This is a graphic produced for a Nevada/Arizona website about Interstate 11.
Coburn’s sorry, sort of Speaking at a New York City Young Republican Club event, Oklahoma Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn said, “There’s no comity with Harry Reid. I think he’s an absolute asshole.” The comment was reported by the New York Daily News. Some subsequent news reports said Coburn would seek a meeting with Reid, presumably to apologize. But before that could happen, Coburn elaborated on his view of Reid. “I think he’s done more damage to the Senate than any majority leader,” he said. “Seventy-five times he’s used filling the tree and filing cloture to eliminate debate, to eliminate the idea that the Senate was supposed to force consensus.” COBURN “Filling the tree” refers to a sanitychallenged practice in which a Senate parliamentarian diagrams multiple pending amendments together before any one is dealt with. The diagrams being called “amendment trees.” Reid’s spokesperson noted that if Coburn wants to apologize, he should know the way to Reid’s office, because it will be the second such Coburn apology. Last year, Coburn told a C-SPAN interviewer that Reid is “incompetent and incapable of carrying on the tradition of the Senate.” In a later Senate speech on fiscal matters, Coburn apologized: “As an individual, he has a very difficult time, and I understand that, and … I ask his forgiveness.”
Obamacare success (except here) While news coverage has focused on the website problems of the national health insurance program, state exchanges have gone merrily ahead enrolling consumers who find health insurance. Nationally, the state exchanges had enrolled 395,807 by Oct. 31. Among state-run Western programs, Colorado has enrolled 19,164 and Washington has enrolled 48,995. Oregon, which has enrolled more than 56,000, has reduced its uninsured population by 10 percent. Officials of the Nevada website, being run by the Sandoval administration, have not posted running tallies. A spokesperson said, “Nevada Health Link will report enrollment numbers on December 16, 2013 and April 1, 2014.” However, figures from state tracker Advisory.com say Nevada lags far behind other states after enrolling 1,757. It is not known why Nevada is not releasing numbers. Gov. Brian Sandoval opposes the program. As for the states whose governors have refused to host exchanges and are having them run by the federal government, U.S. News columnist Leslie Marshall wrote, “This week, we hear Republicans say that the Affordable Care Act has failed because the website crashed. The website crashed when Twitter first launched. Has that failed?” Twitter, in fact, has become so known for crashes that Business Insider once ran an article headlined “Twitter Explains Why Twitter Crashes All The Time.” The Nevada website encountered some early problems, but glitches have been reduced substantially. Kaiser Health News has reported that “it takes less than 20 seconds to start shopping for a health plan on the Nevada, Colorado and Connecticut exchanges where you can get a list of plans and prices by entering your zip code, age and annual income.” But other Western states appear to have done a better job of missionary work in areas populated by the working poor than Nevada. Cover Oregon sent notices to hundreds of thousands of people, using lists of state agencies with assistance programs. In the Las Vegas Sun, a letter to the editor from Michelle Holzman read, “I am currently on a [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996]-guaranteed plan that costs me $565 a month. If I get sick and need an urgent visit, mammogram or other OB-GYN services, I have to drive to Las Vegas from Pahrump. That’s going to change. I enrolled in a [ACA] plan that will save me more than $200 a month and provide local urgent visit and OB-GYN services in Pahrump.”
—Dennis Myers 8 | RN&R |
NOVEMBER 7, 2013
Road battle Proposed freeway fires passions State officials are trying to route a massive Canada-to-Mexico freeway project through Nevada to the Pacific by Northwest, and local officials are Dennis Myers trying to have it routed through the Truckee Meadows. “The overall goal is [for Reno Sparks markets] to have access to Canada,” said state highway department spokesperson Scott Magruder. He said at the moment, though, most of the attention is on opening Phoenix markets to Las Vegas.
“We need another north/south connector.” Ron Smith Sparks City Council “These are the largest metropolitan areas west of the Mississippi that do not have a north/south interstate,” he said.
But not everyone is enamored of the project. “I really loathe the idea of a new interstate highway through Nevada on many levels,” said Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada director Bob Fulkerson. “It’s a throwback to the ’50s when nobody gave a shit about habitat loss, migratory routes impacts, water and air pollution. Just mow over anything in the way of the highway, destroy anything else for the sake of the dollar bill. This looks like a freaking disaster in the making.” In Arizona, where planning for the project is more advanced than in Nevada, there is considerable opposition. “It would create new areas of population, destroying wild areas that don’t need to be developed at this point,” Sierra Club Rincon Group spokesperson Russell Lowes told a hearing in Tucson.
The Sparks City Council last month voted unanimously to support the freeway on a Truckee Meadows route. Councilmember Ron Smith said, “We need another north south connector,” and said the route would promote economic growth in the valley. Asked if he had looked at the impact on the ecology, he said he would expect the Nevada Wildlife Department and similar agencies to examine those issues. Reno City Councilmember Jenny Brekhus suggested it is too early to commit to such a project about which so little is known, particularly because other highway projects, including a northwest connector, are more advanced in planning. She did say, however, that such a project, if completed, would relieve congestion on I-5 in California, though a Fernley-area route would be less disruptive of existing communities. And she said, “We have a big distribution industry here” in Washoe County that would benefit. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has editorialized, “Unfortunately, Nevada has made its share of work on the I-11 project a decidedly low priority. That has to change. We must invest in our freeways so tourists can get here and commerce can come through here. Economic growth will follow. … At a time when our economy needs every bit of help it can get, infrastructure that can speed travel between these major markets would no doubt provide such help.” One southern activist said the newspaper is wrong that the state has made the project a low priority. Rather, she believes, the state has tried to keep the project low key and below the radar so the public will not become aroused as it did when the MX missile system—another project that involved huge swaths of construction across the state—was fought and defeated by residents. It appears likely that the project, if approved, would require a gas tax hike in Clark County. If a similar levy were required in Washoe, Brekhus said, it would face rough sledding. “We’re taxed, I think, 23 cents on every gallon in Washoe County,” she said. “I would have a really hard time supporting a gas tax increase.” Nevada highway federal programs manager Sondra Rosenberg said, “There’s no funding identified for any of this.” Fulkerson directed attention to the fragile ecology of land between Las Vegas and Reno and north of Reno to the Oregon border. “There are major environmental impacts when you put a small dirt road to bring a drill rig in for an exploratory project,” he said. “To
