FOLLOW CHUCK ON TWITTER
If you’re not following me on Twitter, you’re missing out on a lot of great “stuff” that doesn’t make it here in Muth’s Truths. Click here: http://twitter.com/ChuckMuth. And by the way, you do NOT have to have a Twitter account to follow someone’s posts on Twitter. Just click on the link.
DIVIDED REPUBLICANS SPEAKING WITH FORKED TONGUES
At the tea party rally in Carson City on Friday, Assemblyman John Ellison (R-Elko) declared that Assembly Republicans “are sticking together as a team and will stick together until the end” as far as raising taxes is concerned.
Really? Does anyone believe that? If so, have I got a deal for you on waterfront property at Walker Lake!
Truth is, Assembly Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea just this week, in a story in the Elko Daily Free Press, reiterated his willingness to negotiate with the Democrats for a tax hike.
So if legislative Republicans are “sticking together as a team,” then why isn’t Goicoechea talking like Senate Minority Leader Mike McGinness, who on Friday told the Las Vegas Review-Journal flat out, “I’m not trading. Very candidly, none of our bills are worth trading for.”
The fact of the matter is this: Every Republican member of the state Senate signed their names to a letter over a month ago stating their unequivocal support for Gov. Brian Sandoval’s no-new-taxes budget. On the other hand, Assembly Republicans have NOT signed a similar letter of support, including Mr. Ellison.
Legislative Republicans are truly united in their division.
If Assembly Republicans and Mr. Ellison he were REALLY sticking together on Gov. Sandoval’s team, they’d be talking like Senate Republicans and Sen. Ben Kieckhefer (R-Reno), who when asked about negotiating for tax hikes by the Review-Journal this week, responded: “If I could get Jesus to walk through that door, I might trade taxes for it.”
Yep. The one exception to the rule.
The fact is, Assembly Republicans are NOT united in their support for Gov. Sandoval. Indeed, their leaders – Goicoechea, Stewart, Grady and Sherwood - continue to negotiate an extension of $650 million worth of tax hikes that are scheduled to sunset on June 30th, while the four members who signed the Tax Pledge – Goedhart, Hambrick, McArthur and Livermore - are solidly against any sort of capitulation.
As for the rest, they’re lost balls in the high weeds. Some privately say they’re on the team and with the governor but are reluctant to say so publicly, afraid of getting the Democrats mad at them. Others, indeed, are backing “Tax My Meat” Pete’s collaboration with the opposition.
The Republican Assembly caucus is a mess – but I repeat myself. They are not speaking with one voice. They are not hanging together, and will soon hang separately. The Democrats don’t trust them because Goicoechea’s demands aren’t serious and everyone knows it. And Republicans don’t trust them because they’re talking out of both sides of their mouths. As such, they are – what’s the word?...oh, yeah - irrelevant.
It’s only a matter of time before some of them get rolled and fold on the tax issue. Primary challengers, start your engines!
HYPERBOLE MACHINE TARGETS DEAN
The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) put out an email following Shelley Berkley’s announcement that she’s running for John Ensign’s Senate seat, also noting that “extremist Rep. Dean Heller is running for the Republican nomination. Heller wants to end Medicare as we know it and voted to cut more than 6,000 Nevada jobs, slash job training programs and keep Yucca Mountain open.”
Hey, if that DC gig doesn’t work out, whoever wrote that hyperbolic BS has a great future with the Nevada System of Higher Education!
LOOKING FOR A SPEAKER?
Want your organization to get the inside scoop on what will happen next in Nevada politics and public policy? Invite me to be your next speaker. Shoot me an email to get rates and dates.
Upcoming Engagements
May 4: Las Vegas Valley Tea Party (Henderson, NV)
May 24: Southern Hills Republican Women (Henderson, NV)
July 9-10: Conservative Leadership Conference (Las Vegas, NV)
HARRY POTTER & THE CHAMBER OF TAX HIKES
Despite claims to the contrary on the Left, Nevada’s government is presently operating on a biennial general fund budget of about $6.4 billion. Gov. Sandoval has proposed a budget for the 2011-12 biennium of $5.8 billion. Now follow the math with me here.
$6.4 billion minus $5.8 billion. You can’t take eight from four because four is less than eight. So you have to borrow one from the six and add it to the four. That gives you fourteen, minus eight, is 6….or $600 million. Which means the governor’s general fund budget needs to plug a $600 million over-spending deficit for the next two-year budget cycle.
Not $2.7 billion. $600 million.
I raise this basic mathematical equation because Hugh Anderson, chairman of the Government Affairs Committee for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, sent out a letter to Chamber members on Friday which says that “raising taxes at this time is a difficult option to face,” however, because of the “current $2.7 billion budget gap,” the Chamber believes “additional tax revenue may be necessary.”
So the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which has been involved in secret negotiations with Democrat leaders for over a year now, is using a falsely-inflated over-spending deficit figure to basically say that Gov. Sandoval and the vast majority of Nevada’s voters who elected him are….wrong.
According to the Chamber, taking a page right out of PLAN’s playbook, our state government is too small and Nevadans aren’t taxed enough already. And in order to continue growing the government, even in the middle of the worst economic crisis in Nevada’s history – including the nation’s highest unemployment rate, highest foreclosure rate and highest bankruptcy rate – the state’s largest supposedly pro-business organization’s solution is to….raise taxes?
With “friends” like the Las Vegas Chamber, why do Nevada’s small businesses need enemies?
If you’re a small business, especially if you’re a Las Vegas Chamber member, you might want to consider joining the Nevada Business Coalition. We don’t sell out our members to the government; we defend them from it.
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS/POLITICAL CONSULTING
Desert Fox Strategic Communications for political campaigns and government affairs. Click here
WILL GREEDY TEACHERS UNION SCREW OVER THEIR STUDENTS?
According to a letter-to-the-editor in the Las Vegas Sun written by public school teacher Brian Backman, if teachers don’t agree to “wage or benefit concessions” then the world will come to an end in the public schools, including “no advanced placement programs, no band, no theater, no orchestra, no library, no support for English-language learning or special education and class sizes approaching 50 or more.”
Oh, puh-lease. Must these hyperbolic public trough feeders always exaggerate in terms that would make Paul Bunyan blush?
But more importantly, keep in mind EXACTLY what Mr. Backman wrote. If a plague of program cuts does, in fact, materialize, it will be because the teachers union refused to make minor but necessary salary and benefit concessions. Which means we’re about to find out if these “public servants” really care about the children….or only themselves.
Place your bets! Place your bets!
CAMPAIGN & GRASSROOTS TRAINING
Communications, media relations, grassroots organization, blogging, fundraising and more. Contact me via email to inquire about costs for putting on a custom training seminar for your group or organization.
PUTTING A LEASH ON PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS
SB 342 would do a lot of good things. It would allow, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal noted in an editorial this week, “decide for themselves whether to have their employers deduct union dues from their paychecks.”
Me, I’d ban the practice outright, but letting the employees decide is at least a step in the right direction.
The bill would also require that collective bargaining proposals for public employees be shared with the taxpayers who fund their generous pay and benefits, as well as “prohibit the use of public money to pay for union representatives for their work, requiring instead that local government employees who are members of unions pay for their own negotiations.”
So let it be written; so let it be done.
SCHNEIDER BLAZES OBAMACARE TRAIL
Nevada legislators, strapped for cash and fighting efforts to make any cuts anywhere on anybody in the state budget, are backing Senate Bill 135 which would slough off the cost of providing heart and lung medical care for future cops and firefighters to the federal Medicare program.
Nanny-stater Sen. Mike Schneider (D-Las Vegas) – the man behind the ridiculous mandatory tire pressure bill - declared with glee that by passing the SB 135, legislators “are just shifting (liability) to where every other American goes.”
Indeed, that is the Left’s ultimate goal with ObamaCare. Their full intention is to get every American out of their private insurance program and shift them to nationalized, federal health care. SB 135 continues the slow migration to the “government option” for health care - which will do for our doctors and hospitals what the government option has done for our teachers and schools in education.
Oh, joy.
FIRST FRIDAY HAPPY HOUR
May’s First Friday Happy Hour in will feature Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as our VIP guest. Friday, May 6 at Stoney’s in Las Vegas from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Free parking, no cover charge and 2-1 drinks. First Friday is co-sponsored by conservative talk-show host Alan Stock and and KXNT 100.5 FM/840 AM.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“The ethos of the West is you’re left on your own. . . . The open range, freedom. The risk is you might hurt yourself. The plus is at least no one’s telling you how to live your life. That’s the trade-off. You didn’t come out here to have the nanny state follow you and wipe up after you.” – UNLV sociology professor Rob Lang, Las Vegas Sun, 4/16/11
“Don’t let the issues on which you disagree get in the way of the issues on which you agree.” – Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
“The size of government threatens the American way of life as we know it. The solution is straightforward – cut government.” – Columnist Rich Lowry
No comments:
Post a Comment