LOOK, I KNOW IT’S SUNDAY…
And I know Christmas is just four days away.
But what’s going on inside the Republican Assembly Caucus
this weekend is critically important to how the upcoming 2015 legislative
session is going to go.
And there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes shenanigans that he
public isn’t being told about and a lot of misinformation being spread by the
forces of tax-hike evil.
And this extended-length edition of Silver State Confidential has some very important information that
conservatives need to know about.
If you’re not interested or too busy, just go ahead and
delete this – or better, just hold it until later to read.
Because a massive sell-out of the conservative movement has
now taken place and we’re all about to get screwed royally.
STACKING THE TAX-HIKE DECK
Assembly Speaker-of-the-Weak John Hambrick’s sellout of conservative Republicans is now official.
On Saturday – in Nixonian fashion, when no media were around
or paying attention - King John quietly submitted committee assignment changes
to the Legislative Counsel Bureau in Carson City.
But before reporting on the changes, remember this…
Hambrick claimed on Thursday that he was removing
conservative Tax Pledge signer Assemblywoman Michele Fiore as Chairman of the Taxation Committee because of tax
liens the IRS had filed on her two businesses after an employee embezzled money
from the company and hadn’t paid the payroll taxes.
In his press release – which he failed to tell the members
of his caucus about in advance – Hambrick wrote…
“At this time I feel it is best to relive (sic) Assemblywoman Fiore of
her leadership roles in the Assembly.”
But yesterday, Hambrick didn’t just remove Fiore as
committee chair.
He removed her from the committee completely!
And not only did he remove
Fiore from the Taxation Committee, he removed the vice chairman of the
Taxation Committee – conservative Tax Pledge signer Assemblyman Brent Jones – as well!
Oh, and he also once again removed conservative Tax Pledge
signer Assemblywoman Victoria Seaman
from the committee!
So much for the charade of this being all about those tax
liens. That kerfuffle was all just a
smokescreen to cover the removal of hard-line fiscal conservatives from the
Taxation Committee.
In fact, with the new committee roster shake-up, there is
now just one – ONE! – conservative remaining on that 12-member committee:
Freshman Tax Pledge signer Assemblywoman Jill
Dickman (watch your back, Jill!).
My fellow conservatives, Hambrick sold us out. Big time.
And has now stacked the deck in the Taxation Committee for Gov. Brian Sandoval’s coming billion dollar
tax hike.
In colonial times, Hambrick would have been tarred-and-feathered
for such actions.
But wait, it gets worse…
THE REPLACEMENTS
Hambrick replaced Fiore as Tax Committee chairman with FRESHMAN
Assemblyman Derek Armstrong, who has refused to sign the Tax Pledge.
A freshman who has never even cast a single vote as a
legislator, let alone chaired a meeting.
Do you think maybe the GOP establishment thinks it can
control Mr. Armstrong, pull his strings and make him do their bidding? Yeah, me too.
But get this…
Remember: The excuse for sacking Fiore is supposedly that
having tax liens filed against you by the IRS is bad, right? Well guess what Mr. Armstrong does for a
living?
According to his law firm’s website.
“We represent clients against the Internal Revenue Service…”
You know, clients like…Michele Fiore!
It also reads…
“By now you probably have realized that the IRS can be very
intimidating and aggressive to the tax payer. However, we eliminate that stress
for you by dealing directly with the IRS on your behalf. You no longer have to
deal with the harassing phone calls and letters from the IRS. Your tax problems
can be solved for good.”
I kid you not.
As chair of Taxation, King John has replaced an individual
with IRS tax liens because that’s supposedly bad, with a guy who defends
individuals with tax liens! How on
Planet Reality does that make sense?
But wait, it still gets even worse…
Guess who Hambrick replaced vice chairman Jones with?
Thin-skinned serial tax-hiker Assemblyman Randy “Kirner Tax” Kirner (RINO-Kirner
Tax)!!!
This is a guy who has not only voted to extend the BILLION
DOLLAR-PLUS “temporary” tax hikes (the “sunsets”) not once, but twice – but also
engineered a bill in the 2013 legislative session to circumvent the Gibbons Tax
Restraint Law in support of a Washoe County school tax, a.k.a., the “Kirner
Tax.”
SIDENOTE: By the way, based
on a series of dissembling tweets with me Saturday night, the Father of the
Kirner Tax still hates it when you call it the Kirner Tax. So if you see the Father of the Kirner Tax on
the street during the holiday season, please don’t call it the Kirner Tax because
it really, really bothers Assemblyman “Kirner Tax” Kirner.
Rounding out the Taxation Committee on the Republican side
after Hambrick’s reshuffling of the deck…
- Hambrick himself, who has
announced on TV that he was breaking his Tax Pledge
- Assemblyman Pat “The Appeaser” Hickey, who never met a tax he wouldn’t hike and
has refused to sign the Tax Pledge
- Freshman Assemblyman Erv Nelson, who is not a Tax Pledge
signer
- Assemblyman Glenn Trowbridge, the “Republican” recently appointed to the
Assembly by the seven Democrats on the Clark County Commission who also is not
a Tax Pledge signer
And you don’t think the “fix” is now in for Sandoval’s
coming Mother of All Tax Hikes?
GETTING THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT
I’m hearing that Assemblyman Chris Edwards – who is proving himself to be as trustworthy as a
scorpion - is telling people that there was a caucus meeting convened in which
King John Hambrick was granted the power to remove Fiore from her leadership
posts.
Problem is…
Half of the
caucus members – the conservative ones who support Fiore - knew nothing about
such a meeting, if it was actually held.HH
But it wasn’t.
Edwards’ claim is nothing more than a butt-covering
operation, since everyone knows Hambrick acted on his own without caucus
authority. And here, I’ll prove it…
In a private “for internal communication only” email from
Hambrick that was sent out at the exact same time Hambrick was meeting with
Fiore to throw her under the bus – you know, like how the Japanese ambassador
delivered notice to the White House that it was declaring war at the exact same
time Japanese planes were sneak-attacking Pearl Harbor – Hambrick wrote…
“Caucus Members, In the best interest of the caucus I have made the
difficult decision to remove Michele Fiore as Majority Leader and Chair of the
Taxation Committee.”
“I” have made the decision.
Not the caucus. King John. Alone.
By himself. Unilaterally.
But I know there are still some doubting Thomases out there
who have a hard time accepting plain English for plain English. Well, let me make it even more plain so that
even the most skeptical among you can no longer ignore the reality.
In the sixth paragraph of the same “for internal
communication only” memo, Hambrick wrote…
“Some may ask why a caucus vote wasn’t taken prior to these
actions. Historical precedent is that
there is only a vote for the Speaker position and the Speaker then appoints his
leadership team. From the leadership
team to the committee assignments the Speaker has always made the appointments.”
O…M…G.
Folks, this is the sort of mindset you find among
third-world, tin-pot dictators after engineering a coup and dismantling the
democratically elected government.
It’s also a load of flapdoodle.
The Speaker and the Majority Leader were ELECTED by the
caucus at the first caucus meeting after the November election. Assemblyman Ira Hansen was ELECTED Speaker and Assemblyman Paul Anderson was ELECTED Majority Leader (over Hambrick, by the
way).
And after Hansen stepped down as Speaker, a second caucus
meeting was held. At that caucus meeting
Hambrick was ELECTED Speaker and Fiore was ELECTED Majority Leader – though the
votes were tabulated via proxy rather than secret ballot. More on that below.
Anyway, THAT’S the “historical precedent” established for
the Republican Assembly Caucus in 2014.
And Hambrick simply doesn’t have the authority to overrule an ELECTION
by decree like this.
It’s an abuse of power.
And it’s outrageous.
THE UNKINDEST CUT
Most of you don’t know the full, back story of how
Speaker-of-the-Weak John Hambrick rose
to power and became Speaker-designee in the first place. So let me fill you in…
After Speaker-designee Ira
Hansen announced he was stepping aside as Speaker-designee, a wild scramble
recommenced by those in the caucus who wanted the job. The 12 members of the establishment wing of
the caucus, mostly moderates, immediately got behind Assemblyman Paul Anderson, who was at the time the
ELECTED Majority Leader.
The conservative wing, however, was split.
Assemblywoman Michele
Fiore was interested in the Speaker position, but after the media fury
stirred up over some of Hansen’s past statements and writings, there was
concern about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire due to some of
Fiore’s own past statements and writings.
There was also significant and warranted concern about
behind-the-scenes efforts by malcontent caucus members, led by former Minority
Leader Pat “The Appeaser” Hickey,
trying to orchestrate a “nuclear option” deal with Democrats to elect a Speaker
on opening day of the legislative session other than the Speaker chosen by the Republican
Assembly Caucus.
The caucus meeting was scheduled for Tuesday evening,
December 2, in Las Vegas. On the Sunday
before, a consensus emerged that the conservative bloc would support Assemblyman
John Ellison of Elko for Speaker.
Ellison has a solid conservative voting record but has not
signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and is generally pretty media shy. As such, it was hoped that Ellison would be
acceptable to the moderates and the Democrats, thereby eliminating Hickey’s “nuclear
option” threat.
That consensus behind Ellison, by the way, included
Hambrick, whom I spoke with that Sunday morning. And with Hambrick’s support, the conservatives
had the 13 votes needed to elect Ellison.
But by Monday night, delusions of grandeur - perhaps mixed
with a little Irish whiskey - infected Hambrick’s cerebellum. As such, he announced that he changed his
mind – what are the odds?!!! – and was going to run for Speaker himself.
So conservatives no longer had the 13 votes to elect Ellison
– who, by the way, unlike Hambrick, never wanted the position or sought
it. He was willing to step up for the
good of the cause, the good of the caucus, the good of the party and the good
of the state.
John Ellison is a good man.
After talking with Hambrick, Ellison agreed to step aside
and threw his support behind Hambrick, whose vacillation in the caucus was
already legendary and whose campaign presentation in the first caucus meeting –
when he ran unsuccessfully against Anderson for the Majority Leader post – was so
awful that a number of conservatives couldn’t stomach voting for him and went
with the moderate Anderson instead.
So it was going to be a HUGE challenge to sell all 12
conservative members of the caucus to support Hambrick for Speaker because everyone
knew his backbone was made of silly putty.
Enter Fiore.
Fiore spent the entire day on Tuesday, leading up to the caucus
meeting and vote, driving around town and persuading her conservative
colleagues to sign a “proxy” – a written authorization giving Speaker-designee
Hansen the power to cast votes on their behalf.
Fiore successfully, and not without strong reservations
among some of her colleagues, obtained the 12 proxies in support of
Hambrick. And combined with Hansen’s
vote, that gave Hambrick the 13 votes he needed to become the next
Speaker-designee.
There is no doubt whatsoever, that Hambrick wouldn’t have
gotten the votes needed to become Speaker-designee without the efforts of
Fiore. And in a TV interview Hambrick
did the day after his election, he admitted it and acknowledged the fact that
Fiore made it all happen for him.
And this is how he repays her?
Oh, and just in case some of you still believe the animus
Hambrick uncharitably harbors towards Fiore is all about the tax liens - and
the fact that she called out a pair of political consultants who have been undermining
the conservative movement in Nevada, as well as a tax-hiking GOP donor who has
been actively doing the same thing (more below) - get this…
THE RECORD-SETTING TWO-MINUTE HAMBRICK FLIP-FLOP
OK, let’s do this one with a timeline…
On Tuesday night, December 2nd, Assembly Majority Leader Michele Fiore successfully engineered Assemblyman
John Hambrick’s election as
Speaker-designee.
The next night – even though caucus members had agreed that
they all would avoid media appearances to discuss the caucus meeting - Hambrick
went on a since-cancelled/little-watched TV show and announced that he was going
to break his signed Tax Pledge and support the governor’s tax hike proposal.
Without even reading it…since it hasn’t even been introduced
yet.
One week later, Hambrick announced for the first time that
he was removing Fiore as Chair of the Taxation Committee.
The next day, he put her back on.
The day after that – Friday, December 12 at 6:49 a.m. – I sent
Hambrick this email invitation…
“Are you able to speak at our center-right coalition lunch next
Tuesday?”
At 11:39 a.m. he replied…
“YES.”
Now get this…
Not two minutes later (!), at 11:41 a.m., Hambrick sent this
email to me…
“Chuck, I just noticed Michele is also speaking. I will not be there.”
What a baby.
And now you know…the rest…of the story.
But not the whole story.
Coming up…
The story behind the story about Cory Christensen, Nathan
Emens and Monte Miller.
Stay tuned, Batfans!
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
"Although (Assemblywoman Michele) Fiore’s tax problems
are a legitimate issue, they’re merely cover for the party officials and
operatives who wanted her ousted from leadership because of her conservative
views.” – Glenn Cook, senior editor, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 12/21/14
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