Politics
Politics
Election Food for Thought: A Six-Course Meal
November 1st, 2012
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could help candidates up and down the ticket, but the guess here is that while neither will have long coattails, Obama will help Democrats more than Romney will help Republicans. Read more »
Just a Number
November 1st, 2012
Before it’s too late, please stop using your brilliant equations to categorize and subcategorize the subtleties of our humanity. If you don’t, I’m afraid your strings of zeros and ones will mutate into a media virus causing innocent consumers to absorb and embody your predictions before they even know what’s hit them. Read more »
Running Rebel
In taking one last shot at public office, Danny Tarkanian can draw inspiration from his famous parent. Hint: It’s not Dad.
October 31st, 2012
The patriarch, the legend—still recuperating from a heart attack suffered seven months ago—sits in his recliner, a blanket draped over his lap. His famously droopy eyes are fixed on the television. So, too, are the eyes of several guests. It’s not a highlight reel of the legend’s basketball coaching career that they’re focused on, but rather a one-on-one battle between vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. Read more »
18 Things You Need to Know Before You Go to the Ballot Box
Your Seven-Minute Election Primer
October 25th, 2012
On Nov. 6, everything will change—meaning that you will once again be able to turn on your television set without being assaulted by extreme close-ups of Shelley Berkley. Other than that, the notion of “change” is up for grabs ... Read more »
What Should You Ask Yourself Before You Vote?
October 25th, 2012
The biggest—and longest-running—marketing scam going in American society? Politics, of course. From the sixth-grader running for student-body president who promises longer recesses to the U.S. presidential hopeful who promises not to raise taxes, candidates will say anything to win your vote. Your job is to sift through the ideological bullshit—to say nothing of the nonsensical mudslinging—and figure out the answer to this question: Who’s more likely to put “getting the job done” higher on the to-do list than “furthering my ideology”? Read more »
Seven Questions
Jon Ralston
Nevada’s foremost political pundit on our Legislature’s biggest problem, why he’d make a poor candidate and the billionaire he believes would be a great public official
October 25th, 2012
For most of the American electorate, Nov. 6 can’t get here soon enough. The unsolicited marketing phone calls, the junk mail, the attack ads—it’s like the 12th round of a grueling heavyweight boxing match, and we’re up against the ropes, signaling for the trainer to throw in the towel. For political columnist/commentator Jon Ralston, though, this time of year is nirvana. Read more »
Politics
Of Big Raises and Food Pantries
October 11th, 2012
So, when the higher-education system holds a diversity summit just in time for regents’ elections, or a college spends an estimated $100,000 on consultants to figure out why too few students graduate, it’s bad enough. But when they approve pay raises for the well-paid while their employees need free food to get by, it’s time to ask them and your legislators why they don’t believe in accountability. Read more »
Politics
3 Questions This Week
October 4th, 2012
As it turns out, he likes us, he really likes us. At one point a couple of years back, the relationship between Barack Obama and our fair Valley was so chilly that it made even the happiest mayor on the planet unhappy. Now the president digs us so much that he makes regular stops, including his extended stay at Lake Las Vegas on Sept. 30-Oct. 3 in preparation for the silly season's first presidential debate. Vegas Seven asked UNLV political scientist David Damore about the political meaning of the president's visit. Read more »
Politics
A Tale Of Two Coattails
September 27th, 2012
One story of the 2012 elections in Nevada has been the fate of the presidential-candidate coattails. Barack Obama’s have grown. Mitt Romney’s have, it seems, been ripped clear off the coat. Read more »
Dispatch
Underdogs in L.A.
Congressional hopefuls will travel a long way for some Tinseltown support
September 27th, 2012
Los Angeles and politics can make strange bedfellows. What other city can boast of/apologize for sending the Terminator to the governor’s mansion and the Gipper to the White House? Not to mention L.A.’s greatest policy legacy, Proposition 13, the regressive-tax Rosetta Stone of the “I’m OK, you’re a parasite,” Ayn Rand-inflected philosophies of young-gun conservatives such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, vice-presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, and late-blooming-but-making-up-for-lost-time Mitt Romney. In case you want to know how this story ends, check out California’s public education, once the envy of the world and now scrambling to keep pace with Alabama. Read more »
