Michael Green
Contributing Editor, Politics
Contact: Email
Green is a professor of history at CSN and the author of several books on the Civil War era and on the history of Nevada and Las Vegas. He also edits the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly and the Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in Nevada History for the University of Nevada Press, and writes "Nevada Yesterdays" for KNPR and columns for the Nevada's Washington Watch newsletter.
Recent Articles
The Two Faces of the Legislature
Is there some Jekyll to its Hyde?
May 15th, 2013
The notion that the state Legislature has more than one personality makes sense, since it has 63 members. But as a body, the Legislature never ceases to be depressing. Except when it’s exhilarating.
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Good Ideas! Elsewhere!
What Nevada can learn from its neighbors
May 1st, 2013
Nevada supposedly has a “can-do” spirit. But we don’t do. Any businessperson knows you have to spend money to make money. Nevada claims it has too little of the former with which to do the latter. The rest of the West would disagree.
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The Privacy Conundrum
The state wrestles with privacy issues following a pair of high-profile incidents
April 9th, 2013
How you feel about defrocked Assemblyman Steven Brooks and the Nevada Policy Research Institute may depend on the emanations from your penumbra. Wait. Don’t call the censor.
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It's All Our Fault
March 26th, 2013
It’s popular to blame the Legislature for Nevada’s problems, or—and here I’m comfortably onboard the bandwagon—to blame the dilettante, term-limited, every-other-year nature of our Legislature. But when you stop to think about it, most of what we dislike about the institution can be traced straight back to ourselves. Here’s a starter list.
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Staying True in North Las Vegas
March 14th, 2013
North Las Vegas has a problem. Isaac Barron is running for its Ward 1 City Council seat because he thinks he has a solution. “I’ve heard people say we need to re-brand North Las Vegas,” he says. “I’m not sure what they mean. We are not Green Valley or Henderson, or Boulder City or Las Vegas.
There’s no negative connotation to that. We want people to be able to raise their families here, have a good home and a good job, good parks and schools. I just want to see my city prosper. I can’t change what has been done in the past, but I can help with the future.” Read More »
The Struggle, Then and Now
February 28th, 2013
When Harvard Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin delivered a recent lecture at UNLV, she was ostensibly speaking about her award-winning book, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford, 2012). But if you were listening for subtext, you could have learned a lot about Nevada.
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The Ballad of Two Mayors
February 14th, 2013
“A 3-Term Mayor as Brash, Shrewd and Colorful as the City He Led.”
The New York Times headline above Ed Koch’s obituary captured how he exemplified New York City in so many ways, good and bad. It also describes another former mayor who’s very much alive—Oscar Goodman. A look at both careers, and the ways in which they were similar, gives us some insight into our community and its history.
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How a Vegas Kid Helped Bring the Frozen Tundra to Your PC
Craig McKeown and the art of NFL Films
January 31st, 2013
They were close friends at Walter Bracken Elementary School, a fat, dark-haired kid and a more angular redhead. Both skipped ahead to second grade, and their mothers were active together in the PTA. One boy wanted to be a sportscaster, the other an oceanographer. Craig McKeown, the redhead who liked the water, wound up with the career in sports. The dark-haired kid grew up to be me.
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Politics
How to Lose Elections and Negatively Influence People
January 31st, 2013
Campaigns seem permanent, and permanently annoying. To complain about it ignores history: Candidates always have been engaged in constant plotting. Grant Sawyer used to tell his staff when he was Nevada’s governor from 1959 to 1967 that politics and policy—or politics and governance—are inseparable. If you can’t get elected, how do you govern? If you can’t govern, how do you get reelected?
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Marilyn Kirkpatrick
Bipartisanship’s Best Hope
January 24th, 2013
The Great Recession supposedly is over, but Nevada has been recovering much more slowly. The Economic Forum’s projections for Nevada’s revenue are well below what state agencies have requested. So the 2013 Legislature—where, beginning February 4, those scarce resources will be allocated—figures to be a stormy one. At the center of that storm is Marilyn Kirkpatrick, the incoming speaker of the Assembly.
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