As the self-appointed hatchet man of a Democratic Party determined to divide America for political gain, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been on quite a tear. Apparently unfulfilled by his demonization of the Koch brothers as “un-American,” or branding ordinary Americans who expressed dissatisfaction with ObamaCare as liars, Reid has focused his attention on rancher Cliven Bundy and the people who came to his defense when Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials decided a paramilitary assault was the best way to handle a long-standing case of delinquent grazing fees. “Those people who hold themselves out to be patriots are not,” Reid declared. “They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists. I repeat: What went on up there was domestic terrorism.” While it is true Bundy hasn’t got a legal leg to stand on, Americans might wonder why a United States Senator would forcefully and repeatedly inject himself into this relatively insignificant matter. Or is it insignificant? Perhaps it’s time to shed a little light on Harry Reid himself.

The dispute centers around land, a subject with which Harry and his family are intimately familiar. “In Nevada the Name to Know is Reid," reported the L.A. Times in 2003. The subtitle of the piece summed up the reason why quite nicely. "Members of one lawmaker’s family represent nearly every major industry in their home state. And their clients rely on his goodwill,” it stated. The first part of the article deals with a bill, “The Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002,” introduced in the Senate by Reid, who characterized it as a bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at protecting Nevada’s environment and helping its economy. “What Reid did not explain was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms, federal lobbyist reports show,” the Times reports.

Reid insisted he supported the bill because it was good for his state, rather than good for his family. “Lots of people have children, wives and stuff that work back here,” he said. “It is not as if a lot of cash is changing hands.”

One would guess that “not a lot of cash” is in the eye of the beholder. Son-in-law Steven Barringer’s Washington consulting firm received $300,000 from the Howard Hughes Corp. alone as part of the deal. Other provisions of the bill directly benefitted a senior partner in a Nevada law firm that employed all four of Reid’s sons. And more than $2 million in lobbying fees from special interests were collected by three of Reid’s sons and his son-in-law in connection with companies, trade groups and municipalities seeking Reid’s help in the Senate.

Yet most of Reid’s power derives from the reality that the federal government owns 87 percent of Nevada, meaning a whole host of issues that might ordinarily be decided by state officials fall under federal control. That gives Reid an extraordinary amount of leverage regarding the ability to move public land into the private sphere, and vice versa.

As the Washington Post noted in a 2012 investigative piece, Harry was not immune to helping himself. “In 2004 and 2005, the Senate majority leader secured $21.5 million to build a bridge over the Colorado River, linking the gambling resort town of Laughlin, Nev., with Bullhead City, Ariz,” the paper reported. “Reid owns 160 acres of undeveloped land in Bullhead City.” That same year, in what Fox News described as a “banner” one for cronies, they noted that “Sen. Reid has sponsored at least $47 million in earmarks that directly benefitted organizations that one of his sons, Key Reid, [RW1] either lobbies for or is affiliated with.”

Yet all of these activities seemingly pale in comparison to efforts of Reid, his oldest son Rory, and Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert. “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission,” Reuters reported.

Well below appraised value? Two separate appraisals of the land valued the property at $29.6 million and $38.6 million respectively. ENN purchased the site for $4.5 million. Moreover, the same BLM that has ostensibly made protecting the desert tortoise their ultimate rationale for diminishing the grazing rights of all the ranchers in Clark County – driving every one of  them but Bundy into bankruptcy – developed a regional mitigation strategy allowing for the re-location of those same tortoises from the property owned by ENN to a new location known as the Gold Butte. By the sheerest of coincidences, Gold Butte is part of the area where Bundy’s cattle have been illegally grazing.

Once again, Cliven Bundy is in the wrong. But there is the rank odor of politics that emanates from other salient realities here. First, the Senate confirmed Neil Kornze as BLM director on April 8–the same day more than 200 armed agents from that agency descended upon Bundy’s ranch. Kornze was a longtime Reid aide, and a senior policy advisor on land-use issues in Reid’s office from 2003 to 2011. In his prior role as senior advisor at the BLM, Kornze was instrumental in developing the Western Solar Plan, establishing 17 solar energy zones on public land, as well as approving nearly 50 utility-scale renewable energy projects.

Second, the BLM also changed the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate development by Harvey Whittemore, Harry Reid’s top political donor. Last year the billionaire real estate developer was found guilty by a federal jury for funneling $150,000 illegal donations to Reid’s re-election campaign in 2007.

Third, the BLM removed a document from its website indicating that Bundy’s cattle grazing was getting in the way of solar development plans. Before that occurred, a critical portion of that document was captured:

“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.”

While this particular dispute is about land, Reid’s interests are hardly limited to real estate. “The Obama administration overruled career Homeland Security officials and expedited visa applications for about two dozen foreign investors for a politically connected Las Vegas casino hotel after repeated pressure from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his staff," revealed the Washington Times in 2013. Normally such visa decisions are non-appealable, but intervention by Reid’s staff was so intense they got into a shouting match with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials, who subsequently worried about their careers as a result. Reid directly intervened, contacting Alejandro Mayorkas the top officials at USCIS. Within a few weeks, the initial decision made by the Department of Homeland Security on the matter, flatly stating "there is no appeal or reconsideration of this decision” was reversed.

Then there is mining. The Nevada Mining Assn. gave him a lifetime achievement award because the supposedly environmentally-concerned Senator fought against reforms opposed by the industry. Over the course of five years, Reid used his position on the Appropriations Committee to attach onerous riders to bills to kill or stall mining reforms he considered excessive. He did so despite the EPA concluding “mining in the Western United States has contaminated stream reaches in the headwaters of more than 40% of the watersheds in the West.” And once again, mining companies reciprocated with $200,000 in lobbying fees to the law firm where Harry’s son-in-law was employed from 1999 to 2000.

The American Gaming Assn. likes Harry as well. They honored him  as one of “America’s Gaming Greats.” When the NCAA proposed a nationwide ban on collegiate sports betting, Harry backed legislation that would crack down everywhere but Nevada. The two bills competing against each other produced a stalemate – and another $180,000 for the new law firm that employed his son-in-law. That new firm was also the beneficiary of an additional $780,000, courtesy of National Mining Assn. and mining companies active in Nevada, who ponied up the money after son-in-law Barringer arrived.   How did Reid manage it? During much of the time Reid and his relatives were insinuating themselves into many of the aforementioned projects, Harry was either chairman, or vice-chairman, of the Senate Ethics Committee, which sets the standards for Senatorial conduct.

Harry’s personal ethics border on reprehensible. While American men and women were still in harm’s way in Iraq, he declared the war “lost.” During the 2012 election campaign he told a bald-faced lie about Mitt Romney, claiming the GOP Presidential candidate hadn’t paid any taxes in 10 years. During the government shutdown in 2013, when asked if the Senate would at least pass a bill to allow cancer research to continue, Reid responded, “Why would we want to do that?” Add in his personal and ongoing attacks against the Koch brothers for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights, and his denigration of Americans appalled by the excessive display of government force at the Bundy ranch, and one thing becomes perfectly clear:

Harry Reid is one of the most reprehensible politicians in the country.

So why do the people of Nevada keep electing him? There are allegations that Reid stole the 2010 election from challenger Sharon Angle. GOP officials insisted that ballot fraud was conducted by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – who were in charge of servicing all voting machines in Clark County, courtesy of a collective bargaining agreement. Three-quarters of the state’s residents reside in that county, and there were reports that Reid’s name was automatically checked on several ballots prior to those residents casting their vote. Angle filed a complaint with the DOJ, also alleging that Reid pressured casino workers to turn out at the polls. The complaint cited a series of emails exchanged between Reid lobbyist and former La Vegas Mayor Jan Jones and Harrah’s Casino executives, urging those executives to press company supervisors to make sure employees get out and vote. Those emails may have violated federal campaign finance law that “prohibits in-kind corporate and union contributions to, and coordination with, political campaigns.”

It remains unclear if Eric Holder’s Justice Department followed up on those allegations. However we do know that in March 2014, the DOJ thwarted a comprehensive corruption investigation conducted by the FBI and Utah state prosecutors against Reid and Republican Senator Mike Lee.

Thus it would seem Reid remains untouchable. But there is a grand opportunity for the American public to send him a message next November. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel clearly outlined in a January column, Americans distressed by “dysfunctional” government would have the opportunity to remove the chief architect of that dysfunction from his position as Majority Leader by handing control the Senate to the GOP.

It’s time to send this petty tyrant to the back of the Senate bus.

© 2014 The Patriot Post