NV economic outlook: Icky with a chance of uh-oh

David Flippo continues to impress. One of the lies Trump’s minions were telling after Trump lost Nevada in 2020 was that a bunch of dead people had voted in Clark County. Like each, every, and all of Trump’s claims about election “fraud,” the Trump troops could provide no proof. Because, to reiterate, it was all lies. It always has been. It still is.

But! Here we have not a dead person voting, but a dead person contributing to a campaign!

Ha ha no we don’t. Via the Wall Street Journal:

Flippo’s campaign accepted a $7,000 contribution from Marilynn Mack last month, twice the maximum donation per federal election. Instead of returning some of the money, the campaign reattributed $3,500 of the donation to Joyce Mack, her mother, who died in 2024, according to amended filings submitted to the Federal Election Commission…

When asked about the donation by The Wall Street Journal, Flippo campaign spokesman Rory McShane said it was a clerical error and the campaign again amended the donation, putting half of Marilynn Mack’s donation toward debt from the primary, and half to the general election. Marilynn Mack didn’t respond to queries about the donation.

Campaign finance violations tend to make voters yawn. That said, trying to make your campaign contribution amounts look kosher by reattributing some of them to a dead person is, as campaign funding allegations go, not uninteresting.

Meanwhile, and perhaps more interesting, who had “Wall Street Journal does story on Flippo” on their bingo cards? Not me.

If enough Republican voters in Nevada’s 2nd congressional district hold their noses and elect Flippo, upon his swearing in they will be represented by an immediate lame duck and the most impotent and irrelevant person in the U.S. Congress.

So Flippo should take a moment to reflect on and relish this moment in his garbage fire of a political “career.” A Wall Street Journal story? About him? It’s almost as if someone took him seriously for a minute. Almost.

IN NEVADA CURRENT

Gazillions being spent on AI-driven data centers and the chips to jammy pack them with have jacked up the stock market and GDP, providing the facade of a resilient economy. But dang if the AI industrial-complex isn’t borrowing more money than tech companies are projected to make from holy sacred AI amen. Capturing revenue from their AI models and the magical powers therein may be a bit more elusive than tech company hype indicates. Meanwhile, in the non-AI-centric portions of the economy, wage growth is no longer keeping up with inflation, which will put financial pressures on both Nevadans and the non-Nevadans that Nevada relies on to be tourists. Oh and of course making everything everywhere all at once worse, Trump’s Iran war is an act of world-historical idiocy. April Corbin Girnus reports: Iran war, rising costs threaten Nevada revenue outlook, state economic panel warned

The aforementioned AI-driven borrowing and spending has attracted oodles of players saying “ooh, I want to build data centers too!” in the hope that one or more of the oligarchs will sign on as a customer and thus attract financing for the budding data center industrialists. Upshot: There are more would-be data center proprietors than there is financing. Make no mistake, the oligarchs are still financing plenty of the monstrosities. But at the same time, data center proposals, many of them pie-in-the-sky to begin with, are getting scrapped literally by the dozens. I’ve no idea if that will thwart this project at the heart of a data center saga in Boulder City. But whatever its fate, the proposal and its backlash might help shape policy regarding data centers on federal lands. Jeniffer Solis reports: Data center project proposed on federal land gets sent back to square one

This is that job that was held by the elected official who killed Las Vegas reporter Jeff German. Meet the candidates. Dana Gentry reports: Former coroner and deputy attorney general vie for public administrator job

Midwifery to the rescue. “Nevada state lawmakers have rightly made improving maternal and infant outcomes a priority as they prepare for the upcoming legislative session, with maternal health provisions proposed in a state ‘momnibus’ bill. But for these efforts to be effective, our legislative and policy leaders need to expand and strengthen two underused and previously overlooked solutions: accredited freestanding birth centers and integrated access to licensed midwives.” This is an info- and solution-packed commentary by Lorraine M. Garcia, a practicing midwife in Nevada and an authority in the field. A midwife solution to Nevada’s maternity care problem

Good Luck