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Penny PressNevada, USA Volume 11 Number 8 OCTOBER 31, 2013

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Credits:Publisher and Editor: Contributing Editors:Fred Weinberg Floyd Brown Al Thomas Doug French Chuck Muth John Getter Pat Choate Tom Mitchell

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THE PENNY PRESS,OCTOBER 31, 2013 PAGE 2

By FLOYD BROWNContributing Editor

LAS VEGAS, Nv—This week I took time out from my regular schedule to swim among the geeks. I traveled to the Las Vegas

Convention Center and wandered the halls of a technology conference. While I was there, I listened to at least 30 speakers and talked with participants ranging from the hardcore hackers and spammers to run-of-the-mill web masters.

Tech people are mysterious. Many are more comfortable with machines than people. They communicate using words most

Americans will never understand. But they’re also admirable. Most are smart and hardworking – and many build amazing companies to solve problems that have long plagued humankind.

However, it’s also clear to me that this talented and savvy group of thinkers and entrepreneurs has sadly accepted what I will call, for lack of a better term, the hardcore, leftwing politics of Obama. Never in my life have I seen such smart people with so little understanding of government and economics.

The first keynote speaker – noted internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis – was no exception. Calacanis is well-known as the chief executive and founder of Inside.com. And he gave a brilliant speech. His grasp of technology issues is unparalleled. He’s truly a

visionary, and he has an amazing telescope into the future.

Calacanis spoke passionately about how technology startups are improving life and changing the world. But just as he should have been ending his speech, he launched into a rant that showed how this brilliant technologist has no understanding of our free economy.

Calacanis said, and I paraphrase…

“The technology business is destroying America’s jobs. Soon robotics will destroy what jobs the internet hasn’t killed. I think the solution to this problem is for the government to pay every American $2,000 a month. That way, when unemployment spikes above 20% because of technology, we won’t be overcome by riots in the streets.

Let’s just give every American this living wage whether they work or not.”

Unfortunately, Calacanis is way out of his league here. He sounds like a buggy whip salesman worried about the horseless carriage. The truth is, technology has been relentlessly destroying jobs throughout history. So this isn’t a new phenomenon. For example, we no longer need livery stables, telegraph and telephone operators, blanket weavers, or typewriter repairmen. The list of jobs destroyed by technology is nearly endless.

Calacanis is also clearly unfamiliar with the creative destruction described by economist Joseph Schumpeter – the idea that economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior

Penny PressNEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 OCTOBER 31, 2013

Penny WisdomAmazon and eBay don’t crash the week before Christmas. Proflowers doesn’t crash on Valentine’s Day. — Anna Eshoo

The Conservative Weekly Voice Of NevadaInside:Is Obamacare StartA Teaching Moment?

See Editorial Page 6

VICTOR JOECKS PAGE 5FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6DOUG FRENCH PAGE 7JOHN KIRKWOOD PAGE 9AL THOMAS PAGE 10MATT BARBER PAGE 11CHUCK MUTH PAGE 14

Tech Geeks Easily Accept Radical Left

Commentary

Continued on page4


economic order. Creative destruction is being unleashed on our free economy by technology firms, but it’s not going to put millions of people out of work for good.

Technology also creates jobs as its destroying them. Just think: How many search engine optimization positions existed twenty years ago?

So the solution isn’t paying people to not work. Payment for no work degrades character and leads to dependency and aimlessness. The solution

is to allow a wealthier society to encourage more people to engage in nonprofit and charity work, higher learning, the arts, music and research. Create incentives for young people to better themselves. Perhaps they could earn $2,000 a month working with disadvantaged youths as opposed to spending the day playing videogames or doing nothing.

Sadly, it seems that mushy-headed thinking is truly alive and well outside of Washington, D.C.

Heck, even the geeks have trouble with basic economics.

Creative Destruction Creates New JobsContinued from page 3



Government has failed to solve Nevada’s housing problems

Ronald Reagan once quipped that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

In no other area over the last five years has Nevada government tried to be of more “help” than in its attempts to deal with Nevada’s housing problems. But just as President Reagan and his audiences recognized, such “help” regularly makes things worse.

In this instance, the politicians have only postponed the recovery in Nevada’s housing market.

The state legislature’s latest attempt

to mitigate the effects of the inevitable bursting of the housing bubble is Senate Bill 321, the so-called “Homeowner’s Bill of Rights.” Sponsored by Sen. Justin Jones, it took effect earlier this month.

SB 321 is Carson City’s third attempt to “help” borrowers facing foreclosure, and, like the others, it imposed several new requirements on banks that will lengthen the foreclosure process.

This new attempt follows the constitutionally conflicted Foreclosure Mediation Programinstituted in 2009 and 2011’s passage of AB 284. That bill made foreclosure paperwork errors a category C felony. Even lawmakers belatedly realized that with AB 284 they’d produced a number of negative consequences, and so, earlier this year, they modified the law during the 2013 session.

Unfortunately, each of these laws has only prolonged the misery in Nevada’s housing sector.

Unsurprisingly, lenders rushed through as many notice-of-default filings as possible before SB 321 took effect Oct. 1. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that on the last two business daysbefore SB 321 kicked in, 1,374 notices of default

were filed in Clark County, compared to 1,149 in the entire month of August. In total, 3,761 NODs were filed in September, the highest number since just before AB 284 took effect in October 2011.

On the first two days after SB 321 went into effect, however, just 32 Clark County default notices were filed.

These government-imposed delays, however, do not genuinely help the delinquent mortgage holders. Economists have found similar laws actually decrease the likelihood a borrower will “cure” his or her mortgage problems.

In November 2011, three Federal Reserve economists examined a Massachusetts law that stopped the clock on foreclosures for 90 days in an attempt to help borrowers catch up on their payments or obtain a mortgage modification.

The economists found that:[T]he right-to-cure policy that

Massachusetts implemented in 2008 had no impact on borrowers’ ability to cure their mortgage defaults or obtain mortgage modifications. In fact, in some specifications, there is a small and marginally significant decline in cure probabilities at the earliest stage examined, three months after the borrower became seriously delinquent.

The economists found that one reason for this is “that lenders already do exactly what the lawmakers want them to do … In other words, borrowers who stand to benefit the most from additional time already get it.” (Emphasis added.)

What laws like Massachusetts’ 90-day delay or Nevada’s SB 321, AB 284 and Foreclosure Mediation Program have done is simply drag out the foreclosure process — and the needed recovery.

Local corroboration is available in a Reuters interview with Malik Ahmad, a Las Vegas foreclosure defense lawyer. His view on Nevada’s housing problems and the solutions needed completely changed after AB 284, reports Reuters.

“This law has become a mockery,” Ahmad said. “I am now turning down clients every day who I know have no intention of ever trying to pay their mortgage. They just want to stay in their homes for free. And that is a bad situation for everyone, lenders and homeowners.”

The Federal Reserve economists also found that delaying foreclosure has broader negative consequences for the housing market as a whole:

At the crudest level, delaying the foreclosure process causes a wealth transfer from lender to borrower. The borrower lives rent-free while the lender

loses interest income from the capital in the property and cannot get reimbursed for the depreciation. But there are other potential effects for the community as a whole. ...

The unambiguous effect of delaying foreclosure is that it lengthens the period for separation of ownership and control of residential property. As prominent housing economist Edward Glaeser writes:

Delinquent homeowners want to inhabit and to control their homes. Lenders want to get them out and to limit the damage done to the property. During the foreclosure process, home occupants have no reason to invest in their homes. Indeed, spite sometimes pushes them to abuse the property. [This] logic suggests that such periods ensure an abuse of the housing stock, which is one reason why homes often lose close to half of their value when they go through foreclosure.

These devalued and sometimes abandoned homes have negative impacts on entire neighborhoods.

A Temple University study found that abandoned houses in Philadelphia lowered property values for every home on the block by $6,715. Borrowers in default not only decrease their neighbors’ property values, they also are unlikely to pay their property taxes, which decreases revenues for local governments and schools.

Keeping houses in the hands of delinquent borrowers also limits the opportunities of both young adults just entering the market and also those wise enough not to buy a house at the housing bubble’s height.

Another problem with SB 321 is that — like AB 284, before it — the law is poorly written. Housing experts can’t agree on the real meaning of a key provision regarding arm’s length agreements, which usually prevent a mortgage holder from short-selling the residence to a family member or friend for a less-than-market value.

Housing experts interviewed by Vegas Inc predict that the interpretation of that provision of the law will go to court, and a ruling will either lead to a class-action lawsuit against banks or lawsuits from lenders alleging that sellers colluded with family or friends.

State lawmakers keep attempting to “solve” Nevada’s housing-market crisis by prolonging it. Session after session, their legislation rewards the devious and penalizes responsible homeowners.

That is terrifying help indeed.

VICTOR JOECKS

Commentary: Victor Joecks

The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:Judge Valerie Adair for sentencing Dr. Dipak Desai to life with the possibility of parole after 18 years. This is the guy who ran colonoscopy mills and to save a few cents reused vials of anesthetic creading a Southern Nevada outbreak of hepatitis. He knew what he was doing, and, used his juice for a few years to hold off any consequences. It’s just too bad in this case the death penalty was not on the table.

The Sparks City Attorney who finally came to his senses and released the name of the 12-year-old shooter at the Sparks Middle School who killed himself after killing a teacher and wounding two classmates. Jose Reyes.

The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To:Harry Reid (D-Ritz Carleton, Washington DC) who, after shutting down the gov-ernment because Republicans in the House wanted to delay the implementation of Obamacare now has the nerve to say that there is “no excuse” for the website failure. The truth is that there is no excuse for his pathetic career. www.pennypressnv.com

Tips Of Our Capand

Bronx Cheers

Despite the loud trumpeting of the losers who are trying to defend the indefensible, the failure of the Obamacare websites to work was NOT brought about by either too many people trying to use them or a vast right wing conspiracy.

It was brought about by poor design, influenced by politics, and no end to end testing.

Put another way, if these people had been running the show when we went to the moon, they would have skipped Projects Mercury and Gemini and gone right to a Project Apollo moon shot in 1962 despite the fact we hadn’t even tested the Saturn rocket which made it possible.

And they would have gotten the same results they just got with Obamacare except that there would have been three dead astronauts. (For those of you under 50, we did land on the moon in 1969.)

Building an e-commerce website is not rocket science.

Google, Apple, Amazon, Pro Flowers among others are names you see on this publication’s website often, either because we have a business relationship with them or they provide services for us. They are the gold standard in e-commerce because they have international points of presence and their sites work as advertised. They also have one other thing in common.

None of them were only tested for two weeks.

So, asking the logical question, why was the Obamacare site built by a contractor from Canada without assistance from the gold standard in American technology? Was it because there were political considerations? If so, what were those considerations?

It would appear that close to a billion (with a B) dollars was expended.

As Democrat Congresswoman Anna Eshoo put it, “Amazon and eBay don’t crash the week before Christmas. Proflowers doesn’t crash on Valentine’s Day.”

If Obamacare can be described as Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment, then its launch can be described as typical of his administration’s failings.

If normal people were tasked with constructing an e-commerce front end to the nation’s healthcare system, they would invite their friends from Google, Amazon and Microsoft to lunch.

Those are companies quite capable of designing such a system.

Three years ago, they would have asked, what’s the best way to go about this and how much should it cost?

I’m quite sure nobody would have answered that they should sole source the work from a Canadian company which is a professional government contractor.

Reality, however, never stops Barack Obama and his sycophants. When you elect a guy who has never run anything to the most powerful executive position in the world, this is what you get. A CEO who wears no clothes and a staff afraid to tell him he’s naked.

And, frankly, if you think that had the electorate elected John McCain in 2008 things would be better, you are smoking crack. He’s never run anything, either.

The next election needs to be about competence, not politics.

Healthcare should be a signature lesson for everyone.

Let’s not kid each other. Whether you take your cues from Hillary, Barack, George W. or Ronald, our healthcare system is fundamentally broken.

Given their chance, the lefties tried for a step towards a single payer system. They got something designed instead by the Obamaites, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi which was long on politics and short on reality.

Left completely out was anything which would actually lower the cost of delivering medical care and medicine. It is all about spending money, not saving it.

There are plenty of ways to fix the healthcare system but the truth is that one size does NOT fit all and there is no single silver bullet.

Instead of recognizing that fact and empowering people at the local level to find solutions, some very arrogant people starting with Obama, Reid and Pelosi tried to shove a single solution down everybody’s throat.

It won’t work and the results will undoubtedly be reflected in the next few elections. Let’s hope that the winners of those elections pay really close attention to this, as Obama would put it, “teaching moment”.

FRED WEINBERG


OPINIONFrom The Publisher...

Obamacare Is A "Teaching Moment"?


Nobel Prize Winner: Bubbles Don’t ExistNo wonder investors don’t take economists seriously. Or if they do,

they shouldn’t. Since Richard Nixon interrupted Hoss and Little Joe on a Sunday night in August 1971, it’s been one boom and bust after another. But don’t tell that to the latest Nobel Prize co-winner, Eugene Fama, the founder of the efficient-market hypothesis.

The efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are “informationally efficient,” claiming one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis.

“Fama’s research at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s showed how incredibly difficult it is to beat the market, and how incredibly difficult it is to predict how share prices will develop in a day’s or a week’s time,” said Peter Englund, secretary of the committee that awards the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. “That shows that there is no point for the common person to get involved in share analysis. It’s much better to invest in a broadly composed portfolio of shares.”

Fama is not just a Nobel laureate. He also co-authored the textbook, The Theory of Finance, with another Nobel winner, Merton H. Miller. He won the 2005 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics as well as the 2008 Morgan Stanley-American Finance Association Award. He is seriously a big deal in the economics world.

So if Fama has it right, investors should just throw in the towel, shove their money into index funds, and blissfully wait until they need the money. Before you do that, read what Fama had to say about the 2008 financial crisis.

The New Yorker’s John Cassidy asked Fama how he thought the efficient-market hypothesis had held up during the recent financial crisis. The new Nobel laureate responded:

“I think it did quite well in this episode. Prices started to decline in advance of when people recognized that it was a recession and then continued to decline. There was nothing unusual about that. That was exactly what you would expect if markets were efficient.”

When Cassidy mentioned the credit bubble that led to the housing bubble and ultimate bust, the famed professor said:

“I don’t even know what that means. People who get credit have to get it from somewhere. Does a credit bubble mean that people save too much during that period? I don’t know what a credit bubble means. I don’t even know what a bubble means. These words have become popular. I don’t think they have any meaning.”

No matter the facts, Fama has his story and he’s sticking to it.“I think most bubbles are 20/20 hindsight,” Fama told Cassidy. When

asked to clarify whether he thought bubbles could exist, Fama answered, “They have to be predictable phenomena.”

The rest of us, who lived through the tech and real estate booms while Fama was locked in his ivory tower, know that in a boom people go crazy. There’s a reason the other term for bubble is mania. According

to Webster’s, “mania” is defined in an individual as an “excitement of psychotic proportions manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood.”

Financial bubbles have occurred for centuries. In January 1637, the price of the common Witte Croonen tulip bulb rose 26 times, only to crash to 1/20th of its peak price a week later.

Eighty years later in France, John Law flooded the French economy with paper money and shares of the Mississippi Company. The public went wild for stock in a company that had no real assets. The shares rose twentyfold in a year, only to crash. Law, a hero in the boom, was run out of France in disgrace.

At the same time across the channel, the British public bid up South Sea Company shares from ₤300 to ₤1,000 in a matter of weeks. Even the brilliant Sir Isaac Newton was caught up in the frenzy. He got in early and sold early. But he then jumped back in near the top and went broke in the crash.

In the modern era, booms and busts are too numerous to count: Japanese stocks and property, real estate (multiple times), stocks, commodities, stocks again, farmland (multiple times), and art are just a few. Yet the newest co-Nobelist denies the existence of booms and busts and advises you to put your money in index funds and hope for the best.

However, investor returns have not been the best. The last complete calendar decade for stocks ending in 2009 was the worst in history. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Since the end of 1999, stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have lost an average of 0.5% a year thanks to the twin bear markets this decade.”

When you adjust that for inflation, the results were even worse, with the S&P 500 losing an average of 3.3% per year.

This decade, stocks have been on a tear—as have bonds, farmland, and art. At first glance, it’s nonsensical that the price of virtually everything is rising. But when you remember that the Federal Reserve’s cheap money has flooded Wall Street but hasn’t come close to Main Street, it becomes clear. The money has to go somewhere.

If Fama were correct, there would be no legendary investors like Doug Casey or Rick Rule. There would be no opportunities for ten-baggers and twenty-baggers in resource stocks. Fama is like the economist in the old joke who sees a hundred-dollar bill on the ground but doesn’t pick it up. “Why didn’t you pick it up?” a friend asks. The economist replies, “It’s impossible—a hundred-dollar bill would have already been picked up by now.”

Of course subscribers to publications like The Casey Report know there are hundred-dollar bills to be picked up in the market. With tax-selling season upon us, now is the time to be shopping for bargains.

Doug’s friend Rick Rule often says, “You can either be a contrarian or a victim.” Taking Fama’s advice will make you a victim. The path to wealth is to run against the herd, not with it.

DOUG FRENCH


Commentary: Doug French


By JOHN J. KIRKWOODSpecial to the Penny Press

Godwin’s Law: “As on online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.”

ON GAY MARRIAGE:EMAIL: “You’re on the wrong side of history on this, people like you

are this generations Ku Klux Klan.” ME: “Well, two things: I’m not concerned with “being on the right

side of history,” my concern is being on the right side of God. He’s the righteous judge, history may only be “lies agreed upon.”

EMAIL: “[Expletive Deleted], Nazi!”Earlier this week, Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson sent out a

fundraising email with a picture of a burning cross, which was used as a “t” to spell out “tea party.”

The email concluded, “Now What You Know What The ‘T’ Stands For!”

Never mind that the KKK was started by Democrats and strung up both blacks and Republicans; Grayson never misses an opportunity to self-inspect his own alimentary canal … from the tail end.

When the left stifles speech it is chic and heroic; when they accuse the right of stifling speech, it’s fascism, McCarthyism, Footloose andThe Harper Valley PTA. To the liberal, ridicule and alienation are sacrosanct, summarized well by Saul Alinsky’s RULES FOR RADICALS:

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions … Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

And it’s not only online discussions that prove Godwin’s Law, I remember sitting at lunch with a construction crew when one of the carpenters brought up my work in the pro-life movement. By the time his foot-long Subway Club had been inhaled to the halfway point, he had already dropped the Nazi card.

I don’t normally suffer fools but, because of the audience, I decided to play along.

“So let me get this straight, you’re implying that I am a Nazi because I believe that a baby in its mother’s womb has an innate right to life? And that a mother, even on a bad hair day, shouldn’t incinerate it with chemicals or have a Mengele like doctor tear her unborn son or daughter apart with forceps, is that right?

J.D. the carpenter: “Yep, tea-baggers are always telling people how to live, just like the Nazis. No offense, maybe you’re not one of them, but haters need to be called out. Hating a dude just because he’s gay is bull-sh*t!”

Me: “Not telling people how to live, in this case, just telling them not to murder, but let me tell you who I am by first telling you who the Nazis were because frankly, your ignorance is downright embarrassing.

Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian who banned smoking in all public buildings after his party surreptitiously burned down the Reichstag and

cast the blame on their political rivals. When the Nazis annexed the Sudetenland, of the very first laws

that were passed were those prohibiting gun ownership and legalizing abortions. As a matter of fact, certain abortions were encouraged.

His “civilian army” was founded and run by radical homosexuals who bullied and battered those with opposing views. (see THE PINK SWASTIKA, by Scott Lively)

In a purge to separate “Jew and State,” Jews were expelled from the Army, from schools, and eventually from public places. The persecution that ended in ovens was started in the public square by passing laws to tax them, restrict them and identify them. Oh, and one more thing J.D., the Nazis were socialists. You did know that, right?

Nazis redefined marriage, encouraged promiscuity, used the power of taxation to suppress political enemies and subverted the press to carry their message.

They did have fabulous uniforms though and a real flair for drama.” (J.D. the Carpenter remembers that he has a sandwich and takes an

interest. I guess he’s hungry.)“So tell me again, friend, which side is more reminiscent of the

National Socialist German Worker’s Party? The one that booed God and Jerusalem three times from their national convention; the one that hasn’t met a tax, an abortion or an abomination that it doesn’t endorse, celebrate and force on others or the tea party that supports life and liberty, that believes in choice unless it involves a crime to another, that believes that with great sacrifice comes great reward, that will stoop to help others climb up but will refuse to bow and be pilfered?

J.D. the Carpenter: “Dude, relax! All right already! I just think you should stop messing with other people’s lives.”

At this point J.D. walked away but on the chance he’s reading this column, here is what I would have said had you stayed to finish your foot-long.

“You mean like telling them what they can and can’t eat? Like telling them to trade in the Hummer for the Prius? Like legislating how much water they can flush? How about the government panel that will tell Grandma to take the pill and not have the surgery?

Is telling and taxing people to put down the Big Gulp, the Big Mac, the cigarette, the foie-gras and the Twinkie and to pick up the wheat grass, “messing with peoples’ lives?”

Does kicking Christians out of the Air Force while inviting Pandora’s closet in qualify?

How about shouting down conservative speakers at Universities and kicking them off panels, stations and shows? How about suing Christian bakers, photographers, and bed and breakfast owners who don’t bow and kiss the rainbow ring?

Child, Please!

Being On The Right Side of God, Not History



Commentary: Albert ThomasOpen Letter To My GrandsonDear Nick,

The world has changed dramatically since I was a kid. A high school diploma mant something. If you got a college degree it

separated you from the masses. You had a chance at many excellent careers with companies that cared for their people.

Today a college degree is about at the same level as a high school diploma. If you had some kind of special need (I won’t get into that) you could have extra treatment and could graduate without the required knowledge of regular classmates. Maybe, only maybe, you can find a job commensurate with your true ability. That piece of paper does not carry the weight it did 30 or 40 years ago.

Too many of previous big company jobs have been replaced by robots. Jobs that were sent overseas 5 and 10 years ago are coming back to the U.S. The robots are able to produce that same product that is still in demand, but the robot can do it for the same wage as the underage Chinese kid.

What does that mean to you?It means if you are going to have a good financial life your thinking

about work must change. A computerized robot is doing the job you might have had 30 years ago. All the young people today must learn a skill that the computer and the robot cannot do. At least for now.

Maybe becoming a “fixer” may be the answer. Repairing complex machines. Automobile transmissions, X-Ray, CAT-Scan machines,

computers, building specialized devices and personal services.While learning that specialized skill you can still get a recognized

college degree online. No, it won’t carry the same influence as a degree from Harvard or Northwestern or UCLA, but you are a “doer”. You can produce for the company today. It is how well you perform that will get promotions, not a piece of paper.

To earn the amount that you wish might require moving to another country. That will require learning their language. Start now.

The U.S. is becoming a socialist state. That is a downgrade for all the people. Socialism requires everyone to be average. I hope you don’t want to be average. Look to emerging countries on other continents – South America, Asia, Africa. Pick one and try to establish a relationship with someone there before you go. It also means you must have a skill they need. Do your homework. Go to the embassy of the country. Ask questions. They don’t want just hands. They want brains.

When opportunity ceases knocking on your door it may be knocking on the door of the house next door. Move. Go where the knocking is the loudest.Love,Grandpa AL THOMASAl’s new ebook (32 pages) is available on Amazon.com for 99 cents. It explains the Golden Cross and the Death Cross. These are well known methods of determining long term trends in the market. If you only learned one method of technical analysis this would have kept you out of the 2000 and 2008 crashes and will keep you out of the next one that is coming soon. The title is Never Lose Money In The Stock Market Again.

Liberals Feel Crush of Obamacare “Disaster,” “embarrassment,” “humiliating” and “train wreck” are

just a few of the colorful terms being used to describe it. The Obama administration’s incompetent half-billion-dollar rollout of its incompetent multi-trillion-dollar signature achievement is but a tragic metaphor for this man’s entire presidency. (It’s not hyperbole when it’s true.)

Nearly three weeks in and the utopian promise of “affordable care” for all has yielded but a handful of folks who’ve even been able to sign up for this clinic in socialism.

That Obamacare – something billed as a health-care panacea for the collective – is something that the collective neither asked for, nor wanted, is now the back story. That it has failed so fantastically in every respect, has taken center stage.

Reuters reports: “In its third week of operations, the [Obamacare] website continues to experience problems, which government officials say they are working day and night to repair. Even allies of the Obama administration have been highly critical, with former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs calling it ‘excruciatingly embarrassing’ and calling for ‘some people’ to be fired.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., was both a sponsor of – and cheerleader for – Obamacare. He saw this coming. Once he read this 2,400-page regulatory monstrosity, he came to the same conclusion as did anyone else with two synapses to rub together. He called the implementation of Obamacare “a huge train wreck” and announced that, rather than resulting in his re-election, Obama’s pet government health-care albatross would sink him into retirement.

Still, the few who have somehow managed to enroll in Obamacare are discovering, to their dismay, what many of us have warned all along: There is nothing “affordable” about the paradoxically named “Affordable Care Act.” Though government geeks may be “working day and night” to fix the website, no amount of work will fix Obamacare itself. It’s unfixable. The only solution is to total-out this jalopy.

Even the Obamanistas are waking up. Just days before its launch, Politico lamented, “The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week (they weren’t) is a long way from the health plan President Barack Obama first pitched to the nation.

“Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage. Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.”

The president’s like-minded base – the hardcore left – has also become restless. In a recent “End of Day” report, Gary Bauer, founder of Campaign for Working Families, gives one example from the left-wing Daily Kos.

Bauer writes: “Obamacare’s continued horrendous rollout (See next item) will likely cause the scales to fall from many eyes. Even some liberals are questioning Obamacare. [Warning: Graphic language.] We need to make sure that friends and family members who bought into the hype about hope and change know that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better.”

The good news – if you can call it that – is that Obamacare is non-

discriminating. It’s putting the screws to every American – rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative.

In the above-referenced Daily Kos piece, headlined “Obamacare will double my monthly premium (according to Kaiser),” liberal blogger “Tirge Caps” captures the shock experienced by most Americans – even “progressive” Americans – over the promise of Obamacare vs. the reality of Obamacare:

“My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.

“Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is going to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.

“I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any f***ing penalty. What the hell kind of reform is this?

“Oh, OK, if we qualify, we can get some government assistance. Great. So now I have to jump through another hoop to just chisel some of this off. And we don’t qualify, anyway, so what’s the point?

“I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.

“I don’t know what to think now. This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people.

“What am I missing?“I realize I will probably get screamed at for posting this, but I can’t

imagine I am the only Californian who just received a rate increase from Kaiser based on these new laws.”

Not only will you get screamed at, Mr. Caps, but you may want to prepare for an unexpected IRS audit. America feels your pain, my friend.

The proof is in the Obamacare pudding.And Obamacare is poison pudding indeed.

MATT BARBERMatt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President ofLiberty Counsel Action.



Commentary: Matt Barber

It’s Time to Abolish Gun-Free ZonesExactly how many more innocent, unarmed teachers and students need

to be slaughtered on a school campus before people get angry enough to demand that the Nevada Legislature abolish these absolutely insane gun-free zones?

The recent shooting at the Sparks Middle School is particularly infuriating. One teacher was shot and killed. Two students were shot and seriously wounded. And it could have been a lot worse if the kid with the gun had decided to keep shooting other kids instead of killing himself.

Here’s the most outrageous part of this. The murdered teacher, Michael Landsberry, was a trained U.S. Marine who served two tours in Afghanistan and was a member of the Nevada Air National Guard. So we’re talking about a man thoroughly trained in the use of weapons who we completely trusted with our national security.

And yet Nevada’s Legislature didn’t trust Michael Landsberry enough to allow him the means necessary to protect himself and dozens of 7th- and 8th-graders on that school playground that fateful morning. As such, this trained military veteran was forced to confront an armed assailant with nothing more than two empty, outstretched hands and the hope that he could talk the kid down.

Instead, Michael Landsberry was gunned down.And while everyone is clearly saddened by the loss of this extraordinary

American hero and family man, I hope that sadness eventually turns into blood-boiling rage. Because this man didn’t deserve to die and he didn’t need to die. He at least deserved a fighting chance to defend himself and those students by being allowed, if he had so chosen, to carry a weapon with him to work, as countless other Nevadans do every single day throughout the state.

Michael Landsberry’s death is on the heads of every pontificating, self-righteous, anti-gun member of the Nevada Legislature who supports the continuation of these gun-free zones and who opposed the common sense “campus carry” bills that were introduced in both the 2011 and 2013 legislative sessions.

Here’s an undeniable truth: Disturbed students, crazy people and bad guys don’t give a (expletive) about gun control laws that say they shouldn’t possess a gun or take one into a gun-free zone. If they want a gun they’ll get a gun, regardless of whether or not they can pass a background check.

As such, the fact is “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” And the only way to potentially prevent school playgrounds and classrooms from becoming shooting galleries in the future is to allow responsible, properly trained adults the means to protect themselves and our children when a merchant of death comes knocking at the schoolyard gate.

It’s time to abolish these insane gun-free zones.God bless you and rest in peace, Mr. Landsberry. Semper Fi.

CHUCK MUTH(Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a conservative grassroots advocacy organization. He can be reached at www.MuthsTruths.com)


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

Most of the time, we elected that someone.

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

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

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