As the year winds to a close, here are my picks for 2010’s Top 10 Nevada Conservatives.
Yes, as one of my regular readers pointed out, nobody united conservatives around the state this year better than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But despite this impressive accomplishment, Harry Reid is no conservative, so he doesn’t make the list.
Then again, neither does Sharron Angle. Sorry, Charlie, but you don’t blow $27 million and the single best opportunity to take out the #1 targeted Democrat in the nation by either your own or your campaign’s incompetence (probably a combination of both) and be rewarded. Continue reading »
(Chuck Muth) – On one hand, everyone seems to agree that there is about a $1 billion government overspending deficit in Nevada’s general fund budget. On the other hand, some peg the overspending deficit at $3 billion.
But that $3 billion figure is based on Nevada’s super-fund budget, which includes transportation and other items not included in the general fund, as well as local government spending. That brings total government spending in Nevada to around $20 billion.
So here’s the reality.
Continue reading »
There’s no way on God’s green earth that the Supreme Court of the United States of America is going to toss Barack Obama, the first black man ever elected to the nation’s highest office, out of the White House even if it could be proven without doubt that he wasn’t born in Hawaii.
In addition, I believe the constant focus on B.O.’s birthplace by some on the right only helps the opposition paint conservatives as cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, so I wish my side would just drop it. There are PLENTY of other things to go after our anti-business, socialist president.
That said, the so-called “birthers” do raise a legitimate question, as citizenship is a constitutional requirement for the office.
And as an AP story on the issue this week notes, while Hawaii’s health director claims to have “seen and verified Obama’s original vital records” and “notices in two Honolulu newspapers were published within days of Obama’s birth,” the certificate of live birth issued by the health director in 2008 “doesn’t list the name of the hospital where he was born or the physician who delivered him, information collected by the state as part of its vital records.”
Now, if I was a conspiratorial kind of person, I might suspect that the information is intentionally being withheld just to keep the controversy alive in order to be able to continue to characterize conservatives as nutjobs during Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Nah, they wouldn’t do that, would they?
On the other hand, a story in the Las Vegas Sun today maintains that “With his no-new-tax pledge, Sandoval increasingly finds himself on a no-new-tax island with only a small cadre of conservatives.”
“Small cadre”? You gotta be kidding me. Brian Sandoval ran on a platform and a promise not to raise taxes and 382,350 Nevada voters voted for him, crushing his opponent 53-41 percent. Small cadre, my foot.
I’m a Las Vegan. At least that’s what I’ve been telling everyone for almost 25 years. When I send a letter or pay a bill, my return address is listed as “Las Vegas, NV.” And most people I know who live in unincorporated Clark County consider themselves Las Vegans, too.
Seriously, when was the last time you heard someone tell you they were a Clark Countian? Continue reading »
Gov.-elect Sandoval continued his “March of Competence” today by filling out the rest of his administration with appointments of, as his press release puts it, four “veteran administrators” to key posts: Greg Cox at Corrections, Dr. Michael Fischer at Cultural Affairs, David Gustafson at Information Technology, and Chris Perry at Public Safety.
As Newt says, real change requires real change. Considering Nevada’s housing and unemployment problems, I’d say we could use some real change. But if personnel is policy – and it is – the Sandoval administration, highly competent as it may be, will appear to be an agent for the status quo, not an agent of change.
Gov.-elect Sandoval announced another key appointment on Tuesday: Bruce Breslow to take over the DMV. An interesting appointment for two reasons. First, because once again apparently there were no conservatives in the entire state of Nevada qualified for the position. But secondly because Breslow is currently in charge of the state’s non-essential anti-Yucca Mountain office.
I say non-essential because Harry Reid was re-elected Senate Majority Leader last month and between him and Barack Obama, the Yucca Mountain Project has been declared dead, dead, DEAD! So then, why do Nevada taxpayers need to keep funneling millions upon millions of dollars into an effort to fight a dead project? Could this be a sign that Sandoval intends to ax the anti-Yucca Mountain office when he announces his budget next month.
Sure hope so.
The LVRJ ran a sappy story on Tuesday in which many of the artsy-fartsy folks bemoaned the fact that four Nevada museums might be shuttered because of the economic crisis the state faces during the ongoing recession.
David Markoff, a member of the state Board of Museums and History, maintains that “Museums not only serve educational and research functions, but generate millions of dollars in tourism.”
First, before closing any more museums, we should first disband the state Board of Museums and History.
Secondly, sorry, Charlie. Museums are nice, but they aren’t “essential.”
Thirdly, if they’re really all that popular and are generating millions of dollars in tourism, then they should be self-sustaining and not need taxpayer subsidies. Sell ‘em off to private entities.
Problem solved. Next?
The Associated Press on Saturday ran a piece looking back on the Gibbons administration and what all went wrong. The story included these Muth’s Truths:
Ironically, Gibbons wasn’t conservative enough for the rightest-leaning Republicans. He was berated by Chuck Muth, a conservative activist, for allowing a room tax increase that was approved as an advisory question by voters in Nevada’s two largest counties to take effect without his signature.
Muth called Gibbons a liar for breaking the anti-tax pledge he penned as a candidate and labeled his administration a “Category 4 disaster.”
