Vin Suprynowicz

Nevada isn’t the laissez-faire, small-government paradise it once was. But it’s still enough better than such collectivist hellholes as Chicago and California that people keep fleeing those regimes to flock here, a state with no state income tax, a state where there’s a low cost of living, plenty of free parking (always excepting government courthouses) and (sometimes with the exception of urban Las Vegas) no one has a problem if you want to cook outside on your charcoal grill, use a plastic straw, smoke just about anything, or wear your sidearm on your hip.

Problem is, once they’ve been here a few months, those refugees start voting for the same kind of tax-and-regulate crap that turned their previous domiciles into repressive hellholes in the first place. “Restaurant smoking ban,” anyone? “No firearms allowed” signs on the public libraries? Teaching “white guilt” and other insidious Marxist nonsense in the government schools? We call it “Californication.”

Examples? Many folks who hold out hope for Donald Trump as the unlikely yet seemingly heaven-sent, nick-of-time agent of defeat for the globalist totalitarians and a return to Government By the People are vowing to “vote the straight red ticket” next week, to send the president the kind of reinforcements he needs to keep his agenda on track.

I sympathize. I would like to have done so. But that presents a small problem in Nevada.

Oh, one-time Never-Trumper Sen. Dean Heller (otherwise long a solid, common-sense conservative) has made his peace with the president, who even came here to hold a rally for the senator, a rally also featuring Southern Nevada Republican congressional candidates Cresent Hardy and Danny Tarkanian. They’re all fine.

No, the problem is the presence of “Republican” Michael Roberson on the ballot for lieutenant governor.

After signing a “No new taxes” pledge in 2010, State Senate Majority Leader Roberson in 2015 pushed through the biggest tax hike in Nevada history, a $1.5 BILLION monster including a despicable new “gross receipts” tax with 27 separate rates, all to reward beyond the dreams of avarice one of the worst “public school” systems in the nation (unless we acknowledge its purpose is to churn out quasi-literate, thoroughly propagandized leftist dopes, in which case it’s doing just great.)

“It’s not just that he pushed through the largest tax hike in state history, but that he did this after campaigning for re-election to a state senate seat as a friend of the taxpayer,” pointed out fellow Republican Andy Mathews.

Additionally, Robeson — who now claims to be against “sanctuary cities ” — in 2013 authored Senate Bill 303, which created a “Driver’s Authorization Card,” or DAC, for illegal aliens living in Nevada. The Department of Motor Vehicles reports 57,848 such cards were issued to illegal aliens between Jan. 3, 2014 and March 28, 2018. Until recently, anyone applying for a drivers license in Nevada was offered a chance to register to vote — even if the form of ID they presented was a “green card,” indicating they were not U.S. citizens and thus could not legally CAST a vote. 360daily.net recently published an estimate by a local FBI agent that some 55,000 illegal aliens are now believed to be registered to vote in Nevada.

( http://360daily.net/new-report-57848-illegal-alien-drivers-licenses-issued-by-nv-dmv/ . . . and . . .
http://360newslasvegas.com/55k-illegal-aliens-on-nevadas-voter-roles-according-to-fbi-sources-2/

I can’t vote to reward that kind of turncoat stuff; sorry.

True, the lieutenant governorship is a largely ceremonial office in Nevada — unless the governor dies or is incapacitated. And yes, I’m very familiar with the old argument that “If you vote for a third-party candidate instead of the Republican you’re just helping out Democrat Kate Marshall (Berkeley 1982).”

Don’t care. For lieutenant governor I’m voting for the only true conservative on the ballot, the executive director of Nevada’s Independent American Party, Constitutional Issues Chairman of the national Eagle Forum, 1976 magna cum laude Bachelor of Science graduate of Brigham Young University and home-school-mom Janine Hansen.

Politicians respond to punishment. The Nevada GOP is just gonna hafta learn to purge the RINOs.

YES, VOTE FOR THE DEAD GUY

I’ll also be voting for Dennis Hof — who scored a fantastic upset primary victory over another tax-hiking Republican, James Oscarson, this summer — in Nevada state Assembly District 26. I’ll be doing this despite the fact that, following what sounds like a bang-up birthday celebration at one of our local whorehouses two weeks ago, 72-year-old Dennis Hof realized the dream of many guys: he died in bed.

(The location of the birthday party was considered neither surprising nor scandalous; Mr. Hof owned the whorehouse.)

Yes, I’ll be voting for the dead guy, as should anyone else who can. You see, it was too late to remove his name from the ballot. If Hof loses, deep red Nye County gets saddled with some anti-gun, union Democrat, tax-loving Las Vegas public school vice-principal no one has ever heard of. But if he wins (despite being dead), the county commissions of the three counties that share portions of the 26th District will choose a REPUBLICAN replacement. (And it damned well better not be defeated tax-hiker James Oscarson, unless the commissioners want to see some torches and pitchforks, here.)

OK, WE ALL KNOW MOST POLITICIANS ARE FOR SALE. BUT HOW MANY SEND OUT A PRICE LIST?

Anyway, that aforementioned population influx from assorted leftist hellholes led to the creation of Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, back in 2011. When Democrat Steven Horsford won the first election for this seat in 2012, “He moved his family to Virginia,” notes Cresent Hardy -– who himself defeated Horsford after a single term and held the seat from 2015 to 2017 but (in contrast) never relocated his family from Nevada.

Horsford “has been in Virginia, he has voted the last three elections in Virginia, he drove their highways and paid taxes in Virginia,” Hardy told the Pahrump Times earlier this month. “And he didn’t change his driver’s license to a Nevada driver’s license until just days before he decided to file for running.”

Nor is Virginian Horsford’s carpetbagging his first offense.

Although he started out running a cooking school for the Culinary Union -– which routinely buses non-English-speaking Las Vegas hotel maids to early voting stations to vote Democrat there, every election cycle ( see . . . https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/oct/29/unions-flex-muscle-in-nevadas-high-stakes-senate-r/ ) — he has now been a professional lobbyist and public relations guy for Harry Reid’s favorite juiced-in public relations outfit, Billy Vassiliadis’ “R&R Partners,” for years. (Yes, they have a Washington office. Presumably Mr. Horsford would just merge it with his congressional operation.)

In the summer of 2010, when Mr. Horsford was the Democrat Majority Leader of the Nevada state senate, he sent a fundraising letter from his PAC soliciting donations in exchange for private meals or receptions to meet with various Democratic legislative leaders and Senate committee chairs. Following criticism that the letter amounted to “pay to play,” he discontinued the solicitation program and refunded all donations made in response to the letter.

In 2012, when Mr. Horsford decided to run for the new 4th District congressional seat, he and two aides came to visit us for an endorsement interview at the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal. During that interview, he made the mistake of parroting a Democrat Party talking point which he evidently didn’t really understand, asserting the federal government “subsidizes the big oil companies.”

That time-worn talking point refers to the fact that the federal tax code allows oil companies to take liberal tax deductions for depreciation of their equipment, and for “depletion” of the value of their underground reserves. I get a little sick of it.

So I asked candidate Horsford who signs those federal “subsidy checks” to the big oil companies. He looked left and right to see if one of his aides would help him out. They both sat stony-faced. So Mr. Horsford answered “I would think those checks are signed by the Secretary of the Treasury.”

There are no such checks.

Horsford -– clearly not the sharpest knife in the Democrat drawer -– managed to serve a single term.

As he was taking office, I wrote back in January of 2013:

“I see where freshman Nevada Congressman Steven Horsford, the Democrat who believes big oil companies receive subsidy checks signed by the Secretary of the Treasury, but who at least is no longer in the position to call last-minute weekend meetings at the Nevada State Senate to shift state moneys out of public-school budgets and into the coffers of the otherwise private Lincy Foundation (is he any relation to the Sonya Douglass Horsford, Ed.D., who then showed up as a Lincy Foundation ‘Senior Resident Scholar of Education,’ do you suppose?) has now weighed in on the Second Amendment, endorsing Democrat Barack Obama’s new-old gun control proposals as ‘reasonable.’

“‘I support the Second Amendment and the right of individuals to bear arms for recreation, hunting or self-defense,’ Mr. Horsford told the Stephens Press Washington Bureau, last week. ‘That does not mean we cannot have reasonable gun laws to keep military-designed weapons out of our neighborhoods and communities.’

“Well, of course not. Not when the Second Amendment begins ‘A skilled band of deer and duck hunters being necessary to the security of a free state . . .’

“No, that’s not it. I thought I had a copy around here, somewhere. Does it start out ‘The ability of Americans to defend themselves in their homes being necessary to the security of a free state . . .’?

“No, that’s not it. Wait, here it is: ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’

“So, actually, the one kind of firearm we know the government ABSOLUTELY can’t infringe our right to keep and carry around is the ‘military designed weapon.’ . . .

“Besides which, other than Derringers, what weapons are not ‘military designed,’ precisely? My clunky, bolt-action 1903 Springfield and 1917 Enfield are ‘military designed,’ as are my 1917 model Colt and Smith pistols. Heck, they’re all still parkerized and stamped with their military serial numbers.’ . . .”

Fortunately, Cresent Hardy is a common-sense, down-home Nevadan. When overzealous state “health” officials raided a farm-to-fork dinner at Overton’s Quail Hollow Farm (it turned out the invaders didn’t even have a warrant) a few years back, forcing the farm folk to poison all their ready-to-eat produce with bleach so they couldn’t even feed it to the pigs (let alone their customers, gathered to celebrate the fall harvest), Cresent Hardy went to bat for them at the state legislature, which finally changed the law to allow such celebratory thanksgiving feasts.

We attended the next farm-to-fork dinner. Cresent Hardy was there in person, to make sure no such trouble arose again.

THE PROBLEM WITH ELISSA CADISH

Nevada voters will also choose next week between lower-court judges Jerry Tao and Elissa Cadish, who both seek elevation to the state Supreme Court.

Jerry Tao is an honest and fully competent judge (though he’s been criticized for accurately dubbing his opponent a “leftist.” Oh, the horror!) Elissa Cadish is smart — a quick and sharp legal mind. She’s also arrogant, elitist, and jaw-droppingly anti-gun.

Interviewing her back when she sought her first judgeship, I asked her whether jurors should be informed that they have the right to judge the law as well as the facts -– to refuse to convict if they feel a law is unjust or unjustly applied. She said no. I pointed out that if the courts screen out fully-informed jurors during “voir dire,” they’re not really seating juries randomly selected “on the country,” as they’re supposed to. She replied that the juries are “randomly selected” from among those who agree to follow the judge’s orders.

Wait. It gets worse. Why isn’t Elissa Cadish a FEDERAL judge?

Back in 2012, then U.S. Sen. Harry Reid -– no friend of our personal liberties -– nominated Cadish to fill the U.S. District Court seat being left vacant when Judge Philip Pro decided to semi-retire, taking “senior judge” status (the attempted Reid appointment pretty well confirming Ms. Cadish’s political leanings.)

But in a somewhat unusual move, Nevada’s Republican Senator, Dean Heller, used a traditional Senate privilege to block Cadish from receiving a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Though coy at first about his reasoning, Heller later cited a questionnaire she had filled out when running for her current seat on the state bench in 2008. When asked whether the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms, she replied, “I do not believe that there is this constitutional right. Thus, I believe that reasonable restrictions may be imposed on gun ownership in the interest of public safety. Of course, I will enforce the laws as they exist as a judge.” ( https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/heller-stands-firm-against-nevada-judicial-nominee/ .)

Read it again. Elissa Cadish wrote “I do not believe that there is this constitutional right.”

If you’re a Nevadan with any respect for the Bill of Rights, do you want THAT on the state Supreme Court, where judges actually get to rule on how the state and federal Constitutions are applied? Run, do not walk, away from Elissa Cadish. Honest Judge Jerry Tao is the better choice.

Elsewhere on the Nevada ballot: I know both Bob Beers and Ron Knecht personally, have for years. Both are honest and skilled accountants. Beers will be a fine fit as state treasurer; Knecht the same for state controller. Barbara Cegavske is also a solid, common-sense, pro-business choice at Secretary of State. (As soon as she took office she ordered the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to stop signing up non-citizens to vote — https://dailycaller.com/2017/04/17/nevada-sec-state-dmv-instructed-employees-to-register-non-citizens-to-vote/ )

Public defender Chris Arabia is a fine choice for Nye County District Attorney, over disgraced Las Vegas judge Nicholas Del Vecchio, who was removed from the bench for some unusual behavior during business hours, over east of the mountain.

I’m voting “No” on all but one of the ballot questions, since granting special-interest exemptions to the sales tax (Questions 2 and 4) just pressures lawmakers to raise the tax rate on what’s left to tax, and since automatically registering every driver’s license recipient to vote (Question 5) would just sweep in even more illegal aliens and others who shouldn’t be voting (which I’m sure is precisely what the Democrats hope.) THE EXCEPTION is Question 3, which seeks to remove the electric monopoly and allow a free market among those who want to sell us electricity, just as we now have a free market for telephone service.

WHY I’M VOTING ‘YES’ ON QUESTION 3

Youngsters may not remember the days when Ma Bell had a monopoly on phone service, and you actually had to call in an official company “installer” if you wanted to move a telephone from one room to another. My dad, who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s, would never stay on a long-distance call for more than a minute or two, so well was he trained that long-distance calls were (and had to be, by their nature) enormously expensive. So how come, now that there’s market competition, long distance is basically FREE?

The rapid development and competitive marketing of cell phones, wireless extensions, fiber optic cables and satellite and microwave transmission were all facilitated by free-market COMPETITION for our phone dollars, after the Ma Bell monopoly was broken up.

Yet Warren Buffett, who owns Nevada Power (dba “NV Energy”), is paying politicians, lobbyists and others to warn us that allowing a free market in electric service (albeit along what will still amount to monopoly transmission lines) is a “risky scheme” that will raise our power rates. (See . . . https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/28/buffett-adelson-spending-war-nevada-ballot-measure-electricity-supply/ .)

Ha! If getting rid of his cost-plus monopoly would result in higher rates, Mr. Buffett would love it. In fact, the current “cost plus a fixed-percentage profit” arrangement ENCOURAGES Nevada Power/NV Energy to embrace costly nonsense like bird-killing wind farms and solar arrays, since the state Public Utilities Commission guarantees them a percentage of profit above their costs, meaning when their costs go up, our rates go up, AND THE MONOPOLY’S PROFITS GO UP.

There is no natural predator in the system, to punish inefficiencies by allowing customers to choose a cheaper vendor.

Vote “Yes” on Question 3, for a free(r) market in electricity.

And vote “very Very No” on the absurd Question 6, designed to enrich Billionaire Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer and others who are heavily invested in such high-cost, low-reliability, ridiculous “Green” boondoggles as wind farms and bird-roasting solar arrays, as the weirdos of the Green Extreme now attempt to “mandate” that we should get not merely 10 or 20 percent, but HALF OUR ELECTRIC POWER not from clean coal and/or cheap, clean, American natural gas, but from the “high-tech” equivalent of gerbils on treadmills.

(See . . . http://leftexposed.org/2018/01/tom-steyer/ . . . , . . . or . . . https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/trump-enemy-tom-steyer-launches-solar-energy-ballot-measures-launched-in-arizona-nevada-and-michigan-10133655 .)