By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

In the Republican primary for state Senate last year, then-Assemblyman Joe Hardy of Boulder City falsely advertised himself as a conservative in order to get elected.

For example, he said in campaign literature that he “voted against tax increases” and “believes in low taxation” without disclosing that during his short tenure in the Legislature he managed to be the only Assembly Republican to vote for the largest and third largest tax hikes in Nevada history!

As an assemblyman, Hardy also supported a bevy of nanny-state, big government programs and regulations, including one law governing the operation of bicycles and another changing the term “manicurist” to “nail technologist,” as well as forcing manicurists – er, nail technologists – to be licensed, taxed and regulated by the government.

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

Sen. John Ensign finally did the right thing, apparently one step ahead of the law, but it was too little, too late. If he’d quit from Day One, Rep. Dean Heller might already be a U.S. senator and Harry Reid might not be in office.

But that’s all water over the bridge and under the dam now.

Odds are it won’t take long for Gov. Brian Sandoval to announce that Rep. Heller is his pick to fill the Ensign vacancy (heck, it could be done by the time this gets published).

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

Assembly Speaker John Oceguera’s recent claim that Gov. Brian Sandoval “has made himself irrelevant in the budget process” for refusing to put tax and fee hikes on the table is, itself, irrelevant.

The only thing relevant here is reality, and the Speaker is dealing in delusion.

Here’s the budget reality: Gov. Sandoval has submitted a $5.8 billion general fund budget.

He has given the Legislature considerable latitude in how they can spend that $5.8 billion. But $5.8 billion is their allowance. Period.

Now, the only way the Legislature can increase their allowance is to get every Democrat state senator and three Republican state senators to not only vote to raise taxes, but to override the governor’s inevitable veto – which ain’t happening.

So the governor’s position of taking tax and fee hikes off the table is the only relevant factor in the current budget war as long as at least eight of the 10 Senate Republicans keep their word and stick with him.

The Democrat majorities in both the Senate and the Assembly are relevant in that they have the flexibility of moving money from one department to another, or from one priority to another, but they simply don’t have the votes to increase the overall pot of money they’ve been given to play with. Period.

Indeed, the only truly irrelevant entity in the budget process is, once again and as usual, Assembly Republicans.

Unlike their Senate colleagues, Assembly Republicans opted not to produce and sign a united letter of support backing their fellow Republican governor’s no-new-taxes budget at the beginning of the session.

But as long as Gov. Sandoval has the support of Senate Republicans, no tax bill can make it out of the Assembly, through the Senate, and to his desk regardless of what Assembly Republicans do. Period.

Making matters worse, GOP Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea is on record saying he’s willing to actually negotiate with the Democrats to support extending more than $800 million worth of “sunsetted” taxes which would otherwise expire this June. However, everyone and their uncle knows that Goicoechea’s stated “demands” will never be met by the Democrats. Period. So how is that relevant?

But even if Democrats did agree to the demands, any tax hike produced by the Assembly, even with GOP votes, won’t make it past the Senate, let alone past the governor’s veto stamp. So Assembly Republican leaders have sold out the tax issue, their fellow Republican governor and their fellow Republican state senators for….um, nothing.

In any event, it’s not Gov. Sandoval who is irrelevant to the budget process. His no-new-taxes position is actually the MOST relevant aspect of it.

And the sooner Speaker Oceguera, Senate Majority Leader Horsford and Minority Leader Goicoechea accept that reality, the sooner we can move forward.

Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. He may be reached chuck@citizenoutreach.com

By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truth

My friend Paul Jacob of the Citizens in Charge Foundation once was arrested in Oklahoma for defending the right of citizens to petition their government through the initiative process. So when he warned in January that public officials shouldn’t be allowed to “simply throw dissenters into a gulag and govern by decree,” he was speaking with a high degree of moral authority.

But when I discovered that the public officials he was writing about in his column – who had sued their own citizens “regularly and repeatedly” for daring to participate in direct democracy – were right in my own back yard, my jaw dropped.

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

If you have any sense of fairness and justice, you might want to take your blood pressure medicine before reading this week’s column. Here’s the Reader’s Digest version.

A couple weeks ago, Citizen Outreach launched a telephone campaign urging taxpayers to contact Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea and voice opposition to his announcement that he was willing to negotiate with Democrats for higher taxes. And hundreds of Nevada citizens did just that.

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

A recent Associated Press story was a real tear-jerker about an unemployed construction worker named Tera Burbank.

According to the story, poor Ms. Burbank is only able to provide “meager lunch box offerings” for her kids to take to school, “just one of many painful struggles that the mother of three encounters every day while living under the weight of long-term unemployment and threats of foreclosure, hunger and loss.”

Boo-hoo. Hand me a hanky. Now would you like to know the rest of the story?

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truth

If you act stupidly … and you can’t fix stupid … then by definition you are stuck on stupid. Which brings us to another depressing Republican episode of “The Price is Right.”

The tax-hike war in the Assembly is over without a shot being fired. Republicans, under the (mis)direction of Commanding General Pete “Tax My Meat” Goicoechea, have preemptively raised the white flag, dropped their weapons and are dutifully marching in a straight line, sheep-like, off the cliff.

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

It required a do-over, but Republicans in the Nevada state Senate appear to have now gotten with the program and are foursquare behind the no-new-taxes budget proposed by fellow Republican, Gov. Brian Sandoval.

A couple weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Mike McGinness and Assembly Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea inked a joint letter to Sandoval pledging to back the governor’s insistence on balancing the budget without raising taxes or fees.

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

Nevada state Senate Democrats recently announced their list of priorities for the 2011 legislative session. Don’t get excited; there wasn’t much to it. But read this entire column for a surprise, though not happy, ending.

The Democrats’ priorities consist of “critical education reform that emphasizes students over bureaucracy, spending reform that forces government to give taxpayers a better return on their investment, holding the line on taxes, and fairly redistricting the state in a way that represents the best interests of the people rather than any political party.”

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

Although I fear it to be nothing more than a Trojan horse for higher taxes for bigger government, the calls for a restructuring of Nevada’s tax system to “broaden” the burden continues unabated.

So let’s talk about it.

First, the only way to restructure the tax system in the upcoming legislative session without violating Gov. Brian Sandoval’s pledge not to raise taxes and fees is to adopt a reform plan which is revenue neutral.

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