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« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »
September 29, 2007According to researchers a study by biologists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee found dramatic variations in a cockroach's learning ability throughout the day. In the morning, the insects couldn't learn a new task, but in the evening, something kicked in.
Sounds just like American students.
Agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made at least 56 arrests in Reno, Sparks and Fernley after raids at the restaurants and a franchise corporate headquarters in Reno, agency spokesman Richard Rocha said.
The raids drew immediate criticism from Reno Mayor Bob Cashell and activists, who estimated the number of arrests to be closer to 100.
The mayor joined a news conference area Hispanic leaders and members of the American Civil Liberties Union called in front of the federal courthouse late Thursday.
"We don't approve of the Gestapo methods ICE is using," said Gilbert Cortez, a Latino leader who urged Hispanic workers to stay home from work in protest Friday.
Funny, when you give them a date to appear for a hearing, they disappear and reappear under a new identity. But if they get picked up in a raid Latino leaders get upset and white politicians are afraid to state the truth; these people have broken the law by entering the country, are forging documents, and often commit other crimes, and they certainly aren't going to come in to officials and say, "A propósito, tengo tres sistemas de las licencias de conductor y de los números de Seguridad Social." (By the way, I have three sets of driver's licenses and social security numbers.)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's longtime relationship with a powerful Nevada real estate developer has given rise to a lawsuit by a public interest group.
Judicial Watch wants to know if the Nevada Democrat and other state politicians exerted undue pressure on the federal government on behalf of his friend.
Mr. Reid was at the head of the Democrats' campaign against the "culture of corruption" in Washington. But for years, the Los Angeles Times reported, Reid was active in clearing hurdles to the development.
Judicial Watch is suing the Bureau of Land Management for documents related to the 43,000-acre Coyote Springs housing and recreational development northeast of Las Vegas, now in its early stages. The lawsuit alleges the bureau failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request of March 8.
Lawyer and lobbyist Harvey Whittemore, a shareholder in the law firm of Lionel Sawyer & Collins, is the driving force behind the project and a political contributor to Mr. Reid. Mr. Whittemore has employed Leif Reid, a son of the senator, as an attorney.
I wonder just how many politicians and atttorneys are going to get rich from this, especially after the glowing support by Senator Reid, Senator Ensign, former Governor Kenny Guinn, President and CEO of the Nevada Development Authority Somer Hollingsworth, Joe Pantuso of the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association, and Pat Mulroy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority to name a few.
For more on Coyote Springs see
Water for new town flows to lobbyist: Whittemore gains water rights for development without contention seen in other parts of Nevada
Huge development under way in Nevada desert
From Fined group tied to Hillary
Officials of a defunct pro-Democratic group that was hit with a near-record campaign-finance fine last month hold strong ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, documents show.
At least four persons who worked for the America Coming Together (ACT) fundraising group, which the Federal Election Commission recently fined $775,000, work directly for the Clinton campaign or hold top positions with consulting firms hired by it.
Fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats, Norman Hsu remains in jail without bond on charges he bilked investors in a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
According to the Commerce Department sales of new homes dropped by 8.3 percent in August from July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 795,000 homes, the lowest level since June 2000.
With the credit problems, the sub-prime lending fiasco, loss of jobs in the construction market, plummeting value of the dollar fueled by a bailout of the largest financial institutions coupled with a seemingly reckless half point drop by the Federal Reserve which seems designed only to bolster the stock market, record crude oil prices, and a plethora of presidential candidates already bought by special interests, 2008 looks like a good year for a recession. It also looks like a good year for Democrats to win the White House. They don't fix recessions; they ride them out and then take credit, but that's just good politics.
LAS VEGAS, Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Senator Barbara
Cegavske, Commissioner Rory Reid and Mayor Oscar Goodman, joined Ed in '08
Campaign Chairman Roy Romer and other leaders at the Clark County
Government Center, during the campaign's state-wide kick-off in Las Vegas
today, to challenge the presidential candidates to lay out their plans to
fix America's public schools.
"The presidential candidates recognize that Nevada is a key primary
battle ground state," said Romer, as he was flanked by parents, teachers
and school reform advocates. "I urge all voters to send a message to the
candidates: Tell them they must stand up to the special interests that
oppose fundamental reforms because America's failing schools are a national
crisis that can only be solved with strong leadership."
Strong American Schools' Ed in '08 campaign, an up to $60 million
nonpartisan effort supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The
Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, urges the candidates to put forth a plan
of action to implement stronger American standards, ensure that there is an
effective teacher in every classroom and increase time and support for
student learning.
In our society today we will NEVER have an effective teacher in every classroom.
1. Teacher programs don't attract the best students; in the 1990's 40 percent of all education
majors tested in the bottom 20 percent of all college students.
2. An extraordinary number of education majors want to be coaches, meaning that they get a certificate in physical education. A few years ago George Will wrote an opinion piece where he noted that in the state of Arkansas during a five year period its teacher programs graduated 4,400 p.e. teachers and 1 physics teacher. I challenge Nevada colleges to provide the numbers of qualified teachers in each discipline to the public. I will bet the numbers are frightening.
3. Corporations claim to want an educated population but, hey, it's cheaper to outsource, and in Nevada the "corporation" is simply the gaming industry, an industry which relies on mundane service--parking valets, dealers, waitresses, room service, clerks, bartenders--so how much education do they really require from employees while taking money from the clientele.
4. Corporation have apparently more rights than individuals (and certainly buy more influence with our politicians than ordinary people) so it is more likely that the corporate tax will be lowered in the U.S. leaving less money for programs (but probably not ending corporate welfare).
5. If Nevada wanted to raise education standards, it could simply raise taxes on the "corporation" that controls all of Nevada: Gaming! Nevada taxes casinos at the lowest rate of any state or country in the world. But we know that won't happen, because that would take "strong" leadership, something sorely lacking in Nevada.
6. There is just something basically wrong with expecting "fixes" to come from the federal level; it was the failing state of education which led to the "No Child Left Behind Act" which has caused school administrators to creatively find ways to skew numbers so they can remain in hiding, and done little to change education at its most fundamental levels--raise the damn bar back to where it was forty years ago when our county put men on the moon using slide rules.
And it is really time that we seek out talented people and pay them what they are worth to be teachers and truly forget about the obscenely overpaid celebrity monkeys making the news on ESPN or ET. The next news story on TV about O.J. Simpson, Brittney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, try turning off the TV; instead, read a book to or with a child; I guarantee you will survive.
Posted on the Glenn Beck website is this transcript of a show from a week ago where Glenn plays part of an interview that was held at WPLR in New Haven, Connecticut. They had James Brolin (Mr. Barbra Streisand) on for an interview on a movie that he was doing, and it's on September 11th.
VOICE: Yeah, and so, you know, this is based on a true story and I don't know if the kid was there at the time. And, of course, they never really caught the guy and brought him into town in reality, but they sure as heck found him in one day where the CIA couldn't find him in several years, supposedly. So, you know, it's kind of a parody on how much we can't catch war criminals with all of our sophisticated stuff, you know.
VOICE: That's something we've been talking about a lot today on the show for obvious reasons, the sixth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
VOICE: Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, happy 9/11.
VOICE: Well, that's kind of a weird thing to say.
VOICE: Silence.
VOICE: Yeah. Well, we're right outside of New York. I mean, I know people who lost family members. So I don't know. We don't say "Happy 9/11" around here.
VOICE: You celebrate the day, right?
VOICE: Well, we kind of commemorate the day by remembering the people who were lost and the families that they left behind.
And Americans seem to hang on the words of celebrities as if they had a special "truth." For the most part, I view celebrities as empty people looking for a script writer to give them a personality, a voice, and a statement. Also, judging by the number of "bombs" many celebrities embrace--I mean movies--a large number of Hollywood celebrities don't even have the brains to recognize a bad script.
And now a large number of people are pinning their hopes on Fred Thompson, as if his character on TV somehow translates to who he really is. Who he is should be judged by what he has done, not what his TV character says. Thompson has lobbied for special interests, such as Equitas--a British insurance company which tried to avoid paying for asbestos/cancer claims--a Tennessee savings and loan, Toyota, Perrier, and he and his past law firm even advised the lawyer working for the terrorists who brought down the Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie. See "Fred Thompson: Going Nowhere Fast" by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.
The Clark County School District lost $2 million in funding because a federal survey underestimated the number of Nevada students whose primary language isn't English.
Local and state education officials say the Las Vegas district will receive slightly more than $4.4 million from the federal government this school year, down from $6.4 million last school year.
Is it the fault of the Feds that the estimate is low or did our state and local education officials forget something? When students are enrolled, officials know the ethnic background of the students and the language spoken at home, so that information would be available if local officials passed it on to the appropriate Federal level. My guess...the mistake was at the local level.
Of course we have been hearing for weeks about the escapades of valued Democratic fund raiser and friend, Norman Hsu, who managed to raise some 850,000 dollars for Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign only to have it come out that Norman has been running Ponzi schemes for years and has apparently bilked investors out of several millions of dollars.
Now comes Ray Hunt, friend of the Bush family, advisor to the President, contributor to the George W. Bush Library, and owner of Hunt Oil to poison relations within Iraq.
Hunt Oil announced this month that, after secret negotiations, it had struck a deal with leaders in the country's Kurdish-controlled north to explore for oil in the Dahuk region near the Turkish border. News of the deal angered Iraqi Arab leaders, who saw it as a Kurdish power play for the country's oil resources, one that appeared to disrupt already fragile talks over a critical benchmark for peace: an agreement among the Sunni, Shiites and Kurds to share profits.
(Reuters) - People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a study released on Monday.
Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.
A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleep from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk of death from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.
I'm going back to bed. Goodbye.
Eric Perkins, an attorney in Corpus Christi, Texas, said Friday he filed a response to the lawsuit from Nebraska State Sen. Ernie Chambers.
Chambers, a self-proclaimed agnostic, said he's trying to makes the point that anybody can sue anybody. He said his filing was triggered by a federal lawsuit he considers frivolous.
But no one knows where a second response from "God" came from. There was no contact information on the filing, which turned up on the counter at the Douglas County Court office, although St. Michael the Archangel is listed as a witness.
If I was the judge I would schedule a trial on the chance that God makes an appearance.
'God' gets an attorney in lawsuit
Three months before his departure as chief of the Clark County School District Police, Hector Garcia sent $11,750 in business to a longtime associate to evaluate the feasibility of metal detectors at a North Las Vegas High School.
Within weeks of his Aug. 10 resignation Garcia had new employment - as vice president of his associate's company, the School Safety Advocacy Council, which offers training and security assessments for school police and resource officers. (Las Vegas Sun)
Former school superintendent Carlos Garcia did the same. After fiddling for five years until his pension vested Garcia then took a position as vice president of urban markets with the book publisher, McGraw-Hill, with whom he had committed the district to for textbooks throughout its schools and had also hired the company to provide a variety of educational services
Cronyism, bribes, kickbacks, campaign contributions, Lacy Thomas, Erin Kenny, Dario Herrera, Senator Harry Reid, attorney Jay Brown, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Rick Rizzolo...the more the Vegas area changes, the more it stays the same. Is there a seminar at UNLV on "How Business Really Works In The Valley?"
And while Clark County District Attorney Dave Roger still can't find his way to the District Court House for a corruption case (He is still "reviewing" cases, such as the UMC scandal.), he certainly made sure to find it so he could participate in the farce called O.J. Simpson. Dave must be thinking about a run for political office and hoping to capitalize on the national media attention. It normally would be a good ploy; at least one other former prosecutor who never found reason to prosecute corruption was eventually rewarded with the governorship of the state--Bob Miller. Hopefully, this time Roger has attached himself to a media circus that only the media is interested in.
From WTOP.com; Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress on Wednesday that the federal government will hit the current debt ceiling on Oct. 1.
The current debt limit is $8.965 trillion. Unless Congress votes to raise that ceiling, the country would be unable to borrow more money to keep the government operating and to pay debt obligations coming due.
The Senate Finance Committee earlier this month approved increasing the limit on the national debt to $9.82 trillion.
That is about $30,000 per person already, so what is another $850,000,000,000 or $2,900 per person?
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts compared attorneys to firefighters last week, telling a University of Montana law school gathering that both have to jump into tough situations to contain problems.
....
Roberts noted that both firefighters and lawyers are viewed as "a little bit nuts" and have a strong sense of camaraderie.
"If you are in the law simply to make a living, you are not likely to find it rewarding," he told the audience.
Can we impeach Roberts for being really nuts? I don't think that very many firefighters are pouring gasoline on fires so that they increase their billable hours. I also doubt that they are told at firefighter school that they have to be prepared to be firefighters one day and arsonists the next and perform both roles equally, but attorneys are expected to argue both sides of an issue equally depending on which client comes through the door. Plus, firefighters know who their enemy is, the fire. An attorney has to deal with other attorneys who file delaying motions, judges who are incompetent at the law, who don't know the case, who are political or bribable (In Las Vegas, They're Playing With a Stacked Judicial Deck--L.A. Times), even (Gasp!) clients who are criminals--not just in criminal cases but in civil matters, also. The legal system is corrupt; those with money "buy" the best justice, but Roberts claims that those who only want to make a living don't find it rewarding ( I have never met an attorney who said, "Forget the retainer, ignore the bill, I don't need or want the money. I'm just glad justice was served.") ...I wonder if it is more likely those who like money stay in the profession and that those who leave the profession are like many who leave teaching--they have the passion for the profession but not the stomach for navigating a failing system where the marginal and incompetent seem to be a protected species.
For fun--or despair--check out Steve Miller's articles which include the efforts of former mob attorney, Oscar Goodman, the law firm of Patti & Sgro working for Rick Rizzolo, former strip club owner, the Reid family headed by Senator Harry and their land deals, former District Court Judge Nancy Saitta, now a Nevada Supreme Court Justice, who tried to file a document in favor of Rick Rizzolo when the case was being heard by Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez in September 2004 (A judge in their pocket), and then try to believe that attorneys have anything in common with firefighters. I doubt most people, except attorneys, can stomach the comparison.
O.J. Simpson was arrested Sunday, three days after police named him a suspect in an alleged armed robbery of collectors involving the former football great's sports memorabilia, authorities said.
Simpson was arrested shortly after 11 a.m., Capt. James Dillon said. Police were still determining charges.
No doubt after everyone gets an autograph, no charges will be filed.
Six weeks after a fatal Minneapolis bridge collapse prompted criticism of federal spending priorities, the Senate approved a transportation and housing bill Wednesday containing at least $2 billion for pet projects that include a North Dakota peace garden, a Montana baseball stadium and a Las Vegas history museum reports USA Today.
Total spending on transportation "earmarks" next year is likely to be about $8 billion, when legislative projects from a previously approved, five-year highway bill are factored in. A newly released report by the Department of Transportation's inspector general identified 8,056 earmarks totaling $8.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended in October, or 13.5% of the Transportation Department's $63 billion spending plan.
The inspector general's report found that the vast majority of earmarks -- project-specific spending instructions written into bills, usually by lawmakers -- were not evaluated on their merits, and that many "low-priority" earmarks often squeezed out more important projects.
But what museum? We have a Las Vegas Museum, a Natural History Museum, a Neon Museum, a Las Vegas Art Museum, a Liberace Museum, an Elvis Museum, a Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian or is this for the famed Mob Museum Oscar Goodman supports--although the mob doesn't exist!
The Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) is gearing up for the 6th Annual International Money Laundering Conference, September 24-26th in Las Vegas, NV.
According to an announcement yesterday from ACAMS, the conference will open with a "rare, inside look at a regulatory exam" with a walk-though by Lisa Arquette (FDIC), John H. Atkinson (Federal Reserve Bank), and Kimberly Hebb (OCC).
Isn't having a money laundering conference in Las Vegas like having an anti-terrorist conference in the middle of an Al-Qaeda camp or an anti-prostitution conference in certain Las Vegas massage parlors?
The world's tallest building, still under construction in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, has become the world's tallest free-standing structure.
The Burj Dubai tower is now 555 metres (1,831.5 feet) tall and has surpassed the 553-metre- (1,824.9-feet) CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, which held the record for the world's tallest free-standing structure since 1976.
Dubai has also been in the news when it was learned that a company based in Dubai had received a contract to run port security in the U.S. It also appears to be the new home of Halliburton, as the company announced that it will establish a new headquarters there. The city now is home to numerous multinational companies such as AT&T, General Motors, Heinz, IBM, Shell, and Sony.
So, for all the Dubai bashing it has a diverse and booming economy and is a center of free trade, religious tolerance and pro-Western attitudes.
52-year-old Orlando Jones, godson and a former aid to John H. Stroger, Jr., a politician who in 1994 became the first African American president of the Cook County, Illinois Board of Commissioners, was found Wednesday on a beach in the town of Union Pier in southwestern Michigan, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Jones had been under criminal investigation by Las Vegas authorities, who last week recommended he be prosecuted along with fired Las Vegas hospital administrator Lacey Thomas and a Chicago businessman.
Woman Drives Stolen Car to Courthouse
In South Carolina Amber Renee Helton, who went to court to pay a traffic ticket, drove there in a stolen car.
Super bank robber Forest Kelly Bissonnette, 27, apparently tried to cover his name on his own check, then handed the note to a teller Sept. 5 at the Bank of the West in Englewood, Colorado.
They must have both gone to public high schools to be so smart.
Forbes is reporting on a quarterly report out of the University of California says the US economy, while not technically in a recession, is having a 'near recession experience.'
The UCLA study released today predicts real US economic growth will be just above 1 pct in the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2008, and says the deterioration of the housing market is to blame.
....
The forecast predicts the US economy will return to a 3 pct growth rate by 2009, and that the Fed will cut the federal funds rate to 4 pct by the end of this year, more than a full percentage point lower than the current 5.25 pct.
But in other news today the dollar fell to an all-time low against the euro today and oil prices surged to a record, suggesting that a weaker American economy will be accompanied by higher prices for energy and other imported goods.
Early this afternoon one euro was trading at $1.391, up from $1.384 on Tuesday evening; the euro is up 5.4 percent against the dollar so far this year and about 1 percent so far this week. Crude oil prices were up 2.2 percent, to $79.91 a barrel
Home market crash, credit crash, rising oil prices, rising product prices, and poisoned toys from China. If we don't see a recession, it's still going to be tough Christmas season.
Republican Mitt Romney, a former one-term governor with a thin foreign-policy resume, argued Wednesday that the Senate tenures of his top Democratic presidential rivals don't automatically make them qualified to address world affairs.
"Sitting on committees in Washington does not guarantee that someone has the skills to solve the problems on the international stage," Romney told The Associated Press
And apparently Romney's foreign policy experience consists of spending 30 months in France as an LDS missionary in the 1960's. Along with the apparent gaffes committed by his staff in South Carolina, Mitt just may end up as more joke than serious candidate, except for the fact that the Mormons really wants to see him in the White House and will surely pay into his campaign coffers.
A Web site ridiculing Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson - dubbed PhoneyFred.org - turned out to be real bad news yesterday for GOP rival Mitt Romney.
The salacious site, which labeled Thompson "Playboy Fred" and worse, was linked yesterday to Romney's campaign, forcing the former Massachusetts governor's red-faced aides to disavow the site.
The incident - sparking the first real mudslinging in the Republican primary - began when cybersleuths connected the anti-Thompson site to Romney's top consultant in South Carolina, Warren Tompkins.
For more on how each candidate will spin this go to "Anti-Fred Thompson Web site linked to Mitt Romney."
It's nice to see that the candidates are hiring intelligent, professional juveniles to run their campaigns. Don't they have enough sense to leave this sort of behavior to the the rabid bloggers on the net?
A New Hampshire teenager's yearbook photo has been rejected, because she's holding a flower. Merrimack High School student Melissa Morin's senior photograph featured her and a small red flower. School officials, however, said the picture is not going to make it in the yearbook because props aren't allowed.
Wow! And this state gets to have the first primary! If you want to know what's wrong with education it's actions like this where common sense has been put to death and the foolish are in charge. And remember that this state ranks a lot higher than Nevada for education, which comes in at 49th, just a nudge ahead of Arizona. Think of all the crazy decisions Clark County schools will perform in the next couple of years before this state dies of thirst--I mean runs out of water.
The recent articles on the Nevada sex scene have given bloggers plenty to post the last few days, so why not go with the flow; hopefully, the attention will keep Oscar saying stupid things, his stock in trade, giving bloggers continued blogisms...or is that blogasms.
New York Times, September 8, 2007
Escape From Las Vegas
By Bob Herbert
Amber is 19 years old and on Sunday she caught a flight out of Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport and went home to a small town in Minnesota, not far from the Iowa border.
I'm rooting for her. She's low on funds ("I've got my ticket, that's about all," she said), and she's at a crucial turning point in her life.
The question is whether she will go off to college in Florida, and stick with it, which she insists is what she wants to do, or whether she will slip back into her life as a stripper and lap dancer, which is so often the start of the descent into the hell of prostitution.
"I hate the dancing," she told me. "Sometimes I think I don't have a strong enough mind for it, because of the way people treat me."
I met Amber in Las Vegas last week. I was with Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who was asked by the head of the U.S. State Department's anti-trafficking office to do a study of the sex trade and its consequences in Nevada.
(She published the book-length study this week under the title, "Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.")
Amber's story is far more typical than many Americans would like to acknowledge. There are many thousands of Ambers across the country, naïve kids from dysfunctional homes who are thrown willy-nilly into the adult, take-no-prisoners environment of the sex trade with no preparation, no guidance and no support at all.
They are the prey in the predatory world of pimps, johns and perverts that goes by the euphemism: adult entertainment.
Amber's parents are divorced. Her mother, with whom she lives when she's in Minnesota, is both physically and emotionally ill.
For awhile, she said, she had a stepfather who physically abused both her and her mother.
"He was on meth," Amber said. "He'd hit us, scream at my mother. We'd make dinner and he'd go into a rage and throw away the whole dinner. So we'd go without dinner that night."
Amber was both shy and rebellious and began dancing at a strip club in Minnesota on a dare. That was several months ago.
One afternoon a wrestling coach from her high school came in while she was dancing. "I was topless," she said, "and I just wanted to crawl into a hole."
She saved enough money to go to Vegas and tried out for a job there. "The manager told me, 'You can't work for me. You're too big,' " she said. "So I didn't eat for four days. All I had that whole time was one bowl of cereal and some water. It was horrible. I lost 10 pounds and went back. He made me take off all my clothes and dance for him. And then he said I was still too big. You have to be practically anorexic to dance for him."
I asked why she continued dancing even though she hated it. Her face took on the puzzled look of a kid who had no good answer for not doing her homework.
"I don't know," she said. "It's not very logical, is it?"
She got a job at Sheri's Cabaret on South Highland Avenue, which trumpets to all and sundry that its dancers are completely nude. The owners of the cabaret also own Sheri's Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour's ride outside of Vegas.
"It's unbelievable the way the customers degrade you," Amber said. "Their hands are all over you and they're always trying to have sex with you."
I asked if she'd ever been tempted to give in. She waited a long moment before answering.
"Sometimes I am," she said. "Sometimes a guy will offer a lot of money, and I might think that could help with whatever I need for that month. But then I think, I just can't do that. Nobody should violate my body like that."
I asked Amber why she was willing to talk candidly and on the record about her experiences. She said, "I want people to know what it's like for us. They think we're just a bunch of lowlifes who like to get naked for money. We're not. We go through a lot."
When I asked her if she ever wanted to get married and raise a family, she was unequivocal.
"No" she said. "I don't want any of that. I just feel if I get married the guy will change and show his true colors. I don't want that to happen to me."
She swears she's going to school and will try to find work in the fashion industry.
I asked if she thought she would ever go back to dancing.
"Probably not," she said.
Steve Miller, ever tenacious in discovering the relationships of the few, the rich, and the shady in Las Vegas is reporting in a new article that in 2005, immediately following Rick and Lisa Rizzolo's divorce and three weeks after Rizzolo began negotiating his plea agreement with Federal prosecutors, the couple visited the law firm of Lionel Sawyer and Collins in Las Vegas, a law firm closely associated with United States Senator Harry Reid, whose son Rory works there. Steve writes that they met with attorney John E. Dawson, the brother of U.S. Federal Court Judge Kent Dawson, to protect assets in various ways including transfers of property and creation of a trust.
....
After setting up the separate trust, the Rizzolo's hired John E. Dawson as the Resident Agent for the Crazy Horse Too's parent corporation, "THE POWER COMPANY, INC."
....
Steve writes that it appears "Judge Dawson went real easy on 16 former Crazy Horse goons after they pleaded guilty to crimes including racketeering, tax evasion, robbery, and extortion; this after U.S. Federal Prosecutors asked for harsh sentences; and after a member of the New York Crime Commission testified about several of the defendant's mob ties."
"Would Judge Dawson have been so lenient with the Crazy Horse goons if his brother had not gained lucrative clients like Rick and Lisa Rizzolo? Or had he not been appointed a Federal Judge by the business partner of one of the Crazy Horse Too's attorneys?"
As Steve points out, Judge Dawson sentenced Crazy Horse shift manager Vinny Faraci, a reputed Bonanno crime family soldier who had a prior felony conviction, to only five months in an Arizona Federal Prison Camp.
Steve notes that not once during the trials did Judge Dawson disclose that his brother John was the Crazy Horse Too's corporate Resident Agent, or that his brother arranged to hide the Rizzolo's assets from forfeiture, or that he was appointed to the Federal Bench by Senator Reid who is the business partner of Jay Brown who is the law partner of Oscar Goodman who was once Rizzolo's criminal defense attorney and former corporate Resident Agent!
Cause if he did, that would be ethical behavior and I think that such behavior has been outlawed in Nevada. This is the place--possibly Hell--where graft and corruption have to be listed on your resume to get ahead, and where Las Vegas Mayor Goodman recently offered to beat Columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times over the head with a baseball bat because--gasp--that reporter dared to report in "City as Predator" that Las Vegas and Nevada exploit women through prostitution and human trafficking. Can we beat over the head--with a rolled up Sunday paper--the next person to suggest that Oscar should run for governor or U.S. Congress. Please, haven't we had enough embarassment from our elected officials in this state
While the Las Vegas Sands Corp. opened the Venetian Macao hotel and resort, the Macau casino plans of Australian billionaire media mogul James Parker have been hit by a tight debt market.
Melco PBL Entertainment (Macau) Ltd. (MPEL) - a Nasdaq-listed joint venture between the Sydney-based Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd. and Hong Kong's Melco International Development Ltd. - said this week it had borrowed $1 billion less than the $2.75 billion it had planned to use to develop and then build its "City of Dreams" underwater casino and entertainment resort in Macau. One of the key features will be a hall of baccarat tables encircled by swimming sharks.
It must be a sad day in the life of a billionaire when you have to shave a billion dollars from your casino plans; I would almost have to blame daddy for dying with only a couple of billion in assets leaving Parker in such financial straits.
On the local level a judge rejected indicted former Clark County commissioner, Lynette Boggs' bid Wednesday to be declared indigent and have the county public defender handle her criminal ethics case.
"By no stretch of the imagination do you qualify as indigent," Clark County Hearing Master Kevin Williams stated. Her attorney, Bill Terry, was allowed to withdraw from the case because he hasn't been paid.
From 1994 to 1997, Lynette Boggs served as assistant city manager for the city of Las Vegas. She served on the Las Vegas City Council from 1999 to 2004. She was also at one time on the Board of Directors for Station Casinos, Inc. If she would just sell some of the investment properties she collected or perhaps that house that happened to be in the wrong district, she could easily pay some attorney bills but for some reason our public officials past and present seem to think that public service means the public serves them and should pay for their alleged crimes.
Another "public servant" is also costing Nevadans more money than is usual.
From KRNV.com.
Nevada taxpayers will be paying more than normal this year for the governor's travel tab.
Governor Jim Gibbons asked the Nevada Legislature this year for $25,000 to cover his travel on official business outside the state.
That's more than double what former Governor Kenny Guinn spent his last year in office.
What's more... it turns out Gibbons failed to ask for an additional $37,000 he says he needs for security on those trips.
In case you didn't care, there was a Republican debate in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. You probably didn't care much, also, about what the candidates had to say as we know they have pollsters and consultants and media people to help them present themselves as caring, well-informed leaders and not meglomaniacs with strange private agendas.
But a few people not only care about their candidates but wrote in to Fox News touting which candidate they felt won the debate.
From their responses I learned two things:
1. Many of those who wrote in have bad grammar; the only writers who make more grammatical mistakes are the hard core liberal bloggers.
2. These people are about as likely to agree on what they saw and heard as a committee made of equal numbers of pro-lifers and pro-choicers.
For fun, here are a few of the responses on who won the debate:
"I believe Rudy G. won the debate. "
"The clear winners were Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee, in that order. Ron Paul is a very poor excuse for a Republican and should run with the other idiots on the Democrat side."
"MITT ROMNEY."
"Hands down, Mike Huckabee won the debate."
"Rudy Giuliani was the clear winner. "
"While McCain performed better than expected, I thought overall Romney won it. Giulani was just plain disappointing."
"I liked Huckabee and McCain."
"I believe that it was a toss-up between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney."
"Ron Paul has just lost what sanity he ever had. "
"Ron Paul won."
"Ron Paul was the clear winner tonight!"
"I think that Ron Paul was the best in the debate! He is someone that speaks truth and isn't a phony, but he doesn't fit the powerful peoples' agendas!"
"The poll after the debate shows the clear leader of the pack. Ron Paul is the only hope for America."
"Huckabee is the who should win out of everyone....",
"I think Huckabee would be ideal, but I think Rudy is the one that can beat Hilary! Happy voting. Vote GOP!"
"I feel that Giuliani and Romney were very strong tonight."
"JOHN MCCAIN.
"McCain won hands down."
"Clearly, Ron Paul won the debate."
"Giuliani is far from impressing."
"Ron Paul won this debate."
"I like Tom Tancredo's stance on illegal immigration...."
"Mike Huckabee won the debate in my opinion."
"Clearly Ron Paul won the debate."
"Mitt Romney won the debate."
"Giuliani and McCain were my favorite. "
"John McCain. Romery was blah to me...."
"Fred Thompson wins hands down."
Reuters reported on a study comparing the abilities of human toddlers to chimpanzees and orangutans found that 2-year-old children have social learning skills superior to the apes, researchers said on Thursday.
In one social learning test, a researcher showed the children and apes how to pop open a plastic tube to get food or a toy contained inside. The children observed and imitated the solution. Chimpanzees and orangutans, however, tried to smash open the tube or yank out the contents with their teeth.
European scientists gave a battery of cognitive tests lasting three to five hours separately to 105 2-year-old children, 106 chimpanzees and 32 orangutans over two weeks.
The researchers found that the children were far more advanced than the chimps and orangutans in understanding nonverbal communications, copying another person's solution to a problem and understanding the intentions of others.
The only problem is that those same children go to school, become teenagers, and somehow seem to get dumber instead of brighter...and they used to be cute. If you doubt that our students are getting dumber check out the following excerpt from "Students Arrested After Announcing Drug Sales Out Dorm Room Window."
A pair of former Northeastern University freshmen are facing drug and other charges after prosecutors said one of them leaned out his dorm window on Sunday and loudly told a woman in the dorm opposite his that he and his roommate were selling pot.
Two plain clothes Boston officers in the building overheard the conversation, made their way up to a second floor dorm room where they arrested Michael Emery, 18, of Haverhill and Matthew Ferrante, 18, of North Andover after finding about four ounces of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, including a scale, and several bottles of alcohol in the room.
OpinionJournal.com is reporting the forces of the status quo at the World Bank now have another target in their destructive sights since getting rid of Paul Wolfowitz: The corruption fighters at the bank's Department of Institutional Integrity
OJ reported at the time that the fight over Mr. Wolfowitz had little to do with his girlfriend and everything to do with his anti-corruption efforts.
The controversy began with a 2005 report by the bank's Institutional Integrity unit into pharmaceutical drug procurement as part of the bank's Reproductive and Child Health I Project in India (or RCH I). The 16-page report was never been made public but OJ has included a link so that readers can see the whole report.
The key quote from the executive summary: "Evidence summarized below indicates that RCH I was subject to systemic fraud and corruption through i) bribery of Procurement Support Agencies (PSAs) and government officials; ii) falsification of performance certificates; iii) collusion among bidders; and iv) coercion of companies by cartel members and PSA officials."
The report cites "substantial losses" into the tens of millions of dollars or more, as well as evidence of corruption risk at other health care projects in India "representing over US$2 billion in Bank funding." It concludes that the findings are "sufficiently grave" to merit sanctions against specific individuals and companies.
Mr. Wolfowitz was thus presented with a plan for the bank to finance phase two of the RCH project without so much as a mention that there had been problems in RCH I. When he learned of the corruption findings in mid-2005, however, Mr. Wolfowitz decided to suspend further bank lending to that India project until the matter was cleared up.
After India's government committed to cleaning things up, Mr. Wolfowitz lifted his suspension and in August 2006 the bank decided to fund stage two and other health projects, to the tune of $672 million. But only a year later, this past July, did the bank get around to debarring two of the offending Indian companies, Nestor Pharmaceuticals Ltd. and Pure Pharma Ltd., from bank contracts--and then only for three years and one year respectively.
It's pretty clear that the amount of profit {theft} that is available in the world markets must make International bankers drool in their villas. After the scandals in the United Nations, including the oil for food policies, the thought of one world government, one world bank, and the few who would enslave the rest of the world makes me just a bit paranoid--or a lot!
So what do people in some of the major countries think about globalization? Let's look at a recent Harris Poll conducted in July of 2007.
Globalization:
"Do you think Globalization is having a positive or negative effect in [your country]?"
Base: All EU adults in five countries and US adults
Great Britain France Italy Spain Germany United States
% % % % % %
Unweighted base 1040 1020 1084 1116 1046 1054
Positive effect 15 18 25 17 36 17
Negative effect 53 53 55 54 42 45
Not Sure 32 29 20 30 22 38
Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding
And how about those corporate executives who make millions, cook the books so that they qualify for extra large {more millions} bonuses, while cutting jobs, health care, and product quality by buying Chinese. What do people think about the corporate executives?
"In your opinion, do senior executives in your country earn too much each year in salaries and bonuses, too little, or about the right amount?"
Great Britain France Italy Spain Germany United States
Too much 79 % 54% 74% 72% 79% 77%
In a letter to an associate President Franklin Roosevelt wrote in 1933: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I both know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson." (pg. 4, The Shadows of Power by James Perloff) It is a logical step to then own all governments, control all lending, and manipulate all economies; but hey, what's a conspiracy theory or two among friends...or are we?
Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has appealed a federal court ruling allowing Nevada's legal brothels to advertise. She filed the appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, stating she had "concerns about the legal standard used by the judge in determining that our state's long standing limitations on brothel advertising were constitutionally invalid."
First, the state lets everyone else advertise, including liars--I mean lawyers--and second, she is appealing before the Ninth Circuit, possibly the strangest court in the U.S. and certainly the most overturned of federal appelate courts, but in this Constitutional issue of free speech, I sure would like to know what she hopes to gain by spending Nevadans' money in the appeal, other than a clearer standard.
Steve Miller, who has consistently written about convicted felon, Rick Rizzolo, his club the Crazy Horse Too, and the incredible efforts of the Las Vegas City Council to keep the club running, salutes the return of the buffalo in his article, "Feds Seize Crazy Horse Too," posted on AmericanMafia.com.
Monster Worldwide Inc. recently discovered that contact information from resumes for 1.3 million people were taken using software known as Infostealer.Monstres. Files were also taken from USAJobs.gov, the federal-government site run by Monster Inc.
Although the information isn't as sensitive as bank accounts, etc., most do contain e-mail addresses--plus names, addresses, and telephone numbers--which can be sold to spammers or used for phishing e-mails to find account information..
The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] decided to up the stakes in going after college students who are sharing music and video files on the Internet. In the last eight months, the Association has sent out seven waves of letters to hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. The letters threaten students with cases demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars unless the students settle immediately on the site p2plawsuits.com for a flat sum of $3,000.
Just a few years ago all you had to worry about was fifty thousand dollars of tuition to pay off; today, some students may be liable for hundreds of thousands in damages from playing on the computer when they should have been studying, especially copywrite infringement.
Hillary Clinton's handlers like to promote her image as an embattled warrior -- a relentless foot soldier dedicated to the dual crusades of fighting for the exalted principles of goodness and light while simultaneously defeating the ever-present forces of darkness and evil. A modern-day Celtic warrior queen or Joan of Arc -- that's the spin on Hillary.
But in reality, Hillary's favorite wars are much less lofty and much more self-centered and mean-spirited. Hillary emphatically comes from the "us versus them" school of American politics. Like Richard Nixon, the politician she so closely resembles, she sees the world in extraordinarily simple terms: there are those who agree with her and support her and then there's the rest of the world. Those who don't agree with her are bunched together and known collectively as "the enemy" -- that vast right wing conspiracy that must be vilified, beaten, and destroyed ... whatever it takes.
To Hillary, this easily quantifiable adversary is unquestionably the source of all evil. Therefore, any means of obliterating them is acceptable. She thrives on identifying, assailing, and defeating them. Her hatred for this ubiquitous enemy is actually a source of enormous strength -- it motivates her, energizes her, keeps her going and reminds her of her superiority.
Ouch! And this glowing analysis of the Hillary psyche doesn't come from the vast right wing conspiracy but from the man who orchestrated her husband's successful presidential runs, Dick Morris.
But what I want to know is why the Clintons can't seem to avoid getting mixed up with gangsters, crooks, and agents with Asian names, like John Huang, Charlie Trie, the Riadys of Indonesia. The latest Clinton donation relationship has blown up as the L.A. Times reported that Norman Hsu has been involved in several schemes that have Ponzi scheme all over the margins, who pleaded no contest to grand theft and agreed to serve up to three years in prison, and some past involvement with Chinese gangsters.
In the Las Vegas Sun today key state legislators are differing over the meaning of proposed rules designed to reduce the $900 million in tax breaks that Nevada businesses can get for building environmentally friendly buildings.
Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, says businesses seeking sales and property tax breaks must adhere to the criteria for "green construction" buildings set out in AB621, passed by the 2007 Legislature.
But Senate Commerce and Labor Chairman Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, says some companies got opinion letters supportive of their building projects from the state Tax Commission before the new law was passed.
Because of their reliance on a 2005 law governing tax breaks for green construction, they should get tax breaks regardless of what was stated in the 2007 law, Townsend said.
...
During the June 1 floor vote on AB621, Townsend said the legislation eliminated sales tax breaks for all buildings except the CityCenter project being built by MGM-Mirage; Fontainebleau; the Venetian's Lido-Palazzo Resorts projects; the Molasky Corporate Center; the Echelon Place project by Boyd Gaming, and the Panorama Towers project. All are in Clark County.
Legislators revised the older green construction law after learning it would result in more than $900 million in sales and property tax breaks, reducing funding for local government and public schools. The new law is expected to cut the tax breaks in half.
Yep, there just might be a law suit in there somewhere; hasn't Buckley heard of ex post facto? Probably not since education isn't big in Nevada and UNLV students are more noted for hotel management than government but wasn't that Juris Doctor from the University of Arizona supposed to cover that? Just a thought.
For those who might have forgotten an ex post facto law (from the Latin for "from something done afterward") or retrospective law, is a law that retrospectively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law.
Now if they had repealed the original statute so that it "never existed" they might have been in a better position, but that would have involved "real" thinking which legislators didn't use when they first came up with their "50 percent" plan, or expert legal advice, which also seems sadly lacking.
But strangely, all the changes haven't affected the biggest projects being built by the most powerful corporations in the state, which just happen to be the ones the legislators most want to keep happy so that they get to keep their "50 percent" positions in Carson City. Frankly, my dear, I am amazed.
