MUTH’S TRUTHS
(Chuck Muth) – OK, I’m back in the saddle after returning from our AI (artificial intelligence) cruise with Perry Belcher and the “Ignite” gang.
Made some excellent new contacts and friends with small business owners and entrepreneurs from all over the country who are at the cutting edge of the AI revolution for sales and marketing.
What I learned will now be incorporated into the training and support programs we’re gonna provide to candidates for the 2026 election cycle.
And I’m happy to say my two daughters and son-in-law were on the cruise with us and will now be taking on some projects to free me up to focus on the “big picture” stuff.
Also proud that my little Jenna smoked the ship and came home with the gold medal in the onboard archery contest!
But before moving on, a number of you have written over the past few days asking about AB530 (gas tax) and SB451 (cops tax).
Since both of those ships have now sailed (pun intended), here are some final (hopefully) words on them…
Yes, both are tax hikes.
Not so much because of who may or may not pay “more,” but because regardless of who pays and how much, more of our tax dollars will now be going to the government that wouldn’t be going to the government if both tax hikes weren’t extended.
THAT’S what conservatives object to.
Every penny sent to the government will be spent – and then they’ll come back again and again and again for more. The tin cup routine never ends. It’s just what the government does.
Conservatives want to limit government to only its core, essential, legitimate, constitutional functions – not grow it.
Or as our friend Grover Norquist – president of Americans for Tax Reform and Father of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge – so famously and eloquently put it…
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
If you want more money for cops – and I’m one of them – then the “right” solution was to cut non-essential spending elsewhere, as former conservative Assemblywoman Annie Black wrote last month.
Democrats Don’t Need a 30-Year Tax Extension to Fund Police – They Need to Cut the Fat
But my opposition was even simpler than that.
Both of those tax hikes were originally approved by a vote of the people. The government had the permission of those who would cough up the extra dough.
But both of these bills took the decision on whether or not to keep giving this money to the government out of the hands of the people and put it into the hands of politicians.
“I would have strongly preferred that AB530 go before Southern Nevada voters directly,” Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo wrote this week. “Politicians should not be the sole arbiters of sunset extensions.”
That includes GOP legislators who traded their votes and played “let’s make a deal” for their table-scrap bills with the Democrats and Carson City lobbying corps – or decided it was just “easier,” as one legislator put it.
“Raising taxes,” Grover wrote me yesterday, “is what weak politicians do instead of the hard work of governing.”
In any event, both of those crap sandwiches were dumped in Lombardo’s lap because GOP legislators didn’t block them from hitting his desk even though they had the votes to do so.
Lombardo didn’t propose these tax hikes – and he didn’t vote for them. That’s on the 18 Republicans in the State Senate and Assembly who sided with the Democrats to approve them.
Now, a reality check…
Sure the governor could have vetoed both. But guess what?
The same Republicans who voted to extend those two new tax hikes would have just voted to override his veto.
OK, maybe not ALL of them. But the Democrats would only need one Republican from each house. So an override was a sure thing.
In other words, these two efforts to increase taxes were going to be approved with or without the governor’s signature.
And sure, a lot of conservatives would have preferred a veto anyway.
But then the Democrats – especially A-Ron Ford and/or “Shutdown” Sisolak – would have used the veto as a campaign weapon against Lombardo in the 2026 gubernatorial campaign.
The “Joe Lombardo defunded cops!” schtick would run 24/7 – the same way the Democrats have used the abortion issue in the last two elections.
They would have beat that dead horse to a bloody pulp.
Do you want Ford or Sisolak being sworn into the governor’s office in January 2027?
I sure as heck don’t.
Now, what about those “Republican” legislators who represent rock-solid GOP districts who voted for the two new tax hikes?
Those are horses of a different color. We’ll deal with them later. That’s what primaries are for.
So, yeah, Gov. Lombardo and I disagree on this issue. It happens. But you don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
I’m looking at the big, long-term picture. What’s done is now done. We have other fish to fry.
Onward…
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FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“The job of the US Armed Forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, or to spread democracy at the point of a gun. The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America.” – President Donald Trump this morning at West Point
“As governor I have a cheat code. I can look to California, New York and Illinois and just do the opposite. It seems to be working out pretty good.” – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
