Thursday, January 29, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics

Sculpture payday

Last week, the Las Vegas City Council gave the nod--and $30,000--to Israeli artist Yaacov Agam to create a model for a proposed sculpture park downtown. When complete, the sculpture set, consisting of 45 or more 18-foot stainless steel columns, will stretch along Boulder Avenue between Main Street and Casino Center Boulevard. Now, it's up to the Las Vegas Arts District Neighborhood Association to raise from private donors the estimated $1.5 million needed to build the project.

Which might be the easiest part of all. Jack Solomon, owner of S2 Art Group and president of the association, says one potential donor might foot the whole bill. "It's a lady who's a widow, that's all I can say," he says. If that happens, Solomon expects the project to be done in the next two years--and maybe even in time for the city's centennial celebrations in the spring of 2005.--AK

To the point

Veteran news anchor John Daly will host a new radio talk show called "Get to the Point" on KNUU 970-AM starting Feb. 2. Called a cross between ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" and CNN's "Crossfire," the show will take to the airwaves Mon.-Fri. from 6-7 p.m.

Although the show will primarily cover business issues, media bias and politics, it will also deal with the lighter side of the news, with celebrity interviews and sports stories. Daly plans to record celebrity voices who, when the talk becomes too long-winded, will break in with, "Get to the point!"

Daly, former Channel 13 news anchor and former host of the syndicated show "Real TV," is hoping his radio program will help people become better informed. "Technology is so vast; there are more news outlets," he says. "As a news consumer, you have to do more work to get to the truth."--BS

Wooing Minnesota

It's no surprise that Xcel Energy invited four Minnesota legislators on a tour of Yucca Mountain earlier this week. Minnesota has two nuclear power plants at Prairie Island and the waste is accumulating. By 2005, the 17 dry casks storing waste there are expected to be full-up--and by state law no more storage casks can be added. This could be the call for a switch to green power--or a call to hurry up with Yucca Mountain already. The industry would like the latter, because new nuclear power plant construction has been stalled ever since the mid-'90s, when Minnesotans achieved a limit to on-site storage and successfully fought off the DOE's plans to store half the nation's high-level nuclear waste in their state (at one point, Minnesota had more sites targeted for a permanent dump site than any other state). They reasoned that, as a major watershed state, that would be stupid. Then the focus glanced west and Yucca Mountain was chosen.

Dry, spacious, inhospitable Yucca Mountain--oughta look pretty good to Minnesotans. But at a powwow on Monday, arranged by Minnesota Sen. Frank Hornstein with Citizen Alert's executive director, Peggy Maze Johnson, Nevada officals, including Gov. Kenny Guinn, tried to head off the Yucca enthusiasm at the pass. They noted bad science, Yucca Mountain's nickname of "Ol' Leaky," the risk that transportation poses to everyone in the country, and that a dump in Nevada would simply mean more room for more waste in Minnesota.

Upshot, Nevada-side? Keep the stuff on site, don't make more and wait for new technology to come along and render it harmless.

The Minnesotans seemed split in their impressions--just as their loyalties must feel conflicted. Minnesota state Rep. Michael Beard expressed skepticism about Nevada's claims that the waste shipping casks are vulnerable to accidents and attacks. He'd heard they were impenetrable. Titus told him, "This is the same group [nuclear industry] that told you you could survive a nuclear blast by hiding under your desk. If they say you can `duck and cover' from an atomic blast, then why should we believe what they say about the casks?"

Titus also noted the gathering's greatest import: "This meeting is so critical, to have legislators here from another state. Up till now, it's been Nevada against the rest of the country."--HW

Post it

Recently, the Washington Post paid attention to Yucca Mountain and got an earful in return. A Jan. 16 editorial argued against the court case that Nevada officials recently presented against the nuclear waste dump. In turn, Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen in Washington (a consumer advocacy group), disagreed with the premise that even if the plans are flawed, the government should go ahead because the stuff needs to be put somewhere: "Energy Department officials admit that once the Yucca dump is filled and sealed, the access tunnels will probably collapse in less than 200 years," she said. "If the site leaks radioactive waste after that, little can be done." Fallon resident Michelle Ippolito wrote, "The editorial says that Yucca Mountain is 'remote,' but in fact the mountain is 90 miles from Las Vegas. Why not put the waste dump 90 miles from the District of Columbia? I'm sure there's a site or two in the Shenandoah Valley that would be just as suitable as Yucca. Or do your editors agree with the federal government that the people and property in the Washington area are more important than the people and property in Nevada?" Bob Loux, who runs the statenuclear projects agency, weighed in with a laundry list of safety problems. Another letter said waste production will outstrip the dump's capacity even before its scheduled opening, it can't be safely transported, science has proved the site is unsafe--that letter came from a couple of guys named Reid and Ensign.

The sad thing is, the editorial itself really isn't surprising: The Post once had what many considered the top editorial page in the country, but it has become increasingly right wing and has about as much respect for the facts as another right-wing editorial page we could think of a little closer to Yucca Mountain.--MG

Dancing in the dark

While it's been established that The Killers are trying to keep a low profile before the release of their Island Def Jam debut LP this spring, it was unclear the lengths to which the band would go to protect its anonymity until its Jan. 23 show at the Ice House Lounge. There, in front of a paid attendance of more than 400, The Killers played in the dark.

Actually, the lack of illumination wasn't part of The Killers' plan; it was an unexpected side effect of the elaborate PA system provided by Fleetwood Mac sound engineer David Jones. Untested on the Ice House's electrical system, Jones' equipment proved an overwhelming drain on the power supply.

"We've done shows here in the past," says booker and event planner Ryan Pardey, "but the bottom line is that the Ice House isn't wired to handle equipment on that scale."

To get sufficient power to the sound system, Ice House management had to turn off all extraneous electrical equipment, including the venue's overhead and bar lights. Typically, such problems would be identified during the pre-show sound check, but the Ice House's operating hours made an adequate test impossible.

"Since the Ice House opens as a restaurant during the day, we really didn't get a chance to properly troubleshoot the equipment before the show," Pardey says. "We tried to soundcheck during happy hour, but even then the manager got a little unnerved."

And clearly, so did the usually unshakeable Killers. After opening with a rendition of "On Top" that required frontman Brandon Flowers to shout over a loud low-end crackle, the band cut its planned set almost in half. Visibly disturbed by the subpar sound and lighting, The Killers closed after a half-dozen songs with an unintentionally ironic version of the longtime crowd favorite "Mr. Brightside."

Says Pardey: "The thing that sucks is that we went out and spent all this money on a special sound guy with the hope that we could create a really amazing atmosphere. Unfortunately, it completely blew up in our faces."--NB

Kerry world

More Nevadans--more being a relative term--are jonesing for John Kerry since the Iowa caucus, says Erin Bilbray, who used to work in Kerry's D.C. office as head of fundraising. Bilbray now lives back in Las Vegas and volunteers much of her time for the Kerry campaign.

"I did an event in my home in November, and at that point about 70 people came," Bilbray says. "Since Iowa, the support has just doubled. It's really become John Kerry central at my home. I keep getting phone calls and e-mails from people who want to help with the campaign." Among the strongest Kerry supporters, from the start, have been firefighters, and as we went to press local firefighters were gathering at their favorite hangout, the Tap House, to watch the New Hampshire results come in.

"The group who's really going to take us to victory is the firefighters," says Bilbray. "They want to take Nevada."--HW

Mormon expansion

Most Las Vegans are aware that the Mormon Church is prominent here and, of course, in Utah. But Mormon membership is growing rapidly in places you might not expect. The New York Daily News reports that Mormons "have launched an ambitious building program to provide enough worship and study space to meet the demand." They have built or started building four new buildings in Manhattan in the last five years, rented one for the Chinatown congregation, expanded the temple in midtown near Lincoln Center and are building in the Bronx and two suburbs. The number of Mormons in the New York City area is now about 25,000, double what it was a decade

ago. One of the Mormon leaders there pointed out the irony: "It's funny,

but most New Yorkers don't realize that the church began in New York. So

it's not that we're back, it's that we're still here." True. The church began in western New York in 1830.--MG