SILVER STATE CONFIDENTIAL 01/26/2015

OBAMA JUDGE WANTS FBI MURDERER RELEASED According to a Las Vegas Review-Journal story on Saturday, a dirtbag names Jose L. Echavarria walked into a Las Vegas bank on June 25, 1990 “dressed as a woman” and “pulled out a gun on a teller.”  An FBI agent named John Bailey happened to be in the bank as the robbery took place and tried to stop it. Echavarria shot and killed Bailey.  The facts of the case and Echavarria’s guilt are indisputable.  He was convicted in 1990 and is now serving on death row. But on January 16, 2015 – some 25 years later! - U.S. District Judge Miranda Du unfathomably decided that Echavarria didn’t get a fair trial and “ordered his release from custody within 60 days” unless the Nevada attorney general agreed to grant the slimeball murderer a new trial. Fortunately, Nevadans elected Adam Laxalt as Attorney General in November and he has appealed Du’s decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, saying, “Echavarria does not deserve a retrial.” Now, I’ve learned from experience that when I read about some outrageous decision like this that the judge was probably appointed by a Democrat.  And sure enough, Judge Du was recommended by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and nominated by President Barack Obama. Go figure. Du’s nomination, not surprisingly, was quite controversial.  Here’s the lowdown according to Wikipedia… “On November 3, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly reported her nomination to the Senate floor in a party-line, 10–8 vote. The reasons cited by some of the eight Republican senators on the committee who voted against sending Du's nomination to the Senate floor were her lack of criminal-law experience and a 2008 sanction against Du imposed by the very judge, serving on the court to which she was being nominated, who in 2011 was recommending her nomination.” A judge criticized for lacking criminal-law experience decides to let a death row inmate whose guilt is unquestioned out on the street? Go figure. Thank goodness for Adam Laxalt. NEVADA’S WEENIE REPUBLICANS In Wisconsin, conservative Republican Gov. Scott Walker estimates that his efforts at collective bargaining reform for unionized government workers have “saved the taxpayers some $3 billion." Ah, the difference a conservative Republican governor makes! Sean Whaley of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Nevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI) has outlined the kinds of necessary reforms to collective bargaining that would bring on that kind of savings for taxpayers in Nevada, including “ending compulsory collective bargaining,” as well as “end the use of binding arbitration and end the use of government resources to collect union dues.” Alas, despite the GOP in Nevada having control of the governor’s office, as well as majority control of both the State Senate and State Assembly, our elected Republicans have proposed collective bargaining reforms “which likely would be described as modest by most observers.” I accept that Republicans never blow an opportunity to blow an opportunity, but Nevada’s elected Republicans in the Legislature are even bigger weenies than normal. AX THE TAX NOW! From Sunday’s front page in the New York Times… “My jaw dropped,” Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, a conservative Republican in Nevada, said after hearing Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, propose a $1.1 billion tax increase for education this month. “Whether we kill it by five votes or 15 votes or 25 votes, we are going to kill it.” The story concluded with the following… If Republicans were distressed by Governor Sandoval’s speech, Democrats were nothing short of ecstatic. “I never thought I’d see the day when a Republican governor was proposing all the things we’ve been proposing for the last 20 years,” said State Senator Moises Denis, a Democrat from Las Vegas. Lovely. Oh, and apparently Sandoval isn’t finished hiking taxes yet!  Indeed, Citizen Outreach CEO Dan Burdish found the following in the cover letter the governor submitted with his budget… “I am also including resources for the Department of Taxation to collect data necessary to evaluate the extension of sales tax to services. This must be done before this revenue option can be fully evaluated.” So not only does Sandoval want to make the sunsets permanent.  And not only does he want a new gross receipts tax.  And not only does he want to jack up the tax on cigarettes.  Now we find he’s also laying the groundwork to start taxing haircuts and auto repairs! Indeed, the reality is that it wasn’t the Democrats who didn’t have a strong gubernatorial candidate in November.  It was Republicans. RECALL EDWARDS PAC FORMED On Sunday morning, I faxed over the paperwork required to the Nevada Secretary of State to officially file a “Recall Edwards PAC” directed at Assemblyman Chris “Let’s Make a Deal” Edwards.  Edwards is currently (mis)representing District 19, which largely encompasses the area of Mesquite, Nevada. Edwards moved into the district just over a year ago for the sole purpose of running for an office in a district he thought he could win.  It wasn’t so much that he wanted to be a state assemblyman; he just wanted to be elected.  To anything. This guy is the very definition of an opportunistic carpet-bagger.  In his campaign, Edwards refused to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge promising the voters of District 19 that he would “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.”  Yet he ran as a fiscal conservative. “During each of the legislative sessions throughout the Great Recession, the Nevada Legislature has looked for ways to increase taxes,” Edwards said in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “This is the wrong approach.” And yet… Despite the fact that Gov. Brian Sandoval proposed in his State of the State speech to make permanent that $640 million “temporary” tax hike from 2009 that voters were promised would expire in 2011, as well as proposing a new $440 million gross receipts tax similar to the one that over 80 PERCENT of District 19 voters rejected at the ballot just two months ago… Edwards refuses to come out publicly and oppose the governor’s proposal. Before spending so much as one day in the Legislature, Edwards has already shown himself to be a fork-tongued, deal-making, double-talking, go-along-to-get-along, wishy-washy, stand-for-nothing-fall-for-anything Gumby Republican. In fact, here’s a picture of me and Chris taken two years ago when he was foolishly running for a congressional seat he never had a chance to win… RECALL FEVER: CATCH IT! Reminder: Some folks have asked why voters should move forward with a recall before these state legislators have actually cast a vote to raise taxes.  Let me put it to you this way… If you woke up tomorrow morning and noticed a couple termites running around, would you wait until they did their damage and completely destroyed your home, or would you call an exterminator immediately? Hello, Orkin? By the way, if you’d like to consider joining an effort to mount a recall PAC against your own Gumby Republican in the Assembly, let me know.  I’m happy to serve as your registered agent and file the paperwork on your behalf, as well as serve as an informal adviser. And in case you’re not sure which district you live in, just click here and enter your address. DRIVE-BY MUTHINGS Jon Ralston, Nevada’s #2 liberal blogger-without-a-TV-show, wrote something very insightful and interesting in his little-read column in the Reno Gazette-Journal on Sunday… Just kidding! *   *   *   *   * OK, so there’s this Republican clod up in Reno named Orrin Johnson who loves to skewer conservatives – which, of course, makes him a darling of the above-mentioned #2 liberal blogger.  And Johnson inked a silly op-ed published this week by the Reno Gazette-Journal is which he actually wrote, presumably with a straight face, that Gov. Brian Sandoval “was singularly responsible” for the “historic Republican Wave” that brought the GOP into the majority in both houses of the Nevada Legislature. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect Mr. Johnson sniffed a lot of glue as a teenager.  As it is, I’m assuming he just drank the Kool-Aid. FAMOUS LAST WORDS “In the last four years, voters have rejected a property tax increase to build new schools and improve existing ones in Clark County, a property tax increase to keep libraries open in Henderson and a 2 percent margins tax on business to fund education. On top of that, the county commissions in Clark and Washoe counties have rejected tax increases authorized by the Legislature and the governor for things such as police officers and school maintenance, respectively.  Oh, and don’t forget the last time an actual gross receipts tax was proposed, in 2003: It died in the Legislature at the hands of a committed Republican minority.” – Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius HOW TO SUBSCRIBE Silver State Confidential is an email newsletter on Nevada politics, public policy and current events published (usually) daily by Chuck Muth, Nevada's #1 Renegade Conservative and the man voted "Most Likely to Irritate Liberals!"  Click on the link below for subscription information…