Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Cooler heads prevail

AHA! Leadership.

You can't imagine what it was like in Washington, D.C., last week for the folks in the offices of Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign who have been working night and day to stop the Yucca Mountain madness from infecting the United States Senate.

That's when they learned that an off-the-cuff legal opinion from the lawyer for the state's Interim Finance Committee effectively shut off all funds to the ongoing effort to convince Americans that everything about Yucca Mountain was wrong and very bad for them.

It is bad enough that the nuclear power lobby in Washington outspends Nevada and its allies at least 20 to 1 at every turn, now they were faced with the worst news they could get at the 11th hour of their struggle. Nevada -- the state for which they were all fighting so diligently -- had pulled the rug out from under them!

How do you deal with that kind of news? It wasn't the enemy around us, it was the enemy from within our own ranks. Talk about morale busting.

Now, can you imagine what it would have been like in the Senate offices of Trent Lott, Larry Craig and Frank Murkowski if and when they heard that Nevada's own lawyers had scuttled our state's effort to fight this madness? Something akin to outright glee, I suspect.

Travel farther down the street to the Nuclear Energy Institute -- they are the people who have spent the millions and millions of dollars buying the hearts and minds of senators and congressmen so they can convince the lawmakers of the power companies' inalienable right to make a profit on the backs of Nevadans and millions of other innocent Americans -- and just imagine what they would have thought if they had heard the news last Thursday.

Then, imagine what every newspaper and television news organization would have headlined the following day, once the news was out. It would have read something like this: Nevada quits, Yucca rolls.

Fortunately, we don't have to imagine what the enemy would have made of the news because cooler heads prevailed, which included a significant bit of leadership from Nevada's governor, Kenny Guinn, and the aforementioned senators.

When Gov. Guinn -- who is up to his ears in the kind of alligators that could devastate a medical community, remove the power from the people and turn the state into a 10,000-year nuclear nightmare -- heard what had happened, he got right on the problem.

After talking to our senators, the governor probably found a way to convince the lawyers involved to consider all of the facts and circumstances, which in lawyer talk is what provides the ability for a legal eagle to change his or her mind when necessary. The result was that the $1.5 million that Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera took the lead on getting to the state nuclear dump fund can be used for the fight.

I suppose, in hindsight one day soon, it will be interesting to find out why Brenda Erdoes, the chief attorney for the Nevada Legislature, was even asked such a question when an unresearched answer could have created the kind of havoc we can only imagine, but that will be a cause for another day.

Suffice it to say that the governor's immediate response and some deliberate thought saved the day. That doesn't mean that all is well in the U.S. Senate because it isn't. But there is reason to believe that the light at the end of the tunnel is not the proverbial oncoming train.

With Colorado's largest newspaper, The Denver Post, editorializing this weekend against Yucca Mountain because of the unanswered scientific questions losing way to the imposition of political hype, it is not unrealistic to believe that other major newspapers will do the same in the coming days.

So to cut off television advertising in the various states where their senators are in play and the editorial boards are thinking this thing through, would be foolish and counterproductive.

And, while I am on the subject -- we all love Oscar Goodman and love to hear him talk, almost as much as he does himself -- there is no point in second-guessing Sens. Reid and Ensign right now on their Yucca Mountain strategy.

Oscar did as much when he questioned the use of city of Las Vegas funds to help pay for television advertisements that our happy mayor thought might have been better used to send him around the country for face-to-face meetings. While he is not wrong about the benefits of meeting senators one on one, he is wrong about the effect of television, radio, newspaper and grass-roots efforts when they are brought to bear in combination to help sway an electorate.

Where he is also right, though, is the need for enough money to do so much more in what appears to be the last couple of weeks of this particular fight in the Senate. What Oscar should do is get on a plane and meet the senators one on one because every little bit does help.

And, if he needs the money to do that, there are plenty of business folks in his city who have not chipped in dollar one who should be only too willing to help the mayor when he asks.

This fight is not over and Nevada can still win what appears to be a much closer vote than anyone ever thought possible.

One thing is certain, though. Now is not the time to do anything or say anything that will help those who wish us harm. Good leaders knows that.

archive