Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Nevada’s fine mess

SEE WHAT a fine mess you've gotten us into this time.

That used to be one of the funniest lines in comedy, especially because it was uttered by one of the most famous funnymen duos on the planet, Laurel and Hardy. When they got into a mess, we howled, and when they got out, we laughed even louder.

The state of Nevada is in a fine mess today and, try as I might, I can't find anything funny. We got there not through brilliant comedy genius but because of selfishness and ignorance, neither one of which is a laughing matter.

If you had told me a year ago that a handful of freshmen legislators -- Republicans, by the way, who are supposed to believe in non-activist judges, limited access to the courts and the theory of majority rule -- would be the prime movers in the demise of the Nevada Legislature because they violated all three belief systems, I and everyone else I know would have laughed. It would have been a joke almost worthy of Laurel and Hardy.

But no one is laughing. The best we can muster is a tear for what has become of the once envied citizen legislature of the state of Nevada. It will never be what it once was and what those who labored before us in those chambers tried so hard to make it be.

It was a voice of the people. It was loud, it was raucous. It was temperate, concerned and compassionate and it was stubborn, too. Just like the people of this state who sent their representatives to Carson City to act in their stead. It was Nevada.

Today I don't recognize it because it is a bunch of whiny little politicians who are so afraid to stand up and be counted that they chose to run to the courts rather than face the truth and the voters with a little bit of reality. And not just the courts of Nevada.

Aided by a few of our state's most outrageously selfish business interests, these people who have blighted the good name of Republicanism and scampered over to the federal courts to plead their case. And what was that case? That the Supreme Court of the state of Nevada, seven men and women who are directly responsible every six years to the voters, could not interpret our state's constitution in a valid and responsible way.

The fact that the vote was 6-1 with the only negative vote just a matter of time before it most likely would have joined a unanimous court, speaks volumes about the legal efficacy of their decision. Regardless how many "experts" the tax-hating Review-Journal could drag out to intimidate the jurists, the fact remains that their reasoning was sound, however unusual it may have been. And, it did what most clear-thinking Nevadans wanted to be done. It ordered the Legislature to do its job and do it by majority rule, a concept that has served this republic remarkably well and Nevada extraordinarily so for the past 139 years.

By now the federal judges may have ruled and who knows what that will be. Hopefully, they will have exercised appropriate discretion and voted to stay out of Nevada's mess. We made it after all, we elected these numbskulls who think that serving the public means disserving all but the very wealthy and monied business interests. We sent them to Carson City and we gave them the tools to dismantle a thriving state growing to the verge of real opportunity.

In short, all that has happened is our fault, so why should we look to anyone else -- the federal courts especially -- to clean up this mess into which we have gotten ourselves? The answer is we shouldn't.

We elected them so we can un-elect them. We created a situation in which the majority rules but a minority overrules, so we can fix that, too. Whoever heard of a minority of people telling the majority of the citizens in any state how they should live, spend their money and educate their children?

Yes, we have a mess and it is anything but fine. It is the product of an electorate too busy to be engaged in the business of politics or too distant to be worthy of the right to make these very basic choices. There is a price of citizenship and it has something to do with awareness and involvement. And, so far, we have failed that simple test.

I don't know how all of this is going to end although my every wish is that it end soon. However screwed up the 2003 Legislature has left this state, and believe me, we are way screwed up, we will be better off when these sorry folks crawl back to their ideological homes and leave the people alone.

There will be schools to fix, elderly to care for, parks, police and firemen to deal with and nary a dime with which to do it all. And there will be a tax fix that will not be the best but, very likely, the worst that man's mind can conjure up. It will serve no one well and disserve this state at a time when we need such hurtfulness least.

That will be the legacy of the 2003 Legislature. I know they all didn't plan it this way but I also know there are a few -- mostly Republican members of the Assembly -- who are rejoicing in the madness.

Maybe, in the strangest way, all of this really is funny. I just don't see any decent person laughing.

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