It takes a brave governor to so brazenly spite the people of his state

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

“I faced people with real bullets shootin’ at me.”

— The Man Formerly Known as Governor, on “Nevada Newsmakers” this week when asked about being called a coward on the room-tax increase

I, like many people, honor Jim Gibbons for his service to his country. But it is his dishonorable service to his state that is much more relevant in 2009.

That Ø would use his wartime service as a shield to political criticism, abhorrent and pathetic as that may be, the rhetorical device is germane because of the machine gun he pointed at the state budget on Jan. 15, a weapon he used to inflict real-world pain and suffering that, as usual, he appears insensate to comprehend.

He faced people with real guns shooting at him? Well, when The Man Formerly Known as Governor was awarded the state’s most potent political arsenal, he turned it on his own people. Consider some of the victims of Ø’s friendly fire:

• Poor children: This exemplar of courage has proposed capping a health care program for children who don’t have access to health care. He has in his budget a provision that would take a program that is working well, one that has thousands on the waiting list, and prevent tens of thousands more kids from having care their parents cannot afford.

So don’t call him a coward. That’s bravery.

• Clark County residents: This hero of a fighter pilot has in his budget diversions of $100 million from Southern Nevada’s largest government, the one that provides essential services to much of the region. This money would then be poured into the state’s general fund, where it could be redistributed any way the Gang of 63 desires. He is stealing from the state’s largest county, probably hoping it will aid his Northern cronies.

So don’t call him a coward. That’s bravery.

• University and community college students: This paladin of all that is brave and good took a meat cleaver to the higher education system, carving 36 percent out of his proposed budget, including 50 percent side cuts from the state’s two universities. Students enrolled at a strapped institution would now see the quality of their education — and their ability to succeed later — further eroded by this indiscriminate bludgeon.

So don’t call him a coward. That’s bravery.

• Pupils in the lower ed system: This bullet-dodging Superman has taken a K-12 budget funded at levels that should have sparked a federal adequacy lawsuit and proposed slicing $324 million from it. For Clark County, which has made $150 million in cuts and will need to make more, this is nothing short of devastating. To cut salaries by 6 percent in a district that annually has trouble attracting enough teachers to fill crowded classrooms is a prescription for disaster.

So don’t call him a coward. That’s bravery.

• Gutting the Indigent Accident Fund: This freedom-fighting Persian Gulf veteran probably hadn’t even heard of this entity that he wants to gut, which would result in dramatic cuts to hospitals and potential closures, including in rural Nevada where they can least afford it. So he would cut off poor patients from health care — at least he is consistent.

So don’t call him a coward. That’s bravery.

There is much, much more, most of it unburdened by logic and sensitivity, none of it infused with courage, nearly all of it motivated by cowardice. The Man Formerly Known as Governor’s inability to even keep his commitment to support a tax he said he would support is not just a measure of his character but emblematic of just how brave he truly is.

The question now is whether there are any stiff spines across the courtyard. Perhaps some members of the Gang of 63 will hear what Ø said of them later in that interview and finally rise to the occasion.

“When they (lawmakers) throw words at me, you know it just makes me worry about them ... and what their attitudes are,” he said.

On this, The Man Formerly Known as Governor and I agree. If, after months of lambasting these cowardly cuts as destructive to the state and its people, legislative leaders allow most of them to go through, they deserve endless opprobrium. They are as bad as Gibbons — nay, worse, because most of them are not insensate.

Legislators are the only ones with the power to remove the bullets from Ø’s gun and replace them with blanks. It will take two-thirds of them to pull it off.

If they don’t, they are just part of the firing squad.