Although Sen. “Moderate Mike” Roberson’s (R-PLAN) proposal this week to slam Nevada’s mining industry with a new $780 million tax hike is the mirror image of political financier Monte Miller’s own “Screw Mining” proposal, I’m told Miller is “furious” with Roberson and rushed to the state capital on Friday to give him a piece of his mind!
Apparently Roberson didn’t consult with his deep-pocketed benefactor beforehand, so a panicked Miller flew up to Carson City and demanded a crack-of-dawn private meeting with Republican legislators to try to drum up support for the proposal, which one angry caucus member described as a “peanut brittle turd.”
Worse for Miller, one of the mining industry’s most powerful advocates, Rep. Mark Amodei, unexpectedly showed up and sat through the meeting without saying a word. He didn’t have to. Just being in the room spoke volumes!
“When Monte saw Amodei, his face turned white as a ghost,” a meeting participant told me.
Miller’s pitch went over like the proverbial lead balloon, I’m also told. “About the only good thing about the Miller/Roberson proposal is that it’s pretty much united our caucus…against them!” said my source.
Making a bad situation worse for Miller, his own organization, the Keystone Group, issued a scorching public statement a few hours after his meeting declaring, in no uncertain terms, that it does not support Roberson’s new cloned proposal now any more than it supported Miller’s original “Screw Mining” proposal last spring.
As for the mining industry itself – which helped bankroll Roberson’s flop of an effort to win control of the State Senate last year – mining lobbyist Tim Crowley reportedly blasted Roberson in a separate private meeting last week, suggesting his folks should have backed the Democrat challenger over one of Roberson’s GOP candidates.
“Maybe we should’ve supported Sheila Leslie,” Crowley fumed. “At least she would have stabbed us in the front. You stabbed us in the back!”
Ah, how to win friends and influence people.
DRIVE-BY MUTHINGS
* From the Department of Stupid is as Stupid Does comes the announcement last week that in the midst of the ongoing economic recession, Nevada State Sen. Ben Kieckhefer has somehow found it appropriate to waste everyone’s time and money on a stupid bill to establish an OFFICIAL DOG for the state. Worse, the dog he chose is the Blue Weimaraner, a hound with no known connection to the Silver State whatsoever.
Kieckhefer says he introduced the ridiculous bill “as a favor for a 9-year-old boy in his district” as a “civics lesson.” But if “Blue Dog” Kieckhefer wanted to provide a useful civics lesson, he would have explained to the boy that wasting taxpayer dollars and legislators’ time on something this trivial and dumb, especially in troubled times like this simply isn’t a responsible thing to do.
* There’s a reason Fox News kicks its competitors’ butt on cable TV, and it’s not the network’s conservative politics. It’s the babes! See for yourself in this new music video titled, “The Girls on Fox News.” Click here
* So the TSA – which for the last ten years or so has been confiscating dangerous tubes of toothpaste and mouthwash from the carry-on bags of air travelers – now says it’s OK to bring onboard small knives. Only in government could something this stupid make sense.
* Bravo to Sen. Dean Heller for sticking to his guns and killing the nomination of anti-gun judicial nominee Elissa Cadish to the federal bench. Although Cadish recanted her earlier position on the Second Amendment and said she’d enforce the law, a tiger doesn’t change his spots and a leopard doesn’t change his stripes.
* Since the initial accusations that Assemblyman Steven Brooks threatened Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick have been recanted by the very colleagues he supposedly made them to, explain to me again why Mr. Brooks is being barred from serving his constituents in Carson City as he was elected to do? I mean, just being an unstable mental case should not be a reason not to allow someone to serve in the Legislature; that would wipe out, oh, about 47% of them!
