While Las Vegas Sleeps…

There is probably a slicker, less eyebrow-raising name for what is going on between Nevada and a few other states, including, but probably not limited to, Utah. I was raised in an era and in a country that seems to be a different place in many respects, nowadays. There was a time when, for instance, if you had a ticket from some three horse town in another part of your own state, it was up to you and that jurisdiction to work out the payment. It was not going to affect you where you lived unless the ticket happened to have been state police. That was to protect citizens from small towns using speed traps as a way to raise local money at the expense of people traveling on roads that went through their town. In the past, the worst thing that could happen in that situation is that it might potentially affect your credit… eventually.

It wasn’t just the idea of police jurisdictions being separated. Taxes were recognized as being separated by interstate commerce laws - federal laws. Unless you lived in an metropolitan transit authority region, you paid sales tax for things in your county based on the local tax rate plus the state tax. If it was income taxes you paid federal and state (if there are state income taxes where you live) and if you lived in California it was California’s business to collect California’s state income taxes.. LA County was responsible for collecting it’s sales taxes, not Orange County’s, et cetera. Texas doesn’t threaten to revoke some sort of privilege for a citizen having not paid California’s income tax. There might be repercussions but it would be with that jurisdiction involved in the specific situation. Regions and jurisdictions exist for a reason. Lots of them, really. The advent of the Internet and online databases and interconnectivity, though, has made some police organizations get some bright ideas on how to collect their regressive taxes on silly traffic or paperwork sorts of fines. Nevada and Utah, and probably some other states nearby, are now sharing traffic ticket data, and your home state - in their technological gestapo pact - is agreeing to look into other states’ business (unpaid tickets) and arbitrarily penalizing you in a completely different governmental jurisdiction by suspending your driver’s license! (and quickly, too.)

I went on a ski trip to Colorado a little earlier in the Winter this year. Naturally, the most direct route to Colorado from Las Vegas is to drive through Utah. I made it eighty percent of the way through Mormon Country and was moving along pretty fast because the weather was great, it was daytime, and there was no one on the interstate with me. You know the rest of the story right off - a Utah state police cop was hiding in the bushes in Bumblefuck, Utah, waiting to catch a little discretionary tax revenue for his town, courtesy of my check book. He wrote me two tickets, including one for not having the current liability insurance card in my car (the old one had just been mailed out and I thought I’d already put it in the glove box before the trip - people make mistakes.) Long story short, I missed the court date trying to get the paperwork together, as I actually misplaced the insurance card altogether and I’ve been busy - I know, poor excuse, but I mean, I was getting around to it, and I did have insurance.

So I just got this thing in the mail. It actually arrived a couple of weeks ago at my post office box but I’ve been out of pocket and haven’t had a chance to check the mail. It’s a notice from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles informing me that I did not appear in a court in another state on the date specified and my license is going to be suspended on April 6th if I don’t contact that state, pay the ticket, and then get proof of payment and send it to the Nevada DMV. That’s just bullshit on so many different levels I don’t know where to begin. I am going to get this all squared away in the next couple of days, no problem, but that isn’t the fucking point. This isn’t Nevada’s business. It’s with Utah. Where I grew up, which I think represents the U.S. in general pretty well, if you get a suspended license, you really had to have screwed up. Big time. Like at least a DUI or something like that which I’ve never had. Suspended licenses have always and should always continue to be a big deal. They have gotten to where they are passing them out like candy lately, out here. It’s ridiculous. And now a suspension of a Nevada license based on something that allegedly happened in an entirely different legal and political jurisdiction??

Police are not meant to be given the authority to enact these sorts of new “programs” on their own. It’s just outrageous to me that people don’t get more indignant about the way things are going. If anything, Nevada should be acting first and foremost to protect the interests of its citizens, not helping another state line its coffers with some extra cash. Nevada taxpayers are paying for this service. The labor costs, the materials, the extra infrastructure… All to assist Utah in what amounts to bill collection.

I knew it was dry but this is crazy! Brothas’ gotta drink out here, yo!

When I first moved to Las Vegas a number of years ago we were already at like year three or four of what is now like an eight or nine year-long “drought.” I remember thinking, “wow - drought in a desert? It’s supposed to be normally dry. It must be like crazy dry.”

Then some other interesting, counterintuitive things happened. Aside from hearing mention a few times of the local area being ahead on average rainful, a huge amount of snow fell up on Mount Charleston. So much so that at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard resort there was an avalanche that killed a boy named Allen Brett Hutchison. Avalanches kill people in the United States but not at ski resorts. They are invariably backcountry skiers, snowboarders, or snowmobilers, that are hurt or killed in avalanches. So it was that much more shocking that an avalanche killed a boy in Las Vegas - during a “drought,” no less. (He was on a chairlift when the avalanche occurred - it took out the ski lift and him with it. Very sad.) Later in the spring, the snow melt from that year’s record-setting snowfall washed out roads and caused some flooding in a school forcing it to be closed for a time.

So what does it mean to be experiencing a “drought” in the desert Southwest when locally there are places with record snowfalls, ahead-of-average rainfalls, et cetera? “Why live in the desert - it’s environmentally irresponsible,” you say? Well the truth is, Las Vegas uses a relatively very small percentage of the drought-ridden water supply. A couple of hours to our southwest there are a few towns you might have heard of that are interspersed with other towns connecting them, in what seems like a sea of never-ending sprawl… Los Angeles, San Diego.. those ringing a bell? Well Southern California uses an unbelievably disproportionate amount of water from the Colorado River on which Lake Mead sits behind Hoover Dam. Drought in the Southwest, Las Vegas, specifically, is all about the Rocky Mountains. The headwaters of the Colorado River start in - you guessed it - Colorado, where they’ve been experiencing lower average snow packs for the basically the last decade. Lake Mead isn’t the only lake dammed up on the Colorado River, any more. The water has to make its way through Lake Powell in frickin’ Utah before it can get down here into Lake Mead, which then, by treaty with several states and Mexico, passes the lion’s share of it on to Southern California. It’s true that the lake is Las Vegas’ primary water source. There are things they call “straws” that pump out our water from Lake Mead. It’s equally true that we’re not not the cause of the drought and sucking the lifeblood out of the river water conservation system’s coffers. That would be California.

So how bad is it? Well that is the reason I wrote this article. According to a new study as reported by MSNBC.com, it’s worse than they’d originally thought. It’s so bad, in fact, that there is a 10% chance that Lake Mead will be dry by 2014. That’s six years from now! By 2017 there is a 50% chance that water levels in Lake Mead will be so low that hydroelectric power generation will have to be halted. The scariest statistic of all? By 2021 - thirteen years from today - there is a 50-50 chance that Lake Mead will be dry.

I know this is Las Vegas and if you’re a regular reader you know I got a little gamble in me… But I ain’t lovin’ these odds - not even a little bit.

Lake Mead is currently hovering about a nut hair above 50% capacity. It is the policy of the Powers That Be to not let a large amount of water out of Lake Powell to drastically increase Lake Mead’s levels until Lake Powell returns to a certain level that satisfies their requirements. Sounds like someone needs to start taking all the rumors of massive, multi-billion dollar desalination projects seriously. All that water and ya can’t drink a drop..

I Las Vegas, with so many, uh, different sorts of occupations, there exists a market to reach out to these “service industry” people and provide solid, legitimate, financial planning, legal, and tax preparation services.

We don’t discriminate in our fair city. We embrace! You see a hooker - we see an upwardly-mobile young professional making over $1000 per day and in need of some serious tax and financial advice!

Take the photo here, for example, which was taken off of Industrial Road near the Can Can Room, an old school strip club:

The age old axiom of “death and taxes” applies to everyone, including Las Vegas’ working girls.

Tags: hookers, Las Vegas, legal, Nevada, service industry, Sin City, taxes

Oh yes… Just like that. Mmmmm The sweet taste of political relevance! No more voting in Texas where the rural, overwhelmingly conservative vote and Washington influence usually makes the primary election winners a foregone conclusion.

Since different states have different primary election or caucus rules, it turns out that the Republican Party does not allow you to vote in their caucus in Nevada unless you are a registered Republican, unlike the Democratic Party, who allows you to register as a Democrat at the time of the caucus. This is unfortunate, because unlike some states, such as Texas where I grew up, you can fully intend to vote Libertarian, Green Party, Dem, Republican, or whatever in the general election, but weigh in with your vote in the primary election for another party. The way it works in the Nevada Caucus, the Democratic Party in effect allows that by letting you register as a Democrat at the time of the caucus to select the party’s candidates before the general election, and that’s what I intend to do. If the Republican Party weren’t a bunch of conservative elitists they would allow you to do the same thing and I would be showing up at that caucus to cast a vote for Ron Paul, even though I know he has almost no chance of winning the general election. I’ve been a Libertarian Party member since 1994 and I would definitely want to give him every chance of making it as far as possible and hopefully share some Libertarian ideals with some people along the way.

As it stands, Hillary Clinton is expected to carry Nevada, but a judge has ruled today to allow “at large caucuses” on the Strip in casinos. The reason why something so arcane actually matters is that a large number of minority voters work in Strip casinos and are members of the Culinary Union. That union has pledged its support to Barack Obama. That support is not worth nearly so much if all the voting members are at work in kitchens on the Strip, so they have gotten a judge to rule in favor of allowing these workers to hold caucuses at their workplaces so that they can vote. It’s possible that that might make it hard for Hillary Clinton to win Nevada, which is now considered a key early primary/caucus state. It’s nice being important! I’m fairly certain having such growth in recent years and more importantly having the Senate majority leader being from your state were huge factors, but I’m glad that they moved our caucus to this timeframe. Nevada is an important state and needs more politically and socially aware, positive attention pointed its direction.

What is a caucus, you ask? Well, in the context discussed here, it’s a form of primary election that causes the participants to take - literally - a more active role in the process. You have to show up to your precinct at a specified time and register, et cetera. Then, instead of casting a secret ballot, at the time of the vote in your precinct, you walk over to a prearranged part of the room to stand next to your choice of candidate. If there is not a clear winner, it becomes time to actually discuss politics! You can choose to be silent if you want, but it’s actually encouraged that you speak your mind as to why you feel your candidate is best and try to sway the other voters to cast their vote for your candidate. It’s a more active approach to being involved politically, at least in the primary elections. I’ve never participated in a caucus before, so I am really kind of excited about it.

I love caucus (and I can not lie!)