LYON COUNTY REPUBLICAN CENTRAL COMMITTEE
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Spanish Language Controller’s Reports, Interns and Progress

6/26/2018

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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.

In this case, however, the translation could be secured at no cost to the state, and production and distribution at a very low cost to our modest legislatively approved publishing budget. Moreover, the CAR is one of our main vehicles for promoting transparency and accountability about key fiscal and policy issues.  So, it is an item with which Nevada should reach out to people.

Also, we had some positive previous experience with a Spanish-language document.  So, if governments want to make sensible efforts in non-English publishing, this made a good test case.

Three years ago, our first Controller’s Monthly Report, a four-page document, was translated into Spanish by Bea, a Mexican-born American citizen with outstanding facility in both languages, who has been a great friend and volunteer.  She had expressed enthusiasm for more such work, and the 24-page CAR is the ideal piece to translate.

In addition, Ron had suggested to his daughter Karyn that she do a half-time internship in the office to help translate, produce and distribute the document.  Not only would that introduce her to the working world, but she would improve her Spanish and learn production and distribution skills.  After considering the idea, Karyn was enthusiastic about it.

When Karyn’s best friend Lexi heard about it, she asked if she could join the team too.  We agreed and got the three of them together with our production person and a manager with strong bilingual skills who had helped with the first translation and agreed to help this one.

Last week, they went to work.  Due to space constraints in our office, after the first day, Lexi and Karyn worked at the Knecht home under the supervision of wife Kathy.  When Ron was there to observe the work, he was impressed with the diligence and focus of the two girls in their first working stint and with their productivity after minor initial stumbles.

By the end of a week, they had finished translating the first five pages of a challenging document that addresses economic, policy and financial matters.  Observing and talking with them, Ron learned their secret.
In the previous translation project, Bea had started from the printed English version and used her strong knowledge of both languages to create the Spanish version, which to Ron was the natural thing to do.  Bea and Ron are both decidedly 20th Century kids.

Karyn and Lexi are, of course, 21st Century kids.  And the natural thing for them to do was to fire up their computers and input the English sentences and paragraphs into an on-line translating program.  It returned the Spanish version of the text, which they inserted into their document.

Bea noted that the girls’ procedure allowed them to move faster through the text than she could.  She explained that she was familiar with translation programs, but preferred the old school way because it produces a richer, more nuanced and accurate version.  However, not being stuck in her ways, she recognized the value of the material Lexi and Karyn were producing and suggested she would work from their translation, and improve it for the final-review product.  Great idea!

So, the girls initially may not be improving their Spanish as much as hoped because they’re using the software.  However, they’ve made a great contribution to the speed at which the project will be finished.  In short, they’ve introduced a productivity gain to our system by bringing in new technology for automation.  And it will leave them time to concentrate on learning Spanish as they compare Bea’s product to their own.
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This is another example of how automation displaces mainly the lowest level tasks and increases demand for higher level functions, while creating more efficiency and higher quality output.  And an example of how the new generation can improve things.
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Controller’s Annual Report: Health and Social Services

6/19/2018

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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.

At $3.55 billion, Medicaid is Nevada’s largest single expenditure – 64.6% of the HSS total.  Federal operating grants to Medicaid fluctuate annually according to a formula based on per capita income in each state.  States with lower incomes have a larger proportion of Medicaid costs reimbursed, but in no case does the federal reimbursement rate fall below 50 percent.

For 2017, Nevada’s reimbursement rate was 65 percent, up from 54 percent in 2006.  A prolonged decline in our per capita incomes relative to the nation’s drove this increase in federal Medicaid financing.

The long-term rise in Medicaid spending has been accented by a rapid escalation in recent years due to expansion of eligibility parameters.  Historically, states that elected to participate in Medicaid were required to cover only certain highly vulnerable populations, including the elderly, disabled and children living below the poverty level.  The federal Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), however, encouraged states to expand eligibility rules to cover individuals with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, including single, childless, working-age adults with no disabilities.

The ACA offered full reimbursement of eligible state expenditures for this expansion population through 2016.  Federal reimbursements then fell to 95 percent in 2017, continuing downward to 90 percent by 2020 and beyond.  It is uncertain whether these enhanced reimbursement rates will continue under a Republican congress and president, especially given the projections of increasing federal deficits.

In 2013, Gov. Brian Sandoval and Nevada lawmakers chose to expand Medicaid eligibility along ACA guidelines.  Since then, Nevada’s Medicaid enrollment has nearly doubled, growing from 350,234 at the beginning of 2014 to 666,131 in May 2017.  A portion of this increase is attributable to growth by 95,315 persons of the legacy population.

Although many of these individuals had been previously eligible for coverage, new federal tax penalties for failing to acquire health insurance prompted enrollment, which they had previously spurned.  This legacy population is subject to the standard federal reimbursement rate, while the 220,582 persons who enrolled as part of the expansion population get Nevada the enhanced rate.

Expanded availability of publicly funded health care benefits has occurred alongside a decline in rates of private insurance coverage and other private health spending.  In 2008, 68.6 percent of Nevadans held private insurance coverage.  That rate remained steady through the end of the Great Recession in 2009 but fell to just 61.5 percent by 2012 before rebounding partially to 64.5 percent in 2015.

One explanation is that the mandates included in the ACA led to the closure of many private insurance plans and temporarily left policyholders without coverage until some purchased new, ACA-compliant plans.  But the concurrent enrollment growth in Medicaid and other public health plans suggests that greater availability of these plans has displaced many consumers who previously could afford private insurance.  In 2015, 33.5 percent of Nevadans were enrolled in some form of public health plan, up from just 20.6 percent in 2008.

There is evidence suggesting that expanding Medicaid to additional populations does not improve health outcomes and only further endangers the most vulnerable populations.  Medical reviews reveal that outcomes are better for holders of private insurance policies than for beneficiaries of public health plans.

Policymakers have historically squeezed provider reimbursement rates as a cost-control method for Medicaid, while expanding Medicaid eligibility rules.  Hence, many health care providers refuse to accept Medicaid patients.  Thus we get growing demand for Medicaid services and a smaller supply of Medicaid providers.
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So, some folks have Medicaid coverage but cannot get care.  Thus, the increased competition for care wrought by eligibility expansion harms the most vulnerable populations who were previously eligible and now face reduced access to care.
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Socialists Gone Wild in California!!

6/12/2018

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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.

We know California has a water problem, stemming especially from the large agricultural regions of the state and their great irrigation requirements. The state’s nearly 40 million people also use a lot of water.

Enforcement?  Apparently there will be “water police” reviewing ratepayers’ daily metered use.  They’ll report violations to users’ water utility companies, which will be assessed the fines.  The water utilities will pass on those costs one way or another.  Spreading them across all ratepayers evenly would raise a firestorm, so they will surely be charged to the offending parties.

There will be some exemptions, allowing for private swimming pools and the like.  But why?  If you are going to restrict people to 55 gallons of water use per day, which is basically enough to take one very brief shower and run one load of laundry, why would swimming pools even be allowed for private citizens anymore?

That seems to be completely contrary to what Moonbeam and the Beautiful People seek to accomplish -- unless they are hoping that people with private swimming pools will use them for bathing to stay within their water limitations.

Why stop at restricting the private citizens’ water use this way?  There are many other opportunities to reduce overall water use in the state.

Outlaw private swimming pools, which can hold between 10,000 and 30,000 gallons of water.

Eliminate golf courses, which require a flood of water.  It may keep former President Obama and President Trump out of your state, but is that really a problem for the good people of the Golden State?  Those two can play golf in Florida or Hawaii!

Uhm, shower with a friend?

Why not just outlaw farming?  California agriculture uses much more water than all the people who live there combined.  This would save all the water needed.  Of course, it may be hard to put food on the table, but whatever.  According to Moonbeam and his posse, water must be conserved at all costs.

Levy fines against restaurants that serve water to their patrons.

Mandate landscaping that does not use any water.  Say goodbye to grass in California, unless, of course, it is the type you smoke. 

Speaking of grass, California could eliminate the entire marijuana industry in the state and stop all that water usage.  The wine making industry as well.

Make sure you have plenty of water cops at all the reservoirs in case some crafty citizens try to supplement their water supply by filling large containers right at the source.  And make sure there are plenty of state police to throw those lawbreakers in jail for the crime of getting a little more water for their family.

Rename Grass Valley to Xeriscape Valley, since there will be no more grass without water.

California’s statist, progressive, politically correct Democrats have done it again.  But their presumably good intentions to fix the state’s long term water issues will just put more restrictions on the average law-abiding person.  Just like almost any proposed gun law.

Our advice?  If you believe in freedom, get out!  You have until 2022 before this law goes into full effect, providing you four years to formulate a plan to leave California and move somewhere that still believes in freedom and individual liberties. 

But please, if you think this continued march toward progressive nirvana is a good thing, do not depart.  Stay there.  We don’t want any more Democrat socialists invading Nevada.  We don’t want your sanctuary state loving, water restricting, methane taxing, drinking-straw withholding brand of foolishness any more than we want your earthquakes.  Also, we can do without your traffic snarls, overpriced everything, water rationing, tax increases, trigger warnings and safe spaces.

Most of us in the Silver State have no desire to become East California.

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Of Cakes, Coercion, Freedom and Decency

6/5/2018

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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).
They filed a complaint with Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission, even though there were other cake-makers in the area who would have provided the cake they sought.  Their action triggered hateful phone calls, death threats and legal proceedings against Phillips.

During a hearing, commissioner Diann Rice said, “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust … it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to – to use their religion to hurt others.”  In World War II Phillips’s father helped liberate a concentration camp and thus witnessed personally results of the Holocaust atrocities.

By Rice’s logic, if someone acting in the name of a religion does something awful, then others acting for religion are also guilty of the awful behavior and their position is null and void.  By her logic, declining to participate in a celebration is a legally actionable hurt to the celebrants, but forcing someone to participate does no hurt, harm or damage to the person so compelled.  And by her logic, declining to put a specific message on a cake is morally equivalent to supporting slavery and the Holocaust.


Her commission ruled Phillips had violated Colorado’s law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  It imposed a three-pronged penalty that caused Phillips to cease making wedding cakes and lose 40 percent of his business volume. State courts upheld the action, even though three cake artists refused to make cakes with messages critical of same-sex marriage when requested by their customers, but the commission took no action in those cases.  Thus, they used a double standard based on whether one’s viewpoint on an issue agrees with state dogma.
Clearly, the state violated Phillips’s First Amendment freedom of religion as extended by the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the states.  Ditto, his free speech rights.

However, after he appealed the state action to the U.S. Supreme Court, it issued a decision Monday on very narrow grounds that focused mainly on the egregious hostility of the commission toward religion in denying his rights.  The decision failed to address the conflict between federal constitutional rights of individuals versus limitations and compulsions on people and businesses states may seek to impose merely by labeling them “public accommodations.”

The two men claimed Phillips used his religious faith as a pretext for discrimination, even though he has served gay people for 24 years and offered to serve them.  He has not discriminated against people based on their identity.  He just refused to speak their message with which he disagreed.

Our view on homosexuality is reflected in the facts both of us have long had gay and lesbian friends and associates, welcomed them into our homes and fed them, and had some of them involved in our most intimate family business.  We teach children to respect and be decent to all people and to accept and accommodate them as much as possible despite differences.

But the issue here is collective coercion.  Many statist liberals and progressives believe their views about how people should treat each other justify bringing the full coercive power of the state against anyone who violates their personal norms.  They think it does no harm to people forced to toe their ideological lines.
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They’re wrong.  It does immense harm.  Coercion is aggression.  It is oppression.  It is often thinly disguised hate.  Ultimately, people like Diann Rice are dishonest, hateful and vicious.  Most other progressives are, often unknowingly, merely destructive of net human wellbeing and fairness.  We need to recover the balance in these matters we’ve lost in recent decades.
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    *Opinions expressed here may or may not reflect the views of the Lyon County Republican Central Committee. 

    Author

    Ron Knecht has served as Nevada Controller, a higher education regent, legislator and economist. He can be reached at RonKnecht@aol.com.  
     

     

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