<–Lots of readers are/were expecting me to boil Commissioner Tom Collins in oil over his recent ‘Boys of Summer’ tour of assassinating trees and posts and conducting Pamplona Lite with his horny runaway bulls!

Yes, it was Tom who took me from behind-the-scenes Dem maven to public figure—making me of all people a far leftie darling for 10 days—when he signed NVDEMS up with FOXJazeera to televise our Nevada debate without telling any of us on the eboard at the time!  I publicly challenged him and his inane decision then and then it was over and we both moved on.

Commissioner Collins is a longtime reader here, if not a secret fan, but we were supposed to have gone out and thrown a few back after our brouhaha and that has yet to occur and I consider that to be Tom’s unkept promise to me!

That sonofabitch!

Frankly, I’d have loved to be there shooting those damn terrorist trees with him though I have never fired a gun.  I’m not an anti-gun nut but I know me and I do have a bit of a temper and though I wouldn’t kill anyone I would be shooting out tires and rear windows of those pissing me off on Las Vegas streets and freeways with dependable regularity and thus, when Tom Collins gets a burr in his britches, I can picture him getting pissed off by all of those damn trees and I empathize…with him!!!

He and I have more in common than meets the eye!

<–WatchdogWag Exclusive–I’ve obtained a photo of the late trees just prior to their being killed by Tom Collins as well as the non-redacted police report which noted that he was very concerned that the trees were fornicating right out in the middle of nature and that he didn’t want the little kids seeing such filth anywhere else but in a local strip club!!!

Truth be told, I enjoy observing Tom Collins and I really love it when he’s in a mood during those mind-numbing Board meetings where Susan Brager is clipping coupons or doing crosswords, Larry Weekly is trying to remember back to when he was a black guy, Chris G is in pissing matches with county staff, and Sisolak, Brown, & Scow are pretending to be interested while others are speaking!

We don’t need waterboarding or even GITMO really; place our nation’s enemies in attendance at a Clark County Board of Commissioners meeting and they’ll be crying ‘Uncle’ in a matter of minutes and we can call all of our troops home and overturn the Patriot Act.

I’ve fallen sound asleep so many times at those meetings that I just bring my own pillow now.

Frankly, I think Tom handled the tree massacre all wrong—no surprise to me because he’s had no advisors with any level of talent over the years and those that have been in his orbit are all terrified of him but pretend that they’re not!  Come on, remember Steve Redlinger?  He quivered when his ex-wife was in a snit and she apparently got to keep the testicles in their divorce settlement!  Tom is the kind of client who is in charge of his own public self so you can’t be timid with him.

<–With Tom, you gotta sit him down and say, ‘OK, you big dumbshit—you’re in trouble again, this is how we get you to be even more beloved and get you smellin’ like a rose in a pile of horse shit’

I’d have had him go full-metal press with his ‘sincere’ apology for  discharging his gun—but then having him say something along the lines of ‘how damn much I love this country and it was the 4^th of July, and I guess I just got carried away celebrating and I should have known better, but I love being an American…’

Every media outlet on the planet would have picked that up and he’d be a national star for a few days and his press conference would have about 40 million hits by now on YouTube (especially if he faked a tear!) and sometime next year, his face and hat carved into the Sheep Mountains would be completed… and North Las Vegas would have changed its name to ‘Collinsville’!

Am I good, or what?  I’d have pivoted his circumstances to such a degree that besides running out and getting a baseball, a hotdog, an apple pie and a Chevrolet, all of his neighbors would have been holding their own press conference stating that ‘We’re all OK with our pal Tom shooting in celebration of America and we told our own kids that they’re on their own if they get shot and we promise not to make a big deal about it if they get popped by our beloved patriotic neighbor Tom Collins!’

<–Pardon the pun, but Tom did dodge a bullet in not being hauled off to the City of Las Vegas’s Third World jail where NLV outlaws are now processed and housed under contract with North Las Vegas!

Watching Steve Wolfson and Sister Mary Catherine Cortez Masto trying to avoid saying anything at all—let alone proceed with charges against Collins—speaks to his power and influence, not just to assumed ‘conflicts’ of interest in their doing so and he’ll pay his misdemeanor fine and go on his way.

So you’re wrong; I don’t dislike Tom Collins and I never disliked him even in the heat of our board tenure together and I took a shitload of heat from my progressive friends when he beat Marcia for Chair back then in my publicly telling everyone that he was duly elected and let’s move onto to the business of the party.

Ms de Braga didn’t speak to me for two whole quarterly meetings!!!

What I like most about Collins is that he drives the progressives in the party completely nuts and they all dismiss him as some sort of Neanderthal and malcontent when he really is one of the state’s most astute politicians!

He’d have been governor of my home state of Illinois by now and wouldn’t be heading to prison there either.  Nor will he be doing something too serious to risk jail here; Tom’s stuff is all self-inflicted and therefore avoidable, but it hasn’t even dinged him politically; he’s as popular as ever with his Trades base of support but probably sees some signs of concern on the horizon with the well-earned defeat of John Lee earlier this year and will probably put more personal effort into campaigning this year.

He’s an outstanding fundraiser and has no problem whatsoever asking for contributions in person or over the phone—and he spreads those donations around like manure on his ranch. The fun for me in observing Tom is about whom he doesn’t give checks to; his blessing via a check is first, a sign that you’re arrived and are OK with Labor, and second, that you didn’t piss him off, box him into a corner, or stick a knife into his back.  It really bothers people when they don’t get his financial support and they obsess about it.

He also politicks as well as anyone in the state; his leaving North Las Vegas, their biblical fly swarms, and sewage treatment plant effluent languish is more a nod to his understanding that the county needs that revenue the former NLV mayor took constructing the plant, more so than a political slap at now Mayor Shari Buck who was his opponent the year he won his current seat.

Tom is capable of cutting the deal with her to resolve all issues and almost all of those voters involved are in his district too—as well as Mrs Scow’s—but the atmosphere isn’t right just yet and I’m not sure either Buck or Collins are willing to make the first move to meet alone right now but I can see Tom picking up the phone and arranging a private meeting.

<–Commissioner Mary Beth Scow doesn’t like flies, fleas, or gnats or her voters bitching about flies, fleas, or gnats, but she doesn’t have the juice to move Buck and Collins!!!

Get your gun out Mary Beth; that’ll move ‘em and Tom will respect  you and invite you up to the ranch!

Steer clear of his horny bulls though!!!

After the election, something tells me that the logjam will break in some sort of revenue sharing and/or service sharing agreement.  NLV needs the revenue and could sell the plant off to the county too if the county finds some change under the sofa cushions.

If the political powers that be in Nevada perceived Tom Collins as vulnerable because of errant gunfire or runaway bulls dry humping neighborhood women, his 2012 GOP opponent, former School Board honcho Ruth Johnson would have more than a single donation from the Chamber of Commerce today.

<–In the whole grand scheme of things, these are minor political hiccups and Tom Collins will weather them well because he not only plays the game of politics exceptionally well, but because his peccadillos aren’t a problem for his voters or for his donors—he is first and foremost a Nevadan—where gunfire, bulls, and bullshit are king!

Congrats Mr Commissioner on your upcoming victory!

Michael Zahara
8/20/2012
www.WatchdogWag.com