Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Dang. Then again, DANG! I didn’t move here until seven years after the Rebels won the national championship in 1990, so I can’t compare that to the spirit and enthusiasm and sense of community (not something typically associated with Las Vegas) that has marked the season of the Golden Knights. Would the Knights experience, taken as a whole, be even more powerful and lush and yummy had the Knights won the cup? Maybe, maybe not. Will the Raiders generate the same quality of community pleasure and goodwill? It seems unlikely. The Knights, you see, are the right part in this piece in The Week last month on how Las Vegas is everything right – and wrong – with sports right now.

Last chance to vote early. Today, Friday, June 8, is the last day of early voting. So unless you’re real, real confident that you’ll have time to do it Tuesday, you should do it today. Whether today or Tuesday, you should vote. It’s what Anthony Bourdain would want you to do.

Coming soon to Laxalt’s radar screen? Leading the Current this morning is April Corbin’s thoroughly reported and thoroughly interesting story about the DMV allowing people to change gender on their driver’s license by circling a letter, all easy-peasy like, and how advocates’ next goal is a non-binary gender option. It seems unlikely that, while on the stump in one of the towns he campaigns in (i.e., towns without a pro hockey team), wannabe career politician and long-time Virginian Adam Laxalt will be able to resist throwing a hissy-fit about this common sense development – because “California” probably.

No. Bigger. “I think, almost at the level of the stadium, it’s going to be a game-changer for our community,” said Warren Hardy, in the R-J. Hardy, among other things, is on an advisory panel that is recommending light rail from the airport up Maryland through downtown and over to UMC. Hardy is also quite wrong. The economic impact of light rail would be far, far more positive, and for far, far more people, than a football field. Oh and btw, $750 million in taxing capacity should have been tapped for rapid mass transit instead of said football field in the first place.

“Democrats spar in cutthroat[!] primary” So reads the headline on an AP overview of Nevada’s primary for governor. The story observes that “Sisolak became a prominent figure in the wake of the October shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.” That’s one way to put it. Another way might be to paraphrase Joe Biden and suggest that Sisolak’s campaign sometimes seems to consist mostly of a noun, a verb, and “October 1.”

HellerHighSwamp. “Ready to see the Golden Knights beat the Swamp tonight!” Dean Heller tweeted before the game. Donald Trump, whom Heller totes adorbs, nicknamed Washington, D.C. the swamp, and the Capitals are from Washington, D.C., so “beat the Swamp,” get it? Clever, no? In fact, Heller is such a big Knights fan that, as the Indy reports, he had his HellerHighWater PAC raise money at game 4, played right there in the aforementioned swamp. Heller, you see, is secretly Swamp Thing (apologies to Swamp Thing). And by the way the Capitals should be playing in a state, not a district, but Heller will never ever support D.C. statehood because he evidently thinks taxation without representation is fine, for some people, anyway.

A polluted mine? In Nevada? Unpossible! Please don’t let the EPA designate our old icky mine a Superfund site, because EPA, yuck, the mining industry said. Anything you say beloved mining industry, Gov. Brian Sandoval responded. I hate the agency I’m supposed to be running so sounds good, added disgraced grifter Scott Pruitt. And so if all goes according to scheme, er, plan, a state regulatory apparatus that was captured by industry from the start will “oversee” a dirty mine’s cleanup, in a way that may or may not clean up the mine but will fulfill the state of Nevada’s most consistently urgent priority: coddling rich and/or corporate interests from elsewhere. Meantime – and you will find this hard to believe (no you won’t) – while all this has been going on, no one bothered to consult the Paiute tribe. RGJ

Good luck

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