(Mike Zahara/Watchdogwag.com) – One can hardly blame him.
For the very first time in his elective career, the former prosecutor and current ineffective and weak Nevada Secretary of State, has a big, huge pile of shit on his plate — it was all Dem shit, too, until Ensign announced his resignation!—and he’s so overwhelmed and so under-talented that his office is in chaos today!
There are no good choices for Ross Miller, whose entire career hangs in the balance because he is paralyzed by fear of offending those who are supposed to make him governor someday.
Five years of nothing from Ross Miller is still nothing, and he has no credibility, no integrity, or any wisdom to fall back on either! His former colleagues say that when he was a DDA, he was bored and ineffective–sound familiar?–and he favored playing video games all day.
Ross Miller has to deal with his overbearing father with whom no decision is ever made without, the dying Harry Reid Inc., new NVDEMS owner Shelley Berkley Inc., super-corruption from his own party’s members and elected officials, and an agitated Tea Party:
Rory Reid: Wow! This one stinks to high heaven with his talentless 2010 campaign staff, including former Nevada Team Obama guy David Cohen and NVDEMS’ former spokesperson Kirsten Searer conspiring to evade Nevada’s already weak campaign laws to keep the campaign money train running.
And they were stupid enough to discuss this conspiracy in emails and other correspondences after having gotten a weak and inexplicable OK from Rory’s law partner Paul Larsen that all was well with the world.
Reading through what’s in the public realm so far, there is no doubt that it is nothing less than sleazy, but not at all clear if it’s illegal, though it’s clearly unethical.
Faced with an overwhelming amount of evidence that Rory Reid underlings unlawfully engaged in a conspiracy to circumvent the NRS, Ross Miller failed to introduce any corrective legislation to close the loopholes these people thought were open!
Nada! Zip!
You see, its Ross’s position that he has no duty to audit any CCE unless there is an official complaint done correctly and sent to his office.
Can you even believe that?
In most other states, David Cohen, Kirsten Searer, Joanna Paul, Paul Larsen, and others would all be facing indictment for no less than conspiracy, and in other states, their AGs and local DAs would be involved too.
All would be—should be—looking at time in the hoosegow for their gross misconduct.
That a whopping 91 new PACs for a single candidate didn’t get anyone’s attention at the NVSOS is testament to Ross Miller’s complete disinterest in his own job!
However, all of these sleazy people have inadvertently given Rory a plausible deniability passage though he’ll take a major ding on his personal credibility if he goes that route.
If Rory Reid is to save his reputation, he has to throw those who broke the law and/or acted unethically under the bus; Ross Miller, if he wishes higher public office, has to come down hard and not just with piddly, meaningless fines either.
Both Ross and Rory’s political futures have the potential to have this major albatross around their necks forever if these people aren’t severely punished.
PokerStars and Others: Speaker John Oceguera showed a very rare moment of integrity and declined freebie trips to London and the Bahamas, Majority Leader Horsford and chronically corrupt Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson happily took all of the freebies they could stuff their pockets with, and so did Assemblyman William Horne who has flushed his credibility this session!
Then former speaker Richard Perkins can’t remember who he handed out checks to on on-line gaming’s behalf? Throw in Steve Wynn, the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, and Ross Miller has himself a hot little mess on his hands!
Perkins would know what he was doing unlawfully soliciting money from foreign entities for legislators, but he’s suddenly playing the stupid, naïve, has no idea how Carson Critters operate, clueless bumpkin!
Billy Vassiliadis said with a straight face on Ralston that he had no idea foreign contributions were illegal too!
Then there’s Ross Miller himself, no beacon of ethical behaviors either, he’s a big fat UFC geek and I wrote about him being seen around the world at UFC last July:
‘…Ross Miller Files: Yep, that was Secretary of State Ross Miller acting like a 9 year old boy at the Lesnar v Carwin UFC fight at the MGM on July 3rd and since the seat he was in runs in the $1000’s, I emailed his spokes-honey, Pam Dupre, about who paid for them…She refused to respond and Mrs. Miller would clobber Ross with a cast-iron skillet for paying those kind of prices for a ticket, so we can assume that he and a lot of other fat cats there were comp’d in…’ August 2, 2010
In Nevada, elected officials can accept such comps without limit; they just have to declare them!
The ineffective and unethical Ross Miller hasn’t declared his own UFC freebies from 2010 hiding behind a GOTV effort he did with his UFC buddies–with whom he really enjoys wrestling in tightie-whities together with–in 2008 as the reason he doesn’t have to disclose anything to anyone!
Nice huh?
Ross Miller has also embarked on a 24/7/365 campaign mode by maintaining what is his 2010 political website five months after the election, ostensibly to get the NVSOS’s message out there, I guess!
This is from his website: ‘…That’s why Ross campaigned for and delivered common sense campaign finance reforms….reforms that guarantee a more truthful and thorough disclosure from every elected official in Nevada…’
Ross is completely and totally full of shit on the above as he doesn’t know how to work the legislature and he has delivered the most wishy-washy ‘reforms’ if they can even be called that!
Ross Miller gave Kathy McClain a slap on the wrist when she was defrauding Nevada PERS, he completely ignored Assemblyman Harvey Munford’s very worst of the 2008 cycle’s CCE’s where Munford unlawfully failed to state one thin dime of where his money was spent!
During McClain, Miller also developed an arbitrary two year statute of limitations on CCE shenanigans! Completely outside of the law and the NRS—so if you have an issue, you better get it to him via certified mail ASAP!
It’s been five months since the November election and Ross Miller has nothing to say about Rory Reid?
Nothing? Five months?
Ross Miller also allowed for NVDEMS to place more than 40,000 illegal registrants during the Nevada Caucus in 2008 by pretending not to notice that Dems codified in their party’s caucus handbook that all chairs were unlawfully acting as Deputy Registrars!
So, despite Ross Miller’s public pronouncements to the contrary, he is the last person willing or able to deliver even the simplest reforms largely because he doesn’t believe he has an auditing responsibility under the NRS for all of the CCE’s that are scanned into the NVSOS’s website by his own office!
Go ahead legit press, ask Ross how often his office audits Nevada CCEs and note the blank, “how dare you ask me such a thing!” look that he’ll give you!
Remember Ross Miller’s tantrum against even the simplest reforms for Nevada’s worst in the nation Limited Liability Company protocols? Ross Miller stood on the side of secrecy and dummy front groups instead of openness and transparency.
That’s some reformer we have in Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller—perhaps the least effective in that position in all of America!
And we expect Ross Miller can handle all of these scandals when he hasn’t done a damn thing over five years in office?
And no one ever calls Ross Miller on his phoniness and duplicity, not to mention talking out of both sides of his mouth on every single issue! But his luck has run out with the banquet of crap laid at his feet and assisted by his unwillingness to really push any kind of real reforms at all.
Which brings us to his latest and biggest problem: Dean Heller!
Again, another issue of contradictory Nevada election law that is murky and weak and which Ross Miller refuses to correct; we’ve never had to call a special election for a US House member before.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states that the vacancy must be filled by election whereas the senate does not because the Founders didn’t think it was necessary as senators were all appointed prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment only 98 years ago.
A frustrated Lil Bri-Bri Sandoval has to put down his bowl of Count Chocula, turn off the cartoons, then decide whether to spend several million we don’t have on a special election, or to place a seat-warmer in Ensign’s seat!
My guess is that he’s leaning toward a seat-warmer to save the state money and to shore up his fiscal conservative bona fides in a bad budget year while refilling his cereal bowl!
It would be the smartest and wisest decision for him to make with long term politcal benefits for him attached too!
Conventional wisdom says that Governor Sandoval will appoint Representative Heller to the vacant U.S. Senate seat, but there is great risk there in allowing a free and clear shot to Independent American Party extremist turned phony GOPer CD2 candidate Sharron Angle.
I don’t think the governor has a trusted seat-filler for Ensign’s seat so that Heller can stay put and deny Sharron Angle.
How about Sue Lowden, Lil Bri-Bri? She’s a team player, isn’t she?
She’s the perfect seat-warmer for Ensign’s seat and saves the state the several millions it will cost to hold a special election for Dean Heller’s House seat!
It will also turn the screws and dump salt into the wounds of the emotionally unstable Sharron Angle; an added bonus for GOPers who absolutely hate that IAP interloper Angle invaded their party!
Ross sticking with each party’s State Central Committees sending up a single candidate seems smart at first blush, but with a primary being banned and a Dem Party wanting a free-for-all race up there to try to capture the seat even for a few months, risks angering hard-assed partisan Dems who all think Ross Miller is exceptionally weak, ineffective, and wishy-washy.
Sharron Angle could win the GOP SCC because Brian Krolicki has stated he won’t move on the U.S. House because as President of the Senate, he thinks he has a duty to wait until the session is over.
Betcha Krolicki would like to have that public promise back!
Should Angle not get the GOP nod, she and her supporters will pitch a huge bitch about Ross Miller’s incompetence denying her a free-for-all election shot even though her adopted party’s SCC will have dumped her.
She’ll most definitely wants it both ways and isn’t likely to answer questions when reporters ask her to state her preference; yet another reason to appoint Lowden over Heller!
Sharron Angle wants to have the best of both worlds to exploit in what could be her fourth loss in a row!
All of these scandals, all of these political quagmires, and we have the least effective, least talented, and totally gutless election official in the United States to guide us through it all!
Indeed, we get the elected officials we deserve in Nevada, don’t we?
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
RSS