A review of what “may have been the worst legislative gathering in state history”
August 14, 2020
ITEM #1: Beginning on July 8 of this year, Nevada held a special legislative session, called by Gov. Steve Sisolak, to address the massive budget shortfall caused by the government-imposed economic shutdown in the face of COVID-19.
The chief takeaway from the session, as we noted at the time, was that Democrats made it perfectly clear they were willing to undermine the interests of everyday Nevadans in order to cater to the union bosses who fund their campaigns. When the 31st special session of the Nevada Legislature came to a close on July 19, it was hard to imagine Democrats having done any worse.
Then came the 32nd special session.
“A true low point,” is how the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s editors describe what happened in Carson City recently, in the second of back-to-back special sessions. This time around, Democrats pushed through a disastrous “election reform” measure that will open the door to rampant voter fraud, police reform legislation that was much more politically calculated than substantive, and a supposed effort to guard employers from frivolous COVID lawsuits that got hijacked by left-wing special interests.
Here’s the Review-Journal on what its editors say “may have been the worst legislative gathering in state history”:
“[T]he session itself was not the product of any true ‘emergency’ — as most of the 31 other ‘special’ confabs in Nevada history have been — but was instead a purely political exercise staged under the guise of addressing coronavirus urgencies. Lawmakers had already tackled the most pressing issue, the pandemic’s destruction of the state budget, during a special session that ended in mid-July. Gov. Sisolak’s decision to reconvene the Legislature less than two weeks later to address a handful of topics — including election procedures, virus liability protections and police reform — was a transparent effort to better position Democrats for the November elections.”
The process was a disaster, too. As the Review-Journal’s Steve Sebelius wrote, it “was especially noteworthy for its uneven management, with legislative chambers sitting empty during the day, hearings called to order in the late afternoon or evening and adjournments in the small hours of the following day.” Noting that it was “not just Republicans complaining about the process,” Sebelius rightly complained that “average citizens — who were banned from the Legislative Building because of COVID-19 restrictions and forced to watch the proceeds on the web,” had to “wait until well past midnight to express their views by phone.”
Sebelius asks: “Why make your constituents stay up late when you could force the special interests lobbying the bill to do so instead?”
We’ll take that one, Steve. It’s because Nevada Democrats care far more about special interests and their radical left-wing agenda than their constituents.
Come November, Nevada voters should not forget these repeated slaps in the face.
ITEM #2: So Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for President, has chosen California Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate.
Predictably, the “news” media are already hard at work promoting, with full throat, the myth that Harris is some kind of political moderate. As a reminder, Harris has stated her support for the following positions:
- the decriminalization of illegal border crossings
- supporting sanctuary cities
- the elimination of private health care
- the implementation of an unaffordable “Medicare for all” scheme
- the $93 trillion Green New Deal
- a ban on fracking
- a mandatory gun buy-back program
- a massive tax hike on hardworking Americans
Fortunately, some more reasonable voices are also hard at work dispelling the “moderate” myth.
Ari Fleischer: “Her track record as a ‘pragmatic moderate’ includes supporting late-term abortion, co-sponsoring both Medicare 4 All and the Green New Deal, & calling for repeals of tax cuts. [She] even tried 2 impose a religious litmus test on Catholic judicial nominees.”
Joshua Lawson: “Her positions form an agenda nearly entirely in lock-step with the radical leftist ideology that has taken over the Democratic Party. … According to a detailed assessment by Voteview, Harris holds a voting record farther left than 97 percent of Democrats in the 116th Senate, and more liberal than 99 percent of the Senate as a whole.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal: “The move signals that Mr. Biden’s leftward tack is no illusion. During a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Harris — who clashed with Mr. Biden on a number of issues — glommed on to many hard-left policy positions in an effort to attract the party’s vocal collectivist base. … If Sen. Harris has her way, the government will play a much more active role in Americans’ daily lives and hijack a much larger chunk of their bank accounts.”
Kamala Harris: “I have always supported Medicare for all.” … “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” … “I support a mandatory [gun] buy-back program.”
And the problems with Harris go beyond simple policy stances. Writing for National Review, David Harsanyi has come hot out of the gate on the would-be Veep:
"To judge Harris by her own words and deeds is to be confronted by a candidate who is more antagonistic towards the Constitution than perhaps any to appear on a presidential ticket in modern times — and maybe ever.”
He concludes: “There is no power Harris has held that she hasn’t abused.”
Much more to come, folks.
ITEM #3: David Harsanyi shares some important news out of Wisconsin that the mainstream media will be sure to ignore.
“Despite fears that Wisconsin’s April election would serve to spread the coronavirus,” Harsanyi writes at National Review, “a new report by the Centers for Disease Control confirms that it didn’t.”
He continues:
“Symptoms of COVID-19 typically develop 2 to 14 days after an infection. Yet the CDC notes that only 14 people out of nearly 19,000 who voted in person in Milwaukee on April 7 are known to have tested positive for the virus between April 9 and April 21 ...
“Although the CDC report focuses on Milwaukee, there do not appear to have been spikes in cases anywhere else in the state due to the election, either.
“A total of 413,000 people voted in person statewide in Wisconsin on April 7. Although a much smaller number of Wisconsinites participated in protest marches following the killing of George Floyd in late May, Wisconsin officials are aware of '28 confirmed cases reported attending a protest or rally during early June, during the 2 weeks before getting COVID-19' ..."
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: We CAN safely hold in-person elections this November.
That fact becomes more and more relevant as the evidence continues to mount as to the dangers that universal mail-in voting poses to election integrity. It’s well-documented that the process is highly susceptible to fraud, but Marc Thiessen hits on another problem:
“There is plenty of evidence that mail-in voting has the unintended consequence of disenfranchising millions of eligible voters. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of the 2008 presidential election found that about 3.9 million voters said they requested mail ballots but never received them; 2.9 million ballots that were sent out did not make it back to election officials; and about 800,000 were rejected for a variety of reasons — either because they were postmarked after the election, arrived without a signature, were improperly filled out or did not match voting records.”
Ari Fleischer responds with this tweet: “Prediction: When this happens, lazy reporters will attribute it to ‘voter suppression’, an accusation Ds have been making about each other in contested primaries. Smart reporters will know the system was built to crash because it was overwhelmed.”
ITEM #4: Attorney General William Barr has emerged as one of our nation’s strongest and clearest voices in calling out the dangers posed by today’s left.
Recently he sat for an interview with Fox News host Mark Levin, and the AG didn’t hold back.
Barr called today's Democrats a "Rousseauian, revolutionary party that believes in tearing down the system," and added:
"They’re interested in complete political victory. They're not interested in compromise. They're not interested in [a] dialectic exchange of views. They're interested in total victory. It’s a secular religion. It's a substitute for religion. They view their political opponents as evil, because we stand in the way of their progressive utopia that they’re trying to reach."
Right on cue, the ACLU set about proving Barr’s point, issuing a tweet calling for the dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security.
The RNC’s Elizabeth Harrington has the video of Barr’s remarks here.
ITEM #5: The left has used COVID-19 as an excuse to push for mass prisoner releases, and now we have a horrifying story from Virginia of what the consequences can look like.
A rape suspect who was released, after his lawyers argued the virus posed a threat to inmates, has been charged with murdering his accuser.
The Washington Post has the sickening details here.
It’s another heart-breaking example of what happens when the radical left is allowed to subjugate public safety and common sense to their partisan agenda. Will they ever be held to account for their irresponsibility?
ITEM #6: Nellie Bowles, writing for the New York Times, has an update on what’s going on with CHOP, the area of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood that’s been taken over by radical leftists and declared a “police-free” zone.
“Faizel Khan was being told by the news media and his own mayor that the protests in his hometown were peaceful, with ‘a block party atmosphere.’
“But that was not what he saw through the windows of his Seattle coffee shop. He saw encampments overtaking the sidewalks. He saw roving bands of masked protesters smashing windows and looting.”
This prompted Jesse Singal to tweet: “Every outlet that ran puff pieces about the CHOP — and there were many — should hold a few hours of meetings to figure out what the hell happened. Were these stories hard to find? Who were the reporters' sources? What biases led to such unprofessional, harmful coverage?”
Who’d have ever guessed that removing law enforcement from your neighborhood could lead to a breakdown in public safety?
In related news, check out this item from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which writes:
“The press has been playing defense for Portland anarchists for weeks, suggesting riots and arson against a federal courthouse were provoked by federal agents protecting it. When the Trump Administration lowered the profile of its agents in an agreement with the state government, the media’s protest cheerleaders were eager to report that the real cause of the violence had gone away. ‘Trump ordered federal forces to quell Portland protests. But the chaos ended as soon as they left,’ said a July 31 Washington Post headline.
“So much for that. Over the weekend Portland police were forced to declare two riots. On Friday police said ‘people defied orders to disperse and threw rocks, frozen or hard-boiled eggs and commercial-grade fireworks at officers,’ the Associated Press reports. Rioters also ‘filled pool noodles with nails and placed them in the road, causing extensive damage to a patrol vehicle.’ On Saturday night, arsonists set a fire inside the Portland police union building and rioters outside landed two officers in the hospital. Rioting continued late Sunday, injuring more police.”
So much for that, indeed.
ITEM #7: Parents especially won’t want to miss this item that Matt Walsh tweeted, revealing, in Walsh’s words, an example of how “Public school teachers are afraid that you might be able to hear them brainwashing your kids.”
He highlights a series of tweets from an educator named Matthew R. Kay, who has expressed worry over “the damage that ‘helicopter/snowplow’ parents can do in honest conversations about gender/sexuality,” and emphasizes that “conservative” parents are his “chief concern.” He fears that the increased number of virtual classrooms “will have many potential spectators,” including parents, and frets over what that will mean “for our equity/inclusion work.”
Parents knowing what their own kids are being taught in school? The horror!
ITEM #8: With everything going on in the world nowadays, the Los Angeles Times has decided to take the time to decry … the potential racism of camping?
Chace Beech writes:
“Camping is often called America’s favorite outdoor activity. ... But camping and national parks have a complicated past when it comes to racial equality and equal access for all.”
He cites some numbers:
“A 2018 study by the Society of American Foresters found that between 2010 and 2014, 94.6% of visitors to national forests identified as white. People who identified as Latino made up 5.7%, and those who identified as Black made up 1.2%.”
If there are any currently existing laws preventing racial minorities from spending time in the outdoors as often as their white fellow citizens, we’re happy to join Beech in calling for their abolishment.
We suspect, however, that the explanation may be something less nefarious. Perhaps in a country as racially and culturally diverse as ours, where individuals are allowed to exercise free will both on their own and as part of a group, we might see … some differences in tastes and preferences?
Or is that just a racist idea, too?
NOTABLE QUOTES
“Joe Biden’s choice of radical leftist Kamala Harris for Vice President proves one thing: that Biden’s America will be a lot like Harris’s California. We have already seen enough of Nevada’s Democrats turning our state into California. This choice should make it obvious to swing voters that the Biden-Harris ticket stands for California’s values, not Nevada’s.” ― Trump campaign co-chair Adam Laxalt
“Biden-Harris is a weakness that will acquiesce to the far-left of the D party. There is nothing moderate about either.” ― Ari Fleischer
“The problem is that there seems a virtual new blackout on the new evidence [discrediting the Russia-collusion narrative] being declassified. After using tanker loads of ink on the unfounded collusion theories, the media seem unwilling to use a drop of ink on the evidence of misconduct in pursuing that investigation.” ― Jonathan Turley