— Gov. Jim Gibbons, speech to Nevada Development Authority, Sept. 20

Jim Gibbons may be a geologist and a hydrologist and even a lawyer. But Watson and Crick would surely attest: He's no molecular biologist. Or even a very good economist.

Just a month after he painted this rosy scenario as a prelude to offering up a nonsolution to the foreclosure noncrisis with a nonsummit, he is poised to follow that up with some nonsense by cutting as much as a couple of hundred million dollars from the state budget.

Why? Because a double helix may work well for unlocking the secrets of life, but Nevada's economic DNA, as the governor's speechwriter put it, needs a third element. The half-measures that have been attempted over the years, from a paltry Business Activity Tax during the Miller years to a castrated payroll tax during the Guinn era, were economic perversions, mutations that should not survive the state's evolution.

And now, as the foreclosure crisis (yes, everyone but you thinks it's a crisis, governor) worsens and the state budget is in a shambles, Gibbons' caveman approach — no new taxes! — doesn't require the genius of Watson and Crick to decode. We are about to take another step backward as even the incremental progress under Guinn, who wanted that third element but couldn't close the deal, is about to be hacked away.

How often do we hear this cyclical tale of woe? Gaming and sales taxes are not coming in as projected, so we have to make cuts. And we will make the deepest ones in the services that matter most — Health and Human Services, which is projected to lose as much as $95 million over the biennium.

As the governor prepares to cut 5 percent a year for the biennium out of every budget except a select few, the method to this madness once again eludes me. In the fastest-growing state in the country, where the education, transportation and health care infrastructure are as porous as ever, the proposed budget cuts include $63 million in higher education.

In this through the looking glass world, the thought that maybe budget cuts are not the answer will not even occur to the governor or his minions. Why, no, that might cut into his massive popularity in Gabbs and Ely. Can't have that.

Meanwhile, for the most part, the Gang of 63 is loath to awaken from its 20-month hibernation to actually have a say in state policy. The borderline (at best) constitutional Interim Finance Committee may rubber-stamp what Gibbons does, but that is no solution — and perhaps an illegal one at that.

Lawmakers should be clamoring for a special session to assert legislative privilege and have a say in what is done. Tax increases and budget cuts should be on the table and let's see what they — and Gibbons — do when faced with real reductions that hurt real people.

Or we could just plow ahead as if nothing is wrong and say, in fact, that everything is right.

"Nevada is not without its challenges, but it would be a disservice to those who came before us and those who will come after to systematically dismantle the nation's most efficient economic engine," Gibbons said a month ago in that NDA speech.

Great. He's not much of a mechanic, either.

Of course no one is saying dismantle anything. But bringing it into the 21st century might be nice. Or if he wants to mix metaphors between economic DNA and the economic engine in one speech, perhaps the governor would like to put the double helix of gaming and sales in the shop and turbocharge it with a new part.

See, I could write speeches for this guy, although the next one will sound more like this:

Everything's fine. No crisis. Minor cuts. No new taxes.

Anyone dare to disagree?