Nevada, USA Volume 16 Number 23 FEBUARY 14, 2019

Transcription

1 Penny Press Nevada, USA Volume 16 Number 23 FEBUARY 14, 2019

2 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 2 Penny Press Logotype Pointedlymad licensed from: Rich Gast 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 2019 Letters to the Editor are encouraged. They should be ed to: pennypresslv@gmail.com No unsigned or unverifiable letters will be printed

3 Penny Press NEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 16 NUMBER 23 FEBUARY 14, 2019 Epidemics, Fear and Denial: How Every American Is Threatened By: JANE M. ORIENT, M.D. Special to the Penny Press Last year was the one hundredth anniversary of the great influenza pandemic of In his book The Great Influenza, John M. Barry Commentary described it as the deadliest plague in history. It killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century. The lack of a vaccine did not cause the flu. All epidemics start with an index case which may or may not be identified. The great influenza may have begun in a patient in Kansas. The significance of the case was reportedly recognized by a country doctor, who was ignored. As the nation mobilized for World War I, and draftees from across the country were thrown together, illness spread and became much more virulent. Transport ships became floating caskets. Troop trains were rolling coffins. But Woodrow Wilson denied the existence or severity of the epidemic, and effective public health efforts were thwarted. Despite this history, and the expenditure of billions of dollars, the U.S. is not much better prepared than in There have been warnings, such as Ebola, severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARS), novel H1N1 flu, and the 2014 outbreak of enterovirus D68 in schoolchildren. But when the threats recede, the nation goes back to sleep. The Conservative Weekly Voice Of Nevada Inside: Wide World of Journalism Should Shame Them All See Editorial Page 6 Penny Wisdom When different populations are thrown together, as in boot camp or college dorms when new freshmen arrive, there is a lot of sickness. Each group has a different pattern of colonizing microorganisms to which its members have immunity and others do not. There are terrible historical examples of native populations in the New World being devastated by diseases of European settlers. Epidemics can happen naturally or through neglect or they could be caused deliberately. Biological warfare is probably the very worst weapon of mass destruction. One scenario is to embed a suicide agent incubating a deadly disease in a mass of migrants. Or there are doubtlessly innocent persons infected with deadly diseases to which Americans have Many Democrats are focused on tearing down their opposition. Instead of building up our country they're trying to impose some of the most extreme measures and policies ever put forward by our Congress. President Donald Trump no immunity among thousands of migrants overwhelming our border from Central America and many other places. The mainstream press and even part of mainstream medicine promotes denial. For example, an NBC News article quotes Dr. Paul Spiegel, who directs the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health: There is no evidence to show that migrants are spreading disease. The danger of introducing disease is a false argument used to keep migrants out. The article even quotes a study that purportedly shows that hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV generally only spread within the affected immigrant communities and not to the wider population. Perhaps there is an Continued on page4 RON KNECHT PAGE 5 FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6 ROBERT RINGER PAGE 7 DOUG FRENCH PAGE 9 KAREN KERRIGAN PAGE 10 ROBERT ROMANO PAGE 11 LAWRENCE REED PAGE 14

4 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 4 Worry About REAL Body Counts Not CO2 Continued from page 3 nvisible shield between an infected migrant and an American but not etween him and someone newly arriving from his country? Is this denialism? No, that term is for those who don t believe that we can change the climate and save the Planet by cutting off energy from the fuels that power 80 percent of the world s economy. The supposed mainstream of media and organized medicine insists that climate change catastrophic and human-caused is the existential public health threat that eclipses all others. Let s have uncontrolled migration, but tight global control of essential fuels. Is concern about the caravan just fearmongering? We don t hear that term applied to those who say we must treat a child missing some mandated vaccines as a Typhoid Mary and bar him from schools or doctor s offices even though nobody ever caught a disease from a child that wasn t infected with it. Rather, that s the word for those who warn about tropical diseases, even if they are much more common and deadly than indigenous measles. Or for those concerned about tattooed MS-13 gang members, rapists, jihadists, human traffickers, and other criminals intent on harming Americans. Such people also infect, molest, assault, or murder people in their own countries and in the caravan. Our nation faces real threats that produce genuine body counts from violence and disease. Instead, we are supposed to worry about carbon dioxide, invisible dust particles, and imperceptible phobias and isms. Not just worry, but shut down industries and shut out dissenters from public discourse. A wall is indeed proposed to confine the half of America that votes the wrong way and wants to protect American lives, liberties, and property. We need an outbreak of common sense. Jane M. Orient, M.D. obtained her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974.

5 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 5 Commentary: Ron Knecht The Green New Deal: Doubling Down on Past Mistakes My first full-time job after college was assistant city engineer in Urbana, Illinois in I worked on my liberal Democrat green interests: bikeways, undergrounding communications and power lines, better sewer systems, sidewalks, traffic, planning and zoning codes. I learned a key lesson in those matters. Its breadth and importance would become clearer as my career progressed. One day the public works director, a crotchety old The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To: conservative Republican, said: You want bikeways, underground lines, sidewalks and all those things? Well, it really is easy and cheap. I was stunned. Previously he d always been the naysayer, citing costs, practicability, etc. Then he said: At the edge of town, find a green field and you can design and build in all the amenities you want fairly inexpensively. But once you start laying out a subdivision and constructing things and then you decide to add those features, it gets difficult and expensive. And when you try to retrofit an already built neighborhood for them, it becomes ridiculous. Immediately I understood the point, but not all the implications. Those became clear only as I pursued my environmental and consumer interests in a greater Tips Of Our Cap and Bronx Cheers President Trump for a major rally in El Paso, TX which drew around 35,000 people at which he called the Mayor full of crap for the Mayor s suggestion that it wasn t the wall separating El Paso from crime-ridden Juarez which made the American city safe. Face it, the Mayor is full of crap. The New York jury which saw through the high priced defense Bull Crap and sent Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman to a real prison an American prison for the rest of his life. Bye Bye Shorty The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To: Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren who suggested that President Trump may not be a free man by 2020 in her announcement that she was running for President. Who the hell does this lying wench think she is? The FBI? Bob Mueller? While it ain t bragging if you can back it up, she can t even take a swing. professional context. Upon completing my civil engineering masters project, I became expert in the full range of power generating economics, with particular focus on nuclear power. As an expert witness, I had small partial credit in helping stop perhaps a dozen nuclear units around the country. In my analyses, I highlighted the skyrocketing costs over time of building nukes, which were rising as much as 15 percent annually in real terms, a trend no one seemed able to explain. I suggested the increases would continue and were due to cost internalization processes driven by new regulations. As it turned out, that was true, but it missed two important aspects of the problem I would see only later. In 1984, as principal economist at California s Public Utilities Commission, I toured the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which had been delayed many years and was to come on line at a cost about 20 times the original estimate. My first look inside the building housing the reactor was stunning. Instead of elegantly and cleanly designed, it looked like a mess with structural beams in odd places and many other misplaced weird features. Like something constructed in a nightmarish hallucinatory fit. I learned this was due mainly to the retrofit problem explained standards is to raise them only as high as the point at which the diminishing incremental social benefit they provide equals their cost, which rises with the regulatory requirements. But nuclear standards weren t set with reference to social cost and benefit. Instead, they were set as high as technically feasible, regardless of cost. So, nuke costs increased ridiculously as builders were required continuously to retrofit to wasteful standards, especially as retrofit caused schedule delays that led to further retrofit. And utility ratepayers paid the cost. Once I understood that, I reversed my opposition to nuclear power and began to support nuclear regulatory reform. (I also became a limited-government Republican conservative.) In sum, unsound public policy unjustified standards and retrofit regardless of its costs combined to damage the public interest by killing a no-carbon energy option and sticking people with ridiculous costs. So now comes Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and today s liberal Democrat enviros with their Green New Deal. They plan to remake the world to an unsound standard, zero carbon emissions achieved by retrofitting or replacing all existing buildings, ending use of fossil fuels in transportation, outlawing steaks and destroying numerous industries. Also, implementing many of their socialist dreams. The folly of earlier greenies in killing the nuclear power option cost the world many billions of dollars. The Green New Deal, if it could be achieved, would cost many trillions of dollars. For uncertain but paltry benefits much below the costs. to me years earlier. Nuclear construction was licensed to safety and environmental standards prevailing when the license was issued. However, as those standards changed and they changed greatly and fast the builders were required to retrofit projects being built to the new standards. Thus, the visual nightmare. The other problem also soon became clear. Sound public policy for safety, environmental and all RON KNECHT

6 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 6 OPINION From The Publisher... We Need A New Show: Wide World of Journalism So we get up Monday morning, tune in CBS This Morning, and see Gayle King doing an interview with Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. It worked like this: King: Well he may be white and it s possible he wore blackface but he s not such a bad guy since he s a Democrat. Northam: Not me, I didn t do it and I m not resigning. I ll try to be better. OK, I m paraphrasing here, but that s sure how it came off. Do you know what was missing from King s act? A question about infanticide. Best guess is that was never even contemplated. King, of course, is Black and consumed with questions of race and feminism (being Oprah s best friend) but not so bold as to cross out of the Democrat mantra. You can bet if she were interviewing a conservative Republican Governor who was clearly pro-life in approximately the same situation as Northam, it would have been a different interview. Hell, were she interviewing President Trump about the NBC tapes, she would have comported herself differently. But this interview less than a week after Northam said, asked about a potential failed abortion, the infant would be resuscitated if that s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. He was talking about a bill in the Virginia House of Delegates which would have legalized infanticide or, to put a point on it, retroactive abortion. The Republicans in the House killed the bill (instead of the babies) and it should be noted that Northam s background is that he is a pediatrician. And, yet, King couldn t find much, if anything, to talk about there. If anything, any questions she did ask were left on the cutting room floor (or, as these things go today, the digital dust bin). She spent most of her time suggesting that Northam a doctrinaire Democrat was sincere and needed to be rehabilitated. That s what you get from CBS in terms of quality of reporting. Edward R. Murrow should be spinning in his grave. Now, let s talk about Jeff Bezos. Turns out the world s richest man was having an affair and took some pictures which can only be classified as similar to those taken by former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Somehow, those pictures were acquired by the National Enquirer. And Bezos has accused the Enquirer of extorting him. Not for money, but for a statement that there was no political motivation. You see, Bezos bought the Washington Post with his pocket change and hates Donald Trump. The people who publish the Enquirer are reputed to be FOD (Friends of Donald). So the whole thing must be a deep dark plot, Right? It s not like Bezos didn t have an affair. It s not like Bezos and his estranged wife didn t announce an impending divorce. And it s not like Bezos is saying he didn t take the Weiner-style photos. Turns out that the world s richest man is definitely NOT the world s smartest. You see, there is a simple way to stay out of this sort of situation. DON T TAKE SELFIES OF YOUR PACKAGE!!! You would think the guy who invented Amazon would know that. Welcome to today s Wide World of Journalism. (That should have both Roone Arledge AND Howard Cosell spinning in their graves.) FRED WEINBERG

7 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 7 Commentary: Robert Ringer On the contrary, his appetite for wealth without work is insatiable. The result is that when producers can no longer create enough wealth to appease the voracious appetites of the masses, those on the receiving end become increasingly angry. If, for example, a man spends his whole life being told that it is his right to retire at age fifty-eight and that it is someone else s obligation to support him in his retirement in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed, he is incapable of comprehending that he must work until gasp! age sixty. With the ongoing debt-ceiling crisis, no cutbacks in store for Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, and a majority of politicians unwilling to make serious spending cuts in other redistribution-of-wealth programs, it does not take a fiscal genius to see where all this is headed: revolution. The worst thing about the collapse of a nation s economy is that it sets the stage for the uprising that Marx and Engels so passionately longed for and that those on the Radical Left believe they can achieve in America. The reason the United States has been able to avoid violent revolution until now is because even through the eras of the most leftleaning presidents and Congresses of the past hundred years, there has always enough pushback to keep capitalism alive. But things are now changing very fast. The pushback of yesteryear has been on the decline for decades, as evidenced by recent election results in formerly rugged individualism states like Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. These states are becoming more blue by the day, with serious pushback from the right now coming from less than 50 percent of the population. There s an irony in the fact that Marx and Engels believed capitalism was necessary in order to create more wealth disparity. That irony is that capitalism creates more wealth for those on the lowest rung of the income ladder than any other system, so income and wealth disparities, while interesting phenomena for academic eggheads to ponder, are pretty much irrelevant. The only thing that s relevant is how well off each individual is in absolute terms not in comparison to others. Without capitalism, prosperity for the masses cannot exist. Likewise, without freedom, capitalism, by definition, cannot exist, because it is nothing more than a subcategory of freedom the freedom to trade one s goods, services, and labor with others without interference from government. Plain and simple, capitalism is the purest form of freedom. All this by way of saying that as we enter the new year, we would all do well to resist becoming distracted by the ongoing political theater in Washington and focus on the most important issue of our time: our loss of freedom. It is, in fact, the most important issue of any time. ROBERT RINGER Robert Ringer ( 2019)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 The Capitalism and Freedom Connection Americans are easy prey when it comes to being distracted by the political theater in Washington. It is this attraction to non-issues (e.g., the so-called government shutdown) that prevents them from focusing on the issues that really matter. Of course, people s ideas about what constitutes freedom can vary widely, depending upon whether they view the world from the right or the left. Speaking for myself, I believe that the easiest way to define freedom is to call it the antithesis of communism. Karl Marx and his lackey benefactor, Friedrich Engels, firmly believed that violent revolution was the only way to bring about pure communism, and that such a revolution was possible only where capitalism existed. The reason for this, they believed, was because capitalism was a necessary ingredient for creating a wide financial disparity between the workers and the privileged class. It s kind of weird that Marx and Engels sought to increase income disparity between the classes, then rectify the disparity through violent revolution. Perhaps their thinking was a result of their being familiar with the colossal failure of the French Revolution, which led not to freedom but mob violence, unthinkable human carnage, and ultimately a Napoleonic dictatorship. Neither Marx nor Engels lived long enough to witness the most notable communist revolutions, those in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, and it s interesting that none of these countries could have been considered capitalist countries at the time. There s no question, however, that Marx and Engels would have considered the modern-day United States to be the perfect crucible for testing their convoluted class-warfare theory. Today, only naïve utopian dreamers believe in the communist fairy tale that under communism, the state will eventually wither away because there will be so much of everything for everybody that government will no longer be necessary. I do, however, believe that Marx and Engels were on to something when they referred to socialism as a transitional stage of society between capitalism and communism. This should be explained to the masses, so when a Bernie Sanders or an economics-major (chuckle) like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hails the virtues of socialism they understand what a socialist society actually looks like. Here in the United States we have long suffered from the delusion that European-style socialism is a nice, peaceful, cradle-to-grave compromise between capitalism and communism. Elitists on both the right and the left have come to believe that Western society is static and that so long as Western countries keep their redistribution-of-wealth policies finely tuned, capitalists will go right on producing enough wealth to support the parasitic masses. In this naïve view of the world, they do not take into account a crucial factor known as human nature. Homo sapiens particularly its progressive subspecies is, by nature, an avaricious creature. As a result, getting free stuff does not decrease his desire for other people s property.

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9 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 9 Commentary: Doug French The Transportation Boom Ends Sales of Class 8 trucks (18-wheelers) hit the ditch in January, with orders down 58 percent from a year ago hitting a level not seen since October 2016, near the end of the transportation recession, when Class-8 truck orders had plunged to the lowest levels since 2009, and truck and engine manufacturers responded with layoffs, writes Wolf Richter. The other day I posted about the plunge in the Baltic Dry Index and now news is the Cass Freight Index dropped in December. The Cass index covers shipments of merchandise for the consumer and industrial economy but does not include bulk commodities, such as grains or chemicals. It was the first year-over-year decline since the transportation recession of 2015 and 2016 and trucking companies have seen this coming for months: Shipping indexes provide a barometer for how the economy is doing. Less shipping means less buying, selling, and producing. Government interference in the form of low interest rates and the threat of tariffs pulled economic activity forward. However, now the economy is digesting that bubble (malinvestment) of activity. Richter explains, The trucking business is a barometer of, and dependent on, the goods-based economy. In late 2017 through the summer of 2018, demand for transportation services, such as shipping by truck, surged under the simultaneous impact of a strong goods-based economy led by red-hot e-commerce; a buildup of inventories; pandemic front-running of potential tariffs, a resurgence of drilling activity in the oil patch that required equipment and supplies to be trucked in, etc. Freight rates spiked. Squeezed shippers wheezed in their earnings reports about these spiking transportation costs, while truckers were on Cloud-9 and ordered new trucks to meet the demand, and truck manufacturers were swamped with orders. Now shipping activity has cooled off and trucking capacity has improved. The Flatbed Monthly Load-to-Truck Ratio by DAT tracks demandcapacity imbalances. After skyrocketing, the industry figured out how to deal with ELDs just as a slowdown in the industrial sector set in, particularly oil & gas. Now, the average load-to-truck ratio has plunged, down 41% from December a year ago. DOUG FRENCH

10 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 10 Commentary: Karen Kerrigan America s Small Businesses Win and Will Thrive Under New Trade Agreement The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed by President Trump and his fellow leaders at the G20 in Argentina. The accord modernizes the decades-old NAFTA and is chock full of provisions that will help American small businesses boost exports and safeguard their intellectual property (IP). Congress needs to approve USMCA as soon as possible. Small businesses drive the U.S. economy. Thirty million small businesses employ more than 58 million American workers. They also account for roughly half of U.S. GDP. Small businesses rely heavily on North American trade to stay afloat. Of the U.S. companies that export to Canada and Mexico, three in four have fewer than 50 employees, and four in five have fewer than 100. Modernizing NAFTA to strengthen IP protections will provide a muchneeded boost to the U.S. economy. Small firms invest heavily in research and development. They produce 16 times more patents per employee than larger businesses. This innovation would grind to a halt without patents, copyrights, and other IP protections, which prevent rival firms from unfairly replicating and undermining an innovator s creation. Entrepreneurs wouldn t invest in innovative ideas and neither would outside investors if rivals could steal the fruits of such labor. The USMCA bolsters IP protections in several ways. Consider copyrights, which prevent competitors from stealing creative content like books, movies, and art. The USMCA would extend Canada s copyright terms by 20 years, putting them on par with U.S. standards. This change would give U.S. small business owners and their families more time to benefit financially from their creations. The USMCA also furthers the capabilities of research companies that develop biologic medicines drugs derived from living organisms. These firms are set to receive ten years of regulatory data protection for their biologics. During that time, no rival firm can use the innovators lab or clinical trial data to create a knockoff treatment. Canada used to grant just eight years of data protection. Mexico offered a maximum of five years. The new, stronger standard will spur additional research in the biopharmaceutical industry, which directly employs more than 800,000 Americans and indirectly supports 4 million other jobs. Big drug companies depend on thousands of small vendors for help in producing lifesaving treatments. Small entrepreneurial firms also dominate the biopharmaceutical industry. Among pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing firms, 57 percent have less than 20 workers, and 79 percent have less than 100 employees. The USMCA would assist small firms in other ways, too. For instance, it establishes a committee to educate small businesses about ways to expand their exports and reach new markets. The USMCA would greatly benefit American small businesses. Congress should waste no time in approving the deal. KAREN KERRIGAN Karen Kerrigan is president & CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

11 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 11 Commentary: Robert Romano Trump Administration Should Reject $3.7 Billion Loan to Japanese-owned Company Running on Mexican-owned Rail Line The Department of Transportation could be on the verge of approving a $3.7 billion Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing (RRIF) low-cost loan to Virgin Trains USA, owned by the $100 billion market cap SoftBank Group based in Tokyo, to build a higher-speed train project on a freight rail line in eastern Florida owned by Grupo Mexico. The project would expand Virgin Trains USA from southeast Florida, currently operating between West Palm Beach and Miami, all the way to Orlando. Future phases include Orlando to Tampa and up the eastern coast to Jacksonville. The RRIF Loan would be more money than the Trump administration has received from Congress to date to build the southern border wall and that was only $1.6 billion to repair existing fencing. It would also be the largest RRIF loan in Department of Transportation history, beating out Amtrak s $2.45 billion loan in Virgin Trains USA has already raised $1.2 billion in private equity from Fortress Investment Group, which Japan-based SoftBank Group bought in The Virgin Trains USA (formerly Brightline) project has been approved by the Build America Bureau (also run by the Department of Transportation) for $1.75 billion of tax-exempt private activity bonds, $600 million for phase one and $1.15 billion for phase two to Orlando. In addition, Virgin Trains USA has an initial public offering on Nasdaq planned for Feb. 13 for another $619 million. So, what does it need more Department of Transportation funds for? This is a multibillion project owned by the same company, SoftBank Group, which owns Sprint, even has a 30 percent stake in Alibaba and could just issue its own bonds to cover the costs of the project, were it so inclined. This is to say nothing of Grupo Mexico which will be the other net beneficiary of the public funds as Virgin Trains USA will be paying for the right of way on the tracks. Essentially, Grupo Mexico is getting a free track out of the deal and double the freight capacity. This is the definition of crony capitalism, where private companies that can afford to sustain themselves nonetheless come to taxpayers looking for grants or low-cost loans to mitigate their risk. Low interest federal loans and tax-free Private Activity Bonds are taxpayer subsidized financing schemes which, if Virgin Trains USA projections are accurate, mean cash in the pockets of foreign corporations. In the meantime, the project has not been fully vetted by the state of Florida, which does not even have state regulations governing higherspeed rail (trains going mph), according to the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA), a research arm of the Florida legislature. The Office contracted an independent, international transportation consulting firm, CPCS, to conduct the study. The OPPAGA study, notes the gap in regulations, stating, While the Federal Railroad Administration and the Florida Department of Transportation have in place regulations for conventional (up to 80mph) and high-speed (126 mph to 220 mph)rail, neither agency has developed additional regulations that are specific to higher-speed rail (81mph to 125mph). Meaning, what Virgin Trains USA is building may not meet the safety regulations Florida ultimately comes up with. Shouldn t Florida develop its regulations before the project is funded partially using taxpayer dollars? Making matters worse, according to a Dec. 13, 2018 letter from U.S. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) and U.S. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, since the AAF-Virgin high speed train began testing and operating the South Florida portion of its line last year, ten fatalities and multiple accidents have already been reported. That number is now up to 14 fatalities. Other possible impacts to Virgin Trains USA financing include two lawsuits currently in the courts. One group of challenges by Indian River County now at the appellate level of federal court questions the validity of the Department of Transportation approving the Private Activity Bonds and whether the National Environmental Protection Act requirements are being met. Indian River County also has a local suit challenging Virgin Trains USA s ability to require local taxpayers to pay for crossing upgrades and equipment maintenance for the new service. Given the safety concerns, it s a wonder the Florida Department of Transportation did not fully consider an alternate route for the rail project away from densely populated areas with fewer road crossings, such as the one suggested by a 2010 Economic Development Research Group, Inc.- Siemens study on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors that would have run along a coastal bypass route of the Florida Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning questioned the project in a statement, asking, Why in the world would the Trump administration even consider the largest RRIF loan in history for a project that not only endangers lives but is overwhelmingly opposed by the people who would be directly impacted by it? Manning urged the Trump administration to reject the project, concluding, Limited government means ending crony capitalism and the Trump administration needs to just say no to the lobbyists trying to reach into the taxpayers pockets. ROBERT ROMANO Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

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14 THE PENNY PRESS,FEBUARY 14, 2019 PAGE 14 Commentary: Lawrence Reed Presidents Day is just around the corner. Should we celebrate? People who love liberty and live in a free society don t bow down and worship politicians. We understand that politicians wield power, to be sure, but we also know they still put their pants on one leg at a time. As President Reagan once put it, America is a nation that has a government, not the other way around. The best of America s presidents worked to keep the peace and our liberties. They didn t view the Constitution as public window-dressing while they undermined it inside the store. The worst ones expanded power in Washington, burdening future generations with dubious programs, bureaucracy, taxes, debt, and foreign adventurism. The truly good ones are few and far between. So whoever it was who decided we should have a Presidents Day in February, I can assure you it wasn t me. I d prefer to celebrate an Entrepreneurs Day. Or an Inventors Day. Or, of course, Mother s Day and Father s Day. If I had my way, we d have a Capital Day too. America s third president, Thomas Jefferson, regarded government employment with a healthy wariness. In a 1799 letter, he warned, Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. Twelve years later in another letter, he said, I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. Presidents Day, fortunately, is still welcomed by most Americans more as a day off work than a day to glorify presidents even Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays were consolidated into the holiday in the first place. But there s still too much presidential glorifying that goes on for my tastes. In the spirit of Jeffersonian skepticism, my way of noting the holiday this year is to offer five of the many bad things some bad presidents said. Here you go, numbered but not ranked in any particular order: One Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it. What s wrong with that, you ask? Nothing! In fact, it s superbly accurate and insightful. What puts it onto my worst list is who uttered it Woodrow Wilson, my candidate for Worst President. He said it in September 1912 in New York, just weeks before he was elected with less than 42 percent of the popular vote in a four-way race (against Taft, Roosevelt, and Debs). Given what this progressive Machiavellian did during his eight years in office, he either didn t mean what he said or he didn t care enough to ever live up to it. Cynical pandering to get votes and then delivering something different ought to be a political sin, but sadly, it s often taken as a sign that the culprit has grown in office. Wilson grew government like bacteria in a petri dish. He helped give us the income tax and then took the top marginal rate from 10 percent to more than 70 percent. He played a role in the creation of America s inflation-and-depression factory known as the Federal Reserve. He regimented the economy with a maze of controls during World War I, which he put us into despite a promise to keep us out of it. He locked up dissidents right and left after he signed the Sedition Act of 1918, making it punishable by imprisonment of up to 20 years for a citizen to simply use disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language to describe the federal government or his war policies. He was also a racist, segregationist, eugenicist, and philanderer. If he ever believed a word from that passage on liberty, he never demonstrated in deed the slightest evidence of it. A wonderful quote sullied by a lousy pol. Two If you ve got a business, you didn t build that. Somebody else made that happen. Barack Obama not only said that, he meant it. It betrayed a deep-seated disdain for wealth-creating entrepreneurs that he enshrined in public policy. His administration piled on regulations often for the sake of it, not because they made economic sense. He was a state worshiper a man who sought to put government in charge of just about everything no matter what the results were ever likely to be. To Obama, government is an unqualified good, its mere presence a blessing to us all. It apparently never occurred to him to give wealth creators credit for overcoming all the growth-stifling bunk that government throws at them including bad and expensive schools, dubious regulations and high taxes, and job-killing labor rules, for starters. This quote was a horrific put-down of millions of honest, hard-working, risktaking wealth creators from a man whose dislike of business is likely fueled by envy, misinformation, and a lack of any business acumen of his own. Three The government is us; we are the government, you and I. Another so-called progressive, Theodore Roosevelt, spoke those words in Plenty of other people have said something similar, often as a way of endorsing representative government over, say, a dictatorship. It may sound innocuous, but it s actually insidious. One of the first things I ever read by the late Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard was a convincing refutation of this collectivist canard. Rothbard argued that government is a collection of individuals who, by virtue of the monopoly of legal power they possess, exert influence and control over other people. Some people consent to it; others do not. But let s not make the mistake of assuming that just because we can elect our politicians, everything they subsequently do is voluntary on our part or that we re all doing it to each other. If you were drafted by the government and sent to Vietnam, you probably didn t think you were the one doing the sending. If a Martian landed in your backyard and declared, Take me to your government, you wouldn t reply, Oh, well here I am. What can I do for you? More likely, you d send him to Capitol Hill or the White House. In the mind of a power-thirsty politician, the government is us mentality is a license to justify all sorts of mischief. In the mind of an obsequious citizen, it s an excuse to acquiesce to whatever that politician wants to do to him. Four Children are our greatest natural resource. There s another high-sounding, popular, but dangerous expression. Herbert Hoover said it almost a century ago. Yes, children are great. We ve all been one (and some people still are). But if you use ours to speak of children, I hope you re referring to yours, not mine or anybody else s. The point is that children are not collectively owned. They are created by parents, who lovingly exercise a guardian relationship over these new human beings until they are of age to be independent adults. And they are not a natural resource to be mined or exploited or pushed around. This is not a quibble. The idea that children are an amorphous blob to be deployed for the greater good has been used to justify the most awful collectivist disasters, from Hitler s Germany to Stalin s Soviet Union. I m sure Herbert Hoover didn t mean it that way when he said Children are our greatest natural resource, but it would have been nice if someone had shouted, Stop right there, Mr. President! My child belongs to no one but me, and someday he will belong only to himself. That s what freedom is all about. Please don t think of my child as your natural resource. Five It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is. This duplicitous statement was Bill Clinton s way of rationalizing his denial of a relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky in the face of evidence to the contrary. In hindsight, it s both a defining moment and a representation of his eight years in the White House. He earned the nickname Slick Willy for good reason. He constantly parsed words not to clarify but to deceive. Politics and the truth are not joined at the hip, much as we might wish they were. More often, their relationship is casual and self-serving. It s one of the reasons so many people complain about politics and politicians, even as they contradict themselves by supporting more power for them both. Which presidents tried hard to tell the truth? I don t think Bill Clinton was among them. I don t intend here to demean all presidents or the presidency. I ve written about the good ones, including my personal favorite, Grover Cleveland. But all have been mere mortals, foibles and flaws and all. I just don t want to put anybody on a pedestal they don t deserve, or to give credence to the worship of politics. I find it refreshing that when Jefferson gave instructions of what should be put on the obelisk marking his gravesite, he explicitly excluded any mention of the presidency. His inscription reads simply: Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia LAWRENCE W. REED Lawrence W. Reed is president of the Foundation for Economic Education. The article originally appeared on fee.org.

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