Nevada, USA Volume 8 Number 27 MARCH 31, 2011

Penny Press
Nevada, USA
Volume 8 Number 27 MARCH 31, 2011
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 2
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Al Thomas
Doug French
Chuck Muth
John Getter
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Wyatt Cox
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16 PAGES
VOLUME 8 NUMBER 27
MARCH 31, 2011
Half Nevada's Budget Gap Due To Spending Increases
due to spending growth, low tax
rates and the Nevada Depression.
These are our conclusions, based
Special To The Penny Press
on our experience in Nevada governWith many claims, numbers and ment. A companion report is availnarratives circulating about the state able at pennypressnv.com.
budget, what are the key issues? To
First, the gap is $2.4-billion:
answer that, we researched state spending of $7.7-billion versus revrecords and analyzed:
enues of $5.3-billion. Closing that
gap requires 31% spending cuts or
45% tax increases -- or some of
both.
From a short-term and accounting perspective – that is, from Fiscal
1) the gap between the spend- Year 2011 (FY11) to FY12 – the gap
ing that would be required to main- is the product, first, of the mid-2011
tain current state service levels and expiration of $1-billion of taxes.
the revenues expected the next two Another $0.7-billion is due to cost
years under current state law; and
increases in the next biennium man2) the growth in state spending dated by state and federal law, $0.6levels versus the growth in our econ- billion more to the expiration of
omy and Nevadans’ incomes to deter- federal ARRA or “bailout” funds
mine the extent to which that gap is given to Nevada, and $0.1-billion to
By Ron Knecht
and Lynn Hettrick
Commentary
tax revenue declines expected from
the current biennium to the next one.
Our analysis assumes no cost-of-living or other pay increases for state
employees.
Second, from a longer-term policy and economic perspective, while
state revenue declines due to the
economic downturn caused more
than half the gap, over $1-billion
of it results from very rapid state
spending growing since 2000.
Contrary to claims from specific
beneficiaries of state spending (public employees, vendors and subsidy
recipients), there have been only
minor recent reductions in some
state spending, not a series of draconian cuts anywhere. In fact: 1) state
K-12 education and human services
spending rose faster this decade than
all other categories of state spending; and 2) all major state spending
categories grew much faster than
our economy and incomes.
Because Nevada had its two
largest tax increases in the last eight
years – totaling almost $2-billion
– the inescapable conclusion is that
Nevada has spending and economic
downturn problems, not a problem
of unduly low tax rates. Even if
one considers the taxes that sunset this year to fill a hole created
by Nevada’s economic depression,
more than $1-billion in increased
spending this decade remains as the
real problem.
People in the private sector
have suffered much greater cuts in
employment and pay levels than
have public employees supported by
their tax dollars. Over the last 43
months, 16.6%, or one of every six,
private-sector jobs in Nevada has
disappeared – more than 190,000
Continued on page4
The Conservative Weekly
Voice Of Las Vegas
Inside:
Don't Fear The Campaign
Fear The New Senator
See Editorial Page 6
Penny Wisdom
A government that robs Peter
to pay Paul can always depend
on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw
MOONWALKERS
CHUCK MUTH
FRED WEINBERG
DOUG FRENCH
AL THOMAS
MATT BARBER
FLORI HENDRON
PETS OF THE WEEK
PAGE 4
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PAGE 6
PAGE 7
PAGE 10
PAGE 11
PAGE 14
PAGE 15
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 4
Nevada Spending Grew 31% Faster Than Economy
Continued from page 3
jobs lost. The number of state employees has declined from its high-water
mark by only 2.5%.
Further, total state spending rose annually through FY09 and was essentially constant from FY09 to FY10. This decade, state spending has grown
31% faster than our economy and Nevadans’ incomes. State higher education and public safety spending fell an average of less than 1% per year from
FY08 to FY10. However, driven by large increases in human services and
K-12, total state spending grew by 9.5% over that time, while Nevadans’
incomes dropped by 6.1% -- a 15.6% difference favoring the public sector.
In short, private-sector taxpayers – families and businesses – have been
devastated by a depression that is greatly the product of excess public-sector taxing, spending and regulation. Yet, they have been required, via tax
increases, to keep Nevada public employees, vendors and recipients of state
subsidies insulated from the great majority of the effects of that depression.
Our report also discusses the reasons that claims about “budget cuts”,
especially “Draconian” ones, are generally bogus and misleading. The
meaningful data are actual spending levels, not budget levels that can be
manipulated in self-serving ways spending data can’t.
It is notable that significant declines in Nevada K-12 educational quality
(as measured by student achievement) occurred despite rapidly increasing
education spending during the last decade, while real structural reform was
completely absent. So, when advocates claim that we need to spend more
on K-12 to get better educational and economic outcomes, they need first
to explain why increases in Nevada’s past spending have produced poorer,
not better outcomes.
Governor Brian Sandoval proposed low-cost reforms that the education
bureaucracy has in the past successfully opposed that could improve educational results. So, improving policy and practices is what Nevada needs
to do in K-12 before considering significantly increased spending. In the
past, when advocates sought more funding, they did not present plans and
proposals of that sort to justify spending increases; instead, they just asked
for ever “more.”
Finally, increased spending or any policy to improve education – which
we greatly need to improve – cannot improve workforce quality in time to
reverse any cyclical downturn. So, claims that education or research spending will end this depression are false, even though such spending promotes
economic diversification and growth in the long run.
Low tax rates do have timely counter-cyclical effects, and they promote
long-term economic growth. So, our challenge is to combine optimal tax
rates and education reform.
Ron Knecht, of Carson City, is an economist and Chairman of the Board
of Regents Business & Finance (budget) Committee. Lynn Hettrick, of
Gardnerville, was Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Gibbons in 2009-10
and served in the Nevada Assembly in 1993-2006.
Moonwalkers An eBook Worth Reading
A familiar name came up the other day in the context of the unrest in
Libya.
The USS Kearsarge.
Immediately, my mind went back to the very pleasant memories of my
boyhood, following the flights of Project Mercury because any person who
followed the space program as closely as we all did back then, knew that
the USS Kearsarge was the carrier which recovered Wally Schirra and his
Mercury capsule Sigma 7 as well as Gordon Cooper and Faith 7.
While the original Kearsarge was decommissioned in the 70’s and this
ship is a namesake, that didn’t stop the memories from flooding back and
making an otherwise grim day much more pleasant.
The race to the moon was probably America’s finest moment on the
world stage which didn’t involve killing people and breaking things.
The other side of the story is that it was probably the Soviet Union’s
finest moment, too, because this was one race between two different philosophies in which there were no real losers.
Las Vegas based ABC News Producer and free lance writer John Getter
spent years in Houston covering the race and then a few in the private space
exploration industry.
He has written an ebook called Moonwalkers in which he tells some
stories heretofore not generally heard—even by those of us who went out of
our way to know everything about the space program.
The first thing Getter explains is the difference between the Soviet and
the American programs.
It can best be summed up by the story of the Fisher Space Pen.
In the Project Mercury days, NASA assumed that astronauts needed to
be able to write in space. After all, we were there partially as scientists and
scientists take notes.
The problem is that pens hold ink and ink has to flow.
In a weightless environment that is easier to say than actually do.
It took millions of dollars in research, but eventually, the Fisher Space
Pen was born and can still be purchased today. It will write in any environment.
So, however, will the pencils that the Soviets used.
Their philosophy, points out Getter, was “good enough”.
Ours was, “better is better”.
The Soviets accomplished incredible things and almost beat us to the
moon with limited budgets and technology which we sniffed at.
Getter’s book—which is a fairly short read, and priced at $2.99 in the
Amazon Kindle Store goes on to humanize the Russian Cosmonauts such as
Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth.
It seems that on his way to his historic flight, he had to, well, urinate.
So, he stopped, unzipped the fly on his good enough Russian space
suit and did so on a tire of his vehicle. This, of course, was made possible
by two things. One was that there was no television. This was the Soviet
Union. The other was that Russian spacesuits weren’t the elaborate affairs
that American spacesuits were. They had zippers on their flies.
Every Russian flight after Gagarin’s—presumably where a male cosmonaut was involved—followed that tradition.
Unfortunately for the Americans, that tradition was foreclosed because
our technology was better and, more importantly, it would have looked
unseemly for Walter Cronkite to have to explain what was happening.
Getter’s book rocks on with stories like that, guaranteed to bring a continuous smile to any space buff’s face.
His conclusion, by the way, is that better really is best.
But you can’t overlook good enough nor the run that the Soviets gave
us for our money.
FRED WEINBERG
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 5
Commentary: Chuck Muth
Nevada
Legislature vs.
Big Gaming
As the 2011 Nevada Legislature
chugs along, the state’s gaming
industry is being pulled into two
brouhahas it probably never expected
when the opening gavel came down
last month.
The first is a proposal to allow
Nevadans to play poker online
against fellow Nevadans and/or
non-U.S. residents around the globe.
We’re told by proponents that this
would not violate the federal ban on
online gaming as long as the games
remain taboo for Americans outside
of Nevada, thus skirting interstate
commerce concerns.
The devil is always in the details,
but some kind of online gaming is
inevitable. As George W might say,
you can’t put the genie back in the
toothpaste tube. And Nevada needs
to retain its cutting-edge dominance
in the gaming industry by jumping in
front of this bandwagon now or risk
ending up as the caboose.
Opposition to the proposal by Big
Gaming in Nevada smacks of selfserving, short-sighted protectionism,
but it’ll be tough for legislators to
stand up to the state’s 800-pound
gorilla in this company-owned town.
However, considering the potential
buckets of new revenue Nevada
The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:
The Butler Bulldogs for sort of re-enacting the movie Hoosiers for the
second year in a row. Every so often a small, private school with a limited
budget makes it to the top of a world usually reserved for huge state schools
with limited academic standards and huge budgets giving the rest of us
some hope. No matter what happens next week, this is the feel good story
of the year.
The U.S. Department of Justice for exacting poetic justice with the indictment of Doug Hampton who has made it his life's work to gain revenge on
retiring Senator John Ensign. Ensign did have an affair with Hampton's
wife, but extortion is not a proper response.
The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer
And A Bouquet of Weeds To:
The Nye County commission and nanny in chief Sheriff Tony DeMeo who
scolded Assessor Shirley Matson for having the nerve to question of the workers
building the new county jail are, in fact, legal residents. It's a reasonable question, she's an elected official and if people don't like it they can vote her out in
the next election. Asking the question is NOT racist.
could generate without raising taxes
on families and small businesses,
perhaps now is the time for them to
grow a spine.
And then there’s this unclaimed
winnings issue.
Here’s the deal: A person
playing, say, a slot machine, might
unknowingly get up and leave the
machine without cashing in a couple
dollars worth of winnings. Indeed,
you can find people wandering
through casinos, going from
machine to machine, just looking
for unclaimed winnings to call their
own.
Well, this week we learned that
such nickels and dimes add up.
Industry-wide around the state, there
is estimated to be $20-35 million
worth of unclaimed winnings each
year. And at present time the casinos
themselves are keeping that money
and applying it to their bottom line.
But a proposal by Assemblyman
William Horne would take that
money away from the casinos and....
give it to the government.
Now, I can appreciate the
argument that casinos keeping money
they already lost is rather unsavory;
however, the entire transaction is
between a private customer and a
private business. Under what bizarre
sense of logic could the government
possibly have any “right” to that
money? Just because it “needs” it
and wants it? I don’t think so.
Perhaps what casinos should be
doing with the unclaimed winnings
is donate it to a private charity of
some sort. Or maybe use it to create
a private fund for the purpose of
providing underprivileged children
school vouchers so they have a chance
to escape our crappy governmentrun public schools.
But under no circumstance should
that money go to the government.
That’d be like giving the car keys
to a drunken teenager. No good can
possibly come of it.
CHUCK MUTH
Chuck Muth is president of
Citizen Outreach and publisher
of
NevadaNewsandViews.com.
He may be reached at chuck@
citizenoutreach.com
OPINION
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 6
From The Publisher...
Don't Fear The Campaign, Fear The Results
The other day, on one of those Sunday local talking head
shows in Reno, a political science professor, Fred Lokken,
from Truckee Meadows Community College told the host
that he “feared” the 2012 battle for retiring Senator John
Ensign’s seat would attract so much money that the campaign would degenerate into a negative campaign.
What’s to fear?
a tax they didn’t like.
The second is to nominate one lightweight who will try to
bring the other candidate down to his or her level. Contrary
to the mainstream media’s take on the 2010 Senatorial election, that is exactly what Reid did to Angle. She may not
have been the best candidate, but he spent millions demonizing her and the public was so disgusted by the process the
union votes were able to decide the race.
Nevada’s voters are not some amorphous group of people
which marches randomly to the polls and can be influenced If the voters want to avoid that, they need to a) vote in the
by nasty radio and TV ads.
primary election; and, b) select a candidate who won’t disgust them by the night before the general election.
In fact, the evidence is that Nevada voters tend to pick and
choose based on what they perceive to be the facts. And Here something to look for:
they tend to be a whole lot smarter than the pundits want
to give them credit for being.
What did they do five or ten years ago?
Run a pair of lightweights and you will get, I promise you, an
intensely negative campaign. Negative campaigning occurs
mostly when the choices are not particularly good. Picking
the lesser of two evils begets nasty advertising.
In the 2010 race between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle,
Reid—who for most of the campaign polled as a vulnerable
underdog—literally used as his strategy that he may be
pondscum but she was even worse. And he was able to sell
it.
In the case of presumptive GOP frontrunner Dean Heller,
when he was Secretary of State, he did every single thing he
could think of to stop anti-tax initiative petitions from getting on the ballot. And he was, as Nevada’s chief election
officer, successful.
In the case of presumptive Democrat frontrunner Shelly
Berkley, she was once an advisor to casino magnate
Sheldon Adelson and told him in writing that he needed to
make contributions to local judges. The memo she wrote
to Adelson on Sept. 24, 1996, speaks for itself. She follows
Why?
up a recitation about how some judges had been, among
other things, “instrumental in dismissing tickets” for Sands
Because the general perception of the voting public was that employees by declaring: “Judges, like all candidates, rely
neither party put its best candidate forward.
on campaign contributions. Since they are also human, they
tend to help those (who) have helped them. If we want to be
My guess is that if Sue Lowden were running against Ross able to continue contacting the judges when we need to, I
Miller, the nature of the campaign would be very different strongly urge that we donate to the judges I recommended.”
because neither could be considered a lightweight. Still, So give to a judge and, as she puts it on a tape of a phone
nobody was going to challenge Reid and Lowden lost her call, “instead of a $ 500 fine, you pay a $ 20 fine.”
primary to Angle’s grassroots effort.
There is a difference between being popular and being a
There are two ways to end up in the 2010 scenario.
suitable candidate. Ask Ensign who gets to see his name
in the state’s largest newspaper as “Disgraced Senator John
One is to nominate two genuine lightweights. The Republicans Ensign”.
have a bad habit of nominating people who can make the
case that it is their turn, irrespective of actual merit. The I wouldn’t “fear” a negative campaign. I would “fear”
Democrats in Nevada have a similar problem except that another lightweight Senator.
they additionally have to kowtow to the Clark County unions
and as a result, they get left wingnuts more often than not,
FRED WEINBERG
people such as Dina Titus or Barbara Buckly who never met
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 7
Commentary: Doug French
The Secret Life Of Metaphor
If not for metaphors I doubt I could understand much of the modern world. So much
of what it takes to produce what you’re looking at right now I can’t begin to fathom. But
this lack of knowledge doesn’t absolve me from making decisions involving this modern
technology.
When Jeff Tucker walked in my office and announced, “David [Veksler] says that 70
percent of our style sheet is not being used.” My mind quickly conjured up an image of
Jerusalem.
You see (I hope) when I visited that ancient city a few years ago, we took a tour of old
Jerusalem. Part of that tour was seeing the archeological diggings of the Jerusalem that the
current city sits on top of. Rome and Athens are other examples of cities on top of cities.
“So, when you say 70 percent of the style sheet is unused, does that mean, buried, with
only the usable thirty percent lying on top, like present-day Jerusalem,” I asked, “with the
rest of the code a useless buried jumble of unintelligible symbols, like archeological diggings?”
“That’s right, the extra code is cruft, the useless buil up of legacy content that only
slows down development over time.”
The fact is I communicate in metaphorical barrages. It took some adjustment for me to
realize that not each and every sports analogy that would roll off my tongue would easily
be understood by everyone at the Mises Institute.
I had a friend recently say words to the effect that he wanted to kick the metaphor
habit, that thinking that way was “lazy and inexact.” Perhaps, but why rack your brain being
exact, when it’s so much quicker to connect the dots with a pithy analogy. See?
Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action that “Analogies and metaphors are always
defective and logically unsatisfactory.” But Mises was specifically writing about the
numerical evaluation of case probability and in the construct he presented it was arithmetical terms that were being used as metaphor. The “analogy borrowed from a branch of higher
mathematics,” pales next to a epistemological understanding of a problem.
However, Mises was sympathetic to the use of metaphor in daily speech, writing that
metaphorical expression is used to “imaginatively identify an abstract object with another
object that can be apprehended directly by the senses.”
Philip Z. Maymin and Gregg S. Fisher, writing in the Spring 2011 edition of The
Journal of Wealth Managment , argue that investment advisors provide added value to
their investor clients not so much for their advice about individual investment decisions but
by serving as “refrigerator locks.”
The authors cite an article from a 1978 psychiatric journal about a night eater who
taped signs with “Stop! Think!” on his fridge and then resorting to rearranging the furniture to trip himself up on his way to grab a midnight snack. Finally, the moonlight gobbler
locked his fridge and gave the key to his roommate to keep him from his nocturnal noshing. The lock worked, and Maymin and Fisher believe investment advisors who keep their
clients portfolios under lock and key, keeping them from acting on emotion and making
irrational trades out of fear, greed, or regret are doing for their clients what the refrigerator
lock did for the midnight muncher.
Maymin and Fisher believe, “Enlightened behavioral investors ought to be more willing to pay on the order of one percentage point to an investment manager who will prohibit
or at least impede aggressive orders than to pay nearly four times as much for the privilege
of excessively and detrimentally trading their own account.”
The author’s conclude “that one of the important functions served by investment advisors is to act like a lock on a refrigerator to prevent the individual investor from overindulging in unhealthy choices as it relates to the their portfolios.”
This all reminds me of the old joke told in Las Vegas racebooks.
“I’ve got a tip on a horse running in the next race at Aqueduct.”
“I’ll pay you $20 not to tell me about it.”
Read the financial section of any paper or website on any day. Stocks rise, bounce,
climb, leap, or they plunge, slide, drop, and fall. On rare occasions do stocks even remain
steady.
However, as James Geary points out in his brilliant book I is an Other: The Secret Life
of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World, psychologists studying market
movement metaphors find that two specific types of the metaphors are used in describing
market action.
Agent metaphors “describe price movements as the deliberate action of a living thing,
as in ‘the NASDAQ climbed higher’ or ‘the Dow fought its way upward.’” Conversely,
object metaphors “describe price movements as non-living things subject to external forces,
as in ‘the NASDAQ dropped off a cliff’ or ‘the Dow fell like a brick.’”
These different metaphor types bend the minds of investors different ways. Agent
metaphors give the human investor reader the image that the trend is likely to continue
because it implies an “an internal goal or disposition.” Object metaphors do the opposite.
Passive terms like dropping and plummeting prompt panic selling because these metaphors
paint the dire picture that the trend is irreversible and out of the investor’s control.
Humans are always looking for patterns as a matter of survival, and when the picture
isn’t complete our brains fill in the blanks. Unfortunately in the game of investing humans
are not served well by their pattern-seeking brains shaped by the metaphorical flourishes
of financial writers. So, for most of us, our brains succumb easily to metaphor and pattern
making rather than logic or mathematics.
Geary writes that we are but gullible frogs in the investment pond. The frog palate is
not discriminating, he explains. As long as an object moves in a jerky, staccato, burst, the
frog figures it’s a fly. “It does not delay, debate, or deliberate,” writes Geary. “The frog
immediately shoots out its tongue to grab it.”
If an object doesn’t move, or moves in a straight line, frogs aren’t interested. No sense
wasting time, if the object doesn’t fit the pattern. That’s how frogs survive. Investors do the
same, “If it looks like a pattern and acts like a pattern, we think, it must be a pattern.”
Certain people’s minds don’t fall prey to the metaphorical blitz that the world of communication unleashes. Geary explains that those with Asperger’s syndrome have impaired
social communication, interaction, and imagination. So it’s often thought these people have
behavioral problems when in fact their brains interpret everything in strictly literal terms,
making the metaphor-laced world a difficult one.
In his book The Big Short, Michael Lewis told the story of the socially awkward oneeyed doctor with Asperger’s syndrome, Michael Burry. Burry was working 16-hour shifts
as a medical intern when he started blogging about tech stocks from hospital computers
whenever he had a free minute.
Ultimately, he dropped medicine and started Scion Capital in 2000. Starting with a
little more than a million dollars, four years later he was managing $600 million and turning down investor money, after racking up annual returns of 55 percent, 16 percent, and 50
percent, all in the wake of the dot-com crash.
Burry thought it was his glass eye that kept him from easily interacting with people.
“He found it maddeningly difficult to read people’s nonverbal signals; and their verbal signals he often took more literally than they meant them,” Lewis explains.
In the Internet world, Burry could attract money based on his blog posts and performance. Warren Buffett had to take a Dale Carnegie course to get over his social awkwardness in order to meet with investors when he started decades ago.
Burry was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s, sometime after he determined that the
mortgage market was going to melt down. Reading 130-page subprime-mortgage-bond
prospectuses was a snap for Burry, while nobody at Moody’s or Standard & Poors (S&P)
was bothering to read these things at all.
He bet big on a crash in mortgage paper. However, it didn’t go south right away, and
his investors were breathing down his neck, as the S&P was soaring over 10 percent in 2006
while their investment in Scion was plummeting 18 percent. Still, Burry was resolute in his
view that he was right. And right he was: over $800 million right for him and his investors.
But the investors for whom he made so much money said little; Burry’s success only served
to shut them up.
So while Burry’s investors were whipped into a frenzy by financial press metaphors as
Burry’s mortgage bet sank, and the common knowledge had home prices marching forever
upward, Burry’s mind remained focused on the raw numbers.
Geary points out there is a rare breed who experience numbers as physical sensations,
such as colors or sounds. This condition, referred to as synesthesia, is thought by neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran to be the precursor to metaphor.
Daniel Tammet, author of Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an
Autistic Savant, has what Geary describes as “an especially rich type of synesthesia, in
which he experiences individual numbers up to 10,000 as having specific colors, shapes,
textures, movements, and even emotional tones.”
Tammet describes the number five as a clap of thunder, 89 as falling snow, and David
Letterman looked like 117 when Tammet appeared on his show — tall and lanky. Nobody
compares to Tammet who once recited the number pi from memory to 22,514 digits, but
Geary writes that we all maintain some synesthetic abilities.
The fact is we would not be able to understand things we enjoy every day, such as
music, if not for spatial metaphors such as low and high, rising and falling.
Geary starts I is an Other with the words of Rimbaud: “a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses,” is required for language to “include everything:
perfumes, sounds, colors, thought grappling with thought.”
Hart Crane’s “Logic of Metaphor” appropriately closes Geary’s work. Crane lived
a life as intense and vivid as his verse, disorganizing his senses with alcohol abuse. Hart
wrote to Harriet Monroe responding to her puzzlement over imagery he had used in two of
the poems he had submitted to her for publication.
“Its paradox, of course, is that its apparent illogic operates so logically in conjunction
with its context in the poem as to establish its claim to another logic, quite independent
of the original definition of the word or phrase or image thus employed. It implies (this
inflection of language) a previous or prepared receptivity to its stimulus on the part of the
reader. The reader’s sensibility simply responds by identifying this inflection of experience
with some event in his own history or perceptions — or rejects it altogether. The logic of
metaphor is so organically entrenched in pure sensibility that it can’t be thoroughly traced
or explained outside of historical sciences, like philology and anthropology.
“The logic of metaphor is the logic of our lives,” writes Geary — an arch to connect the
complete unknown with the garden-variety familiar. We would be lost without them.”
DOUG FRENCH
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 8
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 9
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 10
Commentary: Albert Thomas
Risk Is The Reason To Buy
When your broker calls you or a friend gives you a great tip on a stock
they always talk about how much it will go up and the huge profits you can
expect. Yes, and pigs can fly.
Mr. Broker will bury you with information with the pink sheets, green
sheets and slicks and prospectuses. It is worthless as everyone already
knows it. It is trading by looking in a rearview mirror. You want to know
what is ahead not what is behind.
Be careful of any prospectus. It was not written for the investor. Of
course, that is what they tell you. No, it was written for the Dilbert lawyer
in his cubicle at the SEC in Washington. All he cares about is it conforms to
all the jillion securities regulations. He knows them all, but has no idea if the
information in the prospectus is true or how much it has been embellished.
Your friend knows nothing or close to it. He might have a friend who
has a friend who knows someone in the company he is touting. He is trying
to help you so don’t blame him if you lose money with this puppy. (It’s not
a full grown dog yet.)
Now that you have all the POTENTIALS for huge profits has anyone
asked you how much you are willing to lose? Huh? I doubt if you heard that
one before.
Brokers never bring it up as it might keep him from creating a commission. Your friend has his head in Never-Never land and has already taken
off in his hot-air balloon.
Before you become entrapped emotionally by the hype of this great
stock or fund you must get a grip on reality. Not everything investors buy
goes up. Ever heard that one before? The best odds are you have a one
chance In four of making money with any stock or fund purchase.
Buying is not where the smart money looks. Professionals want to know
the risk. How much can I lose if I put my money on this? The NYSE is Las
Vegas East and don’t me give that nonsense about being a long term investor. It is still gambling.
A wise investor will always compute the amount he is willing to lose
before he buys anything. It might be 10%, maybe more, maybe less.
How is that arrived at? It is a personal decision only the investor can
make. Unless it is done the investor will lose money. Doing research will
help. If the equity is volatile the risk could be 20%. Choosing a stock with
low volatility is much preferred.
In real estate you must buy right. In the stock market the investor must
sell right. He must have an exit strategy or he will never make money long
term.
Do you set the amount of risk when you buy? When risk is known you
are able to buy intelligently.
AL THOMAS
Al Thomas’ book, “If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!” has helped thousands
of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method.
Read the first chapter at www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s
the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 11
Commentary: Matt Barber
ACLU: ‘Communism is the Goal’
Irony is defined as “the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of
its literal meaning.” The term doublespeak means “evasive, ambiguous language that
is intended to deceive or confuse.”
There is perhaps no greater example of ironic doublespeak than inclusion of
the phrase “civil liberties” within the inapt designation: “American Civil Liberties
Union.” Indeed, few leftist organizations in existence today can compete with the ACLU in
terms of demonstrated hostility toward what the Declaration of Independence describes
as “certain unalienable rights” with which Americans are “endowed by their Creator.”
Consider the doublespeak inherent throughout the “progressive” Goliath’s flowery
self-representation:
The ACLU is our nation’s guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures
and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the
Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
Now contrast that depiction with ACLU founder Roger Baldwin’s candid vision:
I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I
seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole
control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.
Ironic, isn’t it? So much for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” By combining straightforward segments from each ACLU rendering we arrive with an accurate
portrayal. One that cuts through the doublespeak:
The ACLU is...working daily in courts, legislatures and communities. Communism
is the goal.
In 1931, just eleven years after the ACLU’s inception, the US Congress convened
a Special House Committee to Investigate Communist Activities. On the ACLU it
reported:
The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the communist movement in the United States, and fully 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of communists who have come into conflict with the law. It claims to stand for free speech, free
press and free assembly, but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is
an attempt to protect the communists.
To be sure, the “main function of the ACLU” is entirely counter-constitutional.
A shared objective between both Communism generally, and the ACLU specifically is the suppression of religious liberty; principally, the free exercise of Christianity.
Karl Marx, high priest of the ACLU’s beloved cult of Communism, once said:
“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.”
Even the ACLU’s own promotional materials overtly advocate religious discrimination: “The message of the Establishment Clause is that religious activities must be
treated differently from other activities to ensure against governmental support for
religion.”
Utter hokum.
The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause -- a mere 10 words -- says nothing of
the sort. Its message is abundantly clear, requiring severe distortion to stuff within the
ACLU’s Marxist parameters. It merely states: “Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion...” That’s it. Now let’s break it down. What do you suppose the Framers of the US Constitution
-- a document expressly designed to limit the powers of federal government -- intended
with the word “Congress”? Did they mean State government? Municipal government?
Your local school district? Your third grade teacher? Of course not. They meant exactly what they said: Congress. As in: The United
States Congress! It takes someone with a distinctly disingenuous ulterior motive to
derive anything else. Now what did they mean by “...shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion?” Well, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, a fellow-signer of the Declaration of
Independence, Thomas Jefferson -- often touted by the left as the great church-state
separationst -- answered that question. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause
was singularly intended to restrict Congress from affirmatively “establishing,” through
federal legislation, a national Christian denomination (similar to the Anglican Church
of England).
Or, as Jefferson put it: “[T]he clause of the Constitution” covering “freedom of
religion” was intended to necessarily preclude “an establishment of a particular form
of Christianity through the United States.”
How far removed we are today from the original intent of our Founding Fathers.
The ACLU is largely responsible for creating the gulf between the Constitution’s original construction and its modern misapplication.
The ACLU remains one of America’s most powerful secular-socialist political
pressure groups. It relentlessly tramples underfoot the First Amendment, which guarantees sweeping and absolute liberty for all Americans -- including government employees -- to freely exercise their faith both publicly and privately without fear of reprisal:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof.”
Examples of its constitutional abuses are manifold, but one of the most recent
involves an ACLU assault against a group of Christians in Santa Rosa County, FL.
Liberty Counsel represents those Christians.
An ACLU-crafted Consent Decree has been used as a weapon to threaten school
district employees with fines and jail time for merely praying over a meal, and for
exercising -- even while away from school -- their sincerely held Christian faith. You
read that right. The ACLU is literally seeking to criminalize Christianity.
In August of 2009, Liberty Counsel successfully defended staff member Michelle
Winkler from contempt charges brought by the ACLU after her husband, who is not
even employed by the district, offered a meal prayer at a privately sponsored event in
a neighboring county.
Liberty Counsel also successfully defended Pace High School Principal Frank
Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman against criminal contempt charges, after the
ACLU sought to have the men thrown in jail for blessing a lunch meal served to about
20 adult booster club members.
Under the Consent Decree teachers are considered to be acting in their “official
capacity” anytime a student is present, even at private functions off campus.
Liberty Counsel describes this unconstitutional decree:
Teachers cannot pray, bow their heads, or fold their hands to show agreement with
anyone who does pray. Teachers and staff cannot ‘Reply’ to an email sent by a parent if
the parent’s email refers to God or Scripture. Teachers either have to delete such references from the original email or reply by initiating a new email. Teachers and staff are
also required to stop students from praying in their own private club meetings.
During witness testimony, Mrs. Winkler sobbed as she described how she and a
coworker, who had recently lost a child, literally had to hide in a closet to pray. Although the case continues, on Monday the ACLU suffered a tremendous setback
while freedom took a significant step forward. Federal District Court Judge M. Casey
Rodgers granted in part a Preliminary Injunction in favor of Liberty Counsel’s twentyfour Christian clients.
Judge Rodgers concluded that even though “a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary and drastic remedy,” one aspect of the Consent Decree -- its attempt to prohibit
school employees from fully participating in private religious events -- is so flawed that
it must be immediately halted.
The Court thus enjoined the School Board “from enforcing any school policy that
restrains in any way an employee’s participation in, or speech or conduct during, a private religious service, including baccalaureate” pending a trial on the merits. “Progressives” are nothing if not consistent. As they gain confidence, they invariably rush across that bridge too far. They engage wild-eyed efforts to “fundamentally
transform America” to reflect their own secular-socialist self-image. I’m certain that both the bare-knuckle spirit of the American people and Liberty
Counsel’s enduring 92 percent win record against the ACLU will maintain a durable
safeguard - an “impenetrable wall of separation” if you will - between our constitutionally guaranteed liberties and a subversive “progressive” agenda built upon the distinctly
un-American creed: “Communism is the goal.”
MATT BARBER
Matt Barber ([email protected]) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional
law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.
www.pennypressnv.com
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 12
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Commentary: Flori Hendron
Sharing My Avastin Story
In 2009, 181 women from 31 different countries created the largest
all-female skydiving formation in history. What would possess so many
daughters, mothers, and even grandmothers to don pink jumpsuits and free
fall thousands of feet?
The same things that motivated me to get involved with Pink Skies, the
new film that documents the record-breaking jump: celebrating breast cancer survival and helping to raise more than a million dollars to fight a disease
long overdue for a cure.
Getting my cancer diagnosis 15 years ago, at only 38-years-old, was
shocking and heartbreaking. While most friends enjoyed their late-30s with
few health concerns, I endured painful radiation burns and slowly lost my
hair, my breasts, and even my range of motion.
What was also disheartening was the bureaucratic nightmare brought on
by my insurance company -- and, as of last year, the FDA.
Though I was fortunate to have had health insurance throughout my
illness, as well as top-notch doctors I trusted, my prognosis took a turn for
the worse in 2007: the cancer, which had been stable for years -- thanks in
large part to Herceptin, a cancer drug I started taking in 2002 -- had become
metastatic and spread to my lungs and sternum.
Immediately I began a cocktail of aggressive treatments. First, I tried
Tykerb and Xeloda. That didn’t work. Then I tried Tykerb, Carboplatin, and
Gemzar. Still no improvement. Finally, following a 30-day drug wash-out
and regroup with a new doctor, we tried again. This time, we paired Tykerb
with Herceptin.
My body’s response to this last pairing was disappointing. The Pet/CT
showed continued progression. My goal then became survival, but not at any
cost; quality of life was very important to me.
Following that Pet/CT scan, my doctor suggested I try Avastin. The drug,
which cuts off blood supply to tumors, had only earned FDA approval for
my type of cancer the year before, and many woman were having success
with Avastin -- without tremendous side effects. I was hopeful it could do
the same for me.
Almost immediately, it did.
Avastin gave me my first stable, progression-free scan in years. Today,
almost three years since I began the regiment, I’m not only still here, I’m
enjoying life to the fullest with my family and friends.
Despite my and thousands of others’ enormously successful experiences
with Avastin, neither the health insurance companies nor the FDA really
cares. Well, maybe they would if Avastin weren’t as expensive as it is -close to $8,000 per month -- but given the coldness with which Anthem Blue
Cross refused coverage of my initial Avastin prescription, I can’t be sure.
Not only did Anthem Blue Cross refuse to cover my Avastin regime,
they went so far as to explain that the reason behind their rejection was
because they considered the drug “salvage therapy.” In other words, this was
a last-chance-at-life drug, and to them, my life wasn’t worth “salvaging.”
Had Avastin’s manufacturer, Genentech, not placed me in its patient
assistance program, I would never have been able to afford the drug responsible for me being here today. Fortunately, other breast cancer patients
with better insurance carriers have been able to get Avastin at a subsidized,
affordable price -- an arrangement, however, that isn’t likely to last.
Last month, the FDA moved to strip Avastin of its approval for breast
cancer. Ignoring clinical studies and patient testimonials -- mine included,
which I sent to the FDA’s headquarters -- this step is the first in cutting
off Avastin to all breast cancer patients. Without an FDA approval, especially for a pricey drug like Avastin, insurance carriers and Medicare almost
always drop coverage.
The month before the FDA’s decision, my doctor and I decided to stop
my Avastin treatment when my protein levels rose too high and the risk of
kidney failure became too great. But I am the one who made that decision
-- not the FDA and not an insurance company.
Whether Avastin keeps a breast cancer patient alive an extra three
months or an extra three years is a silly debate. Life doesn’t have a price.
Maybe someone needs to remind the FDA of that fact.
FLORI HENDRON
Flori Hendron is 15-year cancer survivor. She lives in Beverly Hills,
California.
www.pennypressnv.com
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 15
Pet Of The Week
Adopt This Pet !
SAGE
Call
702-672-7204
Sage was found wandering in the desert. This sweet, abandoned
Doberman deserves a better life! She is a mature red and tan
lady about 8 years old, but active, playful, full of life and wanting
desperately to have a family. She is very social and gets along
well with other dogs. She is spayed, up to date on all of her shots
and microchipped. If you are interested in giving Sage a forever
home, fill out an application.
BILLY
Call
702-672-7204
Billy is a sweet blue Doberman about 3 years old. His expressiveness
is punctuated by a striking wrinkle in the middle of his forehead.
Just watch the dreamy look on his face when you rub his ears.
This active youngster weighs 70 pounds and will need obedience
training that his previous owners neglected to provide. He is eager
to learn and once his high energy is properly managed, Billy will
be a loving addition to any family. Billy gets along well with female
dogs and could easily share his home with one.
702-4180433
THE PENNY PRESS, MARCH 31, 2011 PAGE 16
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