Questions from a judge over Metro’s vice unit; the unions attacking a longtime union supporter in last week’s Clark County Commission race; and Elvis Presley’s drummer.
John L. Smith is back with us this week with some thoughts on all of that and the push to get Nevada to use more renewable energy.
“There’s been a move here for many years to more or less create and then expand the use of renewable energy in everyday use,” he said.
A group associated with Nevada's for a Clean Energy Future gathered enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot in November that would push Nevada's renewable energy portfolio, which is the amount of energy that is produced from renewable sources to 50 percent by 2030, moving it closer to the standards in California.
Besides moving the state towards more clean energy sources, Smith pointed out that there is a political reason to put the measure on the ballot.
“They want to get things that will get folks off the couch and to the polling place,” he said.
Both parties use issues that "gather like-minded people" together to get them to vote.
Metro's Vice Unit
"Judge [Melanie Andress-]Tobiasson has really broken out of a more reserved mode, granting interviews to journalism outlets to talk about the issue and to -more or less - raise the issue of whether Vice did enough not only to get the bottom of whether her daughter was in danger but whether Vice did enough to protect other daughters, who were also placed in danger when they came within the satellites of pimps who were recruiting them for prostitution,"
Tobiasson's daughter did not end up going into prostitution, Smith said, but she was on the "edge of it."
Admittedly, Metro's Vice Unit cannot stop every pimp from recruiting or every young person from being recruited.
“The scale of the sex business in Las Vegas enormous," Smith said, "It’s great to think that one phone call or a few phone calls might get the police to solve a problem of that nature.”
To make matters worse for the Vice Unit, the Ocean Fleming case makes a complicated issue even more difficult, Smith noted. Fleming is a convicted pimp who as accused the unit of all kinds of wrongdoing.
"Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and District Attorney Steve Wolfson have to see that these issues are not only disturbing but because they close to home for so many different that they deserve public scrutiny as swiftly as possible," he said.
Race for Clark County Commission and the Labor Union
Former State Senator Tick Segerblom won his race for Clark County Commission District E democratic ticket by a very slim margin against labor leader Marco Hernandez.
Segerblom has been a longtime supporter of the union - so what gives?
“It appears to me that the only thing Segerblom did wrong is he criticized the use of room tax dollars for the stadium and voted against it in the Legislature."
The labor union were big supporters of the stadium, attending stadium meetings and traveling to Carson City to advocate for it.
But Segerblom - and everyone else opposed to public funding of the stadium - came out on the losing end. Smith wonders why bygones would not be bygones.
The union, although small, is politically active and they made the vote very close.
Segerblom will face Republican Trish Marsha in the General Election in November.
John L. Smith, contributor
