Las Vegas Gleaner

Bold Gibbons-Sandoval agenda would shield uninsured Nevadans from risk of becoming insured

Nevada's health care system is every bit as comprehensive, efficient and fair as the rest of Nevada's socio-economic infrastructure: It sucks, too.

The percentage of uninsured people in Nevada is traditionally among the nation's highest, and the individual mandate thing (wingnuts were for it before they were against it) could be helpful 'round here.

But arguably even more helpful are the Affordable Care Act's provisions that aggressively expand Medicaid.

When the more substantial portions of the health care law take effect in 2014, the expert-texperts project that no state will see a more dramatic Medicaid caseload growth than Nevada. And for most of that expansion, the feds will pick up 90 percent of the cost. Which is to say for every dollar the state spends to cover our teeming masses of uninsured, it'll get back, you know, oodles.

Evil terrible horrible "Obamacare" would provide medical coverage to hundreds of thousands of Nevadans who have none -- a key prerequisite to holding down health care costs for everyone. And no state would get a bigger return on investment. (Perhaps some local Democrats might want to say that sometime? No? Never mind.)

So of course Gov. Brian Sandoval, eagerly emulating the competence and wisdom of his disgraced and unhinged predecessor, wants the activist Roberts court to overturn the health care law. (Remember that the next time you see some media report gushing about how practical and pragmatic and non-ideological the magic Sandoval is.)

Anyway, numbers & shit explaining all this in more detail are here, ifn's your interested.

Rick Santorum: Wrong for Israel!

"I got to tell you something," bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson said in response to a questions about frothy historical footnote Rick Santorum. "I don’t want him to run my country."

Adelson did not indicate if he was equally opposed to the prospect of Santorum running the United States of America.

In the same campaign curiosity of an interview, Adelson said that Mitt Romney is "like Obama" (but not in a nice way). And Adelson added that Romney always refuses to give direct and clear answers to any questions that he, magic bajillionaire and reluctant American Sheldon Adelson, asks. Which of course is the most positive thing anyone has ever said about the life-long presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney.

Adelson also said something something blah something about Newt Gingrich whatever.

Joe Heck, R-Extraneous

Only a relatively few U.S. House seats are genuinely competitive. And Nevada's 3rd congressional district race, pitting incumbent Republican potted plant Joe Heck against Democratic political-industrial cog John Oceguera, promises to be the dullest and most easily ignored potentially competitive House contest in America.

But then, it's not about them, I politely explain in this week's CityLife.

Sharron Angle will be Orly Taitz of fraudulent "voter fraud" non-issue

Tragically, Nevada's reigning queen of whackadoodle doo will not be a candidate for office this year.

My reaction was televised at the top of Friday's edition of The Agenda. Nutshell:

 

Like Franco before him...

....Bill Raggio is still dead. He did more to make Nevada all it is than probably any other politician of the last half-century. But everybody said nice things about him anyway.

Nevada's economic despair secured, protected in state constitution

It's been a couple weeks since the Sandoval "administration" released it's strategy to grow and change Nevada's economy. As is customary with each and any effort purporting to do something, anything, about Nevada's economy, dust has already begun to settle on the plan.

Eh, it's a relatively vision-free and inconsequential document, in any case. Is it's ineffectiveness due to Sandoval's cautious and unimaginative leadership? But of course.

But Nevada, you see, is also constitutionally prohibited from implementing an economic plan that would actually help the economy. Like mine.

Oh, right, your Legislature

So a trio of Assembly Democrats are under fire for failing to report they spent campaign money on living expenses while the Legislature was in session and ... wait. What? It's OK for legislators to let Barrick and MGM pay their living expenses so long as they report it? Go, Nevada, go!

Also... is Republican Sen. Mike Roberson lucky or what? Roberson was once a glorified gopher for disgraced Dancing With the Stars contestant Tom DeLay, and he can't wait to return to Washington. Except next time, instead of being a flunky for a fruitloop, he hopes to be the fruitloop, with flunkies all his own. In other words, he's a candidate for U.S. House or Senate within, at most, three election cycles. Guaranteed.

But meantime, Roberson needs Nevada cred. And so as the ablest Republican in the state Senate (it's a low bar), he has been scurrying to raise enough money to a) elect Republicans and b) make sure they don't have to pay their own bills either while hermetically sealed every other year in the Carson City Bubble. Alas, Democratic Sen. Sheila Leslie delightfully decided to switch districts and challenge a sitting Republican, so the Roberson math, it hurts. Complicating matters further, after a half-term of thoughtless and reflexive wingnuttery, GOP Sen. Elizabeth Halseth has decided to treat her office as she has treated her senses, and now both will be vacated, opening up yet another opportunity for Democrats.

Poor Mike Roberson. Except! He can blame circumstances beyond his control when the Republicans fail to win the Senate. AND more importantly, he can settle into the comfort of the minority and just throw teabagger-approved stinkbombs at everyone for the foreseeable future -- or as the political consultants call it, nurturing the Republican base -- until the federal race comes along that feels right for MIke.

Finally, one-percenter and erstwhile legislative lobbyist Harvey Whittemore may have paid his fellow one-percenters and juice brokers at R&R Partners as much as $70,000 a month over five years for -- public relations? Advertising? Persuading every politician in a 600-mile radius that Harvey Whittemore likes them? -- because that's how these people roll.

That money is but chicken poop compared to the jillions that may or may not have been his and that Whittemore reportedly threw around indiscriminately in the course of failing to develop the Hilariously Most Ridiculous Idea in the History of Western U.S. Real Estate, or as the media insists on calling it, "Coyote Springs."

Which brings us back to ... the vaporized political non-career of Elizabeth Halseth? Yes, Halseth.

Here we have a state where lobbyist/campaign money oozes out of every inflamed pustule of the public process, a state where campaign contributors (i.e., lobbyists) even pay living expenses for lawmakers while they're performing their duties as elected officials. Yet a sitting state senator who never exhibited the slightest compunction about enthusiastically parroting anything that anyone in the private sector said evidently couldn't find a single inluence peddler who would arrange a simple six-figure sinecure for her so she could continue to utter mindless wingnut noises, stimulus-response fashion, in the senate.

That may be the most shocking recent revelation of all in the pathetic saga of venality, incompetence and dysfunction that is Your Nevada Legislature.

Adelson stops putting out for Gingrich?

News reports from the last several days suggest that Pig Newton for President financier and bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson may have interrupted Newt Gingrich's relentless gush of adverbs masquerading as ideas long enough to look Gingrich in his puffy yet beady eyes and tell him "that'll do, pig."

That is, no more yummy millions.

As your Gleaner has observed on many occasions in multiple venues, without Adelson's money, there is no Newt Gingrich campaign. This is of course sad because next to Google entry Rick Santorum, Gingrich perhaps more than any other American represents the best possible hope that Democrats could retake the House and hold their own or even make gains in the Senate. Oh well. Romney may prove just as productive. For Democrats.

A few related items, in no particular order of importance...

1. Weekend NPR listeners may appreciate the cleverness exhibited by Wonkette commenter Lucidamente1:

"So, Will, can you give us the answer to last week's Puzzle?"

"Sure, Rachel. I asked you to supply the name of a real douchebag of a campaign donor; take his first name, replace one letter, and rearrange the result to get his last name."

"And the answer is?"

"Sheldon Adelson."

2. ICYMI, Reuters & ABC have both recently recapped the ongoing federal investigations into alleged shenanigans in Macau. Something about a Las Vegas casino mogul's company being involved with widespread corruption and bribes and organized crime and sex slaves, etc., etc. Titillating, yes. But is it news?

3. Al Jazeera's mini-take on Adelson, for the nonce...

 

Particularly moving is the part where Adelson apologizes because "The uniform that I wore in the military unfortunately was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform." Gingrich was never pressed on it, but when Adelson shifts his jillions to Romney, perhaps the national media would care to take that Adelson quote and ask Willard why he agrees to take money from an American citizen whose loyalty evidently is pledged first and foremost to another country.

CORRECTION: Barack Obama wins alleged NV GOP caucus

While working on a CityLife column to be published later this week your Gleaner asked the calculator a couple simple questions about the 2012 Nevada Republican Presidential Flop held over the weekend:

• The Secretary of State's office reports a tad more than 400,000 registered, active Republican voters in Nevada. Less than 33,000 of them showed up to caucus Saturday, which means for every 100 Nevadans who are so misguided and/or ill-informed that they actually register as Republicans, 92 of them stayed home. Apathy? On the contrary, that's aggressive rejection of the field.

• In their 2008 caucus (attendance: 120,000), Democrats registered nearly as many new voters on caucus day alone as showed up at Saturday's Republican fiasco-fest.

• For months (years) we've been hearing how how much supercalifragilistic work the Mittles campaign has done "on the ground" in Nevada. And sure enough, all that effort by Romney's magnificent organization culminated in turning out a stunning 4 (four) percent of registered, active Nevada Republicans on caucus/flop day.

Throw in a couple bonus statistics -- 100 percent of what Mitt Romney says is wrong and 0 percent of Americans want to have a beer with him -- and you could say that Barack Obama won the whole danged weekend. Except of course Madonna did.

Eddie Haskell undefeated in Nevada's irrelevant caucus

Sheldon wouldn't give Newt an advance on his allowance so there was no ad war to speak of.

And his handlers wouldn't release Mitt Romney from his hermetically sealed environment long enough for the nominee-by-default to suggest that poor people should self-deport or somesuch other mitticism.

So just as in 2008, in 2012 everyone is left wondering: Did the Nevada Republican presidential caucus even happen?