R-J demands elected official be tried for treason, executed

Congratulations to the Review-Journal editorial page writers for doing something they haven't done in quite a long time -- writing an editorial that is so batshit absurd, which is to say more than usually so, that it actually got our attention. Well done, ass-clowns.

True, County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani is a known progressive, and we all know that all those people are just a bunch of Osama-loving terrorist sympathizers. But that's not why the R-J called her a traitor and demanded her ouster from the Southern Nevada Growth & Development Water Authority.

Instead, the R-J said that Chris G was "betraying" her constituency by voting against the growth industry's Wet Dream of the Century, whereby aquifers elsewhere in the state are mined and the water piped down to Southern Nevada so we can build more payday loan stores and nail/tanning salons in strip malls bordered with lots of lush grass that nobody ever walks on.

Chris G's position is sacrilege, to be sure. But a couple things before we confer enemy combatant status upon Giunchigliani and ship her off to Guantanamo...

There's an argument to be made, and these people make it, that Chris G's vote against buying up a ranch as part of SNWA's water grab, and urging that the money be spent on conservation instead, is not so much a betrayal of her constituency but an effort to represent its best interests by stressing sustainable development rather than the breakneck sort with which Southern Nevada has grown so accustomed.

There's also a curious, oh, what's the word?...oh yeah, hypocrisy at work in the paper's editorial, wherein the government-hating rabidly anti-public-spending R-J is full-bore behind a government works project that still has an as-yet squishy but no-doubt multi-billion dollar price tag. And to back up their argument the R-J editorial writers turn to the proclamations of ... a bureaucrat!?!

But the merits of the pipeline plan so beloved by the development and housing industries that buy so very many ads in the R-J notwithstanding, the editorial calling Chris G a traitor is, admittedly, sort of nostalgic. Remember back when people used to read R-J editorials? And public officials were afraid to speak out lest they get their heads taken off in an R-J editorial? Ah, simpler times.

Alas, they're gone now. Which is why we fully expect influential senatorial offspring Rory Reid and the other elected officials on the Southern Nevada Water Authority's board, along with the most effective cheerleader for unchecked and unsustainable growth and development in the Western United States, Water Authority Czarina Pat Mulroy, to publicly defend Guinchiliani's vote as a perfectly legitimate difference of opinion over policy and condemn the R-J's characterization of that vote as a "betrayal" of the people of Clark County. Unless, of course, Reid, Mulroy and Co. are all a-scared of the newspaper.

In which case the next time the R-J calls them a traitor, they'll have it coming.

Comments

[IronJawed]

From one guidette to another: go Chris G go!

[Launce Rake]

The rage of the growth-and-development lobby -- and the tactics that lobby uses when anyone has the gall to buck them -- is obvious to anyone who reads the RJ editorial. It comes as no surprise to those who have been the subject of attacks from Mulroy and her allies. Mulroy recently characterized opponents of the Water Grab -- among them, state and local elected officials from the states of Nevada and Utah, conservationists, ranchers and scientists -- as hysterical fanatics. For the Water Authority and their close associates in the development business, the politics of personal assassination are part of the regular order of business, even if the target is your own board member.

[Local]

With their editorial on the water authority, the R-J had an excellent "two-fer" going there -- First, (and most important) a gratuitous swipe at a hated liberal, Chris G.; and Second, to denounce anyone who might hurt the newspaper's revenues by restricting future residents and businesses that advertise.

But, as you infer, Hugh, the R-J's editorial page years ago lost any pretence toward credibility it may have once had (in the 1970s?). It's a laughing stock.

It's not that nearly all of the R-J's columnists there are becoming bores (or are there already) -- that's one thing.

It's that nut-case editorial department -- people there have been there so long, their obsessive mental illnesses are showing up in print almost every day.

But, hey, if you like nostalgia -- to see what it's like to read a newspaper with the same views and writing as it did when this town was less than half the size it is now -- it's a treat.

[Paine]

Don't forget, Chris G. also is a woman. If there's anything the R-J hates in politics, it's a woman who has an opinion that differs with theirs. In other words, they hate all sane women in politics.

[Jaded]

I canceled my RJ subscription. My bird died. I don't miss the RJ. I miss my bird. Getting enraged at the waste of a perfectly good tree to print that claptrap is not the first thing I want to do in the morning.

[What?!]

Hugh,
I could not have said it any better.

[Paine]

Look, folks, here's how to judge the R-J. It's such a piece of shit that it makes you want to take a shit. So, what is the comparable cost of a good laxative?

Speaking of which, if the R-J editorial writers had an enema, there wouldn't be any of them left.

I think we should all start to write Erin Neff and Jane Anne and esp Geoff (if the JAckon's too liberal for you Don, then sure I'll replace him and be a milquetoast) Schumacher and ask them, do you think Chris Guinchigliani is a traitor? IF not what are you going to do about it? I'm so sick of hearing that "we're not the editorial page." Either they have any pride or they are just cashing a paycheck.

This sort of editorial is so disgusting, so pathetic, so vile, so indicative of why Las Vegas continues to be an experiment in democracy without a press, that someone should take a stand.

Sherman Frederick, a guy who has done nothing, is willing to call someone a traitor because he doesn't like their votes. Why does Sherm Frederick hate democracy?

Seriously.

What is wrong with those people?

Erin, they pay your salary. Waddya say?

[what??]

Besides, I thought LV is in trouble with housing foreclosures, etc? Why do they need more development?

Chris G has more cajones than Frederick, Mitchell and Suprynowicz (esp Suprynowicz) combined.

[KidFromVegas]

It is sad; the RJ has become nothing more than a casino coupon book and new housing brochure. Have not the casinos and developers bought themselves a governor, aided with their mouthpiece the RJ?

Water conservation and true public servants like Chris G. will save this valley (yes, I know it’s not really a valley) from carpetbaggers like the Stephens Family Trust and their advertisers.