Let’s go to the Various Things & Stuff mailbag, where we find an e-mail from our only lookalike (outside of Drew Carey, that is), state Sen. Bob Beers. Beers, as you’ll recall, is running for governor, but he took time out to question our characterization of U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons’ 2003 speech to the Legislature as critical of Gov. Kenny Guinn’s tax plan.

We looked over Gibbons speech (it’s been a long time since 2003, and our memory is not so good). And while we agree with Beers that Gibbons did not criticize Guinn or his tax plan by name, we also argue it’s impossible to miss what Gibbons was saying. And what he was saying was not sympathetic to Guinn, either.

Take a look at a few paragraphs:

“The slightest push in the wrong direction will destabilize our economic recovery,” Gibbons said, early in the address.

“My friends, there is a legitimate concern from our fellow Nevadans that tax policy, whether it originates in Washington, D.C., or here in Carson City, is often being formulated under the wrong set of priorities,” he said. “As Sir Winston Churchill once said at a time when England was also suffering from some of the same conditions that we are in the United States. ‘A nation trying to lift itself into prosperity by raising taxes is like a ban standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.’ We could actually use some of that Nevada-born common sense in fighting for tax and spending discipline in our nation’s capital.”

Hmmm. That doesn’t seem to supportive of poor Guinn, does it? Let’s read on.

“But now more than ever, we must carefully determine where we draw the line between balancing a government programs’ checkbook against the taxpayers’ checkbook. As families all across Nevada realize, you base your spending on how much you earn; you don’t base your earnings on how much you want to spend. The hurdle presented by the [Gibbons-authored] Tax Restraint Initiative was motivated by these very principles and it will, once again, play a role in this historic session of your Legislature.”

Sorry, but we have to conclude that these passages were nothing less than a primary school lecture to Guinn on how to run state business, delivered just one month after Guinn himself had addressed a joint session of the Legislature to present his doomed gross-receipts tax plan. Sure, he didn’t name names, but it was criticism all the same. As Beers surely knows, in politics, people often don’t say what they really mean, but find ways to say it anyway so that they can later claim they never did. This is surely one of those cases.

So, with much respect, we stand by our item.

And another correspondent, who must remain nameless to protect his position at a white-shoe law firm in town, writes to complain that we’re not updating the blog in a timely manner. To him, we say, you’re right, and we apologize. Things have been crazy around the Various Things & Stuff offices lately, and we’ve been negligent in our postings. We’ll endeavor to have each days’ information before your eyes by noon every day.