penny press 2 september 13, 20182018/09/13 · the penny press,september 13, 2018 page 4 of u.s....

Penny PressNevada, USA Volume 16 Number 2 SEPTEMBER 13, 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,SEPTEMBER 13, 2018 PAGE 2

By MARILYN M. SINGLETON MDSpecial to the Penny Press

During the Supreme Court oral arguments in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to purchase health insurance, people

laughed when the late Justice Scalia asked whether the government could make you buy broccoli. Never happen? The laughable has become reality. A California bill awaiting the governor’s signature forbids restaurants from serving any beverage other than water or unflavored milk with kiddie meals. As of yet, the meal’s purchasers, unlike the restaurant, won’t be

fined for ordering another beverage for their child.

Shrugging off assertions that the ACA was about control, not care, President Obama quipped that his opponents acted like the ACA “was a Bolshevik plot.” That supposedly ludicrous plot is embodied in a too-good-to-be-true congressional bill, H.R. 676, the “Expanded & Improved Medicare For All”. Vote-seeking congresspersons have breathed new life into this 2003 creation. With no dollar amounts in sight, the bill gives the government a blank check to exert total control over our medical care.

H.R. 676 provides that all individuals residing in the United States showing up at the doctor’s office are “presumed to be eligible” for benefits. The federal government will pay for unlimited “medically

necessary” health expenses, including pharmaceuticals, mental health, substance abuse, vision, dental, hearing, and long-term care — with no deductibles or other cost-sharing. Unless a patient opts out, all interactions will be memorialized in a “standardized, confidential electronic patient record system.” Yes, those same electronic records that have been hacked and are contributing to physician burnout.

Overseen by regional offices and the Presidentially appointed 15-member National Board of Universal Quality and Access, participating institutions will receive separate monthly fixed sums for capital expenses (e.g., buildings, improvements) and for operating expenses (including physician salaries). Non-salaried

physicians can be paid based on a national fee schedule that is “fair and optimal” as decided by the government. Finally, each geographic region would receive a single allotment to cover long-term care.

There are some restrictions. Only public or not-for profit institutions may participate. Private physicians and clinics can exist but cannot be investor-owned. And to keep the patients on the reservation, private health insurers are prohibited from selling health insurance coverage that duplicates the government-sponsored benefits.

Ever magnanimous, the government will pay for “reasonable financial losses” resulting from the conversion from for-profit to nonprofit status through the sale

Penny PressNEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 16 NUMBER 2 SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

Penny WisdomAnybody who would betray the man they work for, the President of the United States, is a delusional egomaniacal self-aggrandizing jackass. —Lou Dobbs

The Conservative Weekly Voice Of NevadaInside:Lots of Shame ForShameless Dems

See Editorial Page 6

RON KNECHT PAGE 5FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6ROBERT RINGER PAGE 7DOUG FRENCH PAGE 9G. RICHARD OLDS PAGE 10ROBERT ROMANO PAGE 11CHUCK MUTH PAGE 14

Beware of Geeks Bearing Broccoli

Commentary

Continued on page4


of U.S. Treasury bonds, assuming we choose to buy them. Additionally, the government will compensate insurance and other relevant clerical, administrative, and billing personnel up to $200,000 per person for losing their jobs.

Patients would have “free choice of participating physicians and other clinicians, hospitals, and inpatient care facilities.” But under the business restrictions and capped payments, the better institutions and clinicians may choose not to participate, thus decreasing access.

There is a big bad wolf in this fairy tale. In 2016, the feds spent more than $1.2 trillion on Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Total national health expenditures by all government levels and private entities were $3.3 trillion.

H.R. 676 provides funding from appropriations for federal public health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP); an unspecified increase on personal income taxes on the top 5 percent of income earners; a “modest and progressive” excise tax on payroll and self-employment income; a “modest” tax on unearned income, and a “small” tax on stock and bond transactions.

Fast forward to 2026, when the government predicts that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust fund will be depleted and total national health expenditures will be $5.7 trillion. The federal government collected about

$100 billion in Medicare premiums and a total of $3.32 trillion in taxes last year. Given the projected costs, no cost-sharing, and the $2.4 trillion shortfall, the bill’s “modest” tax increases will soon be obscene.

Not only will the benefits decrease as the money runs out, patients will see real world consequences of total control. For example, Oregon’s Medicaid program wants to limit coverage for opiates for some chronic pain conditions and taper off patients who have been taking opioids long-term — even if they have no signs of addiction. Long-term care will be an easy target; the ACA’s long-term care program was scuttled due to cost concerns. With current nursing home costs averaging $7,500 per month, inevitably when the monthly allotment is depleted, hospice care becomes the medically necessary treatment.

Tell the sponsors of H.R. 676 that it’s your money, your health, your privacy, your life. The government is neither our parent nor our benefactor. The government is not the middleman you want between you and your doctor. At a time when the movement toward innovative and personalized care is moving forward, care via government control is taking us backwards.

Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is also a Board-of-Directors member and President-elect of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

Benefits Bill Decrease As Money Runs OutContinued from page 3

The Secret to Success

Some people seem to have it all.

During our lives, we’ve noticed that many successful people we know in business also find time to stay physically fit, eat healthy diets, read broadly, soak up culture and stay well informed. And make a great home life for their children. The success of many high achieving people often isn’t confined to just one area of life but extends to a number of dimensions.

We often try to emulate these role models, and what we’ve learned is relatively simple: Successes and struggles in life stem much from the habits people adopt. People who plan their time and dedicate

it to achieving different things throughout each day tend to lead happy, balanced and prosperous lives.

We were reminded of this lesson in a different way recently when we came across a revealing statistic from the National Endowment for Financial Education: About 70 percent of lottery winners go broke within seven years of winning. Many actually wind up in worse shape than before they won. Rates of addiction and suicide are alarmingly high among this group, even though they’re commonly called “lucky.”

Financially educated individuals tend not to play out of recognition that the odds of winning are lower than being struck by lightning; so with near certainty the outcome will be the loss of a dollar. It’s better to invest that dollar into an

income-producing asset like stocks or bonds.

Likewise, wealthy folks tend not play both because they understand this principle and because they have no immediate desperate need for money. In most cases, a thorough understanding of the low odds of winning such games leads them to habits that keep them from desperation.

So lotteries involve what economists call “adverse selection” of players: that is, they tend to be played primarily by less financially sophisticated and wealthy individuals. Academic research confirms this, noting that lottery spending is concentrated heavily among the lowest third of households by income. Also, lottery players tend to come from younger age demographics, people who presumably also have less financial experience.

As a result, people who win (against ridiculous odds) often instantly come into a large fortune without having developed healthy and productive habits. In fact, academic studies show a strong correlation between gambling pathology and alcohol or drug abuse.

In other words, many lottery players (and winners) have developed extremely unproductive and personally destructive lifestyle habits that don’t necessarily disappear when they win. To the contrary, lottery winnings often fuel these habits for a time, until the winnings are exhausted.

Lottery winners also frequently pay heavy amounts of taxes due to their lack of financial sophistication. Many winners, for instance, make large gifts to their friends or show off with profligate purchases without realizing all the tax consequences,

such as gifts being taxable to the giver and not the recipient. Others make imprudent or uninformed investments that don’t pan out.

A notable study in 1978 found lottery winners characterized themselves as less happy and less fulfilled than other randomly selected people.

These are sad cases. But they reinforce to us the lesson that happiness and success in life depend on the adoption of healthy and productive habits, including regular and disciplined study of a wide range of topics.

Recognizing the adverse selection inherent to lotteries, winners are effectively case studies in what happens when wealth is randomly bestowed upon an individual with poor habits. Statistics show that within a short time his poor habits will again render him poor. But healthy and productive habits have elevated many folks from humble beginnings to high levels of wealth and success.

That’s why we teach our children to choose heroes based on the richness of their habits and discipline and not the richness of their bank account. Poor habits cause even the largest family fortunes to wane. Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus will not be held up to Geoff’s children as role models and Ron’s 15-year-old daughter rejected them herself (without any coaching) some time ago.

Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Families are always rising and falling in America.” However, some families, such as the Adams family of Massachusetts, seem to pass along good habits and success from one generation to another.


The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:The many members of President Trump’s staff who came forward to challenge the report-ing of the overstuffed Bob Woodward in his work of fiction, Fear, which was released this week. These aren’t people who need the jobs. They are retired four star generals among others who have the balls to push back against the Washington swampmonster.

The Las Vegas Golden Knights. They are no longer Cinderellas, having made the Stanley Cup Finals in their first season, but they are Nevada’s team and ready to start their second season. They are also 10 to 1 this season as opposed to 500 to 1 last season to win the Cup. Go Knights!

The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To:Overstuffed Washington swampmonster Bob Woodward and CBS for promoting a book that is probably pure BS but will fit two of their joint goals. One is to make money and the next is to fit their joint narrative of a White House in chaos. Woodward once got lucky during the Nixon administration and has been riding that horse since then. www.pennypressnv.com

Tips Of Our Capand

Bronx Cheers

RON KNECHT and GEOFFREY

LAWRENCE

Commentary: Ron Knecht & Geoffrey Lawrence

After the first three days of watching Democrat stupidity live at the Brett Kavanaugh Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, I came to the conclusion that while the end of the Republic may not be nigh, a whole lot of people should be ashamed of themselves.

Let’s start with the Senate.

To allow the pop up demonstrators who continuously interrupted the questioning of Kavanaugh simply demeans a body which has an approval rating so low that many of their mothers must not like them. Now you know why.

And this is not just pointed at Democrats. The Democrat Party encouraged it but the Republicans allowed it. And all of the little Astroturf clowns who were “arrested” by the Capitol Police will get their hands slapped because the Washington DC Judges don’t see much wrong with this sort of thing. (What should happen is they should be sentenced to public service as restroom attendants at Reagan Airport or the Smithsonian or Metro stations for months on end. That won’t happen because the restroom attendant union would go berserk.)

While the outcome of the hearings was a foregone conclusion, the Democrats made some of the most nonsensical arguments, always forgetting that someday—as is always inevitable—the shoe will be on the other foot and those same arguments will come back to haunt them—if they have any sense of shame which they don’t.

Then, there is the former newspaper known as the New York Times.

It ran an anonymous op-ed piece from someone who purported to be a “senior official in the Trump administration” which told America that people around the President—himself or herself included—know better than the President and regularly try and thwart him in pursuing his agenda.

Of course, it could have been a New York Times editorial writer stringing together passages from the new books by Bob Woodward and Michael Wolff, all of which were also either made up or based on anonymous sources who probably made it all up.

The key here is that the Times wants you to believe it is a credible newspaper. It’s not. It is the Pravda of the Democrat Party and NeverTrumpers everywhere.

And, like the modern Democrat Party, it appears to also have no shame.

The truth is that you’re no longer going to find much if any truth in the New York Times. This is no longer the newspaper which won New York Times vs. Sullivan or the Pentagon Papers case. This is the New York Times of Karl Marx and Barack Obama.

The truly amazing part of all this is the way these clowns have unified their attack on one person—the President of the United States of America.

They hate this guy so much, they’d take Mike Pence as his replacement. (At least Pence had a lifetime of politics.)

They hate this guy so much, that if Donald Trump personally cured cancer, they’d hold fund raisers to preserve cancer.

And now, they have gone so berserk, that Barack Obama has stepped into the fray, taking credit (you can’t make this stuff up) for today’s economy and, somehow, accusing the President of using the, get this, FBI and the Department of Justice as a “cudgel” to go after his enemies.

Uh Huh.

His credentials as a constitutional law professor notwithstanding, his ability to remember history is warped. Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton for starters. He seems to have forgotten meetings on tarmacs and FISA warrant applications based on phony dossiers paid for by the DNC. No matter how loud his voice is, the former President is a deeply flawed spokesman for either the FBI or the Department of Justice having abused both. As well as the IRS. Remember Lois Lerner?

Put simply, these people make John Brennan accusing the President of treason look and sound like an alter boy.

The American people are simply not that stupid. They proved it in 2016, they’ll prove it again in 2018 and 2020.

With all due respect to Vegas handicappers, I’d take Trump on the money line.

FRED WEINBERG


OPINIONFrom The Publisher...

Plenty of Shame to Go Around for the Shameless


He Certainly Wasn’t Heroic RecentlyEditor’s Note: This was written about a year and a half ago about the now late John McCain. It’s more accurate than ever.

One of the great mysteries of life is why Arizonians keep reelecting John McCain. Is it because he’s touted far and wide as a war hero? Probably so.

But even if we stipulate that his five-and-a-half years spent in captivity in Vietnam qualifies him as a hero, we also should keep in mind that his capture is now 50 years old. That doesn’t lessen his war-hero status, but it’s absurd to give him a pass on his words and actions of today. And today he is, and has for a long time been, a self-righteous jerk.

He obviously doesn’t like Donald Trump, and that’s fine. A lot of people don’t like him. But his over-the-top criticism of the current administration is undermining his credibility as a representative of the people of Arizona, not to mention every person who voted for Trump.

I give McCain a pass for opposing Trump’s travel ban, because even though I disagree with him, some of his arguments against it appear to be reasonable and pragmatic. But his comments criticizing Trump’s handling of the media is neither reasonable nor pragmatic.

Worst of all, McCain’s indignation over Trump’s characterization of Judge James L. Robart as a “so-called judge” after he issued a nationwide temporary injunction against Trump’s executive order to ban people from seven predominantly Muslim countries reminded me of his nauseating deference to Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential run.

None other than famed criminal-defense attorney Gerry Spence, who has never lost a case in his 60-year career, takes issue with the idea that judges are above criticism. In his writings, he even goes so far as to say it’s ridiculous that everyone is required to stand when the judge enters the courtroom.

Spence unapologetically says that the idea that a guy or gal wearing a black robe is deserving of unquestioned respect is a sham. On the contrary, he believes judges are often more corrupt than the people who are on trial before him or her.

If I had my way, I would rather have term limits on federal judges

(especially Supreme Court Justices!) than members of Congress. Of course, that would create some difficult problems, e.g., who would determine who their replacements should be? If a sitting president with dictatorial designs had the power to decide on all nine members of the court, then he could quickly put together a Supreme Court that would give him his wish.

Finally, McCain’s criticism of Trump’s blitzkrieg of the transparently dishonest media — while in a foreign country yet! — is both naïve and indefensible, even for him. When he takes the position that it’s a threat to our freedom for a sitting president to criticize the totally corrupt media that has devolved into the PR wing of the Democratic Party, he makes himself look foolish.

Speaking to “Meet the Press” from Germany, McCain said that without a free press, “I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.” Huh? After obediently watching the cheerleading media do everything within their power to help Barack Obama move toward a dictatorship, McCain now sees a problem with a president who has the courage to expose the media’s nonstop lying?

Of course the president, or anyone else for that matter, has a perfect right to call out the media when they create “news” out of thin air and favor the Democratic party by a wide margin over Republicans. Everyday citizens should not be intimidated into falling in line and easing up on pushing back against the tyranny of the Radical Left.

Unfortunately, like cockroaches, you can never get rid of all the Radical Left miscreants who are running loose on our streets, which is all the more reason to keep the pressure on them. Eternal vigilance truly is the price of liberty.

The opinions of war heroes notwithstanding, when it comes to the media and judges, never be afraid to call them out for their dishonesty. As the Radical Left is fond of saying: Resist, resist, resist! 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

Musk’s Tesla Trump Trick FlopsRalph Keyes has a book out called “The Post-Truth Era.” He writes,“This is post-truth. In the post-truth era, borders blur between truth and lies,

honesty and dishonesty, fiction and nonfiction. Deceiving others becomes a challenge, a game, and ultimately a habit. Research suggests that the average American tells lies on a daily basis. These fibs run the gamut from “I like sushi,” to “I love you.””

The President lies, over 4,229 and counting at 7.6 false claims per day. Politicians have always lied. They can get away with it. There are no market forces to prove their lies wrong, just some journalist looking up stats and pointing out the falsehood after the fact. Yawn.

However, entrepreneurs and business people cannot lie around the market. If they make outlandish promises, the markets punish them. Ask Elon Musk, whose Tesla Trump trick recently flopped.

Musk said he was taking electric vehicle company Tesla private at $420 per share on August 7th. ‘Funding assured’ he tweeted. Wolf Richter writes,

“The ludicrousness of his lie that had instantly spread all over the world had an unintended consequence for eons to come: The term “funding secured” can never again be pronounced with a straight face.”

The market didn’t believe Musk could raise $50 billion to complete such a deal and the stock price remained 20 percent below the buyout price. Tesla’s stock price has sunk from there, closing at $280.95 today. The market is worried that Musk can only keep Tesla going with more capital raises. Meanwhile, Musk has tweeted that the company will be cash flow positive in Q3 or Q4 2018. This would be an ultra-sudden turnaround for a company that’s lost $5.7 billion in total and burned through $1.9 billion in the first half of 2018 alone.

Musk, according to Bill Maurer, has told 125 and counting official lies. Maurer is nice and calls it a failure list.

Further up in the capital stack, bondholders are getting nervous. Richter explains,

“The $1.8 billion in senior unsecured notes, due in 2025, that Tesla sold in August 2017 fell to a record low of 85.69 cents on the dollar today. Investors

that acquired them at issuance are down over 14%. This chart via FINRA and Morningstar depicts the entire life of those bonds:”

Musk may think highly of himself and his company but ratings agencies, not so much. The bonds are rated six notches into junk (B-) by Standard and Poor’s and seven notches into junk (Caa1) by Moody’s.

Tesla suppliers are also getting skittish. A survey by the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA), which represents automotive suppliers, was revealed on Wolf Street:

• 18 of 22 respondents believe Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies.

• 13 of 23 respondents said Tesla requested a “large” price reduction on current business and/or retroactive rebates. This is an issue that became public on July 23.

• 11 of 23 respondents said Tesla had asked them to extend payment terms.• 8 of 22 respondents said they were worried that Tesla might file for

bankruptcy.• But all of the respondents said they wanted to continue or grow their

business with Tesla – which is logical, as long as they’re getting paid.

If the company doesn’t raise cash soon, it’s all over for the suppliers. Tesla’s Accounts Payable jumped 26% year-over-year, to $3.0 billion at the end of Q2 2018.

We’ve been led to believe that every Tesla that rolls off the factory floor is spoken for. However, inventories have jumped by nearly 50% year-over-year, or by over $1 billion, to $3.3 billion at the end of Q2 2018.

This might explain what happened to the 17,000 Model 3 cars that Tesla claimed to have “produced in the first half but did not “deliver” – as documented by endless photographic and video evidence of huge parking lots full of these cars.

Tesla bond holders are counting on Musk being able to sell more stock. Tesla stockholders are counting on Musk being able to sell more bonds. Musk can tell all the fibs he wants, eventually Wall Street will say no.

DOUG FRENCH


Commentary: Doug French


Cure for American Doctor Shortage Lies Abroad

Waiting at the doctor’s office could soon become a national pastime. One-third of America’s doctors are on the verge of retirement. Yet the number of students graduating from U.S. medical schools is growing at an anemic rate — less than 1.5 percent a year, on average, over the last five years.

The U.S. population will reach nearly 360 million by 2030. The number of elderly Americans, who require twice as much medical care as young people, will surge 50 percent. As a result, America could be facing a shortage of 121,000 doctors by 2030, according to a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

To narrow that gap, the United States must look beyond its borders, to graduates of international medical schools. Many are U.S. citizens eager to return home to begin their careers. It’s time to welcome them.

For many, the doctor shortage has already arrived. Over 84 million Americans live in federally designated Health Care Professional Shortage Areas, where there’s less than one primary care physician for every 3,000 people. We’d need almost 14,000 extra primary care doctors right now to resolve this shortage.

Things are projected to grow worse over the next decade. By 2030, the AAMC estimates, we may need an additional 49,000 primary care physicians to meet the needs of our patient population.

Even if they enroll more students, U.S. medical schools won’t plug this gap on their own. Most graduates of U.S. schools pursue careers as specialists. Last year, only 38 percent chose residencies in primary care.

U.S. med school graduates also tend to cluster in relatively affluent cities and suburbs. Only one in four practices in a medically underserved region. And just one in ten doctors practices in a rural area, even though

20 percent of Americans live in one. Graduates of international medical schools have proven more than

willing to fill these gaps. Last year, nearly 70 percent of international medical graduates chose residencies in primary care. IMGs are twice as likely as their U.S.-trained counterparts to practice in rural America.

Many of these international graduates are U.S. citizens who chose to pursue their medical studies abroad. For example, 74 percent of the students at the medical school I lead, St. George’s University in Grenada, are Americans.

It’s imperative that America’s leaders ensure that graduates like these can return home to complete their training.

At the national level, Congress could pass the bipartisan Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, which is currently stalled in the House of Representatives. The bill would fund 15,000 additional residencies — at least half of which would be in specialties experiencing shortages.

States can ease their doctor shortages by actively recruiting international medical graduates.

Consider one California initiative offered through the UCLA School of Medicine. Created in 2007, the International Medical Graduate Program offers financial support and tailored test-prep classes to doctors trained abroad as they prepare for the U.S. Medical License Examination and the residency match progress. In return, program enrollees must pledge to complete a family medicine residency in California and then practice for at least three years in an underserved community.

Private-sector organizations and charities should also consider funding residencies, especially in underserved areas.

America’s physician shortage is set to worsen as the population grows and ages. International medical graduates could be the cure for this looming shortfall. G. RICHARD OLDSG. Richard Olds, M.D., is president of St. George’s University (www.sgu.edu).

Commentary: G. Richard Olds

Trump Should Call China’s BluffIs North Korea independent? Or is it a satellite of China? During the

Korean War, when U.S. forces pushed toward the Sino-Korean border in the summer of 1950, China immediately intervened, pushing the U.S. back to the 38th parallel. From 1951 to 1953, the war was a stalemate.

Since then, although the war never technically ended, North and South Korea have stood at opposite ends of an ideological struggle, the Cold War, which ended in the last century. Now the demilitarized zone stands as a monument to those past conflicts. In the time since then, North Korea has vigorously pursued nuclear weapons in a bid to claim dominance on the peninsula and to permanently stand up its regime as a world power.

How much has China invested in that nuclear endeavor? How does it play into Beijing’s economic plans to dominate global trade? Is North Korea China’s nuclear deterrent against trade sanctions?

We may be about to find out, as President Donald Trump simultaneously pursues his June 12 agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and considers up to $200 billion of tariffs against China as it has dramatically expanded its global market share of manufacturing.

If North Korea is indeed a satellite of China’s, then Beijing would actually be the proper pressure point to achieve denuclearization — by fighting the trade war.

We might not say it. China’s trade subsidies on currency and other state-run enterprises plus dumping steel on global markets all on their own render it worthy of the tariffs.

Sanctions on North Korea, although necessary in their own right until verified denuclearization is pursued and achieved, do not necessarily hurt the persons making the actual decisions to pursue nuclear weapons, if Kim is merely doing Beijing’s bidding.

It may also be the case that in order to persuade China — and Russia, for that matter — to cooperate in administering sanctions against Pyongyang requires consequences for non-cooperation. President Trump recently had to call off further talks with Kim by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo amid signals of non-cooperation from all three.

China and Russia have reportedly helped North Korea to get around the sanctions, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported North Korea is still developing its weapons. In addition, North Korea’s top diplomat, Kim Yong Chol, sent a letter to Pompeo expressing displeasure because the U.S. had not signed a peace treaty to formally end the war. These headwinds are rather par for the course, and to be expected as the U.S. attempts to achieve its policy.

Whether China is personally building the nuclear weapons for North Korea, the sanctions cannot and will not be fully effective without their cooperation. Therefore, the $200 billion of tariffs should absolutely be the table. U.S. economic policy preferences among investors do not trump U.S. national security interests. Trade sanctions with China should be cast in the lens of economic policy, but they may also be necessary to persuade China that cooperation in denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, and working toward a trade accord with the U.S., is preferable to fighting a

trade war with Trump that it cannot win.China has far more to lose in a trade confrontation with the U.S. In

2017, it shipped $505 billion of goods to the U.S., compared with $130 billion of U.S. exports to China, according to U.S. Census data. As a result, the goods trade deficit with China hit an all-time high of $375 billion in 2017.

President Trump should begin illustrating this while simultaneously leveraging the possibility of hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs — perhaps we should make $400 billion? — to bring China to the table. Beijing has no right to trade goods to the U.S. The U.S. government allows it but it is by no means a necessity. So, levy the tariffs. No ultimatum. Just do it. They will hit Beijing where it hurts — in their pocket books.

And then see how North Korea reacts. If they start firing missiles again, it proves that they are China’s puppet. If they move quicker towards denuclearization, it could mean that, too, or it could mean China committed to the sanctions more vigorously. If they do nothing, perhaps that might be an indication that Kim is his own man — or simply be a ploy — and then talks can be resumed on a bilateral basis.

Again, China richly deserves the tariffs that Trump is considering levying after years of trade cheating. They should be enacted in their own right, but it is time that U.S. policy makers observe the real connective tissue between the trade issues with China and its North Korean nuclear deterrent.

The President has to consider the very real possibility that North Korea represents nuclear blackmail in China’s bid for global dominance in trade — and act accordingly. It may be that there can be no peace on the Korean peninsula if China truly rules north of the 38th parallel. It’s time to call China’s bluff. ROBERT ROMANORobert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.


Commentary: Robert Romano



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This Just In: Jobs are Created by Job Creators, Not Socialist Politicians

Andrew Gillum is the socialists’ latest sensation after his surprising win in Florida’s Democrat gubernatorial primary. And shortly after the election he posted one of the more ignorant tweets you’ll ever want to see on Twitter (and that’s saying something!)…

“We need to raise our minimum wage to $15 - but that’s not enough on its own - because nobody wants to earn minimum. We need to create high-wage jobs through training and education, expanding healthcare, modern transportation, and so much more.”

First, outlawing entry-level jobs that many new workers need to gain employment experience ain’t gonna help those trying to step up onto the first rung of their work career ladder.

And if a government-mandated $15 per hour is OK, why not jack it up to $20? Or $35? Or $50? Such ignorance of the real world.

The fact is, if you bump the entry-level wage to $15 an hour, many of those jobs are simply gonna disappear. In fact, we’ve already seen businesses respond by replacing entry-level jobs with technology, including burger-flipping robots!

Secondly, training and education, expanding health care, modern transportation and “so much more” doesn’t create jobs. You know what does?

Job creators. Entrepreneurs and business owners.This should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above a potted plant.

But thanks to the dismal state of our government-owned/union-managed public school failure factories - combined with the Left’s incessant “hate the rich” propaganda campaigns - too many Americans today seem to be missing the obvious.

Fortunately, we have an entrepreneurial businessman in the White House today showing the world how the world actually works in the real world.

Now, for my annual vacation/camping trip this summer, I read Virgin Group CEO Sir Richard Branson’s “Business Stripped Bare” book from 2008. In it, he went to great lengths to explain why entrepreneurs, not government, are so critical to job-creation and economic success.

“Entrepreneurs have the dynamism to get something started,” Sir Richard wrote. “They view the world differently from other people. They create opportunity that others don’t necessarily see and have the guts to give it a go.”

Oh, and by the way, in America there are no race or gender barriers to starting your own business. In addition, as my friend Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has pointed out, “There is no glass ceiling when you are self-employed.”

“To be a serious entrepreneur,” Branson continued, “you have to be prepared to step off the precipice. Yes, it’s dangerous. There can be times, having jumped, when you find yourself in free fall without a parachute.

There is a real prospect that some business ventures will go smashing into the ground.”

Which is why so many people – the vast majority, in fact – choose the relatively safer and more comfortable route of getting a salaried job rather than trying to start their own company. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But somebody has to create those jobs. Entrepreneurs.And to get more of them, as Branson notes, we need to start teaching

our youth about “the value of wealth creation” and encourage kids with gumption to start their own businesses rather than focusing entirely on getting an often-useless college degree.

Indeed, even liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman acknowledged a few years ago that “It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.”

“A great deal of entrepreneurship can be taught,” Sir Richard explains, “and we desperately need to teach it as we confront the huge global challenges of the twenty-first century.”

Yep. And not only does entrepreneurship need to be taught, it needs to

be championed and celebrated. Because there are no jobs without job-creators.

And the sooner anti-rich/anti-business politicians such as Andrew Gillum recognize that fact, the brighter and more prosperous our nation’s future will be. CHUCK MUTH(Mr. Muth is president of CitizenOutreach.org and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. He blogs at MuthsTruths.com. His opinions are his own.)


Commentary: Chuck Muth


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