With Nevada's lying governor suffering publicly from neuroses and dementia, Sen. John Sidney McCain III turned elsewhere for a reliably docile Nevada Republican who would snap to attention, say Sidney the III is right about everything and introduce the presidential candidate at public functions when necessary (unless of course the function is something that's actually important, like a fundraiser, in which case the candidate would be introduced by Sig Rogich promoter Sig Rogich).
Accordingly, when Sidney the III showed up to scare everybody with his bitter-teleprompter face at UNLV Wednesday, he was introduced by Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki. (For the record, Krolicki muttered some utterly forgettable words of praise for McCain about as serviceably as might be expected from a man who holds a totally useless job with no responsibilities.)
And Krolicki himself was introduced by UNLV President David Ashley. That's moderately intriguing on at least a couple fronts.
First, Ashley sightings in and of themselves have become a rather rare commodity since he assumed the presidency two years ago. While his predecessor, Carol Harter, was undeniably the face of the university, always out front and trying to champion her cause, Ashley has largely ceded that role to Jim Rogers, the Lord High Chancellor of Nevada's higher education system. Rogers, in turn, has joined the battle of the budget with the nation's worst governor, arguably in as vigorous and energetic a manner as anyone in the state, which just goes to show jillionaires can be useful on occasion.
But curiously, as Rogers has fired ammo against the governor in the form of memos and letters, he has drawn on expertise or assistance not from UNLV's president, but from a UNLV provost or a UNLV dean. Indeed, Ashley's silence as an imbecile of a governor plots the economic hollowing out of his institution is nothing short of unseemly -- unless of course Ashley is feverishly working behind the scenes to protect his university from the governor's simplistic cut-and-run solutions to the budget crisis. But if that's the case, it's difficult to see any evidence that such a strategy is working.
Anyway, so there's Ashley Wednesday morning, suited up and in front of McCain's Nevada faithful explaining how delighted he is that UNLV is at the center of the national policy debate blahblahblah. And then he introduces Krolicki, referring to him as "a great champion of higher education."
As the Gleaner has said on more than one occasion, the single greatest piece of legislation enacted in the state of Nevada in the last quarter century if not more is the Millennium Scholarship program that makes college affordable for Nevada students. That program was started in 1999 with money owed Nevada through the tobacco lawsuit settlement, and annual tobacco settlement payments have continued to help fund the scholarships ever since. Krolicki has proposed that the state basically borrow against future years of the settlement, in a fiscally irresponsible scheme to spend the money now to tide the state through its budget crunch.
As CityLife's Steve Sebelius has taken the bother and the trouble to helpfully explain, Krolicki may be a political opportunist willing to use public money, even unlawfully, to advance his own career, a crony capitalist, an ethically challenged hack ...
Krolicki may be many things. "A great champion of higher education" is not one of them.
Ashley should know that. If he doesn't, someone should tell him. And someone should also tell him that he might want to think about, you know, getting in the game.
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