NoisyRoom.net

By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

• More Negro-gate Fallout (Michael Zahara) – Harry Reid will lose in November and take the Democratic ticket down with him. It’s too late to drop out too as Harry Reid has already completely destroyed the Dem ticket for 2010, regardless of what he does now.
• Why Is GOP Candidate Elizabeth Halseth Blocking Me On Twitter? (The Anon Guy) – I was looking at Twitter the other day and realized that I hadn’t seen anything this month from Elizabeth Halseth, one of the Nevada 2010 candidates I follow. I checked my list and figured she must have accidentally fallen off, a Twitter glitch perhaps, but when I went to re-follow I discovered the above. I was blocked by the Republican candidate for AD-13.
• Welcome 2010 (Lorraine Bono-Hunt) – Nevada’s small businesses who have managed to survive the great recession of 2009 are now facing in 2010, the continued challenges of decreasing income with increased expenses.
• We Protest (Paul Jacob) – You don’t need to commit violence to conduct a large, effective public protest of perceived injustice. The many Tea Party demonstrations against our federal government’s latest socialist excesses prove that. But what if violent and nonviolent protests are equated in the minds of peace keepers?
• Obama: The First President Owned by Unions (Wayne Allyn Root) – There was never going to be a heavy tax on high value “Cadillac” health insurance policies. That was just a smokescreen. That was just a “placeholder” until Obama could come up with taxes on business owners to replace it. Under Obama, it is always the “rich” who will pay.

Click here to read these stories at the Nevada News & Views site!

SURVEY SAYS!

Which of these Republican candidates would have the best chance of beating Harry Reid next November?

• John Chachas
• Chuck Kozack
• Sharron Angle
• Sue Lowden
• Mark Amodei
• Robin Titus
• Danny Tarkanian
• Bill Parson

No, Mike Wiley is not an option. We have standards here!

To cast your vote in today’s online survey, click here!

MUTHS TRUTHS

• Times & Seasons, a popular Mormon blog, named Harry Reid “Mormon of the Year” yesterday. The blog also named Tiger Woods “Husband of the Year” and Bernie Madoff “Financial Adviser of the Year.” President Barack Obama, of course, ran away with the “Light-Skinned African-American Politician without a Negro Dialect of the Year” award.
• Yesterday, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sue Lowden joined conservative members of Congress and other conservative candidates across the country in signing a pledge promising that, if elected, she will “sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover in 2010.” Fellow Republican challengers Sharron Angle and Danny Tarkanian followed shortly thereafter. Candidate Mike Wiley, campaigning on Rura Penthe, was unavailable for comment.
• Gov. Jim Gibbons yesterday suggested that maybe, just maybe, Nevada might want to drop out of the federal Medicaid program, a program reporter Ed Vogel describes as providing “free health care to more than 233,000 Nevadans.” Problem is, it’s not “free.” Taxpayers pay this bill. It’s HUGE. And it’s getting even bigger. And could soon bankrupt the state. Therefore, it’s absolutely prudent and responsible to explore options. Good call, Governor.
• Went to the UNLV basketball game Wednesday night. Was introduced to President Neil Smatresk and Chancellor Dan Klaich. Nice guys. Rebels won. However, both men went all Chicken Little again yesterday over absolutely necessary additional budget cuts. Smatresk said such cuts would throw higher ed into a “death spiral,” while Klaich said we should be “outraged that this is happening to our educational system because we are seeing the future of our state down the river.” I don’t think these guys realize just how counter-productive this never-ending whining really is to their cause.
• Just to reinforce this point about Chancellor Klaich and President Smatresk, the front page of today’s Business section in the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that retail sales dropped again in December, that the number of bankruptcies in Nevada has gone through the roof, that the number of newly laid off employees nationally jumped an additional 11,000 last week, and that Clark County lost 20,000 construction jobs in 2009. Tell me again how many university system employees were laid off last year?
• Republican State Sen. Warren Hardy – who voted for $1 billion worth of tax hikes last year and then resigned his seat to become a full-time lobbyist – needs to be replaced by the Clark County Commission before the start of any special sessions to deal with the ongoing budget problems. Jon Ralston reports that tax-happy RINO Joe Hardy – the last remaining Republican in the state Assembly who voted FOR the 2003 “Mother of All Tax Hikes” – has the inside track. Bad news for beleaguered taxpayers.
• Tibi Ellis, Republican candidate in the swing Assembly District 5 race against Democrat incumbent Marilyn Dondero Loop, reports this morning that she has raised $35,000 for her campaign, a rather impressive figure for a challenger in an assembly race..and 78 times more than Nathan “Li’l Nate” Taylor raised for his own AD 13 race.
• Former Clark County Recorder Fran Deane (R) was sentenced to five years probation for ripping off taxpayers while in office. Judge Valerie Vegas also ordered that Deane’s stuffed teddy bear be returned to her. Deane got off WAY too easy. She should be wearing pin-stripes..and I don’t mean playing for the Yankees.
• And finally, conservatives nationwide will be losing one of the few true limited-government champions in Congress next year, as our friend and first First Friday VIP John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) announced his retirement on Thursday. Something tells me, however, that this will be far from the last that we’ll hear from John.

OTHER NEWS & VIEWS

• Gov. Jim Gibbons has inked a letter to Sen. Harry Reid urging the Senate Majority Leader to help get Nevada’s tourism economy rolling again by urging President Obama to issue a statement that would “publicly acknowledge that Las Vegas and all of Nevada is a wonderful place for business or pleasure and that Americans should visit and conduct business in Nevada.” Puts hyper-partisan Harry in a bit of a tough spot. Jon Ralston has the details and copy of the letter HERE
• Karri Bragg of Citizen Outreach joined a group of 19 national and state organizations signing a letter addressed to the Federal Communications Commission opposing the push for ‘net neutrality,’ a sweet-sounding scheme to regulate the Internet industry. The full letter can be read HERE
• U.S. Senate candidate Mark Amodei completed an important questionnaire being circulated by Gun Owners of Nevada. How’d he do? Check it out HERE
• Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley sent some rather unhelpful budget-balancing suggestions to Gov. Jim Gibbons a few days ago. The governor returned fire with a “fairly stinging response” of his own, which you can read HERE
• Reno News & Review columnist John Barrette has some thoughtful thoughts on the death of the death tax HERE

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“Sen. John Ensign this week conducted town halls in Reno and Las Vegas..(saying they) would be open, no holds-barred. . . . I suppose it all depends on what the definition of ‘open’ is.

“At both town halls, no one asked about Ensign’s scandalous behavior, which involved parental payoffs that perhaps should have been disclosed on federal forms and his possible conspiracy to help Doug Hampton get jobs and violate a cooling-off law. Ensign has refused to answer any of these questions.

“Isn’t it stunning that no one would have asked any of these questions at an ‘open’ town hall by the party now committed to openness? It would be if stories North and South didn’t point out that questions were screened by Ensign before people were allowed to ask them. And that permitted him to avoid any embarrassing comments and instead simply spew his talking points on health care.

“He won’t answer the tough questions because … he can’t, at least not without embarrassing or incriminating himself.”

- Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston, 1/15/10