He has a lot of money but nothing to lose. He's a little bit crazy but dead serious about his goals. He sounds like a Texan with oil interests in the Bahamas but he speaks with a voice many Nevada voters will relate to.

Waters is some kind of Dickensian character, complete with the name, who seems to have a bit of Cervantes in him, with that gaming windmill looming before him, and he also seems conjured up by Dante as some kind of divine punishment for a gaming industry whose self-satisfied arrogance has given him his moment. Waters knows what the casino barons know: People love the resorts but they also would love to tax them more.

That knowledge gives him the power to propose what he is calling the Tax Fairness Reform Initiative, which when it is finished probably will (at least) triple the gaming tax rate on the most profitable casinos. What the gamers will label a prescription for an economic cataclysm will be seen by many as a far, far better thing and a circle of hell inscribed with Las Vegas Boulevard addresses.

Waters is a guy who operates on a unique combination of intellectual energy and unquenchable disgust. The ideas just keep coming and he has jammed most of them into this initiative, coming one cycle after his eminent domain proposition forced the powers that be to compromise with him.

In its embryonic form, and it may evolve before he files it, the Waters plan includes a division of revenue from the initiative (which also would erase property taxes on homeowners) that goes like this:

• 30 percent for roads

• 30 percent for teacher salaries

• 10 percent for the Millennium Scholarships

• 10 percent to address water needs, but prohibit importing water from another area in the state

• 10 percent to fund solar and wind projects

So in one initiative, Waters takes on the state's most powerful special interest, the water authority and the regulated monopoly utility - and that's just for starters.

Before going any further, Waters plans to ask voters, through a comprehensive poll, what they want the gaming tax money to fund, besides the cash lost from their erased property taxes. And he's willing to abide by what the results of a poll he is having conducted by a national firm tells him - that is, he will drop, or maybe add, components based on popularity.

He doesn't care what the establishment thinks - he has little but disdain for a political leadership he believes is craven and captive to special interests, especially gaming. Waters figures he is in a unique position to do what no one else is willing to do and what he has the wherewithal to do.

The gamers should be worried and I am sure they are. The proposed teachers union initiative, which would raise the tax on the wealthiest casinos by 3 percentage points, already has their hackles up. But that must seem like a picnic compared to the bitter pill Waters wants them to swallow.

In the long run, the gamers may be able to defeat Waters with an effective ad campaign. But he is taking away their options as he uses polling research to tailor his initiative to the electorate's desires. As I said, their worst nightmare.

But what should really worry people beyond the Strip is Waters' insatiable appetite to right what he sees are perceived wrongs. Just recently someone informed him that many of the state's mining companies are owned by out-of-state or out-of-country behemoths.

Maybe, someone told him, he could find a way to tax mining, too. The only question is whether he will have to find a separate initiative or whether he might just try to ram it into this one.