SILVER STATE CONFIDENTIAL 01/27/2015

THE KING OF ALL MEDIA HATH SPOKEN! One of Jon Ralston’s 27 remaining paid newsletter subscribers forwarded to someone who forwarded to me the following quote from Monday’s edition of Ralston’s Flasher Report or whatever it’s called… “After reading all of the stuff in the weekend papers, and comments from my broad range of weekly insiders, I really wonder why we are paying attention to what can only be called The Failure Caucus, Not to diminish real terrorism, but these folks – Tony Dane, Citizen Outhouse, Michele of the Thousand Tax Liens – are nothing more than political terrorists, who are relentlessly unsuccessful but have loud enough voices to keep being heard.” Far be it for me to correct the Grammar King, but there should be a period after “Failure Caucus,” not a comma. And Jon really thinks it’s cute calling conservative political activists “political terrorists,” so be prepared to hear him use that the term ad nauseum for the duration of the upcoming legislative session. That said, it seems to me awfully conceited for Nevada’s #2 liberal blogger-without-a-TV-show to presume to tell his colleagues in the media who is newsworthy and deserves “paying attention to” in the political world and who is not. It also smells of rank hypocrisy, since King Jon is obsessed with “paying attention to” and writing about me (though never by name) and conservative Assemblywoman Michele Fiore on a regular basis, and wrote extensively about Dane just last week. And why is it that when conservatives try to hold elected officials’ feet to the fire and demand that they actually honor the campaign promises they make, we’re “political terrorists,” but when liberal GOP leaders strong-arm conservative legislators with threats to kill their bills and remove them from their committee assignments, that’s OK? And by the way, here’s something political spectators like Ralston will never understand… When you honestly and strongly believe in something – such as opposing tax hikes so as to deny the government more money to expand - it’s not a failure if you don’t win at the ballot box.  It’s only a failure if you refuse to put on the uniform or quit. Since Jon has never been in the arena himself, opting instead to criticize the players on the field from his perch in the peanut gallery, it’s no real surprise that such a notion is too deep for him to understand.  And why he’s the real Boss Hog of the Failure Caucus. RECALL FEVER: CATCH IT! Jon Ralston, Nevada’s #2 liberal blogger-without-a-TV-show, has taken to Twitter to do keyboard battle with citizens in the trenches pursuing recalls of certain elected state legislators, referring to them disparagingly as “clowns” and “serial failures.” As is his wont, The Great Ralstonsky has apparently peered into the minds of the founders of Nevada’s Constitution and hath declarethed that mounting a recall against state legislators who refuse to openly oppose and commit to voting against a billion dollar tax hike that wasn’t announced until two months AFTER the election is “not what recalls are for.” Ralston is the Humpty Dumpty of political punditry in Nevada.  “Recalls” mean what Ralston says they mean; nothing more, nothing less. Fortunately, what the Nevada Constitution says has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Ralston’s opinion of what it means.  It means what it says.  In plain English.  “Recall of public officers: Procedure and limitations.  Every public officer in the State of Nevada is subject, as herein provided, to recall from office by the registered voters of the state, or of the county, district, or municipality which he represents.” Article 2, Section 9.  You could look it up. One last point on this… Ralston is parroting a line that conservatives are pursuing recalls before legislators have cast even a single vote.  But like most of Ralston’s pontificating when it comes to conservatives, he’s wrong. The first vote cast – as in Congress – is for leadership.  And both Assemblyman Chris Edwards and Assemblyman Stevie Silberkraus, who already have Recall Committees established against them, voted with the liberal wing of the Republican Assembly Caucus for Speaker-designate rather than with the conservatives.  Had they voted with the conservatives, conservative Assemblyman John Ellison would Speaker-designate today and conservative Assemblywoman Michele Fiore would be both the Majority Leader and the Chair of the Taxation Committee. With that first vote, Edwards and Silberkraus both set the table for Gov. Brian Sandoval’s billion dollar tax hike.  And that first vote alone is sufficient to warrant a recall before they do any further damage to our wallets and checking accounts! BLAME BRIAN Let’s be crystal clear on who is really responsible for all these recall efforts… Gov. Brian Sandoval (R&R-Advertising). Opponents of the recalls are arguing that no vote has been taken on the governor’s billion dollar tax plan; therefore, it’s premature to launch a recall based solely on the fact that elected legislators are refusing to come out with public statements in opposition.  That argument would have weight except for the fact that the governor didn’t tell voters and candidates that he intended to push for a billion dollar tax hike until two months AFTER the election.  Therefore, voters went to the polls without having all the information they needed about such a massive tax hike to make an informed decision.  If the governor had run on raising taxes a billion dollars, that issue would have been prominent in all legislative races, but especially GOP primary races.  But since the governor chose to keep his tax hike hidden until well after the ballots were cast, the ONLY option left to voters who oppose it is to either (a) force their legislator to take a clear position in opposition now, or (b) assume said legislator is in favor of the tax hike. This is no time to be wishy-washy.  And a recall is the only option voters and taxpayers been left with thanks to Sandoval “hiding the ball” (though it’s unclear if he deflated it first). Seriously, if anyone’s to blame for all this recall stuff, it’s the governor who listened to his political guru, Mike Slanker, and others who refused to level with the voters despite the fact that Sandoval had no real opponent – just like Gov. Kenny Guinn v. Joe Neal in 2002.  There is simply no electoral mandate for these tax hikes and we, the taxpayers, need to know where our legislators stand NOW, not after they’ve already voted with the governor to raise our taxes.  Indeed, you don’t exterminate termites AFTER they’ve destroyed your house!  You get them BEFORE they have a chance to destroy your house.  What part of this is too deep for Ralston & Company to understand? DRIVE-BY MUTHINGS Got this from my baby brother. What a trouble-maker! “I've disconnected my home alarm system and de-registered from the Neighborhood Watch.  I've got two Pakistani flags raised in the front yard, one at each corner, and the black flag of ISIS in the center.  The local police, sheriff, FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Secret Service and other agencies are all watching the house 24/7.  I've never felt safer ... and I'm saving $49.95 a month!” *   *   *   *   * Does this report from the Wall Street Journal make you feel safer? “The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents.” *   *   *   *   * A friend pointed out that while Gov. Brian Sandoval is claiming his new gross receipts proposal is a “fee” and not a “tax,” he nevertheless wants to move the administration of the business license “fee” from the Barbara Cegavske’s Secretary of State’s office to the Nevada Department of TAXation. If this guy told you chickens lay eggs, you’d have to think twice before believing him. *   *   *   *   * Quote from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s State of the State address… “We've cut taxes. We reduced taxes by $2 billion for the hardworking taxpayers of our state. In fact, we lowered taxes on employers, on individuals, on property. Our property taxes are lower today in Wisconsin than they were four years ago. How many governors can say that? We're gonna keep lowering taxes because we understand it's the people's money, not the government's money. That's the difference between the Wisconsin way and the Washington way. In Washington, they keep trying to find ways to take more of your money. In Wisconsin, we want to find ways to give more of the money back to the people who earned it." The difference a conservative governor makes!  Don’t you wish Nevada had a governor who talked AND walked like Walker instead of like Obama? *   *   *   *   * This chart from the Nevada Policy Research Institute is interesting. If about 36% of tax revenue for the general fund budget comes from sales taxes, 23% from gaming taxes and 10% from the modified business/payroll tax, why not just eliminate the tax on employers that penalizes them for hiring workers and increase the gaming tax which is paid by tourists? Or we could just cut spending and live within our means.  *   *   *   *   * From Monday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal… Nevada joined a lawsuit with more than two dozen states challenging President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration that would protect 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, Attorney General Adam Laxalt announced Monday, saying the president is “undermining the rule of law.” “Our immigration system is broken and clearly needs to be fixed,” Laxalt said in a statement. “But just as clearly, the solution is not for the president to act unilaterally disregarding the U.S. Constitution and laws. The solution must be a permanent, legal result that includes, not ignores, the other branches of government and their constitutional roles. “Anything less is a false hope undermining the rule of law that injures millions of people in America, including many in Nevada,” Laxalt added. Ah, the difference a conservative Republican attorney general makes! And for the record, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R&R-Advertising) was not consulted with before AG Laxalt went forward with the lawsuit and issued a statement after the lawsuit was announced declaring that he does not support it. If only we had a conservative Republican governor. *   *   *   *   * We don’t need the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) run by tax-hiker Steve Hill.  What we need is the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and Heavily Against Raising Taxes (GOEDHART) run by former conservative State Assemblyman Ed Goedhart! Personnel is policy. FAMOUS LAST WORDS “There must be something we can do when a politician like Gov. Brian Sandoval lies to win and then does what he jolly well pleases to do.    I am sooooo sick and tired of all the lies and deception.  If he could be hung like a horse thief it would be too good for him.  Our country is going down the tubes because of all the greedy, lying politicians.” – Muth’s Truths subscriber 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…