When time is abused it should be recognized and adjusted. For those who run out of time, activity should be slowed. for those with time on their hands, activity should be accelerated. When private time uses are in conflict with society's needs, then private needs should be adjusted.

Only within the comprehensive framework of a time-use plan can individual time patterns be integrated and made to harmonize with the needs of the community. Recognizing the diversity of life in Idaho, time-use planning should be planned and implemented at the local level under local control of focal time planners.

There is ample precedent for interventionist legislation in the general area of time control. The uniform time act is one case in point. The recent daylight savings bill represents, another timely example.

With adequate planning and funding, every second for every person can be made to count. If necessary, planning advocates could be educated and watchers be prepared to become clock watchers in support of this innovative concept.
Without question, time-use represents the ultimate achievement in planning, should it be initiated.

Not only would time-use planning do justice to the early Chinese agrarian reformers who initially phased out greedy land owners but time-use planning would also build on the tradition established by counterparts here in America - our own land use planners. How fitting it would be if both ideas could come to fruition in time for our Bicentennial celebration of freedom!

Heretofore Big Brother has been watching. Let's give Big Brother a Big Ben to help all of us enrich the time we consume during our "Three score and ten.


Straining at a Gnat and Swallowing the Camel

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 16, 1975


Although one can hardly tell it, if one judges by the Idaho State legislature presently in session, something big is going on in Idaho. Maybe because of the politicians, or possibly in spite of them.

It is going on in America too, according to conservative columnist George Will writing in the Lewiston Tribune's March 1 issue, and going on in Idaho, i.e., if one is to believe an editorial in this newspaper's March 3 issue signed "H.H.," on some asinine aspects of government education.

Now then, not all education is asinine. Like Lewiston Tribune editorials are not all asinine, many of them are, of course, but by no means all of them. So let us be heartened and give a little praise, where due.

But first let me try for just a little background example or two, also from the pages of LMT.

1. Datelined Boise (AP)) one news item is headlined "Sheep Wagons Don't Need Plumbing." The text of the article said, "All four members of the Idaho congressional delegation have joined in sponsoring legislation to exempt sheepherder's wagons from federal regulations on migrant housing..."

Imagine that. The whole congress of the United States is alert to the problem. Nothing is said about their having caused it in the first place.

2. Datelined Washington (AP) this news headline in LMT for March 6 reads, "GOP Grudgingly Accepts Money." The text read, "The Republican National Committee agreed grudgingly Wednesday to finance its 1976 presidential convention, but only as a last resort if legal action fails."

Presumably the Democrats are pushing this "political narcotic" much as they push other similar nostrums, but note the final punch line of the GOP stalwarts of principle; "... to utilize funds provided by the federal government." Grudgingly - a tear oozes.

GOP, the party of principle. Silly, isn't it?

Columnist Jack Anderson (LMT March 1) in a column datelined Washington writes, "Supposedly, the public is protected by the rigid standards which govern (read, by government) the quality of manufactured goods. But more often, the standards are set to squeeze out competition and to fleece the consumers."

What's all this to do with Idaho? Well let's go back to columnist Will. He stated, "The fact that the campuses are not burning does not mean that reason has returned to its throne in the academic world." He told that at Stanford University the grades D and F have been abolished and likewise many otherwise fine universities have gone almost entirely to grading A's or B's. "Easy grading has been necessary to accommodate many of the students swept into universities by Affirmative Action programs," Will explained.

In short the national syndicated columnist terms academic institutions guilty of "grade inflation" and says it discourages a virtue - thrift - upon which prosperity depends.

Comes now the LMT editor also writes of a similar observation of recently elected State Supt. of Public Instruction, Roy Truby, as stating further, "..r. Idaho employers and others are complaining that the public schools are failing to teach students to read and write."

One cannot help wondering where Truby and the editor have been hiding, but neither can one keep from applauding their forth right recognition of a bad scene when they did FINALLY see it.

H.H. may get the proverbial "forty-lashes" from his publisher Butch Alford for such an on-target editorial (Butch is an important member of the Idaho State Board of Education) and now my compliments may cause him even further headaches.

But best of all I liked the final paragraph of the LMT editorial, "Truby, perhaps thinking of those long, long honor rolls, is understandably upset and is quoted as saying that he intends to find out if the complaints (i.e., that students can't read, write and do simple sums) are true. He reacted typically: his department, he told the AP, will seek a $50,000 federal grant to conduct a study of the matter."

Now let us watch for "Truby's study," if indeed it ever comes to pass, and observe that in all the mass of comments, appraisals, and interpretations, including surveys on every imaginable aspect of school life, not one word will be said, I'll wager a tidy sum, about the content of modern education, about the nature of the ideas that are being inculcated by today's government controlled schools.

Every OTHER possible question will likely be raised and considered, except: What are the students taught to think.

This is STILL what no one dare to discuss. Note this well, you conservatives who seem hung up solely on textbook pornography - straining at a gnat and swallowing the camel.



Republican Middle-Roader and a Democrat Middle-Roader

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 23, 1975


Do you know the difference between a Republican middle-roader and a Democrat middle-roader?

Well, neither did I, if indeed there was any, but I'm told there is:

A middle-road Republican, if he finds a surplus of tax money wants to give it back to the taxpayers; whereas a middle-road Democrat never has a surplus, but wants to give the money back anyway.

Now then, if that sounds a little inconsistent, you can recall Ralph Waldo Emerson's "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..."

If that doesn't satisfy, one can read The Lewiston Tribune. Certainly there, one will not likely find such large doses of consistency as to cause many hobgoblins to levitate much before Halloween.

The late, of the Lewiston Tribune, editor Bill Hall now writing full time for Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), in Washington D.C., was and presumably still is a past master at the art of inconsistency, especially when it came to defending his favorite politicians.

Hall, indeed, a superior writer even when he was only "part-time" in Lewiston, for the long time Idaho senator, left something of a lofty target for his successors at the state's second largest newspaper.

I say lofty, partly because Hall inspired this writer (after all he discovered me and must have seen the great virtue so often hidden among gentlemen of the "far" right) and partly because his iconoclasm, wit and polemics were indeed superior to almost all of the media fare elsewhere in Idaho, not to mention his good sense of humor.

I intend to say something in recognition of Hall's political wisdom as well, one of these days and perhaps I'll locate something someday, so be patient with me.

Comes now, LMT's Ladd Hamilton also a long time and respected editor of the same paper, writing, one assumes quite vigorously so as not to allow too big a consistency gap in Hall's absence.

Hamilton succeeds in fine fashion beginning in an excellent editorial (LMT March 11) on sale of liquor on Sundays; "Why should the state tell its citizens that they may drink on Saturday nite, but not on Sunday or its businessmen which days of the week they may open?"

Three days later follows an LMT editorial on the Craig bill now before the legislature on kindergartens. (Many communities cannot possibly utilize a kindergarten regardless of good intentions for geographic, rural, population or other reasons, hence would have no way to get their "fair share" of the kindergarten tax.)

The bill provided that any school district that wished could use its share of the money (instead) "for first grade enrichment..." A kind of option sounding a bit like freedom of choice, "if they wished."

Hamilton's editorial closed with: "Supporters of the Craig bill insist it is not anti-kindergarten. Nevertheless, it would bring about the possibly fatal weakening of a promising new program, and on those grounds deserves to be opposed."

How about that? Even the famous Hall would have to go some to beat that, for, for, well, for freedom of choice, a kind of double-speak.

George Orwell's book "1984," written in the late 1940's, had a word for it called "newspeak." "It came from The Ministry of Truth," Orwell's novel went on, "The three slogans of the Party (1) War is Peace (2) Freedom Is Slavery (3) Ignorance Is Strength" - consistent?

A little bit like some of the old Lewiston Tribune editorials, isn't it? i.e., some genuinely liberal, but mostly interventionist.

Except for one significant difference: author Orwell's character, Winston, also wrote over and over again, "Down With Big Brother."

So far, the latter chant seems to be reserved for - you guessed it - Halloween.



All in the Good Name of Religion

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
March 31, 1975


Next to criticizing the news media and or their august members all it is at least likely that the second most controversial subject upon which cautious men refrain from expressing opinion is religion.

Having violated numerous other canons of media ethics, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, I should like to try to open a new vista on the subject hoping to avoid the likelihood of being misunderstood and certainly not intending the slightest offense to any particular church.

A case in point arises with an alarming number of church-goers on the matter of legalizing the sale of liquor on Sundays, which was considered then rejected by the late Idaho legislature, but it'll be back again.

Church efforts seem pitifully inadequate, hence many resort to the state's law against Sunday drinking and seem further to equate current moral decline with too much freedom. Quoting some of God's commandments, they say, "we, have slowly become a nation known for its freedoms." "We become appalled at the thought of communism, but go too far the other way." (i.e., in the name of religion we should pass more law). How's that for a contradiction?

They make a few good points though, and let me
hasten to add that I could be quite happy without liquor on weekdays as well as Sundays. As a matter of fact, I'd truly welcome its total disappearance, but of course it will not go away so how best to deal with it we may well ask.

Trying not to add to the problem might be a good place to begin, so let's take another look at it.

By way of a Iittle background, the recent legislature introduced 563 formal bills and 103 resolutions aside from the wad of those offered but rejected prior to floor debate. One had more than 1,700 pages which almost nobody read, it was so long. Small wonder weÕve less and less respect for the law.

Almost, every conceivable area of men's and women's lifetime activity seems called forth under the purview of the lawmaker's, or if you like, politician's infinite and compulsory wisdom. From licensing social workers, landscape artists, banks, loan sharks and accountants to an attempt at a law to make small auto accidents nobody's fault by raising the insurance premium on all those drivers who do not have accidents, the lawmakers labor long and assume monumental missions to meddle.

The above mentioned licenses in the Soviet Union are called work permits - a welcome example of intellectual honesty.

If it were not for what is in my opinion a fairly common thought pattern among many fine church going citizens, I would not call the matter to attention, but it is.

I have raised the question of separation of church and state generally and the matter of special interest legislation on tax preference for church affairs in particular to my Christian friends, asking them how we can maintain said separation when we beg for tax-free treatment. Why, I've often asked, do Christians frequently seek implementation of Òrespect for the Lord*s dayÓ by government edict?

Having visited at some length with both leadership and followership in each house of the recent Idaho legislature, I feel some constraint to raise again, the issue that freedom of religion, like that of all our other freedoms, might well be on the decrease rather than on the increase as discernible by even the most casual observer. It's at least an even chance that our lawmakers are as sincere as those advocates of more and more laws, more and more governors are suggesting even that in the name of "equal time."



Pandora's Box

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 6, 1975


Idaho's Democratic Governor Cecil Andrus Monday vetoed the recent legislature's bill (HB257) which was intended to reverse the trend of state agencies to hire their own lawyers.

Most everyone knows that government bureaus tend to grow too fast and too big, but not everyone deals with them. Therefore all too few have opportunities to see just how they go about growing and, in cases HB257 tries to treat, also become nearly autonomous.

One of the ways they do this is to hire their own lawyers. There is precedent for this, however, and since most law is subject to interpretation, here is where opening Pandora's box gets to be dynamite - particularly in a welfare state and particularly when the state's popular governor is clever at building a political power machine.

Former Gov. Robert Smylie hired his own legal counsel some years ago and although the general public is seldom aware of who pays the bill in such cases, not to mention the real reason as opposed to the reason which sounds good, whole departments too have hired private attorneys.

A case in point is Idaho's Department of Highways, which hired outside counsel during its 1959 flap with the controversial Attorney General Frank Benson.

In a brief prepared as background for Andrus by the office of the attorney general, the case of the Highway, Department's hiring their man was, instead, a case of their re-hiring a man who had been assigned to them by former Attorney General Graydon Smith in 1956. When Frank Benson succeeded Smith he "fired" the attorney and the highway commission hired him back.

Benson's tenure in office was indeed a fiery one and, according to the above brief, motivated in part, at least by an argument over the amount of money paid to him in a highway right of way seizure.

Whatever the reason for the highway department's own lawyer, Andrus chose to lean on yet another reason to veto the bill to restore the state's legal department to its former and, in the minds of a large majority of the state's, legislators, proper responsibility.

According to Andrus, HB257 "granted peace officer status to the attorney general . . . " and he therefore cut the bill's throat.

Now it has long been accepted that a state's attorney general is not only the state's lawyer but its chief law enforcement officer. Nobody thinks that means he is to get a badge and gun, jump in a patrol car and tear down the interstate at the federally imposed 55 m.p.h. and enforce the speed limit(s).

Still the governor says in his veto message the prior legislature "withdrew police officer status from agents of the attorney general and would be a step backwards . . ." and he's got a point. Interpretation, remember?


But more to the point, one muses, is probably the fact that Idaho's present chief legal eagle, Wayne Kidwell is a Republican. And despite the past months of sweetness and light between the state's two high office holders, the Democrats have a vested interest in staying in power, so one cannot do anything to help the opposition - can one?

Kidwell, needless to say, is understandably furious and it remains to be seen whether this will motivate him in a way that he can successfully show the people that there is a way to limit the autonomy and thus the power of the cancer called bureaucracy, but that more is needed than merely a governor's popularity.

H. L. Mencken, old sage of the then media, respected by both right and left, once said of the above kind of political monkey business: "What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better? The former assumption, I believe, is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false."

Me? I'm with Mencken.



That's News?

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 13, 1975


An editorial in the April 8 Wall Street Journal said some amazing things on cutting corporate taxes, e.g., "Our belief is that a majority in Congress understands that much of the economic weakness in the U.S. is due to the heavy tax on capital, magnified by inflation, and that the most direct way to stimulate (the economy) would come through a reduction in the corporate tax rate."

But votes in Congress are not taken in secret, the editorial went on, and so the Republicans and Democrats are not likely to do much besides politics-as-usual, even though they know better.


Many other reasons are offered, including a question said editorial asks " ... perhaps the schools have not been selling the role of the corporation in a free economy."

In a burst of candor, the editorial of the financial "Bible" of Wall Street gave birth to an almost-revelation: ...the truth is American businessmen have done a pitiful job in making the arguments for a cut in the tax on capital."


We should feel indebted to the Journal for this observation on American businessmen, but any further thought at all forces one to shrug. "that's news? "

Businessmen with a pitiful number of exceptions, have not been "selling" the role of anything in a "free economy." Indeed, one is led to wonder if the great majority of them know anything about it at all, not to mention know anything about the role of the smallest minority, the individual, in a free society.

Comes now (on April 7) to Boise and Caldwell a new man proposing to do just that. He is Roger Lea McBride, author, lawyer, TV producer and freedom-merchant.

McBride is the chief contending candidate for president of the United States of the Libertarian Party, which calls itself "the party of principle." A dinner was held in his honor at the Rodeway Inn Sunday and at a press conference Monday, the former employe, writer and reporter from the Idaho Statesman who now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, outlined for newsmen some of the goals and principles that his Libertarian Party intended to sell.

Among those, McBride said, are the "radical" ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Adam Smith, Lysander Spooner, Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodrov.

McBride receive national publicity in 1972 as a presidential electoral college elector when be refused to cast his ballot for either RepubLican candidate Richard Nixon or Democratic Candidate George McGovern.

Instead, he cast his vote for Libertarian Party candidates Dr. John Hospers, philosophy department head at the University of Southern California, and Tam Nathan of Eugene, Oregon. The latter is the first woman in American history to ever receive an electoral college vote.

By contemporary labels, McBride explained, the Libertarian Party is neither left nor right wing. It bases its political position on one single premise: "that each individual has the absolute right to exercise sole dominion over his or her own life, liberty and property so long as he or she also respects the equal right of all others to live their lives by the same principle.

Notwithstanding the news mediaÕs relish for sensationalizing the unusual, we might well look forward to hearing an unusually hopeful platform of freedom and political ideas from this unusually fine, bright, forthright and articulate young man who somehow managed to graduate from Harvard University without concluding that Washington, D.C., was the seat of the world's greatest "religion," (i.e., the U.S. government). A fact of reality to which all too many of the men in America's corporations, both great and small, seem forever blind.

The capitalistÕs Wall Street Journal is to be congratulated but still isn't likely to get the real message through to its dull-witted clients. Perhaps McBride can.



The Big Gray Ooze of Politics

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
April 20, 1975


State Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter of Caldwell "took a swipe at six of his moderate colleagues at a recent cocktail party ..." in Boise recently.

According to an article in the Idaho Statesman, Otter "reportedly said six of his fellow party members have to go." "For that statement apparently made in a crowded room Otter has been branded immature."

It is interesting how the Boise paper carefully uses both the words "reportedly" and "apparently" and takes the occasion of a cocktail party (shades of PT Barnum's circus) as the peg upon which to hang a story.

It is a happy result they did though, for it presents an opportunity to clarify some thoughts almost totally obscured by what Idaho's 1st District congressman Steve Symms refers to as "the big gray ooze of politics."

The above article quotes the outspoken legislator from Canyon County who fought long and hard to protect what he saw as a serious erosion of peoples' right to own property. Certainly if they don't control it more than many now in government advocate (read, land use planning) they certainly don't own it.

Although one seldom hears it enthusiastically discussed at the legislature, o in the person of its leading advocate, Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, the institution of private ownership is the main difference between our system and the system of our friends the socialists. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR - remember?

Now this is not to suggest Otter's antagonists are socialists, nor even the Statesman for that matter, although one wonders at their glee when Otter gets some setbacks after his candid and forthright efforts to tell it like it is. Or, if you like, how he thinks it is.

The news column goes on to quote Otter, "It is hard for me to understand how I can be a Republican ... along with those so-called moderates and liberals." While the news item doesn't exactly say who Otter says "has to go" they quote some interesting Republicans. For example: "Rep. Peggy Bunting of Boise, "I think it is a mark of immaturity for some Republicans to accuse on issues that are not partisan." Then Rep. Rudy Anderson also for Boise, "Otter does not represent the Republican party. He represents the far right John Birch approach."

Mrs. Bunting is a friendly person like Anderson, and sincere, too. As a matter of fact Rudy is so sincere it hurts. I'm sure neither considers themselves to be a socialist - just sincere. But consider if you will, in an honest and sincere way, a statement or two of theirs the Statesman neglected to mention.

Upon the question of whether to return Idaho's tax surplus to those who paid it (tax relief) or to those who need it (redistribution) Mrs. Bunting said, "I don't want to be called a capitalist." A dirty word, no less.

The opposite of a capitalist, gentle reader, is of course a socialist but Peggy didn't choose to comment on that either - assuming she knows the difference. Rep. Maurice Clements (R-Canyon) also a colleague of Otter's challenged her, attempting to explain the difference but without much luck.

Rep. Anderson is in the optometric business in Boise and in the best tradition of sincere politicians pushes a law making it illegal for those making eyeglasses to advertise their prices. The word "price" must be a dirty word, too.

Now then that's not socialistic either, that's merely like what the jackass said as he boarded Noah's ark, "Now that I'm safely on board boys, please haul in the gang-plank."

Anderson is quoted as saying, "The public is sick and tired of cheap, two-bit politicians trying to create partisan issues..."

Well, I'd guess, so it Otter sick - of both Democrats AND Republicans. But mostly of the latter, whose principles, if indeed they have ever stopped to clearly define them for voters, might shine the light of day on the big gray ooze and, like sun on a foggy day, burn right through it. Or make it foggier?

"In conclusion, let me say that the best proof of an intellectual movement's collapse is the day when it has nothing to offer as an ultimate ideal but a plea for "moderation." Such is the final proof of collectivism's bankruptcy." That's from Ayn Rand; wish I said that.

Let me hasten to add that any resemblance between the Republican party and an "intellectual movement" is purely coincidental, i.e., if one is to judge from these people.

One gets the feeling that Otter thinks, like the economist Ludwig von Mises, that the average man is both better informed and less corruptible when buying in the marketplace than when voting in political elections.



Don't Blame the Regents

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Press Tribune
April 26. 1975


Some time ago the Idaho State Board of Regents announced the intention to close the UniversityÕs School of Architecture and School of Mines and while a suit has been filed against the board alleging an implied contract with architectural students to finish their schooling, it seems unlikely it wilt change the regents' thinking.

One can sympathize with the "czars" of Idaho's education system, which is at once both free and compulsory, but since our state plays such an important part in mining and metals one wonders why its School of Mines has fallen upon such hard times, i.e., attracts so few students, especially in an era when education is nearly a state "religion "all over America.

A major share of the nation's strategic minerals commodities come from Idaho - 50 per cent of our antimony, 50 per cent of our silver, 14 per cent of our lead, 10 to 12 per cent of our zinc and 8 to 10 per cent of our phosphate and many others, producing welcome numbers of jobs and commerce. Few in our state are so critical of education, both public and private (what's left of it) as this writer, but more is going on here than is currently getting attention. We should not merely pass our buck to the lovely Chairperson Janet Hay and her government board of education, then go back to sleep. After all, most of them are well educated and quite sincere.

More than one observer has begun to question our blind faith in today's "state religion," including many educators, but they understandably fear rocking the boat.

Maybe a little background is in order. Social critic Phillip Wylie has developed the idea that we are becoming a nation of non-persons, engaging in "nothing education,Ó Ònothing readership," "nothing citizenship,Ó Ònothing art," and "nothing music." He describes our society, as a "generation of zeros" produced by an educational system which avoids the creation of any "trauma" for the individual student, from which all competition, all discipline, and all possibility of low grades have been removed from the student's path. He cites television as the creator of nothing readers.

He cites the current population of students who all too often are for nothing and who often assume no role or responsibility in their society except that of criticism and nihilism as nothing citizens and eventually nothing persons. He finds the total absence of creativity in much of modern art as a demonstration of nothing art and levels much the same charge against modern music.

Least of all that the modern student seems trained in, concerning the music, is the ability to "face it."
Still, Idaho's board of regents is getting far too much criticism for closing the "losing departments" of education, and although our mining students are generally a welcome exception to Phillip Wylie's scenario, they ARE few in number. They were BEFORE most of the regents came to power, so it's not all the regents' fault.

This writer heard an important officer of the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce recently declare that land use planning was necessary since Ò... we are just stewards of the land" and private ownership therefore is justifiably downgraded in these times.

Sad as this is, it is not uncommon. It is exactly this kind of "Boise-Caldwell Chamber of Commerce" mentality, or lack of it, if you like, that is causing the Idaho regents to close down producer oriented schooling. (Only 5 per cent of U.S. bachelor degrees in 1973 were in engineering, 66 per cent in social studies.)

Of course, like many others, the Caldwell chamber official understands that not all private owners will agree on a given "land use plan" so we need a little POWER for those who dissent. The fact that the installation of private ownership, as an institution, is almost never considered; yes, even unto being the essential difference between our system and that of the Soviet Socialist Republics seems of interest only to those men like Idaho Congressman Steve Symms.

Today's students are too often told to write their congressman if they need a little power instead of "prepare for a job" with their education, then OWN something.

But, this power corrupts, remember? Keep in mind the Bobby Bakers, the dairy producers' payoff to the Democrats, and Watergate, etc., etc., (ad nauseam).

The late Prof. Ortega y Gasset, an authority on liberty, predicted it: "The result of this tendency will be fatal.

"Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by state intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify (make fruitful). Society will have to live for the state, man FOR the governmental machine. And as, after all, it is only a machine, whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the state after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery..."

No, don't blame Idaho's board of education. fn a strange, misguided, even sincere sort of way they are reacting to a market-below cost. And under government ownership.



Take Another Look

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Press Tribune
May 3, 1975


Sometime ago I received a friendly solicitation to buy tickets for the annual Policeman's Ball. Last year, after a similar request, I phoned a friend at the police station to inquire as to what the money was to be used for, i.e., assuming of course that they made a profit.

The pleasant and enthusiastic response was that most of it would go to various charities, and a small / fesidue would go to the policeman's fund for widows and injured officers. A major emphasis was that it was intended to help the policeman's "image" which, as most everyone is aware, has suffered much these part years.

A laudable purpose indeed, since nearly everyone knows peace officers' public relations have, indeed, gone downhill and the overwhelming majority of them deserve a much better status in our society - but BUYING it by a "recycling" of funds to give to charity leaves something seriously lacking.


Now for a little background. Several years ago I participated in a rather successful effort to build a pistol shooting range, near Lake Lowell, for our local lawmen, and received their warm and friendly thanks as well any my own satisfaction for doing what I saw as a fitting community service. It therefore follows, I think, that the law enforcement officers tended to think of me and the others who helped as their friends. I am, let me assure you, but some of them seemed surprised that I rejected these later altruistic motives (theirs) to serve as a sort of United Fund agent to collect and redistribute charitable contributions, especially for "image" purposes.

One might well reason that our country's foreign policy of "buying friends" through similar acts of charity, however well intended, has come much nearer convincing policemen than it has most underdeveloped countries around the world.

Last week this writer received another phone call, this time the male voice said he represented the Idaho Peace Officers Association in conjunction with the sheriff's office in a similar money raising scheme, but the residue, if any, was this time to go toward building an indoor pistol range, for peace officers, the rest to charity.

Since this was my third solicitation with a subsequent negative reply I may have been a bit too hasty with the fellow who was obviously "turned-off" with my irritation. Later I learned that some outfit merely does the phone solicitations, using the sheriff's office name, for a percentage - a rather large one too, according to my informant.

If to raise the image and public relations, of lawmen in our community is really a good goal and I think it certainly is, why not let's raise these monies so that 100 per cent goes to the benefit of the policemen's OWN projects - not toward some other, worthy cause which merely changes the label of the givers.

And while we're on the subject of public-relations and assuming this writer to be as good a friend of peace officers as he thinks he is - perhaps a suggestion is in order to his fellow citizens, the peace officers.

How does it affect the policemen's image to arrest a well-known and respected person who has lived in the community 25 years and longer, handcuff his hands behind him, haul him to the station and book him like a common criminal in the absence of his resisting arrest?

One instance of this involved a Nampa person asleep in his own car after consuming legal booze, one instance a Caldwell person accused of threatening another in a public place with many witnesses to the fact that no violence was at all indicated and NO booze. All that was required was a plain request, "Please come down to the station."

I know of two of these men (it has happened to others) both are good citizens. I phoned the police station to complain of such seeming police-state tactics only to be told that, "All law enforcement, agencies use such a procedure so that minority groups cannot claim discrimination." Some minority members, tend, too often, to use a knife on the police, so the report goes, so they don't like to risk it without handcuffs. "If we do it, with handcuffs to one, we have to do it to all." How's THAT for a public relations problem?

This column tends toward the observation that America's foreign policy is pathologically irrational, but it may be that the local law agencies are merely following "big brother" and the policy is not so foreign after all. I think there is a connection here someplace.

Too bad the liberals tend to be the only ones who notice the police, and the conservatives the ones who notice only the government.



More Stale Bread

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune
May 10, 1975


The University of Idaho and the state itself is in many ways lucky to have a president like Dr. Ernest Hartung. I say in "many ways" since, like the rest of us he puts his pants on one leg at a time, i.e., he's human and a pretty regular guy.

But in many other ways his similarity with the rest of us stops there. He's very intelligent, in a certain sense very practical, usually very candid and has guts, though not necessarily in that order of importance.

In the current issue of "Context," the University tabloid circulated to the alumni, there appears an interesting interview with Hartung assessing the effects of the 1975 legislature and raising some good questions.

Now bear in mind that this man is hired, in addition to educate students, to (1) further the interests of the U of I (2) manage the operation fairly efficiently for the state (3) get along with most of the faculty, and in order to do the first three he must (4) survive himself.

It's nearly impossible to lift from context (no pun) and preserve all of a speaker's meanings in most any critical commentary, but try we must, and I'll hope to preserve Dr. Hartung's context for he and I serve together on one of the government's give-away boards and though more liberal than I, he's a pretty good guy.

"Our salary scales generally are low," Hartung reported but, "I don't think the faculty here is money hungry in any sense of the word." One wonders, really now, just what'd be wrong if indeed they were money hungry - provided of course they produced a service the consumer ordered.

After nicely covering for Idaho Gov. Andrus' not raising salaries too high then perhaps having to cut them back in a possible recession, Ò...makes for a very great lack of stability" Hartung recovered with, "We are obviously in trouble in the law school the next time we come up for accreditation in terms of enhancing our faculty because of low salaries."

On the question of collective bargaining for faculty, the university chief said, "A bigger issue ... is the new proposed regent's policy, on tenure, hiring, firing and termination under tenure ... is more of a catalytic agent in thoughts about collective bargaining..."

Hartung went on to respond that there were "advantages and disadvantages..." (to a labor union), reminding us of the
politician's tactic to avoid a stand on a controversial issue: "Some of my friends are for it and some of my friends are against it, and I always vote with my friends."

Hartung turned thumbs-down on Idaho's having a chancellor system, i.e., one Òczar" of education rather than one president for each campus as it is now, but he thought the regents were right on closing the school of architecture (at Idaho State University) or else their authority to run joint programs would be shot right down.

Perhaps the most amazing statement of the interview was Hartung's opposition to raising students' tuition and labeling, as you'd expect, "higher education as the salvation of the future of this country." He did not agree with many who say "the student gets the education, therefore he or she should pay for it." Explaining a bit he went on, "Rather it's more important that the better educated citizenry, the better a country, state, or local government we are going to have."
One must search long and hard to find an educator these days who isn't literally breaking his neck to make government efficient - as though higher education was indeed, as many nowadays claim, almost completely dedicated to the "fact" that the marketplace's betterment was all but important, if not ridiculous.

An exception is the famous Prof. Milton Friedman, economist of the University of Chicago who says, "The problem is not that we're spending too little money, though we may be - but that we are getting so little per dollar spent."

Who knows, maybe Hartung would like to say that but hasn't that much guts? Still I insist he does indeed have, because his comment on attempts to set up a legislative committee to oversee the regents and board of education were in part: "...a political move to enhance the legislature's position..." also, "The legislature, in coming in for 60 days, plus however many they want to stay beyond the legal limit... cannot assume the functions of the regents." How's that for telling it like it is?

Fortunately or unfortunately, perhaps like all too many of the rest of us - politicians included - President Hartung knows which side his bread is buttered oh. But like the U.S. Post Office and the railroads, whose competition is illegal, THAT "bread" is becoming awfully stale.



Liberals Have More Fun ....

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune
May 17, 1975


"It's too bad the liberals have all the fun -they just about do you know."

Thus ended a recent observation in this column, sad perhaps, but true. Comes now some long overdue humor for our side, and in a funny and disjointed sort of way, containing a thread through it all - see if there's a connection in your opinion, with the present state of asininity in Idaho and world affairs.

Two cartoons called "The Small Society" by Brickman appeared in a newspaper last week. The first of the two male characters depicted says, "Hoo-Boy! times sure have changed -." The second character responds, "Yeah, even the millionaires don't seem to have much money today."

The second cartoon showed the first character again with, "What this country needs is a leader." The response came back, "WHY? It's not as if we're going anyplace."

In the same week's newspaper another sort of comic strip appeared, this time in the form of a column by David Warnick, a student at the University of Idaho and chairperson of the Idaho College Young Republicans. Warnick, a nice young man and very liberal by most standards, called for the resignation of incumbent Idaho Second District Congressman George Hansen, an outspoken orthodox conservative recently convicted of late filing election expenses and other illegal technicalities.

Warnick said in effect, "Why of course Hansen should resign, he ADMITTED he's guilty." (Never mind of what). Among other things Warnick omitted was the fact that he and Hansen agree on very little else, too. Orval Hansen, a liberal GOP'er recently defeated by George, being the apple of Warnick's eye.

The college Young Republican gave some other "reasons" why he thought George Hansen should resign, most of which reminded this writer of another Mormon politician of by-gone days. Presidential candidate George Romney ADMITTED he was "brainwashed," and that admission alone destroyed him as a viable candidate.

All of which "govern-mentality" serves to remind me of a fun sort of letter I received the other day inviting me to join in some familiar sounding mental gymnastics.

It said, "A group of us are considering investing in a large cat ranch near Hermosillo, Mexico. It is our purpose to start rather small with about 1,000,000 cats. Each cat averages about 12 kittens each year. Skins can be sold for about 20 cents for the white ones and up to 40 cents for the black. This will give us 12 million cat skins per year to sell at an average price of around 30 cents making our revenue about $3,000,000 a year. This averages out to about $10,000 a day excluding Sundays and holidays.

A good Mexican cat man can skin about 50 cats per day at a wage of $3.15 per day. It will only take 663 men to operate the ranch, so the net profit would be over $8,200 per day.

Now the cats would be fed on rats exclusively. Rats multiply four times as fast as cats. We would start a rat ranch adjacent to our cat farm. If we start with a million rats, we will have four rats per cat per day. The rats will be fed on the carcasses of the cats that we skin. This will give each rat one-fourth of a cat. You can see by this that this business is a clean operation, self-supporting and really environmentally sound throughout. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skins for nothing.

Eventually, it is my hope to cross the cats with snakes, for they will skin themselves twice a year. This will save the labor costs of skinning as well as giving two skins for one cat. With the taxes maybe we could pay off this years government deficit.



Let's Be Honest

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune
May 24, 1974


Some of the Idaho editorial opinion critical of Rep. George Hansen could be a study in contradictions when viewed with one perspective, but could also point up something else which perhaps has escaped our attention.

Said editorials cluck cluck Second Dist. Congressman George Hansen's appointment to the House Internal Security Committee which "...is the successor to what they call the old witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee. They claim it is a circus and no longer taken seriously."

A good place for Hansen, one gleans from these critics who can hardly stomach either him or the committee, and for that matter, conservatives generally.

They may have a worthy point even if, maybe, their intent is only to poor-mouth Hansen AND the committee.

Consider U.S. Senator Lowell Weiker, 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 politician's 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 how proposes to regulate them back INTO business via Amtrak and paid for by deficit financing.

A headline in one Idaho newspaper said, "Boise Valley People Support Amtrak Routes to Calif." Why shouldn't they? The cost of the losses 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. 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 Commission 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 lable as "nationalizing" the railroads? Why don't we hear the representatives of the so-called "private" railroad corperations, i.e., their lobbyists, asking questions like this and using labels as HONEST as the British labor party?

In the unlikely event profit isn't yet a dirty word - certainly private-ownership is getting to be. Too bad so few businessmen are so dull-witted to this condition.

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 these particular editors are right, that George Hansen and the anti-Communists are no longer taken seriously, and their House committee a circus. As between what the communists want and what we're doing I Òvoluntarily" - only the clowns think there's a difference.



They Have the Fun

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune
June 7, 1975


This column tries from time to time to point out inconsistencies and unwarranted bias in the news media - not always with success.

The reasons are varied. Specific examples, although helpful, can be cited to prove almost any allegation and "No generalization," said the famous Justice Holmes, "is worth a damn, including this one." Still one must try, if only to be something else than a mere spectator.


My attempts at this are somewhat frustrated inasmuch as I do not see said bias as necessarily malicious, i.e., after all, those papers who print this column do so, to their credit, fully aware that it is often antagonistic to their point of view. Oh they're biased all right, so am I, but it's not just simply to sell newspapers - there's more to it than that.

For example (forgive me) last week this column attempted to point out a particularly glaring example of bias in the state's largest newspaper in their treatment of Bunker Hill 'Mine's (Wallace, Idaho) pollution problems and some laudatory comments by government officials toward the mining company's efforts to solve them. The alleged bias was both in editorial comments and in the emphasis, rather the lack of it, in the treatment of the "good" side of the story, vi a viz, along side of their policy claim to do just the opposite-balance, fair play and reasonable consistency. Not all the papers that usually publish this writer printed the particular column (probably my best this year).

One mild inquiry resulted in an editor's observation that he didn't think it was a good idea for them to attack (sic) another newspaper.

Now then that's a bit hard for this writer to comprehend, but then there is the old saw, "There is honor even among thieves." I jest, of course, but truth is in a jest, and I'm the first to admit that my side is not so very consistent also.

For example (forgive me again) The Wall Street Journal Monday, June 2, carries an article about Senator's Jacob Javits, R.-N.Y., and Hubert Humphrey, D.-Wis., who are jointly proposing legislation (Another law? Well, again this is to be done in the executive office of the President) to be called an Economic Planning Board. "The board would prepare a long-term plan for the economy," the WSJ article relates, "perhaps because of the existence of all those five-year plans overseas (why don't they SAY Russia?) the proposed legislation does not specify the term for the U.S. plan."

I submit that such a plan, i.e., a forerunner similar to socialist Russia's defunct "five-year" plans, is consistent with Sen. Humphrey's Democratic party somewhat more than it is with Sen. Javit's Republican party. At least if one listens to their party's claims to "principles."

As an aside it is interesting to hear first Dist. Congressman Steve Symms touting the GOP and why he's a Republican-on TV yet - presumably because their principles are better than the Democrats. Some of us feel that far better 'twould have been had Symms saw fit to suggest - on TV - that his GOP give something besides lip service to the principles they (we) claim to believe in. Symms has, in the past and to his credit, done so. Still on the last page of George Orwell's book, "Animal Farm," he said, "After the animals, led by the pigs, took over Farmer Jones' farm it got harder and harder to tell the pigs from the people."


But Orwell's observation of inconsistency applies not only to some Idaho newspapers and the Republican party (protests to the contrary notwithstanding) but believe it or not, the WSJ article quotes Leonard Woodcock of the auto worker's Union: "The unseen magic of the so-called free market does not work." At least Woodcock knows what side he's on. Then the article says of the GOP senator from New York, (a Republican yet) "Senator Javits believes that economic planning is entirely consistent with less government interference in the private economy..." The WSJ's article, "sensible planning" could be useful if everyone remained "aware of its limitations."

Perhaps I've been too critical of the liberal media. To the extent that Symms and the GOP, the Wall Street Journal and I are on the same side, I must admit that "our side's" rather obvious attempts to SUCK and BLOW in the same breath are not much better than their's. Especially in light of one of the few facts in all this balderdash which is that THEY seem to be having all the fun.



Consent...and Capitalism

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune
June 14, 1975


Much is being said these days, though not always publicly, about rejuvenating the Republican party in order to restore the two-party system (what a laugh). The theory being that, since Watergate, the GOP is in bad shape.

Just what Watergate had to do with it isn't exactly clear except that "they" got CAUGHT doing some things quite integral to both parties for years and years, and while one can indeed find "a dime's worth of difference" upon occasion, the greatest difference between the two parties is that they back different people, not different ideas, for office.

Witness the senate of the State of Washington last week which passed a bill increasing the amounts small loan companies can lend from the present $1,000 to $3,500 and lowering the interest rates from 36 per cent to 30 per cent, but raising them on loans of amounts most often borrowed. What the news story, neglected was, of course, just how the two political parties differed on this issue. Probably because there wasn't much difference. Both parties have blind faith in controls and no faith in free markets.
Missing, too, was any mention of the fact that entry into the small loan company market is limited by law. Remove the laws limiting competition and the people' borrowing would get a real break, but so far no "NEWS" on such a debate. One wonders if indeed anyone GIVES a damn.

Another report this week from Grangeville was headlined "Betty's Steam Baths Closed." The text of the news item defines Betty's as a "house of prostitution." A judge Thursday "ordered perpetual abatement of the public and moral nuisance" following an afternoon of detailed testimony by Idaho Department of Law Enforcement investigators who said they were offered the services of two prostitutes at Betty's Aug. 22, 1974.

Now then, The Lewiston Morning Tribune's reporter of this story quoted politicians of neither political party, and while
this may be understandable one remembers the news media's clarion call, "the people's right to know." Well, at least the reporter did not mention, nor even imply that the police investigators were attacked. Rather he quoted them as saying they were "offered the services" of the girls at Betty's, apparently in the best spirit of voluntary peace and freedom for everyone.
What's all this have to do with the two party system? Just this - unless Grangeville's police are so overworked keeping the peace or so unreliable or Betty's girls are savage Amazons so that Idaho Department of Law Enforcement investigators had to intervene in their behalf, my guess is that the politicians are in there somewhere, behind the scenes perhaps, but meddling no less trying to do away with local control. At best, confusing an otherwise perfectly peaceful and local situation.


"Crimes against the state" these affairs are called and even the news media tends to pussy-foot with both Democrat and Republican politicians in them. So similar is the intellectual dishonesty, or at least constipation, of both parties toward the free market that it escapes the attention of all but the most perceiving newspersons.

Comes now Harvard University's Prof. Robert Nozik, former liberal recently converted to libertarian views. According to the current issue of SIL News (Society of Individual Liberty, Box 1147 Warminster, Pa.) in an item headlined, "How Is Business Different From Sex?" at last we get some insights: "If you want to know (but were always afraid to ask) see the "Forbes Magazine" interview in the 3-1575 issue with author Nozik ("Anarchy, State and Utopia") who sees this question as the major stumbling block in 'converting' people to libertarianism: "a position that says, 'you have to allow 'people independence', didn't particularly threaten people at the time of the American Revolution - but it seems to today." On socialism: "The trouble with socialism is that it prohibits capitalist acts between consenting adults. I think certain people have a hard time explaining why it is legitimate for the government to intervene in exchanges, but not legitimate to intervene in the sexual realm."

Pick up a copy and, read the interview.



Letter to the Editor

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Statesman
June 21, 1975


Idaho conservatives still read The Idaho Statesman published in Boise now for 111 years, at least some of them do. Oh, sure, some read it out of habit and some perhaps read it mostly to renew their hatred, i.e., for what they see in its pages as anti-just-about-everything-politically-conservative. So they complain.

Comes now the publisher of said journal of freedom of the press, Robert Miller, Jr. with trumpet-to-ear laying all claims to liberal bias, political bias and anti-capitalistic bias ever so gently to rest by - you guessed it - listening.

Having heard the complaints, Miller lays them all to rest in his column in Sunday's paper May 25. They provide some interesting observations, and, to many, a contradiction or two, so let's look.

Miller cites a common bumper sticker seen around Boise which says "Happiness would be another newspaper". But another newspaper is not necessary according to him because, "We're sparing no effort to report what in our judgment is the most important news of any given day. And we're attempting to do this in an accurate, balanced and complete manner." The key word, of course, is Miller's "what in our opinion is...balanced."

Conservatives, generally, find no trouble at all believing they express their opinion---even to including it in their news stories.

The publisher's column continues, "The post-World War II pattern has shown that failing newspapers were usually inadequate newspapers. The Statesman will never be inadequate." But conservatives are prone to ask: inadequate for whom and, if we may, against whom? Few are those who question their adequacy for liberal news and opinion, Gov. Andrus' and Sen. Church's.

The affable and seemingly sincere news chief lays to rest the fears of eastern dictatorship with, "Despite all this, Gannett has always practiced complete editorial autonomy. At the Statesman, we make all out news decisions locally, as it should be. "What he must mean is that they let all their local liberals make their local liberal policy locally. All of which may very well be true. My guess is that the "eastern" influence, long claimed by many conservatives, just isn't necessary. Their idea of "balance" is to find two liberals who disagree.

Perhaps the crowning glory of Miller's Sunday defense was that of monopoly status for his paper. Though recognizng the electronic media as significant competitors, his main defense was to admit to the charge, "The record has proven some advantage to a newspaper monopoly, It reduces sensationalism."

That's an exact quote---protestations of the government's anti-trust dept. to the contrary notwithstanding---Whose ox is being gored?

However, in the final analysis, Miller may have a point in his "reducing sensationalism." Most of us remember the lengthy coverage on the leading pages of his paper last fall and some last week given to Bunker Hill Mining Co. in Wallace, Idaho. Almost the entire coverage about environmental damage and air pollution was BAD news for the capitalistic Bunker Hill Co.

Whether Idahoans see this huge mining company and the hundreds of jobs they provide as good or bad - savior or savage - is not the point. The point is that after what many see as severe and lengthy coverage on the NEGATIVE aspects of Bunker Hill's pollution problems in Miller's paper, they did finally report that Idaho's Health and Welfare Director Dr. James Bax actually praised Bunker Hill for doing a good job. They reported Dr. Bax's praise in the very same Sunday paper as Miller's column on balanced news.

No doubt to avoid sensationalism, however, the Bax story on the POSITIVE side of the mining company's efforts appeared down in the middle of page 17, section B. All 13 lines of the story, one column wide, took exactly two inches.

Less than one-fourth the size of a food stamp.



Can Compulsory Schools Be Free?

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
June 22, 1975


Idaho's education establishment has for some time now come under considerable criticism for what many claim to be dirty words in text books. The critic's claims have been difficult for the public to analyze since the news media, while quite ready to publish stories about the controversy are unwilling to tell the public exactly what those words are. Said words are "not appropriate in a family newspaper.

The critics reason, "Well then why won't the press attack the school book policy if the words are too bad for family newspapers?"

A reasonable question, one assumes, with the possible exception of the problem of context. The matter of context often goes wanting in many news stories taking words and phrases out of context, sometimes understandably due to limited space, but what about the press's claim: "the people's right to know?"

Mrs. Janet Hay, president of the Idaho Board of Education said last week she was concerned over a "body of public opinion" which, would restrict the scope of studies in public schools and endanger the nation's freedoms.

The sincere and charming Mrs. Hay, well known champion of most liberal ideas about education, told the Idaho 4-H Congress that "any government which supports a system of schools which limits or censors books and ideas is cheating its young people."

Each of the above positions has some merit, but one can't help wondering why, for example, so many educators and public servants resist courses for free enterprise in the public schools. Last week one of the Eastern states passed a law requiring such a course. The law was received by educators with about the same enthusiasm as one could expect for a Zionist Jew in downtown Cairo.
I phoned Mrs. Hay myself last year to inquire how we might increase the school's emphasis on free enterprise and the free market. She told me that hers was a "policy of hands off interfering with the academic contents." She was nice about it, she's a nice person, but that's about as far as we got.

Oh yes, another quote from her speech to the 4-H Congress was, "Ideas are the very stuff of human life and civilization." One guesses it depends a little upon whose.

Curious too, is the silence of education's "dirty word" critics about the fact that the schools to which they must send their children are, to a large extent, compulsory (sounds different than "free," doesn't it?).

Each of the above problems poses certain legitimate questions, which indicates that only those in power will get to decide - suggesting, perhaps, eternal conflict. Or, a new idea.

One idea, new to many, is the encouragement of privately sponsored, privately administered pedagogical techniques. "I'll teach your children to read for $75 apiece." An extension of this innovative approach to education is the gradual loosening of the superstitions that publicly administered education is the most desirable kind for everyone. Parents who want them could (should?) receive vouchers, exchangeable at private schools of one's choosing. The social purpose would be to permit the examination and choosing between various ideas and development of individuals according to the claims as advertised by the particular school, which could adept to the special needs of those who have special needs.

Those fearing a voucher system might pass another law requiring that any sex in public schools be taught by the economics of history departments. Precedent says then it'd be so dull it wouldn't make any difference.



Applause to Politicians

By Ralph Smeed
News Tribune
June 28, 1975


Canyon County has half a brand new courthouse. The second half of the new county building complex located in the county seat of Caldwell will be built at a later date. Both halves, of course, were authorized by a recent bond election successful only after several earlier ones had failed over several years time.

The old courthouse is indeed just that old, so one wonders why so many times the elections for a new one failed.

In this day and age of one-man - one-vote we hear much of the "peoples choice," but then when the powers that be do not like that choice, somehow it often gets buried. Remember the referendum that Idahoans used to tell the legislators they were not to give themselves an increase in pay? Overwhelming mandate: "No added pay." Well, you see just how long said mandate lasted - they voted themselves an increase the following year. Whether or not more pay was justified is another question. CaldwellÕs own city hall, for example, was started in 1956 soon after a city-wide election said, "No."

The talk around Canyon County now is whether or not the present county commissioners would be justified in having their three names cast in bronze on one of the plaques commemorating the new courthouse.

A question arises should they decide to add their names, (1) Two of the commissioners were not in office when the election took place and (2) the one who, perhaps more than any other single person, led the battle for the new courthouse was soundly defeated in the last election.

All of which serves to bring up another question. While it is true that precedent does exist for politicians to place their names on public buildings, bridges, road signs telling highway users not to litter, signed by the governor; certificates of notary public upon which, for years, the incumbent governor's name has the dominant size type - thence to be hung in offices all over the state. Presumably the "memorial" is deserved merely because the candidate won an election.

This writer has tried, unsuccessfully, for the past three sessions of the Idaho legislature to get a bill introduced making it illegal for a politician to place his name on any state property for any reason.

A possible exception like stationery or a name on an office door might be in order.

The "pyramids" of today, although seldom pointed like those in ancient Egypt, are nonetheless pyramids, i.e., monuments to politicians and bureaucrats who seldom paid any more toward the monument than any other hard-pressed taxpayer. Indeed, most were paid a salary. And some, like Senator Fulbright, D-Ark., sponsor of. the legislation for Fulbright scholarships for college professors was still in office to enjoy the personal credit for many years. A spectacular bridge near San Pedro, Calif. bears the name of Vincent Thomas, the state politician who helped promote it - not pay for it. So far as I know he's still in office.

The question of whose name should go on public structures has been with us a long time. The Egyptian Emperor Ramses II built a staggering number of memorials to himself. Gary and Pyne's book "Sun, Stones and Silence," Simon and Schuster 1963, a fascinating account of ancient "politicians" says this about Ramses: "He had the dictator's temper, never happier than when he heard the applause paid for from the public purse."

Today we're paying for the same applause-- even if in a slightly more sophisticated manner.

When will we wise up to the fact that the free advertisements for politicians are not free, and generally speaking, not wise?



Let Them Drop Out

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell News - Tribune
July 5, 1975


Recently this column was mildly critical of Idaho's Board of Education, in general, and board Chairman, Janet Hay of Nampa, in particular. Mrs. Hay was quoted as saying something to the effect that an education system which censored sex and four-letter words from the textbooks and discussions denied students an important part of their education.

Some of us try to point out to the charming, if indeed too liberal, lady chairperson that other forms of censorship also should merit her critical, perhaps caring, criticism - namely, the near total censorship or denial in the school system of legitimate recognition of free market alternatives.

One of organized labor's early political triumphs was the passage of laws to prevent young people from competing with union members, i.e., child labor laws,and compulsory attendance laws and so, since State Superintendent of Public Schools Roy Truby apparently received so much enthusiastic support from organized labor, we'll be interested to see if his political allegiance will override his reasonable and academically-free support of free market alternatives and individual freedom to which government educators usually give only lip service.

Robert Poole, editor of Reason magazine (Box 6151, Santa Barbara, CA), writing in the July issue says, "These laws on child labor and compulsory attendance have long been among the most hallowed of sacred cows - anyone proposing their repeal was castigated as a heartless beast." (Idaho's First Dist. Congressman Steve Symms may be an exception. He said it and won twice). But the past decade has seen a new appreciation of the harm done to many children by compulsory attendance, especially past junior high school, when many would he happier and better off learning a trade. To the humane voices of education critics like John Holt and Ivan Illich has now been added that of U.S. Commissioner of Education Terrel H. Bell (Idaho CDP might well take note).

In a speech in March, Bell attacked the present practice of forcing teenagers to remain in school: "Since many young people are more attracted to the seeming freedom of work than they are to school during adolescence, it would seem right to give them the opportunity to work" ... If we remove bureaucratic barriers to our educational institutions, I think we will see some truly self-education taking place."

But innovation rears its ugly (i.e., to the establishment) head even in the public schools. At least it did in Parkrose, Ore., recently, Senior high school social science teacher Cliff Allen (Newsweek June 2,1975) leads his students through the trials and tribulations of married life. Instead of the traditional course, which dwells on the psychological and sexual adjustments young marrieds must face, Allen exposes his students to the nitty-gritty problems of housing, insurance and child care. "No one tells, kids about financial problems," says Allen, 36. "It's like sex - you don't talk about it in front of them."

Allen's course includes mock marriages, jobs, budgets and "proper" number of children. One couple, sweethearts before the course, were "'married", then "divorced" and got back on speaking terms only after several weeks had passed. Perhaps Allen may someday take his place alongside of Commissioner Terrel, at least he has some works of absolute genius.

So we may owe Chairperson Hay a brownie point or two after all, for at least SOME sex education in the schools. Like sex, the subject of free enterprise in the public schools is indeed controversial, but the delightful Mrs. Hay HAS succeeded in bringing sex, (read, female erudition) to an otherwise almost sterile board of education. Non-medically speaking, of course.



College Young Republicans

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
July 12, 1975


Somehow the College Young Republicans seem to have lost their sense of history. At least one can infer this by reading their president, David Warnick, presently a University of Idaho student at Moscow.

Warnick, of liberal persuasion by most any standard, commented recently on the demise of yet another GOP finance chairperson, Mrs. Hope Kading of Boise, herself of more or less liberal persuasion. Kading's resignation follows hard on the heels of a recent one of Pocatello's Grant Kilbourne, who said that massive numbers of laws and regulations made GOP fund raising a near nightmare and he wasn't about to put up with it.

Unfortunately, Kading's "reasons" for resigning seemed aimed at the old political flap about who should control the GOP state organization. Although this didn't cause many surprises it did serve to fuel young Warnick's irritation over the conservative leanings of 3 out of 4 of Idaho's congressional delegation and the natural leanings of a state GOP "led" by such a combo.

As near as this writer can detect, a split, such as Warnick claims to prevail, does not exist in state headquarters. Quite the opposite in fact. I hasten to add that, having been a member of the state headquarters myself years ago, I'd be surprised if lively disagreements didn't exist behind the usual claims, both state and national, to the contrary. Party unity just doesn't seem to stir the souls of Republicans. Too often, unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons.

Warnick observed that party splits generally arise over principles which are "conveniently labeled conservative vs. liberal." In the GOP, ever since the word liberal lost it's connotations of individualism and freedom, the splits are described as "conservative vs. moderate" Not a bad quote for a young politico, I'd say, and quite revealing in several ways.

The young student preppie's statement suggests that conservatives want to EXCLUDE people from the party (read, the Republican party) and his "team" of moderates (read, liberals) want to INCLUDE everyone. Never mind who's in control, nor along what principle guides so that George Wallace's claim of "Not a dime's worth of difference" between the two parties might become "a dollar's worth."

But such is a bit too fundamental for today's students, especially at the U of I. After all, where can a student there get much else than the liberal establishment's view of politics? Idaho's super-popular, if unorthodox, Congressman Steve Symms seldom gets invited into the College Young Republican Warnick's circles, so how can the young aspiring politicians be expected to hear the other side (read, Symms' style) of politics?

So we must not be too harsh on Warnick's concern for the PEE-PUL and "liberal" Republicanism which he so dearly loves (Dave is an ardent supporter of former second District Congressman Orval Hansen). He may yet come to realize the virtue of the candid truth which is that there is too a "dimes worth of difference" between the two parties, i.e., namely: who's the shaft-ee and who's the shaft-or?

Still, again, there may be hope the College Young Republicans will get the "MESSAGE" ... Warnick, in a public statement last April 27, called for the resignation of the conservative who defeated his liberal idol (Orval Hansen, see above) in the last congressional election - i.e., incumbent George Hansen. Why? Because George admitted he was wrong.

Warnick's a nice young man, reminds me of a forgotten sense of history: "Who's not a socialist in his youth has no heart. Who's still a socialist when he's mature has no head."



Anybody for Party Principles? Ho Hum

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell News - Tribune
July 19, 1975


A dose of wakeup?
In front of me is the July 5th, 1975 issue of the AFL-CIO News, a tabloid size paper published by the nation's largest labor union headquartered in Washington, D.C. Most every big outfit is more or less headquartered in the politician's city, i.e., big business, big labor and big government. Just which came first: the chicken or the egg depends on which "farmer" one talks to, but certainly it's at least naive to think that with all the POWER centralized in Washington that somebody isn't going to run down there and try to BUY it, and usually on somebody else's money.

This time I'd rather switch than fight. I want to take my hat off to the AFL-CIO sincerely, enthusiastically and with appreciation. Why? For sponsoring the Nobel laureate, author and freedom fighter from Russia -Aleksandr Solthenitsyn - for a U.S. speaking tour.

The front page of the labor union paper has a photo of the author and labor president George Meany and a headline reading: "Solzhenitsyn Warns West DŽtente Imperils Freedom," followed by a story on the Russian's recent remarks to 2,500 labor and government officials in the U.S.A.

The famed freedom fighter praised the AFL-CIO with, "The American worker's movement has never allowed itself to be blinded and mistake slavery for freedom." The article, with black type emphasis, said, "He noted that the AFL, in 1947, while liberals of the West were swearing there was none in the USSR, published and distributed a map of the Soviet chain of slave labor camps. The map matched the author's account of the camp system in (his book) "The Gulag Archipelago," his own account of Soviet internal oppression."

The 1972 Nobel prize winner's story, both in the AFL-CIO speech and in his interview in the current U.S. News and World Report magazine (July 14, 1975) reads like a page right out of a newsletter or press release from Idaho's First District Congressman Steve Symms.

In fact Symms wrote a sharply worded, if not cranky, letter to President Ford for the latter's refusal to make time to visit with Solzhenitsyn while he's here in the U.S.A. Symms noted that the usual plea of not wanting to offend the Russian government did not seem to work the other way around when the Soviets rolled out the red carpet for the U.S. hater Angela Davis when she visited Russia recently.

Not wishing in any way to detract from the obvious coup for our country which the AFL-CIO has done by bringing the famous Russian author here for a national speaking tour (he also appeared last Sunday on the National TV show "Meet the Press" and nearly stumped the panelists) yet I cannot help but note a few odd observations: 1.) Why didn't the U.S. State Department invite Solzhenitsyn to the U.S.? 2.) Why didnÕt the National Republican party do so? It would have been a sequel to President Ford's rescue of our ship the Mayaguez and may well have restored the country's faith in the President's own party. If not it would have given his party's conservatives a new boost of morale and practically cinched his nomination for 1976. 3.) Isn't it odd that although the AFL-CIO, according to the above story, is anti-communist, their political machine supports nearly all of those liberal politicians and doves who for years have been urging "dŽtente" or peace at any price with the communists (Russians, et at)? 4.) Isn't it at least a bit odd that Idaho's Sen. Church, now investigating the CIA, seems more distressed that the CIA might infiltrate the White House than that Russian agents might infiltrate the U.S. State Dept.? The AFL-CIO has seemed to support Church for the past 18 years with almost blind followership.

America's foreign policy is so pathologically irrational that many people think there must be something clever hidden in it. However, with the AFL-CIO, Solzhenitsyn, Symms and George Meany all on the same side, all at one time; well, SOMETHING ought to wake us up. This just might do for openers.



Smeed, Symms and Solzhenitsyn

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
July 29, 1975


For the last year or so the lack of reasoning power and coherence in the columns of Ralph Smeed have been readily apparent. His recent article on Solzhenitsyn was no exception (LMT, 7-26-75).

Smeed's unqualified support for Solzhenitsyn immediately runs into trouble. Smeed, as a self-professed libertarian, and the great Russian novelist are actually poles apart politically. The Russian dissident has made very clear his contempt for Western liberal democracies and his support for the "ancient regime," the term classical liberals, like our Founding Fathers and Adam Smith (Smeed's favorite libertarians), used for the authoritarian regimes of monarchist Europe and imperial Russia. . . . Solzhenitsyn goes into mystical ecstasy about the absolute rule of the Tzars and the Russian Orthodox church. (He seems to forget that the Tzars abused and imprisoned writers, too. )

Probably one of the most vociferous anti-Communists in history was Adolf Hitler. But it would have been completely inconceivable to have Hitler, or his likes, address Congress about the evils of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn is definitely not a Hitler, but his own conservative, authoritarian views are not at all compatible with the principles upon which, this country was founded.

This is precisely the crux of the problem with our foreign policy, which is, as Smeed said, "pathologically irrational." It is in this condition, however, because people like Symms, Smeed and others insist on supporting any government which sells its soul to us and spews forth anticommunist rhetoric. What is pathologically irrational is that these people don't seem to care if countries like Spain, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan all have authoritarian governments. They treat their citizens just as harshly as the Soviet Union treated their great writer.

It is a significant fact that no country that has had a strong democratic tradition has gone Communist. But there are many places in the world where we have propped up right-wing, authoritarian regimes in the name of anticommunism only to have them fall to the Communists or be threatened by them.

Let us admire and respect Solzhenitsyn for his indomitable courage and great literary genius, but let us not take his political advice. The best way to fight Communism is to encourage and support liberal democracy wherever we find it. And let us hope that the present policies of dŽtente will create the conditions for more freedoms in the Soviet Union. The rhetoric of Smeed and Symms will certainly not do that.

Nicholas F. Gier, Moscow



As Charlie Brown Said...

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
August 3, 1975


As Charlie Brown of the comic strip "Peanuts," was once led to remark, "This world is filled with people who are anxious to function in an advisory capacity."

It is this anxiety most conservatives see as a threat to the American way of life, especially when it's implemented with government compulsion (laws) and its concomitants, centralization of power, decline in production and individual responsibility.

Conservatives believe the world has just been witness to the salvation of a whole nation in a little over two centuries. This witness, through modern communications, has shown all nations what material abundance is possible through free enterprise production. It's precisely because conservatives DO care that they want to retain this system.

The confusion persists because production's cause and effect is not understood. Liberalism suggests we divide it and conservatism suggests we multiply it. Misguided persons on both sides suggest the government compel it. There in lies the punch line compulsion!

A "positiveÓ plan (program ) by liberal definition seems to be a government plan to (compel). A private plan seems to be no plan at all.

Most conservatives believe our Constitution, was designed on principles as valid today as in 1776. The people and the states were granting the federal government certain very limited powers ... the people themselves having received "their rights from God." Essentially in the manner of the Ten Commandments, the Constitution, too, was properly negative. By contrast, the old-world governments granted certain of their "powers" to the people. A radical departure.

The conservatives' program by popular standards is said to be negative, as though that were always bad. The Supreme Court seemed more conservative in a 1943 decision of Board vs. Barnett when it said, "One's right to life, liberty, and property, free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote, they depend on the outcome of no election. The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities."

The authors of our reference have a valid point concerning the liberal's "equity" premise. However, parts are missing, namely, the premise of equal protection under the law which still enjoys at least some lip service, and secondly the double standard of the liberal concept of law. Do it to some and do it for others. Regardless of how well intentioned they are, they propose no stopping place. Conservatives fear national as well as personal bankruptcy.

While the economics of this "debate" is little understood some things seem clear. Liberalism proposes the "easy" solution (i.e. the tax-money poultice) to all problems with almost no enemies on the left. Conservatives are so credentials-conscious we appear to lack the compassion so necessary for appeal to others of good will, but whose decisions are emotionally based. Also we tend to be skeptical and have colder personalities. The liberal, while advocating big government expenditures, is curiously conservative with expenditures of his own. Liberalism seems to have limited faith in government and none in the individual.

The middle of the road (mixed economy) is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments. What we need is neither anti-socialism nor anti-communism but an open, positive, and enthusiastic endorsement of that system to which we owe all the wealth that distinguishes our age from the comparatively restricted conditions of ages gone by. College and university trustees are notoriously dull to this fact.

Things are great by comparison. And the conservative likes to suggest that instead of liberalism's comparison of those at the top of the "ladder" with those at the bottom (a neat trick) rather we would compare America's ladder with other ladders, top AND bottom, then act conservative so we can afford to be liberal.



Media Power - Use, Abuse?

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
August 9, 1975


There is general agreement among a number of learned persons that a limit exists beyond which a free society can beneficially change through the device known as the Law. Could it be that the "pass-a-law, pass-a-law" panacea for solving all our problems has run its course?

Idaho lawmakers just a few years ago convinced themselves they had so many problems to solve running almost everybody's affairs that for the legislature to meet only every two years just wasn't enough. So they said, "give us annual sessions and we will limit ourselves to 60 days we'll even shut off our salaries to insure the 60 day limit." What happened?

The 60 days passed and no shriek from those watchdogs - the media. Nope, not even a murmur. (Lawmakers get expenses after 60 days, but no salary.) Most media types "worship" political problem solving. As a matter of fact, the press can usually be depended upon to suggest more, not less legislation. An amazing newspaper editorial suggested licensing social workers since so many did substandard "work". Protect the public they said, being careful, of course, not to suggest licensing newspapers who do likewise - freedom of the press you know.

This writer knows of no better way to promote slavery than to advocate it for everyone except yourself. Slavery may be too strong a word, so let's use a more reasonable word, like regulation. Sound better? No sirree, not to these people. Sock it to the others ie, license them, they inveigh, but not to us.

The double-standard may have had its day even though the pig-headed press pundits can't (read, won't) see it. Wallowing in Watergate masochism may mean money through mud for the media, but it also may be a kind of perverted attempt of sincere politicians to change the mess. (note well how they forget JFK's and LBJ's messes). The pity is that none suggest too much government as a cause of Watergate. Rather, most of the politicians, cheered on by the media, suggest instead even more laws and more power, the floodtide of which caused the mess in the first place. Small wonder law breaking is on the increase. When genuine respect for the law reaches a low enough ebb, history seldom records its ever having been restored.

Most of the moderates in the legislature - and liberals as well, if there's any real difference now see annual sessions as a foolish mistake, but can't seem to muster the moxie to change back.

To several lawmakers I have suggested they consider a radical alternative the next time a new law is proposed: (1) Why not seriously ask whether the problem is any of the government's damned business at all, and (2) if it is, they might ask themselves if there isn't a law or two they could repeal which might do more good.

They laughed. Many admitted that "they" (the others) probably should do just that, but they (themselves) might look like a kook. One wonders sometimes if the conspiracy theory so vigorously denounced by much of the media isn't more of a problem, if not a fetish, of theirs than of the John Birch Society.

The latter seem to see only the communists while the media types seem to have a kind of vested interest in persuading rather than presenting and see as conspirators those who condemn the mostly-liberal press. An often overlooked facet of this phenomena is the power syndrome wielded by the press and media personalities, not at all unlike Lord Acton who warned us about politicians, i.e., "Power corruptsÓ and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The power of many media persons far exceeds that of many media politicians and of ten-times it's hard to tell just who's playing chess with whom.



Overreaction Dangerous

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass
August 16, 1975


Hailey, Idaho, is a small town near the famous ski resort Sun Valley. The Wood River Journal holds a "monopoly" on newspapers there and its editor is one Chris Peck (Stanford University class of '72) who, has a sort of twisted view of what's newsworthy.

Since Peck's degree is in journalism, and from one of the country's great liberal schools I wondered why an article appearing in his July 31 issue carried an article entitled "Senior Citizens Chide Church" so I phoned him and asked why. The small town newspaper editor told me that he thought the item was newsworthy and a little different slant on what he thought was an important issue.

The article quoted The National Alliance for Senior Citizens as having rated the 93rd Congress. Those members having scores above 60 per cent were named "Guardians of the Aged," while those below 40 per cent were labeled as "Deficit Do-Gooders." Idaho's senators rated as follows: James McClure, 88 per cent and Frank Church a low 25 per cent.


Needless to say this caught my eye so I read further, "Senator Church has failed to address the real problems faced by senior Americans as his very low rating highlights his support of those deficit-ridden, fiscally irresponsible government economic policies which have undermined the integrity of the fixed income." The quote from Mrs. J.W. Aubrey, president of the NASC. (P.O. Box 40031, Washington, DC 20016)

I note the address above since I couldn't believe they were for real, and too, I hadn't seen any reference to them in other Idaho newspapers, especially the Lewiston Tribune and the (Boise) Idaho Statesman who see Sen. Church as some sort of political messiah. I phoned a friend who also takes the LMT and the Statesman he didn't see the NASC article either. Of course we both could have missed seeing it, but I doubt it. The Wall Street Journal for July 10, 1975 carried an editorial entitled "Sen. Church's Indexed Index." Said item begins, "If there was an award to members of Congress who introduce legislation guaranteed to be wildly inflationary, we would now nominate Sen. Frank Church for the prize and throw in an oak-leaf cluster."

Church wants to index the prices of items the elderly buy to Social Security benefits (the elderly vote is estimated to be just under 20 per cent and Church beats
this drum for all it's worth) and the WSJ editorial continues: "He (Church) is not the only fellow who has thought of a special inflation index. The Shah of Iran wants to tie the price of oil to a basket of commodities that Iran concentrates its purchases on, chiefly capital goods. The Shah observes the U.S. rate of inflation at 11 per cent while Iran's import prices climbed 25 per cent to 30 per cent."

Now then, I seriously doubt that both the WSJ and the Wood River Journal are trying to mislead the U.S. and Idaho public, but then neither is this writer. Let me explain.

Recently I wrote a column praising the AFL-CIO for bringing the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the U.S.A. and scolding President Ford for snubbing him. My column also chided Church for seeming to be more concerned about the CIA infiltrating procommunist foreign governments than he was that the Russians infiltrate ours. I still stand by that.

Lewiston Tribune editor Perry Swisher in an editor's note on my column said my "rendering was a canard" i.e., intended to mislead. Doubtless Swisher would stand by his note too, but the point starves to death.

Unlike Swisher, a long time polemicist and gadfly politician of sorts, I doubt his editorial anything but sincere - that's what terrifies me about so much of the liberal press. They confuse sincerity with wisdom and the Russian writer, is now under attack by them. Why? Because they disagree. Swisher makes one good point, however, and though we've both made it, it's even more valid coming from him: "It is difficult but important to stick to the record as we are urged to accept the expediencies of fascism as a proper American stratagem against communism."

The entire state Republican party might well take note of this admonition, especially during and as a direct result of the coming to Idaho of the famous conservative editor, writer and tv star William F. Buckley, Jr. The controversial and outspoken "right winger" will deliver his gutsy observations at a fundraising banquet in Boise next Sept. 11, for the GOP.

I'd guess the moderates will stay away in droves, but the gap may well be more than filled with liberals who like people with guts who take sides - even like Swisher.



Only Time Will Tell / Profit Is Not Dirty

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / News Tribune
August 23, 1975


A current article in one of Idaho's major newspapers begins with, "Some of Boise's most prominent businessmen have decided to become teachers." If that hasn't already moved you to laugh don't. At least until you've given the matter a little further examination, both pro and some might think surprisingly con.

After decades, yea even generations of most,business and professional men oft repeating the clichŽ, "Them that can do, and them that can't, teach." If you prefer the word "those" please use it, but when I first heard it years ago it was "them" and somehow that gave a special credibility to it. Still does, but the idea's wrong and while my leanings are clearly with the market place people (I wish them luck), I think this a fine occasion to shed some different and hopefully better light on a lousy syndrome.

Generalizations are risky, but usually necessary if their major thrust is sound, so allow me to try a few, at risk of almost certainly being misunderstood.

The headline on the above-mentioned article read "Businessmen Decide to Educate Public on Free Enterprise." Then further on "...agreed to give free lectures through the new Speaker's Bureau of the Boise Chamber of Commerce." (Key word here is "new," it'd have to be, since they've never had one that mattered).

Glen Lungren, vice chair-person of the chamber's "Speak-up for Business" committee says, "We just haven't done our public relations work in explaining business..." He's right, but not just for the reason he's using.

Business is losing their fanny and all the fixtures and the intellectuals are winning. That's why they are worried and slightly waking up, ever so slightly. Business has been badgered about the pending doom for years, but all the response some of us could get was, "Bah humbug, I've got a business to run. And besides I'm turned off at politics." Just what politics had to do with it isn't exactly clear, but for the most part it was a nice cop-out, not too unlike "Them that can do..." It's a bit like the oil crisis. Many cried a warning, but the intellectuals shouted, "Greedy profit mongers," etc., etc. Having seldom grappled with the real contest the real wonder is we lasted so long against the giant oil companies "ripping" us off for 16 cents to 30 cents a gallon for gas and diesel oil.

Speaking of Boise, I've attended the Boise chamber's legislative committee meetings and was appalled at the interventionist stance of so much of the legislation favored by the vocal members. Some would label such as socialist legislation and with some justification, but I prefer to think that most members hadn't given the matter all that much thought. Although I may be a bit naive here, since the subject of a free market got about the same reception when I broached it as a turned-up toilet seat in a convent.

Said newspaper article did mention some fine speakers (including at least one who may talk openly and favorably about free markets) on subjects that I'd like to hear myself, but a few may be in for some "education" themselves, i.e., if they get to Dr. Ellis Lamborn's economics classes at Boise State University who, no thanks to the Boise Chamber, actually get to hear some of the free market side of the coin. They're apt to question.

For example: Said news story bills the vice president of Mountain Bell Telephone as speaker on "Government Intervention in the Free Enterprise System." What's free in the phone company's government sanctioned monopoly? For example: Berne Jensen, Boise attorney's speech entitled, "Profit Is Not a Dirty Word." It is too a dirty word. Where the hell has Jensen been?

For example: Bob Krueger, president of KTVB (channel 7) who fell all over himself to help Boise's government tv station (channel 4) get started, then belly-ached when they began to give him some competition. His speech titled? "Broadcasting the News." Let's all shed a tear together.

For example David Light, V.P. of Chandler Supply Co. on "Corporate Credit Procedures as they Relate to Sales Management." If not intimidated by these "barristers of bigness" spokesmen some curious BSU students may ask Mr. Light why the taxpayers should pay the prosecuting attorney to collect the merchant's bad checks which he accepts in order to further his "sales management"?

Yep, "them that can, did The second-hand dealers in ideas, i.e., the intellectuals as defined by Dr. F.A. Hayek, the recent Nobel laureate, have won the contest with their adversary called "business." Only time will tell if the latter has brains enough and stomach enough to admit it. Then be honest enough to do some homework so they can tell the difference between those who support free market institutions and those who only profess to.



The Senator Is Chided

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
August 27, 1975


Hailey, Idaho, is a small town near the famous ski resort Sun Valley. The Wood River Journal holds a "monopoly" on newspapers there and its editor is one Chris Peck (Stanford University class of '72) who, has a sort of twisted view of what's newsworthy.

Since Peck's degree is in journalism, and from one of the country's great liberal schools I wondered why an article appearing in his July 31 issue carried an article entitled "Senior Citizens Chide Church" so I phoned him and asked why. The small town newspaper editor told me that he thought the item was newsworthy and a little different slant on what he thought was an important issue.

The article quoted The National Alliance for Senior Citizens as having rated the 93rd Congress. Those members having scores above 60 per cent were named "Guardians of the Aged," while those below 40 per cent were labeled as "Deficit Do-Gooders." Idaho's senators rated as follows: James McClure, 88 per cent and Frank Church a low 25 per cent.

Needless to say this caught my eye so I read further, "Senator Church has failed to address the real problems faced by senior Americans as his very low rating highlights his support of those deficit-ridden, fiscally irresponsible government economic policies which have undermined the integrity of the fixed income." The quote from Mrs. J.W. Aubrey, president of the NASC. (P.O. Box 40031, Washington, DC 20016)

I note the address above since I couldn't believe they were for real, and too, I hadn't seen any reference to them in other Idaho newspapers, especially the Lewiston Tribune and the (Boise) Idaho Statesman who see Sen. Church as some sort of political messiah. I phoned a friend who also takes the LMT and the Statesman he didn't see the NASC article either. Of course we both could have missed seeing it, but I doubt it. The Wall Street Journal for July 10, 1975 carried an editorial entitled "Sen. Church's Indexed Index." Said item begins, "If there was an award to members of Congress who introduce legislation guaranteed to be wildly inflationary, we would now nominate Sen. Frank Church for the prize and throw in an oak-leaf cluster."

Church wants to index the prices of items the elderly buy to Social Security benefits (the elderly vote is estimated to be just under 20 per cent and Church beats this drum for all it's worth) and the WSJ editorial continues: "He (Church) is not the only fellow who has thought of a special inflation index. The Shah of Iran wants to tie the price of oil to a basket of commodities that Iran concentrates its purchases on, chiefly capital goods. The Shah observes the U.S. rate of inflation at 11 per cent while Iran's import prices climbed 25 per cent to 30 per cent."

Now then, I seriously doubt that both the WSJ and the Wood River Journal are trying to mislead the U.S. and Idaho public, but then neither is this writer. Let me explain.

Recently I wrote a column praising the AFL-CIO for bringing the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the U.S.A. and scolding President Ford for snubbing him. My column also chided Church for seeming to be more concerned about the CIA infiltrating procommunist foreign governments than he was that the Russians infiltrate ours. I still stand by that.

Lewiston Tribune editor Perry Swisher in an editor's note on my column said my "rendering was a canard" i.e., intended to mislead. Doubtless Swisher would stand by his note too, but the point starves to death.

Unlike Swisher, a long time polemicist and gadfly politician of sorts, I doubt his editorial anything but sincere - that's what terrifies me about so much of the liberal press. They confuse sincerity with wisdom and the Russian writer, is now under attack by them. Why? Because they disagree. Swisher makes one good point, however, and though we've both made it, it's even more valid coming from him: "It is difficult but important to stick to the record as we are urged to accept the expediencies of fascism as a proper American stratagem against communism."

The entire state Republican party might well take note of this admonition, especially during and as a direct result of the coming to Idaho of the famous conservative editor, writer and tv star William F. Buckley, Jr. The controversial and outspoken "right winger" will deliver his gutsy observations at a fundraising banquet in Boise next Sept. 11, for the GOP.

I'd guess the moderates will stay away in droves, but the gap may well be more than filled with liberals who like people with guts who take sides - even like Swisher.

Editor's note: The NASC rating was not received by the Tribune, but the Wall Street Journal editorial mention, in which Sen. Church was criticized, was reprinted on these pages within days after it was received. - J.S.



Replying to Comment / What About Free Market

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune
September 6, 1975


Columnist Jay Shelledy, writing his usually lucid comments, this time as an editorial in the August 28 issue of Lewiston Morning Tribune, says, "Consumer activist Paul Kiepe of Payette has filed charges with the office of Secretary of State in which John Hayes (lobbyist for General Telephone Co.) is accused of deceiving legislators when he authored a bill passed by the 1975 session in which the Idaho Public Utilities Commission is required to reach a decision on rate applications within six months."

No kidding - six months.

Shelledy defended Hayes as probably not in violation of Idaho's lobbyist law but went on to say, "But the dozen or so high rollers, the king pins who run the state of Idaho, scorned the people-enacted (sic) law. It was habitually abused, universally violated in spirit, badmouthed incessantly for being unneeded. The complainers much preferred conducting their 'business' in the dank darkness of back alleys where they can manipulate without distinction those legislators who are indolent, ignorant, or morally bankrupt." One wonders if Shelledy ever read a history book outside the University of Idaho.

Now then, that was last Thursday and not so significant in and of itself - depending on one's view as to whether or not a public utility is indeed a second-class "citizen" and entitled to defend itself against what even Shelledy admits is an asinine piece of legislation. Said asininity seems to be on the increase in Idaho with each succeeding year of Governor Cecil Andrus' trying to keep his campaign promise to be governor of "all the people in Idaho." (Whether we "all" want it or not and, one hasten to add, not without considerable help from some of the Republicans.)

What IS significant, however, is that, just for fun, I browsed a full prior week's editorials from the same newspaper and nowhere, not once mind you, did there appear an editorial comment suggesting a free market or a lot less government. No, just "efficient government" seems to be all the majority of the American press wants and along the lines THEY agree with. Except of course in the area of freedom of the press where they want complete laissez-faire. Your freedom and my freedom can apparently go to hell just so long as THEIR special interest is kept holy.

Shelledy is smarter than this; if he didn't know better I'd not bother to comment. One wonders, perhaps, if he thinks anybody in the rest of the news media in general or in his newspaper in particular, would even understand, not to mention enjoy, if he did upon occasion see fit to give a free market or less government point view to his (their) readers.

But that might run the risk of sounding a little bit like Idaho's First District Congressman, Steve Symms, who says it all the time and THAT'D be almost too much freedom - especially for the press.



Buckley and Smeed ... Only a Wing Apart

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Free Press
September 13, 1975


During that football game I chatted a few minutes with Steve Ahrens, political editor of the Statesman. He was walking the sidelines, too. He was covering the game for that other newspaper. Don't ask me what the political implications were.

Ahrens and I were both in attendance during William F. Buckley's speech in Boise the night before, and I asked.

Ahrens how he liked taking notes during Buckley's talk. He said he didn't have any trouble at all.

"I got two sentences in their entirety and they didn't relate to anything else he said during the entire evening," Ahrens said.

I was extremely pleased that I was shooting pictures during Buckley's speech instead of taking notes for a story. I don't think he used more than two sentences all night - but the syntax was perfect and it all made sense ... if you could understand it, that is.

No matter what your political persuasion, you have to respect an intellect such as Buckley. He uses words I've only heard of in dictionaries, making the quantum leap from hearing to understanding a major task.

It's fun to try however, and then there's always some light entertainment at these conservative functions provided by Buckley's old friend, none other than Ralph Smeed. It's hard to understand Ralph's column, too, by the way. Sorry, Ralph, some of Buckley's influence must have rubbed off, or was it the other way around!?

Ralph took part in Thursday night's Republican function in Boise by presenting Buckley with a model airplane that had two right wings. What Smeed failed to mention during his ,inimitable presentation speech to Buckley was that NewsTribune Editor Rick Coffman, formerly of the Free Press sports writing staff, helped compose the inscription.

We used a photo of Buckley trying to launch the craft.

But then in order to blow up the photo of Buckley holding the airplane model (it ran on the front page Friday) I had to crop Ralph out. Just to be fair (and I'm always fair with you, Ralph) I am now running a photo of Ralph holding the plane prior to handing it to Buckley.

Perhaps I should recommend that Ralph take his next trip on such a plane ... or would it only go around in circles always covering the same territory over and over again?

It was an interesting experience - listening to Buckley I mean. I really wish I could repeat a couple of the jokes, and-or pungent comments Buckley used to illustrate conditions in America. Since I can't do that in a "family" newspaper, I'll just pass them on personally the next time we meet on the street.



Baiting the Pessimists / The Day the Teachers Walked Out

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
September 13, 1975


On the matter of strikes among policemen, firemen, school teachers and other groups of organized labor, a few thoughtful persons are beginning to do some thinking. The latter is not to be confused (forgive me) with the old businessman's clichŽ: "Them that can DO, while them that can't TEACH".

I say forgive me because it's worth repeating and while most of my friends tend to lament these "public servant" strikes as somehow more sinister than other strikes, I think I disagree. After all, we remember that the scholars used to teach that the earth was flat since their elders and peers taught the same thing - why wouldn't they?

One of the modern day peers fighting the recurrence of such a flat earth society and a friend of a growing number of educators is libertarian writer and political activist Jerome Tuccille (pronounced TOO-ehilly) . Jerry got national recognition last year when he ran for governor of New York. Time magazine did a full page story on him which I still find hard to believe.

Tuccille's recent book, "Who's Afraid of 1984?" (Arlington House) has a passage which just about rival's Orwell's book 1984:

"In 1976 Albert Shanker held a press conference to denounce the latest trends in education. The boob tube has taken over the classroom," he said. "If this continues it will mean the end of the teaching profession as we have come to know and love it."

"But, Mr. Shanker," said an eager young news hound from the New York Post. "Kids love television. Their reading scores are up, and they're learning to write their names and count their toes for the first time in history."

"It doesn't matter," said Albert Shanker. "Teachers feel more irrelevant and insecure in their own classrooms. Nobody pays attention to us anymore. We're made to feel alienated and unwanted."

"But children are prospering," countered another reporter, "they like going to the new Learning Centers and they had to be dragged to school before."

"What about us?" Shanker yelled. He was visibly perplexed. "What about our right to make a decent living? Why should our job security be threatened just so a bunch of lousy kids can learn the alphabet? "

"Easy, Al. Don't overdo it," an aide whispered in his ear.
Shanker pushed him away and continued: "Kids today have no respect for organized labor. They're out to bust our union and we're not gonna let them get away with it. Tomorrow night at midnight every teacher in the country will be walking off the job. Teach the little dummies a lesson."

There was much opposition to Shanker's militant stand among the rank-and-file. Many saw the handwriting on the wall and were afraid of overplaying their hand. But their leader would not be appeased; his mind was made up. At midnight on September 15, 1976, virtually every public school teacher in the United States walked off the job with the intention of teaching the nation's youth a lesson it would never forget.

Shanker would have been more prudent had he listened to some right from the start. It was the old question of supply and demand all over again. Shanker and his United Teachers Union had the supply - almost every elementary and high school teacher sighed up - but the demand for their services was just about nonexistent. Respect for teachers and the product they were offering had been declining for over a decade, and by the time Shanker called his press conference in the year of America's Bicentennial, the situation had reached a crucial stage.

Teachers all over the country were experiencing identity crises, and a good many were spending half their salaries on psychiatrists and other gurus. Shanker and his cohorts had good reason to be miffed. Like alchemists, blacksmiths, gandydancers, woodcarvers, witchdoctors, toll collectors, kings, queens, dukes, regents, court jesters, foot soldiers, valets, river boat captains, town criers, pirates and epic poets, members of the teaching profession saw their own jobs growing obsolete.

Yes, Albert Shanker's strategy backfired: 1976 marks the year that the teachers of America walked off the job and were never asked to return. Once the strike action by the teachers had become permanent (unintentionally), education grew more and more feasible. Great hordes of the nation's youth entered the ranks of the semiliterate for the first time, while countless others dazzled even their own parents with their remarkable erudition.

Ask your librarian to get a copy of Jerry's book -it'll rally the optimists and infuriate the pessimists.



Lobbyists, Politicians

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
September 20, 1975


The Associated Taxpayers of Idaho headquarters is in Boise Idaho.

It has been headed by Max Yost for the past many years. He is one of the most knowledgeable men on state taxes in the United States. Few men in Idaho are relied upon more by friend and foe alike for facts concerning the effects of tax spending and tax gathering, especially during the time the legislature is in session. (For years I've railed at Yost to take off the gloves and tell the dull-witted legislators why the "cat eats the canary," but to no avail. Long before "Sunshine" he refused to take sides, i.e. unless fiscal sanity is to take sides.)

Comes now Rep. Perry Swisher (Democrat) of the Lewiston Morning, Tribune with an editorial, Sept. 13 commenting upon,the I ineffectiveness of the new Sunshine Law as relates to Max Yost whose report for the quarter ending March 31 showed $428.73 for, according to Swisher, lobbying expenditures. (Most of which Yost spends on oyster stew for lawmakers to eat while they consult him on fiscal matters.)

Now, then, in the words of the late great economist, Ludwig Von Mises, "We are indeed in the midst of a semantic jungle." Words are twisted, labels are hurled, meanings are strangled both wittingly and unwittingly - especially in political circles (political routes seldom leading elsewhere), but polemicist Swisher continues in his LMT editorial labeling Yost as Idaho's leading tax lobbyist. "Conspicuously but not uniquely, Yost is a lobbyist who is asked by legislators to comment on the bills."

"Is the Sunshine Law meant to give preference and even exemption to the person who is consulted, over the lobbyist who must reach for the lawmakers labels?"

The crowning statement in Swisher's editorial innuendo: "If Yost's full-time efforts in the field of taxation don't constitute lobbying to an important degree then the definitions are not working." Now if you are about to go to sleep, gentle reader, get this - after 15 column inches proclaiming Yost as a lobbyist, this politician newspaperman (the two most important "Lobbyist" groups exempt from Sunshine Law), says, "We don't ask that he regard himself as a lobbyist. He never refers to himself that way."

If that isn't to "damn with faint praise" I don't know what is, but he signs off, finally, with, "The Yost report seems to say this (Sunshine) law isn't working." Swisher strains at the gnat and swallows the camel. He lobbied long and hard for a new law giving cities the right to levy taxes, but fortunately Yost's facts helped kill the asinine proposal. Perry didn't tell us that. Apparently, if you disagree with him,you're a lobbyist.

Somehow it seems always next to impossible to get the Utopians like Swisher to,see any virtue at all in fewer laws. See a problem - pass a law, it goes-on and on far into the night whenever the legislature is in session. These Utopians are often times not malicious, just persistent - like gophers in a ditch bank, and almost as mindless. What must be done, of course, is to STOP the monumental stupidity of placing more and more power in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats and then foolishly wondering why men (lobbyists all) go down to the lawmakers and offer large sums for a favorable (to them) distribution. (Not to mention,the lobbyists who lobby merely to defend their principals against the onslaught of socialists, facists and do-gooders.)

The Sunshine Law, however well-intended by some, is an attempt to MAKE government "efficient." It suffers the same defect as consumer protection and land use legislation. It is based on the belief that there is a single procedure that will be best for ALL people - and that there is someone in Boise who knows what it is.

Thank Heaven "someone" isn't Swisher type politicians or newspapermen even though over the vigorous opposition of' Rep. C. L. "Butch" Otter last session, both groups managed to escape "legally" the purview of the Sunshine Law.



Andrus and Goldilocks

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / News Tribune
September 27, 1975


One of the original thinkers of the New Deal, Prof. Rexford G. Tugwell, was a bit more honest with himself than are many Americans as he described the new value system in his book, "Our Economic Society and Its Problems."
Said he, "The real challenge to America ... is the challenge of the planning idea. Russia has silenced forever the notion that economic affairs are governed by adamant natural laws. She has demonstrated that men have it in their power to set up the system they want and to make it obedient to their wishes. With Russia as an example, intelligent people in America ... will want to plan and act."

That is not a statement of some anti-communist zealot and it by no means follows that Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus intends to be a collectivist or even unpatriotic when he pushes (lobbies?) for land use planning, which he does with great gusto and at no small amount of taxpayer's expense.

It is to say, however, that this writer has yet to hear the popular politician utter one word of concern for that single most important intellectual institution which almost more than any other distinguishes our relatively free society from Russia's closed society, i.e., private ownership versus government ownership.

Andrus is sincere, I have no doubt. He's easy to talk to, even for me. I enjoy his personality, wit and charm as do so many of Boise's fashionable Republicans who like to be on the side of the successful politicians. But the reason Andrus is a successful communicator is that the frame of reference to which he and the other planners and interventionists speak is in such super abundance through the government's public school system.

Just for example, let's take the story of "Once Upon a Time ... Goldilocks" or "A Cute Little Blonde, Feniale, Blunders into the Woods and Gets Lost."

Here's the way it goes:

"Goldilocks, alone in the woods and frightened, wanders about and finally comes upon a house in the forest. She knocks at the door, but the owners of the home are away. What does she do?

"Well, she commits an act of breaking and entry. She steals the food of the inhabitants of the home, breaks up their furniture, and goes to sleep in a strange bed.

"Presently, the owners come home. Now, this is characteristic of most adult fiction. The owners of anything are the BAD people, and those who own nothing are GOOD. In this ease, the owners of the house into which Goldilocks has intruded are BEARS. They are property-owning brutes. Ergo, that's what's wrong with them. They are BAD. Goldilocks, who owns nothing, and is cute, is GOOD.

"The bears enter and take inventory, noting the loss of food and the damage to the furniture, and ultimately they discover the little thief asleep in bed. But she awakens and makes good her escape."

The moral of the story is clear. If you are young, cute, and blonde, especially female, you can break in anywhere if you're in difficulty, use whatever you find, break it if you must, and in the end you can escape and remain the heroine.

So, at a very young and impressionable age, children are taught by their parents, through the avenue of fiction, that breaking and entry is all right if you're having a problem. Stealing and trespass and vandalism are just fine if you own nothing and are cute enough to get away with it.

And then we marvel that our youngsters develop hostility toward the property system which we must have if we are to survive.

People believe that fiction is true and that nonfiction is false. I've been writing for years and been correspondingly doubted. So I have begun trying to write fiction. Hopefully, if I can master the art and craft of story telling, my fiction will at least carry the credibility of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Others seeking to communicate vital truths may find the avenue of children's fiction (in particular) enormously rewarding.

The Goldilocks story is from "Le Fevre's Journal" (Box 2353, Orange, CA. 92669) Fall issue of 1975. Le Fevre, who was born in Idaho, is former president of Rampart College. He's now retired to publish and lecture in libertarian circles.

It is indeed risky to exaggerate even for sake of illustration, but I think the point has merit. The point being that hardly one word is uttered by our state's chief political head, even of caution, that we must be very careful lest we lose that precious idea of freedom that distinguishes the American way from the totalitarian states of the world, most of which can hardly even feed themselves.

Andrus, to the extent he's a personality giant in politics (and he is) nevertheless appears to be an intellectual infant concerning the underpinnings of a free society.

Perhaps our Bicentennial will serve to remind this nice man of Jefferson's idea of freedom from, and fear of, too much government.



Pope Paul and politics

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass
October 4, 195


Pope Paul VI said Sunday that the canonization ceremony elevating Juan Macias to sainthood would have been more joyful had Spain not executed five young terrorists. Being at least partially consistent he also pleaded for clemency for the five guerrillas. (No comment as to alleged crime nor fair trial, if any.) This according to an Associated Press story and, one assumes, pretty much the standard "line" for all the news services since it's about all one can hear in the super-centralized news media.

Well bless Bess! What else is new? Certainly Aunt Maudie's birthday would also have been more joyful had Spain thrown a birthday party for the five guerrillas instead of shoot them.

Now then, absolutely no one likes to hear of executions, but one cannot help wonder where the Pope's been during the wholesale slaughter of political dissenters in Red China and the Soviet Union, the numbers of which, we are told in much less hysterical terms of news media heraldry, reach into the millions.

Certainly Pope Paul is a nice man and doubtless doesn't enjoy hearing of anyone being imprisoned for political crimes, much less executed, but notice what seems to be the gigantic asymmetry of his protests at Spain compared with his protests at the communists, alongside those of the media's as well - especially in light of the number of executions and the degree of freedoms in each of the countries.

This is by no stretch of the imagination to suggest that the media nor Pope Paul means to favor the communist countries, indeed I don't know what they intend. It is to suggest that the order of their protestations is substantially awry and to the peril of free societies everywhere.

Adlai Stevenson once said, speaking of a politician of particularly rancid practices, "If he were a bad man, I wouldn't be so afraid of him. But this man has no principles. He doesn't know the difference."

No doubt the Pope does have principles, whether the bulk of the news media does or does not, but they seem to give rise to an odd sort of arrangement and degree of criticism of different countries' political dictatorships.

Much the same criticism could be leveled at Pope Paul's predecessor, Pope John in his "Populorum Progressio" wherein his denunciation of capitalism, per se, seemed to many much more severe than any similar criticism of communism. Enough to provoke a subdued scream of protest from another famous member of the Catholic faith William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative editor and tv personality.

The story has often been told about the theologian chiding the philosopher saying, "You philosophers are like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there."

The philosopher replied: "What you say may be true, but it is you theologians who say you find the cat."

One wonders if our great religious leaders wouldn't be better advised, when speaking on political and economic matters, rather than "pray for peace" to suggest "pray for free trade." Not only would it likely do more good, but if they were misunderstood to endorse the opposite of that which they intended - at least they wouldn't risk endorsing war. Or, having laid claim to know something about a cat, could help keep him from eating the canary.



Whiskey Tax for Art?

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / News Tribune
October 11, 1975


On the matter of Boise's Morrison Performing Arts Center, an issue of increasing interest and importance to citizens throughout Idaho - a few observations: According to a recent editorial comment in The Idaho Statesman, Mrs. Thelma Morrison has graciously offered the taxpayers several million dollars from the Morrison family foundation for the art center. All the taxpayers have to do is match the money with $2.1 million of their own. The editorial was silent, however, about $3 million to come from the state tax on liquor sales.

The recent session of the legislature has already passed a law, Senate Bill 1073, enabling same to be financed from liquor tax funds. Provided, of course, their town has at least 35,000 citizens. Small towns can't play.

Comes now the Idaho Statesman newspaper which is gung-ho favoring the tax-supported performing arts center, with an editorial attack on the newly formed Libertarian Party of Idaho witch openly opposes tax support for the center. (I say openly, since the Democrats and Republicans have even less responsibility, lacking even the guts to suggest that the government ought not to be in the whiskey selling business, let alone say where the greedy "profits" ought to go).

Like any newspaper it is quite within their rights to favor, as it is for the Libertarians to oppose, but their respective reasons are worthy of note and indicate clearer than usual some intellectually honest, for a switch, differences in principle.

To the credit of the Boise Statesman they printed on the same page with their attack, a guest column by James Jerry Jones, vice-president of the Libertarian Party, outlining their opposition to the center's tax allocation issue.

The Statesman's main criticism of the Libertarians is that party's opposition to an almost "divine right" of majority rule to decide who must pay the taxes and who gets the plunder. While the editorial twists the Libertarian position, it nicely sets out the Statesman's own blind faith in said majority rule. (One can assume that if the majority decided to license and regulate newspapers the Statesman would again bawl like a mashed cat and beg for their special interest - freedom of the press). Libertarians, too, love art they say, but now by a compulsory tax.

In any event, Jones and his party largely do identify modern taxation as "theft" and further claim that it usually shafts the little guy for the benefit of the powerful. A position at one time articulated by First District Congressman Steve Symms, but unfortunately not quite so often since some big corporation lobbyists "leaned" on him and his administrative assistant, Bob Smith.

The Libertarians, having defined the Morrison Art Center tax as "theft" pretty well sum up their idea of the newspaper's position: ". . . the tax support advocates imply that theft is proper, as long as the thieves outnumber the victims."

A clear difference of opinion, even if one disagrees, and quite welcome for the reason that, at last, the Statesman newspaper has a political party adversary as articulate for SMALL government (Jones) as they (the Statesman) are for BIG government.

In the words of State Representative C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Canyon, who, before his arm was nearly twisted off (to vote for the enabling law) by friends and relatives in his giant Simplot Corporation family, are the sentiments of a growing number of people. To this writer and a number of other friends, said he: "I cannot see why the drunks should be taxed to support the rich peoples' taste in art."



Keeping the Faith?

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
October 25, 1975


The caption under a photograph of vice-president Rockefeller and former governor of California, Ronald Reagan, read: "Thou Shalt Not Speak ill of a Fellow Republican" and the headline on this newspaper's full page story said, "Rockefeller - Reagan Pack-'em in at Portland."

The item referred to the recent Western States Republican Conference designed to enthuse the party faithful and provide a forum, usually, for the eastern liberal establishment to assure the western peons: "Don't worry, fellas, we'll manage everything just fine. You just keep the faith baby, send plenty of money, don't ask too many questions and everything'll turn out Okay."

Well, it's often "okay" with some and not with others, sometimes bitterly and sometimes passively, but always with an emphasis on an elusive, if undefined, quality called "unity." For the sake of unity the party faithful are urged to be nice, to work hard, raise money and don't ask too many questions. After all, our candidate may be an S. 0. B., but he's "our" S. 0. B., they inveigh hopefully.

Not unlike the animals in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" whose rallying chant against the farmer cheered: "Four legs good, two legs bad. Four legs good, two legs bad."

A manifestation of the results of such irrationality might very well be the current flap about New York City's financial disaster which is not presently considered as "whose disaster?" but as Òwhen will Uncle Sam come bail her out?" Certainly the former governor of New York, now vice-president of the United States, left that state in as good a financial condition and attitude of financial integrity as Ronald Reagan left California...or did he? Not much mention of this in the liberal media.

Not much mention either in the media is the fact that both Idaho's U. S. Senators voted for the recent congressional pay raise which was, to add insult upon injury, tied also to an increase as the cost of living goes up.

One might say that to their credit many Idaho GOPers are not abiding by the above admonition to "not speak ill of another Republican" and instead are furious at Jim McClure's vote.

Not even the beauty and charm of their state's new executive director of the party has slowed their irritation very much. Helen Chenoweth, whose efforts to get something meaningful going in the party by way of principles is already becoming legendary, issued a press release pointing out that Democrat Senator Frank Church campaigned during the election that he not vote for a pay raise, but then reversed himself after he got back in Washington and voted for it.

Oddly enough, one hears very little about Church's vote and quite a lot about McClureÕs support of the pay raise, and while Chenoweth's press release was indeed true and timely, several members of the press were quick to counter without mentioning that at least McClure did not "lie" about what he was going to do AFTER the election.

My guess is still that this will come back to haunt McClure and damage his credibility. I think he knows this. He's also been a fine senator and continues to reflect the views of Idahoans better than Church (note Church wants the federal treasury to bail out New York City and McClure does not) but the press will protect Church and attack the conservative senator.

A contemporary philosopher has summed it all up pretty well in an overview of modern politics: "(1) In any CONFLICT between two men (or two groups) who hold the SAME basic principles it is the more consistent one who wins. (2) In any COLLABORATION between two men (or two groups) who hold DIFFERENT basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins."

All of which is not to say that Church is necessarily evil. After all, everybody's doing it these days. (But New York City got "caught" at it).

It is, rather, to say that McClure shocked his friends AND his enemies. It matters very little what his motives were, nobody expected his Democrat colleague to vote any other way than to cure all problems with a tax-money poultice, but they expect more from McClure. He survived his vote on OSHA, but this time will be different.

Republicans needn't "speak ill of a fellow Republican" who's right so much of the time. All they need do is give him a swift kick in the pants for a foolish college fraternity case of "colleague fever."

Then suggest that he join first District Congressman Steve Symms who has introduced a bill to repeal that foolishness.



Cartoons vs. Editorials?

By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Compass / News Tribune
November 1, 1975


Newspaper people are an odd lot along with a kind of intellectual arrogance, if also a sometimes hard to detect and surprising decency. At least there exists an expectation that other members of the "club," like most political party advocates, will adhere to "Thou Shalt Not Speak IlI of Another member.

Now then, this writer does not belong to said club, at least without prejudice, so some skepticism should accompany opinions expressed herein about the media especially in terms of generalizations - there's always the exception, of course.

One place the exceptions are few, however, are political cartoons usually found on editorial pages. Just for fun I took a weeks sample from one Idaho newspaper. Here's how the cartoons went: 1. A, naked couple outside their cave entrance were cooking an old shoe, in marshmallow and stick fashion, over a campfire. Above the cave entrance flew their patriotic emblem, the U.S. flag. The caption under the cartoon read, "After congress agrees to continue the tax cut and restrain its spending I'd like to ask our congressman over for dinner some evening."

The second day's cartoon shows offshore drilling platforms crowded next to one another overcrowding the sea shore with ever-so-black silhouettes. A spectator on shore, labeled as The U.S. Dept. of Interior, looks through his telescope and shouts "Sale Ho."

The third day cartoon shows presidential aspirant George Wallace on a speaker's platform in Berlin, Germany with a humorous German language greeting ending with the typical southern expression "Y' al." Not bad but, the grim and helmeted German soldiers behind Wallace's wheel chair depict the whole scene as blatantly facist.

The fourth day "editorial" drawing shows President Ford, phone to his ear, behind his oval office desk and in front of the flag of the United States, with his fist clenched in determination and listening with a grin of absolute gleeful delight. The captain underneath reads, "Is New York burning?"

The fifth day's suggestive editorial artistry shows three different covers of Time and Newsweek magazines with photo-cover stories of recent radicals, i.e., those attempting to assassinate the president, and the Patty Hearst story of violence. Then a fourth cover story of ex-president Richard Nixon and wife standing out in bold contrast to the others with a headline "Nixon's New Life."

The caption under the above cartoon read "Speaking of the Glorification, of Crime.

The last cartoon of my week's research showed President Ford as the Statue of Liberty looking grimly and fiercely across the river at New York City with his arm outstretched at the city and its financial mess - thumbs down. No caption was needed, Depending upon one's own point of view, these cartoons do indeed make a point. But isn't it interesting that said point is almost ALWAYS in the direction of, and favorable to, the left side of the political spectrum?

It is also interesting to note the absence of letters to the editor on this condition which, whether they realize it or not, whether they read editorial pages or not, it is another and perhaps even more devastating form of opinion molding than the regular selective "censorship" of the usually left-leaning liberal newspapers.

Some hopeful signs and "better" cartoons, i.e., are beginning to appear with intelligent right-of center ideas.

Write your local publisher. He may be asleep. Or, who knows, maybe he thinks conservatives can't read or else are against THAT, too.



Gloom and Doom Panel

By Ralph Smeed
Caldwell Tribune / The Idaho Compass
November 8, 1975


About a week ago the Idaho Conservation League held a "workshop" on energy. The event took place at Boise State University, hardly a bastion of boosters for free market problem-solving, but BSU should be congratulated this time.

Their economist, Dr. John Mitchell as a panelist, had several friendly comments about such things as the pricing system for allocating scarce resources, along with the supply and demand idea so vigorously opposed by most university types and, unfortunately, by many members of the business community. Too bad Mitchell didn't stay for the question and answer part of the meet, since his approach hardly received any discussion.

The general tenor of discussion was gloom and doom on energy and prospects for the future. It is nevertheless appropriate, if slightly ironic, that the environmentalists who almost always dominate these government-financed gabfests, now find themselves "against everything." A position which most of them used for decades as a slogan to beat the conservatives over the head, (Though most of the media often overlooks this transposition of the liberal vs. the conservative stance, it is still becoming more and more obvious.)

Two of the tragedies of the present flap over the energy shortage crisis were evident at the "workshop." One was the semantic jungle within which we seem destined to wallow. A case in point was the time-honored (or dishonored, depending on one's point of view) tax "loophole" called the oil depletion allowance, which the Congress recently lowered from 27-12 per cent to 22. As part of its "incentive" program, no doubt.

Such strange "incentive" treatment is typical of the welfare state mentality so obviously and rapidly consuming our country. But not so obvious is the confusion, like that at the workshop, which is to blame for the so-called loophole - government or industry. I submit that nothing but more confusion can come from these energy workshops unless and until this part of the semantics is dealt with in some depth.

Another of the tragedies, somewhat more subtle but nonetheless permeating the American scene, is industry's seeming to represent the idea of free enterprise.

For example. one of the industry spokesmen at the above workshop laid the blame for nearly all of the energy crisis "squarely at the feet of government" and then closed his speech by suggesting a tax on gasoline, the proceeds of which could be used to finance energy research, with the surplus, if any, to be returned to the public or to be used to help the poor.

I submit to you, gentle reader, for the proponents of free' enterprise to blame a government in one breath and propose a tax on gasoline in the next - well it's equally as good to try to suck and blow in the same breath. Unfortunately, such is all too typical for the great American Chamber of Commerce mentality.

The observation that I made to the workshop panel on which I served, the title of which read, "Legislation for Energy Efficiency," was that herein said title lies evidence of the problem; a contradiction in terms.

But in a weird sort of way the workshop was typically consistent. Its major thrust was MORE government for LESS energy.



The New Liberalism

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
November 15, 1975


The financial mess into which the politicians have pushed or at least led New York City would in bygone days have been of no particular concern to Idahoans, but not so today.

No longer can we say, "Who cares? It's THEIR problem, not mine." Politics as usual, remember?

Idaho's senior senator and darkhorse Democrat candidate for president of the U.S., Frank Church, is so very much concerned that without even so much as the promise of reforming their past excesses he wants the U.S. Treasury to bail the world's largest city out of its admitted fiscal insanity.

Our junior senator, James McClure, on the other hand, seems to think there would be no place to stop if the federal government began to subsidize city governments whose spending schemes succeed in little else than helping super liberal politicians stay in office by going into debt and-or bankruptcy.

Once again Church is "for" and McClure is "against." One wonders this time, however, just who is positive and who is negative, and why. No doubt the New Yorker's vote, if the political winds blow his way, would play a much bigger role in a presidential nomination for Church than the Gem State's tiny electorate.

Whether or not Idahoans should come to the rescue of New York City, a new phenomenon rises upon the political horizon. Church may well find himself, as a flaming liberal, in deep trouble with a new breed of liberal Democrat and which his customary tax-money-poultice-to-cure-all may not impress. Indeed may turn off.

This new group of Democrats is attending to the gut libertarian concerns of the masses. According to the "Libertarian Party News," the most prominent such liberal is California Gov. Edmund "Gerry" Brown, Jr. Brown recently told Newsweek magazine: "Action has been the catchword. But people feel that things are being done TO them, not FOR them. Sometimes we need fewer programs, less planning, more space to live our lives."

Brown has taken a 7 per cent salary cut (both Idaho's senators please take note) refused to live in the newly-built governor's mansion, said the prisons are for punishment not rehabilitation, and said that the state has no business interfering in people's private sex lives.

He recently told the graduating class of the University of Santa Clara: "you have to depend on yourself - your own energy, your own creative potential. Don't think government is going to provide it for you.

"People are always looking for a laundry list of government programs that are going to unwind the future. That isn't going to happen."

Brown's views are similar to those of Maine's independent governor, James Longley, and Illinois Gov. Daniel Walker. The latter said, "More often than not, it's better for government to stay out of problems."

Most all of which sounds strangely familiar to Idahoans of the First Congressional District. Their congressman, Steve Symms, when loudly labeled a super-conservative by some typical faculty members of the University of Idaho, led the venerable professor Boyd Martin, former dean of said school, to respond: "On the contrary, my (myopic) friends, Symms is without a doubt the LEAST conservative candidate to run in Idaho politics in recent history."

Notwithstanding New York's huge political clout, "status-quo" Church just might find his presidential trial balloon has been somewhat pricked by "super liberal" Symms.



Zionism and Bond Votes

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / Caldwell Tribune
November 22, 1975


The recent election in Boise to decide the fate of the Morrison Center for the Performing Arts, i.e., to tax or not to tax for money to finance a better theater in which performers might show their arts, raises some questions which Idahoans of good will might well ponder.

The $8 million center's tax issue was offered to voters recently to help match the $3 million offered by Mrs. Velma Morrison and the foundation left by her late great husband and construction magnate Harry Morrison. Said tax required a two-third majority vote by taxpayers in the area and failed after an excellent, professional and skillfully handled public relations selling campaign.

"Only two-per cent short" said the center's proponents, "Not so!" According to those who opposed the added tax, "34 per cent short."

Although plans are already under way to hold yet another election to try again, a question arises as to just how many schemes can be justifiably financed on the basis of a mere voting majority, even a two-third majority.

"No way," one of the Boise citizens who likes the performing arts told me, "could the capitalists have forced ANYONE, who did not agree, to pay money into an art center such as this. Not to mention a majority of consumers in an open market situation. No way, that is, except by forming a coalition with government to coerce people. This is what makes me a little uneasy about it."

Almost at the same time that many of the intellectuals who favored the added tax to finance the art center were exclaiming that such a defeat was "terrible," "degrading," "a sad day for our culture" since all that SHOULD have been required, they reasoned, was a simple majority, came a scary headline story from the United Nations General Assembly.

Said story concerned another decision to be made also outside the market place. A vote was to decide whether or not Zionism (The official plan or theory for religious or nationalizing purposes, of the country of Israel, home of the Jews since 1948) was or was not a form of racism.

Probably the word racist is one of the most hated words in the English language, but the vote was taken anyway, The result? 72 to 35 in FAVOR of condemnation of Zionism as racist UN Ambassador Daniel Moynihan, of the U.S. said, "A great evil has been loosed upon the world." The General Assembly of the United Nations has voted and no matter how you slice it THAT'S majority rule. Over two-thirds of a majority in fact.

It is not my purpose here to take issue with this worldwide "hot potato." Rather my point is best summed up by the distinguished black journalist George S. Schuyler in his book "Black and Conservative."

Schuyler wrote: "The tragedy of so many intellectuals in the contemporary world is that while opposing extreme forms of totalitarianism, they are themselves half-totalitarian: that is to say, they express a desire for a society which is half-controlled, half-regimented, half-planned. part capitalist, and part socialist. This strange hybrid they will find (indeed, have found) to be a Frankenstein monster which, ironically, they have a great responsibility for creating."

For those of us who favor the Morrison Center, and this writer does, - perhaps we should look elsewhere to finance our tastes in art.

I, for one am becoming more and more disenchanted with majority-rule, be it in Idaho OR the United Nations. And while useful, within limits, the idea can also become arrogant.

By majority rule standards, 72 to 35, Zionism IS racist, whether you like it or not.



A Clear Case of Political Myopia

By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Tribune
November 30, 1975


Wyatt Earp in a shootout with the bad guys at the OK corral? Well, not now. This particular "show" stars Daniel P. Moynihan, the United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Moynihan is the outspoken, longtime liberal whose statements some years ago, to the effect that the liberal's idea of welfare was not working and the conservatives (this time) were, right, shook up the whole world.

Ever since that time Moynihan's name, which even yet carries large credits with the liberal and Democratic braintrusts, has shown up in important posts in top level governmental circles.

The term "show" is particularly appropriate to the colorful ambassador even alongside the legendary Wyatt Earp, not so much because he's a high-powered official but because he knows which side he's on, and says so.

To find politicians these days whose position is clear about anything except some sort of equivocating is at least unusual.

The ambassador's outspoken comments leave less to the imagination than most of his predecessors', whether on the subject of Zionism as a form of racism (recently decided by vote of the U.N. General Assembly) or by some other U.N. asininity. But whatever Moynihan thinks of he's apt to speak his mind.

His recent threat to resign (such drama is apparently all right only when Henry Kissinger is angry) has provoked the British ambassador to remark the U.N. was "no place for a Wyatt Earp" in his antagonizing the nonaligned countries, or so one supposes.

Only recently one of these "nonaligned" nations wanted a U.S. airbase closed down because we stopped some of our, foreign aid.

What's all this have to do with Idaho? Well, Idaho has a credential-carrying liberal too, in the person of Sen. Frank Church. For somewhat similar reasons he, too, gets the attention of the establishment. In fact, Church is presently running for president on a platform of anti-CIA and, so say some, anti-FBI.

These two nationally known liberals are more than a "distinction without a difference." i.e., it is at least clear which side Moynihan is on. Without questioning Church's patriotism - which I don't - let me illustrate his seeming myopia with an item from the December issue of Reason magazine.

"While the liberals dither, the state marches on. To locate holders of Swiss bank accounts, the IRS hit upon a device of using high-speed copiers to record the front of all air mail arriving from Switzerland. They then compared the postage meter number on the envelopes with meter numbers known to be used by certain Swiss banks and compiled a list of several hundred suspected account holders. It then picked 150 of these for audit. One of the lucky 150 has just lost a federal appeals court ruling that this method of surveillance violated, his Fourth Amendment privilege against unreasonable search.

"This case is an example of what can be accomplished when imaginative police work is coupled with the new hardware, available to the state. It is unlikely that this method would have been practical with the volume of mail coming from Switzerland without the use of high-speed copying equipment. The government needed no "new powers" to carry out this successful investigation. The century-old postal monopoly was quite sufficient."

Church could drag the IRS into his investigation of harassment of U.S. citizens, but he won't. He isn't on that side of the political haymakers.



Economics Two-Step

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / News Tribune
December 6, 1975


"If we have enough voters totally ignorant of economic pros and cons, they can vote the country down the drain without even knowing it."

Truer words are seldom spoken. The above quote comes from the former chairman of the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ATT), the man who headed the government's very own reorganization of the post office.

No doubt a sincere and very intelligent man is Frederick R. Kappel, but having headed the giant ATT seems to have equipped him very little to reorganize the governmentÕs own monopoly, the post office. At least if one judges by the latter's gigantic losses going up and its services going down.

Comes now the vice president of Idaho' First National Bank, V. Dale Blickenstaff, suggesting that economics ". . . needs more attention in the schools."

His statement on the condition of economic illiteracy of the public, as well as this country's students, has reached such pathological proportions as to be almost redundant to mention again.

Redundant, that is, unless one adds the familiar claim one hears more and more these days that students can hardly read, spell, or do much simple arithmetic EITHER.

Blickenstaff's educational speeches around Idaho are getting some welcome editorial and newsworthy attention. His message and literature, however, contain a line or two worthy of note, if not necessarily of alarm.

The bank executive speaks for a group called the Idaho Council on Economic Education, affiliated with a national organization called Joint Council on Economic Education, headquartered of all places, in New York City. It was started in 1949 with support from the Ford Foundation.

According to their literature, the council is "non-profit." Neither "special interests, politics, nor partisan theories have any place in the council's program." Blickenstaff went on, in a recent Caldwell speech, to add that they would not go into theories advocated by economists like
Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or Karl Marx.

Now then, just how one goes about "educating" in economics, or any other discipline for that matter, without getting into the area of theory or value systems of some sort isn't exactly clear. One suspects that when such a "benign" program is offered, it usually carries SOMEBODY'S ideas, either on top of the table or under it - wittingly or unwittingly.

Perhaps "more" economic education, regardless of the theory, the concepts or philosophy, would add to the nation's economic health, but I doubt it.

With the business community in charge of education, students are likely to hear little else than non-profit, non-controversy, non-theory, mixed economy and macro-economic ideas. The establishment means well, most likely, but they shouldn't condemn the teacher's establishment (Blickenstaff carefully avoided assigning ANY responsibility, even to the education "cartel") since it was the National Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers who rushed to Congress to favor wage and price controls - not the teachers. Many of our now oppressive regulatory agencies come about by just such a businessmen's mentality for compromise with government.

Such was the reaction of the native girl in Joseph Conrad's book, "Lord Jim." Conrad describes this encounter between Lord Jim and the native girl by saying, "He would have ravished her but for her timely compliance." Her reaction was pretty much the response of the businessman to the encroachments of government.

Let's hope this "new" set of business tycoons do a better job on free-market capitalism than ATT's Kappel did using private monopoly techniques on the government's post office monopoly.

But don't expect too much. The FIRST thing they've done is ask the Idaho government for money to help sell, you guessed it, "economic education."



Movies, Music ... Politics

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / News Tribune
December 13, 1975


Idaho has a reason to be in the national limelight in that one of her political sons is an aspiring candidate for president of the United States of America, once the undisputed most powerful nation on the face of the earth, but still a pretty big duck in the pond any way you look at it.

Furthermore, whether one likes U.S. Senator Frank Church's influence(s) or not, he is certainly one of the viable Democrat hopefuls getting evermore attention especially surrounding the CIA investigation.

Many newspapers in Idaho like to quote from that giant of journalism, The New York Times, thus giving what some say is an undue eastern liberal slant to western readers. Others say that such a great newspaper deserves to be quoted and followed closely in order to be "in the know." But like it or not its influence is indeed tremendous in many respects.

One of these is their reviews of books and movies, an area where their conservative adversaries have long been asleep. Many an aspiring author has struggled for years only to be discovered by the Times' book reviewers and thence to fame and fortune, usually and especially if said author has a leftish leaning lingo, but not always.

Somewhat parallel to the Times' book department is their review of movies and herein is where Idaho comes into the national limelight again, this time in the person of Miss (or Ms. if you prefer) Ronee Sue Blakely, daughter of the Ron Blakelys, longtime respected citizens of Caldwell.

Miss Blakely stars in a movie called "Nashville." Presumably the title comes from the city in the heart of Tennessee, the "capital" of Grand Ole Opry country Country and western music has seemed to defy, indeed almost evade the modern poll takers entirely and goes on to stay in top running popularity among young and old alike.

Now then one might well assume that this writer would, on occasion, drift into a tendency toward paranoia with a slightly to-the-right bias (admitted) if he said that the country and western stars and the whole group generally tended to be conservative.

But wait. Isn't it at least interesting that the N.Y. Times review of the movie "Nashville" was done by their POLITICAL editor Tom Wicker?

The illustrious Wicker salutes the flag according to the modern manner in his review of "Nashville," a movie which depicts the "vulgarity, greed, deceit, cruelty, barely contained hysteria, and the frantic lack of root and grace into which American life has been driven by its own heedless vitality... the American mobility culture, with its autos obsolete and crunchable the day they're sold, its fast food parlors, plastic motel rooms, take-out orders, transient sex and junk music... a culture in which patriotism and sentimentality salve the hideous wounds of progress, and madmen peer mildly from benign eyes . . ." says New York Times.

Well, the review didn't mention the beautiful and charming Idaho movie star Ronee Blakely and this writer doesn't know whether she is liberal or conservative or gives a hoot about even the N.Y. Times, but one thing seems worthy of observation on Wicker's qualifications on movies of the sort as "Nashville."

The stage for it is set from the current issue of U.S. News and World Report magazine wherein a former top U.S. representative at the United Nations is quoted, "I know 30 delegates who will change their country's vote for a blonde, a case of Scotch or $5,000. Those representing the 'third world' countries don't get much money from home, so it's the "freebies" that make being Ambassador to the U.N. worthwhile."

Go see the movie yourself and see if Wicker's considerable talent for a well turned phrase. . . "vulgarity, greed, deceit. . . hysteria," might not be more appropriate at the U.N. General Assembly, particularly as a POLITICAL editor, than at "Nashville."



Common Sense - At Llast

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / News Tribune
December 20, 1975


A rather odd assortment of personalities go to make up the Idaho political scene which is mostly to the good, at least most of the time. A possible exception could be when the prevailing whim of the voters sees fit to give these fellows power. That's the definition of politics, remember?

A patron saint of the modern philosophers said that politics was a scheme whereby everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else. One such legislator and newspaper editor who believes that such a scheme could be made to work is State Rep. Perry Swisher of Pocatello. At least he thinks his schemes for the good life make sense except for one overriding problem - Steve Symms, Idaho First District congressman.

Consider a recent editorial by this lawmaker who can hardly stomach the increasingly popular Symms. The subject of the acid-tongued editor is, believe it or not, his (Symms) voting record. "He didn't vote on a single roll call listed in the Congressional Quarterly weekly summary, except a pair in opposition to more money for 13 more education programs.

"On all the rest," Swisher quotes the CQ, "he was not on record either by vote or announced position."

Now how is that for contradiction? If anyone should be critical of Symms it seems to me that it should be those of us who agree most of the time with Symms. Certainly not Swisher, who tends to see the congressman as qualified to do little else than perhaps find the restroom on Capitol Hill.

My guess is that Swisher's fears, however couched in editorial gobbledygook, are well-founded. Symms is beginning to get "his" messages across and longtime liberal interventionist Swisher is feeling the political pinch.

Seldom in Idaho politics has a congressman made his "announced positions" so clear. Votes are one versus 434 fellow congressmen but his (or her) influence is often many times that.

State Senator Phil Batt of Wilder, a popular politician of the militant middle of the past, has just written his last newspaper column prior to resuming his duties as a legislator. Said column may give us a key to Swisher's strain in finding something on Symms to criticize.

Batt, reviewing some of his columns, finds himself becoming a little "strident" as differentiated from his past terminology of more quiet and softer debate.

"The reason" says Batt, "is government is growing beyond the public's ability to pay. This is no longer a theory ... proven by New York ... we must face the facts ... the truly needy will lose to the ravages of inflation and a stagnant economy ... government cannot be all things to all people."

BattÕs final line last Week: "Neither the Republican majority nor Democratic Gov. Andrus has a right to put political action ahead of common sense."

Now back to Swisher's final line last week on Symms' voting: "Only four Idahoans (in Washington) have the privilege and responsibility. Three take it pretty seriously. One of them talks a hell of a game."

Some of Symms' more intelligent critics say they'd like to see his efforts take on a little more "intellectual depth," a quality of which he and his staff were once quite capable and, I think, still could be, but as to Swisher's cudgel: "One of them (Symms) talks a hell of a game", methinks Swisher is the one who talks a "hell of a game." Too bad he can't write one, but then that would require - common sense.



New Law - Old Idea

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Compass / News Tribune
December 27, 1975


State Rep. Bill Onweiller, R-Ada, has a plan for yet another scheme of taxation which he chooses to call "site value taxation." Said plan has not exactly received a whole lot of support nor even serious examination yet, but he is a tenacious fellow and as far as this writer can tell absolutely sincere in his convictions. Hence we ought not take him too lightly.

Onweiller's tax has also, on the surface at least, some seemingly desirable features and since there seems to be no particular intellectual competition on the subject it might be well to take a little better look at it. (Without much in-depth examination some pretty weird plans have a tendency these days to become law. For the same,reason Rep. Steve Symms says he's afraid to tell a joke in Congress.)

The so-called site value plan is not new. It is a direct descendant of the old "single tax" plan generally attributed to the economist Henry George (1839-1897). Also a land reformer and former newspaper editor he led an articulate crusade just before the turn of the century which gained some popularity among a relatively small group of followers As a matter of fact an actual Henry George School still exists.

The proposal, for which he became famous, was that the state tax away all economic rent - the income from the use of bare land (but not from improvements) and abolish all other taxes. A certain appeal to "abolish all other taxes" is rather obvious, don't you agree?

Coupled with tenacious and constant pursuit by a lively member of the Idaho Legislature and given the monumental economic illiteracy of today, well anything COULD conceivably pass our eager-beaver legislature.

The Encyclopedia Britannica pretty well sums up the great single taxer, George: "His economic analysis, though more sophisticated than that of most of his contemporaries, is crude by modern standards. His specific remedies had no significant practical result, and economists of reputation who supported it were rare."

To his credit, like Henry George, Onweiller does his homework, too, and not all of his ideas are bad by any means. For example, he wants to balance the budget at the federal as well as the state level and, like many of the delightful present-day Georgists with whom I am acquainted, has an occasional friendly word for the hated terms "capitalism" and "free market."

It is just this matter of homework and consistent tenaciousness of Onweiller's that worries those of us who see "site value taxation" as another scheme for social reform with even more government.

Today's quest for the holy grail boils down to a frantic search for almost any scheme or series of schemes with which politicians can stay in office. Note how New York City's years of planning by reformers of every ilk has them actually believing they deserve a "holy grail" gift.

But Onweiller's no politician, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word. In addition to doing his homework he does not mind being labelled something of a kook, and like many ideologues of the past, he's willing to wait - and work for his ideas. Again, to his credit.

Even so eminent an economist as Dr. F.A. Hayek, recent Nobel prize winner, has recently written: "This scheme (the single tax) for the socialization of land is, in its logic, probably the most seductive and plausible of all socialist schemes. If the factual assumptions upon which it is based were correct, i.e., if it were possible to distinguish clearly between the permanent and indestructible powers of the soil ...and ... the value due to ... improvements ... the argument would be very strong. "

All of which is not to call Onweiller a socialist, not at all. It is to call attention to the shortage of homework, especially in the area of free market economics.
A bill will be introduced, probably in the next session of the legislature, to require a course in economics for high school graduation, but if the government handles this like it handles most everything else look out.