by Dennis Myers
On the march
President Obama spoke at the Reno home of Valerie and Paul Keller in Reno on May 11, 2012.
The Reno Women’s March on Washington is one of more than 200 demonstrations expected to take place in cities across the country on Jan. 21, the day after President-designate Trump takes office. The rally is being called a “sister march” of the larger Women’s March on Washington that will take place in the nation’s capital on the same day. Similar marches are also scheduled for cities in 28 other countries around the world. The Reno march will take place between 9 and 11 a.m. The route starts at the U.S. District Court, 400 S. Virginia St., and ends at City Plaza. A Facebook page created for the event asks readers to join their “fellow concerned community members in a peaceful demonstration of solidarity, inclusion, and unequivocal rejection of hateful rhetoric displayed and espoused by the pending Administration.” So far, more than 1,000 people have confirmed their attendance via the Facebook event page, which can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2jw68Cg. A website can be found here: http://bit.ly/2j4uOB8
PHOTO/PETE SOUZA
—Jeri Chadwell-Singley
amOdei, heller try tO blOck mOnuments Two of Nevada’s congressmembers didn’t waste any time. U.S. Sen. Harry Reid left office on Jan. 3. On Jan. 4, U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei and U.S. Sen. Dean Heller introduced legislation to prevent presidential action “designating or expanding national monuments without Congressional approval or local support.” Reid was instrumental in convincing President Obama to designate two new national monuments for Nevada—Basin and Range and Gold Butte. In a prepared statement, Heller called them “unilateral federal land grabs by the executive branch,” and saying they “should not be allowed. Public input and local support remain critical to the decisionmaking process of federal land designations.” Amodei said in his statement, “Whether you agree with our proposals or not, I have always supprted a public and transparent process which includes input from interest groups, local communities and elected representatives. Unlike all of our Nevada lands bills that allow stakeholders an opportunity to voice their concerns and ultimately reach a consensus agreement that achieves bipartisan support, the Obama administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress and local input.” However, defenders of Obama’s action say Heller and Amodei are rewriting history, that public input was obtained. For instance, in a letter to the editor on page 3 of this edition, Cathy Schmidt of Reno writes that “Gold Butte’s advocates worked with local governments, sportsmen, off-road enthusiasts, opposition voices, supporters, and so many more to ensure that there was a well-balanced proposal to protect Gold Butte where all voices were heard. Governor Sandoval is even on record of having input. To paraphrase Rep. Dina Titus from Las Vegas, who has been a champion for Gold Butte, the only people who say there wasn’t public input around Gold Butte’s designation are just those who are opposed to it.” —denniS MyerS
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Obama and Nevada President regularly aided state On Feb. 21, 2007, the powerful labor union AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) held a presidential forum in Carson City which was attended by all the candidates—Biden, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Richardson, Vilsack, even the aristocratic Hillary Clinton, though she did not meet with reporters in a news conference afterward as other candidates did. All of the candidates, that is, except Barack Obama. He was in California, and his schedule was not busy, but Politico reported, “Obama refused because a.) he thinks it is too early to debate and b.) he has the guts to say no to a powerful labor union.” Commenter Taylor Marsh (a.k.a. Michelle Marshall) wrote on Huffington Post., “If anyone’s keeping score this early, this one beats a verbal gaffe or any blogger brouhaha by a mile, because it’s delivered by the candidate himself. Senator Obama, you just might have to kiss those Nevada union votes good-bye.” Obama went on to lose the Nevada precinct caucuses—in which he was endorsed by the state’s largest labor union—but carried the state against
John McCain in the November election. The debate may have been one of the few Nevada events he was offered that he declined over the years. He campaigned in Elko and larger markets during the campaign and returned repeatedly to the state as president, including this past August for the Lake Tahoe Summit. But if Obama skipped a debate during the campaign, it was one of the few times he neglected the Silver State. As president, he used the state as a forum particularly on two issues— immigration and renewable energy. Some Nevada officials became bogged down in other issues, using up substantial amounts of outrage on two comments Obama made about fun-in-the-sun destinations. One dealt with taxpayer funds being used by companies bailed out by taxpayers. In 2009, the President told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana, “You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.” Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman: “That’s outrageous. He owes us an apology. He owes us a retraction.
What is a better place, I say, for them to come here. For them to change their mind and go someplace else and to cancel at the suggestion of the president of the United States, that is outrageous.” The other Obama statement dealt with personal restraint in difficult times. “When times are tough, you tighten your belts,” he said at a high school in North Nashua, N.H. in 2010. “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices.” U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada: “Enough is enough! President Obama needs to stop picking on Las Vegas.” Such comments would have passed with one day’s newsworthiness, but Berkley and others kept them alive and publicized them much more widely by taking umbrage. The London Economist observed that Obama’s critics had “very little faith in the general public’s ability to understand what Barack Obama says.” On more substantive economic issues, Obama poured federal resources into Nevada. On one occasion he stood in front of an array of solar panels near Boulder City that seemed to stretch for miles—an image that appears on this month’s High Country News as a symbol of Obama’s Western legacy, though it is also a demonstration of the limitations of solar, which eats up huge amounts of space. The president’s Clean Power Plan is aimed at curbing climate change by limiting carbon dioxide production from power plants. Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt has joined other states in suing to stop it. “Nevada stands as something of a green oasis for Obama’s clean-energy vision, with a rapidly growing solar industry, bipartisan political support for reduced carbon emissions and wide swaths of federally owned lands repurposed for massive renewable energy projects,” reported Bloomberg. Renewable projects went to the Moapa tribe as well as other entities. Obama’s emphasis on renewables melded nicely with that of Nevada’s senior senator, Harry Reid, who had
