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An Idaho Conservative Looks at a Forum on Land Use Planning
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
January 20, 1974
Recently a land use forum was held at the College of Idaho at Caldwell sponsored by an oddball sort of alliance - League of Women Voters, Chamber of Commerce, College of Idaho Regional Studies Center (an environmental group whose predilections lie elsewhere than that indicated in their word "center").
State Sen. Dave Bivens opened the forum with his personal support saying that his committee's statewide trek indicated a mandate from the people for land use planning. Bivens was also slated to sum up the panel's discussion. The "pro" panel for the question used their allotted 20 minutes for a well done, if typical, ecology film starring Gov. Cecil D. Andrus and Idaho's scenic outdoors, "save our clean waters and clean air." At whose expense wasn't as clear as the water and air pictured. Nor was the effect(s) on jobs and landowners' individual freedoms.
The pro panel was headed by Dave Alvord who stated he was the only land use planner on the state payroll and that the film cost $7,500.
Dale Duffy, panel head for the con side, said Alvord's $277,483 budget (which has recently been requested and is expected to jump to $720,188) casts a slightly different slant to his little one-man department. Even if it is mostly federal "play money" the state contributes too.
Bob Smith, co-panel member with Duffy, asked Alvord how they got a film as good as theirs for only $7,500. Alvord replied that they got a real bargain.
Strangest of all was Senator Bivens summation to the effect that the panel erred by straying from discussing the issue adequately in light of the four bills his committee suggested, i.e., "you guys can have any flavor (of planning) you'd like, so long as it's vanilla --- government-vanilla."
During a question period the query was made to Bob smith - who carried much of the con side's argument - as to who he'd trust the least; 1. People making their own decisions (read, plans), or 2., elected politicians making those decisions for them.
Smith opined that by all odds history suggests the politicians can be trusted the least. He cited a big risk in the radical departure from the country's traditional idea of individual ownership rights by the present trend of government planning replacing private planning and the all too often mistaken idea that human rights are somehow at odds with property rights.
"One isn't worth much without the other" Smith said, "and shouldn't be considered separately. Otherwise, if government planning was so wonderful, Russia would be shipping food to us instead of the other way around."
Arlo Nelson, Canyon County's planner and member of the pro panel countered the idea of Houston, Texas' lively prosperity without zoning (anti-zoning people often cite Houston's use of private deed covenants vs. government zoning) with the on-target observation that deed covenants were not anti-planning at all, but were indeed themselves a form of planning.
Ah yes, Mr. Nelson, planning indeed, - PRIVATE planning. Mr. Nelson is a rare bird, having been on both sides of the controversy, and a thoughtful and dedicated person. His was one of the best comments of the evening's two-sided issue, which was well presented by both sides.
Right on, Arlo. Laissez faire, and right on.
Government at the Gas Pumps
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
January 27, 1974
Many are the political prostitutes who are willing to exploit the unwitting for plunder or votes or merely to stay in office, but another phenomenon is upon us less often perceived.
The vast majority of people are decent folks rubbing along, trying to mind their own business, caring for their employer or their customers in pretty fair fashion.
"Pretty fair," that is, when they are left reasonably alone.
Maybe the key word here is "reasonably." Certainly most of us look to the government's police to stop robbers and thugs from violence, theft, fraud, blackmail, etc., but a newer, lower profile, insidious and oftentimes misunderstood threat rears its ugly head.
Ugly? No, not ugly, perhaps, but even friendly in an ever changing paternalistic form. Herein lies an interesting story:
The other day, during a routine conference call from the chamber of commerce to our legislators in Boise, a local petroleum distributor, Bob Franklin, asked our representatives (most of whom were assembled at the other end of the weekly conference phone call) whose idea it was that the state demand two gallonage meters on each fuel truck delivering both diesel fuel and gasoline.
Franklin went on briefly to explain that although there was a difference in the specific gravity of the two liquids, the variance in the gallonage metered was so slight as not to be of consequence to either customer or vendor.
Fortunately the right representative was in attendance. The committee requiring said demand by the state government was staffed in part by our conservative, dedicated state Sen. Leon Swenson. Not only is Senator Swenson a good man and intelligent, but almost as important, he is a good and valued friend of mine.
Well, Swenson spoke right up to reveal that he agreed with Franklin, but that although the difference in the quantity of liquid measured one delivery at a time was admittedly small, it was significant when considered "all over the state." No kidding, that is actually what he said!
Prior to this revelation by the good senator, Franklin had made the point that the new meters were: 1. expensive, 2. hard to get, now that shortages were ever faster occurring thanks to governmental price controls and 3. This was an unnecessary hardship on small oil distributors, especially those with one truck. One of the other chamber committee members chimed in with "Ah, come on, Leon, you gotta be kidding!"
"No," responded the good senator in his usual calm, considered and thoughtful way, "I'm not kidding."
Not wanting to appear argumentative with the kind senator whose "collective" measurement point could not be denied, Franklin seemed a bit stunned; however, not enough to squelch a final query:
"Granted the slight difference to a given customer is somewhat large when totaled all over the state, Leon, in whose favor does the difference go?"
"I don't know," responded our friend, the senator.
I wanted to end this column right there and leave the hapless reader to blink his optimistic eyes and wonder where the pony is in this latest pile of horse manure (i.e., political problem solving) but I fear I cannot.
Let me digress for a moment. Those persons devoted to the conspiracy-theory answer to our society's problems have a good point. (I refer to society as individuals in their several capacities.) I wish them well, for, indeed, one could hope that our leaders would make an occasional mistake in our favor these days if there were no conspiracy. But as for this writer, I'm so busy trying to unravel the knots in the thinking of my friends, yes, even my conservative friend's economic aberrations I fear I have inadequate time for ferreting out the Communists who by any rational analysis are most assuredly out to do us in.
The point being that Communists are indeed a problem, but, gee whiz! so are too many laws made by meddling lawmakers. Just how many fly specks should we pick out of the pepper? And whose pepper? Whose fuel? Whose meter? Whose customer? And, one wonders, what's happening to the institution of freedom of choice. Indeed, is there anything, anything, anything that's none of the government's business?
It is sad to note in passing this way that author James Burnham did not have the above little story to include in his recently reprinted and timely book, "Suicide of the West" (published by Arlington House).
If the political conservatives who read (and some do) have anything special to offer our floundering, well-meaning, liberal society, it just might be the old admonition, "... I can protect myself from mine enemies, but God save me from well-meaning friends.
The Gray O -- The Idaho Reorganization Fraud
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
February 3, 1974
"Everybody's ignorant" said Will Rogers, "just about different things."
We could (and do) live with the ignorance observed by the venerable sage, but when the prevailing mental condition becomes like a giant, gray ooze enveloping the legislature it may be time to blow the whistle.
Such a giant, gray ooze is the attitude presently permeating much of the present legislature concerning the move for government reorganization, stewarded by Governor Andrus. While not particularly a partisan issue, SJR 132 enjoys a certain advantage enhanced by (1) a kind of semantic jungle concerning definitions; (2) a Boise newspaper given towards rubberstamping a popular governor who made the proposal, and (3) a general press and media (with a few exceptions) almost completely devoted to promoting the idea of problem solving by passing a law. Their idea of telling both sides is to find two liberals who disagree.
Governor Andrus proposed reorganizing Idaho government by reducing 260 or more departments into 20 departments. Now then, who could be against that? Certainly most voters were not, but the powers that be wanted to be sure so a campaign was mounted.
Financed in part by state money and partly by federal money, the promoters took to the highways and byways with dedicated zeal. Lectures were organized, billboards were put up, (remember them appealing, "VOTE SJR 132, Reduce Government") and the orchestrated news media obliged. The goo-goo boys had hardly a hand raised in lively opposition. (The term goo-goo boys is reminiscent of the New York City political reformers of yesteryear who said they only wanted "good government").
Congressman Steve Symms to the contrary notwithstanding, intellectual honesty doesn't bring much in the intellectual market place these days. Conservative Jenkin Lloyd Jones, speaking Monday to the Boise School system teachers (yes, that's who it was, I couldn't believe it either, but I was there) defined common sense as the art of recognizing the obvious. Has such recognition become unfashionable? What about intellectual honesty and common sense?
Idaho's legislature is stocked with many fine legislators, both liberal and conservative. (The neuters won't come under much examination herewith partly because they have the others already on their side, though mostly for the wrong reasons). I say many fine legislators, since most work long and hard to do what seems to be best at the time. The great majority that I have talked to are quick to concede that SJR 132 was sold to the public as a constitutional amendment to, and I use quotes, "reduce government, and or reduce spending." The intent was both implicit and explicit. The sales pitch up and down the state as sold by the sincere and the insincere hardly mentioned the actual wording of the amendment.
Indeed, how many amendments, frequently offered Idaho voters sometimes in bunches of 12 at a clatter, are understood?
The sales campaign continued undaunted. Appropriating money that was advanced for this sales campaign for an ill-defined purpose at best and a fraud and misrepresentation at worst belongs alongside the Watergate crap, both because it's a farce and a tragedy. A farce to think it will reduce anything, and a tragedy because many voters, having still some faith in local legislators trying to reduce government, will think that such a laudable idea even got up to bat; (so far it hasn't) though it's no farce for the governor's appointees.
The legislators I talked to wanted to chuck the whole idea - not because they were against reducing government and spending, but, because this bill wouldn't do it. Their remarks more or less can be summed up, however, with a resigned acceptance like "when rape is inevitable relax and enjoy it" and "the people voted on a constitutional amendment and we haven't any choice."
If the liberals had this problem, the ACLU, or some such, would have a court injunction (some legislators, et al are actually considering such) in the mill and their pickets would be marching while the court deliberated. All this time, of course, the media would be "in there reporting both sides" (remember?) of this newsworthy story.
A dilemma of sorts I readily admit, given the ease with which the proletariat can be misled even when the politicians don't particularly intend to (like may be the case here) and, given our semantic jungle. Still, one wonders why, when good men get on a committee they have to - (repeat: have to) act like they are on a committee.
Perhaps the answer lies (and lies and lies?) in another fine old sage's observation. He was a gentleman and a scholar, who was also an individualist and iconoclast. A charming libertarian's libertarian, Albert Jay Nock, writing in his "JOURNAL of THESE DAYS," made the canny observation that "Slave-mindedness is the hateful thing whether it follows Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini - what matter?" (If living today would Nock include Nixon and McGovern as well?) "Is not the mass-leader, too, the most slave-minded of all? The French revolutionist's saying, 'I must follow the mob, because I lead them,' ought to be embroidered on every national flag, it strikes me. How right Huxley was about what he called the coach-dog theory of political leadership, i.e., that a leader's duty is to look sharp for which way the social coach is going, and then run in front of it and bark.
Mobile Homes: The Second-Class Homeowners
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
February 10, 1974
Second class citizens seem to be having a helluva time these days, i.e., if you define people who want to live in mobile homes as second class citizens.
I don't, but many do. We've priced ourselves out of a wide variety of markets here in the United States and one of these is housing.
Here's how it goes: Asinine building code specifications designed to sell high-priced electrical and plumbing fixtures, ordinances permitting only licensed plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and/or those workers who belong to a certain "club" or special interest group to work on your house at a required $11 to $15 per hour.
There is of course, fortunately, a black market of sorts which floats in and around this Pandora's Box, but it's risky. Especially risky for little people. Also, the stones which one level or another of government throws in the path of people wanting to build are many and varied. Not all of them are by organized labor either. Frequently legislation is invited by businesses wanting a law to slow up competition from entering their particular market.
Taxes too are one of these gigantic stones, but given the level of politics and compulsory education (another facet of government) of post-World War II days, most people seem content to try to "get someone else to pay the tax," or, "have everyone taxed equally" - both are ancient pipedreams. The cruelest tax, and possibly the least understood of all, is inflation, which hits housing real hard.
Much confusion arises via sloppy semantics of the media and an inherent intellectual dishonesty of politicians wanting credit and to avoid responsibility. Two common, if understandably problematic definitions also obtain: (1) price inflation, which is caused by scarcity, and (2) money inflation, which is almost entirely due to government's printing-press money and their arbitrary expansion of credit. Until these are better understood, and until we stop referring to the two vastly different conditions with the same term, we'll probably just continue to fight among ourselves for even more, and if you can believe it, worse, political solutions.
Well, back to the nearby mobile home part of the housing problem. Recently the Caldwell City Council asked the school board to vote on an application made to put in a mobile home park near the school. The school board said thanks, but no thanks, they'd rather not vote since their responsibilities were education.
The council said, "You own the land, you must vote. It's the law." Since this decision wasn't made at a secret meeting, the split hit the fan. School board members were swamped with phone calls. From which side of the issue?
You guessed it, so they voted no.
The school board had its way after all. They explained, "We were just representing the people." This writer checked with the popular school superintendent, Jerry Evans, whose stewardship of the school tax equalization formula recently makes him a political and educational genius. (Of course it didn't improve the learning atmosphere of the schools, but it was politically popular). Evans confirmed a sticky situation and that he personally was sympathetic with mobile home ownery, and that indeed those folks living in them were not second class citizens, but that the board was only trying (in the best political tradition?) to represent the "people."
Which people? Those living nearby, or those on the other end of the district? According to what criteria? With what kind of notice and what kind of a poll? Now then, this isn't all - what about the mobile home people?
The prospective park owner? This is not to say that the board's decision was bad or even insincere, but whatever the result, they voted against the proposed mobile home park for mostly the wrong reasons.
They should have voted their own convictions and so stated. This cop-out of hiding behind the noisy minority under the guise of "we're just representing the people," is just that, a cop-out. Even granting good intentions, one must come to grips with principles. That's all that separates a democratic collectivist government from a republic (of representatives considering the opinions of their people, but not merely echoing them.)
The fears neighbors have of a potential mobile home park being poorly managed are understandable, but assurances of a well managed park are not what folks want nowadays. Reminds one of an unfortunate parallel of today's group-think society to an old saw: "I'm for racial equality, so long as it's in the South."
What do you expect? We're told to write our congressman, aren't we?
Yes, we are - that's just the problem. That's just about the size of the self-reliance we're teaching students these days and adults too, for that matter. It's pretty well summed up in a note from Congressman Andrew Hinshaw, R-Calif., who, during one two-week period got 890 letters, wires, and post cards demanding immediate impeachment of the President. All of those writing said they voted for Hinshaw, both in the general and primary election, and threatened that if he didn't vote for impeachment, they'd vote for somebody else next year. Hinshaw checked the correspondents' names against Orange County voting records and discovered 442 were Democrats; 123 Republican;s nine minor parties; 60 independents; and 256 were not registered to vote. "The significant statistic," says Hinshaw, "is not the party registration, but the fact that almost 28 per cent of those demanding President Nixon's scalp were not sufficiently interested in our political process to exercise their voting franchise - if, indeed, they were actual persons."
Congressman Hinshaw's political insight and skepticism is amply demonstrated and laudable indeed. However, his observation above, ("voters were not sufficiently interested in our political processes to exercise their voting franchise") comes a little short of the mark.
Maybe one of the reasons that people don't vote is that they aren't so dumb as many politicians may think. Perhaps they are beginning to see through what has recently been called CRAP (Constructive Republican Alternative Proposals). It may account for the success of the League of Non-Voters (write them at 104 W. 4th, Santa Ana, Cal. 92701). Their verse may lend some perspective:
"How could the man have done the deed?
I'm sure he never willed it.
He stepped into the voting booth and, loving Freedom, killed it."
Letters from Two Liberals on Postmen and Birdwatchers
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
February 17, 1974
Two letters from two different friends of mine seem worthy of note here, and timely. Each letter is from a liberal and, though worlds apart, both are humanitarians, both are writers, both are bright, and both exert considerable, if unusual, influence on public affairs.
Bill Hall, editorial page editor of the Lewiston Tribune, wrote to me soon after the holidays relative to my writing this column, but what I want to comment about now is what he typed on the outside of the envelope. (What was inside is also of interest, but, another day perhaps.) In a conspicuous spot he wrote, "Attention Mr. Postman: thank you for all your hard work and frustrations during the Christmas rush."
Now then, at the risk of sounding solicitous, I think that's nice. I wish I'd said that. It's not only a decent gesture, it's self-serving too. Serves Bill, serves the postman, and in an indirect, but nonetheless real way, serves me. It'll serve you too, try it, you'll see what I mean.
Three or four years ago I did, however, do something that I'm kind of proud of. It too, was for use on the outside of an envelope. A story on a rubber stamp, and I still use it. The message: "Let's sell the post office to private enterprise," and then in parenthesis the words, "and raise the postman's pay."
Hopefully both Bill Hall and I did a little something to boost the postman's morale, but admittedly there's a difference in emphasis. Mine scares some of the postmen to death, irritates some, and tickles other. They've told me.
My other liberal friend's letter is significant rather for what was on the inside and although neither so short as Bill's message nor as prima facie, the lyrics are there. The music (band or chamber) may depend somewhat on the reader's point of view. Davis Keeler is a classical liberal, a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies, (a free-market think tank in Menlo Park, Calif.) and publisher of the fascinating (believe it or not) "Law Review."
Davis writes: "The Hill" is a big open space near the San Francisco area, the naturevolk (sic) wanted to purchase through a local bond issue. The electorate voted it down. We should be glad that the voters have disposed of the Hill issue, so that we can get back to more sensible pursuits. The defeat of the Hill bond issue is typical of the results to be expected whenever the public at large is asked to put their money where their mouth is on these back-to-nature projects.
"Hills, open spaces, wilderness areas, backpack trails, etc. ..., are for the most part the concern of affluent, middle class whites. The rest of society, for whom the realities of earning a living and raising a family have somewhat more immediacy, will go along with these schemes so long as they don't think it's going to cost them anything (e.g., as in Proposition 20, where we'll get all this fine land by the simple expedient of expropriating the present owners), but will balk when asked to forego a new set of tires for the station wagon in order to buy a new salt marsh for the terns." Keeler continues,
"A good illustration of this came up recently when State Senator Robert Lagomarsino (Santa Barbara and Ventura counties) sent a questionnaire to his constituents asking them what they would like done with that $850 million Governor Reagan found in the back of a closet up in Sacramento. Did they want a tax rebate, a delay in the sales tax, a retirement of state bonds, or an outlay for new parks and beaches? Parks and beaches got only 11.3 per cent of the 20,000 responses. Forty-one per cent wanted a tax rebate and 22 per cent wanted the money used to delay the sales tax increase. This gives a pretty good indication of where their values lay.
"The truth is, only by offering the public projects which appear to cost nothing can the environmentalists count on selling their schemes to the voters. This quasi-religious love of nature is a class-specific affliction not shared by the population as a whole. If you doubt this, spend some time watching people over at the beach at Half Moon Bay. You will probably observe, as I do, that the people are pretty much "our kind of people". If it's the melting pot you want, don't go to the beach: nobody there but us moderately prosperous, middle class, college educated whites. And the rest of our fellow citizens very sensibly don't want to pay for our nature hobby."
What's all this to do with Idaho? Well, I'll tell you. The legislature's in session, and Mark Twain (I think it was) knew what he was about when he said, "No man is safe in his life, limb, or his property (land use planning?) while the legislature is in session."
Oh yes, I nearly forgot something. My friend closed his letter with a fun aside on the outcome of the above-mentioned election, "Vox popull, Vox del."
Get the message? Ask somebody, I had to.
The Press and Its Lousy Double Standard
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
February 24, 1974
Recently in Caldwell a banker said to me, "This freedom of the press stuff is getting out of hand, I think it's a little bit too free."
Well, state Sen. Orval Snow has presently a bill before the Idaho legislature to demand that newspaper editorials carry a signature. Now almost everyone is for truth in labeling, truth in packaging, full disclosure, etc., etc. ad infinitum. Everyone that is, except the press, the media and the liberals where their own "ox" is being gored.
No ox was the venerable Oliver Wendell Holmes who once observed that, "No generalization is worth a damn, including this one." Still, since there's two or more sides to almost everything, we must eventually generalize if a conclusion is to be reached. Value judgments themselves are mostly generalizations that a person sums up according to his own hierarchy of values, one side having outweighed the other, generally.
So let us generalize a bit, keeping the above in mind, but aware, too, that a dominant trend can exist even though there are welcome exceptions.
As you can imagine, the press is about to strangle, so incensed are they about this boogey-man Snow and his proposed censorship or "there oughta be a law" for editorial writers.
The Lewiston Tribune policy is to sign, i.e., initial their editorials. The Statesman and the Caldwell-Nampa papers for example do not, but they seem to be united in their opposition to any law compelling them in their policy. It is, of course, understandable when they quote Jefferson on the critical nature of a free press for a free society, something most of us want to preserve and expand.
On the other hand, everyone knows there are all kinds of ways to stack the deck, and all kinds of decks to stack. For example, how long has it been since you've heard the press quote Jefferson on the critical nature of limiting government? How long since you've heard the press dwell day after day on repeated abuses of the IRA or OSHA or some other governmental bureau?
Crimes without victims are an ever increasing segment of "the enforcer's" duty and one wonders why Ralph Nader, Common Cause, radical students, extreme environmentalists and the myriad of other doomsayers and semi-socialist entities are so consistently praiseworthy, while those advocating non-governmental solutions and those opposing the arrogance and omnipotence of government seem to go almost unnoticed, if not condemned.
I hasten to add that a case can be made against those individualists who do have something good in the way of ideas to offer as being difficult to communicate with. No doubt about it, we're the world's champ chumps when it comes to selling in the marketplace of ideas. While there certainly are better spokesmen for the free market, limited government concept, this writer is at least grateful for a forum in the Lewiston Tribune to focus on some areas too long buried in the snow storm of the liberal dominated snow job of advocacy journalism so thinly disguided as some sort of church into which and beyond which no one must inquire in depth and in length.
The dominant trend of nearly all the social problems commented upon in the press today is the fault of some businessman, corporation or entrepreneur whose greed for profit or power seems to be a clarion call for the press's ready solution for all problems - pass a law, pass a law.
Not pass a law for free entry into the market, mind you. No siree! Pass a law against those job producing money-mongers. Not repeal a law affording more freedom for those against whom the government oft times levels abuse.
No, somehow that isn't newsworthy. Senate Watergate sleuth Sam Erwin is reported to have voted against continuing the investigation of President Johnson's assistant Bobby Baker, but somehow this isn't worthy of the consistent "heat" of the press so necessary to drive the point home.
So it is with many of the points which the orchestrated press doesn't "see" as newsworthy. Nor is it likely you'll hear much about three of the organizations active in the impeachment campaign, the ADA, the ACLU and the AFL-CIO.
Impeachment can be voted by a simple majority. In 1972, according to the Americans for Constitutional Action, 19 of the 21 Democrats got campaign contributions from AFL-CIO of $189,100; two Republicans received campaign contributions of $2,100.
Stacked deck?
"Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" are two popular TV shows claiming to be the winners of every major award in the business. Balderdash. Must be a contest to see who can be the most liberal, who can interview the most left-leaning politicians, economists or authors.
And notice if you will the zeal with which they bill and coo the liberals, and how, on those rare days when they do interview a conservative, their brace and bit bores in like a suffocating and trapped miner boring for air.
Sal Celeski of Boise Channel 7's "Viewpoint" could hardly be considered one of the "bad guys," and is in my opinion a cut above most. However, in his TV spots prior to his interview of Sen. Frank Church recently, he pealed forth with a lively pitch as to the importance and virtue of the senator's seniority. the TV spots should have been presented as a paid political ad. A protest was made by this writer and I'm happy to report that the "ad" was stricken. It is interesting that the senator's interview used friendly panel members and by contrast when Senator McClure was interviewed a few weeks later the panel members included John Corlett and Bill Hall, two of Senator McClure's main detractors.
Coincidence, you ask? Maybe, I'm not sure, but I want to keep asking, for there is more to this thing than a mere personality-cult.
Those of us on the responsible right should not assume they're just bad hombres, there's more to it than that. (Anybody want to take on the government's university journalism professors?)
The reader will note I used the term "responsible right" above. Isn't it interesting how seldom you hear the media use the term "responsible left"? Their idea of telling both sides (responsibly, of course) seems to rest in finding two liberals who disagree.
Well, comes now Sen. Orval Snow, who wants to follow the medias' consistent and frequently suggested lead to solving a problem: "pass a law," only this time against the press. Or, again one muses, for the press since perhaps they too should be protected from themselves.
What do they expect? There's even precedent for the Snow bill. Recently, a Florida (I think it was) court ruled that a newspaper had to offer equal time to someone they'd leaned on.
I ask only this: Since when is freedom of the press a holy writ and why should it have more weight than your freedom? When this country begins to weigh freedoms in favor of one group's over another's, as freedom of the press is generally presented, we're more than a little bit pregnant.
No less than Sam. Day, editor of the late Intermountain Observer, agreed with me on this one item and he is in the minds of many about as liberal as you can get. Sam put it this say, "Unfortunately, freedom of the press has come to mean mostly freedom for somebody who has a newspaper."
I say the press can best protect their freedom (From government? Who else?) by screaming like a mashed cat when other people's freedom is threatened, not just theirs.
Of course, that way isn't quite as newsworthy. A lousy law, from Senator Snow, a lousy double standard from the press.
Why the Press of Idaho is Paranoid
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 3, 1974
No wonder the news media is so paranoid about the possible passage of State Senator Snow's bill which required editorials to be signed. While there is no censorship involved in the bill which passed the Senate easily last week, and is currently enjoying considerable sentiment in the House, it probably still won't pass. If it doesn't, my guess is it'll be due to the conservatives for less government group. Surprised?
Well, let's look again at the press' understandable paranoia through a few random observations. True enough, The Statesman newspaper seems to be a major target of said legislation, and true too, they push for the "pass-a-law" solution for everyone else under the sun (except themselves, of course). The majority of other newspapers seem to advocate a similar bill of fare.
Now then, some of these newspapers are not so hung up about signing editorials (many do so voluntarily) but they say this might just be the camel's head under the tent (thanks in no small part to the liberal press, the camel is now wearing the tent in many businesses) and they don't know where it would stop. Freedom of the press, wouldn't you know?
Mr. Charnock, head of the UPI wire service, wrote a guest editorial in the Caldwell-Nampa papers recently. He made some points too, mostly the old foot-in-the-door overkill. I say overkill, not because his concern isn't real, but because it's so typically special interest and elitist. "Regulate these other fellows, they deserve it," the press seems to be saying, "but not us. We're a special breed of cats and deserve special privilege exempting us from your foolish meddling."
If the legislature is to be at all consistent, they must also meddle with the newspaper business, since no censorship is suggested and since they meddle in almost everybody else's affairs. Mr. Charnock's closing statement in the above-mentioned guest editorial should be of interest: "Probably the most interesting thing about Senator Snow's bill is that it is backed by some of those same legislators who stand on the floor and shout their support of the Constitution and decry government interference in private enterprise."
It seems to this writer that the saddest part of the whole mess is that only on cold days in July do Mr. Charnock's media colleagues "stand and shout for constitutionalism and decry government interference in private enterprise." Some do, but mostly when their ox is being meddled with. Perhaps the press isn't aware of this double standard, and perhaps those extra conservatives are. Too bad they both can't join forces since they are (for once) on the same side. Do you suppose there's more than the famous 18-minute gap in this "tape"?
Some currently proposed legislation may shed a bit of light on both the press' and the conservatives' apprehension of too much government. House Bill 458 proposes to license social workers. A year or so ago they licensed landscape architects to protect the public: remember? And, oh yes, the feds won't come loose with the give-away funds for some projects unless the landscape architects are licensed. House Bill 459 proposes certain changes in the present law licensing barbers and prescribing, among other things on this seven-page bill, that a registered barber may not have more than one apprentice under his supervision. The bill elsewhere continues (believe it or not) on page 4, lines 23-26 to say, "School hours ... in an approved college shall not begin before nine a.m. (proposes change to 8 a.m.) or continue longer than six p.m. ... It goes on and on; but imagine passing a law for this kind of crap. A law is a law, is a law.
House Bill 464 proposes to "license" shorthand reporters. Lines 5-6, page 1 say, "Providing limitations on the practice of shorthand reporting." To protect the public remember? One supposes that after viewing Watergate for months on end (pun?) that somehow judges and lawyers may indeed some day need protection. I'd laugh, but it hurts.
A proposed law now being pushed by the Society of Certified Public Accountants does not yet have a bill number, but has been typed up in double-spaced bill form (22 pages) for presentation to the "Second Regular Session of the Forty-Second Legislature." On page 2 under Title 54, Chapter 2, line 15, it says something which may account for some of the fear which the newspaper people and the extra-conservatives share on this one question of an editorial signature law: "Legislative Intent.
Recognizing that to practice the profession of accounting is a privilege granted by the state of Idaho and not a natural right of individuals, it is deemed necessary ... state policy ... interest of public welfare ..." and so on for 20 more pages about compulsory education, citizenship, license periods, fees, grandfather clauses, "loophole" for public accountants, etc. etc. Sounds like Orwell's 1984 is here? And this last is presently circulating among the members of the CPA Society for their support. Well, fortunately not all their members favor this monkey-business, but the National Society for CPA's is pushing it. I read a lengthy article thereon in their national magazine last year, and my guess is we'll hear more on this matter of "pass-a-law" from the accountants.
From these random illustrations it would seem the management-concept theory of politics is on the upswing in Idaho (what the possible exception of a certain "apple-eater") and it is therefore rather obvious there should be paranoid reactions from the press and some of the conservatives on too much government. The question still remains, however, as to just why the press is so singularly attentive to their particular freedom from government, yet so generally enthusiastic for legislation to manage (and limit) other's.
No Groundswell for Land Use Planning
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 10, 1974
Despite a short-term setback in the legislature, land use planning legislation must still be considered the wave of the future.
Why? Because the Idaho Daily Statesman says so.
In a recent unsigned editorial, the Statesman asserts that "... a majority of Idahoans favor land use planning regulation."
The facts remain that (1) a congressional committee has defeated national land use planning legislation; (2) our state Senate has, thus far, opposed it; and (3) twenty-one Idaho counties have exempted themselves from it.
All this would seem to indicate there is somewhat less than groundswell support for political control of ground as the Statesman screams.
According to Statesman editorialists, an insignificant apple grower in Congress (Steve Symms) has single-handedly swayed that august body against the public (read, Statesman's) will; twenty-one state legislators have failed to discern this same will; and 21 Idaho counties have openly defied it.
Amazingly the Congress, the state legislature and the local county governments have failed to recognize the will of the majority which the Statesman claims to see so clearly, with their crystal ball, one guesses.
One reason for this phenomenon might be the double standard the Statesman uses to gauge public opinion. For example, the Statesman dismisses letters to Congressman Symms from his constituents which oppose land use regulation as "not representative" of the public will." On the other hand, they accept with blind faith the testimony by persons attending Senator Bivens' hearing favoring said legislation, thereby constituting the newspaper's holy majority.
The Statesman is fairly consistent that the majority should rule, though their method of determining what the majority says, in a given case, is rather arbitrary and expedient. The fact that the majority was not consulted prior to the paper's own decision to leave downtown Boise gives rise to the question: Should the so-called majority have had anything to say about their moving? And, if the majority is to be considered, what if that majority now says the Statesman's place of business should be relocated back downtown?
All of the above may appear to the casual reader as quite asinine, which it is, and replete with half-truths. One fact prevails throughout the whole flap, however, i.e., that those who disagree with the paper are somehow motivated by an ill-will toward the public good and a kind of beady-eyed greed to benefit certain "straw men" called lobbyists.
Try this one for objectivity: The Idaho Statesman by all odds constitutes a tremendous and powerful lobby in the state of Idaho whose editorial policy is almost totally devoted, however sincerely, to promoting more government control over other businesses while demanding an exception for their own business. It is at least sad that they seem unable to see this "holier-than-thou" stance, and at least a crying shame they are so dedicated to a controlled society for others versus a free society for themselves.
Treating Politics as a Laughing Matter
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 17, 1974
The subject of humor goes back centuries even unto antiquity. More has been written on the phenomena of humor than perhaps most of us are willing to admit, since, after all, that's been done to treat the matter we seem so stupid concerning its understanding and use.
When I say we, I mean politicos in general, Republicans in particular and we conservatives top the list, far and away ahead of the hapless souls in second place.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines humor "as the sense within us which sets up a kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the expression of that sense in art." (politics, to a liberal, is an art.)
Now a few observations to some of those hapless souls (above) who may have read a column or two by this writer (yes, this the ninth one ... shades of the millennium! ... and in a paper as insufferably liberal as the Lewiston Tribune - for money.) And, although the first check I received from the Tribune was not signed, one supposes it was done inadvertently. Still, those liberals are hell to communicate (experts indeed) and I am an insufferable conservative - so do you suppose they're trying to tell me something: In any event, I have the check framed now and hanging on the wall where my Doubting-Thomas Friends who warned me, "Hail will be out to get you and Steve" (Symms) can say, "I told you so." Symms tells me those dang liberals back there in Washington are the same way; nice guys mostly, but no fiscal sense whatsoever).
Meanwhile back to the contemplation of humor.
The thought may occur: what the heck business does a conservative have commenting about humor on Bill Hall's editorial page? Certainly not much to laugh about there. Maybe not, but why should we let the liberals have all the fun with their main plan of sin-now - pay-later, and usually at our expense too? While, admittedly, I've been treated quite fairly in this newspaper, it really grinds my thigh to see our side get jabbed there so regularly by virtue of their rapier wit - or is it half-wit? or is it perhaps a kind of fear or a negative unwillingness to use any humor at all? Let's look a little further. Maybe we can find a pony yet in this pile of used oats. Possibly we'll see why the liberals are so successful at communicating and perhaps gain a little perspective for ourselves.
One must of necessity go high in search of wisdom not already held steadfastly by conservatives - so back to Encyclopedia Britannica on humor: "The most reputable theory ... is that which traces humour and laughter to a primitive exultation of a fallen foe." or "... brutal triumph gradually exchanged where no real disaster is, as when an elderly gentleman slips on a banana skin."
Didn't make you laugh? Well, it did me. The elderly gentleman bit reminded me of Watergate and the fallen foe bit is made to order for the general press when a Republican bites the dust.
Reading farther, on page 886 of said book, "nor is there, except by accidental similarity any laughter in animals. A laughing jackass remains a jackass." This give you conservatives any ideas? On the matter of ideas, apparently tired of Watergate and its competition to campus disorder, college students have created a new fad called "streaking." It consists of running stark naked through the dining halls and other crowded areas "just for the pure hell of it," one student explained.
One newsman I queried said, "It's actually catching on, but I think it's a Nixon plot to divert attention off impeachment." Anyway it has made me laugh, and I hope the humor appealed to even some of these tuffed-shirt Republicans.
Even the College of Idaho has a streaking team. That's more life than we've heard of at the C of I in years, maybe even since some members of the Orion fraternity toppled several gravestones at the Caldwell cemetery one hell-night when I was a student there in the forties. Oh, I almost forgot, there also was a brassiere that found its way to the top of the flagpole too - big event in those days.
President Nixon on a TV speech interview last week was asked a long involved question from a newsman as to whether he should not be impeached if he did all those things for which his former aides had been indicted. The paragon of virtue, this fearless slayer of dragons, this appointer of legions of Ripon Society liberals to appease the press, hesitated only a moment before replying, "and I've also stopped beating my wife!"
but hardly anybody laughed. It was a great crack for the President and timely too, but he muffed it somehow, snatching again a little more defeat from the jaws of victory. I'm not sure why this humor vacuum, but we'd ought to wonder why, don't you agree?
Maybe nobody could believe Mr. Nixon would pull a funny out of the hat, since there's certainly precious little precedent for it.
Why? He may be bad, but he isn't all that bad. Anyway, even if it's no laughing matter, it's no matter to laugh. My guess is that if Mr. Nixon would hire some Polack humorists to write for him it would have to be an improvement and long overdue.
I met a Polack blue collar worker once in Berlin in 1968 during an intelligent and lively debate I was having with some college students (the Pole was on my side as you might imagine) and he was the smartest fellow in the group, including yours truly. He just clobbered the socialist sympathizers in our discussions.
The Poles were not always the brunt of jokes of the day, at least according to the Britannica I've been citing. They tell on page 887 about a "higher range of humour of character ... the reputed Jew who's fire (covered by insurance) was not LAST Wednesday, but NEXT Wednesday. Jokes shade off insensibly from explosion and crackle of wit to the infrared glow of the philosophical aphorism" (terse saying).
Even Shakespeare reserved most of his profound observations for the clown.
Conservatives may not use humor much, may not know how, may not care; but this one thinks that if they don't, they're missing one whale of a bet. To those of a completely pessimistic persuasion (and there's too darn many of these) there is always the religious definition of humor as "God's hand on the shoulder of a quaking world."
The press does dole us a little humor out of the goodness of their altruistic hearts, such as the following hypothetical letter from Ann Landers:
Dear Ann Landers,
Could you advise me on the following problem? I am 30 years old and have two brothers, one of them is a REPUBLICAN, a member of Congress and working in Washington. The other is serving a nine year prison term for repeated rape. My two sisters are on the street and my father is living off their earnings. My mother is pregnant by a neighbor man he refuses to marry her.
Recently I met a charming girl, a former prostitute. She is single and the mother of three lovely children, one white, one black, and one Chinese.
My problem is this ... SHOULD I TELL MY GIRL FRIEND ABOUT MY BROTHER BEING A REPUBLICAN?
signed, TROUBLED
Dear Troubled,
Keep your mouth shut ...
Then, if we can't agree upon anything else, and we conservatives cannot, we can always print some bumper stickers for the next presidential election:
AGNEW-EAGLETON in '76
Nobody's Perfect
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 24, 1974
The unintentional humor of Morris K. Udall, the 'middle-of-the-road' liberal from Arizona
Again on the subject of humor, another opportunity presented itself on the occasion of the March 16 dinner and gala event in Boise honoring Gov. Cecil Andrus. The word, honoring, in political jargon means raising money with and for a popular politician, and the Democrats have one in the person of their governor.
Remember? "A governor for all Idaho" (ho, ho, ho).
He's even somewhat popular with this conservative writer. He's too liberal for sure, but I like him and he's easy to talk to, i.e., unless you want to criticize government education in which he seems to have, a la most liberals, blind faith. Which brings me to the matter of humor via semantics, definitions, non-sequiturs. Hopefully therefrom, a healthy cynicism for politics will emerge.
Over 1,600 persons paid $50 per plate to hear famous entertainers, Oregon Gov. Tom McCall and Rep. Morris Udall-D-Ariz., who, I'm told, said very little one wouldn't expect them to say at such an event. No one expected them to be labeled the party of the rich or big business, due to the $50 per plate price on the dinner; but one can usually expect the news media to suggest, however subtly, such a label for the GOP when Governor Reagan comes up from California next May to honor the popular Congressman Steve Symms, R-Ida., at (you guessed it) $50 a clatter.
The Republicans will wax windy, no doubt, at Steve's dinner, not unlike the Democrats at Gov. Andrus' dinner; and the stuffed shirts will smile benignly so as not to offend anybody, especially the media, most of whom would like to see the GOP serve "chicken," which they usually do serve to the press, hoping against hope that they'll choke on the right-wing.
The Arizona congressman had to leave the successful affair early, but no before he shared his happy smiling and fun-loving jokes with those $50 patrons. Mr. Udall had to leave early to be on the moderate-to-liberal TV program Meet The Press. Before he left Boise, Udall appeared on Sal Saleski's anything-but-conservative TV program viewpoint.
It was on Sal's program that the Arizona congressman furnished the best of the humor. Aiding Sal as panelists were editor Bill Hall of the Lewiston Tribune and John Corlett, political emasculator for the Idaho Statesman.
A few random observations on their comments: Udall said the Realtors favored land use planning. Well, some may, but generally in Idaho the statement holds water about like one of State Sen. Dave Bivens' burlap feed bags.
Speaking of Bivens, it's an interesting aside that he too furnished some humor the other day when he told the media there was no philosophy contest on his land use bills. The humor lies (and lies?) in the apparent fact that he may actually believe himself.
Corlet asked Udall if Idaho's Rep. Symms had enough power already to bear out his claim as being instrumental in killing the present land use bill in Congress, but Udall didn't quite rise to John's bait (John can't stand Symms), responding only that, though they didn't agree on the matter, Steve was his (Udalls') friend and, being one of the Congress's six or eight most conservative members, he could be expected to work hard to defeat the land use bill, and this he did. Corlett seemed saddened.
Dr. Boyd Martin, former dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Idaho, told some near-frantic colleagues at the school that, contrary to their analysis of Symms, he was perhaps the least conservative candidate to appear in Idaho politics in several decades.
Possibly the best humor of all was ferreted out, as those who know him might expect, by Bill Hall when Mr. Udall indicated he was something akin to a middle-of-the-roader. Even Hall couldn't let this go by and responded, "You mean with an ADA rating of 100 per cent and ACA rating of zero that you are not a liberal!"
The Arizona Democrat replied that those rating ADA (Americans for Democratic Action-read liberal) and ACA (Americans for Constitutional Action-read conservative) were last year. He was, after all, in the Western tradition, etc., etc. One supposes Mr. Udall just doesn't like labels, as most politicians do not ... affords more "flexibility," you know.
Barf!
This writer's considered guess is that Congressman Udall's only claim to being even a non-liberal would be his friendship with conservative Congressman Steve Symms.
Panelist Corlet asked if the anti-environmentalist trend was nationwide. Udall responded that it was indeed, they were on the defensive and that they would have to be more reasonable in the future. Now then, it may have been a TV illusion, but it seemed to this observer that a big tear actually formed itself and oozed down Mr. Corlett's cheek.
The crowning piece of so-called humor from the Democratic happy-warrior types at the Andrus dinner was no doubt a quote of Mr. Udall's which appeared in Sunday's Idaho Statesman labeling Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, D-Wash., as a conservative. Though certainly deserving of the label anti-Communist or at least legitimately skeptical of the USSR, to call Sen. Jackson a conservative is such a gross strangulation of logic (if such a thing as logic exists in politics) that it should even shock the dull-witted politicos into realizing that author George Orwell's "Newspeak" (i.e., war is peace, good is evil, black is white, etc.) as described in his book 1984 has arrived ten years early.
Conservative Church
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 7, 1974
Idaho's Senator Frank Church appeared on TV's "Face the Nation" last week. He's chairman of, the Senate subcommittee to investigate the greedy capitalistic profit-making oil companies who have socked it to us for, lo, these many years, with oil products too cheaply priced, thus forcing us consumers to get "hooked" on oil and gorge ourselves in a kind of gasoline gluttony.
Everybody was doing their thing in those days to keep prices down. Big government did their thing too, though one seldom hears about it above the din of damnation leveled at big oil. For example they compelled natural gas to be sold at an artificially low price thereby encouraging over-consumption of gas and putting the competing coal companies nearly out of business. Now that we need them, too bad the pricing system for allocating scarce resources is so poorly understood in America, especially by politicians like Senator Church who are so gung ho to cure problems by government's forever throwing a fistful of money at them.
Our senator was in fine form on the TV show and was with good companions. George Herman, the show's chief, loves any guest, just so he's somewhere to the left of Hubert Humphrey.
Mr. Church surprised some of us using such words as "free enterprise, competition, free market," etc. He even went so far as to admit the efficacy of the allegation that the government might be against free enterprise, or words to that effect, further suggesting the role of government acting as referee instead, something long advocated by those rascals of the right. (Advocated? Would you believe screaming at the top of our lungs?)
Congressman Steve Symms told me some time ago that he was having to run hard in order to stay to the right of Senator church since Bob Smith, Steve's former administrative aide and campaign manager from Nampa, got into the race for Church's Senate seat.
All this dramatic (for Church) shift to the use of the words, ideas, etc. of free enterprise gives the heebie-jeebies to those Idahoans who'd like to see Church defeated, but with Symms it's a bit different.
The indomitable free enterprise apple-eater from Idaho's first congressional district "went to Washington D.C. to sell free enterprise," he says, "as well as to take a bite out of government, and if Frank hears the drum beat too, it's great with me. We've got to have somebody besides conservatives get the message, and although Senator Church is usually considered anti-business, we minority groups need all the help we can get."
Symms laughs at this kind of election-year switch for which Frank church is so often roundly accused, but it drives up the wall those republicans and conservatives who'd like to see Church separate from the state. This unusual (for a GOPer) ability to laugh at himself as well as at the asinine inconsistency and intellectual dishonesty of Washington politics seems to give Symms something which drives Democrats (many northern ones love him) and liberal Republicans up their wall.
Mr. Church said something else while on the above-mentioned "Face the Nation" (should be named "Face the Liberals") which merits note. Said he, "Secretary of State Kissinger's current trip to Mexico to celebrate his brand new wedding indicates he is about the only one left in Washington who has any extra energy."
This got a big laugh, as well it should, but since the southern part of Mexico is not too far north of the Panama Canal Zone, some of us hope newly-wed Kissinger will confine his energy activity to just that: kissing-er, and not try to give her the Panama Canal.
The GOP in '74
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 14, 1974
The legislature, current year of 1974, just passed away. Thank the gods, both for those of us who see the threat of a full-time legislature within the next five years (don't laugh) and for those sincere, hard working and overwrought legislators who have given generously of their time toward what they see as the good of Idaho.
Although they usually fight like heck to get the privilege, it is nonetheless a lot of work, and for what it's worth this writer appreciates their sincerity, if not their omnipotence.
Now, with the legislature laid by, on supposes we'll hear more from Vern Ravenscroft's race for lieutenant governor and Jack Murphy's race for the state's No. 1 spot, governor. So far there seems to be a solid consensus among both Republicans and Democrats that Murphy's chances to beat Andrus are about the same as the proverbial snow ball in hell.
While some conservatives in the legislature accused Ravenscroft of equivocating due to his coming race for lieutenant governor, he took part this winter in an educational TV debate with some environmentalists at Idaho State University and made them look like warmed over cream pie. Multiple use concept was the issue as per Boise Cascade's plan and that company's own expert was pale by comparison.
So what? So Vern does have a few expressed plans, not free market perhaps, at least not enough for some of us, but maybe more than we think. We'll wait and watch.
Just what Ravenscroft has in mind for a platform isn't exactly clear but it's clearer so far than Pat Harwood's. His main competition so far. Both are interested in the governor spot at some future date and both are friendly, popular, and well grounded in politics, the latter being something some of us wonder if we couldn't do without.
Jack Murphy seems to be in an unenviable no-man's land with no primary opposition. It'll be a small miracle if he can mount a campaign for anyone but me-too Republicans. Jack's a campaigner, but controversy over big deal freedom principles hasn't been his bag. Still, the seagulls did finally come in time to save the Mormons from the crickets. So who knows?
Orval Hansen, Idaho's second district congressman, is said to be vulnerable to most any good conservative candidate in the primary since his district is said to be much more conservative than the first district. some say Orval has to go because he's too liberal, and certainly he is by most definitions. Orval's vote is more acceptable to the AFL-CIO than even the middle-of-the-road Goldwater types.
George Hansen is said to be waiting and available for a draft, if said draft exceeds three or four signers outside the Mormon Church. George's urge to run for office is said by some to be reminiscent of Caldwell's Erwin Schweibert, perennial candidate for Congress some years ago, whose palpitating political heart throbs forever to run and whose reasons therefore are about as hard to buy as Mr. Nixon's on Watergate.
If they don't get off the unity kick (for what principles?). Watergate just may be as good a political issue for the Democrats as any. Certainly it's phony enough, and tho' great grist for the media mill, it's been even more helpful in revealing their lack of depth, probity and objectivity. It has indeed revealed something about the recent political campaign in general, but more importantly the lack of any well defined principles of the Republican party in particular.
One notices an alarming continuation of the above vacuum in the upcoming races, with very few exceptions, giving credence to the old saw that: "The more things change the more they remain the same."
One wonders why the Republicans seem to fear adopting their own message for change, i.e., the free market and free enterprise. If it really ever was. The Democrats may well grab that ball and run with it. They could well quote the famous economist, Ludwig von Mises: "The average man is both better informed and less corruptible when buying in the market place than when voting in political election."
But leave us not hold our breath waiting for them, since Mr. Nixon told us, "We're all Keynesians now."
The Columnist's Critics
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 21, 1974
Since this column began appearing in the Lewiston Tribune last January, two or three comments, i.e., criticisms, have arisen which seem worthy of note - tho' for widely divergent reasons.
During the recent Idaho legislative session just ended, this column was mildly, I thought, critical of the Idaho Certified Public Accountants for wanting to add other compulsory features to existing legislation which they now enjoy. One of the state's top accountants, with a prominent Boise firm (a sincere and knowledgeable gentleman, not to mention a close friend of mine) took exception to the column in question and descended all over me. Having been warned of this kind of hazard by editor Bill Hall, I took the scolding pretty much in stride; that is, until he compared my column with the kind of journalism often found in the Idaho Statesman (his words).
Well, it's true I had made what I consider a small error - mostly of emphasis - but the basic thrust of the column was on target. Boy, oh boy, target indeed, but I thought the comparison with the Idaho edition of eastern liberaldom itself was a bit extreme. I replied to the bitterness of my detractor hoping not to lose his valued friendship, "Why don't you just call me an SOB and we'll call it square?
"The latter I might live down (sort of fits my idea of the press as well) and the former really kind of hurt my feelings."
He laughed and I think our friendship may survive after all.
The second significant observation from one of the conservative legislators was - and you can believe this or not, "Smeed's column leave something to be desired, i.e., agrees too much with that liberal Bill Hall". (Hall is indeed liberal by most definitions, an excellent writer, and an editor of the Lewiston Tribune.)
Now how does one cope with a crack like that? Hall invited me to write this weekly column in the first place (for which I was both surprised and pleased) because we hold differing opinions and views, and in the second place, if indeed I did agree very much with this leviathan of liberal legerdemain I'd have to re-examine my premises because Bill and I have widely divergent views on most things, especially things political.
For example, if Idaho's fine, intelligent and upstanding young libertarian-conservative-middle of the road congressman from the first District were to actually walk across the Potomac River in full view of all the press and news media, including Hall himself, and all the wire services - well, Bill would likely report it because he is a fair man. Liberal, but fair. Yeah, I know that's a strange combo, but its mostly true. The punch line of course is that Bill's headline would be likely to read some to the effect that "Symms Proves Ineptitude Again - He Can't Swim".
Notwithstanding the fact that this writer believes it to be at least likely that Symms can indeed walk on water, editor Hall is still a superior writer whose political vision and attempt to "see" both sides (not to be confused with political wisdom) hovers around 20-20 most of the time.
Writing in his regular column a week or two ago on the efficacy of the Idaho Legislature's annual sessions, Hall notes my error in ascribing the 60-day salary limitation to the legislators themselves instead of the constitution. Hall is right and this writer stands corrected; still, the thrust of my column holds water, the point being the legislators, many of them at least, did use the salary limitation of 60 days to help sell their idea on the desirability of annual sessions and the likelihood that the salary limitation would preclude more than 60 days sessions. Hall notes that the annual sessions are not working out as well as he had hoped and, although not yet willing to concede the return to biennial sessions, he seems to be more skeptical. At least a welcome attitude to the plethora of political problem solving.
While most of us are slow to accept criticism and quite understandably too, some of it can be a big asset if given an honest chance, like that of a product in the market place when and if the market is kept free. Much, if not most, of politics today tends to do just the opposite - bend it, break it, or license it.
Ludwig Von Mises' famous statement might well be emblazoned in lights over the Senate and House chambers in full view of future politicians;
"The average man is both better informed and less corruptible when buying in the market place than when voting in political elections."
Political Mating Season On
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 28, 1974
The political mating season is on. Most everyone knows it, even Yours Truly, but it's livelier than I thought and coincidentally kind of interesting just today. At home this afternoon (in order to get this column written early enough to get out of town for a few days) I answered the doorbell twice for different Democrats carrying political petitions for Gov. Cecil Andrus. One was carried by Wayne Fuller, a well-known Caldwell lawyer and long-time Democratic activist; the other by Mrs. Betty Passmore, wife of L.I. "Lip" Passmore, member of the Idaho State Tax Commission.
One's interest rises at such good coverage for the governor's petition, not because he needs the signatures in order to get nominated, since the number legally required is quite modest, but because it's good political technique to get a large number of people to "sign up" so to speak, thus tacitly agreeing to work for the candidate on said petition. It's good business in politics to do this and if a candidate can get the workers to do the legwork, especially if he isn't positive he'll win, the insurance is about the single best and cheapest element of political campaigning. Andrus is generally considered popular and unbeatable so far, unless of course something comes up.
Comes now Lt. Gov. Jack Murphy who suffered a serious injury to his back when thrown from a horse at his cattle ranch. Murphy's accident just may open the way for the popular Vern Ravenscroft (representative from Tuttle who has had his thoughts about running for governor for a long time but wouldn't oppose his friend Jack Murphy). Murphy was instrumental in getting Vern to leave the Democratic party and run as a Republican. Ravenscroft won handily each term as a conservative Democrat, but I'm told won last time as a Republican by something like 84 per cent of the vote. If this kind of vote-getting ability is any indication of potential in a gubernatorial race, it could be wise politics for Andrus people to get cracking now, should the image of "unbeatable" begin to fade slightly in the light of a more serious threat. Today's bit of Andrus activity would indicate that Cecil knows Vern is presently touring the state to test the Ravenscroft potential, and isn't going on any vacation.
Switching parties talk makes me think of W.H. "Bill" Crookham who's talking of switching to the Democratic Party to oppose Steve Symms. It figures. Bill's to the left of Hubert Humphrey but a lot more fun and says he'll send his kids to Washington D.C. to look over the schools, etc. before he decides. Would you believe Bill represented the Republicans at a conference last week under the auspices of the University of Idaho? Something to do with an "examination" of presidential politics. Others attending the U of I conference were Bill Hall, Perry Swisher and John Corlett. In such august company maybe Crookham wasn't such a bad choice after all. Judging from the gargantuan bias of that school's Borah Symposium, gross strangulations of logic must be the order of the day.
Some pundits claim bob Smith (former administrative assistant to Steve Symms) may have primary competition for the right to contest for Sen. Frank church's seat in the person of Don Winder, head of the FHA. Though I doubt this will come to pass, it would give smith's campaign some more visibility since the liberal press is more prone to write about contested races (i.e., make war, not love?). Smith's made over 100 speeches so far and has an unnerving (to Church) capacity to persuade. He is easily one of the half dozen best speakers in the entire Northwest.
Mrs. Gay Davis, administrative assistant to the Idaho Office of Energy was considering the Democratic nomination to oppose Symms, but has been quoted as having decided that her family comes first. One supposes that, ... "comes first," means ahead of her horse. At least she didn't wait to get bucked off, or choke on an "apple seed."
Speaking of family, Senator Church's "family" is apparently not wanting to get bucked off either. At least their numerous recent letters to the editor would seem to suggest some awareness that the current wave of disenchantment with politicians in general and incumbents in particular should give them pause. In addition to the senator's own recent letters and one by his administrative assistant, Verda Barnes, the Caldwell News Tribune had one too this week by Cleve Corlett, son of the Statesman's political hatchet man, John Corlett. Cleve is on Senator Church's staff in Washington, D.C. Of course, I'd do the same if I felt threatened and faced any kind of legitimate opposition in an upcoming election.
Even David Brinkley, the TV commentator, said recently that there is an ever-widening circle of conservative influence abroad in the land. Mr. Brinkley is quoted as suggesting a conservative presidential year in 1976, which even a Kennedy candidacy won't cure. Brinkley is awful liberal though and may be a bit paranoid, but Senator church has, in the opinion of this writer, never before come up against a candidate so versatile, and articulate on principles and the law as Bob Smith, so may well have second thoughts about his being unbeatable, as is (was) so often thought.
Smith, who holds a degree in law, was a Methodist missionary for four years in Southeast Asia and speaks the Chinese language. This latter may give him an inside track in understanding the orthodox liberal stewardship of our government's foreign policy. It's been about as easy to comprehend as if the Senate's foreign policy committee consistently used the Chinese language. Mr. Church, who is a longtime member of said Senate Committee, seems to think they make sense. Perhaps he too speaks Chinese.
Playing Cautious With Crookham
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 5, 1974
Many Idaho Democrats are frantic, i.e., those who didn't vote for Congressman Steve Symms in the last election. Many of them did, of course. Those party regulars, extreme liberals and "yellow-dog" Democrats are left, no pun intended, but it's alarmingly true - they are indeed left.
It's true too that there are also "yellow-dog" Republicans (such partisans as would vote for their party's candidate even if he were a "yellow-dog").
Those referred to above as "left," especially the party regulars, have become almost emotionally upset at the prospect of not having a candidate, i.e., any Democrat candidate, to oppose the popular Republican Steve Symms. Reason being of course that to allow an incumbent candidate to run unopposed might appear to suggest that almost everyone is happy with the unopposed persons. Therefore, it must not have been necessary, desirable or feasible for the other party to run someone against him. Since neither logic nor consistency is a tenet of either major party these days, such conditions often occur, to the delight of some and the dismay of others.
Two of those presently delighting at the prospect of a possible candidacy of Bill Crookham to oppose Symms are Lewiston Morning Tribune editor Bill Hall and political hatchet-man of the powerful Idaho Statesman John Corlett, though interestingly enough for quite different reasons.
Hall would truly enjoy an extreme liberal, which Crookham certainly is, but more important to see the prospect of another, to use Hall's term, colorful candidate. It makes for great grist for a newspaperman's mill to have colorful people to write about, especially for a liberal iconoclast like Hall.
Corlett, on the other hand, has hardened rather than mellowed these past several years and sort of chokes up at the success of any Idaho politician to the right of Hubert Humphrey and now, one can likely assume, even to the right of former Democrat presidential candidate George McGovern.
Corlett is so upset at politicians like Steve Symms and his former administrative assistant, Bob smith, that it's difficult to find the latter's name used in his political columns in the Statesman.
Smith is running for the senate seat now held by Corlett's pride and joy, Frank church. On an extremely conservative budget Smith is having an extremely liberal amount of success in his campaign. But you'll have to read about it elsewhere than in Corlett's column. Corlett's son, Cleve, is employed by Sen. Church in Washington, D.C.
Idaho Democrats may succeed in getting Crookham to oppose Symms, and this writer is told the national party organizers have been in the state nearly frantic to get almost anyone to so run on the old political-hack theory that, "We can always say that it was the candidate's fault that we lost, not our principles."
That's a laugh (i.e., what principles?) I admit. It's been par for generations of politics as usual. But politics as usual might not be entirely the case if Crookham runs, for he is indeed colorful, witty, wealthy and has a crusader's zeal mostly for the left-wing kind of problem solving.
In order to get the support of a significant segment of the Democratic party regulars, however, Crookham would not only have to leave the Republican party, thus creating the usual skepticism and lack of confidence. but it would cast doubts on the party's orthodox credibility built upon by longtime Democrats Frank Church and Gov. Cecil Andrus for them to so readily embrace a Republican for high office.
Crookham would also have to make some important ideological concessions to Democrats in order to get sufficient support, and this might not be easy for him to do. Like Symms - and to his credit - Crookham is not for sale, but unlike Symms his idea of a free society is clearly along the lines of that found in Sweden - "honest" socialism.
Few doubt that today Sweden is in deep trouble, much of it via the hands of honest politicians trying to do the right thing, but doing it TO some and FOR others.
One muses, looking back on the last election, that George McGovern must have wanted little more. Remember his suggested $1,000 bonus to just about everybody?
But there's some risk to their party and even notwithstanding the liberal news media's Watergate, Idaho Democrats might be cautious. They took a real drubbing at an "honest" attempt to go quite that radical in 1972.
Why is Gold Illegal?
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 12, 1974
Authors writing columns like this are oftentimes hung up hunting for something to say which is both interesting and intelligent. This writer is no different, but one must focus some attention, if only in defense of being something of a conservative, upon the pitfalls of another kind of "consumerism," i.e., reading columnists. For example, if one reads a really skilled columnist, especially if the reader is outside his own field, the chances are he'll be favorably influenced by the writers' position. The point is that much of the time it isn't necessary to say a whole lot of importance if it's well said. this is true, one supposes, since people seem to like to hear about personalities, the more colorful the better, rather than substantive matters. Hardly seems fitting then to blame this entirely on the writers, except that most of them tend to hold a kind of management theory of politics to the exclusion off all other forms of problem solving. Much lip service is given to the virtue of change and openness, but all that seems to come out is mostly a kind of personality cult about "who can win"? or "who's most vulnerable?", or "who's got the most muscle?", or "who's ahead in the polls?", ad nauseam. (The term "Personality-cult" probably came into popular usage quite appropriately during the Stalin regime in the USSR. Seldom in recent history has violence as a political tool been better epitomized than during his reign.)
My point here is not to take away fin the least from a skilled writer, rather I'd hope to move in that direction myself, but more to suggest an insistence on a healthy skepticism from the popular pastime of much modern media commentary both liberal and conservative. Hopefully thereby emotional exploitation might give way to a better class of public debate.
One example might be the companion subjects of gold and inflation. Seldom is even a clear definition of the two ever attempted, let alone agreed upon. It's not enough to say there are two different conditions both refereed to by one word - inflation. Money inflation is not at all the same as price inflation, yet both conditions are referred to daily in the media by one and the same expression: inflation, as though there were no confusion in the public's mind at all. Gobs of confusion seem to obtain in the minds of the press and media writers, sincerely too. Still, few have the temerity to broach the problem in any depth. Perhaps this problem is sort of perceived, but it's more difficult than to resort to the personality cult for something to write about. One can usually justify it, too, by the usual, "... anyway people relate to naming names and letting it all hang out", etc., etc. sure, and most relate to gossip, too, at least most of us do. Yet I wish it were otherwise. Reminds me of an old saw to the effect that, "Big people talk about ideas; medium size people talk about things; and little people talk about other people."
Heady stuff, so don't get hooked on it unless you write a column (the market tends to demand it) or read one. If you're hooked and really want to kick the habit, try the matter of gold just for kicks. A little less than three years ago the writer had some gold-colored stickers printed for miscellaneous use (like on checks, but mostly on the outside of envelopes). The message was simple, yet hopefully thought-provoking, it said, "Ask your political friends why it's illegal to own gold?" Now then, that query is so simple that it escapes even those divinely inspired ones, yea, especially them, the politicos. Most are not even aware such ownership is illegal, not to mention why. Yet were it not so, the federal government would not have been so readily if at all "responsible" as we're so often told by the moderates who tell us, "Well the states seem unwilling to do it - so the feds must, they're just being responsible." But the states, albeit most of them, have to pay their bills and the feds have only to print the money to pay "their" share. One may wonder why gold's gone from $35 to $1175 an ounce, even without a degree from Harvard, but it must make it easier.
Those Idahoans who wonder why Congressman Orval Hansen voted NO on the bill to legalize gold ownership are well advised to ask. Yet, when they ask, Orval is true to his convictions (he, too, holds the management theory of politics), for it was risky politics in Idaho to vote against gold. Too bad the liberal news media are not as sharp as Mr. Hansen, for then they might ask why, and what is the reason gold is so bad and the money-changers (read, politicians) so good. Orval knows, as should the press, that the economy and men's lives cannot so easily be managed, i.e., manipulated, if America's citizens can flee into gold when her politicians can no longer be trusted to maintain a sound currency. Such is necessary for the management theory of politics to function - and does it ever function? WOW, it sure does! Sometimes one has to break a few eggs, perhaps, but then the politicians reason that "One can hardly make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, can one?"
Ever wonder what happened to our silver coins and even our silver certificates? Yes, the government melted up a bunch of the coins and amidst a growing shortage, too. Ever wonder why? You should. (Bags of $1,000 face value coins now sell regularly for over $3,0000). At least one of Idaho's distinguished mining citizens wonders, and he's no ham'n egger when it comes to silver.
Mr. Henry Day of Day Mines (Kellogg, Idaho) wonders. Wonders at least enough to attend a lecture in San Francisco recently where this writer too listened to John Exter, former V.P. First National City Bank (and former Federal Reserve official now turned investment counselor)) say that in no uncertain terms the government(s), including and especially ours, of the world were trading "I-O-U-nothings" for "U-O-Me-nothings" in the international money markets. Forgive me the world markets, but that is what they call them. I use Mr. Day's name, not because I know him, I don't. Didn't know he was there 'til Mr. Exter told me later when he learned, too, he was from Idaho. I mention Mr. Day because he's a prominent Idahoan and a concerned (for his country) gentlemen and is in the precious metals business. Presumably he has more resources than you and I have, and may - just may - be listening to some knowledgeable people to whom the liberal news media ought to be giving at least equal time these days, but they don't - they're hung up on the personality-cult, like Watergate. Watergate's bad news no doubt about it, but it's like a toothache compared to the cancer of inflation which, were it not for the lack of understanding of a reasonable role of gold in the minds of John Q. Public, would be next to impossible - or at least at this point manageable.
The overwhelming majority of news media opinion molders (with a few notable exceptions) seem more like Typhoid-Mary's to the problem of our largely government-caused inflation (the most insidious tax of all) than like Good Samaritans offering their services and light to the injured and confused along the road to the promised land.
Licensing Newspapers
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 19, 1974
Perhaps we should consider licensing newspapers after all.
This writer has been vigorously opposed to such suggestions over the past several years merely on the basis of principle, still am, but others do have a point.
The idea or the institutioning of licensing itself is an ancient and interesting scheme used primarily by its proponents to prevent free entry into their particular market, but the reason mostly offered is presented under the guise of protecting the public. Idaho's legislature has, for example, passed laws recently licensing landscape artists and stenographic court reporters. While this may seem silly, if not clearly unwise, it was done at least in the case of the former, in order to qualify for federal highway funds - believe it or not!
Quite understandably, such laws are promoted by those persons standing to gain by licensing their own profession, i.e., doctors, lawyers, CPA's, plumbers, realtors, etc., etc., ad infinitum. The Russian government too has a scheme of occupational licensing, but they're more honest about the whole matter. They call theirs a work permit. Nor do they leave it to a committee or board appointed by a trade association of said licensees to run it, as usually happens in the USA.
In the case of newspapers and reporters, however, it is quite a different matter, and curiously enough for quite different reasons - equally devious, equally valid. Somehow, the press generally, perhaps 95 per cent of it, perceives the government to be a genuine threat to their own happy, prosperous and laissez-faire existence; and, therefore, at any suggestion of governmental regulations, such as their being licensed, screams like a mashed cat.
These same newsmen, however, push with great vigor almost every kind of government regulation and/or licensing for every other business in the market place vis-a-vis an almost monumental double standard. One wonders why, if indeed they are at all concerned with the matter of freedom, presumably for others as well as themselves, these members of the press do not resist the idea of special privileges for anyone and stop insisting on freedom of the press as if it were something special to which they are entitled, yet no one else is. (Unfortunately, some of American business has a similar elitist view point.)
Since the matter of licensing newspapers, reporters, requiring signed editorials, and general regulation of the press even unto court orders demanding equal time have been occurring so frequently, let us look at what many see as a case in point. (Idahoans saw a law requiring editorials to be signed, almost pass the recent session of their legislature.)
Last week a two-column, three-inch long news story in The Idaho Statesman, Boise, carried a headline, "Clergyman-Attorney Will Talk to Graduating Nampa Seniors." Datelined Nampa and on the front page of the local section, the story began with: "Robert L. Smith, a United Methodist Church clergyman will address the 350 graduating seniors of Nampa High ... Smith, of 103 Ord Blvd., a Nampa attorney graduated from the College of Idaho, 1953 ..."
What many hereabouts find hard to follow with blind acceptance is the omission of a couple of bob Smith's more recent and newsworthy pursuits, like his being campaign manager for the present United States Congressman Steve Symms in one of the most unusual, colorful and politically improbable campaigns in recent Idaho history, after which he became administrative assistant to said congressman in Washington, D.C.
One supposes that such could have somehow been overlooked in the rush of news reporting (and editing? "don't have room for printing everything, you know") but folks do wonder just how the fact that Mr. Smith is also a candidate for one of the highest political offices in the land and has been for months - ever since he left Steve Symms' office.
Bill Hall, editor of the Lewiston Tribune, has a point in a quote attributed to him (even if it isn't accurate, it sounds like his genuine and frequently superior wit), "The Constitution guarantees a free press - not a fair one." And Bill frequently has the last word.
Next week I'll have the last word, reporting to you from "Insane City, D.C.," the left liberal news media's paradise, the political whorehouse of the world.
Once Upon a Time ...
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 26, 1974
Quite some time ago there were some wealthy and influential men (before women's lib) in a coastal town in Italy. Since their names are not important; suffice it to say that they decided to help a certain politician get elected and set about doing just that.
Well, to make a long story short they were successful, and as is usually the case, the successful politician was grateful to these men for their helping him get elected.
What is not quite so usual was the open manner in which the politician expressed his gratitude. He had a gift made for them from a huge block of marble carved in the form of what in the U.S. would be a gigantic martini glass, six feet in diameter, four feet high and three inches thick, of beautiful quality stone and with a message done in inlaid copper around the brim expressing the sincere appreciation.
I was privileged to look at this magnificent gift while visiting this little Italian town in the spring of 1968. The town had undergone a terrific change in the form of an explosion which dumped millions of tons of ashes from a volcano inundating the whole town including the politicians, his influence - buying friends, the marble "martini glass" and killing everybody in the town, a most spectacular and final form of air pollution, but one which perfectly preserved some interesting stories and artifacts.
As you may have guessed by now, the Italian town was Pompeii and the explosion was from Mt. Vesuvius during the year 79 A.D. These ruins have since been visited by many U.S. citizens, but one wonders if they learn very much while there. It is said that the only lesson Americans learn from history is that Americans don't learn anything from history. But we could.
What's the point of all this? Let me try to show you. Last week I spent a week in New York and Washington, D.C., mostly in the latter, but both cities left me with some impressions which, although I'd been there before, somehow came out in bolder style along with a kind of sinking feeling.
You, too, may have noticed the multitude of faces in a big city, each one different from the other. Most of us who have been in at least a few big cities tend at times to wonder how the good Lord could have made so many faces, each unique, each along certain similar lines, i.e., each a nose, eyes, ears, a mouth, cheeks, hair and all the rest, yet hardly a one looks like anybody back home.
Yet the government planners and other do-gooders of one ilk or another beat the drum loudly for a compulsory plan to fit all people as if to repeal nature rather than try to discover nature. Quite a temptation - to play God I mean.
Speaking of playing God, it is an interesting experience not at all unlike viewing the famous Egyptian shrines to drive around Washington, D.C., and look at the fury with which we are still building "pyramids".
True, not all of these new modern pyramids have a sharp peak at the top like those in Cairo, but the "slaves" (read, taxpayers) which pay for them must have about the same degree of influence on whether or not they want their taxes to go for a marble palace, marble "martini glass" or the marble edifices in Washington, D.C., like the one bearing the name of the late Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sam Rayburn, as the slaves of King Tut had to say about whether or not they'd built the King's shrine.
I saw people reading The Washington Post newspaper. The Post writes questions and poses answers more in harmony with the Communist intellectual Marx than with the canny Scotchman Adam Smith and his capitalism, but they do ask.
In a lengthy editorial last week this liberal paper asked in more or less these terms, why President Nixon took the "bribe" from the milk producers and why shouldn't he be thrown out? They love most liberal politicians, but strangely enough loathe Nixon.
Well, the Post sometimes asks timely questions, but they are very selective about whom they ask and along what lines of reasoning like for instance: Must history repeat itself? They do not ask. Neither do they ask how can we expect the wealthy to do anything else than help politicians get elected when we keep insisting on giving all that power to grateful officeholders who are little different now than in the year 79 A.D.? Who holds the power gets the candy. T'was ever thus.
How to Introduce a Conservative
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
June 2, 1974
Last week in this newspaper a column appeared entitled, "Introducing a Pair of Conservatives" (who will regularly appear in Lewiston Morning Tribune). Said column, which was, incidentally, unsigned, went on to describe, i.e., label, the two conservatives ostensibly for purposes of identification.
The first part of the column told something about George Will, a former Washington editor of National Review, the conservative journal made famous by the editorship of the venerable William F. Buckley, Jr. who also runs the educational TV show "Firing Line."
While I know and admire Bill Buckley I cannot claim the same with Will, so, will not comment further except to add that his credentials in said Tribune column were excellent including, one supposes from the Lewiston editor's liberal viewpoint, the divinely inspired opinion calling for Richard Nixon's removal from office.
The latter itself should assure George Will a treasured spot in the hearts of the newspaper's knee-jerkers. (Just exactly how Mr. Nixon fits the liberal media's idea of a conservative is a phenomenon best understood by themselves alone, but of course this, too, is a gross strangulation of logic in the best tradition of those frequent and regular news media distortions which we've sort of come to expect these days.)
Suffice it to say that judging from the Lewiston Tribune descriptions, George Will will be a welcome addition to their "stable of writers" as they use the term.
The second conservative the above mentioned column goes on to introduce is Ralph Smeed "... added to these pages last winter ... specifically because he is so often in disagreement with this newspaper's editorial policy."
Now then permit me a few random comments on the phantom columnist's labeling of this conservative and for benefit of readers who may have missed said identification I quote: "Smeed can be defined (read labeled) in several ways - ultra-conservative." (the liberal's definition of almost anyone who disagrees with them and knows why. The term has no known principles nor does the typical liberal writer often attempt to explain one even if it were to be offered.)
The labels continue: "fundamentalist - capitalist." Now here's a dandy, not all bad either, but it's new to me, sort of has a religious ring to it. If the column's author means Smeed believes all church property should be taxed equally along with all other forms of taxation thus removing religion from today's worm-bowl of special interest legislation, I plead guilty to "fundamentalist." As to capitalist, if this be mercantile-capitalist of generations past I say "red herring" and not guilty. If the term refers however to the modern one so conveniently ignored in the government's compulsory school system, that of free market capitalism, than I plead guilty.
The phantom's last "definition" placed on this writer is "anti-socialist" and to this label I'm happy to plead: "guilty as hell, your honor."
Now again, please let me add that the phrase was "Smeed can be defined ..." One seems led to infer from this that their definition is probably true, but then the definition elevates itself into position for launch: "But he regards himself as a 'libertarian, the American political faction which believes ...'"
This last error is likely one of innocent ignorance, since the term libertarian by itself is just about the most non-political term in modern use today though it is seldom used at all - thanks to most of the intellectual establishment in education and the media.
The column makes some accurate and on target mention of libertarians' extreme disdain for the political solutions so vigorously and profusely promulgated by most of the press and politicians and professors today.
Closing down the article describes: "A libertarian is the kind of politician who would smoke marijuana at a Ronald Reagan rally."
Well, with no more descriptive qualification than that afforded therein the Tribune's column strangles again. The term "libertarian politician" is akin to the term compulsory freedom, i.e., mostly mutual exclusive. As to the marijuana, I'm disappointed in the Tribune whose usual attempt at humor contains more class and is less apt to mislead. The weed is an abomination and I'm negative about that too, just as I am about the government's asinine laws or prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and similar attempts to compel prohibition on marijuana today. "Fools burnt fingers forever wobble back to the fire."
Had the phantom author mentioned the Libertarian Party which was recently organized and, having ran a national candidate for president and vice president, they could qualify now one supposes, for the column's label "libertarian politician." They too find it difficult to break into the regular media, so it's probable they've not been heard of in Idaho press circles.
As to the closing paragraph's ... "long-time friend of Congressman Steve Symms and Republican Senate candidate (to oppose Senator Frank Church) Bob Smith," this writer again pleads guilty and hopes against hope that Congressman Symms' political attempt to be forthright and his educational attempt through politics will not seem so radically contradictory as so many of the editorial positions and phantom "introductions" seem to so many of us struggling individualists, i.e., struggling with the state and the press.
Hope Springs Eternal
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
June 9, 1974
To introduce a significant degree of culture into a column like this is perhaps an exercise in futility, still, "hope springs eternal..." they say an opportunity arises sometimes which may give that hope a little chance. A case in point is the way we get our news, information and impressions from news reporters - or could they be termed better as persuasive interpreters? One's bias and or prejudice are not at all conditions to be avoided, but should be obvious enough to incite a healthy skepticism where we read accounts of today's happenings - especially those of a political and economic nature. In order to treat this let me quote a poem providing commentary on two monarchs of scripture which may help provide some perspective to today's events.
King Solomon and King David
Led merry, merry lives
With many, many lady friends
And many, many wives.
But when their years had multiplied,
With many many qualms
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs,
And King David wrote the Psalms.
Whoever the poet was he could be reminding us that even those great rulers had a day of reckoning in which they were obliged to face up to their excesses.
While it is not my intention to equate King Solomon and David with today's writers it might be helpful to consider if the excesses in history are somehow repeating themselves.
Perhaps not the best example, but one close at hand is last weeks column by John Crockett, left handed liberal political editor for the Idaho Statesman at Boise. John's column is head lined "A Symms - Cox Race Seems Likely". Now then John and many of the democrats have been about to panic for fear no one would appear to oppose the popular GOP conservative congressman Steve Symms, of Idaho's first district. Mr. Corlett concedes his popularity, but hastens to add that it is due primarily to "charisma and not on his record". Presumably a record to be valid in the liberal pundits opinion must be socialistic, otherwise he's a do-nothing politician "with a boyish flair and a motto to take a bite out of government". Were it not so goes Mr. Corlett how could he have defeated "staunch, solid, relatively well known Democrat, the late Eddie Williams"?
John continues, "This is a motto that has run its course. Symms has hammered away at government but has no positive record of accomplishment in taking his bit out of government. He has in fact abandoned some of his libertarian views and moved farther to the right."
Now this kind of writing used to just infuriate this writer. It seemed so obvious that such distorted views had to be the result of a studied, withering, fire intended to mislead and distort for some sinister, if hidden, motive. But I've about changed my mind. Oh sure John hates anyone to the right of Hubert Humphrey but at least he's fairly consistent. I think John has been seen himself in print for so many years he actually believes that crap, and given the general slant of the regular media one must consider why, rather that vent our spleen at John, the media's (et al) venting theirs. Sure Corlett and company's views are slanted; so are mine, but I admit mine. Thoughtful readers might ask how on earth can anyone be expected to believe that stuff? Well it's perhaps easier than we thought, but we'll come back to that.
Symm's campaign was so open, intellectually honest, and to a larger extent than many GOP liberals would like to admit - consistent with basic principles. On the matter of principles Mr. Corlett ways Symms has moved from libertarian toward the right.
This is such a gross strangulation of the definition of words that unless the voters are actually as ignorant of the meaning of words and the semantic jungle which the modern opinion molders have made for them, another rude awakening for the press may be imminent. As with some of the other diehard newsmen John's worst epithet is most any variation of the words " far right" with little or no explanation thereof and merely to hurl it at those with whom he vigorously disagrees. One reason we shouldn't get too worked up at distortions like these would be we'd have a better ability to mount counter attacks if we understand how people like this rationalize to justify these, at best, half - truths. After stating flatly that Symms won in 1972 via gimmicks and slogans John goes on to quote the apparent Democratic opponent of Symms, Mr. J. Ray Cox, a lawyer who claims in part that "those who criticize the system constantly do a disservice to society". This is music to his ears due to John's basic assumption that virtue and progress come from the government. Symm's assumption is that they come, generally speaking, in spite of government.
By way of an attempt to undo some of the semantic confusion oft-times promulgated by the press let me pass along a rule of thumb which may be helpful to see through some of the fog. On a spectrum of left to right, the general thrust of what Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. (Nationally known conservative and author of the famous column ON THE RIGHT) calls "gentlemen of the right" is opt toward less government and more individualism within a framework of private ownership. Gentlemen of the left, if one may use a friendly term in the opposite direction since many are gentle and thoughtful, have a general tendency to opt toward more government problem solving and more collectivism (small c) sometimes within our present framework of private ownership but with an increasing zeal for more public ownership.
Libertarians on the other hand generally see the state as the major threat to individual and collective virtue and progress, thus opt for less government on most every front. In other words there're about as far from the political liberal left idea prevailing today as you can get, i.e., to the right, generally speaking of course.
Consequently when pundits such as Corlett say things like "Symms has abandoned some of his libertarian ideas and moved farther to the right" it is a contradiction in terms adding even more confusion to an already garbled crossfire.
It is necessary to see the influence of the intellectuals and educators on the media people since they like to deal in ideas & communications and thus tend to be more competent in spreading their gospel than we are in spreading ours. Other than shooting people like Corlett our alternatives are, to my way of thinking, better ideas, better presented. And anyway how do you "shoot" an idea? Far better to do our own homework so that we know what we're for, then there will be a clearer story to off-set the mere socialism so actively promoted by folks like Mr. Corlett.
Some years ago when I was a member of the state GOP hierarchy people would often ask, "Ralph, just what is the truth about so and so?" and I'd often respond, "Do you mean the Republican truth or the Democrat truth?" Not too many of my comrades saw a lot of humor in that, but I always thought it spoke volumes. I guess that's why this writer finds so much in common with the national libertarian movement - they don't like politicians on either side - generally speaking of course, and seem less afraid to laugh at themselves. After noting further that Symms had only gimmicks and charisma going for him in 1972 he does admit that somehow Steve kept his opponent on the defensive, but has become increasingly anti-environmentalist so, one supposes, while John prays, that perhaps they can throw the rascal out.
But the young apple growing congressman is of course not that at all. He is sharp, reads a little Rothbard and Friedman, knows pretty well which way he's headed, is becoming even more articulate and is working to get a better understanding of the principles of freedom, i.e., less government, and judging from the enthusiasm at the Symms-Reagan fund raising dinner in Boise last week (over 1500 @ $50.00 a clatter) Steve Symms will be an even bigger success in the upcoming elections. This is especially true if he's able to keep his autonomy safely above the typical Republican non boat-rockers who for low these many years have feared his kind of enthusiastic tell-it-like-it-is ideas. It would cinch Symms election(s) if the conservatives do as much homework on capitalism as Corlett and his fellow pundits have done on - call it what you will - socialism, but I won't hold my breath.
Corlett and company may will be more sincere in their distortions than we used to think. It worries me that this may well be true, but Steve's big smile says to thousands off people that he, too, cares. It's just that so many voters - thanks mostly to stuffed shirt Republicans - do not yet quite know what he's trying to tell them about man's eternal struggle to be free. Free from what? From too much government. So keep smiling, my middle-of-the-road friend Steve, it's part of your message they find somewhat harder to distort than your "new" ideas and whether intentional or out of sheer ignorance you (expletive deleted) opponents will go nuts wondering what you're up to.
SLA Copies the USA
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
June 16, 1974
The main headline on the Lewiston Tribune's front page June 7 read "Jury Indicts Patricia Hearst." A timely topic for most any paper. An editorial appears in the same paper entitled "Symms - Smith - Hansen" on an equally timely topic especially for a newspaper in Idaho's first congressional district.
Both of these newspaper items deserve comment quite apart from the usual bill-of-fare in most newspapers, partly because they are timely, important and worthwhile (no kidding). What follows could help shed a bit of light, so bear with me.
Several days ago while visiting our Congressman Steve Symms in Washington, D.C., he practically insisted I visit the historic and restored town of Williamsburg, Virginia to see both the contrast and parallel to our modern political citadel of Washington, D.C., and the then cradle of the Republic - colonial Williamsburg. I decided to take Steve's advice for fear he'd propose it as legislation.
To comment at all on this little town, its place in the history of the overthrow of oppressive government (remember some fellow in 1776 thought they had too much government?) is to invite an exercise in understatement. The restoration job is fascinating and extensive, the color film movie at the tourist center is 35 minutes of perhaps the best available in a low key presentation on the subject of freedom of choice in the U.S.A.
Pete Hackworth, aide to Congressman Symms and former editor of the Caldwell News Tribune, drove down with me since it was Sunday and he too enjoyed some patriotic memorabilia, a la 1776, and the light it often sheds on the subject of "must history repeat itself?"
We stopped in Fredricksburg, Va. to pick up my friend, Dr. Tom Johnson, professor of biology at Mary Washington College. Tom was a great guide to Williamsburg, but this libertarian leaning academician told us about something else appropriate to the Lewiston Morning Tribune front page news item which, I think, gives much needed perspective to some of today's news.
I'll tell you more about this rare-bird pedagogue and his famous essay "The Educational Declaration of Independence" another time, but what follows is a significant letter Tom told us he'd sent to the libertarian Reason magazine, (Box 6151, Santa Barbara, California) June issue, on the SLA, Patricia Hearst and the infamous matter of her "kidnapping." Thoughtful Idahoans will see its relevance to their political scene.
"Many people in this nation are distressed by the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army They immediately recognize that it is a monstrously immoral act for this army to use force in its attempt to extort money from the Hearst family in order to aid the poor, aged, paroled and disabled. Americans realize that this 'charity-by-force' is not charity at all, but a barbaric act to be condemned by all.
"But what most of these same Americans do not realize is that this same 'charity-by-force' has been practiced, with their approval, for many years by the agency of force - the government.
"The government, in its attempts to help the needy, uses force, or the threat of force, in carrying out its welfare program. Since the government has no funds or goods to distribute except those expropriated, via taxation, from the citizens, the government takes our money and threatens us with a fine or imprisonment if we do not cooperate (pay taxes...).
"Both the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the government, are attempting to practice 'charity-by-force.' The Symbionese Army is simply doing illegally what it has seen the government do 'legally' for decades. This private army is now moving in on the government's monopoly in this welfare-by-force racket, and this should surprise no one since the government set the example and the citizens gave their blessing ..."
If the example in the above letter seems to be a little extreme one should remember that those of us in the media (including, so say some, Lewiston Morning Tribune Editorial Page Editor, Bill Hall) often times exaggerate for the sake of illustration. We must get your attention, you know. Except in the case of Professor Johnson's letter - I do not think it much of an exaggeration.
Speaking of editor Bill Hall, he doesn't always enlarge the truth to get your attention; on the contrary he often writes an excellent editorial. The above mentioned one is a case in point and I mention it in this column in order to show how much perspective can be missing in honest front page news items (both kinds still exist) and, contrariwise, how much perspective can be had from a generally antagonistic editor's column?
Editor Hall, who is frequently the conservative hair shirt, writes an on-target editorial in my humble opinion, to observe that although, "... many are saying Symms, Smith and (George) Hansen are crusading against incumbent Congressman Orval Hansen ..." the similarity in their political opinions are more "a mutual admiration society" of conservatives than a conspiracy against the liberal Hansen.
But for the possible labeling of the three conservatives as "quasi-anarchists," which they are not, Hall's June 7 editorial is an excellent example of how well perspective can be included even in a quasi-socialist's editorial.
The Ever Present Polemics of Hall's Editorial
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
June 23, 1974
To very interesting items appeared in the Idaho press recently, one in the Lewiston Tribune editorial columns and one in the Boise Statesman datelined Washington D.C. 1st Congressman Steve Symms is a prime subject of both newspaper items, but they are related and significant for other reasons not perhaps so apparent.
The Tribune's editor Bill Hall takes another of his favorite bites at Symms attacking what Hall likes to cite as a deviation in Symms' generally free market stance as opposed to the typical interventionist stand of the typical politicians in general and the press in particular. (With some exception the press advocacy is heavily slanted toward government control for all sectors of the market, i.e., except their own of course.)
Even if one sets aside the ever-present polemics of Hall's editorial it makes far too much sense when he twists Symms for his inconsistency. This is not to suggest that politics is typically an exercise in consistency, but most Idahoans have come to expect a high degree of candor, honesty, and, to use editor Hall's word - consistency from their unorthodox 1st District congressman.
The issue is Symms' apparent switch on his free trade position when he joined the entire Idaho delegation in support of beef controls vis a vis, an import embargo on beef because of severe economic hardship among the state's cattlemen.
Hall says, "Symms feels compelled to cozy up to collectivism." Though the editorial says the congressman only wants the controls to be temporary, the deviation seems to make this politician more like all the rest of those against whom Symms campaigned and spoke against.
While I do not agree with my colleague Bill Hall that "two wrongs make a right" which one could infer from his editorial more o less justifying Symms' action in the beef control deviation of Symms, I must agree that this is a significant departure for a politician who's trying to get the free market a fair hearing.
Better to have passed the vote then upon being asked how he would have voted, as he most assuredly would have been asked, he could have explained how the government caused the mass in the first place. Thoughtful readers will remember the government's grain "sales" to Russia at an artificially cheap price plus credit etc., plus import efforts to depress the high prices of beef some time ago.
Reprinted in a recent issue of a National Chamber of Commerce bulletin was a far better comment Symms might take cognizance of:
IT'S YOUR TAXES
THEY'RE SPENDING!
Last summer the price of meat skyrocketed. The Federal Government said consumers should find alternative sources of protein and, if they held off from purchasing meat, the price would fall.
"I listened to the government and started toting tuna fish to work. Sure enough, the government was right - the price of meat began to fall.
After months of this deprivation and when meat had finally come back into the affordable range, I read, to my dismay, the government was going to spend $45 million of our tax dollars to buy meat to bolster its price.
What I can't understand is if the government wanted meat prices to stay high, why did they tell me to buy tuna fish and then spend my tax money to buy the meat that I can't afford because my taxes are so high?"
This is not to imply that I think Steve has sold out, but the way he joined his fellow Idaho delegation to tell "his" story has moistened the mud across which he must trek, not only to get credibility against which the voter - citizen - cattlemen - public - must look to compare the alternatives to government intervention and its subsequent interventions made necessary by the first ones.
Let me hasten to add caution to the gentle reader lest he read editor Hall as a fount of wisdom to explain the free markets, he doesn't believe in it. Further, until Bob Smith and Steve Symms came along, one suspicions, he'd seldom heard of it from anyone who actually believed in it.
Still, to a considerable degree we'll have to score one for Hall this time even if his version is a bit twisted.
The second article I refer to in the Boise newspaper quotes Symms also, I see it as somewhat more serious than my Republican, Witch-doctor-medicine-man contemporaries.
According to the news service quotes: "Symms said he is steering clear of all primary campaigns this year." "... and then, I'll support whoever wins..." "In fact Max Hansen's (leading Democrat in the 2nd district) probably been in to see me more than the other two Hansens." (the others are Orval and George, liberal and conservative, incumbent and challenger respectively). Symms' ACA record is about 100% while Orval Hansen's is about 30%, and though they are friendly something on the order of fishy has to be said to put them both in the same party, i.e., common-sensewise. But then common sense bears about the same kinship with politics as the government's compulsory schooling bears to education. So much for party loyalty and the GOP's C.R.A.P. (Constructive Republican Alternative Proposal).
On the matter of the Hansen item above I sent my pal Steve the following wire:
Steve,
Here's the way the Symms (read, above) press item sounds:
Some of my friends like Orval
Some of my friends like George
Some of my friends like Max
And I always support my friends.
Meanwhile, Back at Sun Valley
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
June 29, 1974
GOP meetings are almost always notoriously dull and often superficial. On the matter of the Idaho Republican State Convention at Sun Valley last week, here's some random observations:
As for being dull, it was. As for being superficial, it was, but not so bad as sometimes. For example, perhaps the most glaring default was the perfunctory manner accorded the office of State Superintendent of Public Schooling (Education?). Oh sure, there was some talk by the candidates using the word "quality" to define education, but no real definitions, no real discussion of the justifiably controversial matters regarding the overwhelming liberal and partisan bias that works against them in the schools.
The problem was there, the Republicans knew it, but almost nobody wanted to tackle the sticky matter. One wonders sometimes why the GOP elephant shouldn't be replaced with a GOP ostrich; but then education only gets over half of the entire state budget and the president of the university, at least until recently, gets more pay than the governor. So maybe the Democrats should loan the GOPers their jackass.
There were of course, some rather good aspects to the conclave, especially from this conservative's point of view. Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. could not make the meeting as scheduled, but sent his beautiful and charming wife, who gave a fine address which, if a bit traditional, was well received and gave some inspiration to those of us who appreciate the virtues of feminine pulchritude even if we are against everything else.
Rep. Phil Crane gave a rousing keynote speech for the convention. Phil is a close friend of Congressman Symms and is generally considered one of, if not the most articulate spokesman for the conservative members of the entire Congress. A former activist and national advisory board member of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom, Crane is respected by most of the liberal politicians too and is a frequent star of the popular educational television show "The Advocates," on which important political issues of national scope are debated each week.
Congressman Crane is no particular admirer of Idaho's Second District Rep. Orval Hansen, whose generally liberal positions are well known and add considerable weight to the growing tendency among many casual observers including college students to consider the two-party system if not a joke an exercise in intellectual dishonesty.
Orval is in my opinion intellectually honest himself and is really quite consistent and liberal. Just what it is that suggests he and Congressman Symms belong on the same "team," however, suggests that the perfunctory manner with which the GOP treats education (see above) is at best one of its rare consistencies. It's the same way at the national level and Orval can't be faulted for that, but it's small wonder that the credibility gap of political life widens.
Speaking of college students, the College Republicans were disappointed after their big push for a presidential primary was soundly defeated by the whole assembly. They are to be commended for their obvious desire to do away with the "smoke-filled room" politics, but one can hardly give them high marks for their pout at losing.
First off, a wide open primary is like having the Boise State University student body vote on who should be quarterback for the University of Idaho's football team.
Secondly, it's a lousy idea to blow hot air about a two-party system, ostensibly with adversarial points of view, and then do your darndest to blow cold if substantial points of view do indeed come out. Worse yet to pout if yours don't prevail.
Thirdly, with all due respect for those several college young Republicans who do (did) try to work within the system, it's poor policy for the senior party members to attempt to woo the college students by voting for a scheme of which they themselves disapprove.
Admittedly our U.S. foreign policy reflects just such an asinine attempt to "buy" friends. Better luck next time, you college YR's. Try getting some input on your ideas from a conservative political science professor, if you can find one.
While the news pundits didn't exactly cheer the enthusiastic tribute-to-Symms which the convention certainly was, they seemed much less hostile than in prior years. Boise TV newsman Sal Celeski, interviewing this writer at the meeting, asked in my opinion on whether any similarity existed with the 1964 GOP meet. I responded, "Yes, but for different reasons. This time the conservatives knew better what they were FOR in ideas. Not good, but better, and not so much of a power struggle. Said another way, Adam Smith is alive in Idaho politics."
"That's just the kind of line I wanted," said Sal. He used me in his broadcast that night, all right, but as is so often the case in the schools and the news media, the free market economist Adam Smith didn't make it.
The Recent GOP State Convention
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
July 7, 1974
Brigham Young University located in Provo, Utah has about 25,0000 students and a full fledged school by way of a broad curriculum encompassing a great many subjects other than religion. Students attending there must look ELSEWHERE than the government to finance their education even though their taxes go toward paying for the government schools.
I have just received today a statement by one of their professors which is so rare and on target that one can hardly believe it came from a modern day university. It touches directly on the present emerging political scene in Idaho so I want to share it with those who also give one hoot in Hades. It may serve to shed a bit of light rather than heat, on what divides so many men of otherwise good will especially since the campaigns are bound to begin to heat up prior to elections.
The unusual pedagogue is Prof. Glenn Pearson and his incisive analytical statement follows, "The socialist does not trust in the goodness of humanity. He is convinced that the hungry will not be fed, the naked clothes, the aged cared for, the sick visited, unless the power of the state intervenes to confiscate from society the means necessary for the state to attend to these needy. But this poses an interesting question. If the vast majority in our society really share this powerful urge to help the needy, why do they fear for the fate of charity if left to the voluntary care of the people? It is a well-known fact that there is little or nor administrative cost in the sort of family or neighborhood charity for which America was famous, whereas there is great administrative cost in the compulsory redistribution of wealth by government agencies. So what is there to lose in allowing the people to follow their avowed inclinations without recourse to the power of the state?"
Sound a little strange coming from a college professor? Yes, well it did to me too. So what's all this to do with Idaho politics? Well, first of all much is being written about the recent GOP state convention at which ordinary conservatives seemed to be a dominant force against what seemed to them to be the arbitrary force of too much government. OSHA, the federal Occupational Safety & Health Act, the lettuce and grape boycott issue are illustrative of issues which came up, rightly or wrongly, for scorn by the overwhelming majority of delegates voting at the meet.
The presidential preference primary, a scheme to let everybody and his dog vote to decide who will be the party's standard bearer was another issue which got some play too since the college Young Republicans, reflecting the understandable influence of their inteventionist professors, made their theme song for the meet. One mistake was to try to sell the idea based mostly on a desire to "bring the young people into the fold" whether the idea is acceptable to the majority or not. I doubt students are for sale that cheaply anyway.
The liberal leaning segment of the convention, led mostly by the followers off Congressman Orval Hansen and senatorial aspiration Don Winder on the other hand tended in yet another direction. Being soft on OSHA, for example, appealing for the militant middle position, if indeed they have a position based on any clear principles, save one, i.e., the "we'll-manage-it-for-you theory of politics." They received polite applause which quite reflected their standing with the delegates s- rightly if you agree with the majority and wrongly if you are with the minority - 'twas ever thus in power oriented problem-solving. A bad basis but a real one. Too bad the liberal's memory and the news media's too is o short since those times when they held sway over Idaho politics. At least this year the party contest is based more upon ideas than on personalities, a welcome change.
Gubernatorial candidate Jack Murphy has made some waves since the convention (where he received somewhat more than polite applause by a rather vigorous TV attack on Idaho's largest newspaper claiming undue bias in their "reporting" of his campaign. Some people hope this may yet herald a beginning of Lieut. Gov. Murphy's crusade against incumbent Gov. Cecil Andrus. The governor's use of more than half of a $500,000 federal grant for use on Expo '74 advertisement should give opportunity for some lively exchange between the two gubernatorial contenders. Although for Murphy to mount much in the way of an attack against the incumbent governor and to get it played up in Idaho's generally liberal news media may prove quite difficult.
The love affair between the media and Senator Frank Church is well known and a real powerful political obstacle to even ordinary conservatives as 1st District Congressman Steve Symms and Senatorial aspirant Bob Smith are finding with ever increasing intensity.
Some say Symms and Smith are not ordinary conservatives. True, since both know pretty well what they're FOR as well as what they are against, but did you ever read in the press about an "extra" liberal? One supposes the pen really MAY be mightier than the sword, depending on who holds the pen.
The love affair brings me back to the professor at Brigham Young University and his statement above. My guess is that what motivates the liberals in general and the media spokesmen in particular is pretty well set out by the professor of religion and rather than allege a conspiracy of some candidates and the John Birth Society to smear Senator Church with the label "pro-communist" the media should try to examine whether the well-intentioned and patriotic (which this writer thinks he surely is) Senator Church pursues policies, principles and has a voting record which tends to serve the purposes of the Communists, or our own (or are both our purposes and methods alike?). Then let the people decide under who's political economic guidance the people will best be fed, clothed and cared for in their old age, etc.
Certainly thereby Senator Church will no more be proven communist than will the media liberals be proven socialist by the BYU professor's observations. A less sensational reasoned, balanced and open-minded press will (read, would) expose any attempted smear or fake labeling efforts for just what they generally are reactionary.
We should no more expect Symms or Smith to repudiate the John Birch statements than Sen. Barry Goldwater did when he was asked to in 1964, but it still won't please the liberal, if sincere media who in America tend to "OWN" public opinion.
The Voice of Governor Andrus
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
July 14, 1974
Idaho's governor Cecil Andrus' use of more than half ($26,956) of a federal grant the purpose of which was to push the Spokane fair, Expo '74, should furnish a little ammunition for Andrus' gubernatorial competitor Lt. Gov. Jack Murphy. but whether he will use it remains to be seen and may largely depend upon whether the media sees the matter as newsworthy or not.
The money is being spent on radio spots ostensibly aimed at motorists on their way to and from the Washington fair suggesting they drive safely, conserve fuel and enjoy Idaho's splendid scenery. The problem, depending largely on your political stance, comes up when the radio spots emerge entirely in the "non-political" voice of, you guessed it, candidate Cecil Andrus.
Many political bird-watchers wink and opine "old Jack will have to go some to beat that." True enough, but considering the love affair that the bulk of the media has with Governor Andrus and the difficulty commensurate there with getting significant contrary news coverage, the likelihood of much critical analysis is less than great.
Bob Linville, new GOP state chairman, says he's not afraid of controversy, so we may yet get to see some indication of "a dime's worth of difference" between the parties, i.e., if indeed there really is a dime's worth.
Don Winder seems to be running far behind his major competitor, senatorial candidate Bob smith, for the GOP nomination to contest the heretofore thought-to-be--unbeatable incumbent Sen. Frank Church. Church said recently in answer to a newsman's query as to whether he had signed the 1972 lettuce boycott pledge that he didn't remember if he had signed it or not. To this hard to believe statement of Church's, Lewiston editor Bill Hall editorialized about "Church's lame answer." Since editor Hall is a long-time and zealous admirer of senator Church, said editorial caused a mild sensation among many political observers. Enough of a sensation at least to motivate candidate Bob Smith to reprint, with a paid ad in Boise's Idaho Statesman newspaper, Hall's entire editorial scolding his (Hall's) political idol.
Smith supporters claim a kind of blank out treatment on the part of the Boise paper and, of course, the Hall column was a kind of welcome windfall, especially in view of Hall's considerable reputation for "telling it like it is."
All of which must have caused gyrations of gloom in the Church camp. In any event, editor Hall found several days later a friend who was at the ill-famed Democrat convention where the alleged signing took place and this fellow assured Bill that it was all a sort of mistake, i.e., his idol the good senator was merely signing autographs and the lettuce boycott pledge somehow got slipped in there, inadvertently, you understand.
Idaho farmers are scared to death potato boycotts are not far behind lettuce boycotts and considering Senator Church is the darling of the labor unions, the issue is, well, political dynamite and understandably embarrassing to Church and his fellow liberal editor. This especially since United Press Bureau Chief Richard Charnock of Boise wrote a much more critical account of the Democrat meeting where, according to Charnock, Church knew exactly what he was signing.
Perhaps most significant of all is the irony in Hall's "apology to an honest politician" or words to that effect, in a subsequent editorial attempt to retract the first one condemning Church. No Casper Milquetoast when it comes to giving hell to politicians, Hall wrote a devastating critique some weeks ago of Lt. Gov. Jack Murphy's story that due to having been bucked off a horse on his cattle ranch he, Murphy, might not run for governor. Since Cecil Andrus was considered almost impossible to beat, Murphy's story caused editor Hall to label the story a lame excuse for Jack to bow out of the race saying further, "Even if Murphy's horse story were true, he should know better than expect anybody to believe it."
So far this writer finds about the same number of persons who buy Hall's autographing story, i.e., just about nobody, if the press were a little less liberal, Senator Church's memory lapse on the lettuce boycott matter might be reminiscent of George Romney's famous statement retracting his prior statement regarding the Vietnam War "I've been brain-washed." Whether for this statement alone or not few observers ever gave the popular Senator Romney much of a chance again and most attributed his swift demise to the politically ill-timed statement. Still, much comradeship obtains among liberals, especially those in the press and Hall is a skilled polemicist so he may even pull this rabbit out of Mr. church's hat. It'll be a neat trick though if he does.
Candidate for lieutenant governor Vern Ravenscroft, seems to have the lead against Pat Harwood and Hope Kading. Harwood seems to be coming on much stronger, however, and Mrs. Kading's highway billboards are showing signs of hope, i.e., for Hope.
Democrat congressional candidate Ken Miller is still shooting at First District Congressman Symms in a campaign attempt to set up a straw man connection with the John Birch Society, then shoot at the society, hoping in this way to "kill" Symms.
Boise newsmen, of course, see these name callers in a weird kind of newsworthy sense, but one told me last week that this Ken Miller is next to impossible to get on the phone.
Not a bad idea, one muses, when all a man has to sell is negativism, and Miller, has shown little else so far other than an amateur's attempt at name-calling. The apologists for the liberal media might want to ask J. Ray Cox, also a Democrat contender for First District congress, why he doesn't repudiate candidate Ken Miller's kookism.
Mary's Penny Policy
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
July 21, 1974
Idahoans can boast of few high level political appointments to the Washington, D.C. scene, the pattern being rather more toward the appointment of Ripon society types and liberal Republicans of less discernible labels. The fact that so much of the media seems bent upon using the word conservative to describe President Richard Nixon's administration is one of those semantic phenomena for which it has become famous, or perhaps infamous.
One of those Nixon appointees which to many of us seemed an exception to the plethora of eastern liberals flowing in under the White House umbrella of earlier years was Idaho's own Mary Brooks of Blaine County. An ex-state senator, active and respected member of the GOP, Mrs. Brooks saddened many Idaho Republicans who knew her absence from Idaho politica would leave a hard-to-fill vacancy. Most Idahoans, holding fast to the idea of local government rather than federal and a minimum use of both, felt that the "two-plus-two equals four" Republican lady just might be a welcome addition to the Nut House on the Potomac and wished her well and Godspeed in her new job as director of the U.S. mint. Maybe now at least some fiscal sanity might infiltrate that political hot-house, they thought.
Hope may spring eternal in the human breast, but some Idahoans are beginning to wonder if the political pot fumes are not working their illusory wonders on our own Mary Brooks.
According to an article in an Idaho newspaper some time ago, Mrs. Brooks was quoted as suggesting that the mint would issue a certificate of merit, one assumes a sort of good-conduct medal, for those citizens who turn their pennies back to the government, since for some mysterious reason even pennies were becoming scarce.
Although its unclear as to just what one can buy with the lowly penny these days, according to a recent article in the prestigious Reason magazine, "hoarding of pennies has surged in recent weeks" in response to announced government plans to bring out a new aluminum penny. As it did with silver in the sixties, the government has responded with threats against the hoarders. Outgoing Treasury Secretary George Schultz has issued regulations prohibiting the export or melting of pennies, and ordered the Secret Service to enforce them.
U.S. Mint Director Mary Brooks has tried to discourage hoarding by issuing a press release claiming that the aluminum penny plan has been dropped, and stating that "even if" the price of copper rises to $1.50 a pound (the present melt-down point), it would take 240,000 pennies to earn a $100 profit. But she neglected to say what the profit might be at $2. or $2.50 a pound.
The controlled U.S. copper price was only 80 cents a pound in May, but the free market international price was $1.20, with prices for delivery three months ahead at nearly $1.50. Meanwhile, the Firestone Bank of Akron, Ohio began paying $1.10 for 100 pennies, the same price being offered by many coin shops. In Los Angeles the coin shop selling price has already reached $1.26. Thus many are already profiting from penny hoarding, the U.S. government notwithstanding.
Many, if not most of the money managers in governments hold fast to the old shopworn idea that in inflationary times, just like in centuries past, that it's the hoarders who cause the money problems. Let's hope that Mary Brooks' Idaho Western heritage will prevail and enable her (she's at least a non-liberal if not exactly a conservative appointee of Nixon) to see the difference between the two kinds of inflation, i.e., (1) price inflation caused by economic scarcity and (2) money inflation, sometimes called printing-press money, caused entirely by the government's money managers.
Idahoans might do well to write the respected Mrs. Brooks instead of their congressmen, more often an exercise in futility anyway, on the matter of inflation. Mrs. Brooks' son, State Sen. John "pass-a-law" Peavy, R-Rupert, who is not an altogether bad sort, proposes his sunshine Initiative to compel the politicians and lobbyists - but not ALL of them - to fess up and tell all.
Barf! How visionary can Idahoans get! So long as the government has such immense power, there will be buyers for that power (and yes, printing press money inflation) even if the price is paid by devious methods to get around new, and forever more and more laws.
Taking Sides on the Dam Debate
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
July 28, 1974
If one wishes to make a point quite clear it is oft-times a successful ploy to use a technique called "to exaggerate for the sake of illustration."
Most of us do it from time to time. In our speech as well as in columns like this one or in Lewiston Morning Tribune editor Bill Hall's editorials, for example.
Such over-stating of opinion is not all bad either and depending on one's point of view can be very helpful in sounding a warning or extolling a virtue.
A problem arises, however, because of a tendency for people to assume anything they see in print to be factual. When queried on the matter most persons know better, but seldom do we use much skepticism or stiff inquiry unless we are directly involved.
A case in point is the present flap about Idaho's rivers and so-called wilderness arena. Certainly the preservationists have a point when they fear filling the entire Hells Canyon with concrete for a dam or raping the land, as they call it, when sometimes a timber harvest smears the landscape in order to get the logs to market, or a mining company has to dig a huge hole or pit in the ground in order to get at the minerals.
The fact that people's lives, jobs and general welfare are directly affected seems of little concern to the preservationists whose concern for what they claim indirectly affects people's scenic and recreational interests is overwhelming.
Certainly both sides have some merit, but why all the apparent hysteria? Well, one reason is that the preservationists want to lock up these areas and resources forever and some want to keep the options open. (Almost 70 per cent of Idaho is government owned.)
Editor Bill Hall for example writes long and loud against Congressman Steve Symms' proposal to have a four-year moratorium on dam construction on the Middle Snake. Symms wants to go slow in the lock-up-forever tendencies of Idaho Sen. Frank Church, whose ideas are almost always at odds with private enterprise, ideas on anything, whether in the forest or river categories of Idaho.
Hall cites Idaho Sen. James McClure's sponsorship with Sen. Church of legislation "... for permanent protection of Hell's Canyon against dams." (Readers may notice the use of the term "protect against dams" all but makes their case, even without debate. Still, try to interest most conservatives in the semantic nature of how our case is being destroyed almost daily - and their eyes usually just glaze over. Some sort of sense it, but 90 seconds will almost certainly cover the interest span if perception does occur. No wonder we lose.)
But comes now a Welcome Warrior upon the scene. A farm and ranch man, resident of Hells Canyon, former governor of Idaho and U.S. senator, long-time water and land conservationist, Len B. Jordan.
In a formal statement, to his old friend and congressman from North Carolina, chairman of the House Interior subcommittee, Roy Taylor, our own Mr. Jordan comes out of his recent retirement to take sides on the dam flap. The former U.S. senator comes out swinging. Not merely to oppose his former colleagues U.S. Sen. Church and Sen. McClure, both of whom are on friendly terms with him, but to take sides on an issue about which he feels strongly and has a lot of expertise.
Released last week, the statement will lend some added credibility to the current debate over, whether Idahoans should develop their resources or bury them. It will, of course, depending upon the kind of press it gets. That press is largely in the hands of those in vigorous disagreement.
Mr. Jordan's statement beings with this sentence:
"I wish to be recorded as supporting Congressman Symm's bill for a four-year moratorium on the construction of dams on the Middle Snake River."
The entire statement, though excellent, is too long to cover here but watch for it and discuss it with your friends. It will be printed, but the discussion is what's needed, without the above-mentioned exaggeration.
Such discussion may be to much to hope for but it will help to remember that much of what's in print is like the psychoanalyst's couch in S.I. Hayakawa's book "The Use and Misuse of Language." The semantics professor says: "The analyst gives the patient the feeling of having his feet up in the air and the knowledge that the analyst has both feet on the ground."
Would you believe, for example, like most of the Lewiston Tribune's editorials on environmental policy? With the possible exception of the usually "holy writ" in this writer's column, one supposes the gentle reader will use some skepticism in analyzing the Hells Canyon and other political issues as exaggerated (for the sake of?) In this newspaper. And perhaps, on occasion, however, unlikely it might be, even in this column.
Smith Favored to Defeat Winder
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
August 4, 1974
Idaho's primary contests will be settled Tuesday and barring some last minute massive media onslaught the dies have already been cast. for the most part all that remains is the count and the comment. The latter designed, of course, to tell us what the former means, ala Walter Cronkite of the boob-tube fame, Bill Hall, editor of the august Lewiston Tribune, and John Corlett, political news twister from the Boise Statesman who's letterhead, oddly enough, features a silhouette of a politician with his hand out - a kind of printer's Freudian slip perhaps.
Editors Hall and Corlett are as dedicated to liberal (read interventionist) candidates as Cronkite, but lack quite the clout of the TV ringmaster. Hall may well be the best polemicist f the three and to his credit is almost assuredly the most open minded. That is unless or until one of his Democrat darlings is seriously threatened as is his political idol Sen. Frank Church.
Church's credibility took a nose dive recently in a flap about his alleged support of organizing farm labor in general and a lettuce boycott in particular when church apparently signed the ill-famed lettuce boycott pledge at the Idaho Democratic convention. Hall's credibility, in the minds of many, took a sort of beating as a result of a kind of blind-faith defense of Sen. Church. Though not many bought the "explanation," few denied his right to defend his favorite politician.
The newspaper's right to defend their 18-year-long incumbent senator from what they see as a smear by the John Birch Society pamphlet claiming the senator's policies make him pro-Communist is also readily admitted.
But comes now a young attorney, clean as a hound's tooth, articulate in the "new politics" recently made famous in Idaho by the popular 1st District Congressman Steve Symms. The new face is Bob Smith of Nampa, easily favored to win the GOP primary race to contest for Church's seat.
Smith easily poses the greatest threat to Frank Church in all the famous Idaho senator's extremely liberal career and thereby causes understandable alarm in the liberal media's camp (Mr. Corlett's son Cleve is employed by Sen. Church). So it is only to be expected that the Boise and Lewiston papers are upset and try feverishly to offset Church's credibility gap by going after the challenger.
Bob Smith, however, isn't so easy to "get at." He's not only unusually bright and a refreshing new face in politics, but had a major role in Congressman Symms' stewardship of his entire political skyrocket. Small wonder some accuse smith of sounding like Symms, they're friends and political comrades each telling it like it is. Philosophical "thieves" both "stealing" from Adam Smith and Barry Goldwater should sound similar.
Some way must be found to get at Smith, the reasoning goes. Maybe a John Birch tie-in would work on an unthinking public as it has before, but Smith didn't speak to the John Birth Society - Symms did. Well then, the reasoning goes on, we'll tie the Birch can to Symms' tail and the well-known Smith-Symms connection will tend to smear Smith. Admittedly not good, but what else could they do?
Well there's what Lewiston Editor Bill Hall did, at least last Sunday he did, in a thinly disguised guilt-by-association column to the said JBS "can" to Steve's tail.
Seriously. Hall's an excellent writer and as liberal newsman go, a fair minded one, witness this column as entirely his idea. Seldom does one read a liberal invited to write in "American Opinion," still Hall's labeling as a "smear" the John birch label of church as "pro-Communist" brings to the fair minded observer the old query, "Two wrongs don't make a right." Note Hall's July 21 column citing "Symms' four basic errors: (1) Welcomed booming gasoline prices and soaring oil profits ... (2) Been caught addressing a Chicago John Birch dinner ... (3) Tried to subvert attempt by Senators Church and McClure to grant Hells Canyon permanent protection from dams ... (4) Mailed an alarmist indictment of Social Security ... in Idaho. It is here to stay and is popular."
Editor Hall labels as a smear the John Birch label of Church's politics as pro-Communist. An unfortunate choice of words perhaps, considering the hatchet job done by the press placing the Birch members into one bogeyman lump and giving them a label almost worse than Communist, but what about Hall's unfortunate twisting of Symms' above-mentioned four errors?
Let's look a moment: Item (1) Symms' "welcomed" high oil prices and profits the way a good family physician welcomes castor oil, especially compared to more bureaucratic price controls.
Item (2) Symms was "caught" Hall says. I phoned Symms only to hear him laugh, saying that he OK'd the Chicago society's press release on his speaking there and if a release to the United Press International means "caught," he was guilty. The give-em-hell-Harry (Truman) style congressman said, "Don't let that bother you, Ralph, if freedom of the press is to mean anything at all we gotta protect it for Bill Hall and (repeat and) the Birchers, too. We made some points in Chicago and made a couple suggestions the JBS needed. They are, like Hall, not all bad, certainly more consistent though."
Item (3) If Symms tried to subvert Church and McClure on Hells Canyon dams so did former Sen. Len B. Jordan whose formal statement last week supported Symms' exact position.
Item (4) Here editor Hall may indeed have a point when he calls Symms' statement on social security "alarmist." If the popular congressman who went to Washington to tell-it-like-it-is gets another chance to tell-it-like-it-is, it's a good bet we'll hear him zero in on the popular social security program again. Because it is popular and lots of old folks trust their government to care for the funds is exactly why Steve Symms mailed his so-called "alarmist" statement. He thinks the government is screwing up social security, the Federal Reserve and our constitutional safeguards made in 1776. Too bad the damn John Birch Society has been quoting Symms for all these many years, sort of tends to make one doubt that they even have a crystal ball at all.
Meantime, the senatorial candidate Bob Smith tie-in seems only more likely to be making him a prophet who needs no crystal ball.
Sometimes a Non-Vote Is Correct
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
August 11, 1974
"Thank God." a friend said to me, "after Aug. 6th we'll have at least a brief respite from all those lousy political speeches."
"What a lousy time for a primary," says Lewiston Tribune Columnist Perry Swisher. "If we had done our nominating in late May, many thousands of additional ballots would have been cast ..." Most columnists echo the same.
It is at least curious if not down right weird that Americans are at once disgusted with their politics and at the same time treat the matter with reverence akin to a religion. Whether such a contradiction comes from the government's compulsory school system or from the super concentrated and liberal-leaning news media, or yet another influence is hard to isolate.
For those readers and perhaps some of the writers who grieve at the recent primary election's sad results, let's take a little parting, if temporary, glance at some of our foibles.
Almost any politico of the last couple of decades will tell you that both political parties put on workshops on how to win an election. such sessions are often directed by nationally recognized experts who, almost with unnerving regularity, agree that the single most important influence for votes is name identification, that and little else. Small wonder that news pundits, editors, columnists and so many of the idea-mongers of our media resort to sensationalism to get attention. But why do they push this numbers game so hard when so few seem motivated by reason? Think about it. A sick commentary, but a significant one. Still they (we) must retain a readership or, since TV, a viewership. Rebound from a power-oriented society?
One wonders if, alas, voter apathy isn't really our salvation in disguise rather than our weakness as the elitists so often tell us. My friend, Sy Leon of Rampart College, Santa Ana, Calif. formed "The League of Non-Voters" with just such a premise and has achieved much regional and some national publicity.
I offer the thought here, since, as this is being written, the election outcome isn't decided and, if the reader is a bit like me he's about "had it" with the present system's intellectual dishonesty.
Sy's league has a beautiful thought-proposal, just about the only new law they will support, too. It is simply the addition at the bottom of each and every ballot a box in which the voter could place an X beside the simple statement: "None of the above are acceptable." Wouldn't that be great? Just think of the possibilities such an innovation opens up.
While in ancient ages past Africa was indeed the cradle of civilization, the dark continent is now better known for other things. One of these is that the natives there have a form of government, one might say, called tribalism. Its leaders paint themselves up with all sorts of decorations, build big campfires, wave their spears, shout, scream and dance sometimes far into the night, sometimes for days on end. The leaders are called witch doctors and medicine men, many of whom have a great deal of power. This not often because they actually can destroy the evil spirits or deliver the great ones, but more because the natives don't do too much thinking and many live in mortal fear that the witch doctor just might have some "connections" like he says.
In America there is a similar - in an alarming numbers of ways - custom called politics, only the witch doctors and medicine men here are called politicians. Oh yes, they use somewhat more sophisticated forms, to a degree at least, but the "substance" is there much the same. It's called campaign promises. Always at someone else's expense - whatever they offer.
You know the rest of the story, but its pretty well summed up in the words of the late, great economist and moral philosopher Ludwig Von Mises when he said, "Politics is the art of getting money from the rich and votes from the poor under the guise of protecting each from the other."
Join me, if you will, in counting at least one of our mutual blessings from the recent election, i.e., that we are at least not likely to get all the government we pay for.
The Liberal Rationale
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
August 18, 1974
The Lewiston Tribune editorial of Aug. 9 seems worthy of note, not because this column often disagrees, which it does, but more for its rationale. About Richard Nixon's resignation specifically, the Constitution and the so-called two-party system in general some observations and, one hopes, some wry humor.
Like most liberals and most newspapers, the Tribune is Democrat and "worships" generally the management theory of politics. Given this premise their inconsistent positions on management (read government management) are consistent. Lest some conservatives see this as intellectual dishonesty or a play on words let me hasten to say it ain't necessarily so. The distinction is important. Editor Bill Hall is put out at Richard Nixon's resignation the reason for which, in Hall's words, is pragmatism.
Really, he says, the reasons are "... committed illegal and unconstitutional acts so unprincipled that an honored office could no longer afford its present occupant." Nixon of course said, "... it became politically impractical to continue ..." Now then, it is at least curious that an intelligent, concerned and patriotic editor, whose clarion call is almost the epitome of pragmatism itself would raise it as an issue.
Witness editor Hall's own words; "Symms is hung up on his principles, feels a compelling urge to be consistent. Well, I'd rather be right than consistent."
I'm not telling tales out of school. Hall actually believes that makes sense. It is just this sense, or if you prefer, the lack of it, that terrifies me because apparently his publisher, Butch Alford, agrees.
Bear with me, gentle reader. Ex-president Nixon is not my cup of tea and, although he's far from a conservative, his policies and actions were not all that different in ethical stewardship of the office than his two predecessors, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, especially as relates to the arrogant use of the power of their high office and the use of government agencies like the IRS and the FBI to harass their political enemies. Had the Bobby Baker affair, for example, been pursued with half the vigor of Watergate, it not only would have led straight to President Johnson but Watergate would have, almost assuredly, been impossible.
Idaho's own senator, Frank church, himself voted six times against an investigation of President Johnson's assistant, Bobby Baker.
All of which isn't to excuse Richard Nixon, but to focus in a bit on the gigantic double-standard within which our country is dramatically drowning, led in large part by those harbingers of the semantic doublethink, the word mongers and apologists for pragmatism.
Too bad, methinks, that Nixon was not freed with a pat on the back and a "sorry-you-got-caught" handshake like so much of today's political and social aberrations. the pee-pull would, of course, thereby be outraged. And, let me hasten to add, skeptical. And free, for "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," or so goes the truism.
At the risk of seeming to agree with LMT's editor Bill and his publisher Butch, now that Mr. Nixon is out of office, the people are apt indeed to go back to sleep, but need not to be awakened to what's being done illegally so much as to what's being done legally, especially in Washington by the pragmatists.
The fact that, theoretically, at least, the pushers of pragmatism are mostly sincere, granted the above management theory of politics, is the most sobering prospect of all for it is indeed they who are the establishment still in power.
But conservatives, like present day Republicans, don't' like the word theory, (read, ideas and principles candidly articulated). So in the interest of getting elected, we'll likely again defer to the liberals and "the fool's burnt finger will wobble right back to the fire."
Church Voted Against the Probes
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
August 25, 1974
This column has been charged by the editor of the Lewiston Tribune (Aug. 18th editorial) as being "careless ... out of bounds," taking part in "another distortion" etc., etc., concerning his political patron saint, Sen. Frank Church.
To his credit editor Bill Hall did also say the LMT has enough faith in my integrity to believe that "...columnist Ralph Smeed repeats innocently and without malice an untruth that has infiltrated into Idaho's political gossip."
Now then, believe it or not, I appreciate that. Considering Bill's appalling political paranoia it is at least significant that he affords me this charity especially when it concerns his political prelate Frank Church before whom he falls prostrate to "pray" for political salvation, i.e., almost always.
If political paranoia was all that was at stake here I wouldn't take the trouble to respond to Bill's charges to my (read, "our," for I write only at his sufferance and usually am treated with fun and fairness) column for they are truly partisan charges, and anyhow I, too, have a tinge of paranoia. but that's not really al that's at issue here.
At the Swiss theologian Francis A. Schaeffer says in his book "The god Who Is There" (Inter-Varsity Press Chicago, Ill.) "... What we have here is a new concept of truth." In this observation I do not jest for what editor Bill Hall sees is indeed the truth (read, Democrat truth) and what I see in this case at least, is also the truth (read, the Republican truth).
Although Hall doesn't claim to speak for the Democrats nor do I for the Republicans, his tendency is I believe the more partisan and orthodox. Anyway, let us examine a bit.
My column (Aug. 18th) stated that Idaho's own Senator Church voted six times against investigation of President Johnson's assistant Bobby Baker. Editor Hall says, "... But a check with Church's office reveals that Idaho's senator consistently supported efforts to bring out the facts on Johnson's prot‚g‚ Baker and to bring Baker to justice."
Two quick notes: (1) When checking up on how fares the chickens one does not usually call the fox. (2) Much is made of the fact Baker was brought to justice, but there the matter was dropped, (read, buried by the Democratic majority assisted by a liberal news media).
The Robinson Bar incident was almost buried merely by Senator church's "disclosure" that he had divested himself of all (real estate) interests in the SNRA. His retained option near Stanley, Idaho, is in the same area as others selling for as much as $10,000 per acre.
Space limitations preclude comment on each of the Hall editorial-white-paper "truths" and this is sad since some are real gems, but consider if you will that as near as I can determine each of Bill's "gems" are VOICE votes received from Mr. church. About ten years ago they were, too. Seems the senator's memory on these is better than on the matter of his signing the lettuce boycott, since a record these voice votes has eluded my "Republican" sources.
In an interesting news item in the North Idaho Press Aug. 7, Senator Church's aide Cleve Corlett, son of John Corlett, political hatchet-man of the giant Idaho Statesman, says "At no time in the entire (U.S.) Senate consideration of the Baker inquiry did Frank Church vote against a congressional inquiry." Corlett calls the attack another fabricated charge "against the senator."
Back to editor Hall's "a check with Senator Church's office reveals ..." Maybe if The Washington Post had just had the good sense to call the White House to see whether there was anything to the Watergate affair we could have avoided the whole investigation.
Bill states that Church opposed efforts by Senator Carl Curtiss because he did not want the Republican minority to take over the investigation. One wonders why. Was it because he was afraid the Republicans would do a good job and sniff their blood-hound noses right up to the "T-bone" in LBJ's oval office?
Even editor Hall writing daily cannot print all the facts, certainly I can not once a week, but we both can convey much by what we omit, wittingly and unwittingly. I submit, however, whose side gets 90 per cent of the American news media's sympathy?
Cicero said, a hundred years before Christ, "for there being two sorts of disputing in the world, the one by reason, and the other by open force." I'd like to add that today's political chicanery resembles neither but encourages the latter.
Editor's note: Mr. Smeed included with his column a page from the Congressional Record in which Congressman Philip Crane, R-Illinois, lists Church as having voted on six occasions against extending the Bobby Baker investigation.
Why Hall's Wrong About Symms
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
September 1, 1974
The editorial page of the Lewiston Tribune has done it again, no doubt to the consternation of some and the delight of others and to the surprise of no one. So why mention it then, one might well ask.
Well, whatever disturbs Symms seems always of special import to Bill Hall, especially in two recent editorials (Aug. 22 and Aug. 25) both on the subject of the congressman's vigorous disdain for the Rockefeller appointment to the vice presidency. No problem with Hall's disagreement; he likes liberals and Symms doesn't generally, though both deviate dramatically on occasion.
It's these deviations of Hall's which fascinate me. Oh I can indulge in the usual "he's intellectually dishonest, a knee-jerk liberal, a Democrat-ion-the-news-media-clothing" etc., etc., but these seem not quite to answer the question why a skilled and intelligent writer like Hall resorts to the distortions, or what seem to me to be distortions when commenting on Symms' stewardship of his political office.
I've been giving this phenomenon some extra thought, but without much success, i.e., until today when I ran across an analysis which seems to have missed most present day commentary.
A little background first, Hall castigated Symms because he was "unfair to President Ford" (for scolding him about Rockefeller's appointment) and further for Symms' comment about "sniffing glue" and the "philosophical ooze" into which the two-party system had degenerated in their dual quest for power via the ballot box and influence peddling. Symms spoke to a John Birch Society meeting this summer and thus, according to Hall, "Symms has been keeping company with the Birch Society these past two years." "Wanted to wait until the evidence was in before voting to impeach Nixon, but not wanting to wait to oppose Rockefeller's appointment until (in Hall's words) the evidence was in." "Since the congressman is frequently at odds with the GOP he should therefore resign and join the American Party" with whom Hall would have the readers believe Symms is in nearly complete agreement.
Orval Hansen, on the other hand, according to editor Hall, is quite justified in staying in the GOP, the latter in spite of an interventionist voting record which would almost assuredly have made socialist leader Norman Thomas smile with satisfaction.
Now then, I'd have liked it better if Symms had voiced his objections in a slightly different way, his reasons being more important than his vote and the Rockefeller "evidence" has been "in" for years and years in spite of what Hall says in his above-mentioned offering for the most staggering non-sequitur in recent journalistic history (and there have been some dillies), but the maverick Republican chose to express just what came to his mind and in a most colorful way I might add. Most politicians would have been afraid so vigorously to express themselves and it drives liberal media men up the wall to see Symms "get away with it," He's so unorthodox and the media should be the only ones with such a "license"? Symms seems to bend the rules and is not usually orchestrated by the press, therefore they conclude he must be - and here comes that word - an extremist.
I'm afraid Bill Hall has fallen into a more typical type of liberalism than he may have wanted to, perhaps unwittingly in the face of a "non-politician" (Symms) who did his homework, though not nearly enough, on free market capitalism and can tell its story so dramatically superior to his predecessors that many media men are impressed with the young apple growing congressman even though they are plumb scared of his proposals. Men always resist that which they do not understand and thanks to the government school system we have a bunch of school children, grades one through college, who have heard of little else than the familiar chant of the political witch doctors and leftist professors including many of those teaching journalism in the great universities.
Welfare-statists need always something new and in spite of his seeming fierce individualism Hall is falling deep into this trap, perhaps unwittingly. What we are witnessing is a desperate last-ditch attempt to put over two "anti-concepts" the "extremists" and the "moderates."
A straw man is thus needed, the liberals choose the John Birch Society. That society was thrust into public prominence by the "liberal" press, a few years ago, and overpublicized out of all proportion to its actual importance. It has no clear, specific political philosophy (it is not FOR capitalism, but merely AGAINST communism), no real political program, no intellectual influence: it represents a confused (and in my opinion sincere) non-intellectual, "cracker-barrel" type of protest (primarily they fight Communists instead of communism); it is certainly NOT the spokesman nor the rallying point of pro-capitalism or even of "conservatism." These are precisely the reasons why it was chosen by the "liberals."
The intended technique was: First, to ignore the existence of any serious, reputable, intellectual advocacy of capitalism and the growing body of literature on that subject, past and present - by literally pretending that it did not and does not exist; then, to publicize the John Birch Society as the only representative of the "right," then to smear all "rightists" by equating them with the John Birch society.
Governor Rockefeller led just such an attack on this so-called extremism when I was a delegate to the GOP national convention in San Francisco (1964). Then as now, no definition was used for "extremism" or "rightist." The only thing clearly perceivable to the public was a succession of snarling faces and hysterical voices screaming with hatred, while denouncing "purveyors of hate" and demanding "tolerance."
No, editor Bill, Symms was right. The evidence on Rocky has been in for years - perhaps he has changed - perhaps the John Birch society has changed - perhaps the whole situation has changed since the analysis I just ran across was valid (I'll tell you a little more about it, hopefully, in a subsequent column or two and where it came from), perhaps Symms has changed, he spoke to the AFL-CIO political action group in Boise a couple weeks ago. Do you suppose he's gone over to the OTHER "extremists"?
I hope Hall hasn't completely fallen for this "right-wing" crap. John Corlett, political anchor-man for the Boise Statesman, falls for it most every week. Hall's keen brain is more perceptive ... he should dust it off.
Symms Meets the Unions
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
September 8, 1974
On Aug. 17 the AFL-CIO held its election year interview for political candidates at the Downtowner Motel in Boise.
Idaho's labor unions, in the persons of their state president, Bob Macfarlane, and the various union locals presidents were there to hear the candidates they invited for a short speech by each, then questions and answers. The time allotted was announced to be about 10 minutes, but one assumes this allows for some spillover to add extra for those of special interest.
First District Congressman Steve Symms was one such special case, for according to President Macfarlane's own transcript of the Symms interview (probably the only candidate so "honored"), it lasted 90 minutes.
I had been told that the audience would be labor goons and squad leaders given to hurling invectives, expletive-deleteds and generally uncouth to men like Symms and senatorial candidate Bob Smith, but such was not the case. I am pleased to report that as far as I could see the union members were well behaved and for the most part courteous. The questions were all at least competitive and mostly hostile in content. Still there was a reserve there that was, to me at least, something of a sign of maturity.
Let me hasten to add that it is not likely Symms had much to lose in the exchange, since organized labor knows what side it is on, takes that side, has special interest legislation to back it up, and hesitates not at all to use it, both ethically and otherwise, as we're often told. Most of the business community, on the other hand, has a lousy idea of what the free market is all about and furthermore has an even lousier attitude as to its responsibility for seeing to it that a reasonable balance exists in the public schools toward business and the profit system and for the private sector vs. the public ownership idea. Then for the pitiful handful of businessmen who do give a damn and try to do something about free enterprise ideas there is always (1) the law limiting what business can say about organized labor, believe it or not. (2) academic tenure protecting radical leftist teachers, (3) the "free" press, which seem forever dedicated to sensationalism and favoring more regulation of everyone but itself, (4) and lastly, politicians forever willing to offer their power to the highest bidder for big business, big government, big labor. Unfortunately, people think all business represents free enterprise and the free market, but few actually do.
Back in the AFL-CIO political interview. Some of the issues seem to me unimportant, but a few general observations anyway: The union members questions, though hostile in content, were respectable, vigorous, frequent and as one might expect, devoted entirely to one point of view, i.e., government interventionism. In this latter, there is some precedent, especially in the area of big business, and the unions think they're not getting their share of the public plunder, Symms stands in their way of making one thing right with two wrongs, or so they're told. So, they hate his guts.
Symms pretty well told it like it was. I'll venture they never had a TOP candidate who had any respect for the unions (and he does, they can believe it or not) tell his story so enthusiastically and forthrightly right "to their teeth," as the saying goes. Though I've been severely critical with him especially in private, I was proud of the job Symms did speaking to the labor outfit. It took guts, but he seemed almost to enjoy it as though the union "brothers," as they're referred to, had never even heard his story and therefore just might somehow favor "virtue" and truth, sincerity, motherhood and apple pie. Maybe a few might, in the secrecy of the ballot booth, even vote for him. It was a stellar performance if I ever saw one. Mr. Macfarlane, too, led the interviewers in reasonably fair fashion. I was again surprised pleasantly, but was astonished that he wasn't more subtle in his alluding to special interest union legislation, e.g., union political donations are legal while corporate donations are illegal. Macfarlane says, "well they are all listed openly" (one wonders, but even so, why the double standard of competition?) as though being "legal" makes it all hunky-dory. Sort of insults one's intelligence. Still, it's the party line so one can't merely fault Macfarlane.
One might fault Macfarlane on a couple of counts, though. See what you think. Since the union's positions are well known generally, I'll spare the reader all but the following from Macfarlane's cover letter over his transcript of Symms' interview: The labor leader says, "Symms is no conservative, but rather an opportunist, who capitalizes on fear by simplistic slogans ... using a kernel of truth in a bushel of untruths ... I was astonished, disappointed, amazed." The union boss went on, "... voters should see thorough the smiles and veneer of personality that covers a dangerous political philosophy."
There's more, but suffice this last parallel to what seems alarmingly near a John Birch Society smear-like on the labor unions' darling incumbent Sen. Frank Church. Oh yes, Macfarlane accused Symms' press releases of not being the same as what he actually says. (Well what else is new?) So Mr. Macfarlane is distributing the Symms interview "widely" he says. This writer hopes so, indeed. He should: 1) for somebody has his head in the skin sack. 2) Symms' simple answers are so clear everybody can understand and that does make him dangerous, but not to union members so much as many of their leaders. 3) Symms' story says that "bedfellows make strange politics" rather than the other way around.
The Mont Pelerin Society
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
September 11, 1974
Here in Bruxelles Belgium I am looking at two internationally famous groups in two meetings. One continuous and one annual, but there the similarity ends. This is the capital of the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market headquarters where the State Ministers, who seem to have an almost blind faith in Government edicts to solve trade problems, labor vigorously to facilitate the channels of trade. While not completely decided, their efforts are fraught with almost insurmountable problems among several nations.
The other group of which of which I am a guest is the prestigious Mont Pelerin Society, a gathering of 3 or 4 hundred scholars, lawyers, journalists and entrepreneurs who are united mostly by a belief in the importance of preserving individual freedom within the framework of the free market (i.e. libertarian).
Formed in 1947 when its founders saw a threat of too much government the society members have almost no faith in government edicts; indeed most tend to feel that only gold-backed currency has much hope of keeping the world's politicians honest enough to stop a probable ruination of the free world, free market, and private institutions.
Attending are such internationally known economists as Fredrick Hayek of Austria, Milton Friedman of Chicago, former Federal Reserve Board and First National City official John Exter, former British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell who speaks 13 languages and writes 6, but still has problems communicating with politicians (both timid and typical), U.S. presidential advisor Roger Freeman and a host of others are in attendance, some internationally known and some relatively unknown. Many of these here predicted today's economic storms, a few with alarming accuracy.
Some of Idaho's politicians presently urge similar warnings, by the way, but few heed. Still, we remember they ridiculed Noah and his Ark every day until it rained.
More about the Mont Pelerin Society and its fascinating if controversial members perhaps later because the Lewiston Tribune may not see the beauty and wisdom of paying for this non-collectivist cablegram.
The Hansen Funding
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
September 29, 1974
It is indeed sad but true that, generally speaking, liberal candidates get the bulk of their support from labor unions, and conservatives get most of theirs from business.
Present day law is horribly stacked in favor of the union's ability to finance politicians and tends to drive business's corresponding efforts underground, sine corporate donations are illegal. A case in point is the plight of second congressional district candidate George Hansen, whose fund raisers took approximately $2,000 in about 20 checks from small corporations "illegally" in the recent primary. The largest single check was less than $250. Peanuts for sure, but Hansen is in some hot water, nevertheless.
Interestingly enough state GOP chairmen have been strangely silent on most controversial ad sensitive matters especially when the issue involves socialism versus capitalism and the favoritism usually accorded the former in the media. While Hansen's case only involves socialism via his vigorous denunciation thereof, Bob Linville, present state GOP chairman, seems to be following the same silent course - with Symms, Smith and Murphy as well.
Part of the reason for this is because of a double standard and an asinine law, but another reason is more basic, i.e., Hansen is conservative, and his business supporters are not sure just which side they are on. Many large companies donate to both parties (if, indeed, there ARE two parties) just in case "their man" loses.
Those who doubt the zeal and honest, if socialistic, dedication of the unions as compared to the expediency and sick dedication of much of the business community's political effort might ask Idaho's First Dist. Congressman Steve Symms and senatorial candidate Bob Smith.
The dilemma of business and conservative endeavors isn't exactly new, and at least part of it is out of economic illiteracy. Once in a while, however, an exceptional case pops up like a recent story by Mr. Gene Kinney of the "The Oil and Gas Journal." It concerns one of Idaho's politicians and the energy crisis.
Mr. Kinney writes:
"You've read a lot in the newspapers lately about higher oil profits, especially from overseas operations.
"You've also read charges that international companies don't try very hard to keep foreign governments from raising posted prices. Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, chairman of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, accused them of reaping profits in proportion to higher postings. He charged that the companies "ride in tandem with the Arab governments," in raising prices and profits.
"That's what you read in the papers and saw on television.
"But there was another chapter that you didn't read about or see.
"J. Dennis Bonney, spokesman for one of the alleged culprits, challenged Senator Church face to face, Bonney is vice president of Standard Oil Co. of California. And when he got through testifying before Church, the senator was apologetic and beating a hasty retreat.
"Bonney had heard Church's televised remarks with wry amusement. If he had known in advance that the companies weren't serious in bargaining with the Arab governments, he could have avoided untold verbal lashings from OPEC for taking the side of the consumer. He could have saved himself the threats of nationalization, finally carried out by Libya, because he wouldn't knuckle under to the demands for inordinate price hikes.
"He could have spared himself countless marches up five flights of stairs during Libyan talks, only to have the prime minister throw his offer back in his face. When he stood fast each time, he was ordered out of the building - only to be summoned back immediately to hear new threats. He could have saved himself all of that.
"Moreover, Bonney added, the increase in foreign profits didn't result from higher postings. Devaluation of the dollar was a major factor, perhaps the most important. He didn't have precise figures, but Mobil did. Mobil's foreign profits were up 70 per cent last year to $569 million. Without devaluation, the increase would have been only 25 per cent to $419 million. Instead of a worldwide profits rise of 47 per cent, the gain would have been 21 per cent. Devaluation was responsible for more than half the increase in profits. By the same token, continued strength of the dollar this year will have the reverse effect on 1974 earnings abroad, Mobil said.
"Well, stammered Church, his committee is aware of efforts made by industry before the Teheran negotiations. The industry, he knew, had tried to keep prices as low as possible. He hadn't meant to question the motives of companies and their negotiators. He just wondered whether they had any real negotiating leverage any longer.
"Funny, replied the literate and urbane Bonney, he had gotten a different impression. Funny, too, that the millions of television viewers and newspaper readers had gotten a different impression also. Not so funny that those same millions didn't get a word about Bonney's reply and Church's stammering retreat, although there were 20 reporters in the hearing room at the time."
Small wonder Senator Church refuses to meet challenger Bob Smith in open debates thus far, except that they be dominated by the news media.
Big the Geldings Be Fruitful
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
October 7, 1974
The Lewiston Tribune and, one assumes, its skilled editor and polemicist, Bill Hall, have done it again - this time in the form of a full-page, anti-Steve Symms effort, designed to discredit the popular Congressman from Idaho's 1st District.
Symms, in the addition to the ire of the Tribune, seems to have aroused a similar ire of an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Idaho, a Mr. Nicholas F. Gier. this is the same professor who wrote Symms a few months ago wanting to debate him on the U of I campus "in an academic atmosphere more conducive to debate than in public" or words to that effect. The letter, though containing some logical thoughts and some not, contained a rather personal and snide reference to Symms' philosophy (as not agreeing with his frame of reference), so I was glad to see Symms ignore the "invite" to debate the school teacher with a polite reply suggesting others better suited to the pedagogue's proposition.
But, hark now, Mr. Gier has at last found himself a "debate" forum in editor Hall's columns' i.e., the Tribune's mutual admiration society for Symms'-haters. I use the term hate with some trepidation, since Hall's style isn't usually to hate and I don't know Mr. Gier, except that he has a big urge to debate Symms. Hall seems to be hung up on the horns of a dilemma, a certain like for the persons of Steve Symms and senatorial candidate Bob Smith, but whose political philosophy, political candor and success he can neither fathom nor stomach. A sort of gnawing hysteria that the Idaho voting public just might not be like Comrade Pavlov's dogs after all.
But the school teacher from the U of I is something else again. The obvious question comes to mind: Why doesn't Mr. Gier debate with others on his own campus? His urge for a debate is perhaps explained in part by something many critics of the university have been saying for years; i.e., namely, that since Mr. Gier takes such an extremely liberal (read, interventionist) position at his school and, since there is such an academic blackout of conservative teachers and/or scholars at the U of I, one can at least sympathize with Mr. Gier's dilemma at not being able to find anyone to debate with. One must certainly agree that the ideas promoted by Symms are indeed unpopular with most of the faculty at the university in Moscow, Idaho (i.e., one wonders if the university faculty in Moscow, USSR, isn't also "short" on scholars and teachers whose intellectual leanings tend strongly toward the free-market-right school of thought).
This columnist would again, and hereby does, offer the suggestion to my friend Dr. Ernest Hartung, president of the University of Idaho, to make a Herculean effort to rid the school of intellectual arrogance if it exists and to promote equal intellectual search for truth, also in the direction of the ideas presented by Adam Smith, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Rothbard (et. al.) which obviously do not exist. At least if they do exist at the U of I, Mr. Gier seems patiently oblivious to their substantial understanding. And, if they do exist (ho, ho, ho), perhaps we will see a righteously indignant reply to the muddy presentation of Mr. Gier as to what libertarianism really does mean and by a faculty person who believes in it.
It shouldn't be the responsibility of outsiders to debate such liberals as Mr. Gier if academic freedom really existed at the U of I. Rather, the faculty members should be composed of reasonable numbers of free market, private property, limited government teachers ready and willing and telling the freedom story.
Mr. Gier's full-page article in the Tribune does intellectual violence to these ideas, similar to what a zealous Catholic priest might accomplish in telling the "real" story of the Mormons and their Church of Latter day Saints. Though Professor Gier does make a few good points, his essay is so full of errors in describing the libertarian school of thought I will not attempt to reply except to comment that it is indeed sad and not the professor's fault that he has so few scholars of the right to argue with at his school.
The infamous bias of the ultra-liberal Borah Symposium (U of I) has for years been an "iceberg tip," indicating an almost fanatical prejudice toward even conservative thought, let alone to libertarian thought at that school.
As to Congressman Symms and candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Smith allegedly representing libertarianism in Idaho (per Professor Gier's article) - well, he, Mr. Gier, is probably no liar, he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Both these would-be politicians could, at best, be described as libertarian-leaning conservatives.
Professor Gier's idea of public education would seem to be unique in its similarity to editor Hall's idea of government: i.e., they would castrate - and bid the geldings be fruitful.
Running from Debate
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
October 13, 1974
This column often attempts to focus attention on Idaho's sacred cows, education, politics, the media (et. a.). Other columns in the LMT also focus, but mostly from vastly different viewpoints.
Since liberals hold the power centers in America, generally speaking, it probably follows that openness in government, differing opinions with legitimate emphasis, etc. be mostly defined and discussed in get "both sides" of course between two or more LIBERALS who may (or may not) disagree.
What's the point?
Well, this time it's the sunshine law compared to meaningful debates. Now just about everyone is for openness in government, even many of those bureaucrats, politicians , liberals and conservatives in and out of government.
Typically though when the liberals see, or think they see, a problem the first thing they want to do is pass a law. A few examples to my point: Bob Smith. Nampa attorney and challenger of the 18-year incumbent Senator Frank Church's seat in the U.S. Senate, has asked for free and open debater with his opponent. That's my idea of openness in government, but contrary to widespread press reports Senator Church has refused to debate except that he controls or have veritable veto control over "who the pane members would be."
Church never did agree to a debate, rather he insisted on a PANEL of news men over whose selection he demanded absolute veto. So far, and to His credit candidate Smith would not agree to Senator Church's way of "stacking the deck." Church's camp agreed to forego the use of columnist John Corlett of the Idaho Statesman and LMT editor Bill Hall, conceding that both were biased. But foregoing these men is not a concession at all. What is needed, although almost impossible to finding the media, is two paper or media personalities whose bias is just as well-known in the other direction. Presumably Church knows something the rest of us do not, since he demanded a veto power over the potential panel nominees of choices of challenger Bob Smith.
The TV shows "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" seldom have opposing newsmen although once in a while and to their credit "Meet the Press" will have some token conservative questioners, but even these are especially mild and the celebrity invited is seldom a top flight gentlemen-of-the-right as columnist Wm. F. Buckley calls them.
Candidate Smith's suggestion for real openness in government in the form of a series of open debates was immediately popular Governor Cecil Andrus was just about as candid as he could be. His reply to debate his challenger for governor of the state of Idaho Jack Murphy amounted to: "SHOVE IT!"
Apparently both Senator Church and Governor Andrus prefer, instead of open debates, to hide behind another of America's, and now we can guess Idaho's, sacred cows. i.e. pass a law, pass a law, pass a law.
First Dist. Congressman Steve Symms, the political rule breaker, agreed to a debate with his challenger lawyer Ray Cox. Since Cox had nothing to lose, credit must go to Symms whose sympathy for passing another law for "openness" he thought would produce very little at best. It is a kind of salute to Symms that Cox's main, almost only, issue he could find to talk about in their debate was the non-issue straw-man John Birch Society. A low-brow legal technique long in use by lawyers who, having no other evidence to "pounding on the table.: Symms tried to debate, but Cox wouldn't let him. Symms was a prophet again.
Due in large part to the gargantuan bias in education and especially the press it looks sadly like Church and Andrus will again get away with "political murder. "They must intend to hive only lip service to open debate. To their ever-lasting DISCREDIT, so far, the press's SILENCE has been deafening.
Church and Amtrak
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
October 20, 1974
Idaho's political mating season is heating up a bit. Not much, and typically not particularly penetrating, but some improvement.
For example Senator Church, after a long and distinguished 18 years of urging more power for labor unions to "regulate" management in general and the railroads in particular, finally succeeded with the help of other well-meaning liberals to regulate the railroads out of business, i.e., the passenger trade at least.
Of course other factors were important, too, such as the federally subsidized airways and the federally subsidized interstate highway system etc., but the fact remains that where large numbers of employees are required --- problems abound. Vigorous still are the memories of the ticket agents whose grouchy manner made you wonder if they wanted your business and, as often as mot, if the conductor didn't make you wish you had found another way to travel an indifferent porter did. Mot all, to be sure, but those who were courteous and efficient were forced to receive the same pay as the others --- thanks in large part to Idaho's Senator Church and his equalitarian average-seekers.
Comes now the famous Idaho senator again, seeking re-election partly on yet another intervention called AMTRAK. After working feverishly to "regulate" the rail passenger service out of business our senator and his friends work now to "regulate" them back into business. As if this weren't bad enough, namely, pouring salt into the wound, they actually want credit for this kind of intellectual whirling dervish.
One assumes they're well-meaning, but gosh it was only a few years ago this AMTRAK would have been properly as "moving toward a kind of fascism" or next to "nationalization of the railroads." It's been amply demonstrated time and again that the government can't run anything well, not even the post office whose first class mail delivery enjoys absolute monopoly, i.e., it is against the law for companies to carry even their own first class mail between company offices. Believe it or not, Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation actually paid a fine for it.
(Elsewhere the same U.S. government's anti-trust department screams against monopoly. Small wonder that mental health is a problem). The Postal Service, while not paying property or Social Security taxes, still has a $1.7 billion deficit which comes out of the U.S. Treasury.
Let's look a bit at Senator Church's AMTRAK. Since he and the committee of civilians appointed by Governor Andrus and chaired by newsmen Dwight Jensen, at telling us the "candy-side" of the free lunch here's some of the "candor-side" that they forget:
AMTRAK, the government subsidized corporation which operates all passenger service crossing state lines, prints the on the back of tickets:
Times shown on time tables of elsewhere and times quoted are not guaranteed, and form no part of this contract. Time schedules and equipment are subject to change without notice, substitute alternate means of transportation, and form on part of this contract. time schedules and equipment are subject to change without notice. Carrier may, without notice, substitute alternate means of transportation, and may alter or omit stopping places shown on ticket automobile. Carrier assumes no responsibility for inconvenience, expenses of other lass, damage or delay resulting from error in schedules, delayed trains, failure to make connections, shortage of equipment of other operating deficiencies."
In other words, you may not get where you want to go, and you may not get there on a train, and you may not stop where you thought you would stop, and the railroad is not responsible for inconvenience or injuries resulting from its own ineptitude. The only thing that you can be sure of when you ride the silver streak known as AMTRAK is that your chances are high that you will arrive on time. Why? Because AMTRAK has re-defined "on-time." From the Wall Street Journal on March 14, 1974:
"In January, 1973, AMTRAK reported that 66.2 per cent of its trains arrived on time. By December, 1973, the figure was down to 51 per cent, so AMTRAK, a great fan of Newspeak, redefined 'on-time.' Under the old definition a train had to arrive within five minutes of the schedule arrival time to be considered 'on-time.' Under the new definition it may be up to a half hour late. Thus AMTRAK was able to announce an improved 'on-time' rating of 61.7 per cent for January, 1974."
You pay your money and you take your chances: this seems to be the way AMTRAK is run. If a privately-owned company, one subject to competition, were run like this, it would not be running long. Only with government sanction and with taxpayers forced to pick up the deficit, can a monopoly as inefficient and silly as AMTRAK continue to operate.
Forgive me, gentle reader, if I sound shrill for I sincerely do not want to impugn the motives of Mr. Church, much less my friend Dwight Jensen to whom I made the suggestion last week that he appoint a token-conservative (like me?) to his AMTRAK-Idaho advisory board, as a kind of hair-shirt to keep them honest. Dwight's honest, but he won't, maybe can't.
In Nazi Germany, events took a similar course, except that these economic controls (and that's just what they are, i.e., energy controls, transportation controls, crop controls, wage and price controls) were administered with far more ruthlessness.
Consider, if you will, an authoritative critique of the Third Reich's economic policy given by Reichsmarshal Herman Goering (who was responsible, among other things, for economic planning) while a prisoner of War in 1946. (Let me hasten to add that I am not calling messieurs Church, Andrus, and Jensen Nazis; they're not. As a matter of fact they are nice guys, wrong as hell pushing quite socialist policies, but sincere, patriotic and most of the time even nice to me. Though this is sometimes a tool perhaps, I still appreciate the courtesy).
Now to continue with Mr. Goering's message: He told correspondent Henry J. Taylor that "Your America is doing many things in the economic field which we found out caused us so much trouble. You are trying to control people's work. If you do that you must control people's lives. And no country can do that part way. I tried it and failed. Nor can any country do it all the way either. I tried that too and it failed. You are no better planners than we. I should think your economists would read what happened here ..."
The Referee Should Stop Playing
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
October 27, 1974
Two quotations from very recent Lewiston Morning Tribune editorials illustrate a little noticed, if common, contribution to our modern day Tower of Babel. (Attributed to the ancient Greeks was an old saying to the effect that, "Those whom the gods would destroy they first remove from their senses.")
Well, editorial writer Bill Hall seems hell bent in this direction. On Oct. 18, editorializing on the lead and zinc industry pollution study around Bunker Hill mine he quoted the governor as stating "the industry had agreed to end its own study and defer to the state." Later said editorial goes on "But the Lewiston Morning Tribune has learned that the governor was not told the truth. Until yesterday the industry was continuing on the sly ... its separate study."
Now then I tend to doubt the "lie" part, but supposing it's true - what, pray tell, is so sinister about that? So two competitors do not accept one another's so-called facts. What else is new? Indeed if the referee (government) would stop playing ball (being advocate) perhaps the other team (Bunker Hill and/or ILZRO) and the fans would better accept their calls (decisions) on close plays.
On Oct. 19, Hall opines that first First Dist. Democrat challenger for Congress Ray Cox is right in his allegation that Congressman Steve Symms is affiliated with a certain conservative society (so thin is Mr. Cox's "case" that he can talk of little else, so in typical lawyer fashion he rails at the straw man). Hall quotes Symms that he has "no affiliation whatever" with said society. Here's Hall's quote, "And that statement is, of course, untrue."
Now then it's not a gross strangulation of words to say perhaps that I am about as well acquainted with Symms as editor Hall is and I think the statement is true (i.e., no lie). Of course much depends on how one defines the word "affiliated," just as much depends on whether there is something sinister in Bunker Hill or its president Mr. James Hawley trying to tell their side of the story. What's become of the liberals' long time crusade towards hearing the other side? It seems to almost infuriate them to discover there IS another side.
To the credit of Hall and his publisher Butch Alford, the Lewiston Morning Tribune editorials are signed and I don't want to underplay this voluntary openness policy, but it's hard to see why their basic skepticism of less government and the business community is so colorful and spectacular. On the other hand, their faith in more government and liberal politicians (viz. Church, Cox, Andrus) is almost blind if not total.
In the matter of evidence to the contrary that government and politicians can all too seldom be trusted no matter how sincere they are, witness if you will our popular governor's support of less state employees if he's elected, now there's more than ever. His support of openness in government and the so-called Sunshine law - now he won't debate his opponent at all and won't reveal, per said opponent, the endowment fund audit. Who is fooling who and of whose credibility should we be most skeptical?
How come we less-government-advocates are admonished to defend anarchy (which we don't) and my colleagues like Messers Hall and Alford are so seldom asked to defend communism (which they don't))?
Could it be they know something we don't? Could it be that there is a sinister reason why the business community cares so little about the freedom philosophy in education? Could it be that there is a reason why American business will not give vigorous support to free market foundations and institutions? Could it be that senatorial candidate Bob Smith has only one tenth (1/10) the money for his campaign that his opponent Senator church has is with big business's blessing? Yes, gentle reader, it not only "could be" but it is, a fait accompli, it has happened.
One wonders why Bunker Hill, Simplot Corp., Boise Cascade and almost all the others are wondering why they are getting kicked in the seat of the pants, because their (and, unfortunately, our) educational chickens are coming home to roost. And, speaking of chickens, could it be that the stuff on the floor of the hen-house has replaced businessmen's moral courage?
In his best selling book "Gulag Archipeligo" the Nobel prize winning Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it this way, "you today - me tomorrow." But, one muses, most business tycoons seem disposed only to give to liberal colleges and causes in a feeble attempt to buy friends.
Ignoring the Temptations to Guess
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
November 3, 1974
One resists the temptation to offer speculations, however sage or silly, on the outcome of the upcoming Idaho elections, but this writer at least tends to feel that the plethora of present prognostications to be piled painfully high already, so I'll defer and spare you more pain.
Besides since "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," doesn't it follow that - so is ugly? My idea of beauty being my idea of who's ahead in a given race colored of course by who I think should be.
A few exceptions to the contrary might be such obvious ones as Andrus for governor and Symms for Congress. Here it might be said I may have a slight bias in favor of Symms, but since I've been a member of the press I've become so fair, honest and objective that few will doubt anything but truth, right and sweet justice always emerge triumphant in my columns.
Speaking of the press, a UPI wire story came out Oct. 26 datelined Boise with the following story, "The Idaho Press Club has adopted a political code of ethics to protect the news media credibility by steering away from becoming professionally active in political campaigns." The final paragraph opened my eyes to some new and exciting vistas hitherto unexplored. It said, "The Idaho media have a sacred and trusted responsibility to provide the public with fully unbiased reporting of the news."
That's it ladies and gentlemen, that's exactly what it said, not an expletive deleted. After I laughingly said to myself, "Oh no, not again!" a truly erie, grayish sort of pall seemed to have settled down around my thoughts with a kind of compelling, if perverse, reasoning. I asked myself, "Now what if those fellows in the press club actually, repeat actually, believed that stuff they are saying in their statement(s) on news media?"
Well, my friends, the inescapable conclusion is it's altogether probable that they really do. And what's more they are, no doubt for the most part, sincere about their ethics as they see the matter.
I retain my near paranoia about bias in the media, especially TV, and feel that we may be nearing one of the great crises in our country's history, controlled media. So low has fallen the general public's trust of the free press that one hears all too frequently comments about the press's having become "a little too free." I don't go along with this view, but I can sympathize with it and understand why.
What's hard to understand is how so much of the press seem to believe they can police themselves, i.e., a free press, without government regulation and yet on the other hand see those other private entities in the marketplace as apparently so greedy they cannot be trusted to be free, i.e., with a free market.
Notwithstanding all this I am starting to re-evaluate my idea of press bias and invite the readers of this column to do likewise - believe it or not. As much as may seem to the contrary and as bad as the present Idaho political campaign "news" and opinion is heavily one-sided, as it most assuredly has been, the possibility exists that these press men, may not be so malicious after all, at least in their own eyes.
Oh sure, they justify. They lean hard here, soft there, and to be sure just because they become "... professionally active" in political campaigns right out in the open news and edit columns doesn't excuse them. The tragedy is that there is so little "truth in labeling." i.e., admitted bias.
To aver that ethical behavior is achieved merely by what most of the media sees as openness is like saying that a fellow who wet the bed achieved a cure when his psychiatrist removed his guilt-feelings. The poor fellow's wife, upon hearing he was cured, exclaimed, "Oh joy, my dear John, now you won't wet the bed anymore." "oh no," replied the newly-repaired patient, "I'll still wet the bed, but now I won't care."
If the free and largely favorable publicity so lavishly bestowed upon Idaho's Governor Andrus, Senator Church and congressional candidate Cox by the state's two largest daily papers were to be valued in terms of dollar replacement cost, the so-called sunshine initiative would be shown up for what it really is. Misleading at best, futile at worst. Too, if people later relax after the law passes (and it will pass thanks much to media lobbying) thinking that most of the monkey-business in Idaho politics is now out from under the table, they will go back to sleep forgetting the healthy skepticism so laboriously and properly built up by many members of the press.
The Naked Electorate
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
November 10, 1974
"What do you say to a naked lady?"
Such was the title to a movie made awhile back by Allen Funt of the popular TV show "Candid Camera," but this particular film featured a somewhat more candid, if not profound, technique in order to demonstrate their point, i.e. what would may do if they happened upon, you guessed it, a naked lady and what humor would ensue if their surprise(s) were surreptitiously recorded on film for movie goers? One hardly needs to add that it was quite revealing.
I sort of feel the same way about last Tuesday's election not only in Idaho, but nationwide as well. One of the early choices for vice president of former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern was U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton, who summed up the big Democratic victory Tuesday night in a TV interview saying something to the effect that the American voters do not want high interest rates, do not want inflation, do not want a multitude of other bad things like inflation. The good and kind senator said what the voters wanted was Social Security, welfare rights, decent pensions for their old age, etc., etc., etc., and lower taxes, in other words, a free lunch.
While not Eagleton's exact words, the meaning was clear as to the mandate that this dragonslayer of the proletariat and newly re-elected soothsaying slayer of semantics by a sort of social strangulation. This little victory speech was almost as if: "Now that we've a veto-proof Congress, we'll beat the puddin' out of presidential advisor for economic affairs, Allen Greenspan, and kick the farmer's chief, Earl, right square in the Butz. Mr. Earl Butz, of course, being the Republican secretary of Agriculture and just about the only friend the farmers have had in a presidential cabinet for many, many years.
At the risk of sounding like sour grapes, which I suppose I must admit to, a little (forgive me this once) I'd have to admit also that the newly elected First District congressman, Steve Symms, pretty well summed it up by observing that "... when so many Idahoans voted for Frank Church and me in the same election, they couldn't be voting very strong on philosophy." (Sen. Church is generally considered pretty far to the left and Symms equally far to the right.)
In quite a number of contests for the Idaho legislature also a lively disregard for fiscal sanity seemed evident, although not quite so blatantly as for the Congress. Perhaps one reason is that people know that the states MUST balance their budgets.
Name familiarity is the watchword, so the experts say, for both Republicans and Democrats which is well born out by the billboards and other ads showing the candidates' names only and in some cases the office for which he or she is running. Often times the party to which the candidate belongs is barely mentioned, if at all. This last may well be the nearest many of these candidates ever venture toward intellectual honesty since there really is so little fundamental difference between the parties.
One of Senator Church's TV ads showed him speaking to some senior citizens vying or their vote of course by saying "... a country as rich as ours SHOULD give more money to its senior citizens." On the other hand, some conservatism was in evidence in Church's campaign - each 5.5 years - remember? - when he says we should slow down on some of the big spending schemes. It is as if even the liberals in this election see the ship's (USA) hold filling with sea water (inflation) and henceforth summon the machinists (politicians) with great fanfare to drill holes in the ship's bottom and drain that darn water out into the sea.
One bright note remains for the Republicans in addition to Symms, Congressman-elect George Hansen, Secretary of State Pete Cenarussa, and Attorney-General-elect, Wayne Kidwell and that is what's indicated by Gov. Cecil Andrus' candor in answering the press inquiry as to whether he would debate his challenger, Jack Murphy. The popular governor said, in effect, "Go to hell." The press went. Need I add, so did Murphy. But then, Jack had a lot further to go.
Kind of lets the GOPers rejoice in that church's own political pal, Andrus, in his candor showed Church's charade at "negotiating" for a debate with challenger Bob Smith for just what it was - henhouse.
When Opportunities for Profit Diminish
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
November 24, 1974
"We have learned the lesson that when opportunities for profit diminish, opportunities for jobs likewise disappear." A resolution of the Executive Council of the AF of L, January 31, 1940.
Arriving in Washington, D.C. last week to attend a meeting of the Committee on Monetary Research and Education, I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and guess whose name I saw in the first line of their lead front page article for that day?
None other than Eugene C. Dorsey, my old liberal, if charming, friend and former publisher of Boise's Idaho Statesman newspaper.
Now then, Gene's not as old as his is liberal, or at least he was liberal when he was in charge of the Boise paper, but the WSJ news story makes me wonder if there isn't some new logic behind the fact that he no longer answers the friendly little snide messages I used to send along to him. We used to have a good liberal conservative rapport going in Boise a few years ago and I enjoyed it a great deal, especially during the term of Governor Don Samuelson who, for ample reasons, enjoyed Dorsey somewhat less than I did.
Upon reading the WSJ article, I couldn't help wondering if Dorsey had become one of those so thoroughly abhorred by the Statesman, his former Boise paper, i.e., a greedy, money-grubbing, profit-motivated capitalist for the headline read, "Profitable They Are, but Gannett Papers Find Prestige Elusive." The subheadline read, "Fast Growing Chain Shuns Competition, Stresses Autonomy and Automation."
The article related how Dorsey, who publishes two of the nation's largest newspaper chains' dailies in Rochester, New York, passes out Christmas turkeys to his staff members, causing some grousing about the gifts. Not only were the turkeys small - "more the size of a capon" one reporter grumbled - but they had come to symbolize "... a 19th century attitude out of keeping with the dynamic and fast growing newspaper chain."
Last year their earnings shot up 26% to $28.8 million and are even higher this year according to said WSJ article.
Shares of the giant Gannett Corp., which owns Boise's Idaho Daily Statesman, that were purchased by their union local 10 years ago for $22400 are mostly responsible for the $80,000 in the union's treasury, says Tom Akeman, a former union official.
The article went on in some detail explaining the Gannett company's expansionist plans to seek even more profits and more papers (now owns 53 in 17 states and Guam) but suffice it to say that the company, led in part by Dorsey and in pat by Paul Miller, 68 yea old chairman of the board and father of the Boise paper's present publisher, Robert Miller, is in a big, big way part and parcel of America's free enterprise, free market, private capitalistic system.
Back for a moment to the Committee for Monetary Research and Education. These are a group of scholars, businessmen and miscellaneous others, who don't trust the government to do anything very well except wage war and inflate the currency. Lewiston Tribune editor, Bill Hall, would likely call them "Gold-bugs," but, in any event, they are indeed an extreme embarrassment to the government by advocating gold to keep the politicians honest. Hall, too, likes to embarrass the politicians but seldom uses the gold story in order to chide them. Most of Hall's political pals like gold about the same as Nixonites like Martha Mitchell. Remember her?
Two weeks ago, after a pleasant, if severely penetrating conversation over supper with Boise's Robert Miller, I asked him how many members were on his editorial board, to which he replied, "Seven." I then asked him to name for me one of them who is an enthusiastic and articulate supporter of the free enterprise system.
I do not wish to embarrass Miller for I believe him to be sincere and mostly well-meaning, as I do Messrs. Dorsey, Hall and LMT publisher Alford, but the answer must surely be obvious. They don't even have a staff writer qualified and enthusiastic whose number one mission it is to cover that wonder producing - but endangered species - American free enterprise. Rather, they seem embarrassed by it.
Nikolai Lenin said in another town named Moscow in 1920, "Ideas are much more fatal than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?"
Now, then, let me respectfully suggest the "hair-shirt" of the time-honored gold story for Idaho's newspapers, just for a starter, to embarrass the government if only in remembrance of Lenin. Who knows, Idaho business might even appreciate it.
My eastern journey wound up at the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, N.Y. where I again picked up a local newspaper and, you guessed it, it too, is owned by Gannett.
A Little Tribune Openness
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
December 1, 1974
For some time now the Lewiston Morning Tribune has spoken out vigorously for the Sunshine Law, i.e., an initiative ostensibly to make openness in government compulsory which Idaho voters passed with an overwhelming margin this past election to the surprise of no one.
Absolutely everyone favors the concept of openness in government or, at least, so they say, but not everyone agrees that passing another law, especially this particular one, will result in more openness and public awareness. On the contrary, many feel this law will delude the public, tending to alleviate their recent healthy skepticism of the political process.
A few random observations may help sharpen some views for men of good will, especially those whose premise tends to orbit around freedom of the press to use openness in government to fulfill the historic "people's right to know."
A recent Lewiston Morning Tribune editorial was scolding General George Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his controversial statement to the effect that the oil crisis story is somewhat one sided and or misunderstood partly because the banks and news media are owned (mostly) by the Jews.
Now then, the Jewish-Arab oily flap in the Mideast certainly threatens to engulf other nations, including the USA and the USSR, in a war and much depends on America's stance. Lewiston Morning Tribune made an excellent point or two, but as is so frequently the case the newspaper missed, or avoided, the point mainly at issue, i.e., the one about which they are properly concerned - freedom of speech and, hopefully, the truth. No comment on whether or not General Brown was accurate, but rather only on his right to state his opinion. Never mind whether or not his opinion has any merit, total or partial.
The public will be subjected to opinion poll after opinion poll with the question: "What do you think about the oil crisis, etc., etc.?" Based on what? Based on whether the Arab's story is best or the Jew's story, of course, but most of us depend on the media for "our" story.
I for one would appreciate the candid opinion of a general who heads an $80 or $90 billion budget ostensibly designed to defend me. Based on all the openness and freedom of speech humanly possible, I'll decide whether or not the chief of staff is racist. It'd be sad indeed if he were, but with "freedom of the press" as administered only by those in the press, I may never have the opportunity to know.
Now that Idaho's "Sunshine Amendment" has passed and the people have clearly spoken in favor of openness in government, particularly as it relates to who's trying to influence the Idaho Legislature, we should all enter into the spirit and see that it works.
Influencing the legislature can and should take many forms - it seems to me that the intent of the new law is not to stop this influence, but to identify those that are doing it so the "people can judge." Reliable sources tell me that lots of people were in attendance at the recent North Idaho Chamber of Commerce Biennelal Legislative visit where members of the newly elected Idaho Legislature traditionally caucus in attempts to select their leadership.
Leadership will have a strong influence on all legislation before the upcoming session, so if we are going to be completely open, those that were trying to influence the decision should be identified. My informants tell me that among those attempting to influence the outcome of the leadership discussion was no less than the editor and political pundit of the Lewiston Tribune, Bill Hall. It seems that Bill Hall was trying to put together a compromise ticket for the Democrats in the House whereby Perry Swisher would be the Minority Leader instead of Pat McDermott of Pocatello, who is considered by some as a bit controversial. I'm told that Patty took a dim view of the idea and suggested that if Bill Hall wanted to be the leader of the House Democrats, he should run for the office.
Now let me hasten to add that I think it's quite all right for Bill to do this; most everybody knows he's a red-hot Democrat, but even if they didn't, so what? Bill's input would get into his favorite party anyway. and another thing, since when is a newspaper editor expected to sell his political soul just because he's an editor?
Still, I believe Patty has a point. Political columnists and editorial writers that get involved in, or attempt to influence, the inner workings of the legislature should identify that bias, at the head of every interpretive story on the legislature that they write. This would be within the spirit of "openness of government" and to do less would be a denial of the "people's right to know."
The Benefits of a Black Market
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
December 8, 1974
Lewiston Tribune editor Bill Hall had two editorials of special interest Nov. 17. One was on marijuana and what President Ford's advisor on drug abuse, Dr. DuPont, says the government ought to do about it. One assumes, since all else passes within its purview, the government ought indeed assume responsibility for this, too.
Hall's editorial continues about this timely and growing menace, "Dr. DuPont ... is advocating an end to criminal penalties for using marijuana." Then Hall opines, "A law that is violated by a massive percentage of the populace is usually a law that is flawed anyway. If half the population is violating a law against drinking ... enforcement officers are just spinning their wheels and forced to pick on the tiny percentage they catch."
Well, Hall goes on to ask which hampers social performance most, using marijuana or going to prison for its use! A good question and a fair one. Still, I wonder why Hall doesn't take this embrace of freedom to include the area of economics, for example. The black market, when viewed as an institution, generally serves an excellent function between people wanting to exchange goods voluntarily, but in violation of some politician's edicts which oftentimes caused the shortage in the first place.
I was in Osaka, Japan six days after World War II ended and lived there over a year. Believe me, though I saw few stores with more than f five or ten per cent inventory. The black market street "stores" had whatever you wanted, admittedly at rip off prices which were at least more so because of asinine laws, but they kept Osaka alive.
Why so relaxed in areas of personal freedom and so often, almost always in fact, up-tight to pass laws in economic matters, these newspaper-literary-lobbyists? I genuinely wish I knew why the inconsistency. What a wonderful argument never offered in Hall's column, i.e., it's simply none of the government's danged business - and besides, legal or not, what's happening during our young people's 12-year "prison" sentence in the government's compulsory school system? Hall didn't ask. He made a good point or two too, but he didn't ask the never-never question.
In the second editorial the posture pointed at by the pundit's pen is precious, no kidding, it really is. Editor Hall is actually chiding organized labor. Not much for him - yes, though he walks through the valley of the giant labor unions, Hall will speak no evil - for he thinks the labor chiefs are all JOLLY GREEN giants, or at least one supposes.
But on this day he's saying, "... while fighting for their rights the UMW members (must do so) without doing it at so great an expense to their fellow workers." He actually said that. Oh yes, he watered it down some elsewhere in the editorial, but he said it and, considering Bill's bias, I think he's to be complimented. A thoughtful column and one to which the United Mine Workers might listen, considering the source. The lessons(s) of economic interdependence, while no long suit of most Idaho legislators, is a severe one. We should heed and study it as a few union members are beginning to do, even though the hour is late late late. But there's always the "establishment" union officials and corporate lobbyists in whose interest little newsprint is wasted. Their jobs too, you know, are at stake.
Want an example? Okay, in the Nov. 25 issue of the U.S. News and World Report this item appears:
"After spending nearly $170,000 in an unsuccessful effort to block John Glenn's Senate big in Ohio's Democratic primary, organized labor contributed about $150,000 to his victorious drive in the general election campaign. This made the former astronaut - now a presidential hopeful - the biggest recipient of labor money in the autumn contests."
Consistency, you ask? Well, Bill Hall isn't all bad; it's just that consistency just doesn't turn him on. He told me once, "I'd rather be right," and I laughed.
Too bad the Lewiston Tribune and The Idaho Statesman chaps don't read U.S. News and W.R., or other conservative journals (there are some, you know, like Chicago Tribune, National Review, Human Events, Indianapolis Star, Reason, etc.) that is to quote from them like they do from the liberal ones, The Washington Post and New York Times, et al.
At a meeting of the Philadelphia Society in New York recently, Frank Shakespeare, former head of the United States Information Agency's "Voice of America" and "Radio free Europe" told me that the media bias has reached staggering proportions.
"So much so," said this delightfully calm but frightfully concerned and brilliant man, "that I fear the conservatives may now be able to get the power to pass yet another law to "compel" the press to be free. That, I fear, However understandable, might very well be even worse.
Is Amtrak Nationalizing Railroads?
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
December 22, 1974
The Lewiston Morning Tribune editorial of Dec. 14 entitled "Hansen In His Place" could be a study in contradictions when viewed with one perspective. but could also point up something which, perhaps, has escaped our attention.
Said electoral cluck-clucks 2nd Dist. Congressman-elect George Hansen's recent appointment to the House Internal Security Committee (which) "...is the successor to the old witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee...."the editorial goes on "...is a circus and no longer taken seriously..."
A good place for Hansen, one gleans from the LMT which can hardly stomach either him or the committee.
LMT's editor Bill Hall, whose initials followed the above, thanks to their voluntary policy of signing editorials, may have a worthy point - even if, maybe, his intent was only to poor-mouth Hansen and the committee.
Consider U.S. Senator Lowell Wiker (R-Conn.) called for a total embargo of all Arab oil imports and mandatory gas rationing. Is food next? Consider Idaho State Senator Dave Bivens', R-Payette, Land Use Plan (read, government's land use plan).
Consider the recent popularity with the national Democratic party and even some GOP politicians' advocacy of compulsory wage and price controls. Consider AMTRAK, now for Idaho. One hears "Well, everybody else is getting theirs, so ..." After regulating the railroads, passenger service at least, out of business the government now proposes to regulate them back into business via Amtrak, and paid for by deficit-financing - the latter being precisely the cause of our sky-rocketing price inflation.
A headline in the Dec. 17 Idaho Statesman says, "Boise Valley People Support Amtrak Routes to Calif." Why shouldn't they? The cost to anybody in particular is hardly spoken of, not to mention argued comprehensively in the media.
Newsman Dwight Jensen, Idaho's Amtrak chairman appointed by Gov. Cecil Andrus, says his committee "... might recommend a different fare structure for Idaho, such as 6 cents a mile or 4 cents a mile depending on the market and competition." note this last.
For Heaven's sake, isn't that exactly what the private railroad companies were trying to do - depending on the market and competition? One assumes they would have - but for the Interstate Commerce Comm. who tells the railroad how much they can charge. Jensen quotes Amtrak as saying about the Idaho route, "Unless it's a real dog, we'll keep running it indefinitely."
I'd merely ask you, gentle reader, just how all this monkey-business differs from what the British socialists honestly label as "nationalizing" the railroads? Why don't we hear the representatives of the so-called "private" railroad corporations, i.e., their lobbyists, asking questions like this and using labels as honest as the British labor party?
As columnist Bill Buckley said recently, "The answer is that we don't do it for exactly the same reason that we are, really, losing all over the world. Because our spirit is enfeebled."
Perhaps it is no wonder, if editor Hall is right, that George Hansen and the anti-communists are no longer taken seriously, and their House of Representatives committee a circus. As between what the communists want and what we're doing "voluntarily" - only the clowns think there's a difference.
Liquor and Free Enterprise
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
December 29, 1974
The famous Hungarian-American author and journalist, Arthur Koestler, warned us some years ago against the "men of good will with strong frustrations and feeble brains, the wishful thinkers and idealistic moral cowards, the fellow travelers of the death train."
We listened, but did we heed?
According to an Associated Press report just published, it's doubtful. Eleven years ago the Idaho legislature decided to limit and license liquor outlets by a quota system, and how it has done the job kind of depends on how one sees the problems.
The AP found that while the quota system may have limited the outlets and helped some of the operators keep on the straight and narrow, it has resulted in booze-oriented boundaries, long waiting lists of applicants, a bidding bonanza for licenses, and perhaps higher prices for drinks.
"Hell, yes," said Gary Moser, owner of the Arbor Lounge in Lewiston, where a current license sells for $40,000. "Where else could we get the money than through higher prices?"
In other Idaho cities, the bidding is $15,000 to $30,000 for licenses issued by the state for $750.
Richard Cade, liquor law chief of the Department of Law Enforcement, doesn't like the arrangement, because it creates a bargaining price up to $32,000 to $35,000 by that piece of paper. If a guy is qualified otherwise, he ought to be allowed a liquor license, he said.
According to the AP, "In most of Idaho, applicants face long waiting periods. In Ada County, 18 persons wait. Oldest application was filed 4.5 years ago."
Rep. Ralph Wheeler, R-American Falls, said the state should get entirely out of the liquor business. But he says most Idahoans "favor the law the way it is."
Why shouldn't they? After all it is admittedly to restrict competition and after a bar owner gets on the "inside," through political pull or at terribly high cost, he'd be a fool to advocate a change in the system.
It seems the Lewiston Country Club built a new clubhouse this year, but didn't realize the quota system was applicable (ho ho ho).
So, the AP report goes, the club requested and got de-annexation from the city. This enabled club officers to get a resort license, one of the few kinds the law permits outside an incorporated city. Once they had their license a request was made to be re-annexed, and the city obliged.
I'm not exactly a super-fan of the Associated Press, but we're indebted to it for this little free-enterprise story. I say hats off to AP for it and I hope you will, too.
I say good luck to the Lewiston Country Club, also, it being unfortunate that it had to run that obstacle course. But if the club's members are very responsible citizens they now realize that our legislature's "wisdom" isn't infinite, isn't wise, and usually isn't needed.
Prof. Murray Rothbard, the economist, pretty well summed up our most important inconsistency when he said, in his book "Man, Economy and State," that "The partisans of intervention (who push more and more laws) assume that individuals are not competent to run their own affairs, or to hire experts to advise them, but also assume that these same individuals ARE competent to vote for these experts at the ballot box."
I'll bet you didn't know that a professor even existed who'd say a thing like that, let alone write it - did you?
So hang in there.
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The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy
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