Everybody’s working for the weekend … and the Friday Slashback!

Taking politics to the streets, metaphorically. Refusing gifts, literally. And —yay! — Las Vegas Township Constable John Bonaventura managed to go a whole week without making the news for doing something stupid! It’s time for the Friday Slashback!

• No more Eastern Avenue values, please! Regular Slashbackers will remember that I recently made fun of an Erin Bilbray campaign meme that centers on Eastern Avenue, a road that runs through the heart of the 3rd Congressional District as well as the heart of Bilbray’s stump speech. I figured it was a one-time dalliance with an overwrought metaphor, that she’d think better of it and move on.

But no. Those Eastern Avenue values were back in Bilbray’s stump speech, which she gamely delivered at the Henderson Convention Center this week as Vice President Joe Biden looked on. Included was this classic: “Congressional District 3, your struggles are my struggles. Your heart is my heart. Your soul is my soul. And your families are my families.”

And your rising nausea is my rising nausea?

It’s not that Bilbray doesn’t have good material; when she got to the issues section of her remarks, she had plenty of facts and one-liners at her disposal. I mean, her closing lines were positively “Game of Thrones:”

“I love this community and I will fight for this community. This is going to be a huge battle and I need every one of you,” she said. “They are going to throw so many arrows at me that they’re going to block out the sun. … This Nevada desert woman knows how to fight in the shade.”

(One thing, however: They actually shoot the arrows, from a bow. They don’t throw them. If you’re throwing an arrow you’re doing it wrong. Unless it’s a spear, and then you’re doing it right. But that’s not important right now.)

Anyway, Biden had some awesome advice for Bilbray, and other candidates: You don’t need personal attacks or insinuations about motives in your campaign, you just need to say what they’re for and what you’re for. “Just state it,” he said simply. And while he didn’t specifically say, “just state it without embellishments or rhetorical flourishes about major section-line roads that run through your town,” that’s probably what he meant.

• Keep your gifts! That’s Republican attorney general candidate Adam Laxalt’s message to would-be gift-givers. This week, Laxalt said he would refuse all emoluments should he be elected. The R-J’s Laura Myers reports:

“I think that the attorney general has to be above reproach,” Laxalt said in an interview. “I’m concerned about conflicts of interest.”

Laxalt said he isn’t suggesting that politicians who take gifts are corrupt, “but it’s a perception issue.” He said the attorney general makes decisions involving corporations and so shouldn’t take gifts from companies.

“If I want to go to a boxing event I’ll either pay for it myself or not go,” Laxalt said. “My opponent has taken more than $70,000. That’s a big number. He’s just gotten so many gifts over the years. I think it’s a bad practice.”

Yeah, see, he’s not saying that politicians who take gifts are corrupt. He’s just saying that his opponent who is a politician who has taken gifts is corrupt.

That opponent is one Demorat Ross Miller, current secretary of state. And the reason we know about all his gifts is that he’s reported them, as required by law. And since he’s reported them, we know that they’re entirely legal.

Still, this is not a totally illegitimate complaint. The fact is, there’s no shortage of people who would love to lavish gifts on elected officials, either with the illegitimate intention that they depart from the faithful exercise of their duties, or the more common (and more insidious) intention of building a lobbying relationship that they can later call upon when it’s time for official action.

Should Nevada ban all gifts — regardless of value — to elected officials from people outside their family and personal friends (assuming their friends have no interests that would come before that official for action)? That’s a policy well worth exploring.

In the meantime, let’s get down to brass tacks: If Holly Madison, the Playboy model whom Republicans have alleged likes to hang out with Miller, invited Laxalt to party with her at a nice Las Vegas club, all expenses paid, you’re telling me he’d refuse? Really? It’s Holly Madison? C’mon!

• It seems like just yesterday that the Las Vegas Monorail was opening, with fireworks, big promises and soaring dreams. But it turned out the only things that really soared were the parts that fell off the trains, shuttering the system for months while repairs and upgrades were made. But even after the falling-parts problem was largely under control, the train was plagued by lower-than-expected ridership, which saw the monorail move swiftly into U.S. Bankruptcy Court, where it shed millions in debt.

But now? Well, the train is making enough money to cover its operations, if not enough perhaps to buy new train cars or pay for planned maintenance into the future. And there’s even talk about linking Nevada’s three big convention centers by monorail train, although that would require building a station at the Sands Expo, and crossing the Strip to include the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Anyway, the monorail celebrates its 10-year anniversary on Saturday. I’m told there will be cake.

• How dare the BLM show up armed to enforce a lawful federal court order after an outlaw cowboy called for a “range war” and his property was lousy with armed insurrectionists! That was the actual complaint of Republican lawmakers talking about the April standoff between federal officers doing their lawfully assigned jobs and the obstructionist followers of ranting racist rancher Cliven Bundy. Those same lawmakers apparently were unconcerned with Bundy’s long history of refusing to pay grazing fees, or the other crimes committed by the insurrectionists.

Hey, Republicans: When only outlaws have guns, how do you expect anybody will follow the law?

• It’s so totally shocking that this totally meritless complaint filed by the Clark County Republican Party against state treasurer candidate Kim Wallin was dismissed. But I heartily welcome Nick Phillips, political director of the party, to the cause of giving the secretary of state the authority to audit campaign accounts to investigate potential wrongdoing, as well as banning the use of third-party entities (such as payroll companies) to obscure how much campaign staffers are being paid. See you in Carson City in 2015, Nick!

• See, if they’d just done this in the first place, there would not have been a problem. Lesson: When the Gaming Control Board tells privileged licensees not to do something, they should probably listen very carefully.

• I know, I know. But I’m still going to watch this.

• Speaking of sharks, this might be a good opportunity for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to jump on something and turn it around for us. Don’t go to San Diego, Miami or Nantucket on your vacation! Come inland, where it’s nice and safe! Unless, of course, there’s a Sharknado.

• Diversity of Voices/High-quality Journalism Update: It was not a good week for the Las Vegas Sun, with the news that star columnist J. Patrick Coolican will not be returning to Las Vegas. Coolican was the latest Las Vegas journalist to win a prestigious yearlong Knight Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Like every other fellowship participant from Las Vegas, Coolican will not return to his home paper, but rather go on to bigger and better things, in his case, a job at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. (Previous winners include the Review-Journal’s Molly Ball, who worked for Politico and now writes for The Atlantic; Sun reporter Emily Richmond, who now works for the Education Writers Association; and Steve Friess, who worked at Politico and now teaches journalism at Michigan State University and freelances for the Greenspun Media Group’s Las Vegas Weekly.)

It’s a blow to the Sun, which recently touted his return with eager anticipation. But it’s a bigger blow to the Las Vegas community, because Coolican actually would have contributed to the diversity of voices in town with his trademark high-quality journalism. I’ll miss the competition, but I’m glad for his success.

That’s it for this week — see you back here next week!