Lombardo campaign’s Medicaid fraud claims don’t add up

Joe Lombardo, who needs no introduction, was succeeded as Clark County's sheriff by Kevin McMahill, who tells the RJ he thinks it's fine that Lombardo wasn't ticketed for being a common red light scofflaw. Thousands of people get pulled over for minor infractions without being ticketed, McMahill says. That's a fair point. Alas, McMahill is also missing, — or evading — the main point: It's not the officer's actions and behavior — and tone — that warrant scrutiny.

IN NEVADA CURRENT

The sprawling and obscenely extravagantly financed reelection infrastructure of Gov. I'm Joe Lombardo last week deployed a Republican Assemblymember, a Lombardo-campaign poll, and the Republican Governors Association in a coordinated group effort to slime, er, brand Democratic challenger and Attorney General Aaron Ford as soft on Medicaid fraud. The RGA characterized the manufactured kerfuffle as a "scandal," in an email evidently designed to rid that organization of even a hint of credibility. The pathetic substitute for a smoking gun in the purported "scandal" was the assemblymember's release asking “why only approximately 40 percent of referrals are accepted for criminal prosecution” by Ford's office, the not at all subtle inference being that Ford is history's greatest monster or whatever. Meanwhile, in the reality based community... well, here, Dana Gentry reports: Ford prosecutes twice the share of Medicaid fraud referrals as the national average

Note: Medicaid fraud is a genuine issue, and has been for a long time, as demonstrated by the largest Medicaid fine in history, which was levied against a company ran at the time by a chap named Rick Scott. Scott, you may recall, went on to become a Republican U.S. senator from Florida. And he still is. So you could say when it comes to Medicaid fraud, Republicans have first hand knowledge.

And yet.. whatever the bloated Lombardo campaign's concerns about Medicaid fraud, the ham-handed way it served up a spool of gossamer thread masquerading as a micro-scandal suggests the campaign's concern wasn't Medicaid fraud, but getting a headline tying Ford and/or his tenure as attorney general to the words "Medicaid fraud," and not in a nice way. At least one Nevada news outlet obliged, providing the Lombardo campaign with a headline it can plop into a campaign ad. So mission accomplished.

Trumpworld's BLM, part 1: The Bureau of Land Management intends to grant not only some land but also the mineral rights to a company that is expected to flip it to another extraction company for a profit. And then the company purchasing the land would mine it. So jeesh what a big fat giveaway, is one of the things the deal's opponents say. Jeniffer Solis reports: BLM land sale near Anaconda Mine challenged in court

Note: As an aside, perhaps the most consequential policy achievement of Harry Reid's career was assuring that the General Mining Law of 1872 was never amended to require companies to pay federal royalties on hard rock minerals mined on federal lands. In other words, if a company buying the old Anaconda property makes a zillion dollars mining rare earths/critical minerals that might be on the site, the public wouldn't have seen any of that money anyway even if the mine site remains federal land.

Trumpworld's BLM, part 2: One of the many things Trump and Lombardo have in common is they both love 'em some data centers. This Boulder City project was approved by BLM in what appears to be an unprecedented circumvention of permitting procedures, as per Trumpworld's overall wishes for both the bureau and data centers. Busy Jen reports: Boulder City Council seeks to stop data center on BLM land

Note: Hopefully I'm wrong, but this project has the look of being a potential precedent for what could turn into a broader giveaway of federal lands to the tech bros, in which case the city of Boulder City's appeal is an early salvo in what might end up being a big battle with multiple participants.

"I'm his lawyer" is DC's version of "I'm Joe Lombardo." From the DC bureau: Senators grill Blanche over ‘slush fund,’ Epstein at attorney general confirmation hearing

Good Luck