Penny Press OBER 6, 2016 · In a July 2013 letter, Robert Martinez — civilian co-chairman of that review board — notified Metro of his intent to resign based on Gillespie’s

Penny PressNevada, USA Volume 14 Number 5 OCTOBER 6, 2016

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THE PENNY PRESS,OCTOBER 6, 2016 PAGE 2

By DANIEL HONCHARIW Special to the Penny Press

Transparency is a ripe issue these days. This is especially true for law enforcement.

So when Las Vegas Metro P.D.

boasted of the collective bargaining agreement it recently brokered with its associated union, the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, the deal was immediately branded as a win for transparency.

The occasion was the announcement of the newest, 3-year CBA, approved on September 26 by Metro’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs. The agreement includes a

provision requiring all officers to be equipped with body cameras.

A move in the direction of transparency, no doubt. But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

A thorough review of the newly-approved CBA reveals that the LVPPA did not embrace the provision to equip all officers with body cameras with open arms. To the contrary, the police union refused to budge on the issue until Metro conceded to the union’s demands for additional salary increases.

This quid pro quo was expressly incorporated into the agreement.

Under Article 25.6,The Parties agree that regularly

assigned uniformed members of the Department will be required to wear a BWC, while on duty at all

times.The parties recognize that .25%

of the salary increase in July 2016, .5% of the salary increase in July of 2017, and .25% of the salary increase in July of 2018 are a result of the Parties agreeing to the conditions identified above in Article 25.6.

Thus, it seems local law enforcement — the frequent target of anti-transparency allegations in recent years — is on board with more sunlight on police operations, but only conditionally and when the price is right.

Clark County residents will recall the controversy over a series of dubious officer shootings in recent years, many of which lingered prominently in the news media.

Responding to this worrisome

trend, then-sheriff Douglas Gillespie — as has current Sheriff Joe Lombardo since — asserted the department’s willingness and intent to become more transparent in its operations, including through increased use of body cams on Metro’s officers.

So, why then does this transparency — which was promised independent of additional public money — come at a price to taxpayers?

The fact that body cameras are now a negotiable item during union bargaining demonstrates the extent to which transparency has become hostage to Southern Nevada union power.

Moreover, this isn’t the only recent occasion when the LVPPA has effectively opposed public transparency in government and

Penny PressNEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 14 NUMBER 5 OCTOBER 6, 2016

Penny WisdomYou've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world. —Bill Clinton

The Conservative Weekly Voice Of NevadaInside:McPaper and NYT:Send In The Clowns

See Editorial Page 6

RON KNECHT PAGE 5FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6ROBERT RINGER PAGE 7SALLY PIPES PAGE 9G. RICHARD OLDS PAGE 10RICK MANNING PAGE 11CHUCK MUTH PAGE 14

Metro Cops Union: No Pay Increase, No Body Cam

Commentary

Continued on page4


broader notions of professionalism in policing.In 2013, six members of Metro’s Use of Force Board resigned abruptly

following then-sheriff Gillespie’s refusal to accept their recommendation that an officer accused of misconduct, Jacquar Roston, be fired.

Following Gillespie’s decision to impose a milder suspension in lieu of termination, many criticized the LVPPA for its aggressive opposition to the board’s recommendation, so as to protect one of its own — notwithstanding the review board’s findings that Roston had flagrantly violated departmental policies and procedures.

The LVPPA, thus, lent credence to a frequent criticism against public unions — that they put their members’ interests above police obligations of professional integrity.

In a July 2013 letter, Robert Martinez — civilian co-chairman of that review board — notified Metro of his intent to resign based on Gillespie’s refusal to honor the board’s recommendation.

Martinez wrote, in part:I am saddened by what I feel is your inability to maintain the integrity

and credibility of the Critical Incident Review Process. I can no longer support the department’s consistent effort to minimize openness and transparency.

Ironically, the Roston shooting incident itself was briefly referenced during the same September 26 Fiscal Affairs Committee meeting when the new CBA was announced. The reference immediately preceded the FAC’s approval for a $400,000 settlement of a federal civil-rights lawsuit the victim in that unjustified-shooting case had filed against Metro.

Significantly, the pay-for-wear agreement between Metro and its union does not, by itself, guarantee more transparency for LVMPD police conduct.

As events nationally make clear, exactly when cameras are turned on and operating is a critical element in whether police transparency is real.

Evidence is provided by a growing number of police-involved shootings where — contrary to departmental policy in each instance — an officer’s body-worn camera did not record the event in question because the officer present never activated his or her camera.

Contextually, a department’s commitment to transparency is only as solid as its commitment to abiding by its own policies governing body-

worn camera use.When it’s learned that cameras were not activated per departmental

policy prior to any incident being reviewed — as reported from both Baton Rouge and Charlotte this past month — the general public, often in conjunction with local media, develops its own interpretation of the agency’s purported failure to adhere to its own policies.

Unfortunately, in the case of Metro PD, its policy governing body-worn camera use is not well-known, likely because it is not conspicuously available on the department’s website.

Metro’s willingness to make greater transparency a bargaining issue with its union guarantees only that body cameras will, in some form or fashion, be an ongoing political issue for years to come.

Thus, that Metro and its union have agreed to wider use of body cams is only a modest first step toward more transparency in Nevada law enforcement. Serious additional steps remain to be completed.

Rather than leave police transparency hostage to Metro’s collective bargaining process, body-worn cameras should be codified into state and county law.

Nevadans need only look to the 2015 Nevada legislative session to see how easily this can be done — as when Senate Bill No. 111 was passed into law.

Introduced by State Sens. Aaron Ford and Kelvin Atkinson, SB-111 requires any Nevada Highway Patrol officer “who routinely interacts with the public to wear a portable event recording device while on duty.”

It further requires NHP officials to “adopt policies and procedures governing the use of portable event recording devices after which the state Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice must then review those policies and procedures.

This NHP precedent illustrates the ease with which similar valuable rules could be implemented in Clark County.

Although political opposition may arise from the LVPPA, which has an interest in keeping body cams within the collective bargaining process, the price tag for transparency needn’t be that high.

Daniel Honchariw, MPA, is a public policy analyst at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

Legislature, Not Cops Union, Should Make Body Cam RulesContinued from page 3

Lester Holt Very Biased in Moderating Presidential Debate

First thing in last week’s Presidential debate, moderator Lester Holt told a whopper that illustrates the left-wing bias of lamestream media pundits and how they concoct completely false narratives to serve that bias and promote statist-liberal Democrats.

“We’re calling this opening segment ‘Achieving Prosperity,’” he began. “And central to that is jobs. There are two economic realities in America today. There’s

been a record six straight years of job growth, and new census numbers show incomes have increased at a record rate after years of stagnation. However, income inequality remains significant, and nearly half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”

His totally out-of-context reference to records clearly suggests that economic times are great, and he soft-pedalled the qualifier about income inequality. This narrative implies President Barack Obama has done a fine job on the economy and so electing his political heiress Hillary Clinton should be a source of hope, not dire concern.

As we detail below, despite Holt’s job-growth factoid, Obama’s recovery is the worst on record and getting worse. And even with the 2015 jump in incomes, Americans’ incomes are lower today than before Obama took office, while poverty

levels and income inequality are higher.

The reasons for all this are the policies statist liberals, politically-correct progressives and their lamestream media cheerleaders have promoted for 60 years, culminating in a blow-out orgy since 2008.

Economic growth is the most important thing because it increases material human well-being and provides basic human needs such as food, clothing, shelter and health care, especially for our least fortunate and most needy people. Together with freedom, it promotes human flourishing, including education, arts and sciences, and the quality of life.

The “record” long job growth has produced only 1.15 percent yearly job growth since the end of the Great Recession, or about three-fourths of the long-term annual job growth rate.

More important, the economic growth rate during this recovery has been 2.1 percent and falling; the 2016 figure is 1 percent. The average economic growth rate across all recoveries from World War II to the Great Recession was 4.4 percent. Over a decade, a 4.4 percent growth rate means peoples’ incomes will be 39 percent higher than at a 1 percent rate.

Further, the labor market is leveling off, with hiring being slower than in recent years, labor force participation stuck at a 40-year low and many folks stuck in part-time work even though they’d like full-time employment. Business investment, which creates jobs, has been dreadful for two years, and corporate earnings are decreasing for the sixth consecutive quarter.

So, job growth has been slow and getting slower. At the same time, extremely low productivity growth has produced the worst economic growth and recovery

on record despite the modest job growth. Why? As we noted last year in Nevada’s first Popular Annual Financial Report: Government excess is the prime reason.

Confirming our diagnosis and prescriptions, Harvard economist Robert Barro recently wrote: “What could have promoted a faster recovery by enhancing growth? … strong rule of law and property rights, free trade, rolling back inefficient regulations and other constraints on market activity, … fiscal discipline (including a moderate ratio of public debt to GDP), efficient taxation …”

In short, the main cause of our problems is the government excess the statist liberals have foisted on us on all fronts for about 60 years, capped by Obama’s blowout. The problem is all the destructive policies Hillary Clinton proposes to crank up further if she’s elected.

Holt’s claim that incomes have increased at a record rate? In just-released numbers that some experts question, incomes increased from 2014 to 2015 after years stagnating during Obama’s recovery. But more important than a one-time dubious increase is that median household income was higher at the end of the last two recoveries: 1.6 percent in 2007 and 2.4 percent in 1999.

Inequality and poverty? In a column earlier this year, we showed income inequality has increased more on Obama’s watch than any other since records were first kept on this matter 50 years ago. And the poverty rate is 3.3-million higher than in 2007.

When you know the facts and figures, Holt’s misrepresentations are glaring and inexcusable.


The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:

Mary Jo Frazier, the former head of Boulder City’s animal shelter, who plead guilty to a felony animal cruelty charge and saved the taxpayers who supported her pathetic life for years the costs of a trial before they (figuratively) hang her. She is a useless piece of white trash.

The U.S. Supreme Court which will not hear the NCAA’s appeal of the Ed O’Bannon case, leav-ing in place lower court rulings that found amateurism rules for big-time college sports violated federal antitrust law but prohibited payments to student-athletes. The justices on Monday reject-ed the appeal in a class-action lawsuit originally filed by O’Bannon, a former UCLA basketball star, and later joined by other athletes.

The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To:

Hillary Clinton for asking the dumbest question of the campaign, “How can you lose a billion dollars in the casino business?” The moronic former Secretary of State should ask that question of Caesar’s Entertainment (nee Harrahs) or MGM, both of which managed to do just that. In Las Vegas, no less www.pennypressnv.com

Tips Of Our Capand

Bronx Cheers

Commentary: Ron Knecht & Geoffrey Lawrence

RON KNECHT and GEOFFREY LAWRENCE

Who are Bill Sternberg, David Mastio, Jill Lawrence, Dan Carney, Thuan Le Elston, Josh Rivera, Eileen Rivers and Saundra Torry?

Have you ever heard of them?

Ever gone to dinner with them?

Let’s put it another way. Do you know all of them well enough to take their advice on who NOT to vote for?

I’ll end the suspense. This assemblage of self-important yo yo’s is the “editorial board” of USA Today, also known in journalism circles as McPaper. And last week, they wrote an editorial calling Donald Trump all kinds of three dollar words—because they all fancy themselves Ernest Hemmingway—and urging the mere commoners who read McPaper NOT to vote for Trump.

Worse, as far as the practice of “journalism” goes, none of these clowns had the cojones—not even the women—to sign their “opinion”.

Now if the late McPaper founder Allen Neuharth had signed such an editorial, that might be one thing. He, at least, built Gannett and founded a newspaper or two. His actual real life experience extended to more than sitting in a well-appointed newsroom and trying to act like Ed Asner playing Lou Grant.

Same for guys like Colonel Robert McCormick at the Chicago Tribune and William Randolph Hearst at any of the newspapers he founded.

But these McPaper clowns?

Hell, I’d be more inclined to listen to the fictional Margaret Pynchon who played the publisher in Lou Grant.

Here is how these “courageous journalists” signed their missive:

USA TODAY’s editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

In fairness, if you dig deep enough, you can find out who these people are. But you have to guess at their level of life experience, competence and all of the other factors which would endow someone with the wisdom to tell us mere

commoners how to vote.

These guys merely got a job at the Gannett corporation and Viola!—they’re smarter than we are. Go figure.

But even that arrogance doesn’t top the New York Times.

The latest newsflash from the grey lady was that Donald Trump might have lost a billion dollars in 1995 and if he did, then he probably would not have had to pay taxes for about 18 years.

This from a newspaper company which bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion, (among the highest price ever paid for an American newspaper) and sold it in 2013 for $70,000. Do you think THAT sale may have had a tax advantage? Possibly not because the Times may still be losing money.

We tax income in this country at the Federal level. We also use the tax code to encourage investment which, in turn, encourages employment.

If what the Times is saying is true, this means that Donald Trump invested a Billion Dollars which he lost. That money went into many other people’s pockets. It funded paychecks, equipment and a whole bunch of other things. Including payroll taxes, real estate taxes, sales taxes. Because he did not get that money back (if the Times is actually telling the truth) in the form of income, rightly or wrongly, he would be allowed to take that loss against income going forward. That’s the law for him, me, you and. . .the New York Times.

Now in Trump’s case, his other businesses are very successful. They have produced enough income, assuming the Times is reporting accurately—always a leap of faith—so that Trump has come back. That’s a lot harder than getting bribed by Goldman Sachs for making a short speech and getting paid a quarter of a million dollars.

But the clowns at USA Today and the New York Times wouldn’t understand that as they apparently don’t like guys who can come back from a Billion Dollar loss.

These guys would rather have someone they can bribe. And they know that because they can ask Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs would too.

FRED WEINBERG


OPINIONFrom The Publisher...

McPaper and The Times: We're Smarter Than You


Making TimeIn an interview I did some years ago with Hugh Downs, I asked him

how he finds the time to get so much accomplished. He explained that people who complain about not being able to find the time to do things they say are important to them are approaching the issue with the wrong mind-set. His philosophy is that you don’t “find the time” to do anything; you “make the time.”

Finding time implies there is a certain amount of unused time somewhere in your day that you can utilize to work on something that’s important to you. But if your days are like mine, not only do you not have extra time on your hands, you can never hope to work on even those things that you consider to be of prime importance.

So if you’re constantly searching for a time opening to start exercising, take some online courses, or, as in the case of Hugh Downs, read all of the great works of literature, the likelihood is that you’ll never get around to doing any of these things. Parkinson’s Law is all too true: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

I highly recommend that you take Downs’ advice and, if a project is important enough to you, make the time to work on it. Otherwise, it may take you much longer than necessary to complete it — or perhaps even never work on it at all.

Which means, of course, that you have to prioritize, a practice that everyone likes to talk about but very few people are able to master. I realize that many folks don’t like to hear it, but in order to become effective at prioritizing, I believe you have to look at your business and personal life as one.

Perhaps the best example of this is exercise. Though you may think of exercise as part of your personal life, the reality is that it directly impacts your business life as well — especially if you die from a lack of it! Dead people — or even sick people — aren’t high earners. I know from experience that the only way I ever get around to exercising is if I make it a fixture in my regular schedule and set a specific time on specific days to do it.

Remember, if you feel as though you’ll never catch up on everything you want to do, you’re right. The only people who get everything done are those who are not going anywhere in life. (Hint: If you spend a great deal of time watching television, it’s a good bet that you may be in that group.)

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that if you’re over the age of twenty-five and spend hours on end playing with, and staring at, your smartphone, you’re probably better off to ignore everything I’ve said in this article and just continue on with your normal way of life. The withdrawal symptoms from your smartphone addiction could be so traumatic that it may be impossible for you to focus on adult projects.

Bottom line: Forget about trying to find time. In an active life, there’s none of that particular commodity lying around unused. If something is important enough to you, make the time to do it. Remember, you have free will, so the plain truth is that you can do anything you really want to do at any time you choose to do it. ROBERT RINGERRobert Ringer (© 2016)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


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Commentary: Sally PipesThe “Public Option” Is Just Single-Payer on the Installment Plan

Obamacare’s government-run insurance markets are collapsing. Insurers are losing millions of dollars — and proposing double-digit premium hikes combined with high deductibles to try to stanch the bleeding. It’s no wonder that exchange enrollment is roughly half what the Congressional Budget Office predicted, 11.1 million instead of 21 million.

So what’s the left’s answer to this government-caused debacle? More government, naturally. This time, Obamacare’s partisans are calling for a new government-run insurer to compete against private insurers in the exchanges. This “public option” is only a precursor to a full-blown, government-run, single-payer healthcare system.

Thanks to Aetna’s decision to pull out of all but four states — and defections by UnitedHealth, Humana, Blue Cross, and others — one-third of the country will have only one insurance carrier to choose from next year. Alaska, Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wyoming will have just one insurer per rating region statewide.

The people who engineered this mess should be hanging their heads in shame. Instead, many of them are celebrating — not because Obamacare is failing but because they see its failure as an opportunity to push for still more government control over Americans’ health care.

“The best argument for a single-payer health plan is the recent decision by giant health insurer Aetna to bail out next year from 11 of the 15 states where it sells Obamacare plans,” said Robert Reich, a former Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton.

But progressives face the same problem pushing single-payer they always have — the public won’t stand for it. So they’re dusting off an old idea that will get them to single-payer without using those words.

It’s called the public option. The idea is to have a government-run insurance plan available in every market to compete with private insurers.

“The public option is one of those policy ideas that hits the trifecta: simultaneously simple, popular, and effective,” said Yale professor Jacob Hacker.

He’s also all but admitted that the public option will invariably lead to single payer.

“We’re going to do it in a way that we’re not going to frighten people into thinking that they’re going to lose their private insurance,” he said in 2008.

The government can price a public option however it wants and absorb any losses with deficit spending. Private plans can’t do the same; they’ll eventually go out of business.

The idea that a public option would be “simple, popular, and effective” is laughable. After all, that’s precisely what Obamacare’s cheerleaders promised that the law would be. Remember? “Just visit HealthCare.gov, and there you can compare insurance plans, side by side, the same way you’d shop for a plane ticket on Kayak,” said none other than President Obama in 2013.

The end game is clear. And single-payer health care has been an unmitigated disaster everywhere it’s been tried. The government-run Veterans Health Administration is a monument to waste and inefficiency, where veterans can die on a wait list to see a doctor. In Canada and the United Kingdom, patients suffer from a chronic lack of access to advanced equipment and therapies — and months-long waits for care.

The very last thing our nation needs is to move closer to single-payer by implementing a public option. Americans need health reform that empowers doctors and patients — not the federal government. SALLY PIPESSally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The Way Out of Obamacare (Encounter 2016).


A Pressing Challenge for American Medical Schools: Boost Student Diversity

American medical schools are suffering from a severe case of economic homogeneity. Three in four med students come from families with incomes in the top 40 percent of the population. Just 5 percent of students come from the bottom income quintile.

People from poor backgrounds aren’t the only ones underrepresented in medicine. The field lacks sufficient numbers of minorities of all sorts — socioeconomic, ethnic, even linguistic.

Medicine’s diversity crisis isn’t just cosmetic. It’s harming patients.About half of medical students are white males. Ethnic minorities

comprise just 4 percent of medical school faculty and 8 percent of American doctors.

This homogeneity is fueling physician shortages in vulnerable communities. Doctors are most likely to work in areas that share their demographics. White medical students from wealthy backgrounds tend to return to well-off, predominantly white locales to practice. Conversely, communities that produce few medical students also tend to have few practicing physicians.

Take rural areas. Not only are there very few people from these communities training to be doctors — medical school pedagogy often ignores them entirely. Just 4 percent of family medicine training and 5 percent of internal medicine training occurs at rural, community-based health clinics.

As a result, while about 20 percent of the American population lives in rural settings, only 10 percent of doctors practice there. Rural communities have 20 percent fewer doctors per person than their urban

counterparts.Studies show that med students from rural areas are more likely to

return there to practice. To address the shortage of rural doctors, med schools need to recruit rural students in the first place.

The story is similar for racial minorities. Research suggests that black doctors are more likely to practice medicine in communities with higher proportions of black residents. Likewise, Hispanic doctors tend to work in areas that have, on average, double the share of Hispanic residents relative to populations served by non-Hispanic doctors.

Increasing the number of black and Hispanic doctors will surely increase access to care for their brethren.

Consequently, boosting the diversity of the physician workforce isn’t just a feel-good mission. It’s crucial to improving the quality of care, especially for at-risk Americans — and can have tangible, positive consequences for patients and doctors.

Some have taken up that charge. The University of California-Riverside’s med school provides admission preferences to students who are first-generation, speak English as a second language, come from economically disadvantaged communities, or reside in inland Southern California, a historically underserved area.

At the institution I lead, St. George’s University, all second-year students go through a 10-week rotation at a community hospital in Grenada, in the Caribbean. We’ve also made diversity the focus of our recruitment efforts. Our students come from 97 different countries; non-U.S. residents account for 35 percent of our enrollment.

Today’s medical schools don’t reflect the ethnic, socioeconomic, or geographic composition of the patient populations doctors serve. By boosting diversity, med schools can improve the quality of their training, help close the healthcare access gap, and improve patient health. G. RICHARD OLDSDr. G. Richard Olds is president of St. George’s University in Grenada.

Commentary: G. Richard Olds

Talk to Your Congressman Now to Stop TPP, Mass Jail Break in Lame Duck

Congress is going back home so that individual members can ask for you to send them back for another two years. Rather than recap the work that has or hasn’t been done, it is instructive to learn what Congress pushed back to the lame duck session to decide after you have given them your vote.

There are four issues that figure to be featured prominently in the lame duck: funding the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, a criminal justice bill which was too hot to handle during the regular session, ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a water resources bill known as WRDA.

While Congress did pass a funding bill before the end of the previous fiscal year, that bill only covers funding through December 9, 2016, guaranteeing another opportunity for President Obama and current Congressional leaders to set spending priorities.

This debate will largely be driven by Democrat threats to shut down the government over Christmas if their pet projects are not included in an even more bloated government. The GOP will send out press releases urging fiscal restraint, but if previous negotiations are any indication, will give in to Harry Reid’s last gasp demands and declare it a victory that they are out of session before Santa comes down the chimney.

The criminal justice bill is a different animal. While Speaker Paul Ryan is the leading advocate in the House for the legislation, he faces stiff opposition within his own party on the bill. On the Senate side, Senator Mitch McConnell faces an even more split Republican delegation as Congress grapples with whether they should release major drug traffickers early onto the streets of America. As crime and claims of unfairness in the justice system become dominant themes in the November election, this issue may very well be decided by what Members of Congress hear from voters about whether they sympathize with the tough job facing police or with those who claim victimhood.

The water bill is usually a pretty arcane item on the legislative agenda, but it was thrust into prominence as Republican promises to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Flint, Mich. in response to their self-inflicted water crisis (this is not to diminish the problem, but it was created by bad choices by Flint’s local officials.) It is anticipated that a series of other water projects will also be funded through the bill as it becomes a veritable Christmas tree for western and other interests before it passes into law.

Finally, and the biggest fight, will be over passage of TPP in the House and Senate. There will be a number of issues brought up and argued on this issue related to the pharmaceutical industry and others, but the main battlefield will be over the exporting of what remains of the U.S.

manufacturing sector to the eleven other nations involved in the deal, and the transfer of the ability of future Congress’ and Executives to make laws and regulations without review by a foreign unelected tribunal.

Once again, Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell will be the primary advocates for passage of the TPP, and given the narrow margin of victory last year on fast track trade authority, they don’t have many votes to spare. Already nine House Republicans who voted for fast track have publicly pledged not to support TPP in the lame duck. Additionally, should Donald Trump become the President-elect, there will be heavy pressure on his early supporters in Congress to pull out all the stops to prevent passage of the treaty.

Ultimately, the fate of TPP will be decided by whether or not members of Congress hear from their constituents while they are campaigning to oppose it or not. Once back in D.C., the corporate crony lobbyists and campaign funders will be in the ear of every member demanding passage, and unless voters make a strong impression in face to face meetings between now and election day, history tells us that Ryan and the establishment cronies will likely win.

And that is the point of this piece, right now voters have a chance to get face to face with their members to let them know that they expect fiscal restraint, no TPP and to oppose letting major drug traffickers out of jail early. If members don’t hear that before the election, they certainly won’t listen once they get back into the comfy confines of Capitol Hill. The time is now to stop bad legislation from passing in the lame duck. RICK MANNINGThe author is president of Americans for Limited Government.



Commentary: Rick Manning



Zero-for-Zero Beats False Info and Skewed Analysis Every Day Ending in “Y”

According to a report published last week by Crop Protection News, various candy manufacturers and sugar-substitute lobbyists recently teamed up and “accused the government of burdening taxpayers with extra tariffs” on sugar.

CPN reports that the Sweetener Users Association (SUA) claims U.S. sugar processors “defaulted on government loans (and) taxpayers were left holding the bag.”

But as CPN notes, there is “little or no evidence” to back up the SUA’s claim, and the bill the group references was actually passed in 2014, the year AFTER the supposed loan defaults occurred.

The SUA accusations also failed to note that the problem in 2013 was due to Mexico unlawfully “dumping” cheap, government-subsidized sugar into the U.S. market in violation of established trade agreements. That situation is being addressed and rectified.

The fact is the U.S. sugar program has cost taxpayers exactly ZERO dollars since passage of the 2014 Farm Bill.

And projections by both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Congressional Budget Office predict there won’t be any cost to taxpayers through 2019, when the current farm bill expires.

Rather than rely on false information and skewed analysis by anti-sugar program critics, Congress should focus on free market reforms that would actually move the global sugar market towards an actual free, fair and balanced market.

And the most promising of such reforms is a resolution proposed by Congressman Ted Yoho of Florida. “Zero-for-Zero” is a brilliantly simple but as-yet-untried idea by which the United States would eliminate its current sugar program in return for foreign competitors simultaneously getting rid of theirs.

“In other words,” Seton Motley of Less Government wrote back in July, “we have zero protectionism – and so does everyone else.”

“Consider that there are more than 100 sugar producing countries worldwide,” adds Dr. Mark Hartley of Americans for Limited Government, “and there are also basically 100 different sugar policies, each of which includes various forms of government intervention.”

A “free market approach rewards the best and most efficient business people and not the most heavily subsidized producer,” Hartley concludes.

Zero-for-Zero is not just a good idea, it’s the BEST idea. Congress should give it a shot. CHUCK MUTHMr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of Nevada News & Views


Commentary: Chuck Muth Every week in Nevada, someone is trying to screw us.

Most of the time, we elected that someone.

That's why we conserva-tives NEED a WEEKLY voice.

That's why the Penny Press has made sticking up for us little guys a whole new Nevada tradition.

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Documents

Penny Press OBER 6, 2016 · In a July 2013 letter, Robert Martinez — civilian co-chairman of that review board — notified Metro of his intent to resign based on Gillespie’s