Political antics you might have missed

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Another busy week early in the 2010 cycle, so big that Mayor Oscar Goodman’s State of the City speech was relegated to oblivion by other stories. But His Honor’s thin skin and thug dialect should not be forgotten, nor should more evidence (as if we need any) of John Ensign’s hypocrisy and a post-mortem on Rory Reid’s “Let’s have a community conversation and then ignore it” committee (I think that’s the official name):

I am going to build my city hall the way I want to build my city hall: Goodman’s State of the City speech, which featured a didactic presentation complete with an easel on how redevelopment works and the mind-numbing recitation of all the Goodman things that have happened downtown, was largely ignored because of the kerfuffle over Harry Reid’s race comments.

The mayor started with an analogy of the terrible economic times here to Winston Churchill being in his bunker during World War II. Goodman at least had sense to tell people, “I don’t pretend to have any similarities with Winston Churchill” (no kidding, so why bring him up?), although His Honor did say they both love cigars and martinis. As one of the greatest world leaders in history began to roll a bit in his grave, Goodman continued, “They were facing dire times in World War II and we in Las Vegas are facing dire times.”

Goodman again caught himself and added, “The direness of his situation was so much worse than ours.” Ya think?

But Goodman, apparently an Anglophile after a junket over there last year, then quoted — wait for it — Queen Victoria as saying, “Please understand there is no depression in this house and we are not interested in the possibility of defeat.”

Suppose Sir Winston’s “We shall never surrender” speech slipped Goodman’s speechwriter’s mind.

This silliness having passed, Goodman updated (sort of) pages from his past State of the City speeches and talked about the downtown agora, consolidation, the “medical Mecca” he (or is it Larry Ruvo and the Cleveland Clinic?) is creating. He went on to blame arbitrators ruling against the city for generous public employee contracts and then went on to the Oscar B. Goodman City Hall. “We had a near-death experience when our redevelopment district was almost abrogated,” he said, obliquely referring to the evil Culinary Union. Then came the teachable moments on redevelopment before he concluded with his thug dialect: “I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about it from any stupid people.”

Lovely, as his friends in Britain might say.

And what did the crowd of sycophants do at such appalling verbiage? What else? They applauded.

Run, Oscar, run.

•••

I am shocked, shocked no one asked about my unethical, potentially felonious conduct: Sen. John Ensign this week conducted town halls in Reno and Las Vegas, previewing them on KXNT’s Alan Stock program and telling the host that, in contrast to the Democrats, it would be open, no holds-barred. This came after one heckler had to be removed from a Reid town hall.

I suppose it all depends on what the definition of “open” is.

At both town halls, no one asked about Ensign’s scandalous behavior, which involved parental payoffs that perhaps should have been disclosed on federal forms and his possible conspiracy to help Doug Hampton get jobs and violate a cooling-off law. Ensign has refused to answer any of these questions.

Isn’t it stunning that no one would have asked any of these questions at an “open” town hall by the party now committed to openness?

It would be if stories North and South didn’t point out that questions were screened by Ensign before people were allowed to ask them. And that permitted him to avoid any embarrassing comments and instead simply spew his talking points on health care.

He won’t answer the tough questions because ... he can’t, at least not without embarrassing or incriminating himself.

•••

Some priority by members of the Committee on Community Priorities: That’s the actual name of the Reid the Younger panel convened to give recommendations to the county on its budget problems. The panel met 10 times since August, and I wondered how attendance was.

Turns out that Reid’s pick to be on the panel, Assemblyman Morse Arberry, missed half of the meetings. Nice choice, Mr. Chairman. And Al Martinez, the SEIU president who wrote a scathing memo about the panel’s work, did so after attending only six of the meetings.

At least he had standing to criticize the final product.