(Chuck Muth) – Well, we can say we successfully beat Pete’s meat….er, meat tax that is.
Republican Assembly Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea announced on Tuesday that he was rescinding his support for putting a new grocery tax on the ballot after a week’s worth of Nevada taxpayers and citizens in his district letting him have it….all thanks to Citizen Outreach making it easy for said citizens to participate in our democratic process by informing them of the issue via automated phone calls and then connecting them with their elected representative by simply “Pressing 1.”
And boy, is the tax-happy minority leader unhappy about it all.
Consider this excerpt from John L. Smith’s column at MesquiteLocalNews.com:
Where Goicoechea caught most of his criticism wasn’t from the left, but from the right side of his own Republican Party. At a time middle-of-the-road Republicans are being politically tarred and feathered across the country, and the Tea Party movement is notching anti-tax-ticket victories in important races, the overreaction to any conservative who suggests revenue enhancement will be needed is immediate and brutal.
In Goicoechea’s case, it came in the form of the instant outrage of conservative activist Chuck Muth, who like lightning sent vitriolic e-mail to thousands on his contact list and just as swiftly shouted for calls to go out to the assemblyman’s home and cell phone. In no time, Goicoechea had his hands and ears full.
When I described Muth as a “conservative activist” in a recent interview with Goicoechea, the legislator replied, “You can call him that if you want. I have a different name for him. … The bottom line with Chuck is, he speaks in twisted half truths. Are we really going to lay off half the state’s employees?”
That’s about as close as he came to losing his cool.
Twisted half truths?
Well, I guess I need to point out that on Tuesday, August 31st, Tax-My-Meat Pete sent me a short, curt email from his Blackberry SmartPhone that read, “Chuck would appreciate you getting your facts right before running your mouth Pete.”
To which I responded by asking Assemblyman Tax-My-Meat exactly what “facts” I had wrong since my “facts” were taken directly from his mouth as opened on Sam Shad’s “Nevada Newsmakers” program. Goicoechea never replied to my reply.
Twisted half truths? I don’t think so. And if there were any, it’s Pete’s own fault for not communicating exactly what I had “wrong” when given the opportunity to “set me straight.”
The simple fact is, Goicoechea is a major league tax hiker and big-government Republican. In that interview in which he floated the grocery tax idea, he also said, “I do believe we’re going to have some revenue increases” in 2011. And he means it.
Remember, back in 2003, Pete voted against the $836 million tax hike by the Legislature…..but openly supported Gov. Guinn’s original $704 million tax hike proposal that year. Screwing taxpayers to the tune of $704 million was OK; just not by $836 million. Lovely.
And in the 2009 session, Goicoechea voted for the third largest tax hike in Nevada’s history – that $292 million room tax hike which was a direct attack on the state’s tourism industry.
The thing that really bothers Pete, and all of his fellow moderate Republicans who prefer to do the state’s business behind closed doors and with minimal input from the citizenry is that conservatives such as you and me are exposing their true agenda and saying “No mas!” And we’re saying it loudly and effectively.
And that’s no twisted half truth.
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