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The Dismal Science
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
January 6, 1977
There is an old saw that says, "economics is the dismal science" and hardly anyone challenges it. Many people are coming to realize that somehow we have educated a nation of economic illiterates by just such an attitude. Some people say the schools merely hire dismal professors to teach economics, hence the subject does indeed tend to seem dull thereby scaring students away in droves.
But it is not just students or teachers who seem turned off at the study of economics - according to several polls the general public too, holds about the same attitude toward money-matters and why they seem so mystifying.
Well SOME concerned citizens are apparently trying to do something about it. Some are downright alarmed about it, but don't know where to begin.
One company who's trying to do something is a division of Continental Oil Company (CONOCO) Box 2197, Houston, Tex. They are distributing a booklet called "The American Economic System ... And Your Part In It."
The company's cover letter says it was "prepared in the public interest by the Advertising Council and the US. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Labor."
Now just what this giant oil company thinks the "public interest" consists of and why they choose a booklet made up by two bureaus of the U.S. Government is not exactly clear.
I cannot testify as to the Advertising Council, but the U.S. Government seems about the LAST place most informed businessmen would recommend for advice in economic and fiscal matters.
Let me hasten to add that I've read the booklet and it's certainly not dismal even though it is indeed about economics. It is in multi-color and laced with cute cartoons of the famous comic strip "Peanuts". Furthermore, my guess is that those promoting the booklet have good intentions.
The only signature on their cover letter is one Scotty MacLeod, some executive at CONOCO, so I direct a couple of observations to him rather than his huge faceless and soul-less corporation: (1) Many parts of the economics booklet are well done and, though gingerly, yea, almost tenderly, do make some good points a bit skeptical of more government. (2) The booklet's definition of the term "inflation", which is without a doubt the most critical section of the entire publication, defines it as meaning "a rise in the general level of prices."
Admittedly the news media (no friends of business they) tends to use this definition, but the library dictionaries define the word inflation generally as "an increase in the supply of money and credit."
If one defines inflation as "high prices" it certainly follows that since business prices their goods high, it must be THEY who are responsible for inflation. People may be ignorant of economics, but they are not stupid and most can read.
On the other hand, if one defines inflation as an "increase in the supply of money and credit" then it follows that government, not business, is responsible for inflation
They and they alone control the money supply, at least for all practical purposes, hence they (i.e., the government) should get the blame.
While there does tend to exist confusing definitions for the word "inflation" it is hard to see why businesses like CONOCO tend to give such aid and comfort to their own already BAD public image. They choose the rhetoric which only proves they deserve said image.
There's another old saw which might apply here. It says, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Yes, Virginia, There is a Smeed
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
January 13, 1977
On the matter of women in the news, I am finding an increasing number of them worthy of genuine interest. I had intended to tell the readers of this column about one fascinating female who writes frequently in the magazine TV Guide. Her name is Edith Efron. She's fascinating to me because she's an individualist with both courage and brains and who can also write.
But Miss Efron's story will have to wait. One New Year's day another female's thoughts appeared. This time in a letter to the editor. I'm going to pass it along to you, even though I've never before heard her name. She's Lynn Meier of Boise.
"Dear Editor," she writes. "I am 10 years old. I am just discovering the high prices of food and electricity. How come prices are so high? If anybody can help me find out, please write this in the editorial page." signed Lynn Meier, Boise.
That's it folks, that's all there was. I've checked a bit, and I think the little girl's letter is genuine and her question certainly is on the minds of most adults these days. Unfortunately, most of us tend to be less direct, so I thought I'd reply.
I'll try to help you, Lynn, with your question, "how come prices are so high?" But you must understand that not everyone will agree and that, here at least, we have to be brief and must try to simplify.
Most things people want are scarce, i.e., there is not enough to go around for everybody to have all he wants all the time. So these things have to be divided or allocated among people who want them. Generally speaking, there are two ways to allocate these things; (1) by a voluntary scheme called the pricing system where people use their purchasing power to buy things offered by other people who have goods and services for sale. Almost always the more scarce a thing is the more people who want it will pay, hence the higher the price.
(2) The other way to allocate things is to have the government dictate or set the prices. A big problem with this is that people who produce the things almost always feel the government dictates too low a price and so the tendency is to produce fewer and fewer things. Pretty soon no one gets the things 'cause they're all gone. Many say the only fair way is for the government to regulate prices "fairly", otherwise only the rich can buy things.
Most of these people who want government regulated prices are decent, honest and sincere people. But, so are most of the people who produce things for sale - in spite of the ever increasing number of influence peddlers who try to tell us otherwise.
Another way to look at it, Lynn, is to see that our whole world economic system is really a giant and complicated barter system. Men used to exchange directly things like wheat and bread for things like yarn and cloth or leather and shoes. They still do, but this is, of course, cumbersome and awkward, so MONEY was invented as a sort of "grease" to make things easier for people to exchange their goods and services. It works, too - until the politicians get to "greasing" voter's palms.
But the politicians, Lynn, discovered centuries ago that this stuff called money also got scarce, so they decided that THEY should control it. They could make it scarce when they chose to and they could make it plentiful when they chose to. So they pass a law giving themselves that power. Our constitution calls it that "Power to coin money and regulate the value thereof." It is all quite legal, but the more money the government "boins" today the fewer things it will buy.
It all went quite well until the politicians, who tend to promise a lot in order to get elected, became so greedy to get elected or stay in office, that they (i.e., the government) actually ran out of money. They couldn't keep up with their spending without risking a taxpayer's revolt.
Well this was the case when the government used "hard" money, i.e., silver and gold coins. They were scarce and difficult to increase the supply, thus tending to limit government. So our politicians, both Democrat and Republicans, "passed a law" to let them print an almost unlimited supply of paper money. This way the politicians, (i.e., the government) could pay for all those many things they promised the people in order to get their votes: It's called inflation. It MAKES prices go up.
There are other reasons for your "how come prices are so high?", Lynn, some important, but this is the most dramatic and most important, and least understood of all - both for you AND the politicians, many of whom are, even, sincere.
Freedom Fog
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
January 20, 1977
As if we didn't have too many laws already, the Idaho Legislature is about to consider passing yet another one. Oh yes, they'll be passing a whole slew of laws if past sessions are any indication and most of them bad, but the problem persists - lost on a fog.
Just why the senators and representatives think they MUST pass laws isn't exactly clear except that nobody much seems to question it. They either give something to somebody or take something away from somebody each time they pass a law. The idea of protecting someone's freedom seldom seems to occur to the politicians.
But this time might be different according to some senators. They think there is a problem in our schools. Now that seems logical enough. The government runs the schools, so it's quite possible that we do indeed have a problem there.
These senators see a bias in the schools against what they call free enterprise. I hope they mean to say "against freedom." In any event, they intend, therefore, to pass a law for a compulsory course in freedom. That's my way of putting it, of course, not necessarily theirs.
Now I have crusaded myself, personally, over many years trying to communicate an awareness of Idaho politicians that such a bias really existed. Indeed we have educated a whole nation of economic illiterates. Something certainly needs to be done, so per usual, we pass a law.
Comes now Senate bill N. 1001: "The purpose of this law is to require the development of a comprehensive economic education program for all children in kindergarten and grades 1 through 12 in the public schools of the state.
"The program in economic education is intended to teach a positive understanding of the American economy and the free enterprise system," the bill's formal statement of purpose goes on to say, "how it functions and how the individual can function effectively within the economy as a consumer, worker and voter." (Nothing mentioned about a producer.)
"The program is under the administration of the state department of education with overall supervision by the state board of education."
That group being the very people in charge of the whole blooming educational mess in the first place. Isn't THAT something?
However, these sincere, concerned and most well-meaning senators are doing their level best to DO something. Especially the Republican ones. Their party has for so many years been completely redundant. So completely out of step with reality that they've been completely intimidated by the education lobby.
Representative Ernest Allen (R-Canyon) was a case in point. He headed up the GOP "education" effort in the Idaho House for years until his retirement. Since then he's been a paid lobbyist for the Idaho Education Association. Allen, too, was sincere, but now his label is on much clearer.
An almost identical free enterprise bill passed the house last year with flying colors, but it was denied even a debate in the senate. But most important of ALL, I don't know where in the world the legislators thought they could have found teachers to teach "free enterprise" had such a bill actually become a law.
These people remind me of something that the famous economist and Nobel laureate, Dr. Milton Friedman, once said: "Two authors who are read the least but have influenced mankind the most are Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. In their objectives, these two men were far apart. Marx sought to do away with the enterprise system; Keynes sought to improve its functionings so that it might survive.
Well Keynes, the great teacher, turned out to be part of the problem, too, but he did his homework - the Idaho senators haven't. A sort of fog seems to obscure the real problem - a rising flood of laws.
Still let's wish them well, for like it or not, we are all passengers on this Ship of Fools and there's not enough lifeboats to go around.
"Law Is an Ass"
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
February 17, 1977
The current flap about whiskey being smuggled into the state of Idaho brings out some sticky, if interesting, points. Perhaps without intending to many opinion molders seem to be suggesting that lawful government management of our lives just may not be so hot after all.
The director of Idaho's liquor law squad said recently that "even if we had all the manpower" smuggling liquor into Idaho couldn't be stopped.
Richard Cade said the only way tax-free booze can be stopped from entering Idaho "is by lowering the price so as to be more competitive with neighboring states." Well, Horray for him.
Cade said that most of it is used for private consumption and he is not recommending lowering the price to be "competitive", presumably for that reason.
But isn't it a little silly that what it's "used for" comes into the conversation AT ALL? One wonders if it were used for snake bite that somehow drug stores would resell it - profit therein being required by law - ergo, profit is a dirty word therefore whiskey is a dirty word.
Lest some of you think I jest, I do not. Idaho Code 48-403, Section 3 of the Unfair Sales Act requires at least a 6 per cent markup on merchandise. This may not make profit compulsory, but it's a gung-ho start. One wonders, again, if Cade realized that his "only way to be competitive" is against yet another law.
On the other hand, if indeed some citizens WERE retailing liquor in the black market would they have to register, presumably, under the Sunshine law in order to protect any repeal of said tax which might tend to put them out of business? Small wonder people drink for escape.
The state government compels the price up, with a big tax on in-state booze, then compels the price to STAY up by stopping Idahoans from going out of state where they can buy it cheaper. Those Idaho legislators who suggest state laws to "police" business practices probably yearn for coyotes to herd sheep.
Cade said his department last year had seized 30 cases of contraband booze at road blocks this side of Jackpot and Winnemucca, Nevada, all in the line of duty, no doubt. But I'd suggest that he did the citizens of Idaho a lot bigger service by explaining the only way to stop smuggling tax-free whiskey into the state is by lowering the price. He should be teaching economics.
*****
On the television is currently running a pleasant ad which shows a state police officer "selling" the 55 m.p.h. speed limit. After his really quite good pitch for slower speeds he louses it up something awful with "It's not only a good idea - it's the LAW" i.e., never mind if it's a BAD idea.
Too many laws are pretty well summed up in Charles Dickens' book Oliver Twist by his character Mr. Bumble when he said, "If the law says that Sir, then the law is an ass."
Concerning good traffic ideas and bad economic ideas the same cops are having to police BOTH and it's becoming harder and harder to tell the difference.
Pinched Spirit
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
February 24, 1977
"State of Representative Dorothy Reynolds of Caldwell is, by most yardsticks, a pretty sound legislator. She has a good heart, but she represents a constituency which sometimes shows a PINCHED spirit."
Thus begins a recent editorial in the Lewiston Morning Tribune on this popular school teacher now a Democrat representative. She personally supports the controversial Equal Rights Amendment idea, but was "forced" to vote against it because of overwhelming sentiment among her voters at home. Said editorial accused her of selling out, but thereby tended to obscure more important aspects of the issue.
On the matter of ERA, the pinched spirit and selling out - a few observations: (1) the editorial was really quite complimentary of Reynolds, although the editor and she disagree on this issue they tend to agree on most all others, hence the editor's "pretty sound legislator," (2) according to the editor: "Many of her colleagues voted against the legal quackery of the legislature's attempt to rescind ... ERA'' and in order to be re-elected she "obviously decided to sell out.''
In my opinion, Reynolds is no sell out artist and she and I differ on a great many issues. I doubt editor Hall thinks she sold out either, at least in the ordinary sense of the word. The editorial, though it did indeed make some good points, was intended rather to make Reynolds the martyr and her constituents as sinners with pinched spirits, i.e., Reynold's understandable dilemma.
(3) The editorial suggested Reynolds and others, voting as she did, voted "against legal equality for women," but such is not necessarily the case. While some no doubt do like the idea of women having special privilege by law, most look at it another way.
It is one thing to have legal privilege to be equal, but it is quite another to be COMPELLED to be equal. The latter is just exactly how many, who have learned to fear government compulsion, feel about the ERA.
It is not so much a matter of "pinched spirit" as one of having learned not to trust the ever-growing big government. Heaven knows there is ample experience suggesting it's like sleeping with an elephant, i.e., at least risky.
And (4): well meaning people, observing inequalities among individuals, now seek to go beyond mere equality UNDER LAW and try to enforce equality BY LAW. Whereas equality "under law" protects unequal persons equally, equality "by law" penalizes some and rewards other for being unequal.
This is Marxism: From each according to his means; to each according to his needs. Christ, on the other hand, said: "Sell what thou hath and give to the poor." The only difference is free will. Some say that Marxism is an attempt to achieve Christianity by force.
All of which is not to say Reynolds or Lewiston Tribune editor Bill Hall like or even condone Marxism. It IS to say that sincere folks disagree. Yea, even liberals and conservatives disagree - even on majority rule.
But they both, including Democrats and Republicans, seem hell-bent to agree on one thing - RULE.
We might try repealing some bad ones, for a change, in place of passing so many new ones.
Lumped With the Others
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
March 3, 1977
Having received an irate phone call recently from Idaho Attorney General Wayne Kidwell in regard to one of my columns, a few comments: the General opened his call with something like "that was a cheap shot you took at me in your column." I asked why.
He responded by saying "you lumped me in with those other guys." He meant Senator Phil Batt and State GOP chairperson Vern Ravenscroft who I reported as also running for governor on the Republican ticket in 1978.
Well, I made a couple of errors which, perhaps, I should correct. Let me explain. First of all I chided the GOP in general and these three candidates in particular for seldom wanting to rock the boat. This is so obvious especially in the fact of the two most popular politicians the State of Idaho has seen in decades- ex-Governor of California Ronald Reagan and First District Congressman Steve Symms, but the myopia grows.
Now just why the GOP cannot seem to "see" this as fact and thereby encourage other candidates to do likewise isn't all that clear. Certainly, whether or not one agrees with Symms or Reagan, most admire their "non-political" candor and guts and success.
But the establishment dies hard- and harder than you'd think.
My column said these gubernatorial aspirants sought to avoid confrontation with the hot issue of a right to work law for fear it would hurt their own political future.
Perhaps, I erred. After he finished scolding me, Kidwell said that nobody had come to him to ask his opinion, thus I didn't have my facts straight, i.e., his unkind term, "cheap shot."
Well I said I'd check my source and if I was wrong I'd apologize. I checked. My source insists that was Kidwell's position on RTW if indeed it was not a formal one. I think it was, I admit maybe it was not.
So what does one do? I see the press quotes Kidwell as saying he'd sue those rascals in Oregon if they seeded the clouds and deprived Idahoans of their rain rights. I applauded that idea and hereby thank him publicly - no question about it.
But, I doubt anyone sought him out for his public position on the right-to-SEED unless he'd called in the press. Anyway, I just wish that when an Idaho individual's right to work is threatened that Kidwell would seek and get as much publicity as did the cloud seeding episode. If indeed it was his position that compulsory unionism should be illegal, and he tells me now that it is his position, I'm sorry. If I've erred, I apologize.
Me thinks he protesteth too much, however. I'd rather think it more accurate to suggest his term "cheap shot" was motivated at least in part by my labelling former State Representative C.L. "Butch" Otter as the GOP's boat-rocker and announcing HIS candidacy for governor, which I did. Otter is his future competitor.
I clearly erred on Senator Phil Batt though, as running for governor. He told me, since, that he's running for Lt. Governor. It was, however, well accepted at the time I wrote the column that he was serious about seeking the governor's office. We could do a lot worse, in any event, and I wish him well.
The bottom line of my column was an attempt to dispel the partisantribalism and hero worship of today's political witch-doctors whose "trade" all too often reaches almost religious proportions. What's called for is the healthy skepticism so clearly articulated by the late great H.L. Mencken, the writer, who the New York Times said was "the single most powerful private citizen in the whole U.S.A."
Mencken said, "The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principle device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of 10 that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
Fortunately Kidwell is no "auctioneer," and he's sincere enough, but the zeal for office should be tempered with the zeal for freedom. Mainly, the individual's.
Are We Honest?
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
March 10, 1977
One hears much these days about citizens who would like to vote for and honest politician. Just what they mean by "honest" is seldom made clear. My guess is that, generally, most of us mean by the term honest we want a politician who AGREES with us, i.e. if we ourselves are honest.
But there is a growing number of people who, by the term honest really mean intellectually honest. And in today's politics, news media and business world that's becoming harder and harder to find.
Take the Idaho constitutional revision for example. Article VI, Section 3 of Idaho's Constitution begins, "No person is permitted to vote, serve as a juror, or hold any civil office... who is a bigamist or polygamist, or is living in what is known as patrachal, plural or celestial marraige.." Or, it goes on to say, who advocates such beliefs shall not vote.
According to Lewiston Morning Tribune editor, Bill Hall, the simple translation of that passage in Idaho's constitution is that Mormons are not permitted to vote, serve as jurors or hold public office. I agree and that part of out constitution should have been changed long ago. And WOULD have.
But not all the so-called politicians are politicians. Here's what can happen. Some years ago when I was a member of the Idaho State FOP executive committee the Idaho League of Women Voters was "pushing" for a brand new Idaho constitution. They questioned me as to my views on said proposal and I said, "No, because the present one tended to be restrictive toward too much government and today's GOVERN-mentality was already headed the other way and a new constitution would tend to be a PERMISSIVE one, thus making it worse." Let's amend the old one.
The League's policies being almost always for more government they never called me again.
Why not amend the constitution, you ask? Good question. I'll tell you ONE reason why. Some years ago the Boise Chamber of Commerce received a suggestion for such an amendment, almost as asinine as the Mormon passage. I think it had to do with preferred stock issuance as that Mormon passage. I think it had to do with preferred stock issuance or some such.
In any event one of the legal-eagle members of the committee considering the matter recommended the chamber not take ANY action at all. The idea being that the sooner the dissent with the old and bad constitution built up--the sooner we'd be able to "sell" the idea of a new one. Nobody objected and no improvement was made.
To find an intellectually honest crusader these days often flies in the face of some wierd forces since so very many push for more and more laws. No wonder the cliche: "the more things change---the more they remain the same" and the other one: "bedfellows make strange politics." So it is today.
Idaho legislators, now in session are SWORN to uphold the Idaho constitution---why don't they? How can they/ Not many seem to worry much about it. Small wonder respect for "the law" is slipping.
Republican Senator Robert Dole was quoted in National Review lately as saying that their recent campaign for president and vice president consisted mostly of " Constructive Republican Alernative Proposals, but unfortunately only the acronym of that phrase seemed to come through."
Dole noted, of course, that acronym spells C-R-A-P, which is about what the Mormon passage in the Idaho constitution amounts to.
but five will get you ten that THIS legislative session won't even pass a memorial on the matter, but it would be intellectually honest, by anybody's definition, if they did.
A House Is Not a Home
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
March 16, 1977
A bill directing the State of Idaho to spend $350,000 on a new mansion for the governor has been introduced. It is authored by State Representative Larry Jackson a Republican of Boise.
A source high in GOP circles tells me that Jackson is planning to run for governor and that a former state Representative Larry Mills, now an executive with Boise Cascade Corporation, may be heading up his campaign for that office.
Well, I was glad to hear THAT. Otherwise what conceivable reason could a nice and intelligent guy like Jackson have for suggesting a $350,000 mansion for the state's chief politician? Never mind the fact that taxes are already too high and getting higher; never mind that the present home provided for the governor is quite adequate for comfortable living already and never mind that building modern pyramids and Taj Mahals has not exactly endeared politicians to the hearts of voting taxpayers-it is at least comforting that Jackson has foresight to prepare for his future. Indeed, how con he prepare for us if he cannot prepare for himself?
Owyhee Nugget Editor Rodney Hawes of Marsing, Idaho has long stumped and lobbied for a new prestigious governor's mansion for Idaho and so, no doubt, have some others. One must not blame Jackson alone, therefore, if one thinks governors should merely be treated like the rest of us mortals.
In fact, even my own small inquiry turned up a few enthusiasts for Jackson's bill. One person thought they needed a big, expensive and prestigious home in which to entertain in whose behalf?" and the reply was, "ours".
NOW, I doubt that the collective use of the word "ours" can be intellectually defended so as to justify better government, since "better government" means MORE to some people and LESS to others. There is also tough value judgments on issues of an even more emotional nature like Right-to-Work and Equal Rights Amendment.
Further, we hardly need a fancier governor's mansion as an incentive to run for the office. A long line of gubernatorial candidates is forming and history suggests each will risk nearly breaking his neck to promise - that is, I mean - compete.
We have come to have unreal expectations of politicians because we have unreal ideas of government, and matching these unreal expectations are the unreal amounts of dollars and personal freedoms we blow away in trying to achieve them.
If Jackson and company really want to elect Governor John Evans next election I can think of no better way than to put such a bill on his desk in this present session and have him veto it. That, especially in today's political climate, would make Evans about as popular as California's Governor Jerry Brown.
Brown, you will remember, made it big with California voters when he refused to move into their state's brand new governor's mansion.
I'm not exactly a fan of Brown, but it's to his credit he's not afraid to rock the boat and neither hoes he seem to "worship" government.
Former Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus is reported to have closed down the houses of prostitution in North Idaho. Let's not tempt out lobbyists by building a fancy house in South Idaho - especially at government expense.
It's Your Friendly Press
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
March 23, 1977
I had resolved not to say anything further on the matter of Right-to-Work or on the Equal Rights Amendment during the legislative session, but I now find this next to impossible.
Two or three reasons: (1) These two issues are about the only ones wherein the matter of individual rights and individual responsibilities are somewhat openly discussed. For that purpose they are absolutely delightful. (2) Each is a little too emotional, but they tend to cause people to think; even a politician or two, and (3) the news media treatment of ERA and RTW is, if one keeps a sense of humor, almost slapstick comedy.
The Idaho Legislators, who would rather do almost anything than take sides on RTW have come up with a clever gimmick to obfuscate the issue almost beyond recognition. They have amended the bill meant to outlaw compulsory unionism to also outlaw the farm commodity commissions.
The Republicans had a good chance to put Governor John Evans on the spot if they passed a RTW law. If he vetoed it he'd wipe out about half his voter support and if he signed it into law he'd wipe out the other half. Either way he'd lose, but they chose not to do this.
Many of the legislators understandably fear organized labor's political muscle although they won't say so publicly, but also most are GOP members who claim this is only political pragmatism. Then these same politicians say they wonder why so few young people want to join the Republican party. What a laugh. Fortunately this kind of sophistry is finally being exposed little by little.
There is much to condemn the commodity commissions, but the seeming "truth in labeling" of compulsory unionism as somehow the same as compulsory commodity commissions is at best only a half truth.
There are about a dozen agricultural commodity commissions in Idaho set up to advertise and or control meat, potatoes, wheat, beans, peppermint etc. Admittedly many if not most of these have some type of compulsory check-off to pay the "dues" via some deduction from sales.
Now I congratulate those newsmen who zealously promote compulsory unionism when they cite the compulsory check-off of agri-business. That certainly has merit, certainly stifles freedom of choice and certainly uses the government to coerce unwilling "members." Not entirely unlike the special privileges granted to organized labor.
But a few big differences: (1) the commissions "dues" go into government bank accounts and are paid out by law (2) they don't support political candidates regardless of member's private wishes (3) there are almost no farmers or growers who are "screaming" for freedom of choice, i.e., to get out. Of those few who do want out many can get their money back by writing a letter requesting same, and (4) since when do two wrongs make a right? Both these legal compulsions should be repealed.
I personally do not favor RTW laws, neither do I favor ERA laws COMPELLING equality between the sexes (next we'll be compelled to let men marry men and women marry women. Requests for this are mounting already), but it's no wonder people look to the law to plunder each other.
The primary instrument by which the few have managed to plunder the many is the clever but phony story persuading the victims that they are being robbed for their own benefit, but a friendly press is a big asset, if not a must, toward this end.
For example, RTW is usually referred to as a bill to outlaw the "union shop", but when it's called a bill to outlaw "compulsory unionism" it is indeed a friendly press. If YOUR press is friendly - try urging them to use the latter term, and the best of luck - you'll need it.
A New Image for the GOP
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
April 6, 1977
Somebody said to me once that the Republican party needed a new face, a new smile, new image. Indeed the conventional wisdom still leans in that direction, i.e. to the extent they'll tolerate being pinned down to any direction at all.
Well, they made a rather substantial move in that direction two or three years ago. They hired the beautiful and charming Helen Chenoweth from Orofino, Idaho, to be executive director.
She brought not only beauty to the GOP but some brains, too. And according to a few GOPers, some bias to the right.
Chenoweth had dropped out of politics in North Idaho, but she said the enthusiasm and principles put forth by the First District Congressman Steve Symms in his 1972 campaign rekindled a new spirit in her own mind of how party politics could and should run. Sometime later, when offered the job of salaried chief of staff for the Idaho State GOP, she accepted.
One of the first in a series of eminently successful fund raising efforts headed by the new female executive was a Boise banquet speeck by the famous Bill Buckley, editor of National Review Magazine and host of the popular TV show, "Firing Line."
Buckley, by all odds the country's number one conservative, delivered easily the most clever and inspiring speech heard by Republicans in recent years. It was eagerly applauded by both liberals and conservatives alike who packed into the giant ballroom of the Rodeway Inn to hear one of the nation's most controversial thought leaders.
But thoughts, especially controversial ones are not universally appreciated by Idaho Republican leaders and shortly thereafter began some resistance to the party's new found vigor which was to result in Chenoweth's resignation, effective April 1, to join the Boise staff of Congressman Steve Symms.
Just how soon or just what athe substantive effect will be of this new addition to Symms, who is easily the hottest piece of political property Idaho Republicans have had in years, remains to be seen. But another very intelligent and very famous female GOPer Clare Booth Luce, writing in the March 18 issue of the National Review, makes some interesting observations on the obvious decline of their party, hence of interest to Idahoans.
Luce says, "The conventional wisdom that is the main cause ... is argued that voters cannot tell whether the GOP is Conservative fish, Moderate flesh, or Liberal fowl and, furthermore, that they have been leaving it in droves because they no longer know what it really stands for."
Although Luce doesn't buy this "conventional wisdom" she thinks the GOP is nonetheless dead and makes some congent points in her article as does two other famous writers in the same article. The latter disagree with Luce and thereby shed considerable light on similar troubles within the Idaho GOP. The three short articles are must reading for political watchers in our state.
Chenoweth has something of an awesome responsibility with Symms for, among other things, she'll be in charge of his press relations. And whether or not she and Symms can convince Idaho voters "their" GOP is "not dead" and do it through an all too often hostile media may take a REAL old fashioned revival.
Symms, in that regard, can be something of a political boat-rocking evangelist - Chenoweth, considering her past association with the establishment, may want to take a page from Jimmy Carter and get "born again."
The Boondoggle of Food Stamps
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
April 6, 1977
If there is any single issue that concern for which is almost universally shared by Idahoans it is the subject of welfare. Welfare in general and free-loaders in particular. This is probably occasioned by the fact we see it going on LOCALLY as different form other government "projects" in distant cities.
Of these programs probably the federal food stamps are the most infuriating. So much so in fact that even Congress has begun an investigation into "food stamp' abuse.
Idaho's Congressman Steve Symms gained some notority once by condemning the accepted practice of food stamps being supplied to students attending the college and workers who had jobs, but were out on strike. Even the politicians are beginning to hear from folks back home. At long last comes the inevitable investigation.
Well, I attended part of that so-called "investigation" a few days ago as a guest of Rep. Symms in Washington, D.C. It must be remembered that food stamps are assigned to the U.S. Department of Agriculture of which Symms is a ranking member. The fact food stamps are not a part of the Welfare Department merely attests again to the monumental dishonesty of Congress and their semantic jungle-warefare.
Chairman of the U.S.D.A. food stamp sub-committee is Representative Frederick Richmond (D-New York). His continual commenting and purring words in witness's mouths tended to encourage one to throw up.
One episode was the appearance before the committee of a Florida group, headed by that state's attorney-general. It included a prosecuting attorney and two investigative reporters, and was supported by their congressman "Skip" Bafalis (R-Florida) all of whom were severely outraged by what their own investigation turned up.
The Florida attorney-general gave examples of massive fraud and abuse of food stamps in his state, but the New York chairman insisted that such instances were not typical and were caused by the unusual Florida cold wave.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Chairman," explained the head of the Florida panel of witnesses, " but they ARE typical. These people were on food stamps BEFORE the freeze."
Noting that the chairman was not at all impressed the attorney-general said they investigated 22 welfare cases on food stamps and found 18 of them to be fraudulent. In so doing they had to subpoena the welfare office records in order to overcome the lack of cooperation on part of the bureaucrats.
When their offices began the welfare bureau food stamp investigation, the fed's in turn started an investigation against HIM.
Indeed the law enforcement people from the Sunshine state thought it incredible the the bureaucrats were so defensive about their welfare conduct.
To the starry-eyed do-gooders who ascribe the most virtue to those who can spot the most poverty this little episode may not seem very important. But one of the investigating reporters who testified was plumb converted. Said he," I was a flaming liberal until I got into this food stamp mess. Now I see it as a complete boondoggle." The USDA food stamp committee seemed hardly impressed.
To the well meaning conservatives who condemn the welfare freeloaders, I say it's high time they instead take in after the politicians buying votes with the food stamps. Like the college student authors of the book "The Incredible Bread Machine," said in regard to food and hunger; "no one gets it - if there ain't any."
Regarding my opposition to the revent congressional pay raise, a friend said to me that he believed in paying our representatives what they are worth. I replied, "If we did, they'd starve to death." I should have added "with or WITHOUT food stamps."
RX for Medicare
Valley News
By Ralph Smeed
April 20, 1977
The State of Washington's female Governor Dixie Lee Ray has put her state in the news more often than most of her male predecessors. Said newsworthiness seems to irritate much of the news media, giving her political unorthodoxy a certain credibility. Perhaps she's started something.
Comes now the Evergreen State's Senate with some unorthodoxy of of its own, namely an attempt to require their welfare department to pay its bills within 60 days or start paying interest to its debtors.
Chronic late payment of bills is reported to be one of the reasons many doctors in Washington have stopped treating welfare patients. That seems to me not only unorthodox, but quite newsworthy.
These doctors and, one supposes, doctors in Idaho as well, complain about other things in addition to late payment from the government. For example: mountains of paperwork, and the " meddling" of bureaucrats in diagnoses and treatment.
Accountability it is called now, by some. But notwithstanding the fact that many bureaucrats are sincere, it's the legislature that decides how much the doctors will be paid and that requires the paperwork, hence, it's called socialized medicine by others. Whichever it is, it is not a question of sincerity nor compassion, nor decency. It's a question of semantics and the media, if it deserves indictment for anything at all, should be criticized for the semantic-jungle of confusion of who's to blame for what.
Most doctors, most newspersons and yes, maybe even most politicians genuinely want people to get good medical treatment. The problem is how best to do it and at who's expense. It's a tough enough problem WITHOUT so much of the Tower of Babel permitted, if not promoted, by the media.
Still, the story about medical care, medicine and it's delivery is in many ways much the responsibility of the medical doctors themselves. They charge off, all the expensive education they are required to have and other sacrifices they make, all seeming to justify their "special case." Most of these people are decent, honest and at least as well meaning as the most of us.
Two other realities stand out, however, and are necessary to put the medical picture and doctors in some sort of perspective.
First of all, it is a fact these "sacrifices" are for the most part true, but so are they true of tire dealers, Ma and Pa grocers, building contractors and a plethora of other small business and professional people. Many of these are not protected at all from too much competition by occupational licensure as doctors are.
Secondly, although certainly not ALL doctors enjoy $100,000 per year incomes - many do. True,m they work long hours - like many do who have small incomes. But the problem of government interference in medicine is a political one, and most doctors seem to think someone else ought to pull their political fat out of the fire for them.
Many doctors are politically illiterate. Many are intellectually arrogant, but most of their patients have almost blind faith in their family doctor and seek his advice on almost ANYTHING.
However, the tragedy is not that the doctors cannot give expert advice on everything. The tragedy is they are absolutely irresponsible with their case for socialized medicine (yes, there is one and paradoxically, they're repeating the same story as Great Britain's doctors).
I'll tell you, God willing, just how bad they are next week. I had a survey made at my own expense and many of the "ought to be run out of town."
Astonishing Proposal
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
May 27, 1977
Next to the federal government, the American Medical Association probably comes in for more scathing criticism than any other organization in the U.S.A.
Oh sure, there are many decent and well meaning citizens who seem to have an almost blind faith in government, but generally speaking the only blind faith almost universally shared by Americans is in their own family doctor, if not the doctor's trade association.
Freely chosen and selected by the outcome of no political monkey business whatsoever, with the possible exception of occupational licensing, medical doctors inspire and enjoy more real confidence than any other profession in the world.
In the light of all this esteem and respect for their advice which, by the way, runs all the way from how to choose a mate - clear across the spectrum to urban renewal or county land-use planning, or wife swapping.
Sound ridiculous? Well, such tremendous regard do people hold for their paternal painkillers, that, typically, even the most ardent church going deacon is apt to grab his first copy of "Playboy" magazine, provided his family physician were to suggest a casual reading of that publication's feature, "sex life after 80", i.e., if it were such a feature.
If all this prestige and influence is truly present, why are these same doctors, nearly all of who claim to be vehemently against socialized medicine, losing the race against it? Of all the doctors I've ever met and, of those who do CARE, nearly all frequently expressed great sorrow for the sorry direction medicine is headed.
I think these doctors are without a doubt as sincere and dedicated a profession as exists. They work long hours and again, generally, deserve their prestige and pay. So why are they so consistently losing their "war" on government medicine?
Since I've been such a long-time crusading comrade of the private medicine story, I too, wonder why. So I had a survey made. A rather honest one, too, I suppose, since I paid for it. It's approach was clean, unusual and revealing.
The survey was to see what the doctors were doing with their waiting room literature. Of all the captive audiences in the world, with the exception of the government's compulsory school system, doctor's offices are the biggest and, in terms of THIS fight, certainly the bet, i.d., made to order.
A random survey was made of the literature to be hound in the waiting rooms of doctors in Caldwell, Nampa and Boise. The idea, of course, was to see what kind of a job the doctors themselves were doing to help pull "their" fat out of the fire of government medicine.
It is true that such a fight is not altogether the doctor's alone, since socialized medicine is sort of a bellwether of more nationalization to come. Great Britain is, of course, the free world's classic example, but certainly they should put their mouth where their money is.
The survey may or may not be the equivalent of Gallup, Roper or Lou Harris, but i can assure you it was honest. the office waiting rooms of 100 doctors were checked at random in Caldwell, Nampa and Boise. Over 1,000 magazines, publications and periodicals were carefully counted and cataloged to see how many we could find in which one would LIKELY find the case against socialized medicine.
We didn't expect to find many, since those magazines favoring private medicine are in the minority, but they DO EXIST. For example, Private Practice, National Review Reason, Conservative Digest, Human Events, the Freeman, to name only a few, plus a host of excellent newsletters.
Result? We found not one. NOT ONE. Now I'm sure there must be some doctors who do provide good anti-government medicine publications, in fact I've seen one or two. But our random survey found none and I think, therefore, it is alarmingly representative. What a golden opportunity - lost - to state their case.
Idahoans are fortunate to have such a large number of fine medical people in this area, and I myself have a great respect for them, but they must be politically and economically illiterate, or dull. Certainly they are not stupid.
Or perhaps, shades of the millenium, the idea of using their waiting room literature to "educate" just might not have occurred to them.
Or, horror of horrors, maybe they just don't want to irritate a paying customer - in public. Not everybody agrees, you know.
Biting a More Chewable Bullet
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 2, 1977
Idaho Power Co. president James Bruce said recently that "President Jimmy Carter bit the bullet on energy policy - and I think a lot more of him than I did before."
Bruce liked Carter's effort to establish a national energy policy and urged I daho state government to do likewise. One supposes he meant the Public Utilities Commission establish said policy.
Speaking to an overflow crowd sponsored by the Caldwell chamber of Commerce, the chief spokesman for Idaho's electric monopoly drew a dour and dramatic drawing of doom for Idaho consumers.
Certainly the need for more juice is more apparent now than it was when Bruce's company was trying to promote their Pioneer coal-fired plant near Boise last year. Since that time a shocking shortage of water has compounded, geometrically, the hydroelectric company's ability to provide power to an already undersupplied energy market.
Notwithstanding the fact that even come hard-core environmentalists are beginning to have second thoughts about Idaho's growth or the power company's "greed," the articulate energy chief's story left some of us puzzled.
About this puzzle a few observations: (1) Bruce applauded President Carter's request for a government energy plan. This in spite of the government's years and years of planning, most of which is asinine.
For example, their compulsory price ceiling on natural gas at the well-head causing excess consumption of gas and making the use of abundant coal harder to sell. The price controls on domestic crude oil as against imported crude are almost as asinine, but not quite so apparent to the public.
Just why a bigger and presumably more comprehensive and complex national energy policy would be an asset is not apparent either. It's a bit like asking a perennially bankrupt dairyman to become the nation's milk production czar.
(2) At the state level perhaps there is expertise which again escapes our attention. I seem to remember however, the Idaho PUC did indeed HAVE a policy. Attention to it was drawn by then Gov. Cecil Andrus whose policy "direction" to the PUC was louder and clearer than Idaho Power's. It said in effect, "nothing doing" to more Idaho growth, i.e., Pioneer electric generating plant.
While it is true that succeeding events have provided somewhat clearer evidence that Bruce and his company's warnings of power shortage should have received a friendlier hearing, he speculated that even today there was doubt a referendum on Pioneer would pass.
Now then, Jim Bruce is a sincere, dedicated, articulate and enthusiastic power tycoon. I like him. But he's not being candid. Maybe he thinks e can't - and stay legal - because of the state's energy policy. What he should have said is that the states's energy policy was stupid, not that we needed one. People could understand that.
The state's largest newspaper, the Idaho Statesman at Boise, attacks the power company's energy policy almost daily. Why doesn't Bruce attack theirs? People could understand that.
Bruce's story is finally beginning to emerge. But whether or not it's the best for the state's future he left something else unsaid, perhaps more important than the others - formal education. The government runs that, too, you know. Policy and all.
Whether we notice or not educators have had big input on energy and policy the past several years. Bruce's problem is, unfortunately, a political one. His predecessor, former chief of Idaho Power, Tom Roach summed it up once years ago, but it too, got swept under the rug.
Said he, "I've heard about all I need to about business's stake in education. What's needed is to hear about education's stake in business."
Bruce should bite THAT bullet, because educators have more political clout than power users. But that'd be risky - and the state's energy policy, to which Bruce seems oblivious, doesn't call for its legal monopoly to take that kind of risk.
Laetrile and "Dr. Hall"
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
May 11, 1977
A recent editorial in the Lewiston Tribune made some interesting comments on a substance called laetrile which is made from apricot pits. Called a drug by some people and called vitamin B-17 by others, it is said, again by some, to have a beneficial effect in the treatment of cancer in some cases. For reasons yet unclear it is illegal in the U.S.
As to whether the claims about the efficacy of laetrile are true or not, I cannot personally testify, but I do know of both patients and medical doctors who insist the substance does have beneficial effects. In fairness, I should add that I also know other intelligent people who disagree.
Comes now Bill Hall, gadfly editor of the Lewiston Tribune, and author of the above mentioned editorial with some amazing comments on the substance which is illegal with or without a prescription.
Labeling the substance as a drug throughout his editorial, Hall insists laetrile is no good whatsoever for cancer treatment, except, perhaps, as a "sugar pill or placebo" and might give temporary piece of mind to a cancer patient. Since the drug is harmless according to Hall, it might be okay to legalize it except that it might cause a patient to forego potentially helpful treatment.
Now then "Dr." Hall doesn't tell us WHICH treatments are "potentially helpful" in specific cases, but he does say all this difference of opinion is a "dilemma". My understanding is that some conventional treatments work and some don't and that this is the real dilemma.
In any event, I don't intend to impugn the motives of my friend Hall for he is indeed a doctor of sorts, i.e., to his credit he's often concerned about peoples freedoms, but he often prescribes one of the strangest "drugs" of all - government. This time to govern a drug that he himself labels as harmless. More like a prescription for legalizing freedom, I'd say.
Indeed his comments include some good and cogent observations, but the punch line in his editorial is really one for the book. It reads: "If the drug is legalized, with provisions that no firm have an exclusive patent on the product, the price would be minimal."
The balance of his argument is much the same as the one to legalize marijuana which even a presidential commission has recommended, so let's not scold him for this. But get that message, folks. Let's legalize a harmless drug, he says (or vitamin), "... with provisions that no firm have an exclusive patent ... would discount that useless drug - and put the quacks out of business."
I just hope "Dr." Hall doesn't try to legalize my copper bracelet and put the beautiful and charming female "quack" who gave it to me, out of business.
George Hansen and Legal Gold
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
May 18, 1977
Apparently Congressman George Hansen of Idaho's second district has drawn up legislation to legalize gold. Most people think it is already legal, since 1973, but that is only partially true, i.e., it is STILL not legal for private persons to draw up contracts payable in gold.
According to a recent editorial in Lewiston Morning Tribune, Hansen is "bidding for the gold miner's and speculator's vote ... but it would turn our monetary system into chaos."
About the Tribune's opinion on gold a few observations. 1) Such misleading information is unfortunate not only because they disagree with Hansen on almost every monetary issue. It is sad because they attack Hansen's apparent gold position for the wrong reasons.
The interventionists fear a gold standard because it tends to limit the politicians who promise to get in office and spend to stay in. If they couldn't "print" the money to pay bills they'd be forced to be fiscally responsible since no one can "print" gold.
Printed paper money is precisely how the foibles of politicians were paid for in Germany prior to World War Two. Adolph Hitler's rise to power there grew out of the chaos caused by the same money scheme the U.S.A. is using today. The fact it took a German wheelbarrow full of paper dollars, which they call marks, to buy a loaf of bread is what Hansen fears if the present monetary insanity continues.
And (2) the "chaos" feared by the Lewiston Morning Tribune is very real. But what do they consider is happening to our monetary system right now - if it isn't nearing chaos WITHOUT gold?
There may be plenty to criticize Hansen about for example, his campaign debts. However, compared to the gold guzzling gluttony of the federal government the eastern Idaho Congressman is a penny-pinching Scrooge.
For over two thousand years gold was man's choice for money - not government's choice. Gold made it difficult to cheat the ruler's citizenry. In spite of kings, dictators and politicians, both kind and despotic, the yellow metal survives, especially where freedom from too much government is generally misunderstood among the people. Hansen probably knows this.
Perhaps the saddest of all, however, is that the newspaper seeks to impugn the motives of Hansen's idea of gold. Honest men for centuries have debated about gold and many have hated each other afterward. But some understanding could help alleviate some of this hatred if we could just get outside our political personality cult. Or maybe we're missing some humor here.
The editorial's "... unless he's half mad" may have been meant as something of a joke in their own statement: "Congress has decreed that our paper currency is legal tender for all debts public and private."
That's an odd statement, though, considering the huge number of private citizens who bought gold with their money in the black market while the metal was illegal. Odd, too, considering the alarming amount of MUSCLE required to enforce the spiraling number of decrees congress makes. Also odd that in spite of the U.S. gold dumping the price continues to rise.
Apparently those voters don't have much faith in what congress decrees. Could it be that congress' word is not - as good as gold?
Simplot and the Judge
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 22, 1977
During the late 1960s and early 1970s federal judges were among those who had to deal with the sophistry of radicals who contended that their bombing of banks and burning of ROTC buildings were excusable because they had attacked evil institutions, they hadn't hurt people.
And of course, judges have been among those who have to deal with those embezzlers who stole from the company, excusing the act in their own minds with the rationale that they hadn't stolen from people; they had only ripped off a faceless corporation which could well afford the loss.
It's all poppycock of course. Those burned ROTC buildings belonged to all of us and had to be replaced with our tax dollars. And the burned banks are owned by people - people who had to pay the cost of their replacement. And the corporation hit by an embezzler is owned by stockholders - by people. For good measure, banks and other corporations have a tendency and an economic need to pass their losses on to the customers - to people. Judges have had to make that point time and time again.
But it was a federal judge himself - A. Andrew Hauk of Los Angeles - who lapsed into flimsy excuses for the defendant and attacked the prosecutors with sophistry when Idaho industrialist J.R. Simplot was fined Friday for income tax fraud.
Hauk, resisting the suggestion by government attorneys that he consider imposing a prison sentence as well as a fine, sounded like every radical bomber of the past decade, every bank embezzler, as he apologized for the defendant before him and lashed the government attorneys.
Excusing what Simplot did as a "so-called white collar crime," Hauk contended that, "no one has been bereft of physical, mental or recreational sustenance. Oh, yes ... you could say the government was hurt. but not one of you had to pay a nickel more (because Simplot didn't pay what he should have) ..."
In other words, Simplot only cheated the company - our company, the government, the company owned and supported by the stockholders - the people of the United States.
There are given costs to running that company, costs borne by the taxpayers. Those, like Simplot, who don't pay their assigned share, have lowered the revenue used to maintain that government. If enough Simplots cheat the government out of their assigned shares, then the share of the load assigned to the rest of us must be increased. If enough Simplots across the country are unilaterally and artifically lowering their own taxes, it is axiomatic that the taxes on the rest of the citizenry will have to be raised. And that extra money, taken out of the paychecks of other people, is money that the Jack Simplots have taken from the rest of us by not paying their share. They have cheated, not a faceless government, but their fellow citizens, who are the government.
Perhaps the most preposterous Hauk excuse of all is his contention that he shouldn't be too hard on Simplot because the industrialist will eventually suffer even more because he may have to pay so much in back taxes, penalties and interest.
Imagine a bank embezzler pleading with the judge to go easy with him because, Lord knows, he will be suffering enough since the bank has had the gall to ask him to give back the money he took.
One wonders, after the object lesson of such disgraceful reasoning by a federal judge, what the defendant can possibly say if he catches an employee stealing from that faceless corporation the J.R. Simplot Co. After all, it isn't like stealing from people. - B.H.
Quandary for Symms
By Ralph Smeed
Lewiston Morning Tribune
May 30, 1977
Idaho's First District Congressman Steve Symms had lunch recently with the Governmental Affairs Committee of the Nampa, Idaho, Chamber of Commerce. I attended the luncheon, but came away uneasy and perplexed.
Symms seemed at ease and more confident than usual as he outlined the follies and foibles of a liberal congress. "They're trying desperately to solve everybody's problems, but succeed mostly in only making matters worse," he said.
The outspoken Republican reported on what he saw as some glaring mistakes such as the big city politicians setting farm policy, "rural America being urbanized."
They're putting the food stamp program into the farm bill package when it should be in the department of HEW. Of course Symms opposed this.
Symms opposed Amtrak, the government's railroad service soon to come to Nampa and explained that it'd most likely be cheaper to buy the passengers first class tickets on the airlines than to have the government try to do what the private railroads could not.
One popular misconception which particularly gravels Symms is that the military budget is usually thought to be the largest item in the U.S. budget. He said it is only 25 per cent, whereas by far the largest part is for vote-buying social and welfare programs.
As might be expected the Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA) came under Symms critical attack as did a proposed gag law in the House of Representatives designed to limit debate and speed up their ability to pass more and more legislation.
He was also against the seemingly popular phase of "food as a weapon" in U.S. foreign policy because "the farmers always end up as the whipping boys."
All of which adds up to this: the gutsy, and popular congressman delivered about what could have been expected of him here in his home territory. His manner and ease of reporting has taken on some polish and even a little class since I last heard him and that's a good sign, especially since the Democrats see him as far too successful in Washington, hence intend to pull out all the stops to defeat him come next election.
But what perplexes many Symms supporters is how does a politician properly report all these sad tidings of an overwhelmingly meddlesome congress and at the same time avoid that label of being against everything?
Symms is market-oriented, but the news media and all too many chambers of commerce are politically oriented, hence tend to expect government to solve problems most of which were caused by them in the first place. Certainly Symms sees Washington, D.C. as more problem than solution - and tries to tell it like it is.
Too bad he couldn't have risked telling the friendly chamber members that their own lobbyists, especially in Washington, just might be part of the problem too.
For example, it is rare indeed when a chamber of commerce is vehement "against" government spending in their own politician's back yard. "After all," they often seem to say, "we need the jobs and it does stimulate the old economy."
Potato Fascism
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
June 1, 1977
The big chain store groceries have been in the news lately, but for some strange reason a most interesting aspect of the story has escaped much attention from the news media.
For some years many Idahoans have complained that it was nearly impossible to buy a good Idaho potato within the state. The reason was, they are almost positive, the good spuds were all shipped out.
Now just who these greedy profit mongers are that deny Idahoans their own state's famous high quality tubers is seldom discussed.
But some of those who deliver potatoes in-state to vast numbers of voters have recently come to public attention. I use the term "voters" - instead of consumers - advisedly, simply because the potato quality of grading has come to the attention, almost all of a sudden, of TWO state departments, the Department of Agriculture and the Attorney General's office. Both want to govern the in-state marketing of potatoes.
Both claim some false labeling of poor grade spuds as U.S. No. 1 and lousy display practices resulting in what is called "greening" under fluorescent lighting.
It seems prolonged exposure to these lights causes the chlorophyll in potatoes to surface, making them less desirable. Just why the government gets so excited about a potential loss to grocers is not clear. Perhaps they see potato buyers as "voters", (or dummies) instead of buyers.
At any rate, both departments allege that some Idaho grocers are cheating by mis-grading their own potatoes, something few consumers would condone.
Comes now Wayne Kidwell, Attorney General of Idaho, who has apparently nailed several of Idaho's big food chains cheating on their potato labeling. At least if he hasn't nailed them he got several of them to sign a sort of consent decree, technically labeled "Assurance of Voluntary Compliance" by his office.
Let's assume for the moment the big grocery chains were guilty of cheating on the labels of the bad spuds. Just how they can stay in business selling "junk" potatoes merely by labeling them "gold" isn't clear, but it seems clear Kidwell convinced the giants they were not Jolly Green. At least they signed his "compliance."
Now then, many business practices these days are not clear as to what's strictly legal and this tends to make business, especially big business, easy prey for a sharp politician or bureaucrat with aspirations to higher office.
I hasten to add I'm not impugning Kidwell's motives - I simply don't know. but my copy of his negotiated agreement with one of these large food markets makes some queer statements.
Here are some: (1) "..Technical violations of this voluntary compliance are possible despite honest best efforts of Respondent to ensure proper grade standards (of potatoes)." (2) " Attorney General will consider all circumstances .... beyond the respondent's control .... for defects within prepackaged potatoes...." etc.
It is entirely possible Kidwell merely wants to be reasonable as he supervises the grading, packaging, storing and displaying of the supermarket's potatoes. But the negotiated "decree" gets quite specific as to exactly how the stores shall package and display, with notices to him in writing, yet.
So specific in fact that some risk obtains that a precedent is perhaps being set for a kind of bureaucratic "blackmail". Aside from what may well be a very unwise negotiating way of the merchant's common sense right to package and display goods as he and his customers see fit, another danger exists.
While Kidwell may see himself as merely protecting people from their own lousy freedom of choices in the marketplace, what does the following do to the grocer's freedom - except raise the price?
Paragraph "D" of his negotiated compliance says that potato displays ".....shall not exceed a maximum of fifty 10 - pound bags, five 20 - pound bags, ten 5-pound bags, and twenty-five pounds of unbagged potatoes." Leapin lizzards!
Even if the big food store chains can live with this crap the should never have agreed to it. Makes one wonder just what Kidwell REALLY caught them at.
Perhaps the stores were indeed guilty, if so they should be ARRESTED, not regulated.
Unless there is fraud the customers in a free market should be the regulator. The businessman's tool is values - the bureaucratic regulator's tool is fear.
American business is being harrassed, bled, and even black-jacked under a preposterous crazy quilt "system" of laws and regulations, many of which are unintelligable, unenforceable and unfair. There is such a gob of laws governing business that the government literally can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute.
This is not only an outrage, but it's exactly how ht Ma and Pa small businesses all across America have been clobbered.
Kidwell's edict says much more, but suffice it to say that regardless of his motives in this matter, it is of far more importance to Idahoans that big business has "negotiated" away (even further) their rights to a free market - albeit in a quiet, gentle and fairly fascistic fashion.
The 'Other Side'
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
June 8, 1977
The subject of land-use planning has always been controversial, but the matter has taken on a new dimension lately, especially in Idaho. The reason being that the "other side" is finally getting a hearing. And further, said hearing is in the form of an articulate spokesman.
Professor Bernard Siegan, distinguished professor of Urban Studies at the University of San Diego, told a huge and enthusiastic crowd t Boise recently. "There is not anything wrong with zoning boards that abolishment of them wouldn't cure."
The Boise Board of Realtors brought Siegan to Boise as an expert witness to the public and to several other groups too, for that matter, including some chamber of commerce committees.
While others have complained for tears of land-use plans for one reason or another the reactions to Siegan's rationale for freedom in land use are what's worth watching.
Not only because of his book "Land Use Without Zoning", the story of Houston, Texas successful land plan, but Siegan is a heavy weight spokesman. A former land developer and lawyer himself, he brought a new dimension to Idaho's "hot-potato" land controversy.
As one could expect, both the Lewiston Tribune and Boise's Idaho Statesman editorialized on Siegan's advocating private ownership ideas. Each took their typical solid stance favoring the classical "big brother" approach for social planners to decide what's best for the common good.
Or, as Mussolini explained, "You can own it, but we'll control it." His main claim to fame, to those few who care to remember his and Italy's very worthwhile contribution to history, is that he made the trains run on time.
but perhaps the best of all the carefully thought out observations were the super skeptical Ada County Commissioners. Board member Linda Lund Davis refused even to give the board of realtors the courtesy of a visit with the soft-spoken land use professor.
More courteous, but still super cautious was Commissioner Gary Bermeosolo who was so impressed or terrified with Siegan's saga of Houston's private ownership plan that he vowed almost immediately to go right down to Texas and see for himself whether or not Siegan was lying.
Jim Auld, president of the Boise Board of Realtors said his group may also put together a tour of Texas' huge "free city", possibly in conjunction with the Bermeosolo mission.
The commissioner indicated, however, that he was not at all thrilled about the idea. He explained, "I think if go without them I can get a much better unbiased view of what is happening in Houston."
Speaking of bias, one sympathizes with Commissioner Davis-she may smell a mouse. Texas don't acknowledge ANY federal ownership of their sovereign state lands (the feds own 2-3 of Idaho) hence may see Siegan as a sort of private property "typhoid Mary".
It took many centuries before primitive wandering tribes of savages reached the concept of private property - specifically, LAND property, which philolophers have said harked the beginning of civilization.
It is a tragic irony that in the new realm opened by this gigantic concept, out political and intellectual leaders seem to have reverted to the mentality of primitive tribes and, unable to conceive of property rights, want to declare the new realm to be a tribal hunting ground.
Good or Wicked?
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
June 15, 1977
the media carries a lot these days on questioning, analyzing and criticizing personalities in the news. Unfortunately the most newsworthy by far, they think, are the politicians. The media would seem to lie awake nights scheming for yet another way to make their favorite candidates look good or those they dislike look wicked.
This isn't all bad. Given a similar opportunity most people would do the same, but the technique of half-truths and guilt by association lends itself to a professional, if a subtle form of demagoguery.
A case in point is the current campaign for governor of Idaho as "reported" by the Idaho Statesman in general and John Corlett, who was for years their political reporter, in particular. Neither Corlett nor his paper likes politicians who are very conservative C.L. "Butch" Otter's announced candidacy does not contain some, hopefully detrimental, reference to Otter's wealthy father-in-law, J.R. Simplot. (The Lewiston tribune, to its credit, confines its criticism mostly to the editorial page).
One suspects that Representative Larry Jackson, Attorney General Wayne Kidwell, Senator Phil Batt and other gubernatorial hopefuls much in the news all have father-in-laws, too, but whether theirs are as wealthy as Otter's is just not referred to in the media.
Harder yet is to find just what is the relevancy of all this anyway? Well, if you haven't guessed already it is precisely this - when you can't find anything else to condemn your adversary about, try guilt by association. It's a rotten technique, but often successful.
There are important exceptions, but generally the press loves liberal politicians. Certainly Corlett and the Statesman do.
*****
In answer to a press inquiry as to how much he intended to spend in his campaign, the outspoken Otter said "$150,000 if we can raise that much," but Corlett in his quote neglected to add the qualifying "if". Why? Because he doesn't like Otter's policies, of course.
The June 13 issue of the Statesman, for example, has substituted for their regular political cartoon a huge facsimile of a dollar bill. In the oval where George Washington's face belongs they've substituted the face of candidate Otter.
The headline under the facsimile, which one must admit is clever if not very ethical reads, "Can Otter 'Buy' the Nomination?" In the face of the vast sums of money spent by politicians these days especially those liberals that Corlett seems to love, it is, well, like the pot calling the kettle black.
But no doubt, most important of all behind Corlett's fear of the freedom loving food-processing executive's candidacy is the candid and enthusiastic support of an idea on which the Boise newsman has strangled for years - the free market, private ownership, non-government way.
"The market place has always failed in the fields of human and civil rights," says Corlett, "... and it has become necessary to regulate nearly all facets of business." Hogwash, I say. Pure hogwash. And nearly pure Gospel according to St. Mussolini.
Each of us is as free to practice what he preaches as to preach what he practices, and if Otter's father-in-law himself deserves any criticism at all it shouldn't be for being wealthy or avoiding taxes. It should be for allowing Corlett and his newspaper to be so much better preachers for government than he (Simplot Industries) has been for freedom.
Orwell's "1984" Is Here
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
June 22, 1977
Idaho Governor John Evans is alarmed about the apparent drying up of the small towns. Toward this end he has appointed a select committee of Idahoans to study city and county government. The idea being to stop the flow of people to the larger cities and away from the small towns.
Ferd Koch of Boise, former city councilman and state legislator, will head the governor's committee. It was initially suggested by former Governor Cecil Andrus, but not implemened until Evans got a $72,345 grant from the Pacific Northwest Regional Commission.
I'm not sure, but it's a safe bet the regional commission is some off-shoot of a federal government giveaway program. Evans said the legislature seemed to think the state didn't need such a study, but took matters into his own hands apparently when he discovered the "free" money.
The chief executive cited a number of possible causes for the small town decline as "farm consolidation ... a kind of industrial revolution in farming and increased mechanization."
He also asked his Department of Commerce and Development to keep the new group advised on any small business and industrial firms which might be recruited to save the small cities.
Now then Koch is no dummy and has experienced in business, as well as government, but it's another safe bet that one area his committee will NOT explore is just how much government subsidy has been heaped upon these so-called larger cities merely because there is where the muscle is - political muscle.
Downtown urban renewal, for example, is a well known term, certainly to Boiseans, and it's another safe bet that the small towns in Idaho did not deem the Boise renewal of such importance that they should have it rammed down their throats without even an election.
A surprisingly large crusade asking for a citizen vote on the capital city's federally financed program was denied by the City of Trees presumably because the establishment thought the people were too damn dumb to know what's good for them. Hopefully, repeat, hopefully, Evan's and Koch's committee will remember and re-evaluate.
Another gubernatorial hopeful, Representative Larry Jackson also of Boise, is concerned about Idaho cities, too. Taking a view nearly opposite to C.L. "Butch" Otter, his competitor for the GOP candidacy for governor, Jackson advised Idaho cities to "circle your wagons inside present boundaries and fight marauding urban sprawl." (Jackson's ideas are generally thought to be well to the left of Otter's.)
One hopes the Evans-Koch select committee will re-read George Orwell's book "19484" and note there his coined word "double-think." That's the power of a politician to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Hopefully, again, Jackson will read Orwell, too.
Surely the Evans-Koch committee will pass up a beautiful opportunity if they do not examine the government's policies, at all levels, to drive businesses and customers out of downtowns. They regulate to death people who have been stampeding out into the suburbs for years, then wonder why.
If Evans could find $72,345 to explore what the consumers and taxpayers want by way of planning - it's called a free market, by the way - he'd be great. But government seldom finances studies in freedom of choice, does it?
My city of Caldwell seems possessed of the same holy vision. Last week their Plan and Zone Commission voted for an ordinance to provide for annexation into the city, now get this, "without consent of residents or property owners."
If you can believe THAT, gentle reader - well, you don't need to read Orwell's "1984." It's here.
The More Things Change ....
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
July 6, 1977
Most members of the news media believe an unwritten law exists which says that writers should not criticize one another.
It's sort of like the lawyers and doctors who get credit for a kind of mutual protection society. If and whenever such criticism does appear, it's usually only between lively friends or lively enemies - rarely in between and that's too bad.
My lively friend and fellow columnist Phil Batt, is a case in point. As a member of the media, let me indulge myself.
Last week he rightly criticized the federal government for dragging its feet over the past 70 years in their agreed upon pay-back in federal lands for state land that they had taken from state ownership.
He said, "The land is worth many millions of dollars. The proceeds will go entirely toward the support of our schools, so the need for speedy action is apparent."
I agree, but not for the reasons cited by the sincere senator. If the federal government has an agreement they should honor it - NOT since it's for a good cause. In fact, if all the "Johnny can't read" articles one sees these days are any criteria, perhaps it isn't even a good cause. Indeed, if education spent less money they might even have time to teach Johnny to write.
Batt is correct, though.
Idaho should have the land, but the philosophy has changed - we've been snookered and the state's leaders ought to say so in no uncertain terms.
Batt said, "We are fortunate that our congressional delegation is united in their determination to consummate these changes and even better we've now a Secretary of Interior, Cecil Andrus, a former governor of Idaho who understands the problem intimately."
According to Batt, "We are able to make the bureaucrats squirm and promise full speed ahead." He meant now that Andrus is on our side. Well, I'm not so sure because of the way Andrus was quoted recently in regard to the question of how much Idaho land should be locked up in a federal wilderness area.
Environmentalists wanted 2.3 million acres locked up. The forest service recommended 1.5 million acres, and President Ford announced the decision of 1.1 million acres. But the public ownership advocates in Congress stalled the legislation and now Andrus has been given the responsibility of recommending the acreage.
Here's his quote that bothers this writer: "The Idaho wilderness will be my cup of tea."
Now get that - "MY cup of tea." This wouldn't entirely upset me except for yet another quote of Andrus' in the Idaho Falls Post Register of June 8, 1977.
Speaking to the graduating class at Gonzaga University, Andrus is quoted as saying, "The land is yours regardless of who has the title to it." Jumpin' catfish! Even if that was taken out of context, as statements often are, that makes me uneasy.
Senate Pro Tem Batt is no dummy. In fact he's bright, sincere, and no advocate of big Brother government, but he is enamored by the popular former governor of Idaho.
Well, so am I. But maybe (I hope I'm wrong) he has more respect than he should have for "political reality."
For example Batt says, "Our free society may be a trifle shopworn, but it still retains much of its vigor." The key word there is STILL - instead of vigor.
All of which is Cheerful Charlie talk. Political reality being what it is, Batt might better insist on his friend (and mine, too, by the way) Andrus declaring himself openly, unequivocally and enthusiastically as generally favoring state ownership over federal ownership and private ownership over both when at all possible.
This is the way to battle what the conscientious state senator calls the "federal monster."
Otherwise, the big gray ooze tendency of his "government elasticity" will merely combine with his Republican party's tendency toward friendly fascism simply in order to stay in office.
Or, as Cheerful Charlie might say: "The more things change, the more they remain the same."
Let's Hear It For Taxis
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
July 13, 1977
Why does it matter to you that the Boise taxicabs are in trouble? Well, there are several reasons why it SHOULD matter.
Here's a little background: As many as 19 of Boise taxicab licenses could be revoked as a result of a recent police department inspection, according to one report.
Boise Chief of Police John Church said this week about the taxi inspection, "We're not saying passengers are actually in danger, but drivers will eat their lunch while they're driving and throw paper bags and banana peels in the back seats and then expect people to ride back there."
Bob Ryder, a spokesman for Yellow Cab, said he thinks cab services are misunderstood. "The part they don't realize," he said, "is picking up a bunch of drunks at 2 or 3 in the morning, who use the back seats as a rest room. We don't object to the safety regulations and inspections, but there are certain areas where it comes right down to harassment - like asking us to repair tiny dents and scratches in the cars."
Another manager of two Boise cab companies, Bert Calling, admits they don't run first-rate operations, but explained: "The reason is that the city council controls the rates we can charge, and Boise's 70 cents-a-mile rate is one of the lowest in the country.
Just so you'll know there are others, Kip Sullivan, owner of two Boise cab companies, is quoted as saying, "The way they're going about it stinks. They're getting really picky - for scratches and scrapes and inspecting really silly things."
The mayor's assistant, Leon Grisham, claimed the city was not trying to put the cab companies out of business. He explained, "I don't think it's a serious problem. I mean no one's been killed or anything. We just don't have good cabs. I think they'll shape up."
There you have it ladies and gentlemen - the police are doing what Mayor Dick Eardley tells them to do, so they can hardly be faulted for doing their duty. And so it is with most everyone in this matter.
Indeed, one could assume the police would much rather chase criminals who, with alarming frequency these days, commit acts of violence in innocent victims. But how could the police seem to criticize their bosses at Boise city hall - even if they wanted to?
Consider something. Here's a relatively simple problem, close to home, understandable, mostly concerning well-meaning people, i.e., taxi drivers, cab owners, police and probably Mayor Eardley himself, all uptight, all seemingly sincere.
What's missing then? I'd like to suggest that it's freedom of choice that's missing. Forgotten by lots of well-meaning, decent, hardworking people who don't realize that Boise City took the taxi driver's freedom of choice away from them, then gave it back in the form of a franchised monopoly called a license - with strings attached. Sincere strings, too, I have little doubt, but do they ever work? I wonder.
Yellow Cab spokesman Ryder defends the taxi's franchised monopoly as does the police chief who says, "I realize this would do away with free enterprise, but it's obvious the privately owned cab service is not working." I wonder why he said that?
Privately owned taxi licenses in New York City, for example, cost $34,000 for each cab. Unbelievable, but it's true. Is it any wonder private cab service is "not working" with this kind of typical city management?
Apparently they did away with THEIR free enterprize system, too - New York City's bankrupt today.
Some well-meaning Boisean should explain to their well-meaning chief of police WHY private ownership is "not working" in Boise - before it's too late.
A Legend
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
July 20, 1977
The United States Post Office is slated to raise their postage rate on first class mail postage rate on first class mail to 16 cents. However, the Postal Rate commission may hold about 10 months of hearings before giving their okay.
Presumably the hearings will determine how loud the outcry would be if it isn't too hysterical and the perennial red ink of the post office will be softened to a more acceptable shade of pink.
Six years ago the government mail monopoly was reorganized, that is to say, given a new name and called a corporation. But it retained all of the essential governmental qualities as before, namely monopoly and bureaucracy.
Postmaster General Benjamin Bailar announced great progress since last year, his "company" only lost $50 million. Compared to the year before when they lost $1.2 billion, Bailar is no doubt thrilled.
Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, in a typical Constructive Republican Alternative Proposal (C.R.A.P.) said the suggested elimination of Saturday mail delivery "would have a detrimental impact on rural newspapers."
His suggestion carried in the August senate by a vote of 77 to 7. And so it goes, gentle taxpayers, after all, it's only money. We can always blame the bureaucrats for our bungling deficits and red ink. Never mind their trying to cut their losses in the face of our politician's trying to buy our votes with our money.
Somehow the idea of competition or free entry has GOT to be introduced into this flap. But how? Dole won't do it. Symms tried it a time or two, the but idea seemed not to turn on many conservatives so he's apparently abandoned the sale of freedom for the defense of the flag. After all, the libertarians shout at him for not being pure and there's more conservative votes out there than there is freedom-lover's votes, and so it goes.
But the story gets lost and before we give up we ought to at least SEE the real problem in perspective.
Here's a brief background. On Jan. 20, 1844, Lysander Spooner announced that the American Letter Mail Company would establish post offices and carry mail between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston. Within months, the American Letter Company and other mail companies had captured the bulk of the mail business from the government Post Office.
The Post Office was alarmed, but instead of challenging Spooner in the courts, the Post Office used naked force: It threatened the transport companies with loss of government contracts unless they ceased to haul for American Letter Mail Company. The government then harassed company agents.
In June, 1844, Supreme Court Justice Story ruled that it was an open question whether the United States had any exclusive right to establish post office and post routes. But Story's ruling was too late. Government harassment had forced Lysander Spooner, American Letter Mail Company and the other private companies out of business.
Subsequently, Spooner set down in writing the constitutional case for free enterprise mail, but the basic question of whether the government has ANY constitutional right to a monopoly of the mails has even yet to be tested in the courts.
Since Dole and the GOP are sould asleep, Symms has taken a nap and your news media merely REPORTS this "legend of Sleepy Hollow," let's us write all three - and see if we can wake them up.
Steve used to be Post Office monopoly minded, but he's been there quite a while. Thus the folks at home seem less relevant and the folks in D.C. seem more relevant. My view is that if we can't reform Government monopoly how in the world can we"reform" private monopoly which seems to occupy so much of Congress' time?
Tax Reform
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
July 27, 1977
There is big news in Ada County these days. It's not only big, but interesting and important. Unfortunately it concerns taxes and economics, hence tends to be perceived as too complicated, if not too dull, for the average citizen.
So let's look at it from a different perspective. The Idaho State Tax Commission ordered a re-appraisal for Ada County property. The county commissioners hired an appraiser, Max Arnold, from Denver, Colo., to make the new appraisal and budgeted something like 1.6 million dollars to pay for it.
Now, several months and over a million dollars later, Arnold's job is mostly finished. Reports vary, but property values have gone up from 200 per cent to 260 percent, and the hue and cry of the complaints range all the way from irrigation to heartbreak.
The commissioners, led by their chairman and land use planning enthusiast Linda Lund Davis, gave taxpayers until July 1 to protest their new valulation or forever hold their peace. A rather short span of time in view of the staggering proportions of the complexity and size of the re-evaluation - especially to small taxpayers.
Thousands of Ada County citizens applied, armed with formal protests; at least one multi-million class action law suit is reliably reported to be on the way from Idaho Property Owners Ass'n.
Aside from the obvious blow of a dramatic increase in taxes the complaints are, with few notable exceptions, alarmingly alike. For the most part it is unequal treatment they complain about.
No matter how understandable this may be, it will, in my humble opinion, fall on deaf ears. It can hardly be otherwise. Let me explain.
There are two main theories of appraising property at issue here. One is "actual and functional use" emphasis on which is called for by law. The other is "highest and best use."
The former tends to call for lower values and since Arnold seems to have used mostly the latter theory, apparently with the blessings of the commissioners, the fuzz will surely hit THAT fan in court.
But again the real complaint would be much more to the point. That is: too much government and their lousy approach to regulating everybody's lives. It comes from yet another theory, sometimes called the state's favorite theory of justice. Consider it in light of the present problem.
The rationale behind the government's approach runs something like this: It is just and fair that you should pay your taxes because everyone else is paying them. It is as if a robber were to tell a victim that he should not be upset because everyone else was being robbed too.It is the government's favorite theory of justice: We may treat our subjects however we choose, so long as we treat them equally.
It is a denial of the objective notion of our rights or justice. It avoids the question of the justice of the tax itself and concentrates and victim's attention on the uniformity of it's application.
An unfortunate aspect of the acceptance of this philosophy by certain taxpayer-action groups is that they are turned from questioning the justice of the tax to demanding that the government tax other groups as heavily (or more so) as they tax the so-called common man.
This enables the government to play off one group of taxpayers against another, rather than be confronted by an attack on the tax per se.
This tax reform has taken the pattern of demogogic nonsense such as "tax the rich, not the poor," "tax the corporations, not the people," "don't penalize unmarried taxpayers," or "plug the loopholes," and "end the oil depletion allowance," etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Such "reform" is not merely useless, it is positively harmful in that it divides the citizens and turns them against each other and distracts them from their common adversary - too much government.
The people are turned from demanding an end to their oppression to demanding that the government oppress others more efficiently.
Government, at whatever level, is happy to oblige.
Why the Controversy?
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
August 3, 1977
Boy, oh, Boy, is it ever easy to be so close to the forest that you cannot see it on account of the trees?
The subject of laetrile, a substance made from apricot pits and labeled a vitamin by some and a drug by others, continues to hang right in there as controversial, REALLY controversial.
But why? It isn't even claimed by it's detractors, the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association (et al), to be harmful to humans as are common tobacco and sleeping pills.
Then why does said controversy persist so doggedly? Is it because some people claim laetrile is a cure or partial preventative for cancer? Surely, no one, not even the AMA, long suspected by many of artificially holding up the prices of medical care, would be guilty of so heinous a crime as to hide a cure for cancer.
The Food and Drug Administration, who seem Hades-bent to regulate our lives from womb to tomb, can probably be said to be out to protect us from ourselves - sincerely. Then why the fuss?
The urge to regulate others and expand the federal bureaucracy are no doubt contributing factors to FDA's zeal to ban the apricot extract. But they were already, so busy regulating marijuana, cyclamates, saccharin, and host of other substances, not to mention cranberries, that yet another burden was surely not needed to expand their already cancer-like growth.
Bear with me, gentle reader, my point is coming up, but the whole laetrile matter is not only ridiculous, not only a cause celebre' for political conservatives - it is clearly hilarious.
Or it WOULD be hilarious if it were not so pathetic. I myself might even be guilty, if somewhat unwittingly, of overlooking the REAL reason for the prolonged controversy. It is really so very simple, perhaps I should apologize.
This column has recounted much about laetrile and my intelligent and wealthy businessman friend in California who swears the substance cured his cancer of the larynx after his medical doctors had recommended its removal by surgery.
I have even written one column ridiculing a fellow columnist for suggesting that laetrile be legalized "since it's harmless, but then only if the government puts price controls on it."
Still, it didn't soak into my consciousness - freedom itself being so controversial today - that the bottom-line objective was PROFIT.
Egad, it's so simple. Even the Idaho Board of Regents caused to be hired one Dr. Jerry Drayer an academic economist at Boise State University to push - would ever guess (?) - economics, itself a kind of drug, i.e., if the sleep dullness of most economic classes are any criteria.
But on being dull, I'm guilty too. It took a political cartoon in the Idaho Falls Post-Register to wake me up as to what the interventionists were thinking, hence the continuing controversy.
The cartoon showed a giant padlock labeled "Federal sales ban" on laetrile's front door while people were flocking to the back door to buy the vitamin (or the drug). The doctor in the cartoon and his customers were both happy, but the doctor was counting his MONEY. He was labeled "Dr. Quack." Political cartoons are devastatingly communicative.
Freedom of choice seldom seems to see the light of day in this controversy. Could it be that the Board of Regent's doctor, Dr. Drayer, will be looked upon as a "quack" if he, too, tries to sell another controversial substance - profit?
The Real Controls
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
August 9, 1977
Not long ago Idahoans were aghast at the phenomenal price they were having to pay for sugar.
The rest of the nation, too, was so used to paying ever increasing prices for all sorts of hard goods that many actually went to hoarding sugar so sure were they tht prices would continue to soar.
Although some consumers cried for price controls, most just stopped buying sugar or at least cut their consumption drastically. And guess what happened. The price slammed into the ground - controlled!
So much so that the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill to require the Department of Agriculture to support, get that, support the sugar price at 55 to 65 per cent of parity. That's control, too.
So low has the price of sugar gone that Ray Larson, district manager of Amalgamated Sugar Company in Treasure Valley, fears that farmers may go to other crops in order to survive. Not only would his factory have to shut down, but the worker layoffs would be staggering.
One has to look back only a few short years when beef prices were rivaling the government's moon missiles for sky-high orbits. What happened? People stopped buying beef. It cost too much.
Other people substituted other cheaper foods, hamburger stretcher, soya beans, chicken and yes, just at less. That's beef control.
But the government rushed in with threat of price ceilings and other controls thus eventually driving the prices way down, farther than necessary. What happened is par for the course. They helped wipe out the little producers. It is almost always the marginal producers who get wiped out by the government bureaus. Big ones usually survive.
Take the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) for example. Since when did you notice them putting one of the giant firms in financial jeopardy or fear of closing them down?
One wonders if maybe big business does indeed use the government regulations to harass their smaller competitors as is sometimes alleged.
Well, while the beef check-off system failed, it's vote to get producer financed funds for research and sales development, the National Wheat Growers met with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Bergland recently, to get the government to "buy" surplus wheat. Don Howe of Bonners Ferry president of the National Association, headed the delegation.
Remember when the Russians "bought" the U.S. wheat and sent prices skyrocketing into orbit?
Seems like ever since "Sputnik" they've had us falling all over ourselves trying to do just like they do, namely, run everybody's business every day. That's people control.
NOTHING is none of their danged business anymore. They're even protecting the coyotes now. Presumably coyote's esthetic value supersedes the sheepherders "right to life" crusade which, unfortunately, is all but forgotten these days - as is Idaho's once thriving sheep industry.
But a 60-year-old orange grove farmer in California is not forgotten. In fact he's hit upon one real juicy idea.
Slapped with a $12,200 fine by the U.S.D.A. for selling too many of his own oranges, the gutsy farmer stood on principle and refused to pay.
Jack Giddens has 40-acres of oranges in Orange Cove, Calif. That's 3,500 trees.
Giddens says, "The marketing order lawy is crazy. We've got perfectly good food in a hungry world, and we're just throwing it away."
No big food marketing tycoons came to Gidden's rescue, so he had to devise some "legal" means. Loopholes, they're called by some.
The retired Marine Corps officer has numbered each of the trees on his 40-acre farm and for a fee of $12, he will lease you one of them, pick the oranges and ship them to you - postage collect - anywhere in the U.S.A.
To ship a 40-pound box from California to Boston for example, costs about $11.00, and Giddens says each tree should produce from three to four 40-pound boxes of oranges per year.
But Idaho's sugar, beef, wheat and sheep growers will find it too tough to lease their beets and livestock one at a time.
And besides that, water's short in Idaho. The crop of bureaucrats may outgrow the producers.
Any Idahoans for bureaucrat control?
Anchors AWeigh
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
August 17, 1977
Anchors Aweigh, my boys, Anchors Aweigh.
Or is it just the other way around? Has the U.S. Navy gone conservative by it's decision to return to bell bottom trousers and coats of Navy blue?
The return to the traditional uniform for the naval GI's heralds another more radical change made in 1971 by then Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt.
Thought to be radical in many other ways as well, the outspoken chieftan sought to boost morale of his Navy's enlisted men by allowing long hair and doing away with the familiar seaman's dress.
The Navy took a poll among 8,500 sailors early this year and almost 90 per cent favored going back to the old uniform.
It seems like almost nothing is sacred anymore - yea, even change for the sake of change is not secure from the onslaught of the poll takers and the democracy worshippers of one-man one-vote problem solvers.
Not even the Idaho Board of Regents is safe from the anything-goes voice of the majority.
In a recent law suit brought on by the Associated Students of the University of Idaho, the august body of learning had to back down on their ban the booze on campus stand.
Apparently the students, tool, had taken a poll and booze on campus won. Spirits could lift the spirits of students, they said, and took to the courts to make it stick.
It stuck - the students won.
The students have history on their side, too.
That is if the U.S. Navy's crew of the famous fighting ship "USS Constitution" is any criteria. Here's what they thought about booze and bringing home the bacon.
"Old Ironsides" set sail on August 23, 1779, from Boston harbor. She carried 476 officers and men, 48,000 gallons of fresh water, 74,000 cannon shots, 11,600 pounds of black powder and 79,000 gallons of rum.
Permission to harass and to destroy English shipping was given. Making Jamaica on Aug. 6, she took on 620 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum. Then she headed for the Axores, arriving their on November 12th.
She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef, and 4,300 gallons of Portugese wine. Then on Dec. 8 she set sail for England.
In the ensuing days, she defeated five British Men-of-War, and captured and scuttled 12 English merchant ships - salvaging only the rum.
By January 27, her powder and shot were exhausted. Unarmed, she made a night raid at the Firth of Clyde. The landing party captured a whiskey distillery and transferred 40,000 gallons aboard by dawn.
Then she headed for home. The USS Constitution arrived in Boston in February 1780 with no cannon shots, no food, no powder, no rum, no whiskey, no wine and 48,000 gallons of STAGNANT water.
Now this is not to suggest that our Board of Regents or the U.S. Navy push for a two-fisted course in whiskey drinking, but those poll takers who want change for the sake of change versus those who favor tradition merely because it was good enough for Grandpa may yet drive us to drink.
And if it was good enough for Old Ironsides - well, maybe the students and Grandpa have SOMETHING in common after all.
Religious "Detente" in the Army
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
August 20, 1977
If you are one of those twice-a-year church-goers, the message that follows may be especially meaningful. In fact, if you attend regularly there may also be a message but a slightly different one.
My attention to what was going on in the religious movement all across America goes back to 1953 during a visit with Lt. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer of WWII fame.
He told me then it was true that there was indeed some pressure on the military to do away with the chaplain corps. In other words the Army's own religious professionals were under attack. Until then I had refused to believe it.
There is, one supposes, some legitimate concern for separation of church and state even in the armed forces but my own bias favors the cliche that there are no atheists in foxholes, which is to say that I favor keeping the chaplains.
The ensuing years, since 1964, have seen the military's religious controversy fade into the shadow of bigger and more controversial controversies so the chaplains are, for the most part, still in business. I thought the Christians had won.
But a recent news article makes me wonder. Maybe there's another kind of detente here that has solved the problem much in the same fashion that detente has "solved" the Cold War and problems like the Berlin Wall and the Panama Canal.
The official Armed Forced Chaplains Board, which rules on contents of the 500,000 books distributed to the military, decided that a new hymn entitled: "It Was On a Friday Morning" was okay and "meets the broad spectrum of worshipers within the military."
But then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld overruled the board and ordered the hymn expunged from future books. He thought it was terrible. See what you think of it.
The song describes the thoughts of one of two thieves crucified with Christ. Here's how the lyrics read:
"It was on a Friday morning
That they took me from the cell,
And I saw they had a carpenter
To crucify as well.
You can blame it on to Pilate,
You can blame it on the Jews,
You can blame it on the Devil,
It's God that I accuse."
"It's God they ought to crucify
Instead of you and me,
I said to the carpenter
Ahanging on the tree."
"To hell with Jehova,
To the carpenter I said,
I wish that a carpenter
Had made the world instead.
Goodbye and good luck to you,
The road will soon divide.
Remember me in Heaven,
The man you hung beside."
"Now Barabbas was a killer
And they let Barabbas go,
But you are being crucified
For nothing here below.
But God is up in Heaven
And he doesn't do a thing
With a million angels watching
And they never move a wing."
Now then, I pretend to be no expert in theology, nor am I an expert in military detente between nations, but one does not have to be an intellectual giant to figure out two or three things for himself: (1) How in Heaven's name did a "hymn" like that ever get in a hymnal in the first place? (2) Maybe there's more Christian missionary work to do at home in our own churches and in our own government than there is overseas. And (3) the Army's religious battle is not over after all - although its "war" may be.
Economic Education
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
September 4, 1977
It has been said about sex education that if the public school system teaches it there is not much danger because it will be so dull that it won't be of interest to anybody anyway. Well, economics is becoming almost as controversial as sex education.
So what? For much of the history of the U.S.A., the local school boards and teachers pretty much ran public education without fanfare.
They taught reading, writing, arithmetic and very little else. Then what happened? In the opinion of many just about EVERYTHING happened and most of it good.
More jobs, more pay, more freedom, better medical care, longer life span - Yes, most of just about everything. And the lion's share of it through something called business.
Why then has business's reputation suffered so these past few decades? Opinions vary, but nearly all agree business has bad PR (public relations). So much so that many companies are actually alarmed to the point of doing something.
Comes now economic education. There is such a rash of courses in the subject as to lead one to wonder how we ever escaped from the covered wagon days without them. So many millions of dollars are being spent by corporations one supposes the corporate executives think that they would have a nicer reputation if only people understood the rudiments of business enterprise and the relation between the prosperity of the corporation and the well-being of the citizenry. (Bless their little corporate hearts of stone.)
Some of the programs are even pretty fair, but most of lousy, and in the opinion of one expert, Professor Irving Kristol of New York University, much of the reason is that businessmen can scarcely tell the difference between education and propaganda.
"Education," says Kristol, "is always raising questions; advertising is always giving answers. And to mix the two is corrupting to both."
So what do the corporate tycoons do to counter the anti-business, anti-profit attitudes which tend more and more to shove anti-business critics like Ralph Nader toward becoming President of the United States and the business tycoons toward Siberia?
Here again opinions vary, but Kristol claims that favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward business seem to have little or no correlation with the taking of courses in economics.
"Rather their attitude toward business" he says, is a derivative of their political philosophy, not of anything they know or don't know about economics.
"The teachers and professors in economics for example, are not anti-profit. Indeed they know how important they are to a healthy economy. They just don't see why CONTROL over these profits should be exercised by corporate executives rather than by, say, professors of economics or highly paid civil servants."
The coming school year will see extra attention on economic education, including that currently being pushed by an economist hired for that specific purpose and now on the staff of Boise State University. His name is Dr. Jerry Draayer and although I've never met the man I wish him Godspeed in his important mission.
Although his job will not be easy, it could very well be a barrel of fun - except, perhaps, for two conditions: (1) the Idaho State Legislature could not even pass a law requiring a subject called free enterprise be taught in grades K through 12, and (2) Roy Truby, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, talked the legislators into substituting, in place of such a law, a course largely amounting to consumerism as a requirement, for graduation.
They have substituted compulsory consumerism for compulsory free enterprise and the business community, not to mention the legislature, doesn't seem to know the difference.
Wit and Wisdom
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
September 10, 1977
Al Capp, the cartoonist and creator of the now famous comic strip "Lil Abner," once pointed out something interesting about humor. An especially brilliant observer and social critic himself, he said that people do not want a "funny man" telling them anything about their religion, their politics, or their money.
Well, perhaps it's the exception that proves the rule, but one who stands out boldly among all the rest was the ever lovin' cowboy-philosopher Will Rogers whose wit and wisdom for decades kept Americans laughing at themselves and their political witch doctors.
If humor is indeed God's hand on the shoulder of a quaking world, Rogers performed an almost religious mission for his country as well as entertain it.
As I was browsing through some of his political and historic observations the other day I was struck with the relevance of some of his quotations which apply with an alarmingly familiar ring for today.
We might agree or disagree with this fellow who made world famous the phrase, "I never met a man I didn't like," but his almost timeless insights are certainly worth recalling. We might even regain some common sense and some long overdue confidence therein.
For example, during prohibition in the late 1920s Rogers sent the following wire from London, England, to his friend President Calvin Coolidge:
"You can pick an American bootlegger out of a crowd of Americans everytime. He will be the one that is sober."
The following month, from Paris, France, Rogers cabled this report also to Coolidge: "American dressmakers are making sketches of foreign dresses. American bootleggers are making sketches of foreign labels." Signed WILLROG. That's cable code language, of course, for Will Rogers.
Again from London, two weeks later came this special cable to CALCOOL addressed Whitehousewash: "A bunch of American tourists were hissed and stoned yesterday in France, but not until they had finished buying." Signed WILLROG.
Sort of reminds us of America's image overseas in many places today doesn't it? They adore American tourist dollars, but many still shout "Yankee go home." Everyone gets the message except our foreign aid zealots.
Rogers sent another wire which has a parallel even closer to home. Remember Idaho's liquor law enforcers who were searching motorists returning from Nevada recently?
Well, the huge tax we levy on Idaho booze is a kind of modern day prohibition and causes the police all kinds of headaches.
Here's how the humorist saw prohibition in those days. His cable came early that same August in 1920:
CALCOOL. Whitehousewash; datelined London, "General Andrews, our prohibition director, is here and has just held a meeting with the British shippers to eliminate any delay in getting it in." Signed WILLROG.
So much for the government's effort to legislate morals and the 1920 whiskey market and Idaho's political parallel today. Rogers, the ever-laughing journalist, sent another cable. It, too, is alarmingly appropriate to our U.S. Department of State's double standard for meddling in foreign affairs.
From London, Aug. 20th the same year, Rogers sent this tongue-in-cheek cable to Coolidge: CALCOOL, Washhousewhite: "You refuse to give Philippines their complete independence, I am with you. Why should the Philippines have more than we do? Yours for 100 per cent freedom for everybody, including Ireland." Signed WILLROG.
Raise Your Heads, Conservatives
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
September 21, 1977
Conservatives belly-ache a lot, but all too often don't suggest much of anything positive. Or, or least, so goes the story that most liberals tell.
Now then, I am something of a conservative myself and I used to be furious when confronted over and over with that tired old liberal line.
Faced with a government gone mad passing laws and meddlesome government regulations as if there were going to be no tomorrow, we DID complain a lot (still do), but nobody much cared about our chicken little story that the sky was falling.
It didn't fall - at least it hasn't yet - and the liberals sailed upward and onward ever gaining sway with their Utopian story.
What's the point of all this you ask? Forgive me, it's so simple, I hesitate to admit it, but the liberals were right. At least they are right to a large degree. We're negative. We're against this and against that. We don't want to see anything done for the first time. What are we FOR?
When was the last time you heard a conservative discuss with any positive enthusiasm a new book that he or she just read? Chances are its been a long time.
It may come as a surprise to liberals and conservatives alike that books DO exist which they'd find both entertaining and of great value. Many are written by bright people with short as well as long hair, by the way.
One of the most successful examples of such a book is called "The Incredible Bread Machine" written by six college students ALL just over 20-25 years young.
These kids have delivered the most dramatic communicative missile ever to be launched since Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations."
Lest you think theirs is merely an articulate criticism of modern liberal orthodoxy and burgeoning bureaucratic growth, let me warn you it is not. In fact conservatives, too, come in for wel aimed jabs of the authors' acid-dipped and on-the-ball pointed pens.
These students thought they were not being told the real "skinny" by their college professors most of whom knew even less about the freedom philosophy than the forever promising - in order to get elected - politicians of the day, so they decided to write their own book.
So successful has this book been, selling by the tens of thousands all over the country, that it's now being translated into several languages.
Not only does AMTRAK, the government's latest euphemism for nationalizing the railroads, get excoriated for re-designing the railroad term "on time" so their statistics would look good, but the private corporations come in for a lion's share of these students' penetrating wrath.
These young authors see capitalism like you've never heard it defined before: as the "incredible bread machine" and government intervention, from credit expansion to price controls, as a "no-dough" policy. The upshot of intervention is runaway inflation or depression, planned chaos and still more government. Or, in other words, they say "burnt toast."
Why has the book been so successful? Because it's freedom oriented - that's why, and we conservatives should have seen it a long time ago. We WERE negative, we were against most everything, so to speak. Now here's something we can be positive about, something we can be FOR, namely, freedom of choice and individual liberty.
Oh, yes. Now it has been made into a TV movie starring ex-Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, Nobel Prize Winner Milton Friedman and Dr. Walter Heller, liberal economist and advisor to several Democratic presidents. All three discuss the controversial bread machine.
Some Chamber of Commerce members won't like the book's smoke-filled room exposures and pious snobs will flinch as it thumbs a nose at almost ALL the establishments. So buy the book. It's $1.95 paperback and available from the non-profit Center for the Study of Market Alternatives, 222 West Bannock, Boise. You can't miss - it makes education a real joy.
To that real joy is added some real irony, too, in that the film, which is a real departure from the ordinary free enterprise stuff, is being shown on the government's very own TV station (KAID-TV) rather than Boise's private enterprise stations.
Hat's off to the government TV.
More on School Junk Food Vending Machines
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
October 1, 1977
Recently this column was critical of Idaho State Superintendent of Public Instruction Roy Truby for pushing - not drugs - but yet another law.
The state's education head wanted another law to regulate coin operated vending machines which dispense what he labeled "junk food."
Aside from the fact Truby is running hard for Congress, unofficially of course, against Steve Symms, a few observations seem appropriate.
(1) Nobody is against school children having good wholesome food, not even Symms whose detractors claim is against EVERYTHING.
(2) The State Board of Education, which is made up of mostly very liberal leaning citizens also favors such a law to enable them to regulate the coin operated vending machines, so we cannot blame it all on Truby.
But the board members who direct the state's universities as the Board of Regents when they are not directing the secondary schools as the Board of Education, are not running for Congress, either.
Presumably, then, their ends and means and goals for Idaho education could quite naturally differ, not to mention their respective motives for seeking publicity.
(3) No one seems concerned about just why the junk food machines are in the schools in the first place. One wonders why the educators didn't merely remove them unless - shades of the profit monger's dream - they enjoy the income from a captive market.
Or are they not getting their share? One of Idaho's aspiring politicians told me that he was against graft and corruption unless he was in on it. He was joking, but then too, there's truth in a jest.
(4) A number of the school superintendents around the state were surprisingly outspoken in suggesting the vending machines were none of Truby's business.
Or, perhaps it's more nearly summed up in the popular comic story Peanuts when Charlie Brown said, "The world is full of people anxious to act in an advisory capacity." Maybe the educators are merely asserting their urge to ADVISE others.
Best of all, however, there may well be an opportunity here of which we should take advantage. It involves freedom of choice and responsibility. Not perfect perhaps, but potentially great fun.
Why not turn the food vending machines over to student government? Almost every high school has some form of student government through which decisions could be made to stock and manage the machines thus affording opportunity for an excellent learning experience.
Now this would not be ideal. For example, rather than "student government" I would rather it would be something called "student business" but nothing like that exists. I wish it did exist, but it doesn't.
If Truby is as daring as he is personable maybe he'll suggest a new educational innovation called "student entrepreneurship." He might cut into Symms' so-called monopoly on business support. But freedom of choice somehow doesn't exactly put the Board of Education into orbit, the Truby might lose the board's support in so doing, hence there is some risk.
Then too, maybe the idea just never occurred to the state's chief school teacher not the state board. They aren't bad people, they just understand authoritarian ideas better than they do free enterprise ideas.
Maybe that's partly your and my fault, too. Let's suggest it to them, i.e., if you like the idea.
I'll bet the economics and political science teachers would have a field day with their own variations of the scheme.
And who knows, the students might even learn that one must have a stacked deck in order to make a profit selling lousy products to paying customers, and how much fun it is to pass the buck if and when it doesn't work.
Reversed Punishment
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
October 12, 1977
Here's a little story for your very own horror file. A horror file, you know, is one of those stories at which you merely shrug your shoulders or say "tut-tut," at first. After you've thought about it further, it scares you to death.
On the front page of the Press-Tribune newspapers in Nampa and Caldwell recently appeared the headline "Car Owners Get Auto Theft Blame." The article by-lined by Charles McCollum can be pretty well summed up by the following two statements.
1) Car thefts in the Caldwell-Nampa area are up from 11 per cent to 25 per cent, and
2) Idaho law prohibits owners leaving keys in an unattended vehicle, punishable by a maximum fine of $100 for the first offense and $300 or up to 30 days in jail for subsequent offenses of the car owner, believe it or not.
Two days later on the front page of the same newspaper appeared another story outlining the alarming rate at which convenience stores, i.e. 7-11 and Circle K markets which are usually open 24 hours a day, are being robbed.
The second story, by-lined by Randy Stapilus, ended on a somewhat brighter note than the first one. At least it did NOT report that Idaho lawmakers threatened the owners of the small markets for staying open all night thus tempting the robbers and thieves who tend more and more to prowl after dark.
Considering the absolute plethora of laws which seem more and more to get passed these days making less and less sense, I'd say the Stapilus story had a happier ending - so far, at least.
I mention both stories being by-lined, for two special reasons: (1) this usually means the story is written by one of the paper's best writers and (2) because I tend to be super-critical, and with good reason, I think, of newspapers often sensationalizing news stories and usually with a left-wing bias.
These two front page accounts were remarkably newsworthy,l well-written and although each could very easily have been sensationalized, both were unusually free of editorial slant. Both were especially interesting to thoughtful persons, partly because they were well written.
such is not often the case, partly because it takes real skill and partly because it's sort of "chic", in literary circles to do otherwise. I'm happy to say hats off to these writers and although they are not the only ones, skillful and perceptive writers are very much an endangered species.
But what's the point of all this? Well, all this crime is a bloody outrage, that's what it is, and how we are able to keep any police officers on the job at all is a real wonder - what with the tap on the wrist too many criminals seem to receive for their crimes of violence, even if they are convicted.
So bad has the situation become that one theologian, Robert Fitch, Dean of the Pacific School of Religion, a minority voice in these matters, observed that Protestant theology has helped toward this decline in ethical standards.
He called it "indiscriminate compassion," and here's how he put it: "The usual moral distinctions are simply drowned in a gushy emotion in which we have more feeling for the murderer than for the one who is murdered ..."
Now some might admonish us, lest we react to the extreme and pass even MORE asinine laws. So let's remember the latest bumper sticker whose communications have invaded even the hallowed halls of holiness lately (witness the popular "I found it" stickers) - this one read: "Prohibition worked so well, now let's try gun control."
Kick the Tires
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
October 19, 1977
Much has been written and said about the Panama Canal Treaty confirmation of which is now pending before the U.S. Senate.
Much of this has taken the form of empirical data or the number and tons or the number of dollars affecting both the United States and Panama.
But since our government's affairs have become so massive and seemingly all-consuming and all-encompassing, it has become almost impossible to get a handle on it, at least a handle with which intelligent laymen might take a swing at the problem.
Also the statistics and numbers are cited by both sides. One proves the canal is important, the other says, or seems to say, that since we now have a two-ocean navy we don't need it. No wonder we're confused.
Let's try some simplification by asking some questions which the news media, generally speaking, seems reluctant to emphasize.
1) Why do the retired generals and admirals tend to favor keeping the canal and the others, most of whom owe their jobs to their commander-in-chief President Carter, tend to favor the "give away" treaty?
2) Why the super haste of that commander-in-chief and his state department advisors to have a huge ceremony on national television to celebrate his signing the canal treaty?
Everybody knows, or should know, that the treaty has to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, otherwise it is null and void.
3) With this kind of presidential pressure on the U.S. Senators, is it not likely Carter would put the heat on for his military leaders support?
How eager would you be to reject a treaty on which your party's leader had staged such a hasty, risky and flamboyant campaign prior to senate confirmation?
4) While it is true that our government tends to solve every problem both foreign and domestic by throwing a fistful of money at it, why should the U.S. pay Panama to take the canal off our hands? The treaty calls for huge multi-million dollar payments to Panama. FOR WHAT?
5) Why is so little said about U.S. chief negotiator Sol Linowitz's being a director of Midland National Bank which has made multi-million dollar loans to Panama? Why should the U.S. Treasury bail out the Linowitz bank?
6) Why too, if we are so hell-bent to give the canal away, as Senator Barry Goldwater terms it, do we have to do so when Panama has a pro-communist dictator in power? One wonders just which side some of our leaders are on.
7) Perhaps most of all we should ask; Why all the sudden haste? We were not even allowed to hear the terms of the treaty until it was "all over but the shouting." And even that was only a few days ago. Think about it! We still haven't seen a copy of the treaty.
When someone is in THAT big a hurry for you to sign an order to buy a used car without reading the fine print - better at least kick the tires.
"Big Media" Obscuring the Issues
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
October 21, 1977
In spite of the overwhelming support of the major news media to give away the Panama Canal by treaty, the American public is amazingly furious about it.
While much can be said about improving some bad aspects of our canal operation only a little seems to be said about improving the United States own situation there.
But thanks to the public's righteous wrath at the seeming death-wish of our egghead foreign policy negotiators the canal treaty seems destined to get into the public spotlight.
In the meantime another phenomenon seems destined for the continued same treatment by America's major news media, this time in the country of Chile.
Sept. 11 marked the fourth birthday of the anti-communist take over in the South American country of Chile. Judging from the press one would think this was more a cause for sadness than for joy. You'll note that was ANTI-communist take-over. We are so seldom treated to a coup in that direction it's hard to believe.
It's also hard to believe that the media, the State Department, the intellectuals and such political liberals as Idaho's U.S. Senator Frank Church are less than patriotic.
Those who'd keep the canal and who support the anti-communist military junta in Chile, however, find it hard to fathom the press' friendly treatment of communist Salvador Allende, former president, and their disdain for the present President Pinochet (pronounced pee-no-shay).
But hooray for small favors. Comes now a huge exception in the person of Spruille Braden, former U.S. ambassador now retired, who says publicly the United States should stop supporting Communists in Chile and support the new regime of Pinochet.
The latter has not only increased prosperity in Chile, but personal freedoms as well, according to Braden's American Chilean Council news letter of Sept. 29.
The council, whose sponors include such luminaries as the Hon. Walter Judd, columnist Ralph de Toledano, Dr. Stefan Possony of the prestigious Hoover Institute at Stanford University, along with a host of others, tells a remarkably different story than the major U.S. media.
Idahoans should support the American-Chilean Council (Suite 68 at 95 Madison Ave. New York, N.Y.) for reasons of our own obvious self interest, but more for the spread of freedom of people against communist expansionism which seems all too often to be gaining momentum in Latin America.
Perhaps one of the reasons Senator Church and his friends are less than enthusiastic at the present Chilean anti-communist government is the big eastern newspapers.
Consider this: A spokesman for the international drug enforcement association spoke recently of the present Chilean government. "Chile's authorities of today have done the United States a great favor by shutting down the huge drug traffic from Chile."
A terribly significant story, don't you agree?
Well, the Chicago News, Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles Times all carried the story.
As for the immensely influential New York Times and Washington Post, they did not print a word about it.
Playboy Only One With Truth
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
October 29, 1977
Could it be that Playboy magazine is the only place one can find lively, unorthodox and interesting articles these days? Articles, that is, by people who are worthy and capable, but out of step with the establishment media.
Probably not, but some mention of what's going on seems called for. Especially if one thinks there is a liberal (whatever that means) bias in the media.
While there is no doubt some risk of offending right-of-center circles when a columnist uses subject matter from a sex magazine there is a real world out there and in many instances, Playboy magazine deals with it in a big way. So bare with me.
My case in point is an interview in the current issue (Nov. '77) with a former cabinet minister from the African country of Uganda.
Henry Kyemba (pronounced Chemba) was for five years minister of health and culture under that country's present dictator, Idi Amin. He is now in self-imposed exile in England and has written a book about the gruesome atrocities committee by his former boss. "President" Amin, which is how our media often refers to him.
Now then, dictators and despotic leaders around the world butchering and plundering are not new, especially in Africa's hungry nations. Neither are the exiled black heroes who have escaped and tried to tell their story to the Western media about bad black leaders. But when such a story as Kyemba's gets so little emphasis in our media and when that story gets the candid treatment that it gets in Playboy, well that's news.
It's news by a much bigger measure becauseour media so often refers to the black butcher Amin as though he were mostly a big mouthed uneducated buffoon. Not much worse than the white leaders of Rhodesia and South Africa.
Without wanting to seem to endorse all of the sex magazine's authors and contributors who include such luminaries as Idaho's Sen. Frank Church and recent Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, let me quote the black man from Uganda:
"In late 1972 everybody started to see dead bodies ... So many they couldn't be buried, so they were dumped into the Nile River."
If one judged by the major thrust of the American media one would have to assume that only the white Africans were bad, but the exiled minister says otherwise.
"Amin destroyed much of the economy by handing out the business of the 50,000 (black) Asians who were thrown out of the country in 1972," says Kyemba, "that was, in effect the whole of Uganda's middle class ... there are no foreign newspapers, no foreign correspondents - except one from the U.S.S.R.'s Tass News' Agency - and none even from African countries."
Kyemba notes something else usually missing from the U.S. media, namely, that the U.S. has trade boycotts on Rhodesia's chrome and other products while Uganda's Amin continues to enjoy American government support and trade.
Prime minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, whose crimes against blacks are fewer and lesser than Amin's, by far, gets a worse condemnation from the U.S. and Great Britain, according to Kyemba.
He says more of interest, much more, in the Playboy interview, which is seldom told in the U.S. media, about the explosive situation in Africa, and I don't suggest that everybody rush out to buy it. But the American press could take a page from Playboy's book, for example, where they quote the black former cabinet minister, "It has amazed me the extent to which Amin has successfully exploited his color with the American blacks to excuse his excesses."
Perhaps the conservative's typical disdain for sex magazines is somewhat warranted, but it just may be also that's about the only place they will see the boat-rocking, anti-establishment truth.
That is, if they can get past the pictures.
The Marketplace
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
Novermber 5, 1977
A market in Mountain Home is selling milk for one third less than the other stores downtown. According to one report that's a savings of 66 cents per gallon. U.S. No. 1 potatoes per 10 pounds sell for 55 cents, saving their customers over 46 cents.
Other items ranging from sweet peas to ketchup and hamburger sell at considerable savings to their grateful customers, but before you jump in the old Ford or Chevy and hurry over to Mountain Home - DON'T.
That is unless you are one of the privileged class, one of those members of the U.S. Air Force stationed at the Mountain Home Air Force Base. Only they are permitted to buy at this "company store."
Wouldn't we all do just the same if we could buy at the commissary like the military personnel?
Well, I suspect we would, at least I would and I don't have the least amount of criticism for any military people who pay approximately 23 percent less at commissaries like this one all over the world.
As a matter of fact I'd most likely holler like a mashed cat if somebody tried to take that 23 percent discount store away from me and my pals, particularly since many servicemen and women consider the commissaries just another form of pay.
But the merchants who must compete with these "company stores" are not so enthusiastic about the arrangement, especially when those who do have a permit to purchase goods there have friends who live in town. Like most folks, they tend to buy for their friends.
A carton of cigarettes, for examples costs $1.34 less at the commissary in Alexandria, Virginia than in civilian stores. (There are six such stores just in Washington, D.C.)
What's all this have to do with Idahoans? Well several things: We're federal taxpayers too, and I was just wondering what it costs the U.S. government in terms of total dollars to save the servicemen and women that 23 percent. My guess is that it probably costs about twice that much, i.e., if the true costs were known.
Why not pay the difference directly to the military personnel and give them a raise with what's left over? My guess is they are probably underpaid anyway and might sooner have the money.
But this sort of logic seems to escape the government. Last month the Senate voted 59 to 33 to kill an amendment that would have phased out the subsidy for the commissaries and at least made them self-supporting.
Now then, just why these military "company stores" are considered as extra pay to the active and retired military people rather than add to their pay check isn't clear.
Especially is it not clear when, one learns that no state or local sales tax is collected on the groceries and the Senate Appropriations Committee says that from 1964 to 1975 military pay increased 127 percent while the consumer price index rose only 74 percent.
Unfortunately this argument is not new and the problem is not new. Unfortunate also is that about all we hear of it is the military people trying to defend their commissaries and merchants trying to defend their markets.
We should be hearing about the difference between an economic market (in town) and a political market (in the military commissaries). Instead the local merchant winds up arguing for fair competition and the Air Base people argue for getting their share.
I agree with both, more or less, except that in their myopia each seems forever to overlook the politicians who screwed up most of the marketplace arrangements in the beginning.
If we didn't have so many politicians getting their cut and meddling into peoples' affairs all over the world we might not need so much military.
And on the matter of the asinine, and rather typical argument between the military based commissaries versus the home-town merchants, I'm reminded of one of the late Will Rogers' holiday greetings:
He said, "To the Senate and House a Merry Christmas. May the literacy test never be applied to your constituents."
Freedom -- A Forgotten Issue?
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Tribune and Idaho Free Press
November 13, 1977
The local campaign for city government alarmed me and for what some may see as a rather odd reason.
I have just finished examining our candidates' literature and I find not one single reference to the matter of freedom or, if you like, freedom of choice.
What with all the emphasis the media gives to politics these days one might be led to think that SOMEBODY would bring the matter up. After all, that's what politics is all about, i.e., freedom TO or freedom FROM something or somebody.
But the local politicians' literature is very much a case of the bland leading the bland.
For example, most recite where they were born, how long they've been here, where they went to school, some give the number of children or the number of college degrees.
Some list the number of service clubs they belong to and some the number of government boards they've "served" on and on and on.
Some itemize their character as "honest, dedicated, dependable, sincere, effective, good, concerned" and one in an apparent burst of candor, noted his "integrity" as an asset to reassure us no doubt.
All of the above words are actually quoted from one or more of the candidates' literature. (One can hardly assume the word candidate stems somehow from the word candid - can one?)
But then not everyone sees things alike, as the Irish novelist Margaret Hungerford said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and so it is. But again, given today's political state of mental health, most politicians tend not to agree. All too often "beauty" is in THEIR eyes and in THEIR opinion.
Somehow these same characteristics tend not to repose in the persons of the electorate as seen by many politicians after they "arrive" into office. This becomes especially apparent in the matter of land use planning by the government where the case for freedom of choice is fast disappearing.
But such issues as planning for someone else's land, always at someone else's expense, is controversial as well as heady wine for planners and politicians alike, hence seems to be avoided in favor of platitudes and cheerful Charlie talk of being honest, sincere and efficient, whatever that may mean.
Some light is shed on the matter by two world famous personalities whose philosophy about politics was radically different, but whose candor was loud and clear.
I refer to the late Will Rogers who said, "Politics is applesauce" which pretty well sums up much of today's rhetoric. Also Benito Mussolini who said, "My program is simple: I want to govern," which pretty well sums up the rest of it.
All of which is not to say that all candidates are like Rogers or Mussolini. They are not. In fact most of them are indeed sincere and most are honest, but unfortunately they are seldom candid as the Italian dictator or the cowboy humorist.
It is doubly dificult in a local campaign because, as in Vietnam there are no front lines, the opposition is all about us, the opponents in many cases are not our enemies, but our friends and neighbors, our fellow citizens, our business associates, and even members of our own families.
Also, as I'm so often told: "You cannot get elected by being candid." Nevertheless it is a genuine battle in which we are engaged. A battle of ideas and for men's minds - Whether we admit it or not - and if we cannot get the ideas and issues out on the table, openly and candidly we can hardly make local government work.
If not locally, how can we possibly make government work nationally or internationally? Candidates who TRY are, of course, to be congratulated, but what ABOUT freedom of choice?
Idaho's late great Sen. William E. Borah said, "The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
Borah's key word is "unnecessarily" some will say, but I say his key word is "freedom" even if it's only implied.
In any event let's hope our newly successful local politicians agree - for not enough of our national ones seem to.
Banking In Spite of Government
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
November 19, 1977
Some years ago a new branch of the Idaho Bank and Trust Company was built in Caldwell. During the construction they publicized the interesting fact that there was more than 20 tons of steel used in the construction of their beautiful new vault.
This of course was intended to inspire confidence in the minds and hearts of potential depositors, i.e., where their money would be safe from robbers and thieves who might otherwise steal it if it were kept at home in the mattress. Nevertheless, impressive and shiny vaults are a time-honored custom for banks, and to be expected, of course.
I remarked at the time that the public may well have been served better if the new bank had informed the people that their dollars might safely rest on the shelves of the bank's new vault, but those "20 tons of steel" would provide virtually no protection whatsoever from a different kind of theft and a real menace to their life's savings.
I refer to the legal "stealing" or counterfeiting of money by the federal government. A phenomenon incredibly simple and incredibly ancient, having been in almost constant use, or abuse, for countless centuries.
It's called inflation. It's when government merely PRINTS money to pay it's bills, thus diluting the value of money already printed. You put your money in the bank when 50 cents buys a loaf of bread and when you take it out the bread costs a dollar. It takes more interest than most banks can afford to pay on your savings account to make up the difference, although few banks will disclose THIS on their truth in lending forms.
And for two very understandable reason: (1) most bankers don't seem to know the difference between money-inflation and price-inflation (or if they do, they don't care) and (2) most banks have to get a "work-permit" from the government to do business, hence don't want to rock the political boat. Called a charter, the permit is merely a special kind of license.
The late Dale Carnegie, author of the famous book "How to Win Friends and Influence People," said that "For everything people do there's a REAL reason and one that SOUNDS good," and the real reason for the banking license is to hold down competition, but the reason that sounds good is "To protect the people from shyster or careless bankers."
Almost no one sees a need to protect the people from their protectors, however, at least until after it's too late.
Fortunately, Caldwell is neither burdened with a shyster, nor so far as I can tell, careless bankers and the competition to make prudent loans and sell banking and money services is often very keen indeed.
So keen in fact that even in their government controlled and conservative market another Idaho bank has introduced some genuine innovations. They actually seem pointed toward serving customers rather than burping the old shop-worm advertising pablum which was for so long served up by the sterile, if professional, ad agencies who tell the banks' usually dull story.
In a series of full page ads The Idaho First National Bank is now telling the public, "Look for the fine print - there isn't any." They refer, of course, to their effort to use "plain English to replace legal terms and fine print in (their) customer agreement forms." (No mean task for the super-conservative banks.)
Now then, I'm no expert, but I've examined two of the new forms they speak about (1) their "Simple Interest Note" and (2) their "Security Agreement." While it cannot be said there is "no" fine print the bank has, I believe, sincerely tried to make things much clearer with a real minimum of fine print.
Their note contains headlines such as balloon payments, simple interest, finance charge, annual percentage rate, property insurance, security (and how they could take it away from you on default) collection costs, irregular payments, etc. each explained in plain and simple terms.
The all-Idaho bank's "Security Agreement" is another excellent attempt to say something meaningful to their borrower customer with a reasonably few, but well chosen words in a refreshingly unambiguous configuration of thoughts.
There is, most assuredly, some fine print - to much to recount here - but it's a far cry from the usual gobbledy gook we've come to expect - and much less of it.
Tom Frye, the bank's chairman and Fred Humphreys, its president, have done themselves proud and should be congratulated for their effort to help simplify the banking function one of the most important and least understood in a free market capitalistic society. Important indeed, and long overdue.
What has all the earmarks of being a precedent-setting trend, if not a complete innovation in Idaho banking, may well succeed at increasing their business, or at least it should. But there's an old saying that a banker is a fellow who will loan you his umbrella when the sun is shining ...
My guess is, however, that if it rains they'll STILL want their umbrella back - fine print or no fine print. And rightly so.
The Other Side of Press Freedom
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
November 26, 1977
Father, forgive me for what I am about to do. I am about to speak out AGAINST freedom of the press.
Page after page pours forth from the printing presses in Idaho, and hour after hour the TV newscasters lament long and loud about the danger foisted upon those hallowed souls - the newsmen - by a recent court decision against one of their own.
I speak, of course, about the executive editor of the Lewiston Morning Tribune, Jay Shelledy, who recently lost a court battle because he refused to "reveal his source," or in other words reveal the name of a law enforcement official who was allegedly critical of a narcotics agent in a Shelledy story.
The narcotics agent sued and demanded the right to facehis accuser. The editor claimed "freedom of the press" for a defense, but the judge said, "No deal, you must tell the law enforcement oficials' name."
Shelledy, and subsequently almost the entire Idaho news media, squalled like a mashed cat and are still squalling because shelledy disobeyed the court of law and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. He wouldn't name his source.
Notwithstanding the fact that the judge wouldn't let Shelledy into the jail even after he practically demanded to be let in, and not to mention the fact that even I myself disagree with the law, some observations which the media seem loathe to discuss are in order.
(1) Had Shelledy been put in jail, even for only 30 days, he'd have become a martyr and perhaps rightly so (2) freedom of the press has become a charade. What all the screaming is about is the POWER of the press and they clearly see it slipping. (3) To his credit Shelledy is, I think, sincere in this respect.
He seems little interested in the abuse of power. (It's been often said many newsmen yield far greater power, and abuse it, than the majority of our elected representatives.) (4) One of Shelledy's colleagues is fond of telling me, "The constitution, Ralph, guarantees a free press - not a fair one." Although said in jest, it is both very real and very revealing. (5) Just when will the media ever get the message that OTHER people's freedoms are just as important as theirs?
Well, more could be said, but don't hold your breath until the media goes ape about other people's freedoms, it just ain't going to happen.
I confess, I lied a little at the first of this column: I am not speaking against freedom of the press, although this kind of iconoclasm is likely to be labeled that way.
And I am not against my friend Shelledy, a competent, candid, articulate andmuch more open-minded member of the media than most. One of the few "good guys" in a profession whose claims to be open are far outweighed by their greed for power.
In his covering of past sessions of the Idaho Legislature he struck up a sort of fatherly friendship with C.L. "Butch" Otter, then an outspoken and articulate state representative and presently a Republican hopeful for the 1978 nomination for governor.
Otter, also, took a kind of hard line for freedom in those days, especially when he thought he saw a clear violation of principle. But shelledy would often say, "Now Butch, the name of the game is compromise. Don't be too unwilling to bend a little."
Recalling this in the light of his journalist friend's recent uncompromising stand for freedom of the press, Otter made a rather spectacular preparation for his friend's going to jail.
Otter had a cake prepared for delivery to Shelledy after he'd entered his new jail cell. Inside the cake was the proverbial hack-saw, but the saw blade was replaced by a typewriter ribbon with a note saying the ribbon was doubtless more effective than the blade.
Of course Shelledy did not go to jail, so the cake and saw deal had to be abandoned. (I know, because I was in on it.) But the message Otter wrote to accompany the cake was absolutely a classic and pretty well sums up what needs to be said to the Idaho press. It's so appropriate it should get Otter a PhD in poetry. Here it is:
"Oh, were, oh where is that honored word
The fourth estate holds dear?
The missing link twixt left and right
'Tis sadly gone, I fear.
The word that brought acceptance
to every spending scheme.
The word that censored right and wrong
For something in between.
The word that squashed both black and white
The missing word you prize.
The word to conquer prison gray:
You forgot to compromise.
"Oh where, oh where is that honored word
The fourth estate holds dear?
The missing link twixt left and right
'Tis sadly gone, I fear.
The word that brought acceptance
to every spending scheme.
The word that censored right and wrong
For something in between.
The word that quashed both black and white
The missing word you prize.
The word to conquer prison gray:
You forgot to compromise."
Personal note to friend Jay: Instead of your source's name, perhaps the judge would accept just his initials. Can't be too unbending, you know.
"Fair" Too Often Means Loudest
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
December 10, 1977
Paul Harvey, the nationally syndicated columnist and "Mr. Clean" of his profession, is an unusually candid and outspoken man. In a profession often accused of slanting the news with a left leaning bias, Harvey is a beacon light for lots of conservatives and more than a few open-minded liberals.
For example, he ridicules what many Americans have come to view almost as "divine guidance" for solving all problems - sticky, picky and wacky - majority rule.
Not that the idea is no good at all, but rather that it is not a substitute for common sense. Especially is it not when our government officials attempt to push it all over the world while denying it in our own country here at home.
He cites such double standards as 71 percent of the Americans don't want to give away the Panama Canal, but we will. An even larger majority, he says, want their children to be able to pray in the public schools, but they cannot.
He cites other glaring inconsistencies such as our insistence upon majority rule for anti-communist nations, but somehow we're much less vocal about such freedoms historically denied by communist governments.
Aside from the old saw that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," a reasonable degree thereof seems patently obvious.
And not withstanding too, the rather obvious trend to replace ownership rights with majority rule let's pose another question.
It seems too often to escape the attention of the millions of Paul Harvey's faithful listeners - the hardworking, decent, God-fearing church goers of America (the majority, perhaps) that this double standard business cuts both ways. Their own selfish interests might well be served by some re-examination.
I refer to the time honored doctrine of separation of church and state. Next to the separation of powers doctrine, i.e., keeping apart the executive, legislative and judicial departments, it is probably one of the most important of all the constitutional functions. But it, too, is disappearing.
Partly because Canyon and Ada counties are one of Idaho's "Bible Belts" and partly because I myself am worried, I try to focus attention on the matter of freedom. Consider some legal developments if you will.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld most parts of an Ohio law providing funding for church schools.
Numerous religious and civil liberties groups had asked the High Court to strike down the entire, if complicated, Ohio program except for, wouldn't you guess, the textbook-loan provision.
The Supreme justices will soon consider arguments in a case involving the Tennessee constitutional ban against clergy in the state's legislature. A Baptist minister is challenging the law.
They will also hear a case charging that a District of Columbia law that voids certain bequests to churches thus violating the First Amendment.
But the justices declined to review cases challenging a Fairfax County, VA, zoning ordinance prohibiting home church services and a challenge by a Roman Catholic bishop of Gary, Ind., that a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) effort to unionize lay teachers in church schools violates the First Amendment.
There are, of course, many more religion related issues coming before the courts, but what is NOT so obvious is the fact that popular opinion, popular appetite, or if you like - the majority rule syndrome - influences the courts, both juries AND judges to a very real extent. This is in spite of most justice's attempt to be fair. The problem is that "fair" has too often come to be seen as what the majority, or those shouting the loudest, think is fair.
If the obviously sincere and intelligent Harvey could only see his way clear to make a suggestion to his likewise sincere and church going listeners, we ourselves might find somewhat of a skeleton in our closet.
Namely, that is has been left mostly to the atheists to condemn the rather large and discriminating tax benefits to churches, church schools and those donating to churches.
Let's hear it now for the OTHER taxpayers freedom for a while. And if the word "Atheist" is offensive, we might remember that Christ came to save the sinners - not the saints.
And who knows, they might even make some converts, if not for their own church's freedom - then maybe someone else's.
Really Folks, Not All the Media's Bad
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
December 21, 1977
Perhaps critics of the news media, many of whom are becoming much more vocal as well as irate have been overlooking something.
Reed Irvine's "Accuracy in Media" and TV guide's "Newswatch" have been screaming long and loud, and propertly so, about the national media's bias and slanted programs. This writer as well has made some soft spoken and casual criticisms of the journalists.
But SOME good cheer is called for, maybe even a compliment or two for the newsmen.
Three items appeared recently which suggest perhaps their "eyes" for freedom and fairness has not died after all. Indeed there may be an emerging awareness, however tiny, that freedom of the press is not the only freedom they want to defend.
Not long ago on the outskirts of my home town an elderly lady asked permission of the local zoning board to place her mobile home on the lot occupied by her adult children.
The lady is 75 years old, has a heart condition, diabetes, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.
But the lady's arteries were not nearly so hard as the hearts of the zoning board who said "nothing doing" to her request - doesn't conform to the government's plan, you know.
But an enterprising reporter god hold of the story, put it on the front page and all of a sudden the lady's "second class" house became a "first class" house. The zoning board gave in, thanks to a freedom-oriented newsman.
In Florida there's a Scotsman, Ian Milloy, who applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for a work permit to drive his private tour bus across the state line into Tennessee for some grade schoolers.
The RETIRED Milloy was doing so well with his stereo-equipped bus and his charm and talents as a story-teller at roadside picnics that his business thrilled both students and travel agents.
But the ICC said no. It did not conform to their idea of the government's competition plan. Greyhound and Trailways protested - and that was all it took.
But again, another freedom-oriented reporter god hold of the story. It made the prestigious Wall Street Journal. Other papers, TV shows and editorial writers picked up the story and Milloy raised cane himself, even getting the Department of Justice into his act.
The ICC announced that it would "reconsider" his case. That IS some good news. Let's just hope Milloy, the canny Scotsman, lives long enough to survive the bureaucracy.
Comes now "The New Times," a magazine of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union in an altogether different attack on physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. They recently took him to task for "slanderous inventions" about Soviet society. (i.e., the government plan, of course)
But unlike much of the American news media the Russian magazine offered a diagnosis of the source of the man's behavior:
Sakhorov, the magazine pronounced, was suffering from the phenomenon known as "pathological individualism."
Our media is not all bad, folks. SOME of it, even here in the U.S.A. is seen by some people to be "pathological" in its concern for OTHER people's freedom.
Truth -- Can the Press Handle It?
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
December 25, 1977
That late great libertarian Albert Jay Nock, said something quite pertinent to the present flap about freedom of the press.
He said, "It's mostly a waste of one's time to read newspapers. If one reads them and is taken in he is debauched; if he is not taken in he is outraged."
Over simple? Of course it is. But Nock who was one of the 20th century's wisest, most polished and keenest critics of the contemporary scene had a severely penetrating wit and perception.
The great H.L. Mencken called Nock, "one of the most charming men I ever met." And charm may very well be what's missing in much of today's news media.
Take, for example, the case of Bruce Jenner, recent Olympic decathlon champion. Easily one of the most charming young athletes in his field, he came on the Tee Vee the other day endorsing Wheaties, the breakfast of champions.
Implying, of course, if only parents feed their off-spring a breakfast of Wheaties they, too, might become famous athletes.
A San Francisco prosecuting attorney who doubted Jenner really ate Wheaties all those years, threatened to challenge him in court.
What happened? Well the news media almost went ape. "Ye Gods," they seemed to say, "What'll happen to our advertising business if we actually have to tell it like it is?"
Well NOBODY could sell anything, at least if they had to conform to the federal "TRUTH in advertising" law.
Did you see anyone on the boob-tube or in print or on the radio say, "We wonder if it is true. Did Jenner actually eat all of those Wheaties all those years? Or did his mother merely crumble them up in bed so he wouldn't sleep late?" Nobody asked the simple, straightforward question: "Is it true, or is it false?"
No, the press merely reacted: "Is that all the attorney has to do, i.e., raise truth in advertising questions? Who does he think he is - an investigative reporter?"
The Swiss writer Henri Amiel summed it up pretty well. "Truth," he said, "is violated by falsehood, but it is outraged by silence." One wonders if the press appreciates anyone, but one of their own, breaking that silence, as the prosecuting attorney tried to do.
What's all this got to do with Idaho? Well, our media people are squealing like a pig under a gate on account of a threat to their freedom of the press, and RIGHTLY so, in two cases involving a Lewiston Morning Tribune editor and another involving the Twin Falls Times News. But their memories are short, if not selectively convenient.
For example, Bruce Herschensohn, author of the book "The Gods of Antenna" and one of the former television directors for the United States Information Agency, spoke to an audience at Rockford College March 9, 1977. He told of a similar media selectivity, but on an even greater scale.
He said, "It seems destructive and ironic that such a (noisy) case is made against South Korea by the Washington Post and the New York Times when they totally disregarded the charges against the Soviet Union's KGB infiltrating the offices of Congress.
"Fifty members of Congress requested that Idaho's Senator Frank Church's committee investigate those charges. Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times printed that they made the request.
"It is well known in Washington that the Embassy of the Soviet Union monitors the telephones of thousands of Washington residents.
"There never has been an investigation called for by either of these giant newspapers." But South Korea continues to catch hell. One wonders why the double standard.
Back in Idaho this writer is not aware that any Idaho news source gave any substantive coverage to those same controversial requests made of Senator Church's committee. Nor did they ask him while he was in Idaho.
Could it be that the Idaho courts are reflecting an outrage long felt by intelligent laymen against the media's selectivity and omnipotence?
Fred Friendly, who was once President of CBS News was recently asked, "Is there a liberal bias in the news?" He answered, "No, only an affinity for righting the things that are wrong with society."
Except truth in advertising - we suppose. And a little tailor-made news, maybe?
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The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy
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