penny press 31, 2018 · commentary continued on page4. the penny press,may 31, 2018 page 4 ... the...

Penny PressNevada, USA Volume 15 Number 39 MAY 31, 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

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THE PENNY PRESS,MAY 31, 2018 PAGE 2

By ROBERT FELLNERSpecial to the Penny Press

The average wage for Clark County local government workers is richer than what their peers in 99 percent of counties nationwide

receive, according to an NPRI analysis of the most current wage data available from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the 2017 third quarter, local government workers in Clark County received an average weekly wage of $1,155 — which ranked 55th out of the 2,867 counties surveyed nationwide, and was about 22 percent higher than the

$943 received by local government workers nationally.

When the average wages are adjusted to reflect the different price levels faced by the average consumer in each state, as calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Price Parities 2015 report, Clark County jumps to number 25 on the list — placing its employees firmly within the top 1 percent of counties with the highest paid local government workers nationwide.

Cost borne by taxpayers who, on average, earn much less themselves

“The findings are significant, given that much of the cost for this excess is borne by Nevada residents who, on average, earn much less themselves,” explained Nevada Policy Research Institute Director of Transparency Research

Robert Fellner.“Clark County local government

workers are among some of the best paid in the nation, but this excess is being funded by a private sector that earns significantly less than the national average,” explained Fellner.

While the $1,155 average weekly wage received by Clark County local government workers was 22 percent above the national average, the $866 earned by private-sector workers was 15 percent less than the national average of $1,013.

But Clark County government workers don’t just fare well in comparisons of wages, they also receive vastly richer non-wage benefits than the average private-sector worker.

The NPRI analysis found that Clark County government workers

receive nearly twice as many paid holiday and sick days, significantly greater job security and a retirement plan that costs nearly 6 times more than what the average private-sector worker receives.

Despite receiving wages that already place them in the top 1 percent of counties nationwide, the SEIU of Nevada recently rejected Clark County’s offer of a 2 percent pay increase, and is instead demanding a 3.25 percent raise instead.

The move shows why collective bargaining in the public sector was historically opposed by so many, including some of the labor movement’s greatest champions like former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“As the SEIU of Nevada has

Penny PressNEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 15 NUMBER 39 MAY 31, 2018

Penny WisdomThere are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observa-tion. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. —Will Rogers

The Conservative Weekly Voice Of NevadaInside:More to Knights'Success Than Dough

See Editorial Page 6

RON KNECHT PAGE 5FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6ROBERT RINGER PAGE 7DOUG FRENCH PAGE 9ROBERT ROMANO PAGE 10RICK MANNING PAGE 11TEEN VIOLENCE PAGE 14

For Clark County, Top 1% Not Enough

Commentary

Continued on page4


made clear, unions in the public sector are not about eliminating an imbalance that results in below-market wages. Instead, the incentives are such that both government unions and campaigning lawmakers profit from inflated public pay and the increased burden that imposes on taxpayers.

“That is precisely why extending collective bargaining to the public sector was opposed by so many across the ideological spectrum, for so long. ”

Everybody Profits But The VotersContinued from page 3

Growing Government Overreach – Does it Ever End?

Ayn Rand, the hero author of many a conservative and libertarian, once said: “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.”

A frightening statement indeed. Especially since the essence of America’s Constitution is the opposite: the federal government

has limited powers and the people and states retain all freedoms not expressly denied.

Ms. Rand passed in 1982, so the quote antedates that time. Decades ago she was already seeing so much where the “if it pleases the crown” mentality had invaded all parts of our daily lives. Several examples Immediately come to mind.

We cannot own real property without paying taxes to the state.

We cannot operate a motor vehicle without state mandated automobile insurance and paying fees to the state to register the vehicle and operate it.

We cannot hunt or fish without a license from the state.

We cannot operate a drone without a license from the government.

We cannot get married without obtaining a license from the state.

So, are we truly free? This reminds us of another Rand

quote: “Freedom: To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

The basic question: “Are we really free?”

We submit that, in many ways, we are still free. We do still have the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a fair and speedy trial, and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, just to name some of our Constitutionally protected rights.

Still, even these basic freedoms are under attack. Many constitutionalists believe that any infringement on the Second Amendment erodes this freedom, including bans on certain types of weapons, magazine restrictions, and the requirement to have a concealed carry permit to exercise this right in the public square. Further infringements are demanded every day by the mainstream media and progressive activists who make proposals that would turn law abiding gun owners into criminals.

How far would James go on 2nd Amendment matters? He would repeal everything back to the National Firearms Act of 1934, including the Brady Act. What part of “shall not be infringed” does the government not understand, anyway? The citizen has the right to own and possess any gun or ammunition the government has a right to own. No more, and no less. (Ron would consider separately each measure to be repealed, but can’t think of provisions worth keeping.)

Clearly, our protections against unreasonable searches and seizures are under fire too. This erosion was accelerated with passage of the USA Patriot Act. This act

expanded what are called expanded surveillance procedures, allowing the government to gather foreign intelligence on both non-citizens and citizens. It has led to warrantless gathering of metadata from our cell phones and computers, including our texts and emails, although that was supposedly ended in 2015.

Our government’s response? We keep the average citizen safe from terrorist attacks with the provisions in the act. But how much freedom should the same average citizen be willing to give up? We suggest that the USA Patriot Act goes too far, and should be repealed.

We encourage fighters like Senator Rand Paul to continue to bring this overreach out into the open in the hopes more people will listen and join the fight against the act. It was a feel good measure born in the confusion and anger our country experienced after we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Cooler heads now need to prevail, and it needs to be repealed.

Where does this leave us?Freedom is a fragile thing,

and taxation and regulation have greatly and increasingly eroded freedom for all of us. From the opening quote, Ayn Rand saw the key issues two or three generations ago, and we all pay a price for our lost freedom.

Libertarians and limited government conservatives will continue to fight against additional erosion of our freedom, even if it may not be trendy to do so.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”


The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:

The Vegas Golden Knights who have become permanent residents in this particular block of type. Will the run continue? Like they say on the East Coast, Film at 11. Nobody…nothing has delivered a boost to Nevada like this team of Golden Misfits. May they not fit anywhere three more times.

The Clark County Jury which found for David Copperfield in a lawsuit clearly filed for money as opposed to actual injury. A few of these will remind lawyers everywhere that money along is not a criteria for a lawsuit.

The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To:The Walk Disney Company for killing an Ambien taking Goose which was lay-ing them Golden Eggs by killing off the reboot of Rosanne for one tweet about a former advisor to President Obama. Was it over the line? Yes. Should the shareholders of Disney tell Robert Iger to get lost? Absolutely. www.pennypressnv.com

Tips Of Our Capand

Bronx Cheers

RON KNECHT and JAMES SMACK

Commentary: Ron Knecht & James Smack

I write at least 52 columns a year and my guess is that—even though I started 50 years ago in high school as a sportswriter on a major metro daily newspaper—less than ½ a per cent of those columns have been about sports. (That said, there’s a very thin line between politics and sports.)

But, as I am writing this, the Las Vegas Golden Knights are now THREE WINS AWAY from Lord Stanley’s Cup. (Maybe fewer by the time you read this.)

In their first year as an expansion team.

The credit goes to a lot of people but majority owner Bill Foley has got to be at the head of the line.

It’s not that Foley has amassed the wealth necessary to convince a major professional sports league to award an expansion franchise. There are a surprisingly large number of people in that category. It’s not that he was able to recruit Former Sacramento Kings owners (and Las Vegas fixtures) the Maloof family as minority owners.

It is that after doing all of that, he has been as good, or better, than his new goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury. If he made mistakes, there sure weren’t too many and they sure were not obvious.

An organization which can go from zero to the Stanley Cup Finals in its first season doesn’t do that by accident. I’m pretty sure that things Foley learned at the United States Military Academy as a cadet came into play because West Point is one of the places this nation trains its leaders.

The impetus for an organization is the guy at the top. (That’s paraphrasing what you would hear at West Point the summer of your freshman (plebe) year.)

Everybody else is, of course, extremely important. But someone has to have the idea, hire them, tell them what he (or she) wants done and what the result (as he or she sees it) should be.

My late father used to constantly tell me to hire the best people I could find, tell them what I wanted and then get the hell out of the way and let them do their jobs. It probably only took me 55 years to learn he was right. On the other hand, it probably only took him 50 years to take his own advice.

The biggest lesson he taught me, however, was that ordinary people can do extraordinary things by just putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. That doing something is almost always better than doing nothing.

By way of full disclosure, my company provides much of the radio network to the Knights outside of Las Vegas. I got a call from a friend of a friend who had just been hired by Foley’s President about a year ago and we took about a half a day to do a deal which I’m pretty sure neither of us regrets.

He told me at the time that his new boss had told him not to ask him for what he wanted but rather for what he needed to get the job done.

When the Knights started to win, we were all surprised.

But maybe not that much.

Everything that said “moneyball” was in place by then. Was there a heavy element of luck involved? Sure. How many times can you get a Fluery, a James Neal, a Jonathan Marchessault and a William Karlsson, put them on an expansion team and it works? But when you do catch lightning, the people who can put it in a bottle have to be ready and they were.

Somebody had to hire Gerard Gallant as the head coach and George McPhee as the General Manager.

It always gets back to the guy who put the whole deal together.

And I’m sure that Bill Foley completely understood that had things not turned out as they did, the sports writers would have blamed exactly one person.

Years from now, when the Wharton School is doing business cases on the 2017-18 Knights, they’ll also still be taking in plebe classes at West Point and they’ll still be extracting and exploiting whatever nuggets of leadership come through the gates at America’s premier leadership training school.

My guess is that the next Bill Foley is more likely to come from one of our military academies than Wharton or Harvard.

FRED WEINBERG


OPINIONFrom The Publisher...

Is it Money, Is it Leadership, Is It Luck???


Taking Control of Your DesiresA fundamental truth that I learned about desire from Harry Browne is

that everyone’s desires are unlimited. That’s not to say we all have the same desires, just that we have an infinite number of desires.

Some of the more common desires include wealth, power, recognition, and, at the extreme end of the desire spectrum, bringing about world peace, ending hunger and suffering, discovering the meaning of life, and, above all, immortality.

Obviously, many of our desires can never be fulfilled. The wisest among us can never be absolutely certain about the meaning of life. Likewise, until someone produces proof to the contrary, it goes without saying that no one is immortal.

Putting aside for now the most extreme and abstract desires, the main problem we encounter with our unlimited desires is that they clash with our limited amount of time, energy, skills, financial resources, and, yes, luck. Many people have possessed a great deal of energy, skills, and financial resources only to run out of time and luck in their quest to fulfill their desire to defeat illness and old age.

Thus, given our limited time, energy, skills, financial resources, and luck, we have to pick and choose which desires are best for us over the long term. This is where the battle between success and failure is fought. It’s where the battle between happiness and unhappiness is fought. It’s where the battle between a meaningful life and a meaningless life is fought.

There are two kinds of desires — emotional and intellectual. In his book On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, William B. Irvine refers to these as terminal desires and instrumental desires.

Irvine divides terminal desires into hedonic and nonhedonic, but I’m not convinced there is such a thing as a nonhedonic desire. It seems to me that all terminal desires are hedonic because they are always focused on bringing comfort or pleasure and avoiding discomfort or pain. Examples include such desires as wanting people to like us, admire us, respect us, even envy us.

Because they are based on emotion, terminal desires are mysterious. You don’t plan to have a terminal desire; it just appears in your mind, uninvited, as a result of emotion. Unfortunately, the desires that have the greatest impact on our lives are the ones over which we have the least amount of control. Hedonic terminal desires are at the very heart of instant gratification, and no one is immune to these emotionally engendered desires.

Terminal desires are desires for their own sake, while instrumental desires are focused on ways to fulfill terminal desires and thus are formed by the intellect. Our emotions are constantly playing the role of serpent to our intellect, which causes frequent conflict between the two. And, unfortunately, the serpent usually comes out ahead in these conflicts.

For example, if you’re hungry, you form a terminal desire to eat. This motivates you either to find food in the refrigerator that is ready to eat, cook something, or go to a restaurant. If you decide on the latter, your intellect may form an instrumental desire to go to a health food restaurant, but your emotions may want to satisfy your hunger pangs with junk food. In other words, a conflict.

Sex and infatuation are also classic examples of terminal desires, and they are probably the greatest challenge to our intellect. Unfortunately, the intellect tends to fare poorly against such terminal desires as sex and infatuation. I say unfortunately because problems arise when you take action on, say, your desire for sex based solely on emotion, in which case the results can range from bad to catastrophic.

So, what’s the best way to handle the ongoing conflicts between emotional (terminal) desires and intellectual (instrumental) desires? I believe the most sensible approach is to get in the habit of mentally listing the pros and cons of your emotional desires at any given time, then have the self-discipline to let your intellectual scorecard guide your actions. (Yes, it takes a lot of practice to develop such self-discipline, but the reality is that everything good in life requires effort.)

I’ve often changed my mind about doing something based on an emotional desire when my intellectual scorecard lists nine reasons not to do it and only one reason to do it (the latter, singular reason often being that it simply feels good).

Thus, one could make a compelling case that happiness and success usually boil down to a person’s ability to control his hedonic terminal desires. You know you’ve mastered desire when you no longer feel anxiety about not having the house you desire, the car you desire, the social status you desire, etc. It isn’t that you stop trying to better your life. It’s just that you use your intellect to fulfill healthy desires and suppress unhealthy desires.

Put another way, to live the life you want rather than allowing your emotional desires to determine how you live, you have to learn how to control the desire-formation process. As I said, it takes a lot of effort, but it’s not complicated. Meaning that it is within your control. 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

Trouble in EurolandWhere oh where will that first financial domino fall? National Alliance

Securities Head of International Fixed Income, Andy Brenner, told CNBC’s Rick Santelli, when asked why investors are preoccupied with US Treasuries, “It’s called Italy.”

Bloomberg chimed in on the same subject. “Italian assets were pummeled again on mounting concern over the populist coalition’s fiscal plans, with the moves rippling across European debt markets.”

Little old Italy, you might ask. While small in land mass, the Italian government has borrowed mightily: the fourth largest bond market in the world, behind, China, Japan and you know who. That makes Italy the largest bond market in Europe. “You have to take what’s happening there seriously,” Brenner said. “This could be a major event for the dissolving of the EU.”

Political change is brewing in Italy and “Investors fret the anti-establishment parties’ proposal to issue short-term credit notes – so-called ‘mini-BOTs’ – will lead to increased borrowing in what is already one of Europe’s most indebted economies,” Bloomberg reports.

The 5-Star Movement and League are proposing “to ask the European Central Bank to forgive 250 billion euros ($296 billion) of Italian debt, according to a draft of a coalition program the parties are working on,” reports Reuters.

These political parties understand that no real people own their debt. The ECB conjured money from nowhere to the quarter billion euros worth of paper by way of its quantitative easing program.

Thus, despite Italy having a debt to GDP ratio of 130 percent, the yield on their 2-year bonds until a few days ago was negative. Yes, if you wanted to lend the basketcase Italian government money, you had to pay them, courtesy of Mario Draghi.

Italy’s two-year note is yielding all of 27 basis points as I write, despite, as Wolf Richter explains,

“an over-indebted government that doesn’t control its own currency and cannot print itself out of trouble and whose new leadership – made up of the coalition of the Five Star Movement on the left and the League on the right – is proposing a haircut for its creditors to make the debt burden easier, and is also proposing the issuance of an alternate currency to give it more money to spend, even as it also promises to

crank up government deficit spending and cut taxes too.”Will the ECB’s stifling of price discovery last forever? Richter thinks not,

writing, “the ECB has tapered its bond purchases to €30 billion a month, and will likely end them this year. Leadership at the ECB will change in 2019, and Italy will lose its champion at the ECB.”

Meanwhile banking in Euroland is precarious. Professor Phillip Bagus, tells the story on mises.org and it’s no small problem. “The Eurosystems´and euro banks´ balance sheets totaled €30 trillion in January 2018, that is about 291 percent of GDP,” writes Bagus.

Bagus lists seven reasons that European banks are in trouble. He mentions regulation cost rising but then there’s this,

there are risks hidden in banks´ balance sheets. That there is something fishy in European banks´assets can quickly be detected when comparing banks market capitalization with their book value. Most European banks have price-to-book ratios below 1. German Commerzbank´s price-to-book ratio stands at 0.49, Deutsche Bank´s is at 0.36, Italian UniCredit´s at 0.23, Greek Piraeus Bank at 0.14, and Greek Alpha Bank at 0.34.

What’s fishy? European sovereign bonds that yield less than zero likely tops the list.

Equally jaw-dropping is, “according to the ECB non-performing loans (NPLs), i.e. loans where borrowers have fallen behind in their payments, amount to €759 bn., that is 30% of the banks’ equity,” professor Bagus writes.

Additional time bombs on bank balance sheets are loans to zombie companies only surviving due to negative, or close to it, interest rates. When the ECB suspends QE and rates normalize, businesses will fail and banks will be loaded with more bad credits.

Finally, on Bagus’s list is, “banks in the Eurozone are still connected closely to their government. As of January 2018, Eurozone banks held €3.536 bn. Government debt on their books which amounts to 13% of their balance sheet total. When in the next recession, the sovereign debt crisis looms again banks can expect losses on their sovereign debt portfolio.”

If all that isn’t enough, in nearby Turkey, the Lira has plunged in value and is close to five to the dollar. Erdogan’s country has a share of the $250 billion worth of emerging market debt coming due next year.

Imagine the Greek crisis on steroids.

DOUG FRENCH


Commentary: Doug French


Italian President all but Guaranteed the Anti-Euro Five-Star, League Will Win

Depending on your perspective, Italian President Sergio Mattarella has either saved Italy, or sealed its fate.

After Italy’s elections resulted in the anti-euro Five-Star Movement and the League banding together with Giuseppe Conte being nominated for Prime Minister by the parties, and Paolo Savona for finance minister, Mattarella rejected the outcome of the process — he was opposed to Savona, who opposes the euro currency — and called for new elections.

In the U.S., this would be the equivalent of the Electoral College failing to select the president-elect who had received the most electoral votes in the general election. It’s that outrageous.

Arguably, Five-Star and the League would have been a coalition government, but it would have been a tenuous alliance. The negotiations to get a compromise figures for prime minister and finance minister were undoubtedly difficult and lengthy.

Now, the two are united in their outrage against Mattarella, and have called for national protests on June 2.

The snap elections could be held as early as September. Watch for Five-Star and the League to once again poll as the top two parties, and with the blessing of Silvio Berlusconi, make it clear that the majority of the Italian people will not stand for Eurozone and European Union tyranny in attempting to overturn the results of a legitimate election.

The fact is, the euro currency prevents Italy from printing more money

to help pay off its debts, which every other non-eurozone country in the world has the power to do. As a result, Italy and the rest of the eurozone lacks the same sovereignty as other nations.

In response, the League’s leader Matteo Salvini blasted the decision, saying, “In a democracy, if we are still in a democracy, there’s only one thing to do: let the Italians have their say.”

In the meantime, Luigi Di Maio, the Five-Star Movement leader, called Mattarella’s rejection of Savona “unacceptable.”

“What’s the point of going to vote if it’s the ratings agencies that decide?” Di Maio added.

The two parties might even run together, according to early reports.But even if they don’t, it might have been better, from Mattarella’s

perspective, to have just left well enough alone.If Mattarella’s goal was to consolidate Italy’s place in the Eurozone

by keeping the populist Five-Star and League out of power, he has badly miscalculated. He has acted to solidify their bases of support, and if anything, will surely turn Italian sentiment against Brussels.

Stay tuned. This is likely to get even more interesting. ROBERT ROMANORobert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

Commentary: Robert Romano


Trump Puts an End to Taxpayer Subsidies for Unions

Government employee unions have enjoyed an absolute boondoggle in recent years, receiving hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds. But the boon could soon be over thanks to a new executive order from President Donald Trump.

Last Friday, the president signed an executive order requiring that federal government employees who work full-time for the public employee unions at taxpayer expense spend at least 75 percent of their paid time on the government’s business. The administration estimates this will save taxpayers $100 million. This measure is one of three executive orders signed by the president. Those orders do not eliminate taxpayer subsidies for public employee unions altogether—that is Congress’s job—but they do end the taxpayer subsidy of travel for union business; mandate that unions be charged fair market value for rents of government office space; streamline the public employee appeals process so that bad apples can be fired more rapidly; and force taxpayer-funded union workers to spend at least three-quarters of their time doing the people’s business.

Most people are shocked to learn that taxpayers have been footing the bill for public employee union salaries, but they become incensed when they learn that in 2016, union employees were paid $177 million by the federal government, not counting office space and travel expenses.

A 2013 Freedom of Information Act request by Americans for Limited Governmentdiscovered that the Department of Veterans Affairs alone had over 250 employees working full-time for unions in 2011. The Transportation Department had 35 employees on full-time “official time,” many of whom had salaries in excess of $170,000 per year. And in 2012, when the IRS was busy playing politics by delaying and denying Tea Party group applications for non-profit status, the Washington Times reported that more than 200 full-time IRS employees were engaged in nothing but union activity. The same report added that taxpayers picked up the bill for another $687,400 in union travel at the IRS alone.

It’s bad enough that the federal government spent between $150 and 200 million a year on union salaries and travel, but what’s worse is that this indirectly subsidized unions’ political activity. Because money is fungible, the money that public employee unions didn’t have to spend on personnel could then be turned around and spent on politics.

Public employee unions are among the biggest donors in politics, with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees ranked the 15th largest contributor so far in 2018, according to Open Secrets. And this group, in particular, has overwhelmingly favored Democrats over Republicans.

Of the $4,843,291 that this group has poured into politics this year, exactly $6,000 of it went to groups, causes, or politicians considered to be Republican or conservative. In 2016, they spent almost $16 million on politics with under $8,000 going to Republican or conservative groups. In that same election cycle, their political action committee could not find a single Republican to support, giving 100 percent of their money to

Democrats.This is just one case out of many. For years, taxpayers have subsidized

public unions that pursue political activities and overwhelmingly donate to Democrats. Their donations are designed to grow government, and consequently their own membership.

Public employee unions don’t even pretend to be anything but big government advocates. The president’s executive order forcing taxpayer-funded union employees to spend 75 percent of their time doing their federal job is a good first step in reigning in this far-left government funding stream.

Trump deserves kudos for recognizing the absurdity of taxpayer funding of the left, and in particular, he deserves credit for hiring people like Russ Vought and James Sherk for the Office of Management and Budget and White House staff, respectively, and Nathan Mehrens into the Labor Department. By hiring people who have studied and understand how the current federal civil service system perpetuates the administrative state, Trump set himself up for success when it comes to dealing with the wash, rinse, repeat swamp cycle that the public employee unions perpetuate.

Recently, much of the discussion about public employee unions in politics has been focused upon the upcoming Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision, which could allow public employees at all levels of government to opt-out of paying dues as a First Amendment right. But these new executive orders will have a much greater impact on the federal bureaucracy, since federal employees already have the right to not join the union.

This executive order will shift about $100 million in union employee costs back onto the unions. This will force them to prioritize which cases should be fought and which one’s should be settled, injecting some rationality and perhaps greater speed into the federal government firing process.

Now, the president needs to take the next step: Force the public employee unions to compete for their members through an opt-in process, where the employee would have to actively decide to be a member of the union rather than being assumed to be a member unless they fill out the proper paperwork.

If the president takes this next bold step, the public employee union stranglehold on the federal government will be broken, giving Congress a chance to pass full-blown civil service.

You can almost hear the swamp draining. RICK MANNINGThe author is the president of Americans for Limited Government, and served on President Trump’s Labor Department transition team.


Commentary: Rick Manning

What is Causing Teen School Violence?

The world seems to be an upside down place.The latest example is the former Education Secretary Arne Duncan

suggesting that no one goes to school in some kind of perverse strike until Congress “does something” about school violence. Of course, “doing something” is not defined in any other way than to ban guns. And since the underaged criminal in the Santa Fe shooting used a shotgun and handgun that he stole from his home, and neither of the guns were the demonized black AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, the rhetorical narrative of the left didn’t neatly fit the situation.

But that won’t stop them.As an alternative, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott believes that aggressive

social media screenings would help identify potentially troubled children before they became shooters, along with mental health screenings and metal detectors all of which are doable first steps in securing our schools. But for those who wish to blame the gun, these common sense approaches are seen as nothing more than eyewash.

The fact is that those who wish to use this horrific shooting to significantly curb access to firearms would create far more death and misery in the long-haul than they would ever solve. A Center for Disease Control study confounds those who simplistically wish to blame private gun ownership for times when firearms are criminally misused in that it states, “defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a.)”

Rather than continue the silly merry-go-round of the modern debate about violence, it seems obvious that breaking outside those chains by asking a simple question, “What is different today from previous decades when these types of shootings were relatively rare?”

Teenagers today are bombarded with a dramatic increase in inputs into their brains over previous generations. Rather than passive entertainment like television, the current generation of boys and girls have millions of interactive mental inputs through video games, and their personal digital assistants allow them to listen to music or view other streaming media while making a phone call are prevalent.

A 2016 National Public Radio story titled, “Heavy Screen Time Rewires Young Brains, For Better And Worse” reports about conflicts in the scientific community about the impact of video games on young brains.

“The debate centered on a study of young mice exposed to six hours daily of a sound and light show reminiscent of a video game. The mice showed “dramatic changes everywhere in the brain,” said Jan-Marino Ramirez, director of the Center for Integrative Brain Research at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

“Many of those changes suggest that you have a brain that is wired up at a much more baseline excited level,” Ramirez reported. “You need much more sensory stimulation to get [the brain’s] attention.”

While there seems to be evidence to support the logical conclusion that how young people spend their time impacts how their brains are wired, what is unknown is whether this rewiring is somehow connected to the seeming spate of shootings.

Another factor that is different than the past is that the family structure, and particularly the absence of fathers in many homes when kids are growing up is something that today’s young men have to deal with at an unprecedented level. The lack of discipline or perhaps even just instability due to the disintegration of the nuclear family might play a role in the disaffection that these teen shooters act upon.

Does the on-going war on males with the increased emphasis on so-called gender fluidity cause, for some developing males, an increased sense of being an outcast creating the formula for this new generation of teen shooters? What role does bullying play?

And do the common use of psychotropic drugs on kids, particularly boys, at earlier and earlier ages have unforeseen impacts where the side effects are worse than the cure?

The truth is that none of us know the answers to these questions. And until we come to grips with these questions and begin to honestly try to find the answers, the circle of pain will continue. And recriminations will flow without any real answers to the underlying question, “what is wrong with these kids?”

Instead of engaging in knee-jerk screaming matches, our youth deserve that our nation have an adult conversation about the causes of these violent outbursts. And until we dig deeper than sloganeering for public policy solutions, we will be counting tragedies, asking why and wondering why no one is doing anything that seemingly works.

If America is to do something, it needs to be the right thing. And to do the right thing, we need a lot more information on what triggers these young men. Failing to nail down the root causes of violence will leave authorities grabbing at air as they seek public policy solutions.

Our kids and our nation are too important to engage in emotion-based decisions which will fail as the underlying causes of violence are ignored. We need solutions that address the actual problems rather than creating feel good, doomed to fail reactions.

In the meantime, it makes sense to secure our schools as Governor Abbott suggests as a first step as we grapple with the tough questions which might reveal a much larger challenge than anyone ever dreamed. RICK MANNINGRick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.


Commentary: Rick Manning


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