Chicken Lady Comes Home to Roost at the Innovation Zone

(Chuck Muth) – This week Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak – a guy so bad at communications he couldn’t sell hot cross buns to the “starving pygmies down in New Guinea” – held a press conference to discuss details of a proposed “Innovation Zone” bill that would allow development of an independent “smart city” on some 67,000 acres of barren desert east of Reno.

“I’m not afraid of the hard questions,” Sisolak declared during the pitch before his staff, you know, cut off the questioning after only a handful of questions from questioning reporters.

This guy builds confidence that way the Italians built the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Sisolak has been so wrong on so many issues so often that it’s understandable if Nevadans, especially conservatives and Republicans, would reflexively hold out their two fore-fingers in the shape of a cross at the mere mention of “Innovation Zone.”

But the Blockchains project deserves objective consideration despite the smarmy tele-marketing pitch of our boiler room governor.

Important details – such as water and infrastructure – still must be ironed out.  But it’s the proposed independent governance, separate from control of the existing county commission in the county where the project is located, that has me intrigued right now.

If you’re going to invest over a billion dollars of your own money – no tax abatements or “incentives” – into such a massive project, do you really want your fate to rest in the hands of dumb-as-a-rock politicians such as former state Assemblyman Willy McCurdy and the mush-headed voters who actually elected him?

That’s like giving the car keys to a drunken teenager.  No good can come of it.

And while some are characterizing the Innovation Zone project as a “company town,” it’s actually more like the American colonies that started off under heavy-handed British control but eventually fought for and obtained their independence.

It’s a freedom issue.  The freedom of self-determination.  The freedom to establish a government of the people, by the people and for the people who will live, work and shop in the Painted Rock smart city that’ll be built in the Innovation Zone.

And, of course, individual freedom has the same effect on the hard left as garlic to vampires.

Indeed, the knee-jerk BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) Brigade is already out in full-throated opposition.  Consider this from Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director with the Center for Biological Diversity…

“Blockchains LLC’s plan is to build a 100-mile pipeline to the Black Rock Desert to drain remote aquifers important to indigenous people, endangered species and Nevada’s outdoor recreation economy.  Governor Sisolak wants to give the keys to our state to tech bros, while enabling a water grab which would destroy the environment.”

This is a guy whose self-explained reason for consuming oxygen on the planet is to use “all of the tools in the activist toolkit to strike at the heart of the greed machine which exploits and oppresses people and their environment.”

And then there are the Bonehead Bolsheviks over at Battle Born Progress who have already declared the project a “scam” and immediately took to Twitter to cackle and screech against it after Sisolak’s press conference.

Just to show how unserious and juvenile these goofballs are, they made up nicknames for the project that took swipes at various highly-successful U.S. technology companies that, you know, provide products and services people want, create jobs and generate tax revenue.

SwitchCity.  BloqIncVille.  Teslaville. CryptoCounty.  Bitcoin City.

How cute.

Of course, this should come as no surprise considering the organization’s leader, Annette Magnus, thinks dressing up as a plump chicken to hunt-and-peck in front of the Legislature is an effective way to petition the government.

Indeed, whenever Magnus weighs in on an issue I’m reminded of a pair of quotes by actor Sir John Geilgud (Hobson) in the movie classic, Arthur…

• “You obviously have a wonderful economy with words, (Annette). I look forward to your next syllable with great eagerness.”

And…

• “Thank you for a memorable afternoon, usually one must go to a bowling alley to meet a woman of your stature.”

Look, none of us – NONE OF US – know enough about this Innovation Zone project yet to definitively declare it a virtue or vice.

But Magnus and her flock of left-wing banshees are a pretty reliable political weather vane.  If they’re clucking against it, well…

Stay tuned, Batfans.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“I don’t understand much about politics…” – Blubber-blogger Jon Ralston, 1/2/20

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views and blogs at MuthsTruths.com