penny press 15, 2018the penny press,february 15, 2018 page 4 patterns often amount to legalized...

Penny PressNevada, USA Volume 15 Number 24 FEBRUARY 15, 2018

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Credits:Publisher and Editor: Contributing Editors:Fred Weinberg Floyd Brown Al Thomas Doug French Robert Ringer John Getter Pat Choate Ron Knecht Byron Bergeron

The Penny Press is published weekly by Far West Radio LLC All Contents © Penny Press 2018

Letters to the Editor are encouraged. They should be emailed to: [email protected] No unsigned or unverifiable letters will be printed.

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THE PENNY PRESS,FEBRUARY 15, 2018 PAGE 2

By DANIEL HONCHARIWSpecial to the Penny Press

In recent years, a number of states have implemented policies that have curtailed the abuse of “civil asset forfeiture” by law

enforcement agencies. Nevada isn’t one of those states.

Instead, the rate at which Nevada authorities have exploited the practice has accelerated rapidly, according to the Nevada attorney general’s 2017 Forfeiture Report released this month.

Making matters worse, the state’s largest beneficiary of civil forfeiture — the Las Vegas

Metropolitan Police Department — is using a legally dubious argument to keep the public in the dark when it comes to how, exactly, the department utilizes the practice.

Given the due-process concerns related to forfeiture, Nevadans deserve better.

Civil forfeiture refers to the law enforcement practice of seizing a person’s property based on the mere suspicion that such property was connected to criminal activity, regardless of whether criminal charges are ever filed against the owner. In forfeiture proceedings, individuals are required to spend their own time and money defending their seized property in court, with no presumption of innocence.

It’s a system that completely upends the American notion of due process.

Moreover, because the seizing law enforcement agency is often permitted to keep all or a portion of the proceeds generated by the forfeited property, there is a perverse incentive for authorities to abuse the practice to bolster their budgets — a phenomenon commonly referred to as “policing for profit.”

It’s difficult to comprehend how such a seemingly anti-American practice can flourish, unchecked, in the supposed “Land of the Free” — yet the situation is only worsening in Nevada, and the public is being left in the dark as to why.

According to the AG’s recent report, the amount of forfeited property in Nevada totaled $3.7 million during fiscal 2017, a 12 percent year-over-year increase.

Interestingly, the report also

provides renewed evidence that the value of forfeited property is oftentimes petty, thereby belying law enforcement’s justification for the use of civil forfeiture — namely, that the practice is crucial for the purpose of crippling major crime syndicates.

The AG’s 2017 report documents multiple instances of forfeitures within Metro’s jurisdiction where the value of the property in question is less than $1 — hardly enough to bring any major criminal enterprise to its knees.

These instances suggest that local law enforcement is literally taking quarters out of the pockets of individuals through a practice that provides minimal due-process protection.

As multiple studies have documented, such forfeiture

Penny PressNEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 15 NUMBER 24 FEBRUARY 15, 2018

Penny WisdomThis country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer. —Will Rogers

The Conservative Weekly Voice Of NevadaInside:Gomer Pyle HasJoined The TSA

See Editorial Page 6

RON KNECHT PAGE 5FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6ROBERT RINGER PAGE 7DOUG FRENCH PAGE 9MERRILL MATTHEWS PAGE 10ROBERT ROMANO PAGE 11CHUCK MUTH PAGE 14

Las Vegas Metro's Forfeiture Problem

Commentary

Continued on page4


patterns often amount to legalized theft against the state’s poorest, who are disproportionately targeted by the practice.

Metro’s reluctance to be transparent about its forfeiture activities, however, makes things even worse. It has left the public no way to investigate the extent to which there might be abuse or mismanagement.

In fact, the Nevada Policy Research Institute has been trying for months to ascertain the underlying fact patterns behind such petty cases, to no avail.

Instead of providing the relevant records, Metro’s Office of Public Information has consistently denied the requests on the basis that “arrest reports are considered criminal history which cannot be disseminated to non-media.”

This response is peculiar, given that media outlets are no more entitled to public records than is the general public, nor are criminal history records specifically exempted from the purview of Nevada’s public-records law.

Thus it appears that the department is unlawfully keeping these records from seeing the light of day — an especially troubling thought, given the perverse incentive civil forfeiture provides for abuse by authorities.

Ideally, state law should simply prohibit the practice of civil forfeiture — allowing only for criminal forfeiture in cases where illegal conduct has been proven and due process rights are protected for the property’s owners.

In the interim, however, Nevadans should at least demand transparency from our law enforcement agencies regarding the use of civil forfeiture. After all, without such transparency, it is virtually impossible to assure the public that our local law enforcement agencies are not, in fact, “policing for profit.”

Daniel Honchariw is a policy analyst at NPRI and author of the report, “Who Does Civil Asset Forfeiture Target Most?”

Metro: Denial Is Not Just A River In EgyptContinued from page 3

Robert Taft: Father of the Modern Conservative Movement

There have been only two sons who followed their fathers’ footsteps to become President of the United States. John Quincy Adams followed his father John Adams in the early years of our republic, and George W. Bush followed his dad George H. W. Bush more recently.

Had circumstances been different during the Second World War, we might have had a third man follow his father to the highest office in the land.

Robert Taft was born in Ohio in 1889, the eldest son of future President William H. Taft. The Taft family had been a force in Ohio politics since Ulysses Grant was president, with President Taft’s father Alphonso serving in Grant’s administration as Secretary of War and Attorney General.

President Taft served as Secretary of War during the Theodore Roosevelt administration, and was elected president in 1908. President Taft became the only former president to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, serving for nine years in that capacity until his death in 1930.

Robert started his political career in the 1920s, serving in the Ohio legislature for twelve years. He distinguished himself in the legislature as a vocal opponent to the Ku Klux Klan and a supporter of the repeal of prohibition (which

outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages).

Upon his election to the United States senate in 1938, he became a leader of the conservative coalition, a cooperation of some Republicans with conservative Democrats who stood in opposition to their party and president to defeat further expansion of the New Deal. This was only the beginning of Taft’s conservatism and its effect on our government at the time.

Taft continued to strongly oppose the growth of the federal government occurring during the reign of President Franklin Roosevelt. He supported the reduction of federal spending and a balanced budget, lowering taxes, and limiting fledgling social programs such as Social Security.

Senator Taft was also very much opposed to the United States entering into World War II. Taft strongly opposed any intervention into wars in Europe and Asia, either financially or with troops, advocating instead for more solutions to domestic issues. He was consistent in his opposition to aid to countries fighting Germany until Pearl Harbor.

In 1940, Taft made his first bid for the Republican presidential nomination. However, his non-interventionist stand made him unpopular with establishment Republicans. So, he finished second in five of the six ballots at the convention, unable to create enough momentum to deny the nomination of Wendell Willkie.

In 1947, Taft led passage of the Taft-Hartley labor act, which is still law today. The act banned several unfair union practices. Taft worked hard to pass that legislation, gaining bipartisan support to override the veto of President Harry Truman.

Taft stood firmly against the Nuremberg trials. Taft called

the trials “victor’s justice” and a violation of some of the most basic principles of our justice system.

His Nuremberg stand was not popular, and was one of the principal reasons he was denied the Republican nomination in 1948, losing to establishment Governor Thomas Dewey of New York.

By the early 1950s, Taft had built a solid reputation as the conservative voice of the senate and a national leader. At this point, he made his strongest attempt in 1952 to secure the nomination for president.

Taft was the favorite going into the 1952 Republican convention, with about half of the delegates committed to his cause, the most primary votes, and the backing of party conservatives. However, his nemesis Dewey and others backed General Dwight Eisenhower for the party nomination. In a nasty ideological fight, Eisenhower won the nomination due to his perceived electability.

Even though Eisenhower and Taft disagreed on almost every foreign policy question, Taft endorsed Ike and helped him win the presidency. Taft was elected Senate Majority Leader.

Unfortunately, Leader Taft was unable to serve for long. In the early part of 1953, he was diagnosed with cancer and by the summer was terminally ill with the disease. He passed away on July 31, 1953.

Without the work of Robert Taft paving the way, we may well have never seen Barry Goldwater nominated for president in 1964, nor President Ronald Reagan elected in 1980.


The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:Nevada District Judge Elissa Cadish who denied a Metropolitan Police Department request to fine the Las Vegas Review-Journal for publishing the name of a man now facing federal charges in connection with the Oct. 1 Las Vegas mass shooting. The man, Douglas Haig, was identified in a Metro document released to the newspaper in January. Haig’s name was included in one of two phrases that were supposed to be redacted. We’ve always known Metro is barely competent. This proves it.

Steve Wynn, accused of demanding sexual favors from female employees over the last three decades, has denied any wrongdoing and blamed his ex-wife for leading a campaign that resulted in an “avalanche of negative publicity” and, ultimately, his resignation as Wynn Resorts chair-man and CEO last week. This is still America and you’re still innocent until PROVEN guilty.

The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To:Nevada state Sen. Julia Ratti, D-Sparks, who chaired the first meeting of the Legislature’s interim Committee on Affordable Housing. The committee’s purpose is to determine “methods to increase the availability of affordable housing.” At its first meeting, the panel heard six hours of testimony—all totally unnecessary since the government should stay the hell out of housing, given how well it has done in the past. www.pennypressnv.com

Tips Of Our Capand

Bronx Cheers

RON KNECHT and JAMES SMACK

Commentary: Ron Knecht & James Smack

Do you have any idea why the average citizen no longer has much trust in his or her government at all levels?

Because much of that government doesn’t trust the average citizen.

This is also a relatively new phenomenon.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 1958, the number of folks who trusted their government was 75%.

An experience I had last week at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport may go a long way to explaining that lack of trust on our side.

I was making a trip to Dallas. I have a TSA Trusted Traveler number which means that the so-called Transportation Safety Administration has my fingerprints, a background check and, probably a list of the thousands of flights I have made over the last 30 years.

That means they know damn well who I am and have granted me a pre-check.

So, I go through the line. And I’m told that I have been “randomly” selected for additional screening. For the 12th time in about 14 calendar months. Which by any mathematical definition is hardly random. And, as additional evidence of that, I have NEVER had a similar situation come up in Dallas, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Minneapolis or…ANYWHERE ELSE.

Now it could be that there’s a credible threat that terrorists are trying to sneak through the pre-check lane at Reno. Or it could be that the union guys who work for the TSA in Reno are putting on a show for Washington. Which do you think is more likely?

But it gets better.

It used to be that when you were selected for additional screening, you went in the body scanner.

Now, they want to dissemble your luggage and swab your

electronics, of which I carry a lot.

So they swabbed my four cell phones (actually three because they missed one), my iPad, my laptop and my Bluetooth. The Bluetooth set off an alarm in their scanner device.

That meant a patdown, taking off my belt, my shoes and an inspection of my suitcase. All in all about 20 minutes.

Now, here’s where my lack of trust came in.

How do I know that Gomer Pyle who was operating the scanner didn’t do something to make that bluetooth swab set off an alarm so he could have a little more fun at my expense?

The answer is that I don’t.

In 1958, I might have been one of the 75% who would say, “Oh, that’s OK. Gomer is just looking out for my safety.” (Of course I would have been six years old.)

Today, having read the FBI text messages, the Devin Nunes memo and watched the clown act surrounding the so-called “special” prosecutor, I am not one of the now 30% of trusting souls.

If my government, having vetted me, doesn’t trust me, who should I trust it? Especially in the form of a very bad imitation of Jim Neighbors. Yes, Gomer, I’m talking about YOU!

Gomer Pyle was making $37,793 a year PLUS Federal benefits.

That is why, since 2007, the share of Americans saying they can trust the government always or most of the time has not surpassed 30%.

As taxpayers, we need to do some additional screening of our own.

FRED WEINBERG


OPINIONFrom The Publisher...

Does Gomer Pyle Run The TSA in Reno?


Cosmic ConsciousnessEach of us discovers his own path to what is commonly referred to as

a “higher consciousness” or “heightened state of awareness.” For me, the path opened up in my early twenties in New York City.

It was a very active, very exciting time of my life, filled with high hopes, eternal youth, and unlimited opportunities. I experienced new things every day, and I constantly thirsted for more. I was passionate about my work and was always on the go. Sleep was an occasional distraction; gourmet dining was a corned beef sandwich at a Lower East Side deli.

I didn’t have any money to speak of, so I got to know the less trendy parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens pretty well. I could not have imagined a more exhilarating activity than walking around Greenwich Village, taking the subway to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, or browsing at Macy’s on 34th Street (at a time when only New York could boast of having a Macy’s store).

I usually stayed at the old Prince George Hotel on 28th Street, as it was inexpensive and more than suitable for my needs at the time. Best of all, there was an automat right across the street, and when it came to dining treats, the automat was just a notch below my favorite deli.

As exciting as those times were for me, I probably did not fully appreciate the magnificence of it all. There was a feeling of urban spirituality that I certainly will never again experience — first, because I will never again be in my mid-twenties and, second, because the world was much younger than today, much more wholesome and innocent.

To be sure, the hippie revolution was in full bloom, but most of the certitudes that formed the foundation for American culture were still in place. I had never heard such terms as “illegal immigrant,” “transgender,” or “global warming.” College and pro football players were clean-cut, all-American role models, and, for the most part, television networks reported the news fairly and objectively.

To be sure, life wasn’t always fair to everyone, but, for better or worse, it was a time of certitudes. It was comforting to know that Western culture stood strong on the foundation of a generally accepted code of conduct.

This was my world when I discovered New York City in my early twenties. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but I now realize that I was in an elevated state of consciousness as a result of my incredibly active life.

Thus it was that on a beautiful, sunny day in November, I was driving on the Grand Central Parkway on my way to JFK International Airport. My mind was exploding with a thousand and one thoughts about my life, both business and personal.

Then, just as I began steering my car south onto the Van Wyke Expressway, everything about my life seemed to coalesce into sharp focus in my consciousness. It was as though I were being given the cognitive means to solve all my business and personal problems simultaneously. A sense of being connected to an infinite source of power came over me.

Instead of having to exert the usual intense mental effort to sort out my thoughts, every item that was significant to me at the time — perhaps forty or fifty in number — instantly became clearly fixed in my mind in such an orderly fashion that I felt a sort of omniscience.

It seemed as though a bright light had suddenly brought my thoughts out of the dark recesses of my subconscious mind and allowed me to consciously focus on all of them simultaneously. It was a feeling of immense power, incredible joy, and an inner ecstasy that made me feel almost immortal.

I do not recall exactly how long my euphoric state of heightened

awareness lasted, but I would estimate that it was perhaps two or three minutes. Since that time, I have had similar experiences on a handful of occasions, each of them lasting only a few seconds to a few minutes, but nothing to match the intensity of that unexpected blink of heightened consciousness I experienced on my way to JFK Airport many years ago.

My experience became more understandable years later when I read a book titled Cosmic Consciousness, by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, published way back in 1901. Dr. Bucke was a graduate of McGill Medical School and a prominent psychiatrist in Canada.

At age thirty-six, he experienced an “illumination” that lasted only a few seconds, but during which time he claimed to have learned more than he had in all his years of academic study. Dr. Bucke ultimately came to believe that his experience was the emergence of a new faculty in man that takes simple consciousness to a new level of awareness. He postulated that such historical figures as Jesus, Buddha, Dante, and even Walt Whitman possessed advanced consciousness on a consistent basis, while in the rest of us this aptitude is still evolving.

If Dr. Bucke was right in his assessment, the implications are enormous. It would mean that human beings, through the phenomenon of free will, have the power to break through their mental paradigms and accomplish things they have previously believed were not possible — in their careers, in their personal relationships, and, above all, in spiritual matters.

Which is where high-energy activity comes in. Who is more likely to succeed, the guy sitting on his couch, watching television, guzzling beer, and stuffing himself with taco chips … or the person who’s out and about and actively engaging the world with a high level of energy? It seems self-evident that the atoms in a person’s brain vibrate at a much higher rate of speed when he’s actively living life than when he’s sedentary.

In this regard, Lee Iacocca, the legendary automobile industry innovator, once said something that has served me well over the years. Iacocca explained that whenever he was feeling down, the one thing he found that always picked him up and got him back into high gear was rolling up his sleeves and immersing himself in work.

Plain and simple, when you raise your energy level, good things happen. That’s because when you take action, the atoms in your brain vibrate more rapidly, which in turn makes it possible to telepathically draw to yourself the things, people, and circumstances you need to accomplish your objectives.

And if you raise your energy level high enough, you may, on occasion, even find yourself in a heightened state of awareness — call it “cosmic consciousness” — that could forever change your life. I feel privileged to have experienced this phenomenon, and all I can tell you is that it’s an awesome experience. ROBERT RINGERRobert Ringer (© 2018)is a New York Times #1 bestselling author who has appeared on numerous national radio and television shows, including The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, ABC Nightline, The Charlie Rose Show, as well as Fox News and Fox Business. To sign up for a free subscription to his mind-expanding daily insights, visit www.robertringer.com.


Commentary: Robert Ringer

Central Bank Musical ChairsIf the last few stock market days are interrupting your sleep, Jim Bianco and

CNBC’s Rick Santelli are saying, get used to it. The total assets of all central banks hit $16.4 trillion plus (an all-time high) and these banks now, collectively, own 33 percent of all the world’s sovereign bonds (someone/something had to buy ‘em).

Santelli’s question to Bianco was, if the aggregate size of the world’s central banks is at an all-time high, and these bank’s have purchased a third of all government paper, will these banks be able to “normalize in size” (shrink) without “going through a lot more stock market anguish?” Bianco’s response was a flat, “no.”

Reversing trillions of dollars worth of securities purchases will create market turmoil. And now that price inflation has entered the equation, the ride is bound to be bumpy. So, who should 401k investors be worried about and keeping an eye on? Bianco and Santelli agree, that person is ECB head man Mario Draghi. Santelli believes Draghi may be caught without a chair in this game of monetary musical chairs. By the way, it’s not all about the Fed any more. “All central bank stimulus is fungible,” says Bianco, “it doesn’t matter who does it.”

The patron saint of central bankers, John Maynard Keynes, wrote in The General Theory,

“For it is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs — a pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, who passed the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops. These games can be played with zest and enjoyment, though all the players know that it is the Old Maid which is circulating, or that when the music stops some of the players will find themselves unseated.”

Surely central bankers aren’t just speculating with funds created from nowhere? However, the once “lenders of last resort” are now engaging in social policies, boosting the collective wealth effect, while keeping the under-capitalized, over-leveraged, and less than competent operators in business.

While the Fed is loaded with Treasuries and Mortgage-Backs, the Swiss National Bank is “in a very risky position. Some 94 percent of its balance sheet assets lie outside the country. According to SNB data, about 20 percent is invested globally in equities, including $88 billion in U.S. stocks,” wrote Mark Grant for Bloomberg last last year.

Draghi’s ECB has a taste for even gamier paper. “According to UBS, the ECB holds 26 bonds rated below investment grade, or “junk,” amounting to $21.2 billion in notional debt,” Grant wrote.

Writing in early December, Mr. Grant, a managing director and chief global strategist at the investment bank B. Riley FBR Inc., concluded, “Regardless of the protestations made by the Fed, and the other central banks, the flow of ‘pixie-dust money’ has not relented. I remind you of the Wall Street adage: ‘Act on what they do and not on what they say.’”

The latest volatility reflects the worry that inflation make cause Draghi to stop the presses (not just talk about it), creating a market event.

Lord Keynes continued in Chapter 12 of General Theory,“Thus the professional investor is forced to concern himself with the anticipation of

impending changes, in the news or in the atmosphere, of the kind by which experience shows that the mass psychology of the market is most influenced. This is the inevitable result of investment markets organised with a view to so-called ‘liquidity’. Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of ‘liquid’ securities. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.”

On the issue of liquidity Evariste Lefeuvre, Chief Economist for Natixis North America and Global Head of Cross Asset Research Expertise in international management, wrote an illuminating piece for Seeking Alpha in 2015. Stepping beyond Murray Rothbard’s “Mystery of Banking” Lefeuvre wrote,

“traditional banks engage in credit intermediation between ultimate savers and borrowers. Modern banks engage, as dealer banks, in collateral intermediation: financing bond portfolios with insured money markets instruments. The list of actors involved is quite long: investment banks, brokerage houses, MMMFs, asset back conduits, SIV, hedge funds…”

He (again, writing in 2015) concluded,“The longer sovereign yields remain low and the longer the scarcity of safe assets

(something very likely given that there is no sign of reduction of the size of the balance sheets of many central banks and, meanwhile, fiscal imbalances are being corrected - see chart below), the most likely is a rise in the percentage of illiquid assets in the portfolios of many investors. Given that the collateral absorption of dealer is dwindling and that repo and MMMFs remain quasi-money claims, the divergence between investors’ needs (yield pickup), central bank policy targets (safe asset negative yields) and regulation outcome (asset light and lower security inventories), the next crisis might not be driven by credit and funding scarcity but rather by illiquid assets and collateral freeze.”

If you’re tossing and turning; you should be. DOUG FRENCH


Commentary: Doug French


Rejecting the Cloudy Logic of EPA Ozone Rules

The Environmental Protection Agency just missed a court-ordered deadline to announce which regions of the country are complying with an Obama-era ozone rule. The agency says it needs more time to make that determination.

Green activists are livid. The Environmental Defense Fund accused the agency of “allowing vulnerable communities to suffer the consequences of polluted air while Administrator Pruitt stalls.”

Ozone is the main ingredient in smog. So one might assume that the nation’s city dwellers are struggling to breathe. Only the activists’ rhetoric is breathless, though. Ozone levels have dropped by a third since 1980.

This precipitous drop didn’t stop the Obama administration from issuing a strict new ozone rule in 2015. The regulation requires states to limit ground-level ozone concentrations to 70 parts per billion. Previous standards issued in 2008 had set acceptable ozone levels at 75 ppb. States are poised to waste billions adhering to these new rules — all to address a problem that has been getting better for a decades.

Regulators are working with states to ease the compliance burden as much as possible. But the EPA can’t nix the regulation on its own. Only Congress can do so.

The new regulations aren’t needed. The United States has already slashed air pollution dramatically. Since 1970, levels of six common air pollutants have dropped by an average of 70 percent across the nation, even as economic output jumped over 240 percent. Levels of carbon monoxide alone have fallen by 84 percent since 1990, while lead concentrations have dropped by 85 percent.

The 2015 regulation, known as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone, would create an immense compliance burden on

many regions of the country. In roughly 180 counties, ozone levels still exceed the 2008 requirement of 75 ppb. The new 2015 standard would move the goalposts. More than 958 counties — roughly one-third of all counties — could be classified as “nonattainment” areas if the standard is changed to 70 ppb.

They’ll face severe penalties for failing to meet the new standards. The federal government can freeze funding for transportation projects. And it can force factories and other buildings in nonattainment areas to install expensive emission reduction technologies.

As a result, local economies would pay a significant price. In 2015, the EPA claimed that compliance would cost states, excluding California, $1.4 billion by 2025.

The actual costs will likely be far higher. As recently as 2011, the agency calculated the annual cost of meeting the 70 ppb standard at between $19 and 25 billion. An analysis from the economic consulting firm NERA estimates that new ozone standards could cost the economy $270 billion annually between now and 2040.

Why would federal regulators choose to ignore the crippling costs associated with their rules? Because they’re required to. The Clean Air Act prohibits the EPA from considering costs when determining air-quality standards.

Congress knows the updated ozone rules will devastate the economy. This summer, the House passed the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017 to delay the 2015 standards. It’s now up to the Senate to do the same.

Over the last few decades, America has made extraordinary progress in ridding the air of harmful pollutants — including ozone. Imposing draconian ozone standards — at immense economic cost — is irrational and irresponsible. MERRILL MATTHEWSMerrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.

Commentary: Merrill Matthews

The U.S. is Going BrokeSay, you’re a fiscal conservative. You think the federal government

is spending too much of your hard-earned tax dollars and that the $20.7 trillion national debt is pushing it. You took a gander at the campaign brochures of each of the major parties in 2016, Democrats and Republicans, and discovered Republicans were actively campaigning on balancing the budget.

So, you rolled the dice and as fortune would have it, the Republicans were elected to majorities in the House and Senate plus claiming the White House for only the fourth time since the Great Depression — the other times were 1953-54 and 2003-07 when they had all three. And, at least initially in 2017, it looked like this might finally be the time spending could actually be cut. President Donald Trump offered his first budget, which proposed increasing defense spending but cutting non-defense and other mandatory spending, with a full $4.5 trillion of overall spending cuts over ten years.

Fast forward a year later, and although Congress did agree to increase defense spending, it was unwilling to cut spending elsewhere. The result is $165 billion of defense spending increases and $131 billion of non-defense over the next two years. The reason?

Once again, the Senatorial requirement to get a supermajority — 60 votes to govern and achieve cloture on any legislation — remains the main culprit. Despite owning majorities in both house of Congress, Republicans still require Democrat votes to pass appropriations bills and other continuing resolutions, which gives the opposition major input into spending. Democrats would not agree to increase defense without also increasing non-defense.

Now, others might note that, in reverse, the filibuster veto on legislation has been almost useless for Republicans. In 2013, having a majority in the House, Republicans were unable to hold up a continuing resolution to achieve concessions rolling back Obamacare. There was a partial government shutdown until Republicans relented. No concessions were achieved. Obamacare remained the law of the land, and spending still increased.

The only achievement on the fiscal side during that period was budget sequestration, which arose out of the 2011 debt ceiling deal. For similar reasons, the sequestration applied to both defense and non-defense spending. In that case, Republicans had the House, Democrats had the Senate and the White House. So, the only spending agreement that could be had was similarly bipartisan, one where if one side could not increase, then neither could.

Similar dynamics played out in the 1980s. Non-defense discretionary budget authority started out at about $160 billion before hitting a low in 1982 of about $138 billion but by 1985 had risen back to nearly $162 billion. The non-defense spending cuts came in exchange for slight tax increases after the historic 1981 tax cuts. Defense spending rose from $141 billion in 1980 to $292 billion by 1988.

The compromise of 1982 again owed to the need for a bipartisan arrangement to get past the Senate. Democrats wanted to pare back a portion of the tax cuts, but to get there, non-defense spending was cut as

well before being allowed to rise again in subsequent years. What could meet muster by both political parties very much dictated the terms of the outcome.

Almost every single funding agreement to keep the government funded, or to raise the debt ceiling, since that time has been bipartisan. Because of this feature, a few different outcomes have occurred: 1) Both sides agreed to increase defense and non-defense spending, as in 2018; 2) Defense and non-defense budget authority was frozen, as in 2011, but then both rose in 2016 and 2017; 3) Defense spending was frozen and non-defense spending cut slightly, but then both were later allowed to rise, as in 1995; 4) Defense budget authority increased and non-defense budget authority was cut in 2000, but then both rose dramatically in the 2000s; and 5) non-defense spending cuts were traded for slight tax increases, as in 1982, before being allowed to rise.

Again, thanks to the Senate filibuster and/or divided government, every one of those has been a bipartisan compromise. Some of them came about after partial government shutdowns. To the extent there were some cuts and freezes on the discretionary side of the ledger, they were all more than offset by increases in so-called mandatory spending — that is, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food stamps and other automatically paying programs based on eligibility.

For that reason, the $20.6 trillion national debt has grown every single year since 1957.

Since 2000, the debt has grown an average 7.4 percent a year. But the Gross Domestic Product has only grown nominally, prior to adjusting for inflation, at 3.96 percent. As a result, the debt to GDP ratio has risen to 104 percent. But it will get worse.

If both continuing growing at those rates, by 2048, the debt will be a gargantuan $185 trillion, but the GDP will only be $42.7 trillion. That’s a debt to GDP ratio of 433 percent. And so ridiculous that nobody would ever believe we could pay it back. We’d be broke.

That is why we hope that the President’s budget he just submitted for Fiscal Year 2019, which includes another $4.5 trillion of proposed deficit reduction and works toward a balanced budget is actually taken seriously by Congress. But if history is any guide, sadly, they’ll ignore it just like they do every year.

To break the bipartisan cycle of increasing the debt, eliminating the filibuster on spending bills could help but only when one party holds the House, Senate and the White House. When each party holds a chamber, that’s divided government and you’d still need a bipartisan deal, filibuster or no filibuster. It’s a feature of the Constitution, which includes majority rule, the bicameral system and the separation of powers.

Because of Congress’ repeated failure to keep spending reined in, that is why so many have supported a Balanced Budget Amendment in the past. Which is probably the way to go, because all this bipartisanship sure is getting expensive. ROBERT ROMANORobert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.


Commentary: Robert Romano



Watching Outfor Our Country, County and CityLIKE A HAWK!

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Before Burning Steve Wynn at the Stake, Consider This…

When it comes to this Steve Wynn kerfuffle, as comedienneJoan Rivers was wont to say, “Can we talk?”

First, I’ve only spoken with Steve Wynn on the phone once. It was in the spring of 2009 after his attorney threatened to sue me over a column I’d written in which I used a quote by Mr. Wynn declaring that “Anybody who raises taxes now is purely psychotic.”

We spoke for almost an hour. No lawsuit was filed. And we actually ended up having a very productive chat about education reform.

We also met once in his office at the Wynn Resort on the Strip in 2011, just after Mr. Wynn did an interview, I think on FOX News, blasting ObamaCare. A mutual friend suggested he pick my brain about possible voter registration projects, but we never went beyond that conversation.

And that’s it. In fact, neither I nor my business nor my non-profit organization has ever received a dime from Mr. Wynn or any of his affiliated businesses. So there’s no financial conflict here.

That said, I can tell you this: If I had been the beneficiary of his generosity I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t return his donations based solely on the unsubstantiated sexual misconduct allegations — and let’s be clear here; that’s all they are at this point…allegations — published recently by the Wall Street Journal.

And now would be a good time to remind everyone of that quaint old American tradition of an individual being considered innocent until proven guilty. The operative word being “proven,” not accused.

In addition, all but one of the accusations made against Mr. Wynn in the WSJ story were made anonymously. So much for facing your accuser. And the one individual who was actually named said only that he “repeatedly asked her to spend time with him outside of work.”

Inappropriate, maybe. Sexual assault, hardly.Plus, multiple other accusers in the story admit that once they made

it known that Mr. Wynn’s alleged advances were unwanted, he stopped. Hardly the act of a “predator.”

And then there’s the report by one unnamed woman who says he paid her $1,000 in cash for a massage.

Now, maybe this woman was offended at being asked to give Mr. Wynn a massage and didn’t want to. But let me suggest that a “Help Wanted” ad offering to pay $1,000 for a one-hour massage would result in women lining up around the block looking for an application. And probably a few men, too!

Oh, and by the way, I wonder if those women claimed the $1,000 cash payments on their income tax returns. But that’s another issue altogether.

Let’s get back to recipients of Mr. Wynn’s contributions who actively, often aggressively, sought his financial support in the past but ran from him like the proverbial scalded dog after the WSJ story broke.

Unless the donations they received were obtained by Mr. Wynn illegally or were somehow related to the accusations — which they weren’t—I just don’t see the point in suddenly deciding to return them. Especially, again,

over unsubstantiated allegations that Mr. Wynn has denied.There is one exception: Attorney General Adam Laxalt returned a

$5,000 donation from Mr. Wynn. But since the Gaming Control Board—which the AG’s office represents — has opened an investigation in this matter, that’s a legitimate reason. But what about everybody else? Two points…

One, if you somehow now judge Mr. Wynn’s money to be “dirty” money, you should give it ALL back, not just what he may have donated over the last year or two.

I mean, how do you say any money given last year is bad, but all the money given for the previous 20 or 30 years during which the alleged conduct occurred is OK?

Makes no sense and is totally hypocritical.Secondly, if you decide to give any of the money back for any reason,

the money should be returned to the DONOR, not given to some charity. If you no longer want Mr. Wynn’s money, give Mr. Wynn’s money

back to Mr. Wynn. To use his money to make a donation to some unrelated charity in a self-serving effort to garner some kind of political brownie points is just plain wrong.

A closing observation—and I KNOW this is gonna get me a ton of “male privilege” hate mail…

Unlike the Jefferson Starship song, we didn’t build this city on rock-and-roll. Las Vegas was built on gambling, booze and sex. Sexy women are, and always have been, featured in advertising from here to the moon. Sex sells. And it oozes all over the Strip.

Our nickname is “Sin City” — which has nothing to do with honoring your father and mother. And the ongoing marketing slogan is, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” — which has nothing to do with our all-you-can-eat buffets.

So for people to be shocked — SHOCKED! — that some kind of sexcapades may have occurred in this decidedly adult playground is ridiculous. This ain’t the Bible Belt — not that there’s anything wrong with that. This is Vegas.

Or as Joan Rivers’ was also wont to say, “Oh, grow up!” CHUCK MUTH(Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. He blogs at MuthsTruths.com)


Commentary: Chuck Muth


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