Columnist Susan Snyder: Cleaning up a messy Beers spill

Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 | 3 a.m.

Stu-pid: slow of mind; given to unintelligent decisions or acts: acting in an unintelligent or careless manner.

Nevada Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, is a lot of things -- a second-term senator, a mom, a waitress at Treasure Island. But stupid ain't one of them.

Carlton was one of the first people on the telephone to Nevada Assemblyman Bob Beers this past week when word spread of an e-mail he wrote to a Sun City constituent saying casino workers don't value education.

"To have something like that in print is unbelievable," Carlton said after a senate Commerce and Labor Committee hearing in Carson City Thursday.

For those who missed Erin Neff's story in Wednesday's Sun, Beers wrote a reply to an e-mail from a resident who expressed dismay over cuts to government programs and accused Beers of "playing politics as usual."

Must have made the Republican assemblyman a little edgy. His remarks pretty much likened the average casino worker's intelligence to that of an average salami.

Gaming, he wrote, "provides some of the best jobs in America for people who do not value education.

"For the most part, however, the many children they sire grow up not valuing education either," Beers wrote. "These youngsters are prone to dropping out of school, reproducing illegitimate children, often while little more than children themselves, abusing drugs and alcohol more frequently, and even killing themselves more often than people who value education."

Wait. There's more.

"Their failure to value education is a direct legacy from their parents, and there is little government can do to stop it, at any level of spending."

So that's why we don't spend any money on education -- we're too dang stupid to appreciate it!

Beers backpedaled so fast he may have pulled a hamstring. He said he tossed out the comments rhetorically, for the sake of academic argument. (How many assemblymen does it take to screw up the first day of the session?)

Beers didn't describe any of the co-workers Carlton has met at Treasure Island over the past 20 years.

"We have Girl Scout leaders. We have Boy Scout mothers. We have people who teach Sunday schools," Carlton said. "They're parents like parents in every other town in this country. Everybody wants their child to have a better life than they had."

Carlton's 18-year-old graduated from Rancho High School's magnet program and started classes this fall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"She graduated as a junior because she had enough credits in three years," Carlton said. "She took summer school and extra classes. Does that sound like a kid who doesn't value education?"

Carlton's 17-year-old is a percussionist enrolled at Las Vegas Academy.

"She works in the library," Carlton said. "My girls are out of bed at 5:30 every morning to go to school."

The Nevada industry that values educated people the least is the public education system. Educated people can earn more selling cocktails in a casino than they can earn by using their college educations in a classroom. Casino wages may offer those parents the only hope they have of sending their kids to college.

Beers is right. Education is undervalued in Nevada. He's just confused as to who values it less.