Penny PressNevada, USA Volume 14 Number 18 JANUARY 5, 2017

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THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 2

By NATALIA CASTROSpecial to the Penny Press

Millennials are quickly realizing college is not all it’s cracked up to be, or rather, all it’s priced up to be. College was meant to assist

students to enter the workforce with a competitive edge which would drive up higher employment, instead Millennials are failing to enter the labor force, often returning home to their parents with nothing but debt.

Billy Williams became social media famous for dropping out of school after his 4.0 first semester, in his Facebook post he claimed, “Yes

I have dropped out after finishing my first semester (with a 4.0 GPA). And it’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made. Not because I am averse to learning, but actually the exact opposite.” He explains that college is a scam, forcing students to pay outrageous prices for classes which aren’t providing the same returns.

And he is not completely wrong.College graduates are finding

themselves unable to put their degrees to work, LeAndre Martinez of the Huffington Post explains that “I am 23 years old. I’ve got $60,000 in debt from student loans. I make around $10 an hour working as a cook, and I live off of about $20 a week after I cover rent and other expenses. Since I graduated, my degree has been pretty much useless. When people see that I have a degree, it’s like it doesn’t

even mean anything. Every job that I’ve done, it’s kind of been by personal relation or word of mouth.”

Martinez is not a lazy millennial, but a product of a weak economy and a diminishing labor force.

Investors Business Daily of Dec. 2016 explains, “40 percent of [Millennials] still live with their parents, a 75-year high. They can’t afford to live on their own… This may well be the challenge of the coming decade — to re-skill and retrain younger workers so that they can find better, higher paying jobs and move out of their mom and dad’s house and into their own digs. They’re just bearing the brunt of decades of failed economic policies that have cut U.S. economic growth from 3 percent-plus to below 2 percent, and caused family incomes

to stagnate.”The economic stagnation of

the last decade could well result in economic devastation for the next several decades as the Millennial unemployment problem tears a gigantic hole in the overall workforce.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows labor participation for 25-34 year olds has dropped from an annual, unadjusted average of 84.6 percent to 81.6 percent since 2000, accounting for 1.3 million millennials who never entered the labor force on a net basis if labor participation had remained at the same rate.

This is matched with a growing population among this generation, the population of 25-34 year olds has increased an additional 4.8 million since 2000 to 43.5 million,

Penny PressNEVADA USA 16 PAGES VOLUME 14 NUMBER 18 JANUARY 5, 2017

Penny WisdomThe utter contempt with which privi-leged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, work-ing-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely respon-sible for the upswell of rage and con-tempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now. —Anthony Bourdain

The Conservative Weekly Voice Of NevadaInside:Trump Fixing NAFTAMakes Us All Winners

See Editorial Page 6

RON KNECHT PAGE 5FRED WEINBERG PAGE 6ROBERT RINGER PAGE 7THE PROMISE OF 2017 PAGE 9WILL OBAMA FADE AWAY PAGE 10ROBERT ROMANO PAGE 11CHUCK MUTH PAGE 14

Is College A Scam?

Commentary

Continued on page4

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 4

but the labor force has only increased 2.7 million to 35.5 million, an absorption rate into the labor force of a miniscule 56.7 percent for the additional population.

Millennials are now the largest and most college educated generation in American history, yet just over half of them appear to be entering the workforce. This is creating an unsustainable drag on the American economy.

However, the problem extends past this alarming drop in labor participation, because for many who aspire to pursue high level careers, a college degree is still a necessity.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also tells us that without a college degree it is significantly more difficult to obtain any level of employment. While finding employment is becoming increasingly difficult for younger Americans as is, without a college degree it is even harder. Not because of

the degree’s worth, but the stigma surrounding a lack of a degree.This pressure has pushed Millennials to attend college, garner high

levels of student loans, and when they fail to find good jobs, then return home to their parents.

The idea of the American dream proposed that each generation should be more successful and have more opportunities than the last, but with diminishing employment opportunities and escalating levels of student debt, the current economic climate is ruining this possibility. In the New Year, all Americans should hope the Trump administration will be able to turn around the economic tide that has burned our nation with slowing growth the past 16 years. An entire generation depends on it.

Natalia Castro is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.

For Many, A Degree Still NecessaryContinued from page 3

An Inspiration Moves On

As 2016 ended, we reflected on the homages we paid to great professionals and human beings we’ve long admired as they graciously ended their illustrious careers. They included Vin Scully, Tim Duncan and Charles Osgood. We’ll deeply miss the mastery and character with which they executed their crafts and enriched our lives.

Today, we add Thomas Sowell.The great Chicago-school

economist published his final of more than 2,000 syndicated columns this week. Sowell’s resume is too long to list, as he’s one of the most accomplished academics of the past

century. Degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago stand out, along with faculty positions at Cornell and UCLA, long-term residencies at the Urban Institute and Stanford’s Hoover Institution and nearly 40 popular books.

But what means most to us is the impact he’s had on our own lives and thinking. Sowell ranks right alongside his mentor, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek and the most knowledgeable and articulate advocates of free-market economics and liberty over the past half-century.

When Geoff was an undergraduate, one of Sowell’s books first broke the leftist mold for him that permeates much of academia and turned his attention toward becoming an economics student. Thus began a lifelong

pursuit of Friedman, Hayek and other greats, along with their ideological opponents like Karl Marx, Oskar Lange and John Maynard Keynes.

Somewhat, Geoff’s career and passion is attributable to that first encounter with Sowell’s work.

When Ron was in graduate school at Stanford, he wanted to meet the great man. But he heard that when students dropped by his office to do so, Sowell quizzed them on which of his books they had read and cut short the interview if not enough. To this day, Ron regrets not being brave.

Like us, Sowell originally started his own career holding leftist biases and beliefs he has now long since opposed. Sowell admits he was a Marxist in the early years, but says he changed his views after taking a job in the federal bureaucracy. While there, he studied the relationship between minimum wage hikes in Puerto Rico and the unemployment rate, noting that unemployment spiked when the minimum wage was raised.

He concluded that the government employees who administered the law cared more about justifying their own jobs than the plight of the poor. These private incentives meant that government isn’t really benevolent and is therefore much incapable of accomplishing the objectives for which it purports to strive. Often, as with the minimum wage law, it makes social problems worse.

This epiphany led Sowell to reject many of his previous premises. As he says in his final column this week, “You cannot live a long life without having been forced to change your mind many

times about people and things -- including in some cases, your whole view of the world.”

Also like us, Sowell is a boundless optimist when it comes to human progress and the potential of the human mind. Reflecting on the past this week, he says, “Most Americans did not have refrigerators back in 1930, when I was born. Television was little more than an experiment, and such things as air-conditioning or air travel were only for the very rich. My own family did not have electricity or hot running water, in my early childhood, which was not unusual for blacks in the South in those days.”

He continues: “Most people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia continue to call the ‘have-nots’ today have things that the ‘haves’ did not have, just a generation ago.”

But Sowell laments the degeneration of political discourse over the years, the routine dishonesty of officeholders and the deterioration of black families and communities. Having grown up mostly in Harlem, it saddens him to see how violent and dysfunctional that community has become.

One final happy note before we cheer our hero into what we hope will be a long and happy retirement filled with photography and other passions: In 1948, Thomas Sowell tried out for our favorite team, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 5

The Penny Press Tips Its Cap To:The GOP House, which did the right thing, prodded by President Elect Trump, and cancelled their gutting of the Congressional Ethics Office. It just wasn’t a very smart move and both Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan fully understood that simply shouldn’t have been a priority at this point.

The Ford Motor Company, which cancelled its plan to build another Mexican plant and, instead, added jobs in the United States. Were they under heavy pressure to do so from the Presidential bully pulpit? Of course. But, nonetheless, the company did the right thing. Have you driven a Ford lately?

The Penny Press Sends A Bronx Cheer And A Bouquet of Weeds To:General (Government) Motors which was bailed out by the taxpayers of the United States of America in 2009 and even HAS a Mexican strategy. Who the hell does the management of this company think they are? Without America’s taxpayers, there wouldn’t BE a General Motors. The smart money at GM would be to use US plants, US workers and put America first. www.pennypressnv.com

Tips Of Our Capand

Bronx Cheers

Commentary: Ron Knecht & Geoffrey Lawrence

RON KNECHT and GEOFFREY LAWRENCE

Apparently, corporate America is now paying attention to the new administration’s attitude to fair—as opposed to free—trade.

United Technology caved on the Carrier move, Ford has decided not to build another plant in Mexico and General Motors is now clearly reconsidering its Mexican strategy.

Devotees of the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics are busy screaming to high heaven about “free” markets, but the fact is that sending auto assembly jobs from Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky to south of Ciudad Juarez—where the minimum wage just went to $5.18 an hour—and then sending those products back to Ohio, where the auto workers average $29 an hour is hardly free.

The upside is that the manufacturer theoretically makes more money. The downside is that, absent a robust domestic economy, nobody can afford the product—either in Mexico where $5.18 a hour won’t pay for a $25,000 car or in Ohio where unemployment insurance won’t pay either. Which means that the upside eventually becomes the downside after several quarters, maybe as much as 20 years, of artificially good performance.

This inflicts upon us the conflict between our national interests, our domestic manufacturing companies and our domestic economy.

Absent a level playing field—which this is definitely not—we must go with our national interest.

The question is no longer purely economic.

It is whether or not we can be a superpower without taking care of our own citizens first.

Bill Clinton won two elections with “it’s the economy stupid”. Back in 1992, however, Clinton didn’t see the North American Free Trade Agreement the same way that a serious businessman, Ross Perot, did.

“If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay $1 an hour for your labor, have no health care, have

no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care for anything but making money, then there will be a giant sucking sound going south.”

Perot said that on October 15, 1992 in a debate between Clinton, George H. W. Bush and himself.

While the phrase giant sucking sound became part of the lexicon, Perot was regarded like Donald Trump by many but his prediction has been vindicated even though he lost the election.

In the meantime, NAFTA became a signature of both the free trade crowd as well as those who think we somehow owed Mexico an opportunity to be our equal—on our nickel, of course.

By 2015, Hillary—and probably Bill who is a consummate reader of political tea leaves—realized NAFTA, and the baggage it was dragging with it, was a liability. That Ross Perot and, by extension, Donald Trump were right.

She couched it in touchy feely terms but she walked away from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was NAFTA for the Pacific. And, like John Kerry, she was for it before she was against it.

The truth is that nothing in real life is a zero-sum game.

Donald Trump, love him or hate him, observed what Ross Perot did in 1992 and, 24 years later, figured out how to use it more effectively than did Perot.

And Bill Clinton will probably, given the chance, tell you that it’s ALWAYS the economy, stupid.

So, if Trump can also figure out how to make the better deals he promised, using the same tools every President has, he may be able to level the playing field.

If that means a resurgence of domestic manufacturing, than we’re all big winners.

FRED WEINBERG

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 6

OPINIONFrom The Publisher...

Trump Might Make Us ALL Big Winners

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 7

In his book In Search of the Miraculous

In his book In Search of the Miraculous, the great 20th century thinker, philosopher, and writer, Russian-born P.D. Ouspensky, shares the following insight by his mentor, G.I. Gurdjieff:

If a man in prison was at any time to have a chance to escape, then he must first of all realize that he IS in prison. So long as he fails to realize this, so long as he thinks he is free, he has no chance whatever. No one can help or liberate him by force, against his will, in opposition to his wishes. If liberation is possible, it is possible only as a result of great labor and great efforts, and, above all, of conscious efforts, towards a definite aim.

Think about Gurdjieff’s observation as it applies to many modern-day imprisonments. People are imprisoned by unhappy marriages, unfulfilling jobs, or cities they live in but intensely dislike. Others are imprisoned by crusades, slogans, or dogmas, and still others by guilt, hatred, or envy.

Though few ever recognize it, the majority of people, certainly in

the Western world, have the power to escape most of the conditions that imprison them. That’s because most people’s imprisonments are usually caused by their belief systems or, quite often, nothing more than lethargy.

Which is why a person’s freedom begins with his realization that he himself possesses the mental key to his prison door. Once he acknowledges this reality and makes a commitment to do something about it, all he needs to add to the equation to bring about his complete escape is action.

The next time you’re feeling down, search your mind for signs of imprisonment. If you find that the source of your imprisonment is hiding there, recognize that it is within your power to turn your mental key and open the door — then be sure to take action. ROBERT RINGERRobert Ringer (© 2017)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

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 8

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Commentary: ALG2017’s bright promise

It is the end of 2016 and while many on the left view the year as the worst one ever, for those of us at Americans for Limited Government, it was a year of restored hope.

Contrary to the common lament, 2016 is the year when the American people finally declared that enough was enough and that they were taking back their government from the crony capitalists, Beltway bandits, big government unions, green job killers, the lobbyists, media conglomerates and the Silicon Valley oligarchs who thought they had permanently seized power.

It remains to be seen whether the red state rebellion will hold or if those who run D.C. will slither their way back into power stopping it before the calendar turns to 2018, but the initial signs are great.

The Trump Cabinet is largely outsider business types who view the federal government and its massive regulatory regime as an impediment to economic revival. The Trump White House economic team is being set up to be a group of very smart leaders who disagree on the approaches to restoring our nation’s economic footing. This creative disagreement will allow Trump to hear and compare various approaches to limited government policy options rather than just plunging ahead without competing advice.

Obama’s arrogant continual abuse of his power, effectively ends any talk that might have creeped into the conversation about not looking back, instead forcing the new Administration to focus on undoing the Obama presidency brick by brick. All the while, pushing forward with the Trump agenda.

The net effect promises to be a freeing of job creators from the

unnecessary and punitive shackles that Obama has placed upon them, providing the same effect as a stimulus package without adding to the national debt.

The effect will give hope to those who have either left or never entered the workforce that they can experience the American dream and don’t have to be shunted off to the sidelines suffering through a quiet despair.

The effect will be to encourage those who are underemployed in the workforce as they see new opportunities emerge where they can better utilize their skills or pursue opportunities that were previously closed to them.

If the revolution holds, 2017 will usher in a new American era where the economic marketplace and demand of consumers drives job creation and not a detached, agenda driven D.C.-based command and control system that picks winners and losers based upon whose back needs to be scratched.

No one can doubt that 2016 was a difficult year, but like a hard childbirth, the resulting change in how our government views its own people will make it worth it.

So, when you hear or read a celebrity, newscaster or sportswriter bemoan how 2016 was a terrible year including the election results as an example, just nod your head and smile, because out of the storms of this past year, there is the bright sunshine of hope just ahead.

AMERICANS FOR LIMITED GOVERNMENT

www.pennypressnv.com

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 10

Will Obama go away?Now that Christmas is in the rear-view mirror, we are in the true closing

stretch of the Obama Administration, and it just won’t go away.The outgoing President’s decision to stay in Washington, D.C. living less

than two miles from his former digs on Pennsylvania Avenue will ensure that he stays in the flow of official D.C., and his promise made in a CNN interview to keep quiet for a while after he leaves office to “still” himself is likely to be forgotten within the first hundred days of the new Trump Administration.

But it is Obama’s actions leaving office that are much more startling than any sidebar comments he makes in private with his buddies from the Washington Post that will be splattered across the pages of their birdcage lining rag.

Obama is determined to cement his legacy in the hopes that the mortar dries before the true “change” administration can dismantle it. The range of Obama’s chutzpah is startling going from foreign policy to a regulatory onslaught to a virtually unprecedented release of high level drug traffickers and violent criminals.

Obama’s choice to abstain rather than veto a United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s settlement of land that has been deemed to be occupied — in contravention of settled international law — fundamentally changes U.S. policy in the Middle East, opening the door for Israeli soldiers and government officials to be subjected to world court harassment or worse, used as basis to invade those Israeli territories, waving the new Security Council Resolution as a ready-made justification.

However, the fallout for the UN could be even more significant, as the corrupt international body’s anti-Israel decision should lead to a complete examination by the new Congress and administration of whether the UN actually serves any valid purpose, or if it should be shunted aside as the failure which it has proven to be. Senator Ted Cruz has already urged a half-measure, calling on Congress to suspend U.S. funding to the UN so long as this latest resolution remains. At a time when discretionary budgets for the U.S. government are likely to tighten, it would be easy to in the least deny the approximately $5 billion in non-peacekeeping contributions in 2017 and 2018 and allocate those monies to other important domestic needs.

In the end, if the UN comes under intense scrutiny in 2017 — which it will thanks to Obama’s extremely provocative move to allow the UN declare the post-1967 borders illegal — it will be because of Obama’s Hanukkah breach of U.S. policy, declaring that Jewish homes that have been built in certain territories of Israel are illegal, even including those in east Jerusalem.

While Obama continues to do internationally in his lame duck period what he wouldn’t dare prior to the election, his administrative state is churning along pushing out a regulatory barrage of bad ideas designed to tie up the first hundred days of the incoming Congress with using the Congressional Review Act to overturn dozens of regulations. It is reported that at least five new environmental regulations are scheduled to go final in the upcoming three and a half weeks from the EPA and Department of Interior alone at a cost of $6 billion.

Unlike the Bush Administration which put much of its regulatory writing on hold during the final six months of his term, Obama is working at a whirlwind pace to tie up the next Administration for much of its first four years in office attempting to unwind his maze of economically destructive paperwork.

But Obama’s pen has not just been busy clogging the system with regulatory overreach, he has also engaged in a legal jail break of historic proportions through his mass clemency program. In the past year alone, 872 drug offenders, some of whom were violent, have either had their sentences shortened or been granted outright clemency.

To put this in perspective, if you combine the numbers of people released from federal prison by Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, it would not equal Obama’s total.

Obama is going out with all of his guns blazing and you can be certain that his home in the wealthy D.C-based neighborhood, Kalorama, will be viewed by the establishment press as the government in exile, given almost diplomatic status in their minds.

With all of the challenges in the world, perhaps one of Donald Trump’s biggest problems will be Obama’s government in waiting undermining U.S. policy, led by their former boss who apparently has no intention of giving his successor the same courtesy that was afforded him.

AMERICANS FOR LIMITED GOVERNMENT

Commentary: ALG

‘You’re fired’: How Trump can reduce the federal workforce and drain the swamp

Republican presidential candidates the past many years have spoken of plans to reduce the federal workforce and rein in the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Rudy Giuliani in 2008 planned to do so by simply not rehiring workers to replace the retiring Baby Boomers, a proposal that was adopted by John McCain the same year and Mitt Romney again in 2012. President-elect Donald Trump once again adopted the hiring freeze this year in his successful bid to win the presidency via “Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter,” promising to “to reduce the federal workforce through attrition.”

Now Trump will have the opportunity to finally put that plan into motion and to dust off his famous slogan from NBC’s The Apprentice: “You’re fired.”

Because there is another more practical, political problem for Trump, and that is that after 8 years, the current 1.3 million non-defense civilian federal workforce is currently staffed with loyalists to President Barack Obama, who may not wish to implement Trump administration policies and may even seek to undermine the President-elect.

On his way out, Obama created an avenue for a small number of political appointees to rehired on the career side to burrow them into the workforce — called conversions. He also changed civil service rules to make it easier to hire federal employees outside of the traditional http://USAjobs.gov system. So, how to drain the swamp?

Federal rules make it extremely difficult to fire anybody in the civil service, a process that can take up to two years, even when there is cause like, say, only showing up to work one-third of the time. The federal employee unions get involved, and the whole thing is a mess. That said, federal managers attempting to deal with problem employees had best get started on day one. But one additional step that could be taken would be to reform civil service laws to make it easier to fire career federal employees, legislation that would need to be taken up by Congress, such as proposed by U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) likely to cause a major fight.

Another idea is to incentivize early retirement through financially lucrative, limited-time-only buy-outs. This would be accomplished via a one-time appropriation by Congress in the next continuing resolution — due on April 28, 2017 — reducing the amount of time served and the eligible retirement age on a temporary basis. The program could be administered by the Office of Personnel Management, with enough funds to facilitate the buy-outs, which would need to be big enough to promote early retirement.

More immediately, in the next continuing resolution, Congress could simply defund the personnel budgets of non-defense civilian departments and agencies, forcing an immediate 10 to 20 percent reduction in the workforce. Specifically, this would be done by taking last year’s enacted full-time equivalent number for each department, agency and office, and then cutting it by 10 to 20 percent. Also, it would be necessary to defund existing preferences under federal rules being given to those laid off being later rehired on a first-in-line basis. This latter part is essential, because otherwise, the Obama personnel who were just laid off will be the first to be rehired when positions need to be filled.

That would lay off anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 federal

employees. If it becomes necessary to refill certain positions, that can be dealt with later — with non-Obama personnel. But first things first, let’s start out from a point of reduction, truly limiting the size of the government via personnel.

Federal regulations, called Reduction in Force at 5 CFR Part 351, generally dictate a last-in, first-out seniority system when it comes to layoffs. The last federal employees who were hired were by Obama. A 10 to 20 percent reduction of the federal workforce then would naturally hit Obama’s hires the hardest. This too would be a major fight, but tied to the continuing resolution, the continued funding of the non-essential portions of the government would be at stake, giving Republicans in Congress the leverage they need to prevail, provided they are willing to get tough.

Congressional Democrats would likely attempt to force a government shutdown over any changes to the civil service via the April funding bill, particularly anything reducing the workforce on a mandatory basis and preempting the possibility of Obama personnel being rehired during a Trump administration. Indeed, Senate Democrats are likely to force a shutdown in the April funding bill no matter what it contains in order to test the new President’s resolve and that of House and Senate leaders. Such a shutdown would be unsurprising, as it will be one of the few tactics available to Democrats whilst in the minority in the House and the Senate to stop Republican policies. To which, there is a simple solution: No back-pay for federal employees after the shutdown ends.

Usually, after government shutdowns, non-essential personnel can expect to receive back-pay, essentially a paid vacation for their troubles during the shutdown. So, simply issue a warning that there will be no back-pay during the ensuing government shutdown, and suddenly the federal workforce, if not the unions whose job it is to protect those who have been there the longest, will be the biggest advocates of ending the shutdown immediately — even if it ultimately means an across-the-board reduction of the workforce. Self-preservation would kick in just from a monthly cashflow basis for most employees who have bills to pay.

Much of the workforce lives in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia anyway, all of which voted for Hillary Clinton. If there is no back-pay during the ensuing government shutdown, Democrats using the shutdown tactic to forestall inevitable federal workforce reductions would only be punishing their own voting constituencies instead of protecting 80 to 90 percent of them from a cessation of pay.

Nobody in the federal government is entitled to their jobs, and with a Republican president, government shutdowns should no longer be leverage used to enact Democratic policies or to protect government employee constituencies. No back-pay during government shutdowns would take away leverage Democrats usually wield. This would increase the likelihood of success in a fight over the civil service issue, and critically, once Democrats capitulate, over any other issue in future policy-based funding battles in continuing resolutions and omnibus spending bills, like Obamacare.

It’s time to play hardball. If the Trump administration wants to be able to enact the President-elect’s agenda in the relatively short time that is available, the biggest obstacle may not be Congress. There are problems there to be sorted out, to be sure. The biggest problem will be with the federal workforce itself, leaking to the press like a sieve and undermining the administration at every turn.

In this case, hiring freezes, early retirements and a big, real cut in the size of the workforce should be the first order of business by the Trump administration to truly drain the swamp. ROBERT ROMANORobert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 11

Commentary: Robert Romano

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 12

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 13

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2016’s Top 10 Nevada ConservativesWhile the general consensus is that 2016 was a disaster for Republicans

in Nevada, not so for conservatives. An awful lot of culling of the RINO (Republicans in Name Only) herd was accomplished, as well as a thorough mucking out of the RINO stable.

And with that in mind, here’s my list of the top ten Nevada conservatives for 2016…

10) Ira Hansen. Ira was one of the strongest opponents of RINO Gov. Brian Sandoval’s $1.4 billion tax hike and one of the biggest behind-the-scenes supporters of conservative candidates who ran against tax-hiking legislators in 2016.

9.) Jim Marchant. Jim defeated tax-hiking Assemblyman Glenn Trowbridge in the Republican primary, and went on to win the seat in the general election.

8.) Al Kramer. Al defeated tax-hiking Assemblyman P.K. O’Neill in the Republican primary, and went on to win the seat in the general election.

7.) Danny Tarkanian. Tark dispatched the Prince of RINOs, state Sen. “Tax Hike Mike” Roberson, in the 3rd congressional district GOP primary and refused to buckle under extreme pressure to “dump Trump” just weeks before the general election.

6.) Dan Schwartz. Despite setback after setback in both the judicial and political arenas, Nevada’s state Treasurer has plowed forward, undaunted, with efforts to make Nevada’s landmark school choice program, Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), a reality.

5.) Ron Knecht. The Nevada State Controller led the successful legal battle to repeal Gov. Sandoval’s new job-killing “Commerce Tax” via referendum. Alas, the Nevada Supreme Court dragged its feet and didn’t clear the measure until a month before the deadline to submit signatures. As such, it didn’t qualify for the ballot.

This year.4.) Wayne Root. Wayne is hands-down the most prolific preacher of the

conservative gospel in Nevada. He’s an author, columnist, speaker, and radio talk show host. Wayne was also an early and outspoken supporter of Donald Trump.

3.) Adam Laxalt. Nevada’s attorney general has been the “Energizer Bunny” in fulfilling his campaign promise to protect Nevada’s sovereignty from federal government overreach. Adam was also unique among Nevada’s top elected officials for refusing to throw Donald Trump under the bus.

“Governor Laxalt” has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?2.) Charles Munoz and Michael McDonald. At a time when all the

“experts” declared that Donald Trump had absolutely no chance to win the Republican Party nomination, let alone the presidency itself, Munoz and McDonald defied conventional wisdom and boarded the Trump Train - Munoz as Trump’s Nevada director and McDonald as chairman of the Nevada Republican Party.

Trump won the Nevada primary easily, and came a heckuva lot closer in the general than anyone thought possible.

1.) Victor Joecks. So what did the former executive vice president of the conservative Nevada Policy Research Institute do in Nevada last year to warrant this #1 position?

Absolutely nothing. Instead, Victor spent the year deployed in Iraq with the Nevada National

Guard. As George Orwell would put it, Nevadans slept peaceably in their beds at night because rough men like Victor stood ready to do violence on our behalf.He is now safely home and will soon begin fighting the conservative cause again in Nevada as an opinion columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Welcome home, Victor. More importantly…THANK YOU! CHUCK MUTH

THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 14

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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eFax 201-304-0355pennypresslv@gmail.com

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THE PENNY PRESS,JANUARY 5, 2017 PAGE 15

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