E!! The True Conservative Story™

The LVRJ is reporting that Bob Loux has finally resigned.  (Go here for a refresher on Loux.)

Loux, age 59, apologized to the commission (and the public) for giving himself and other agency staffers unauthorized pay increases.

Gov. Gibbons has ordered that the salaries in question be corrected to the approved amounts and has asked that the Department of Personnel obtain repayment of the excess.

“This action will ensure that the general fund is reimbursed…and will also ensure that any retirement benefits to employees of the Agency for Nuclear Projects are based on the correct salary levels,” the LVRU reports Gibbons to have said.

Loux’s salary has been rolled back to the 2006 budgeted amount of $104,497 and his retirement will be based on a percentage of his three highest pay years, excluding the unauthorized ones.

Still a pretty good deal for a guy who, according to Stuart Waymire, holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Nevada, Reno, did not have credentials for the job, and has done more than anyone to get in the way of a civil, intelligent discussion about Yucca Mountain.  (I’ve got excerpts from a book Waymire wrote here.)

Anyway, Loux is out. 

As the flight attendants cheerfully say at the end of long, tedious flights, “Buh-Bye now.”

Jonah has an update saying some left-wing emailers claim the “O” sign thing is a joke.  I did some reasearch and here’s what I found out (from this blog post at US News and World Report):

George Bush had his three-fingered W salute that supporters flashed when greeting him at presidential campaign events in 2000. And now, if a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above.

 ”Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama’s nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country, a renewed hope, and acceptance of responsibility for our future,” says Rick Husong, owner of The Loyalty Inc.

Husong tells me that he got the idea after seeing the famous Obama-Progress poster by artist Shepherd Fairey. “We wanted to get involved some way,” he says. So, the agency came up with their own a symbol of hope and progress that also plays off Obama’s name. “We thought, ‘Let’s try and start a movement where even while walking down the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for Obama,’ ” says Husong.

Much thought went into the relatively simple idea. “You interlace your hands in a circle, the interlacing being a symbol of different types of people coming together and the circle a symbol of unity,” he says. Their design, unlike Fairey’s, is free, and Husong is urging people to download it and print it on posters and T-shirts. “We want to see it everywhere, but more importantly we want this sign to take the world by storm.”