Opinion

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mike Smith, owner of Shiny Shoes in downtown Carson City, last Sunday to talk about his "Ideas on Tap" concept as a monthly community event in the Nevada state capital.

I've often mused that I should be cloned so that I can be everywhere I need to be at the same time.

But nobody thus far has come knocking on my door offering millions of dollars for the right to duplicate me. That's probably a good thing, though, because I'm not so sure the world is ready for carbon copies of me wandering around.

Each of our lives is run by a clock. Our days are governed by time.

Most of us never seem to have enough of it in a day to do with what we want, much more everything we need done, either.

With a thoughtful and succinct speech Monday, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the most experience of the people Trump considered and a stellar textualist and originalist record, he was considered by many as the front runner for the nomination.

Not every hero walks on two legs. Some have four.

There are five of these serving the Carson City Sheriff's Office, and I was humbled to be able to meet them Saturday at a retirement celebration for one of their own.

The morning after the Fourth of July one year, a dog showed up at our back door; a shaking, frightened and forlorn black labrador.

Being a real patriot these days takes true grit, like the United States Marine Corps motto "Semper Fidelis," the latin translation of "always faithful."

Authentic patriotism just doesn't seem to fit the modern political narrative.

Time is a precious commodity. Once it's gone, we can't get it back.

Time machines, like the one written about by H.G. Wells, haven't been invented yet. Until DeLoreans with flux capacitors become a reality, we have to make the most of our time and make it count.

A few months ago, we decided the Controller’s Annual Report (CAR) should be published in Spanish, as well as English.

As a rule, we think most government documents shouldn’t be rendered in languages other than English. It’s expensive and difficult to do, and in most cases the social value is not great when there are public employees or friends and relatives to help folks with limited English skills.

Health and Social Services (HSS) has been the fastest-growing category of state expenditures since Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10). Nevada spent $5.5 billion on these services in FY17, up from $2.2 billion in FY06.

Much of this spending is financed through federal grants for Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare programs. As Nevada spends money on these programs, it gets some reimbursement from the federal government. However, the reimbursements do not compensate Nevada fully for all expenditures, and certain programs such as Medicaid require a matching state commitment.

I recently cleaned out old files on my computer, coming across one I hadn't seen in six years.

It was the eulogy I wrote for and delivered at my father's funeral on June 30, 2012.

Reading through it for the first time in six years stirred up a lot of memories, some painful but mostly fond.

This month, California Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown signed probably the most restrictive water consumption law in the country. Under the new statute, starting in 2022 every California man, woman and child will be restricted to 55 gallons of water use per day. For a family of four, that’s 220 gallons per day.

The penalties for using more water than your allocation under this newest socialist Democrat program? Between $1,000 and $10,000 per day.

I let out a hearty chuckle the other day as I read a chapter from the book, "Stories from the Sagebrush: Celebrating Northern Nevada at the Millennium," written by Don Cox and published in 1999 by the Nevada Humanities Committee.

Fortunately for us, both men have a long record. Gary Schmidt has been an outspoken conservative on every issue for several decades. Like me, Gary Schmidt is a Goldwater / Reagan / Trump Republican. On the other hand, the NPRI rated incumbent state senator Ben Kieckhefer as the most liberal Republican over four sessions of the legislature.

Jack Phillips, a Colorado Christian cake artist, was known for his custom-designed masterpieces. In 2012, two men asked him to prepare a special cake for a local celebration of their upcoming Massachusetts marriage. At the time, Colorado law did not allow same-sex marriage.

Phillips politely declined, saying his religious faith didn’t allow him to participate expressly via his art in celebrating their marriage. He offered to sell them any product he made, but he wouldn’t prepare one specifically endorsing a gay union (nor Halloween, alcohol or nudity).

In April the Nevada Appeal announced the top 40 Most Powerful Women in Northern Nevada. I was on the top 40 list.

There were over 11,924 votes and over 7,350 unique participants.

This Thursday the Atlantis had a luncheon with over 700 attendees to honor us and to vote for the top 20 Most Powerful Women in Northern Nevada.

It is an honor to say that I was among the top 20.

Thank you to all who voted for me.

God Bless,

Doreen
Lofty Expressions
President Downtown 20/20

Another Memorial Day has come. Today we observe the sacrifices of men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion in defense of the United States of America.

I was going to write about how this year marks the sesquicentennial of Decoration Day, predecessor to the modern Memorial Day holiday.

Liberty is the absence of murder, slavery and tyranny. Liberty is the "freedom to choose" constrained by the golden rule with equal individual responsibility to choose wisely.

When my sister and I were in college, we often had difficulty sharing information by computer. I worked on an Apple Macintosh, while she used an International Business Machines (IBM) unit with a Microsoft Windows operating system.

“Shall Article 1 of the Nevada Constitution be amended to require the Legislature to provide by law for the establishment of an open, competitive retail electric energy market that prohibits the granting of monopolies and exclusive franchises for the generation of electricity?”

Who wouldn’t want an open, competitive retail electric energy market? Haven’t monopolies franchised by the government produced many problems? And isn’t market-type reform the answer?

Growing up in Oregon's Willamette Valley, I had become accustomed to the occasional paper plant along the Interstate 5 corridor between Eugene and Portland.

There's a reason why we celebrate moms and dads on different days of the year. Their love, though measured the same, is expressed differently.

Today I'm going to tell you the story of a mother's love.

Waiting to turn left onto Fifth from Carson Street Friday afternoon, I asked myself, "Why am I sitting through five light changes?"

This is Carson City, after all, not Reno.

Check out the detail elements at the four story retail and residential masterpiece at 308 North Curry Street in Carson City. The real story about this building lies in its historical accuracy to late 19th century construction.

During World War II, German intelligence officers learned to spot American spies from cues as simple as their eating habits.

Westerners commonly used the same hand for the fork as they did the knife, putting one down to pick up the other. Nazi agents observed this subtle behavior, often tipping them off to American spies.

Edwin Lyngar, a freelance writer, penned a “From the Left” piece this week in the Reno paper under the headline, “Trump’s tax policy is an attack on the community”. He hit the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), President Trump and all Republicans and limited government conservatives.

We say “hit” because it was the usual leftwing label-and-bash fest, long on nasty rhetoric and not only devoid of evidence, but in fact contrary to well known facts and data.

His opening sentence calls the TCJA, “terrible … and a massive redistribution of wealth to the already super-rich.”

We need a break from politics. So, it’s our good fortune this month marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most remarkable film ever, producer/director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Even more than Gone with the Wind, it was the most revolutionary film. It was radically different from everything before it, and it influenced all film after it more than any other work. Yet, nothing made since 1968 is really like it, either.

This fourth column on the Controller’s Annual Report (CAR) analyzes state taxes. Nevada collected $5.523 billion in taxes in fiscal year 2017, which was 41 percent of total state revenues. As discussed in our previous column, program revenues made up 56 percent, with miscellaneous items at three percent.

The largest tax sources were sales and use taxes ($1.285 billion or 23 percent of general revenues of $5.895 billion), gaming taxes ($897 million or 16 percent) and unemployment assessments ($825 million, or ten percent). All other taxes totaled $2.516 billion, or 43 percent).

his is the second column based on the Controller’s Annual Report for fiscal year 2017 (FY17). Here we disclose where the state spends its money.

Total state spending for FY17 was $12.29 billion: $11.033 billion (90 percent) from regular state accounts, including pass-through federal funds; $1.211 billion (ten percent) from tuition, fees, contracts, grants and other service charges by higher education; and $46 million in two other areas. The total was 74 percent higher than in FY06, or 17 percent more in real per-person terms.

We have just issued the Controller’s Annual Report (CAR) for fiscal year 2017 (FY17). Here we provide an overview of it. Future columns will discuss individual sections.

The CAR provides Nevada citizens, officials and others a summary of key facts, data, analysis and issues about the state’s fiscal condition and challenges. The Controller has a statutory charge to recommend plans for: support of public credit; promoting frugality and economy; better management of the state’s fiscal affairs; and better understanding of them.