My Point of View/By Rolando Larraz
I have interrupted my vacation because of an incident that happened to me yesterday while I was talking to Gregory Bortolin, the Director of Communications for the State of Nevada, working directly under the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development with the logo of Empowering Success.
Gregory Bortolin is not really the Director of Communications for the State of Nevada; he is a man that promotes the business for Nevada to make Steve Sisolak look good, but he sells himself as Director of Communications and that is what he has on his business card.
When people refer to me as the Cuban who works at the Las Vegas Tribune, I do not feel slighted because I am Cuban, and when people refer to me as that Cuban SOB, I still do not take it as an offensive remark because while I am Cuban, I know that my late dear mother was not that. And when someone calls me a Cuban AH, I laugh because I know that being born in Cuba makes me a Cuban and the AH part is a matter of opinion and I am a Republican who believes that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I have learned that those who are afraid of talking about race, sexual preferences and nationalities are afraid because they have something to hide and that is not my problem.
When I criticize the former Las Vegas City Attorney and when we write about him, we are writing about the city attorney NOT about the gay city attorney; when we write about a city of Las Vegas councilman who wants to be the first Black mayor, or when we write about his predecessor who went to prison for corruption for only a few days, I
write about a corrupt elected official, a corrupt public servant, and race has nothing to do with his actions.
When a federal judge gives a corrupt elected official, a corrupt public servant, two months in prison, it is because he is a Black elected official who committed a crime; if he would have been a White elected official, he would have had to do two years instead of two months.
Why I am bringing up the race subject after speaking with the fake Director of Communications for the State of Nevada, Gregory Bortolin, you may ask. Here is one of the many reasons to bring the race subject to the plate.
While talking with Bortolin under the impression that I was talking to the Director of Communications for the State, the spokesperson for the governor, the cover-all-in-chief for the dictator of the State of Nevada, I explained to him that while many people have been evicted, many cars have been repossessed and many “deposits” have been made to the wrong accounts, the Governor and his wife have been dining out all over the Las Vegas area, perhaps getting compliments like it was usual in Las Vegas before the corporation crime families had taken over the operation from the other mafia crime family that created the best city of them all.
Well, Bortolin may have been aware that his telephone line might be (or could have been) tapped by the same dictator that he so idolized and protected, he rudely hung up the phone on me without even saying goodbye.
I called him back and asked, “Were we disconnected, or did you hang up on me?” Bortolin’s response was, “I do not have to tolerate racist comments,” and that is when I realized how ignorant this man is so I ignored his totally ignorant comment and went on to talk about the fraud situation on DETR, which he tried to explain his way out of by telling me was that as a tourist, he does not know anything about such matters as DETR or any political situation, and referred me to Rosa Mendez, at an undisclosed location, for the Department of Employment and Training Rehabilitation, AKA DETR, where the telephone never is answered and if anyone answers by mistake, rude employees like Liliana — with the blessings of her supervisor — hang up the telephone instead of asking how she can help or even apologizing for making the caller listen to that mind-maddening music for twelve hours.
That, my dear friend Bortolin, is what I call a dictatorship, which is what I call abuse of power; that is, my friend, what I call covering up for a badly committed crime within; that is what I call corruption; that is what I call discrimination; that is what I call racism.
Yes, that is what I call racism — pointing out the nationality of the Governor’s wife has nothing to do with racism; only your feelings of terror for what the governor may think that mentioning the governor’s wife’s nationality (NOT RACE) is a way of being racist.
I have never met the governor’s wife, but I am sure that if she is like the many Chinese people that I know, she may be very proud of her heritage. She may be as proud of being Chinese as I am of being a Republican Cuban.
My name is Rolando Larraz, and as always, I approved this column.
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Rolando Larraz is Editor in Chief of the Las Vegas Tribune. His column appears weekly in this newspaper. To contact Rolando Larraz, email him at: Rlarraz@lasvegastribune.com or at 702-272-4634.
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