Smile, here come traffic cameras

Attention North Las Vegas City Council members, consider this fair warning: I feel like marching down to City Hall ... and giving you all a big, fat hug.

For the benefit of all concerned, however, I'll resist and for now let this column suffice.

As just about everybody in Las Vegas knows by now, I've been on a traffic safety jihad all summer, specifically arguing that it is high time Las Vegans do something about our "anything goes" roadway culture. In addition to increasingly not paying full attention while we drive (cell phones, text messaging, etc.) we also speed and run red lights with more brass than a Clark County commissioner taking a bribe.

The best and fastest way to change that culture is to embrace what essentially is the "Robocop" of traffic enforcement -- cameras. I won't bore you with the full argument for traffic cameras. If you want more, dig up my old columns on the Review-Journal Web site at this address: (http://www.lvrj.com/columnists/Sherman_Frederick.html)

What's new is the North Las Vegas City Council, on the advice of Police Chief Mark Paresi, has agreed to test traffic cameras at a few intersections. It's a baby step. But it will at least provide some local data by which the city can go to the Legislature in 2009 and argue to change the law to allow the use of cameras to issue traffic citations in Nevada.

Way to go, North Las Vegas. This is the right thing, and citizens should thank you.

Tax-and-spend mush-heads

The planned initiative petition to double-down on casino taxes and cut property taxes is not only an incredibly bad idea, it's the sad but logical result of the constant yammering from tax-and-spend mush-heads who advocate raising taxes across the board so runaway government spending can make us a "better community."

We don't need more taxes on everybody, as the tax-and-spenders want. Nor is the answer to lighten the tax load for one segment of the population by piling on another segment, as the populists want.

The answer is what I've advocated many times and what the Review-Journal editorial page has stood for these many, many years: Lower taxes, lower spending and higher accountability.

When I get more time and space, I think I can make a compelling argument that we'd all be better off if we actually lowered gaming taxes to spur more capital expenditure in Las Vegas. In other words, Las Vegas today remains vibrant precisely because it is a low-tax market for gaming. If we want to keep pace with the Macaus of the world, we ought to find ways to make the building of future casinos here even more attractive.

But that's an argument for another day.

For now, let's remember that Las Vegas and Nevada are phenomenally good places in which to live. Some of our institutions -- pick public education if you like, but there are others -- need reform. Raising taxes so we can pour even more money into broken institutions is not going to produce excellence, or even efficiency. It's only going to accentuate and perpetuate that brokenness.

If the Hsu fits ...

The fundraising scandal involving the Hillary Clinton campaign and Norman Hsu (pronounced "shoe," in case you didn't get that from my clever headline) is just another sign of three things:

1. Despite reforms, campaign finance laws are still a swamp infested with creatures lurking to benefit from the system.

2. Most presidential candidates are not above feeding those creatures if it gives them a financial edge -- and they can do it without getting caught.

3. Don't think for a moment that those swampy practices only exist in Washington, D.C., or Hollywood. They exist in Las Vegas, too.

Let's cut to the quick. It is illegal for individuals and companies to "bundle" contributions. For example, you can't funnel large amounts of cash to politicians using dummy companies or scared employees who are essentially given bonuses for the expressed purpose of then donating to the boss's candidate of choice.

Hsu-style bundling is hard to see and harder to prove. But it happens in Las Vegas. Bet me.

From the photo archives

As is my periodic custom, I like bringing you "blasts from the past" courtesy of the Review-Journal's phenomenal photo archive. This morning I offer two, for lack of a better term, "beauty queen" pictures.

The first, at left, is Miss Nevada on the airport tarmac with former Las Vegas Mayor Oran Gragson. Unfortunately for the good mayor, the photographer snapped the picture at just the wrong moment, making it look as if the mayor were, well, giving her a wolfish review. And the second picture, at right, is of four swimsuit-clad women leaning over former Nevada Gov. and U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, in a boyish pose, suit buttoned.

The names of the women and the context of the pictures are, I am sad to say, lost to antiquity. If any loyal Review-Journal reader has any details to add, please don't be bashful about letting us know.

Have a nice rest of the day. Las Vegas is a wonderful city. Don't let the mush-heads tell you differently.

Sherman Frederick is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media. Readers may write him at sfrederick@reviewjournal.com.