Liberal Talk Radio

Lest you think I’m on the Richardson payroll, let me highlight some annoying pandering from the New Mexico governor:

In brief remarks to about 300 Democrats who gathered at a local newspaper’s conference room to watch the presidential candidates forum aired live on C-SPAN, Richardson touched on several key Nevada issues, saying he’s opposed to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain and wants to find ways to free up federal land.

Adding Nevada to the early primary caucus was supposed to “add diversity” to the elections, but so far it’s just added a another place to pander to locals. The ethanol pledge in Iowa is replaced by the “Yucca Pledge” in Nevada (and yes, you have to intentionally mispronounce it “Ne-VA-duh,” like the locals do, proper Spanish pronunciation be damned).

I know he doesn’t have much choice in the matter. It just rubs me the wrong way that there’s yet another state primary where politicians have to make silly statements like this. The nuclear waste has got to go somewhere, after all.

At any rate, it gets worse:

He said the West would need to find ways to conserve and desalinate water, and needs to forge new water agreements that accommodate growth.

“It’s critically important that we find ways that Nevada get more water from the Colorado (River),” he said.

Where’s all this Colorado River water going to come from? As both a former Secretary of Energy AND a Western Governor, Richardson knows better than most that the Colorado’s already overtaxed, that California’s using more than its fair share, etc. The lack of water provides a natural cap to the amount of development that can happen in Southern Nevada. They should keep it that way.

Don’t get me wrong, I like going to Vegas as much as the next guy, but we need to think long and hard about how much we want to “accommodate growth” in places that are so naturally inhospitable to human life.