The Manchurian Disconnection

(Thomas Mitchell/4th St8) – How could any news story be more thoroughly reported and exhaustively detailed than one Sunday in the Las Vegas Sun “newspaper” about the connection between Nevada and Red China?

The story starts with the Chinese coolies brought in to build the railroads to carry Nevada’s gold and silver to market, meanders past the Asian-themed casino floor in the Encore and the American-owned casinos in Macau and up to the announced plan by a Chinese firm to build a photovoltaic factory and solar panel farm on 9,000 acres of public land near Laughlin.

The story mentions the Chinese, going full circle like yin and yang, are interested in investing in high-speed railroads in the U.S. — like the ones being built in China.

It even mentions the Chinese investment in a proposed molybdenum mine near Eureka, which was the topic of a column and a blog by me — which was mocked by Harry Reid’s favorite turncoat “columnist” in a twit post as a shill column for the company.

Speaking of shill: The Sun story says this of that planned ENN Solar Energy project outside Laughlin: “But out of this barren desert, a Chinese energy company plans to give rise to the United States’ first glittering eco-city: The next-century heir to Andrew Carnegie’s oil towns, made for a renewable-energy era.”

The story concedes there might be some problems with partnering with Chinese companies on occasion, noting three top executives of the Chinese company investing in that molybdenum mine were indicted in Australia for insider trading and the head of the Chinese high-speed railway system has been convicted of bribery.

But for some strange reason the story never mentions the planned wind turbine manufacturing plant in Southern Nevada that was much ballyhooed just a year ago. A-Power Energy Generation Systems, based in Shenyang, China, announced it was partnering with the American Nevada construction company, which is owned by the Greenspun family, which also owns the Sun “newspaper,” to build a plant that would employ 1,000 Nevada workers.

A ceremonial ribbon-cutting was attended by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman,
according to a story in the Sun under the headline: “Planned wind-turbine plant gathers gust of momentum.”

Salzar credited Harry Reid for steering the project to Nevada. “We’re at the focal center of the renewable energy revolution,” Salazar was quoting as saying. “It’s happening here in Nevada because of the great leadership of Majority Leader Harry Reid. He is a tireless worker for the creation of jobs here in Nevada.”

That same story quoted a Reid statement: “I commend A-Power, their partners and supporters for moving forward with a project that will put more than 1,000 Nevadans back to work and help our nation in its effort to achieve energy independence. I encouraged A-Power to come to Nevada because our tax-friendly business environment and abundance of clean energy resources make our state the perfect place for them to do business. If we play our cards right, this project will be just one of many more to come.”

The story quoted Brian Greenspun as saying: “When historians 50 years from now look at Las Vegas and the Nevada-Chinese new power city, they will conclude that the seeds of that great endeavor were planted here today.” A glittering eco-city, perhaps?

But somehow that was not worthy of mention in the exhaustive tale of the Manchurian connection. Maybe that is because trading in the company’s stock was halted this past summer and the SEC has announced it is investigating allegations the company inflated its revenue by 10 times in reports to stockholders.

The gust has died, and, like something out of a George Orwell novel, the matter has been erased from history and memory. It is not and never was.