At Risk: Your Family's Health and Welfare?

Published: Fri, 05/04/12

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In This Issue:

At Risk: Your Family’s Health and Welfare? By Richard C. Young
Why You May Need to Make Fire with Ice By E.J. Smith
America Arming The Editors
Dragon Fire II: 120 mm Heavy Mortar The Editors
Imagine a Guaranteed Return of 8% By E.J. Smith
The Walker Recall Showdown The Editors

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New April Client Letter: What to Expect for Stocks in 2012: Serious Risks Revealed
What should stock market investors expect for the rest of the year? While we cannot predict the future, we continue to see a generally pleasing environment for stocks in 2012. Ultra-low interest rates on treasury bonds offer little competition for stocks, which have the powerful tailwind of election-year fiscal and monetary stimulus working in their favor. On the surface, a favorable near-term outlook for the stock market may give the impression that things are fine, but a look beneath the surface reveals serious risks. —Click here to read more in the New April Client Letter from Young Investments

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At Risk: Your Family’s Health and Welfare?

Day in and day out, we are inundated with one health myth after another. In the past, I have written about what I believe are some of the biggest health frauds, including advertising for cholesterol lowering drugs. I doubt you have heard plaque referred to as Nature’s Band Aid. You are regularly advised to take a buffered aspirin to prevent heart attack. Is it not possible that the calcium and magnesium in the pill are responsible for buffered aspirin’s potential favorable effect? Are you aware that scientists have found a link between low cholesterol and cancer? Have you read that researchers at the University of San Diego have shown that low cholesterol is a risk factor for heart arrhythmias? Are you and family members taking vitamin D supplements?

It’s time that you check in with an organic chemist on each of these issues, as I have. It is always helpful to hear both sides of a controversial subject. Organic chemist Shane Ellison has first-hand background in drug design and synthesis. I have a copy of Ellison’s Health Myths Exposed and recently read over his summary report on the advisability of vitamin D supplements. It is likely that your view on each of the items I have outlined above will be refreshed after digesting Shane’s conclusions. In the future, no matter the case, you are going to be asking a lot more questions regarding your health.

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Why You May Need to Make Fire with Ice

Here’s some anecdotal evidence of the stress facing towns and cities in Rhode Island. Last week, Newport’s city manager proposed a 2.47% increase in the city’s budget for this coming fiscal year:

The large increases in utility rates due to mandated system requirements have been difficult for citizens and businesses to absorb in the current struggling economy. Therefore, the staff tried to minimize any increase in the levy in the development of this draft budget.

The mandated system requirements in question have increased Newport water rates by 22.5% at the end of last year and will cause sewer rates to go up by 10.6% in July. Add to this property appraisals that are coming in 10-15% lower—the tax rate increase will have to be greater than the percentage increase in the budget. And that’s not even getting into the pension mess facing America’s prettiest town.

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Your disaster preparations—which include self-sufficiency—do not have to be expensive or hard. They just have to work. Here’s how you can make fire out of ice.

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America Arming

March figures for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) jumped by 20 percent from the previous year. As you’ll see in the video below, it looks like the April numbers will be high too, as gun dealers are seeing Americans using their tax refunds to buy firearms.

The shares of gun manufacturers have been soaring as more business is being done. And Sturm Ruger even had to suspend new orders to enable the company to catch up.

Politicians at the state level are getting the picture. Americans overwhelmingly want to exercise their Second Amendment rights without impediment. Even in liberal New York, politicians see the writing on the wall. Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a budget that eliminates the failed Combined Ballistics Identification System (CoBis) that was used to keep records on firearm ammunition ballistics. The program cost New York taxpayers an estimated $32 million dollars and never once led police to a criminal. The only upshot of the System was to increase costs on law abiding gun owners. Now that’s over.

Americans are arming themselves. After the president’s statements about the extra “flexibility” he will have after the election and how he is working on gun control “under the radar,” it’s no wonder Americans are buying guns now. Americans want to exercise their rights before they lose their rights. If given the chance, the Obama administration would destroy Second Amendment rights. And Americans are but one Supreme Court seat away from Second Amendment demolition.

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Dragon Fire II: 120 mm Heavy Mortar

Since 1997 the US Marine Corps Warfighting laboratory is experimenting the Dragon Fire, Expeditionary Fire Support System – a mortar based system that designed to provide mobile fire support for expeditionary forces. Dragon Fire I system demonstrator that utilized a 120mm rifled, recoiling, self-loading mortar, that can fire rifled or smoothbore ammunition. The original system had a weight of 7,000 pounds, but the new version, Dragon Fire II weighs only 3,200 pounds, and will be capable of deployment in a towed, heliborne and mounted versions.

Dragon Fire II is the follow-on experimentation phase of the program, which utilizes a towed by a tactical vehicle (such as the HUMMV) or internally mounted on a Light Armored Vehicle (LAV). The mortar has a range of 8,200 meters (13,000 m’ with rocket assisted projectiles). It can fire 10 rounds per minute for 2 minutes, or four rounds per minute sustained fire. The system has an on-board digital communications, navigation and computation facilities to enable effective precision fire at a closed “sensor-to-shooter” loop.

The USMC Warfighting Lab is also experimenting with remote control capability and stabilization that will enable fire on the move for improved agility and responsiveness. The system can be deployed from amphibious ships, internally, in CH-53 helicopters and MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Dragon Fire II EFSS systems transitioned into a spiral acquisition with the award of the program to General Dynamics Ordnance & Tactical Systems (GD OTS) in October 2004. GD OTS is cooperating with TDA Armaments SAS, a joint venture between Thales and EADS Deutchland, to produce ammunition for these mortars.

Dragon Fire Experiment Background

• Developing Government-designed advanced artillery system for future combat

• First Dragon Fire designed by Army Armament

• Research Development and Engineering Command (ARDEC) Picatinny Arsenal and fabricated at Rock Island Arsenal in 1998

• World’s first automated towed artillery system: conducted first “sensor-to-shooter” fire missions

• New Dragon Fire II in design as potential Expeditionary Fire Support System (EFSS)

>> read more

Imagine a Guaranteed Return of 8%

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The Walker Recall Showdown

Wisconsin voters are being asked to vote against Governor Scott Walker in an upcoming June recall election. But if they are voting against Walker, what are they voting for? The answer is higher government costs. The unions are trying to oust Governor Walker because of the tough collective bargaining reforms he implemented after his election in 2010. The law said that unions had to collect their members’ dues, rather than having the government do it for them. Predictably, dues collection has cratered. It turns out even union members don’t want to pay for collective bargaining, or all the political campaigning that comes with it.

The lack of dues has had an effect already. The Wisconsin Education Association Council (the local union affiliate of the NEA) has been forced to fire 40% of its staff. The WEAC was recently found to be falsely accusing the Governor’s budget of forcing 4,000 teachers out of a job.

Wisconsin voters have an easy choice in the June special election. They can reelect Scott Walker, or they can vote for the future tax increases needed to pay for ever-sweeter union pay packages for the state’s public employee unions. Reelect Scott Walker as governor of Wisconsin.