SILVER STATE CONFIDENTIAL 10/08/2012

GINGRICHES IN VEGAS ON TUESDAY

Both Newt and Callista Gingrich will be in northwest Las Vegas on Tuesday evening, October 9, at 7:00 pm for a book-signing event at the Barnes & Noble store in the Rainbow Promenade at 2191 N. Rainbow Blvd. 

Callista will be signing “Land of the Pilgrims' Pride: Ellis Discovers the 13 Colonies” and Newt will be signing “A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters.”  Stop by and say hello!

LI'L STEVIE GETS SENT TO CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE

This is a big day for Democrat congressional candidate Steven Horsford.  Today he gets to sit down one-on-one, face-to-face with former university chancellor Jim Rogers, who has been ripping Horsford a new one for the last two weeks. 

I wonder if Horsford will charm the television station owner out of his criticisms?  Somehow, this tweet from Mr. Rogers this morning indicates…not:

“As this Tweet is being read at 6:25 this morning, I am anxiously awaiting the appearance of Steven Horsford, along with his mentor, at my office at 11:00 a.m.  Why he would come to see me is beyond my comprehension.  However, I am more than eager to listen to his pitch. I’ll let you know what he says.”

Speaking of Steven Horsford, you may recall that his race-baiting campaign has accused his Republican opponent, Danny Tarkanian, of being a racist.  Which makes it all the more interesting that the black head of the NAACP here in Las Vegas, Frank Hawkins, has endorsed white Tarkanian over black Horsford. 

I guess that makes Hawkins a racist, too, right?

SANDOVAL FLIP-FLOPS ON HIS FLIP-FLOP

As you may recall, not only did Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval break his pledge not to raise taxes or extend the “sunsets” last year, but last March he announced he planned to extend the tax hikes yet AGAIN in 2013; a decision that was immediately and warmly embraced by Republican Sen. Michael Roberson - who is now in charge of making sure no Republican state senate candidate promises not to raise taxes.

Apparently, we’re all supposed to be Democrats now.

Anyway, Sandoval said his decision to re-impose the $600 million worth of tax hikes was to avoid cuts to education; a claim nevertheless exposed as false just a couple days later when an administration memo was discovered which explained that at least half the money would actually be going towards restoring government employee pay cuts!

Now scour the Internet and see if you can find that factconsistently repeated by anybody else.  It’s been one of the best-kept secrets since the Stealth fighter program in Tonopah!

Anyway, you can bet the Sandoval administration knew that we knew the game and weren’t about to let them get away with it.  And yesterday, lo and behold, Sandoval chief-of-staffGerald Gardner announced that agency chiefs have now been advised by the governor todrop plans to undo the minor pay reductions.

Two things really bother me about this development:

1.) For more than six months now, the governor, Sen. Roberson and a passel of GOP candidates have been claiming that the tax hikes on businesses, consumers and car owners needed to be re-imposed in order to avoid further cuts to education.  That claim has been a flat-out lie and they all know it. But they kept trying to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes anyway.  Why couldn’t they just tell the truth about where the money was going?

2.) The reason for the reversal isn’t to fess up and a tell Nevada taxpayers the truth.  No, the stated reason for now not undoing the pay reductions is because of “much higher than anticipated” health care costs associated with the implementation of ObamaCare. 

Now, that’s bad enough…but then consider the fact that Gov. Sandoval is, I believe, theONLY Republican governor in the country who is aggressively implementing ObamaCare and you realize this is a problem of his own making.

Pretty ironic, too, that the reason state workers now aren’t getting their pay raises is because of President Barack Obama and not conservative Republicans. 

DRIVE-BY MUTHINGS

* About Mitt Romney’s rush to the center: It was not only predictable; it was inevitable. Conservatives accept this reality, but with a caveat. 

When George W. Bush was elected president, conservatives bit their tongues and held their fire for darned near five years as #43 pursued one bad policy idea after another (NCLB, TSA, prescription drugs, etc.).  Romney will enjoy no such honeymoon.  The minute he is elected, the right will begin to hold his feet to the fire and snap his suspenders if he wanders too far off the reservation.

* Many conservatives in Nevada are up in arms over NV Energy’s “smart meters,” a concern I share. So I asked NV Energy to send me information on some of the more frequently asked questions about the program.  Click here to read the Myths vs. Facts information they sent me.  Hope this helps clear some things up for you.

* The more I look into Sen. Michael Roberson’s $20 million proposal to hire 200 new teachers' union members for students who can’t speak English fluently, the more red flags pop up.  For example…

A Las Vegas Review-Journal story last week reported that the Clark County school district already “has more than 2,000 teachers trained or certified in teaching English as a second language,” and gets some $6 million in federal funds to pay for “the salaries of nearly a dozen specialists who train regular classroom teachers to work with limited English speakers.”

Call me paranoid, but something tells me we’re not being told the whole story on Sen. Roberson’s proposal.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“I will not cut a penny out of education.  I would like to increase funding to education.” –Nevada Republican state Sen. Michael Roberson doing his best Sheila Leslie imitation