What with him being a neurotic, emotionally stunted glassy-eyed pathological liar with sociopathic tendencies, sometimes it's easy to forget that Jim Gibbons, the nation's worst governor, is also a corrupt, venal crook -- but not for long! There's always something there to remind us, in this instance provided by AP reporter Sandra Chereb:
Gov. Jim Gibbons asked for and received a property tax break on a vacant rural parcel he owns in Elko County that saved Nevada's chief executive thousands of dollars a year and left the county assessor feeling pressured.
Records show the first-term Republican governor lowered his annual property tax liability to $15 from about $5,000 on the 40 sagebrush-dotted acres he owns near Lamoille by getting it designated as agricultural land rather than residential.
The story goes on to tell how the nation's creepiest governor slammed Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre up against the wall in a parking garage and told him to put out or else. OK, that's paraphrasing. But not much.
The state Democratic Party rushed out a release Friday afternoon under the headline "'No-new-taxes Gibbons' doesn't pay his own taxes," and accused Gibbons of being "reckless and self-indulgent in using his power as governor ... once again, it looks like Gibbons is abusing the trust of Nevada voters."
Well, yeah. But this might be a little bigger than that.
Gibbons was trying to get out from paying taxes by claiming that the land qualifies for an agricultural designation because he makes more than $5,000 leasing a measly 40 acres of dirt and rocks, primarily for grazing livestock. As AP reported:
Forty acres isn't a lot of ground for an animal that needs 800 pounds of forage a month, industry experts said. The Nevada Cattlemen's Association said one rule of thumb is 100 acres per cow if the land is mostly scrubby sagebrush, though less is needed if the land has higher quality feed and water.
Grazing land lease rates range from $1.35 to $20 per animal unit month, meaning that if Gibbons' 40 acres could support a cow, the going rate would be $240 a year on the high end, about $500 if it supported two cows.
Gibbons -- for whom the phrase "all hat and no cattle" might have been originally coined, after all -- is either flat-out lying, as usual, when he claims the land earned more than $5,000, or he found a crony in the form of Washoe Disrict Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead to substantially overpay him -- or at least make it look like he was paying him.
Through lawyer and Nevada Tax Commission member (!?!) John Marvel (son of the geezer legislator), Gibbons ...
...submitted copies of the front side of two checks from Whitehead to Gibbons in the amounts of $1,500 and $4,227, with notations saying they were for 2007 lease payments, according to documents obtained by the AP. Aguirre said from the documentation provided he couldn't determine whether the checks had been cashed and he didn't feel comfortable questioning the governor or Marvel on that matter.
Whitehead, contacted by phone, declined to comment, saying it was a private matter.
In other words, this is not just another in the interminable string of Gibbons lies. He also could be involved in ... well, the Gleaner is not a lawyer and not sure what one would call it but "conspiracy to commit fraud" and "fraud" come to mind for starters, no?
For the record, the story includes the requisite hollow denials dutifully trotted out by increasingly discredited-by-association Gibbons spokester Ben Kieckhefer, the poor, poor bastard.








Recent Comments