Gibbons sickens few remaining supporters in exchange for $10,700

Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre was on the Face to Face TV program -- actually it was more of a Phone to Face thing -- Tuesday explaining that he looked into the glassy empty black eyes of Jim Gibbons (paraphrasing there a little) in person during the Elko County Fair last year and told the nation's worst governor flat-out that his foo-foo retirement property shouldn't be designated as "agricultural" land eligible for a teensy-tiny tax rate.

So then the nation's creepiest governor slinked away and ordered a minion from the Nevada Tax Commission to browbeat Aguirre -- or as the assessor put it, Gibbons and Tax Commissioner John Marvel "backed me into a corner."

Following Aguirre, the Gleaner was also on the program saying that the governor is a crook etc. But Gleaner readers already know that so let's move on to another subject. How about ... animal unit months!

The friendly animal unit month, or AUM as it's known amongst the bumpkin set, is the amount of forage needed to feed a cow for a month. Or maybe a cow and her calf. Or perhaps five sheep. Exact definitions can vary depending on whether federal bureaucrats or state bureaucrats or welfare cowboys are doing the defining, but for purposes that will be charitable to the nation's most crooked governor, let's say it's a cow.

In the original AP story exposing the nation's worst governor's latest criminal activity, cowboy types who presumably would know were quoted saying that the value of an AUM can range from less than $2 on the low end up to as much as $20. They also said that as a rule of thumb, for native rangeland of the sort that comprises the Gibbons property, a cow would need about 100 acres to get the amount of forage needed to feed it for one month (i.e., an AUM).

Jim Gibbons has 40 acres. And he owned the land for about four months in 2007. Assuming his land warranted even the most generous price per AUM, and assuming -- very, very charitably -- that his 40 acres of scrub could generate a full AUM, i.e., feed a cow, two conclusions can be drawn. First, that cow would have been pretty spindly. Second, the grazing value of Gibbons land would have been, at best, $80 ($20 for one AUM over four months).

Instead of paying Gibbons $80 in grazing fees, disgraced former judge Jerry Carr Whitehead paid him more than $5,700. Demonstrating a penchant for understatement, Aguirre described that amount on Ralston's show Tuesday as "excessive."

He could have added convenient. The land had to generate more than $5,000 in agricultural income for Gibbons to qualify for the agricultural property tax designation. As a result, his property tax bill was $40 instead of about $5,000.

So why all the recapping and such?

First, it's hard to believe that anyone, and certainly not discriminating well-informed opinion leaders who constitute the Gleaner's readership, would doubt that this whole sordid turn of events is anything other than a full-on scam. But just in case, there's the math. There is no way that grazing leases on the 40 acres could have been genuinely and legitimately worth $1,000, let alone the more than $5,000 Gibbons was paid. Gibbons absolutely positively should not have qualified for the much smaller tax bill. Period.

Second, assuming the checks Whitehead wrote Gibbons were cashed, the total value to Gibbons of this ... hmm, what's the word? ... oh yeah, scam was nearly $11,000 -- the $5,700 his crony Whitehead gave him, and the $5,000 in taxes that Gibbons evaded.

And third, whatever shape is taken by the criminal investigation -- whether it's the Elko County DA probing the deliberate manufacture of a phony transaction to avoid a tax bill, or the state AG examining Gibbons illegally using the influence of his office for personal financial gain, etc. -- this latest scandal is, at bottom, about crass, base, crude personal enrichment.

But this con didn't take place on a cruise ship or in a congressional committee in Washington amid contested allegations and the hidden terms of a shadowy deal with a defense contractor. It went down in Elko, Nevada, for all his most ardent erstwhile political supporters to see.

Going back to Chrissy Mazzeo or even before that, to the plagiarism and beyond, there's always been an element within the "Gibbons country" rural base that has felt the darned big city media was always out to get their poor Jim.

Serial cheating on his wife has started to chip away the support among those "20 percenters," as  Erin Neff dubbed them.

Now, with the possible exception of the three to five people who don't care if Gibbons is filmed murdering children with his bare hands in broad daylight so long as he doesn't go back on his no new taxes pledge, this latest criminal act should just about take care of the last few stubborn holdouts in whatever was left of the Jim Gibbons "base."

So that's cool.

Comments

[Juice]

Since Gibbons was sworn in - yep all 3 times - he has made appointments and changes in the State to benefit himself and his cronies. Don Henderson, Director of Department of Agriculture and a damn good director, was asked to vacate his position and in his place the 80 year old cattleman Tony Lesperance was named Director, Nevada Department of Agriculture. Who the hell is running this state anyway?
Lesperance is in place to look out only for the interests of the ranchers and farmers of the state - changes have already been made in the way our wild horses are treated. Screw Nevada should be the Gibbons Administration Logo.

[dave404]

Gleaner,

I had to go back and read your post twice...
particularly the part where Gibbons only owned the property for 4 months.

If Gibbons owned the property for only 4 months, then that means that Whitehead is paying $1,425 per AUM which is $17,100 for a year. This lease fee is over SEVEN HUNDRED times the quoted low end industry standard AUM of $20 and at best, considering $20 AUM at the high end, Governor Gibbons is getting over seventy one times the industry standard!

Man oh man, anywhere else in the world that would be called a payoff! (What else would you call it if he sold, say, raw land or his home for 700x the low end of an appraisal?).

[d404]

...sorry "low end AUM of $2.00" not $20
*sigh*

[Thushara]

Well Mr.Gibbson sounds weird to me.
................
Thushara
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