The Wheel Las Vegas Rotary Club newsletter, 1975

Singapore Visitors Enjoy Las Vegas The Las Vegas Rotary Club was hon-ored last Thursday by the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Lin Chin Hin. The couple is from Singapore and they are on their way to Montreal and the inter-national convention. They were very interested in the manner in which the meeting was con-ducted, especially in the way fines were assessed. When asked if the Sin-gapore meetings were opened with the national anthem, Lin replied that the Rotary club there was composed of so many nationalities there was no common anthem and religions varied so much there was no opening prayer. However, they both enjoyed the meeting and said they would be back. - Rl - Call Is Issued For Club Assembly Don Ashworth, incoming president of the Las Vegas Rotary Club, called upon all who are eligible to attend the district assembly which is to be held in Claremont, California, on June 21. The incoming officers and the new chairmen of the various committees are urged to attend in order that they may get acquainted with the various officers and committeemen from the other clubs as well as absorbing in-formation of how it is done in other clubs. Don said the assembly will provide a very good opportunity to have ques-tions answered regarding the various phases of Rotary organization and all who could should attend. - Rl - Sheltons Return From Hawaii Trip Charlie Shelton and his Rotary Ann, Alva, had an interesting and restful vacation for the last three weeks. The Sheltons flew to Hawaii, where they visited four of the islands and then boarded the steamship Mariposa and returned to the mainland in rest-ful luxury. Legislative Four Are Recognized The Las Vegas club paused last Thursday to pay tribute to those four members who served in the legislative session which was concluded a couple of weeks ago. Keith Ashworth and Robby Robin-son were present at the meeting but Harley Harmon and B. Mahlon Brown were absent. President Bob called attention to the fact that, serving in the legislature is a true evidence of the Rotary motto — service above self — and expressed the gratitude of the entire club for their service to the citizens. The speaker for the day, Jordan Crouch, gave special praise to Keith for the manner in which he ran the Assembly as its speaker. - Rl - Bill Blackmers Have Silver Observance Bill Blackmer and his Rotary Ann, Shirley, had an especial reason to cele-brate this week because, tomorrow, June 6, they will observe their twen-ty- fifth wedding anniversary. Bill reported they plan to delay any formal observance of the date until next month when he and Shirley will make a tour of our neighbors to the north, Canada. He was especially proud of the fact that, not only are they celebrating their twenty-fifth, but they also have been blessed along the way with three grandchildren. Congratulations, Bill and Shirley. Support u our (k otary \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ v \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ Economic Future Of US Outlined For Club Jordan Crouch, last Thursday's speaker, finally was given an oppor-tunity to finish a speech he started at the Las Vegas Rotary Club some seven months ago. His talk was highly inter-esting but held few immediate hopes for the economic system of the United States government. He started out by saying "The Unit-ed States always seems to be able to talk itself into trouble but, so far, has shown little efficiency in getting itself out of the messes it creates." He read an editorial which appeared in Harper's Weekly which pointed out many of the problems which exist to-day and he said the editorial appeared on October 10, 1857. "The problems of those days," he said, "have carried over into the pres-ent and the people of the United States have shown little disposition to solve them over the years." He told his audience that there is a whole new ball game in economy since he last talked to the Rotarians. The outlook of seven months ago, he claimed, is vastly different today. "Seven months ago inflation stood at the 7% level, the hope was bright that Watergate was buried and a pro-gram to solve the national energy crisis seemed close at hand. "Then the roof caved in. Congress, to date, has done nothing to bring re-lief to the energy crisis, the Commu-nists have taken over in the Far East and Portugal and several other na-tions' governments are about to turn Red. Faisal, our friend in the Far East, has been murdered, and Congress be-lieves itself mandated to follow an ultra-liberal course," he said. The Congress is on a spending spree, he said, which has brought the federal deficit to $68 billion. Wall Street, he declared, has a different figure for the deficit — more like $151 billion. "We just can't conceive of that defi-cit figure," he said. "When you break it down the deficit figures out at about $133,000 per second. It is at $1 billion per day or about $700,000 per minute. The interest on that deficit is about $4 million per week." He pointed out that this deficit spending started during the FDR re-gime when the battle cry was "tax and spend, spend and tax, elect and re-elect." It was then the United States lost budget responsibility. It has con-tinued ever since. "The Marshall plan cost $100 billion and because of this program we be-gan investing in southeast Asia. Then along came the Great Society of LBJ which brought about an expenditure of $152 billion. "The Great Society inaugurated pro-grams which now are unstoppable and LBJ looked ahead for his plan to develop a socialistic state," he said. He warned that Congress now is on a path on which they will try to spend the nation out of trouble and this path could lead to Lenin's prediction that the United States will actually spend itself into bankruptcy. He said there were some good points along the way. Watergate now is in the past and we have survived the traumatic situation of a presiden-tial resignation; inflation has dropped from 1 V/2% down to 6% and the econ-omy seems to be emerging from the worst recession of recent years. " In order to get out of the recession we must depend on the consumers' confidence, not only in the federal government but in industry as well. The trend of the economy should be turned around by the end of the sum-mer and the economy can reach suit-able levels by the late 1975 or early 1976." However, he said we are not home free yet and, if we are to recover, the administration and Congress must leave the system of free enterprise alone. Leonard Fayle was program chair-man and introduced Crouch. - Rl - Man thinks, and at once becomes the master of the beings that do not think. — Georges de Buffon.