Friday, March 18, 2005 | 3:54 a.m.
Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at [email protected].
WEEKEND EDITION
March 19 - 20, 2005
Maybe we can't do better.
Maybe we are consigned to national embarrassment status, a backwater unable to move forward, a place where unlimited potential is squandered by recurrent myopia.
Our most visible luminary is a bacchanalian buffoon of a mayor who promotes alcohol to elementary schoolchildren and jokes about feathering the family nest wherever he goes.
Our higher education system is a venue where any strides that have been made are vitiated by a so-called special collections department that values Robin Leach's breathless fawning over celebrity homes and a university board of regents populated with goofballs quivering in the presence of a chancellor to whom they have granted omnipotence.
Our lower education system could not sink much lower, ranked near last (again) last week in funding, and where the concept of full-day kindergarten is treated as some kind of useless pork program.
And our concept of political ethics seems to devolve by the year, with part-time elected officials, be they in Carson City or Las Vegas, making a living in the private sector without any discernible qualifications beyond their titles.
Maybe we can't do better.
Maybe we should accept that we are a one-step-forward, two steps-backward city, personified by Mayor Oscar Goodman. For every advancement in downtown redevelopment he touts, Goodman opens his mouth wider and unleashes a couple of classless and clueless gems.
Last week, for instance, at a B'nai B'rith reception, he told the crowd that they should "sit back, relax, close your eyes and pretend you're a class of fourth graders," a reference to his hawking the benefits of gin to a class a few weeks back, remarks he later apologized for unapologetically.
Later, at the same event, he used his hackneyed line about being able to play Monopoly with real money downtown and added that "you even get to help your son once in a while." Funny stuff this, making light of his efforts to ensure Ross Goodman, with the less-than-able assistance of stepson Michael Mack, benefits from his mayoral influence.
Maybe we can't do better.
Maybe we should accept that the university and community college system, despite bright spots such as the law school, is doomed to be NIT-like and never NCAA-worthy. Last week's revelations that regents think it's fine to spend hundreds of dollars on golf outings and fancy dinners to show off their lack of education knowledge to others is just another argument for appointing the university overseers, as most other states do.
And how sad is it that interim Chancellor Jim Rogers' putative bosses can't decide whether to just give him the permanent job or go through a sham of a national search before giving him the job.
Maybe we can't do better.
Maybe no one should worry about that study -- sounding all too familiar -- released last week that showed Nevada ranks 47th in per-pupil funding. The report was released by the U.S. Census Bureau, which the anti-education funding crowd surely will claim is a communist front.
And even though they are simply following through on a poll-tested playbook, Assembly Democrats are dead-on in proposing full-day kindergarten, which would cost $72 million, a drop in the $2 billion bucket of new money but one that would rain benefits on youngsters at the gateway to the public school system.
Maybe we can't do better.
Maybe the public has no reason to have faith in the people making all of these important decisions because they seem to lack the basic ethics that anyone should possess. Mack's business solicitations from the dais seem to be the model for others to follow.
In the last fortnight alone, two state senators have been forced to relinquish contracts that their positions should have disqualified them from obtaining in the first place, but instead appeared to help the lawmakers secure the deals.
Barbara Cegavske gave up a comical contract with Rogers' TV station to provide consulting services to the newsroom that (allegedly) covers the Legislature after folks had the temerity to wonder whether it was ethical for her or KVBC-TV. And Sandra Tiffany had to agree to stop selling surplus state vehicles after some people also had the gall to suggest that a state legislator should not have a contract to do business with the state.
This kind of Mackiavellian behavior has become less the exception than the norm, especially in local government and even more so in Carson City, where common sense is on permanent holiday and lawmakers serving their public or private sector masters is all too obvious.
Maybe we can't do better.
Yet there are those who continue to try. Businessman Larry Ruvo has brought all of his resources to bear to build a world-class medical clinic downtown with an internationally renowned architect and, if he gets his way, a staff to match. Retiring Boyd executive Don Snyder is close to his long-held dream of building a performing arts center that could become a magnet for high-class theater. Heather and Jim Murren have raised a large fortune for a cancer clinic that will be on a par with any in the country.
There are many more examples, from exiled Nobel Prize winners bivouacking here to spectacular condominium projects sprouting to that marvelous new Atomic Testing Museum.
But too often we seem stuck in a time warp, with Oscar Goodman's law firm defending alleged organized crime killers, political corruption probes ongoing and the higher and lower education systems the subject of derision. Maybe we should just accept our status as the butt of jokes but a magnet for tourists, as a colorful dot on the map and not a city with a potential for greatness.
Maybe we can't do better.
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