20/20 foresight to see beyond Nye’s nose
Recently there’s been talk of the Nye County Sheriff’s Office being a reactive police force instead of being proactive. Yet I ask, what about a proactive local government?
In the last year, 42 states have had power outages. Problems range from severe weather, strain on the grid caused by data centers, and outdated transformers. With increasing geopolitical tensions, the power grid is a likely target. It’s so bad that President Trump has signed an Executive Order 14421, strengthening the nation’s power grid.
What are our locally elected representatives doing about this? Well, some of them, like lame duck commissioners Ron Boskovitch and Debra Strickland, are hell-bent on making a data center sound destined to happen. In reference to developers building on the Clark County border, Ron has repeatedly said, “one way or another we’re getting a data center and/or solar farm.”
In psychology this is called Manufactured Inevitability, Learned Helplessness, Bandwagon Effect and a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. These psychological tactics pay little heed to the dangers of hooking a data center up to an already-stressed Nye electrical grid and expanding a solar farm whose power will flow entirely to California. All this, AFTER being voted out. It’s like they are dumping cement down the toilet of the house they’ve just been evicted from.
Luckily, our water basin is safe from data center developers — for now; however, what if Pahrump’s grid were to go down? Electric well pumps would cease to function. Were local government proactive, there would be water pumping stations set up with hand pumps, perhaps at town parks.
Additionally, someone could pass measures to make Pahrump more self-sufficient. Easing restrictions on livestock like chickens. Community gardening could be encouraged and classes offered. Commissioner Ian Bayne and District 4 candidate Anthony Greco support such policies. Ian Bayne put it this way, “People don’t trust Nye County government. We have to earn back that trust before we’re able to be more proactive. We earn trust by being transparent and trying to do what is best for the community.”
There is a reoccurring pattern when it comes to bad government that doesn’t listen to the concerns of the voters. All over the country supposed ‘public servants’ are siding with developers in greenlighting wildly unpopular data centers and Fourth Amendment-violating flock cameras. Much of the problem comes from county and city managers. Managing is a job full-time (unlike part-time councils), pays north of $250,000, and quickly makes someone acquainted with their community’s business interests. Councils often appear a rubber stamp for many of these city and county managers.
I moved here in part because of Ron Paul. While traveling during Covid, I looked at a map of where to go next and saw ‘Pahrump’. How do I know that name? Oh yes, I remembered reading an article about how Ron Paul got the most votes in Nye County compared to any other county when he ran for president in 2008. I had to check out this bastion of Libertarianism in the Nevada desert and decided to stay.
Libertarians want smaller government. As Oliver Norquist said, “My goal is to cut government … down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” That being said, if the government is going to do anything, it might as well be helpful and proactive. Hopefully we’ll get there. As Anthony Greco says, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix this.”
Eric Coleman is a free-lance reporter living in Pahrump whose political cartoons appear weekly in the Pahrump and Tonopah newspapers. Contact him at ericjamescoleman@gmail.com.
