Photo/Dennis Myers
Sparks City Councilmember Julia Ratti applauds a speaker at a fundraising breakfast in Sparks for Volunteers of America.
Harm reduction Television marketer Kevin Trudeau, whose infomercials appear regularly on Reno television stations, has been convicted of criminal contempt for violating the terms of his earlier Federal Trade Commission consent order. In that order, he promised to stop making misleading claims about his books. U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman issued an immediate order for Trudeau’s arrest, pointing to his contempt for the law. Prosecutors believe Trudeau has stashed millions in out-of-country accounts. Earlier in his career, Trudeau sold merchandise on his infomercials, such as diet supplements for which he made unfounded medical claims. After regularly running afoul of the FTC, he put his claims into books and started selling them instead of merchandise in his infomercials (“Return of a huckster,” RN&R, Dec. 9, 2004). That brought him under the protection of the First Amendment and complicated the FTC’s work. His books are designed to appeal to the conspiracy minded, with titles like The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. The jury reached its verdict in an hour after watching three half-hour infomercials that aired on late night TV in 2006 and 2007. Information from his books was also seen by jurors, including a section where he tells readers that if they receive advice from physicians that Trudeau’s information is harmful, “Find another doctor.” In past years, some Reno television stations pledged to stop running Trudeau’s programming (“Return of a huckster,” RN&R, Dec. 9, 2004), but it keeps showing up. Infomercials usually are cycled by television stations on a rotating basis from sales agencies, and vigilance is required to know when a Trudeau one is going to air.
Legislators attack selves U.S. Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada and two U.S. House members have sent a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell demanding a list of proposed national monument designations she is considering recommending to President Obama. An accompanying statement to the press complained about Obama administration “plans to designate national monuments on public lands without congressional approval ... to unilaterally designate national monuments.” The problem for the three Republican congressmembers is that their complaint is with the Congress, not the president. Congress itself has empowered the president to designate national monuments unilaterally, and without JEWELL consulting Congress, much less seeking its approval. Title 16, section 431 of the United States Code reads in part that the “President of the United States is authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest ...” If the three congressmembers are impatient with Jewell, she apparently feels the same toward them. In a National Press Club speech on Oct. 31, she said, “If Congress doesn’t step up to act to protect some of these important places that have been identified by communities and people throughout the country, then the president will take action. We cannot and will not hold our breath forever.” U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Steve Daines of Montana, Republicans like Heller, joined him in the statement.
—Dennis Myers
8 | RN&R |
NOVEMBER 21, 2013
No rebuilding ahead Seven years of recession takes a toll on state’s economy “I expected to do good work when I ran for office and instead we spend our time dismantling everything.” by Sparks City Councilmember Dennis Myers Julia Ratti’s rueful quip reflects the way a lot of elected officials feel. The recession is generally believed by economists to have started at the beginning of 2007, though in Nevada—hard hit by the nation’s highest foreclosure rate—it may have been earlier. Certainly, it has lasted longer in Nevada. And people who wanted to make an enduring contribution have instead had to spend their time coping, at best. Ratti ran for the council in 2008, so her entire tenure has been in hard times.
“We’re not going to go back to the way it was.” Sen. Debbie Smith Washoe County “Well, certainly as a person who’s been involved in the community all my life, and always looking to build solutions to the problems that we’re facing, getting elected right at the time when the economy was crashing—and really, the first two years were spent tearing things down—we had to discontinue a lot of programs, we had to pull apart some things that other people had spent years building” she said. “And that was certainly
not something that I relished. I felt it was important, though, that there be someone on the council who really was invested in quality of life and making sure that we were meeting the needs of all neighborhoods and making sure that we weren’t always just focused on the needs of business, but we were focused on all aspects of the community. And so I just did the best I could to be that voice.” Ratti, a naturally upbeat person who grew up in Sparks, still enjoys the work and is able to keep an optimistic outlook on city affairs. She said that there have been some “small victories along the way,” and she hopes for a more stable economy. And she says that even the hard times have not been without valuable lessons. “I think it’s a coin with two sides,” she said. “So I think being forced to trim as drastically as we’ve been has made us more nimble, more creative, more efficient as a local government. At the same time, the service levels we’re providing now are inadequate. They are just frankly inadequate. We’re not investing in infrastructure, we’re not doing anything in terms of prevention, we’re not doing the kinds of things that make a city great. So if what our community wants is to just get by, then our service level is adequate. But if we want to have parks that we’re proud of, if we want to have the kind of community services that, when
businesses relocate, they’re looking for in the community because this is where their employees want to live, we have some investment that we still need to do.” Washoe County Sen. Debbie Smith, who chairs the budget committee and did the same in the Assembly before moving to the Senate, knows state finances intimately, and spent years building public services, even before she got into elective politics. Like Ratti, she is concerned about economic development but is unsure when the state will be able to rebuild enough to be competitive in economic development. And she thinks it’s important to come to grips with difficult facts—that the state economy as it once was is gone for good, and that the state’s unstable, unpredictable tax structure is a hindrance to moving on to a new and robust economy. “It just doesn’t look like that economy will ever be there again,” she said of the state’s reliance on construction as an economic engine. She said she’s been told that in the construction trades, union apprentices have been told they should not get used to the lifestyle. “We’re not going to go back to the way it was,” she said. “You hear people talking about the new normal a lot, and that’s what we have to focus on.” But how does the state build a new engine in accordance with that new normal when it is scraping by, unable to compete with other states for business? “I think if we don’t look at the tax structure, I don’t know how we’re going to get to where we need to be,” she said. “There’s not enough conversation about where we are and where we need to be.” Watching the wreckage of programs like higher education and mental health, after she spent years in budget committee sessions, is not easy. “It’s very hard,” she said. “One of the most difficult ones for me has been class size. I was a parent with the PTA when we passed class size reduction and thought it was one of the things we could be proud of over time. We’ve maintained the requirements in grades one and two, and done something for kindergarten, but what we haven’t done is be able to improve the other grades. For me that’s been the hardest thing, that we haven’t been able to improve class sizes. In fact, it has gotten worse above the second grade. It’s very hard to work at something for a very long time and find that our classes are
