The reason we have legislatures is to represent the people. Unfortunately, we see total disregard for ours by our governor with the veto of SB 135 and SB 1136, which passed both chambers with overwhelming support. These bills would have limited governor Littles’s emergency powers to no more 60 days. The bills also stated that the governor cannot unilaterally change state laws during the declared emergency. The governor claimed that the bill would add “more red tape and government bureaucracy. And vetoed both bills. What he forgets is that the legislature is there to slow things down. These bills would have brought control back to the people in shut down situations. We are 13 months into this shutdown and he has continued to rule our state like a monarch.
About the Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution. This organization was formed by two former Idaho attorneys general and a former deputy attorney general. They supposedly formed this group to fight what they say are unconstitutional laws being proposed by the Legislature. This is a lot of bunk as this group is littered with crony RINO attorneys led by Jim Jones who is a former crony chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court. They say this bill would limit a governor’s ability to respond to emergencies. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bill states that “declared emergencies must not restrict the right of Idahoans to work, provide for their families, and otherwise contribute to the economy of Idaho.” This is a bill that protects the people’s constitutional rights and does nothing to hinder the governor from declaring an emergency for 60 days.
“A legal opinion from Republican Sen. Kelly Anthon (Dist. 22) suggests that a governor of a state can at his own discretion declare an emergency and then maintain that emergency declaration without any limitation, without any check or balance, and with the powers of that emergency suspend all the laws of the state. These powers beg reason, and as we have found out are very harmful to the people.” All this bill does is to protect the people from unconstitutional directives by our governor and brings the legislature into the equation which is the check and balance necessary to protect the people of Idaho. The continuation of this emergency is nothing more than another of Chicken Littles’s power grabs so he can continue to distribute the Federal Funds coming into Idaho. You can bet the RINO republican lawyers will donate their time to fight this in court but I would encourage the legislature to stick to their guns and not give in. Little has gone too far and he should be warned that he has raised the ire of Idaho’s citizens and that conservative groups from around the state are already gathering to join as one coalition to see this man does not get another term in office.
The governor plays a shell game where you must guess which shell the pea is under. He signs some of the conservative bills because if he didn’t it would raise a flag to the public that he might be a liberal in conservatives clothes. While the public’s eye is trying to watch where the pea is he is taking away our rights while continuing to take more federal money with more strings attached to it.
Let me refresh voters’ memories about something that I have said many times in the past on how and why our state is run the way it is. For the past 20 years, Idaho has been on a road to being ruled by the lobbyists and large corporations who are all members of IACI, the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, run by Alex LaBeau. I’ve said before that Little was the chairman of IACI before being appointed to office as a legislator. This organization has a vice like grip on our state and controls so many of our RINO legislators as it has become Idaho’s legislative cartel. Everyone forgets back in 2015 Mr. LaBeau’s scandalous, profanity-laced email bashing a Senate committee chairman and threatened political retaliation against him – for backing teacher pay increases over IACI-backed business tax cuts. https://gemstatepatriot.com/blog/who-is-iaci-part-i/
One would think that such actions would have caused LeBeau to be fired but no, he was only suspended for a short time and still runs this group. Alex LaBeau has honed the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry into a sharp-edged political knife.” Since LaBeau took over, IACI has formed PACs aimed at defeating Democratic candidates for governor but also goes after incumbent GOP lawmakers and new conservatives that are a threat to their control of our legislature.
Tom Luna has mentioned several times on his Red Wave radio show about how the liberals are moving into Idaho and slowly changing it to a blue state. What Tom doesn’t tell you is it is the fault of the RINO republicans that we are being invaded by liberals. The Republican Party has been splintered for the past 10 years between RINOs, libertarians, and conservatives and they have never been able to reconcile their differences. Tom Luna and friends have tried to make the public believe they are conservative, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Remember this is the man who brought Common Core to our state and screwed up our educational system and is now chairman of Idaho’s Republican Party which he won by a mere 4 votes. Luna along with Victor Miller and a cadre of RINOs will continue to run our state until the real conservatives get off their butts and put up their money and their time to run some good candidates against these bozos. Until then, folks, you will have to be satisfied with a government run by the elite of Idaho who continue to fleece our state with their manipulative politics.
