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Symms' Cuban Trip No 'Junket'
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
January 7, 1979
Idaho's First District Congressman, Steve Symms, is off on a fact-finding mission to the Caribbean. He will be visiting the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba, believe it or not, as a representative of the House Agriculture Committee.
I say "believe it or not" for more than one reason. First, he will probably meet Communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro - eyeball to eyeball - at least it's a possibility.
Second, these so-called fact-finding missions or study missions have been a target of Symms' severe criticisms for several years. He calls them "junkets" for politicians. They are usually paid for at taxpayer's expense, of course, all-too-often mostly for monkey-business reasons.
And third, as a representative of the House Agriculture Committee Symms may well be a shill for the U.S. State Department, who is actually in charge of things.
I say who, rather than which, advisedly, since the State Department is more a person than a department. It tends to reflect the personality-cult in Washington, D.C. rather than policy for the enlightened self-interests of America.
One should be able to assume, for example, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is for farmers and agribusiness the same as the U.S. Department of Labor is for labor and labor unions - but one cannot.
Indeed, ever since the reign of former Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman the matter has, upon some occasions, even been openly admitted.
Freeman himself virtually touted the fact that he not only was not a farmer, but that his department had other equally important concerns. Presumably, consumer protection and a cheap food policy, whatever that means, has come to replace food producers as that department's chief concern. Most farmers have yet to discover this.
If one needs a concrete example, the fact is that the now infamous food stamp program is part of the Agriculture Department rather than the Department of Welfare.
Just exactly why the food producers and processors of Idaho cannot seem to see this asininity and scream about it to the high heavens nobody ever asks. In fairness, the news media isn't much help, but to his credit, Symms has at least asked them the question - albeit in a rather quiet and for him at least, unobtrusive manner.
If Symms returns from his current trip to the Caribbean with anything more than a sunburn (and only time will tell) he could do much to expose, publicize and educate the American public, at least the agriculturists, as to what the competition is doing - usually with the enthusiastic and gung-ho help of the U.S. State Department masquerading behind some Agriculture Department shill like Symms.
But Symms is no shill. He's his own man, especially in agriculture and public lands - sometimes to a fault in the opinion of some.
Even his critics admire his gutsy articulation, in the past, to the effect that America's foreign policy is so pathologically irrational that many people think there must be something clever, hidden in it.
Unlike Idaho's Sen. Frank Church, however, who returned from Cuba saying he felt like Fidel Castro was his "good friend," the Idaho Congressman is a super skeptic when it comes to government ownership of land and factories and jobs.
If indeed the State Department does allow the two politicians to meet in Cuba, eyeball to eyeball, the bearded dictator might get a radically new idea for a free trade from Idaho.
As a goal for 1980, Symms may suggest trading Castro some of Sen. Church's advice, which usually favors more government ownership of "public" lands, etc., in exchange for some of Symms' political advice.
It usually favors less government ownership.
'Enemies of Education Hiding
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
January 13, 1979
Did you ever talk to anyone who was against education? No? Well, neither have I. But almost each year we are subjected to the resurrection of a giant straw man - concerning education's enemies.
Everybody knows that is a hypothetical enemy who is "made of straw" so we can smash him, shoot him, stick pins or knives in him even though he doesn't exist.
All this, of course, is for the benefit of making a point to impress somebody else with our great courage and wisdom at "fighting" a fierce enemy who does not really exist.
Well, the anti-education entity is, in my opinion, a strawman of such proportions as the abominable snow man. big foot: Frankenstein the monster or maybe even those unidentified flying objects (UFO's) that nobody can even photograph - so far anyway.
All of which is NOT to say that people do not exist who have disagreements with that largest of all state monopolies - public education. Many of these people are some of education's best friend, even though they are critical.
So why are we treated so consistently with such a crusade FOR education when there is virtually nobody against it?
One reason may be that "education" has come to be a giant special interest and "local" control has come to be a relic of the past. How long, for example, has it been since one of the great education lobbies such as the Idaho Education Association made a long and loud crusade for teaching students to read and write, or conversely, why more and more observers are saying they cannot?
If we could possibly get past our almost tribalistic penchant for name-calling at everyone who disagrees with the status-quo in education it would help.
Now then, whether the conservatives are the worst offenders at name-calling or the liberals, or yet others is not my point, but certainly the liberals in both political parties are clearly in authority in education. Certainly, too, if one defines liberal to mean those sincerely believing in expanding the government's role in education, if not in most every other walk of life as well. Let's at least try to define the problem.
Idaho's newly elected, state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jerry Evans said in Caldwell recently that their total budget in Idaho was about $234 billion. Out of that the proposed tax limitation would cut from $25 to $40 million and that this would necessitate some cuts "somewhere."
Asked where he might suggest a beginning the new education chief understandably hedged his answers knowing full well the tremendous political implication(s) of WHATEVER side he took.
To his everlasting credit he did try to say something meaningful, namely, that if push came to shove and no other options were available the public schools, i.e., grades 12 down, would, he thought, have priority over higher education.
"But," he hastened to add, "I hope such a decision is not necessary." Well, what else COULD he say? His is a political job, requiring political solutions. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
What Evans should have said, but the political witch-doctors have forbidden all but the gods themselves to say it, is that government monopolies like his and the post office, for example, have expanded too far.
The expansion of government to its present scale has politicalized virtually all economic life and now almost all education life.
The wages being paid most workers today are political wages, reflecting political pressures rather than anything that might be considered the normal workings of supply and demand.
The prices farmers receive are political prices. The profits business is earning are political profits. The savings people hold have become political savings, since their real value is subject to abrupt depreciation by political decisions.
If an example of the latter is needed, just look at how money-inflation caused only by Government, has robbed their savings without even so much as having to say - stick 'em up!
One further remark, Evans should have closed with, but it would of course been political suicide, is that it is important to distinguish between "schooling" and "education."
He, should have said that not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling. The proper concern is education, and that government isn't the only place one can get it.
The activities of government are mostly limited to schooling.
Bankers Caught in Usuary Debate
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
January 20, 1979
The Idaho legislators now meeting in Boise are faced with yet another dilemma - to raise the usury ceiling on interest rates, or to keep it at the present 10 percent limit.
The lawmakers have almost no choice in the matter except to raise the ceiling. If they want any money lenders to make loans in Idaho they must recognize the competition elsewhere for higher than 10 percent rates.
Most of the politicians recognize this all right, in fact most of them know that their own banks are borrowing money themselves for almost 12 percent right now.
If something isn't done pretty soon Idahoans won't be able to borrow at any price - all the bankers will either be in jail or shipping their funds to greener pastures.
This problem revives several age old controversies not the least of which is just what is a "fair price" for the loan of money?
After all that is all the farmer wants for his product, his sugar, his milk, or his wheat so why shouldn't bankers ask the same question?
Well, some do. But there are some important differences between money and farm produce. It might help if we would do the unusual thing before we have an argument and define our terms, especially since we'll be hearing alot more about the word usury - and soon.
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1976) gives three definitions for usury: "(1) interest, (2) the lending of money with an interest charge for its use, (3) an unconscionable or exorbitant rate of amount of interest; specifically, interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money."
Now, then usury, by one definition or another, has been denounced by just about everybody ever since biblical times and before, so we can be pretty sure to hear it again during this legislative session.
At the risk of boring you, let's define also the word interest. It means different things to different people and the hard-working lawmakers are passing so many laws these days they just might appreciate a little help.
The above-mentioned dictionary's pertinent definition says interest is "a charge for borrowing money generally a percent of the amount borrowed."
I thought this wasn't quite enough, however, so I looked up Dr. Hans Sennholz's definition. He's the chief economist at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and one who has been through two world renowned financial crises in Germany. He's an absolutely brilliant economist. Sennholz's definition says interest has three facets. (1) originary or pure rate, (2) the debtor's risk premium, and (3) the inflationary risk premium.
It is this last or third facet of the definition to which, I fear, the legislators whoo not address themselves - money inflation.
The debates on the floor of the House and Senate should stress for the benefit of the public the fact that lenders have only one way to protect the purchasing power of their money - raising the price. Otherwise they will most assuredly get back in return less purchasing power than they loaned out. Most of them won't do that. They will export their money first or go into the black market to find the highest and safest rate of return.
This is of course, almost too simple for most politicians to accept, but the bank's public image, which is not especially good, somehow calls for ever more regulation. Most people think the banks should loan risk capital until each is asked for written permission to loan their own savings account in that risky way. This educates a few people - a reverse kind of disclosure, so to speak.
But the banks are long overdue in their scrutiny of and public disclosure of our federal politicians that are hell-bent on issuing paper-money to pay for the promises they made in order to win votes, i.e., inflation.
That's where the problem is - not with the Idaho banker's so-called greed to raise their price. They're not greedy, just human.
After all, when the legislators pass laws to restrict the banker's competition and have for years provided a special permit for certain loan companies to loan money at a 36 percent per year legal ceiling (3 percent per month) they can afford to be human.
In fairness, one should add that perhaps the reason most money lenders do not shout too loud at the government's phony paper-money system is that if they did those same lawmakers just might get irritated and lower the legal floor to 26 percent per year.
Take Off the Limit
By Ralph Smeed
Valley News
January 31, 1979
The Idaho legislators now meeting in Boise are faced with yet another dilemma - to raise the usury ceiling on interest rates, or to keep it at the present 10 percent limit.
The lawmakers have almost no choice in the matter except to raise the ceiling. If they want any money lenders to make loans in Idaho they must recognize the competition elsewhere for higher than 10 percent rates.
Most of the politicians recognize this all right, in fact most of them know that their own banks are borrowing money themselves for almost 12 percent right now.
If something isn't done pretty soon Idahoans won't be able to borrow at any price - all the bankers will either be in jail or shipping their funds to greener pastures.
This problem revives several age old controversies not the least of which is just what is a "fair price" for the loan of money?
After all that is all the farmer wants for his product, his sugar, his milk, or his wheat so why shouldn't bankers ask the same question?
Well, some do. But there are some important differences between money and farm produce. It might help if we would do the unusual thing before we have an argument and define our terms, especially since we'll be hearing alot more about the word usury - and soon.
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1976) gives three definitions for usury: "(1) interest, (2) the lending of money with an interest charge for its use, (3) an unconscionable or exorbitant rate of amount of interest; specifically, interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money."
Now, then usury, by one definition or another, has been denounced by just about everybody ever since biblical times and before, so we can be pretty sure to hear it again during this legislative session.
At the risk of boring you, let's define also the word interest. It means different things to different people and the hard-working lawmakers are passing so many laws these days they just might appreciate a little help.
The above-mentioned dictionary's pertinent definition says interest is "a charge for borrowing money generally a percent of the amount borrowed."
I thought this wasn't quite enough, however, so I looked up Dr. Hans Sennholz's definition. He's the chief economist at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and one who has been through two world renowned financial crises in Germany. He's an absolutely brilliant economist. Sennholz's definition says interest has three facets. (1) originary or pure rate, (2) the debtor's risk premium, and (3) the inflationary risk premium.
It is this last or third facet of the definition to which, I fear, the legislators whoo not address themselves - money inflation.
The debates on the floor of the House and Senate should stress for the benefit of the public the fact that lenders have only one way to protect the purchasing power of their money - raising the price. Otherwise they will most assuredly get back in return less purchasing power than they loaned out. Most of them won't do that. They will export their money first or go into the black market to find the highest and safest rate of return.
This is of course, almost too simple for most politicians to accept, but the bank's public image, which is not especially good, somehow calls for ever more regulation. Most people think the banks should loan risk capital until each is asked for written permission to loan their own savings account in that risky way. This educates a few people - a reverse kind of disclosure, so to speak.
But the banks are long overdue in their scrutiny of and public disclosure of our federal politicians that are hell-bent on issuing paper-money to pay for the promises they made in order to win votes, i.e., inflation.
That's where the problem is - not with the Idaho banker's so-called greed to raise their price. They're not greedy, just human.
After all, when the legislators pass laws to restrict the banker's competition and have for years provided a special permit for certain loan companies to loan money at a 36 percent per year legal ceiling (3 percent per month) they can afford to be human.
In fairness, one should add that perhaps the reason most money lenders do not shout too loud at the government's phony paper-money system is that if they did those same lawmakers just might get irritated and lower the legal floor to 26 percent per year.
Too Much Against Symms' Race?
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
February 3, 1979
Some people are saying that Idaho's Congressman Steve Symms should run for the U.S. Senate in 19480. That seat is now held by Idaho's senior senator Frank Church, who was first elected in 1956.
Church will then have been in the Senate for 24 years, almost a quarter of a century, and those who approve the direction of his influence applaud all this "experience" and "power." Those who do NOT approve say "enough is enough" and "it's time for a change."
But those who want the popular congressman to bounce the popular senator out of the latter's seat of all this power tend to be a whole lot more familiar with what they are AGAINST than what they are FOR. This fact is well known to Church. In fact it is the single most important reason he's still in office, i.e., he's done his homework, and perhaps even more important, his supporters have done THEIR homework, and have for years.
Who are his supporters? Well, among them are at least 75 percent of all the school teachers in the state, most of whom are on the government payroll. More importantly, however, is the influence they have on the voter's children, who, in turn, carry much of this influence home to their parents, who, in turn, see, their children getting ever smarter.
When one adds the teachers together with labor unions and the growing number of government employees and bureaucrats who can hardly be expected to vote against what they see at their own job security, it really adds up.
Then there is the ever-growing number of senior citizens forever being solicited by traveling bureaucrats who fawn all over Senator Church "... for whose generosity and caring for the aged we are eternally thankful - Amen." At government expense, of course. These older folks are all grateful, certainly most are, and so, guess who gets most of their vote. Church is abundantly aware of the importance of this voting block, but Symms' camp is not - at least not yet.
It is not that Symms' people do not care nor that Church wants only the old folk's vote. It is, after all a question of whose proper responsibility it is and how much can the government afford.
Symms says the aged are the most vulnerable to government-caused inflation yet tend more and more to look to that SAME government to save them. Still, he'll be hard pressed to get their vote against "Church's" super-government programs and super-government workers.
But perhaps most of all the big question facing those Symms supporters, or Church haters, is the problem of the news media. While it's true that the apple growing congressman is easily the most well-liked Republican in recent Idaho history, i.e., by the press, generally speaking, they don't like what they think he stands for, namely, a free market, private ownership and extremely limited government. again, I say GENERALLY speaking, since he rarely screams about military spending.
In a head-on confrontation between the popular senator whose super-liberal policies, almost without exception, have each been a bouquet of roses into the waiting arms of an equally liberal and gushing bride - the news media - and against a conservative congressman - well, guess who they'd be romancing and twisting the news to fit.
Still, times are changing, and political times are not so liberal as they once were, including, even, the media. Liberal ideas. Keynesian economics foreign give-aways and many important and powerful politicians have recently been discredited. Others just barely escaped. Church might be vulnerable. Senator William fulbright of Arkansas, for example, another super-liberal and for decades chairman of the senate foreign relations committee was recently defeated.
Since Church has never had a real popular and gutsy politician, at least as charismatic as he is, for an opponent, even his liberal pals in the media would dearly love to cover a campaign between Church and Symms, but if Symms took a serious lead in the polls the news media would PANIC. They did in California in Proposition 13 and they nearly did in Idaho on the one-percent tax issue. They're still mad.
But people's common sense penetrated the news media fog. And, to their everlasting credit, even a small number of the news media reported and commented fairly. The voters CAN win a few.
But symms would do well to consider something else before he decides to run for Church's seat in 1980: What will Idaho's junior senator James McClure do - PUBLICLY, if Symms takes on Church?
Last election (1974) many say that the sincere and conscientious ex-Senator Len Jordan, who hated most of Church's politics, gave perhaps more credibility to him than any other single thing in the campaign with a sophisticated, customary, orthodox and always-to-be-expected endorsement of the Republican opponent for Church's seat. it excited nobody and threatened Church not at all.
Church has supported nearly every foreign give-away ever to come down the pike. Now he's moderating, they say, but people forget.
Church supported almost every foreign foible President Jimmy "TRUST ME" Carter has made, but people forget. church led the Panama Canal give-away and the Taiwan (Free China) sell-out - but people forget. So my bet is that McClure will NOT attack Church - effectively - if Symms runs. And not because he doesn't like Symms - he does like him.
McClure has always been a good solid conservative, too. He's gained added visibility in the last few years, partly because of Symms' moral support and free market enthusiasm, so he just MIGHT surprise us. He has a kind of quiet courage - even guts.
But membership in the most exclusive club, the Senate,will, I'm afraid, prevail. It's peer group, you watch - even with the republic hanging by its finger nails - you watch. They seldom attack one another - and, so, people forget. Thanks often to the good guys.
And the GOP? And big business? Well, had it been left up to them Symms would never have run in the first place.
And if he leaves very much up to THEM to defeat Church in 1980 - and without McClure - best thing for him to do is, I'm afraid, follow the people and forget it.
Media Muchraker Hits Symms
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
February 11, 1979
Well, Idaho's First District Congressman Steve Symms made the big time national TV news. The American Broadcasting company's "Good Morning America" program featuring the nationally syndicated muckraker Jack Anderson took after Symms with considerable glee Wednesday morning.
The controversial columnist is famous for his support of extreme liberal causes and is one of the prime targets of the nation's number one "truth squad" watching the media. The latter is Reed Irvine, chief of "Accuracy in Media" (AIM) and also number one critic of the three major networks and the Washington Post and New York Times, also of the knee-jerk liberal news crowd.
Anderson began by suggesting that the president's brother Billy Carter "embarrassed the White House by escorting a delegation of Libyans around Georgia."
The muckraking news commentator went on to relate that Idaho's congressman's "embraced" the Libyans as did Billy, but only after suggesting in the same broadcast that the Libyans were world-wide terrorists.
He did add, however, that the Libyan embassy officials deny these charges. Still, his emphasis clearly indicated Anderson tends to discount their denial.
What's all this to do with Steve Symms? Well, according to Anderson our farmer-congressman scheduled a meeting (Feb. 7) with a "select group" of congressmen to meet with Ahmed Shahati who heads Libya's foreign liaison office.
According to Anderson, the invitations were confidential and promised the press would neither be present nor invited. Needless to say the big shot columnist was furious. A secret meeting - ye gods!
"I do not believe in keeping secrets from the voters," Anderson said, "and I will have a reporter there in case the congressman goes ahead with the meeting."
Well, bless Bess! Anderson is in the business of secrets and so is the rest of the media. If their super-centralized media were not almost monolithic that would be a great line, but the power kick most of them are on to "form the news to fit" is beginning to surface.
It began to surface about the time of former vice-president Spiro Agnew resulting from his withering-fire attacks on the "nattering nabobs of the media" - remember? In fact William F. Buckley's magazine, National Review, had a cover story called "The Post-Agnew News Media - it's about time" or something to that effect.
But Anderson isn't all bad. Once in a blue moon he even blows the whistle on the liberals. Still "news" is his stock in trade and if secret meetings got to be popular his business would suffer.
But his remark about "... secrets from the voters" is, well, a crock.
Symms is without a doubt one of the most open, candid, forthright and intellectually honest politicians in Idaho history. He may be wrong but he begs to inform the voters. As a matter of fact that is probably his most troublesome task.
If the news media, which generally speaking, is insufferably liberal, were not so consistently hostile to conservatives like Symms, meetings "without the press" would never occur - certainly not to Symms anyway. His continuous efforts to get the media to communicate his free market ideas even give the conservative stuffed shirts an everlasting peptic ulcer.
To his credit Anderson's TV broadcast ended with, "I understand Symms is eager to expand trade between Libya and the United States.
"The farmers in Idaho would like to sell agricultural products to Libya. But I want to make sure Symms does not try to make a secret deal."
Well, good goshamighty! What about the trainload of secret deals coming out of the U.S. State Department for years and years?
And speaking of terrorism, the last of these takes the cake, i.e., the U.S. has kissed the cheeks (you can guess where) of Red China and kicked the cheeks (same place) of Taiwan or Free China. All done in secret deals.
If Symms makes a U.S. farm policy "deal" with any common sense in it - he'll have to do it in secret.
Political Truncoat Label Nonsense
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
February 19, 1979
Can a Republican support a Democrat or vice versa and still remain loyal to his principles or his party? Or should be - even if he could? Well, let's take a look.
Some years back when then governor of Idaho Don Samuelson, a conservative, was campaigning for re-election we were treated to a series of newspaper ads which were adamant in opposition to him.
This would not have been newsworthy except that the ads were signed: "Republicans for Andrus," and contained the names of several well-known citizens long identified as Republican party members. Andrus, of course, was Cecil D. Andrus, a Democrat, who was subsequently elected governor and later picked by President Jimmy Carter to fill the cabinet post of U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
In terms of private ownership versus government ownership he's mostly a socialist and as such remains an embarrassment to many liberals and conservatives, although his charm and personality still obscure this fact to many observers.
In any event when this all took place I thought that such an ad was pretty bald-faced something-or-other, I suppose in part at least because I supported Samuelson and although I did not for a moment question the right of those Republicans to their "deviations" I admit to being somewhat irritated.
But then those signing the ad were also irritated - enough so as to go public with their irritation and even sign their names.
Now having the courage of one's convictions in public is a vanishing quality these past few decades and that's sad. But I well remember that virtually each and every one of those Republicans signing the anti-Samuelson ads were liberal Republicans.
This, too, was their right, but the lines between the political paraties have become less and less distinguishable in past years. Indeed, such an abandonment of clearly understood principles has led to a pathetic atrophying of moral principles in general, especially in public affairs. And the politicians wonder why fewer and fewer people vote.
But one can hardly blame these liberals for speaking their minds. This came home to me rather dramatically in the last election, when after long years of pretty darn loyal (I thought) Republicanism, I supported a couple of Democrats. I've done so before, but not so openly as this time.
I didn't think so much about it since my support for the Democrats was based entirely on ideas, namely, less government, and involved two good friends. But my "deviation" came home to roost when a Republican friend who won re-election to the Idaho Legislature hung a label on me.
He told a mutual friend, after the election, that he not only had to "defeat his Democrat opponent, but a turncoat Republican as well." He meant the latter to be Ralph Smeed.
Well now, just wait a minute. I'm no turncoat. Or am I? by gosh maybe I am. It's continued to bother me a little because something is wrong. One's loyalty to anything important ought not be taken lightly.
It bothered me, that is, until just the other day when I read about Congressman Otis Pike, Democrat from New York.
After 18 years in Congress Pike did not run for re-election this last year. Here's some of his rather remarkable reasons: "I feel increasingly uneasy with the never ending fiscal irresponsibility of the majority of my own party and the absolute indifference of both political parties to inflation, the size of our annual deficit, our national debt, or any obligation to pay our bills and balance our budget. The Republicans pay lip service to these things and then vote overwhelmingly the other way."
Pike went on: "Congressmen are treated, in Washington at least, like little tin Jesuses ... it's a real ego trip, but I've had it."
But here the very successful and now ex-congressman gets right to the point: "I'm tired of pretending that the accumulated wisdom of the ages has been secretly entrusted only to Democrat candidates and officeholders ..."
"Some Republican congressmen are great ... I would like to feel free to say so without being accused of treason or ingratitude."
Three cheers and a big hooray for Congressman Pike. He may not have improved the mix in Congress very much by quitting, but he sure has added one powerful and clear thinking voice back home.
And, believe me, that's where the confusion is.
Schools' Economic Views Contrast
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
February 25, 1979
There is an interesting contrast between the new presidents of two of Idaho's universities. The University of Idaho at Moscow has Dr. Richard Gibb and Boise State University has Dr. John Deiser, both virtually brand new and eager to do the right thing, for his school, no doubt.
In order to make a point I'd like to take, out of context, a major thrust from each of these two educator's suggestion of a new course of action for his school.
The ink was just barely dry on Keiser's appointment contract as new chief of BSU when he reasoned that since their school was located at the very seat (if not in the pocket) of state government, perhaps they should become the state's experts on how to run other people's lives.
In fairness, I think he put it another way, probably, something like, "BSU should become the state's headquarters for education of bureaucrats and politicians." Sort of experts in how to make government efficient - one supposes.
I see no reason to think Keiser is not completely well-meaning in his suggestion, but to borrow a timely observation from recent Nobel laureate in economics Dr. Milton Friedman: "Thank Heaven the government is not efficient, because if it were we would not have one iota of freedom left."
But such reflects the prevailing orthodoxy in most of America's schools, particularly higher education, i.e., "government" solutions preferred and studied and favored in place of "private" or marketplace solutions, especially in the allocation of scarce resources.
By contrast and particularly welcome to most of the business community in Idaho is the suggestion of U of I President Gibb who is right now in the process of raising, from the private sector, something over a half million dollars to endow a chair of free enterprise for his Moscow-based school.
Jumpin' catfish! How is that for contrast in educational philosophy? One need not push either president's recommendation very far to hear one say we should be teaching more about free enterprise and the other to say we should be teaching more about government.
But maybe Keiser meant to say we should be training public servants, I think he used that term, about how many problems they CAUSE and how few they CURE and how their numbers and costs are increasing faster than those in the steadily-shrinking private sector.
It could be that's what he meant. I doubt it. But it could be. The problem is we are not likely to know until it's too late, since most educators are reluctant to discuss controversial education philosophy.
Academic freedom? - Yes! Academic philosophy? - No!
At least that's been the tendency for decades. A few exceptions - precious few - and in a supposedly capitalistic country. Interestingly enough, one finds the subject of capitalism much more controversial than the subject of socialism, especially on campus. How come?
The U of I's prestigious "Borah Symposium" held annually on campus is a case in point and only a tip of the sickening iceberg of socialism's apologists. As a matter of fact, a few years ago it was almost totally dominated by marxists, according to a former dean of the Moscow school.
But such is not my concern, just now rather it's Gibb's chair of free enterprise. Aside from his definition of "free enterprise" which is missing, and aside from the fact that back in 1969, then president of the U of I Alumni Association, Steve Symms, was kicked out as that organization's chief for just such a suggestion (he called for a chair of capitalism), I have two great reservations about Gibb's suggestion.
(1) How do we know that that school's liberals, who dominate the institution, or some version of Harvard's left leaning economists like John Kenneth Galbraith, won't wind up sitting in the U of I's new chair?
And (2) How does it make sense for our government university to take tax monies to finance super, often knee jerk, liberal college courses with interventionist oriented philosophies - that tend toward socialism or at least anti-free enterprise?
Or, said another way, shouldn't it give us pause for the government to finance the U of I's "liberal arts" (pun-intended) with tax money and then go into the private sector for money to finance the "conservative arts?"
Everybody Knows What It Is, But . . .
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
March 4, 1979
The subject of garbage disposal is on the minds of most city and county officials almost constantly. Indeed it is a constant problem and getting constantly tougher each year.
But one of the toughest garbage problems of all is the disposal of the garbage about inflation. The quantity of it is alarming and the danger of disposing of all this waste is a lot like disposing of a pile of atomic waste and almost as dangerous.
A better than average example of this garbage about inflation appeared in a newspaper column last week. It was written by Erwin Schwiebert whose weekly column is often a joy to read and behold. Not to all, perhaps, but certainly to some.
Erwin was a public speaking teacher in high school and as such had few peers. I kid you not. He was great. he even won the national extemporaneous speaking contest one year. A well-deserved award.
Later he became a professor at the College of Idaho and also while there a several term member of the Idaho State Legislature. He was more than once a candidate for Congress from this state, too, and while unsuccessful he was a most tenacious campaigner for what he believed in. He's now a successful fund-raiser for the College of Idaho, but he's still very much a political activist in his spare time.
I give this little biographical sketch of my friend Schwiebert for a reason. It, admittedly, does not do justice to one of the most dedicated, hard working, highly educated, honest and sincere political figures I ever met, but he fell under the influence of bad, bad company while politicking, i.e., the liberal Republicans.
What's all this have to do with inflation? Well, it's this: Schwiebert said in his column, "federal deficit financing is a chief engine of inflation ... (but) it is also questionable that it is the only cause of inflation."
Now then, I appreciate that. He's trying again to be honest. It's taken years and years to get that much out of the liberal GOP, so it's a start. Not much, but a start.
The trouble is he didn't stop there. He said some other things too, and here's where the waste if not the garbage begins to emerge.
Schwiebert says "extreme conservatives are inclined to lay the whole blame for inflation on government ... (but) some responsibility can be found at the door of almost everyone."
The "extreme conservatives" bit is his shot at Congressman Steve Symms who does indeed tend to lay the blame for inflation on the federal government. This upsets most liberal Republicans, but in all the many conversations I've had with Schwiebert I've never heard him use the term "extreme" liberal.
In fact he prefers to use the term "moderate" to describe nearly all non-conservatives. That's about the safest euphemism I've ever heard and just about the most meaningless if not downright misleading.
But misleading tends to suggest a measure of deception and I don't want to accuse my so-called moderate friend, he really is my friend outside politics, of wanting to deceive anyone. Misguided, perhaps, fiscally confused, maybe, utopian, even naive, but not deceptive.
Now here's where the garbage comes in that certainly must be disposed of before our country is completely covered up in a garbage dump of double-talk and double-think.
Erwin said, "When incomes increase faster than our productivity then inflation is stimulated..." Ye gods! that's like saying if it rains the sidewalks will be wet. but wet sidewalks do not cause it to rain.
Except that everybody knows the definition of "rain." They do not know the definition of inflation. My fellow columnist, Schwiebert, however, uses two different definitions for moderation, one guesses.
He said, "Wasteful spending is usually inflationary." I guess his "usually" means it's good when he wastes; bad when I waste. He claims a businessman who charges more than a "fair" profit is inflationary.
Balderdash! Somehow he forgets that obscene profits breed cutthroat competition. They charge only what the traffic will bear since they cannot do otherwise, and thank Heaven for that.
There are, of course, two schools of thought defining the word inflation. Simply stated they are: (1) High prices and (2) an increase in the supply of money and/or credit (my preference). Most big dictionaries use the second. Schwiebert uses both. Most moderates do, and that's nice or at least convenient for the politicos.
Seriously now, if one defines inflation as high prices one tends to blame the market. If one defines inflation as an increase in money or credit, one must blame government. Schwiebert's moderatism almost never blames government per se, for anything, hence the attempt to have it both ways.
To their credit, many of these people are high-minded with idealistic views of equality and social justice. It is heartening that people of goodwill have these well-meaning motives. But it is still "double-think" to play with words using two or more meanings. Perhaps I should define that word.
"Double-think" means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Sort of like trying to suck and blow in the same breath.
Education: The Latest Surplus
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
March 10, 1979
"Government Education vs Non-Government Education"
or
"Does America, too, have a 'Sacred Cow?'"
"Our age reminds one vividly of the dissolution of the Greek city-state: everything goes on as usual, and yet there is no longer anyone who believes in it. The invisible spiritual bond which gives it validity no longer exists, and so the whole age is at once comic and tragic - tragic because it is perishing, comic because it goes on." -- Kierkegaard, 1843
When one thinks of government, any government, these days it is as often as not in connection with a joke. For example: What do you think would happen if the Russian government took over the Sahara desert in Africa? The answer to the query is: "Nothing for the first few years, after that there'd be a shortage of sand."
Now then, if that didn't make you chuckle (it was supposed to) perhaps it was because you are, instead, used to hearing about "government" producing surpluses.
Our government, of course, for decades has been subsidizing farm products. When they do our farmers produce to beat the band. In fact for years they produced so much that the corn and wheat became almost a national crisis just on account of the storage alone. Oh yes, the storage too, was subsidized.
Let me hasten to add that most of the farmers did not want the government to subsidize agriculture, except that they could see the politicians were buying votes in the big cities by subsidizing everything else so they reason: "We might as well get our share." And so the story goes and goes and is still going today.
One of my friends who is active in politics said to me the other day, "You know something, Ralph? People worship government almost more than they do their church."
"Whaddaya mean almost?" I asked. "Churches say: 'Pay now - fly later.' Government subsidies are just the reverse."
Well more could be said about that, but one area of subsidy that often gets overlooked is education. Oh yes, it's true, people probably worship education even more than they do their church or government, but let's look at the parallel effect of the subsidy.
It's a lot like the Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman says; "Let the government subsidize something and almost assuredly it will become a surplus."
Take education for example. since World War II and the Korean "police action" the government has sent almost everyone to college who even thought of going. Even many who did not want a higher education took their GI Bill education "vouchers" and attended. Some went just to avoid the draft.
Let me hasten to add that I can't say I blame them, but guess what's happened? Yep, you guessed it - there's a surplus of college graduates. So what did the government do? Why, put them on the government payroll, of course.
It's true, some of the graduates went into civilian life. Some are fine, productive citizens, but what have those on the government payroll given us?
Well, a few did a 10-year federal study in Seattle and Denver which revealed that when people have a guaranteed annaul income, they are less likely to work.
Some others helped set up a plan whereby a Wisconsin government employee who lost a filling in his tooth while munching popcorn during working hours filed for workman's compensation. He won - and received $167.
But there remains some hope. The Government Printing Office, exasperated with Post Office inefficiency, has turned to the private United Parcel Service for the shipment of some federal documents. A spokesman says UPS is faster and cheaper than the U.S. Mail in many areas. Some hope, but mostly problems.
Now, I'm not sure whether all these problems are all caused by government subsidized college graduates, but I'm reminded of what that late, great, cowboy philosopher Will Rogers said; "I don't know much more than economists; and Lord knows they don't know how to do anything."
But the Lord, or perhaps Rogers anyway, was wrong. They know how to produce surpluses - just give 'em a subsidy.
Sanity: R.I.P.
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
March 18, 1979
After World War II the United States initiated a foreign policy of rehabilitating those countries who had been defeated in the war.
This was so successful and some of the countries rebounded with such speed that the programs were broadened to countries all over the world. Some we financed directly, some indirectly through the United Nations.
American aid became so broad in fact that many people thought that in many cases we were financing the wrong side.
While everybody wishes President Jimmy Carter every success in his current peace making negotiations in the Middle East, it appears that the main difference between our old foreign policy and Carter's new frontier foreign policy is that now we are financing BOTH sides.
Good luck America. And two cheers for mental health.
Abrahams Didn't Understand
By Ralph Smeed
NT
March 28, 1979
By the time you read this the 45th session of the Idaho Legislature will have adjourned. At least, hopefully they will have adjourned, i.e., before they have done any more damage.
In fairness to a number of the politicians there assembled, I must report first of all some good news.
During the rather vigorous house debate on a bill to allow Idaho cities to vote themselves a city sales tax one legislator said, "This bill flies in the face of the one-percent tax limit initiative recently voted for by the people."
The debater went on to say, "This bill is merely a tax-shift, not a tax reduction. Why don't we be honest for a change, and vote for a bill to repeal the one-percent tax limit?"
He could have added that at least Governor Evans would love such a bill. He's been trying, ever so valiantly, to KILL it ever since the people voted FOR it.
Oh well, what else is new? Well, one thing that's new, or at least exposed now for all to see is that it is not only our governor who cares very little for the voters "mandate" for less government, but the Idaho House of Representatives as well.
At least a great many of them took an od stance on a Senate bill SB 1204 to de-regulate the in-state trucking industry.
At least it was very revealing as to the old Democrat criticism to the effect that the Republicans are the party of (big) business, i.e., ostensibly at least, the GOP pushes more freedoms for business and entrepreneurship and a market economy instead of a government controlled one.
But first some small background about the matter. The bill was sponsored by a Democrat Senator Kermit Kiebert and supported by, believe it or not, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) who drafted the bill, the Idaho Consumer Affairs, Inc., several other individuals, including this writer, who testified before the Senate Transportation Committee in favor of the deregulation measure.
It was opposed, among others, by the big trucking companies, the Idaho Transport Association and two livestock truckers both of whom already have trucking permits issued by the PUC.
Also opposing the bill was the committee's chairman, Senator Dean Abrahams (R-Canyon) who bucked and snorted and opined that while he, too, "owned" a government permit to haul livestock that "it was not worth much."
But the conservative senator's opinion flew in the face of others testifying before his committee, who said, "Some permits were worth $75,000 and that some large companies would no doubt spend $200,000 to $300,000 defending their "work permits" in the event they were to be challenged in court.
It seemed to make very little impression at all on those, like Abrahams, who said there was "already plenty of competition in the trucking industry WITHOUT de-regulating it," that permits to compete in it brought such a high price when offered for sale.
While there were others whose testimony did make at least some sense, Abrahams noted during the hearing that this writer's testimony favoring the bill and opposing his (Abrahams) "seemed to go in circles and that he didn't understand it at all."
An economist, also testifying for the bill before Abrahams' Committee, asked him if he could name ANY industry which could be left for the free market to set its rates, i.e., if the trucking industry could not.
While Abrahams could think of none, the bill passed the senate 30 to 5.
I'll have more about this ill-fated bill and the strange perigrinations surrounding its defeat in the other house next week. Meantime perhaps the reason why Abrahams couldn't understand Smeed's "less government" testimony was that the good senator, like so many politicians these days, cannot THINK very well while trying to suck and blow in the same breath.
A Conversation Worth Repeating
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
March 31, 1979
This column has for years carried on a fairly consistent barrage against the news media's tendency for excess and bias - both of omission and commission.
But there is sometimes another side, at least to part of their organization that is, to their credit, worth repeating. Well, I found one.
It involves a young teenager named Donald Woodard Jr., who calls himself an account executive representing the Fort Worth News-Tribune, in Texas.
He was being questioned by one Joe Noriega, a Department of Labor compliance officer out of the Fort Worth area office.
According to an article in a recent issue of Conservative Digest Magazine the issue was whether the News-Tribune was in violation of "Child Labor Requirements in Non-Agricultural Occupations - under the Fair Labor Standards Act."
Two years with the Texas newspaper, it was the first time the teenage Donald had been grilled by a public official.
When asked, Donald told Noriega that his title is account executive with the News-Tribune. (Here's the gist of their dialogue;
"How long have you had that title?"
"Two years."
"Two years exactly?"
"Two years exactly."
(The teenager knew because he was giving a dinner party that Saturday to celebrate the anniversary.)
"You have been an employee of the News-Tribune two years?"
"No sir, I am not am employee. I am an independent agent, like an insurance agent. I represent the News-Tribune," Donald said.
"That's what I mean. There is an employee-employer relationship here."
"No, sir, there is not."
Noriega reached for a Department of Labor booklet. Donald reached for a dictionary.
"I think you'll accept Webster's definition," Donald said. "It's accepted generally. If you will read it you will see that I am not an employee. I am an independent agent, self-employed."
"But you sell their product."
"No, sir. I sell advertising and strictly on commission."
"Now Donald, I am here to protect you..." protested Noriega.
"Against what?" Donald demanded.
"The government recognizes that some kids..." Noriega started to explain.
"Please, sir, do not call me a kid."
"I'm sorry. The government recognizes that certain classifications of employees need protection..."
"I am not am employee. And what do I need protection against?"
"H.O. That's what the Department of Labor calls hazardous occupations."
"There's nothing hazardous about selling advertising unless you make a prospect so mad he throws you out of the office, and I don't do that."
Undeterred, Noriega bored in. "The government protects you as a salesman. It is conceivable you could work all day and not sell an ad and then you wouldn't get any money for your work."
"It is NOT conceivable, sir."
"What is not?"
"That I would work all day and not sell an ad."
"Nevertheless the government wants to be sure you do not work for nothing..."
"I don't. I work on commission like I told you."
"Yes, well. Now as an outside salesman, you are entitled to $4.35 an hour. That's one and one half times the minimum wage."
"I don't WORK by the hour," said the teenager.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that story DID appear in the Fort Worth, Texas News-Tribune, the paper on the firing line. But I'll bet you didn't see it in YOUR newspaper.
Nor, on the United Press International (UPI) wire service.
Nor, on the Associated Press (AP) wire service.
Nor, was it on the wall of the rest room, where I went to throw up.
Food Stamp Abuses Unchecked
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
April 8, 1979
Here's a little update on political progress.
About two years ago I attended a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. on the matter of food stamps and the abuse which has grown to be almost synonymous with them.
Afterward I reported that oddly enough the U.S. Department of Agriculture was in charge of the food stamp program.
Obviously the stamps are a welfare measure and would logically belong in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), but logic is hardly a part of anything these days, particularly in Insane City, D.C.
Unfortunately even the farmers, whose recent tractor-parades and demonstrations in the capital city made nationwide headlines, failed to protest the fact that their huge agriculture department budget gets the food stamp black-eye instead of HEW.
Perhaps there is a virus in the nation's capitol atmosphere which destroys logic in anyone's mind once they enter that city - on or off a farm tractor.
In any event the food stamp hearing back in 1977 showed quite clearly that abuses were ghastly, especially in Florida.
That state's attorney general was so outraged at food stamp abuses that he brought to the USDA hearing a Florida prosecuting attorney and two investigative reporters, all of whom were so severely outraged they were eager to, and did, testify against the food stamp program. And very articulate witnesses they were.
Even Florida's Congressman, "Skip" Bafalis attended the hearing to support those witnesses from his state. The abuses were so rotten, so obviously inept and wide spread as to cause one of the investigative reporter witnesses to make the following statement:
He said, "I was a flaming liberal until I looked into this food stamp mess. Now I see it as a complete boondoggle."
So you might ask, what else is new?
Well, let me tell you. But first let me repeat what I said in my column two years ago, i.e., the congressional committee was not about to be impressed. Indeed, the chairman, Rep. Frederick Richmond (D-N.Y.) literally fought the witnesses throughout the whole affair. The late comedian Groucho Marx, and his typical loud-mouth interrupting, would have made more sense.
Although what happens as a result of many congressional hearings is almost forever predictable, let me cite a new classic example.
Now, two years later, almost to the day, I read where a Louisiana prostitute was recently declared eligible for food stamps because she had to kick back most of her illegal earnings to a pimp.
And in Texas, a dope dealer was given food stamps - after he told officials that his business had slacked off. That's no joke.
Here's what Mrs. Leslie Wilder, an information officer of the USDA food stamp program, explained.
"We are only concerned with an applicant's eligibility. We don't care whether or not his activities are illegal."
Well so much for the USDA's food stamp hearing. Now, after two years, the prostitute and the drug pusher having also qualified, maybe we should put the Army and Navy on food stamps, too.
Don't laugh. The do-gooders have been wanting to reduce the military budget - and that's do it - the same way they reduce most budgets in Washington, D.C.
Energy Program Defies Logic
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
April 14, 1979
Take heart freedom lovers - miracles can happen - the federal government de-regulated the airlines and all sorts of good things happened, even lower prices to consumers.
With the exception of United Air Lines, which favored de-regulation, the big airlines had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the free, competitive market.
Thanks in large measure to the efforts of the famous liberal, Sen. Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts, the airline business has been divested of government price-setting.
The lower fares and better service (to most) comes as quite a shock to many observers, but not to that minority of free market economists who for years have been advocating a return to less government. In nearly every economic area government price fixing in one from or another, and in the name of fairness, has virtually repealed the law of supply and demand.
Even Idaho's extreme liberal, U.S. Sen. Frank Church, tells me that I should be elated with what he tends to label a trend in Washington, D.C. toward "de-regulation." He cited "talk" in that city of de-regulating the trucking industry, intimating his own approval.
While the senator knows that I would, indeed, love to see the government get out of truck regulation I can hardly envision his more than half-hearted support for it, especially when his old pals, the giant labor unions start to yell. Both big labor and big business usually fight de-regulation - and, of course, for lousy reasons.
Even President Carter has made a recommendation toward de-regulation, so bad has the energy supply situation become. But, as could be expected, his economic illiteracy, if not his political one as well, has led him to add what he calls a "windfall profits tax" just in case his less government suggestion works "too good."
Remember way back when the greedy oil companies were ripping us off with 29 cents a gallon gasoline, free road maps and free restrooms and free information at service stations all over the country? Well, the environmental crazies have changed all that.
Ever since the late John L. Lewis, the giant labor leader, helped the eastern coal companies price themselves out of the coal market, other energy producers have had their eye on the western state's vast coal reserves.
Montana and Wyoming pasture lands have easily enough coal to supply our need for three or four hundred years, but the environmental "green panthers" strike fear into the hearts of the establishment's would-be coal miners.
The western state's coal supply rivals even the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, yet we can't mine it. The environmentalists, aided and abetted by a super-friendly news media and a super prejudice against private property among most educators, have pounced on strip mining coal as a "rape of the land."
Never mind that in much of that vast cattle grazing land a cow has to do at least 30 miles per hour all day long to avoid starving to death. And never mind that the eastern state's traditional coal mine explosions and black-lung disease would be no more.
And never mind, too, that most strip mined coal is cheaper and better than eastern coal - the green panthers use your government to enforce all this and even pay the Arab oil pirates far more than our own domestic oil producers.
The result? Nuclear energy of course. We've been driven to it. The panthers won't let us even stick a shovel into the ground - what else is there? Now they claim they're afraid of nuclear plants. Well, so am I. But we can't have our cake and eat it, too. I would much prefer coal myself, but try to get Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus, for example, to open up government land to mine anything, and he, too, turns into a green panther.
Call it de-regulation or call it less government, it's about as hard to come by in Idaho's legislature as in the U.S. Congress. Witness the Idaho PUC's recent attempt to de-regulate the instate trucking business.
Thanks to the efforts of Sen. Dean Abrahams and Rep. John Sessions, GOP chairmen of their respective transportation committees, Idaho's meager attempt at de-regulation failed.
Thanks to Carter and the green panther energy-fighters America's attempt toward a sane price mechanism to encourage production is failing.
In light of this I wrote recently scolding Abrahams' efforts against deregulating Idaho trucks. I said then that one could not suck and blow in the same breath.
Well, he and Sessions and Carter have sure made a liar out of me.
Media Deserved Kick in the Pants
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
April 22, 1979
The news media is in a state of absolute shock, or very nearly so, at the hands of the Supreme Court.
For generations they have held high the banner of the First Amendment - freedom of the press - their freedom, of course, and for the most part it's been virtually absolute.
So much so, in fact, that much of the news media has embarked upon a power kick to "run America."
At least the latter is the observation of the famous Aleksandr Solzhenitsun who was exiled from Russia and warned America that it was headed for the same medicine. It was due in part, he said to an irresponsible news media which "controls America."
But the U.S. Supreme Court has changed all that. At least it has put a big dent in what many see as the media's arrogance of power.
In a 6 to 3 decision the high court said that reporters and editors are not constitutionally protected from being forced to explain how they prepared a challenged report - and may be asked questions about their "state of mind" during that preparation.
Justice Byron White wrote the 23 page opinion which won't be fully understood soon, but it's already sent shock waves throughout the journalism world.
And well it might. It even scares me - some. But so far has the media gone in its crusade for something loosely called "advocacy journalism" that I welcome their having to suffer some of the same innuendo that others in the producer market place have been suffering for years. Also their double standard in protection of Kennedy at Chappaquidick and Korea-gate and their thirst for blood with Nixon and Watergate may be "advocacy," but it's strange journalism.
In any event, the court ruled on a suit against the popular "60 Minutes" show on CBS-TV. Their segment against Army Lt. Colonel Anthony Herbert resulted in his asking for $44.7 million for libel.
Aside from the merits or lack thereof in Herbert's case the news media has for years taken a general attitude that freedom of speech was mainly for somebody who owned a newspaper, or a government franchised TV or radio frequency.
Oh, sure, many newspersons will scream, "it ain't so," but the generality is very much so, even though there are, indeed, important exceptions.
The media has become so super-centralized and powerful that they tend to become corrupt.
It's like the late and famous Lord Acton said, "Power corrupts - and absolute power corrupts absolutely." And the Supreme Court moved to strike down some of that power.
It may, I'm afraid, tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater. But it's been a long time a coming. It's now an old joke that one should not let a few facts stand in the way of a good story.
But facts, so-called, are not the whole, nor even, very often, the main issue. More often, rather, it is opinions.
For example, the choice of a friendly headline or an unfriendly one; the opinion of what is printed and what is omitted; the sly, but ever so effective selection of "good" quotes from one candidate, for example, and "bad" quotes from another.
And another, ever so powerful force - peer group pressure. It is rare, indeed, for one newspaper to take on another or columnists or reporters to get serious criticizing one another - for anything.
Rod Sandeen, managing editor of the Statesman, a member of the giant Gannett chain of newspapers whose profits far exceed most of the major "bad guy" oil companies, said of the recent Supreme Court decision: "It could trigger fishing expeditions into journalists minds."
Well, yes, it could. But I'm somehow reminded of the popular highway billboard advertising Fearless Farris, "The Stinker" gasoline.
You may remember the sign. It fits, so well, Sandeen's statement. It was installed in the most arid part of Idaho's sagebrush desert.
It said, "No fishing expeditions within 300 yards."
GOP Party-Poopers and Symms
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
April 28, 1979
The subject of whether or not Congressman Steve Symms should run for the U.S. Senate in 1980 finally made the main headline on the front page of the state's largest newspaper.
The Idaho Statesman's political reporter, Steve Ahrens, surveyed "20 people prominent in Idaho politics." The survey indicated, "most have serious reservations about Republican Symms' chances of beating incumbent Democrat Frank Church in the 1980 race."
About the subject in general and Ahrens' article in particular, some observations seem in order:
Eighteen of the "20 Republicans" responded in the negative, only two positive.
Well that's about par for the course, Republicans are usually negative and usually about 10 to 1, especially when it comes to political mavericks.
Few people will deny that Symms is a maverick and few also will deny that in 1972, had it been left up to those Ahrens surveyed, Symms would still be back on Sunny Slope growing apples.
These are not bad people. They are, in a special sort of way, (forgive me) just conservative. They want to conserve the gains they've made. They don't want to lose the status quo.
But "they" did not make that particular gain. Symms and his mavericks did it. If it'd been left up to them, Wayne Kidwell, then attorney general of Idaho, would have been the candidate. He'd been through the "chairs." He wouldn't rock the boat, at least very much.
Kidwell was inundated, of course, by Symms' apple campaign and unfortunately he's still bitter. Partly perhaps, because he's still trying to get the apple stains off his blue serge suit and, one supposes, the GOP egg off his face.
But it wasn't all Kidwell's fault. He was merely playing by the establishment's rules, most of which, at that time at least, he welcomed.
Let's look at a few names in the Ahrens' survey. Robert Robson, attorney, and William Campbell, insurance man, both of Boise, were queried about Symms vs. Church. Both like Symms. Both said no, don't risk it.
Robson and Campbell managed Vern Ravenscroft's ill-fated campaign for the GOP nomination for governor of Idaho. Ravenscroft had the race sewed up solid, so they wouldn't let him take controversial sides on anything. He lost. His GOP managers were top experts, but he lost.
John McMurray, grand old man of the Idaho GOP and his party's former state chairman, suggested Symms should not run against the super-liberal Sen. Church.
But it's an open secret in Boise that McMurray himself admires Church a great deal, sometimes even getting defensive at Church's critics and, like the senator, also favored the Panama Canal give-away and the U.S. Treaty to abandon Taiwan, both of which most Idahoans detest and both of which Church favored with great gusto.
Still, I hasten to add, McMurray is no sell-out artist. In fact he is one of the best loved characters in the whole Idaho GOP list of top leaders. I love the guy myself. I've known him for years. He's a barrel of fun and so sincere it hurts. I think he loves Symms, too, in a genuine way perhaps. But not against Church. He has his reasons no doubt and, while I don't doubt his general loyalty to the GOP for a minute (I supported two Democrats myself in 1978), he's not exactly the bets survey material for a Symms vs. Church race.
Former U.S. Sen. Len Jordan, former Boise Cascade executive Larry Mills, also a long-time GOP legislator, and Tom Hovenden of the Idaho Cattle Feeders, all thought Symms should "conserve" his seat and seniority in the House.
Bob Hansberger, former president of Boise Cascade Corporation thought a "less conservative candidate would have a better chance."
Right now his reaction was that "Steve could not beat Church." Hansberger is generally accepted as the architect of federal urban renewal in downtown Boise, a program Symms wouldn't approve.
Interestingly enough, Mills is an old and valued friend of mine, who for many years ridiculed my efforts to get the GOP to stand up and be counted for free market, limited government and private ownership principles. Said he, "It's all well and good Ralph, but you can't sell that stuff."
Well, Symms wrote his original 1972 campaign announcement, the liveliest in Idaho history, on my dining room table. It was a doozie, too, and unorthodox and about political principle and what Mills referred to as "stuff."
And Mills was right, I couldn't "sell" it, but Symms did. Against big odds - he won. Since then, Larry just grins and says "Bah-humbug."
The others, including Lt. Gov. Phil Batt and Symms' former administrative assistant, Pete Hackworth, expressed a spectrum from Batt's. "Symms has a 50-50 chance, depending on the moderates" to Hackworth's let's take very, very careful aim and if it looks good enough - pull the trigger, and go."
But the best of all and a surprise of sorts came from two female, admitted moderates. Hope Kading, a veteran party worker and 1974 primary candidate for lieutenant governor said, "Symms should challenge Church. He's a candidate whose style and approach are right for the times."
Oriette Sinclair, who liked the liberal ex-congressman from Idaho's second district, Orval hansen, and tried her best to defeat incumbent Congressman George Hansen in the GOP primary, said of the Symms-Church race, "You've got to take a few chances and be ready ... I can't see where he could lose anything."
I'm sorry I wasn't in when Ahrens called me for my opinion to use in his survey, but I wrote in my column (Press-Tribune Newspapers 2/3/79) that Symms' main problem would be the news media. Most of them hate his guts and love Church's. GOP surveys always avoid this fact.
But with Republican poker-players like some of those above playing their hand so close to their belly Symms maybe ought to consider Russian Roulette as a safer technique.
His Republican stalwarts might forget to put anybullets in their gun for 1980.
Ideas: Just Try to Ignore 'Em
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
May 5, 1979
Is it true that ideas have consequences? Well, two headlines this week seem to shout this message loud and clear.
One headline read: "Ex-Boise police employees awarded $103,000 in law suit." The women, you may remember, were fired in March 1977 after an investigation into complaints of homosexuality among Boise police employees.
Now then I don't want to get into the merits or the lack thereof in this case just now. Rather I want you to consider the question: do ideas really have consequences?
Bear with me. The second headline concerned the infamous Reverend Jim Jones and his recent mass suicide colony in the South American country of Guyana.
It read: "Jonestown report raps U.s. officials." The U.S. State Department commissioned a report to review all the background on the whole mess. They thought perhaps there might be a message somewhere amidst all that miniature holocaust. The report has just been published - 110 pages.
The story came over the United Press International (UPI) wire service and was over 20 column-inches long. It completely omitted the fact Jones was a dedicated communist, or, better said yet, a dedicated Marxist.
It's true, this is only one article, even though an important wire service story, and more on the matter will, perhaps, be written. In any event we'll hope so, but one of the sharply critical report's observations said, "The State Department and the embassy did not consider the "People's Temple to be given to violence toward outsiders."
Congressman Leo Ryan (D-Calif.), you may remember, was brutally machine-gunned down during his ill-fated inspection at Jonestown.
The UPI story covered part of the alleged intelligence agencies; scarcity of information about the whole matter thusly: "As for the intelligence agencies (the report) says, they had been scared off by congressional investigations of their past abuses of power in affecting American citizens."
Well, considering the recent developments in Iran and the current accusations saying the U.S. intelligence agencies: "should have known what was about to happen to the U.S. supported Shah of Iran ..." maybe something's not rotten in Denmark. Maybe something's rotten in Washington, D.C.
Now then, as to whether ideas have consequences - let me tell you what happened in the New Mexico state legislature. Bear with me.
A young Episcopalian minister was Chaplain of that state's legislature. His name is Rev. William E. Crews. His prayers before that law making body almost got him impeached.
He tried to warn the politicians there assembled that something was wrong.
Here's one of his unusual prayers offered during a legislative session: "Almighty God, we who spend $10,000 for a bus so our children will not have to walk, and then budget $200,000 for a gymnasium so they can get exercise, do now seek guidance in all matters financial."
Crews barely survived a vote to dismiss him because his prayer struck at the ideas of too many law makers.
The successful law suit in Boise on homosexuality and the miniature holocaust at the Rev. Jim Jones' "People's Temple" are both the result of ideas. Good or bad ideas depending upon one's background, but ideas nevertheless.
Ideas take time, and study and thoughtful consideration. You cannot kill an idea with a bayonet nor a gun. It must be done with a better idea, better presented, better understood.
The New Mexico legislature's chaplain tried to warn "his" politicians where they were headed, but many of them "hated" him for blowing his whistle at them.
Here's another of his boat-rockers which our U.S. State Department and our congress should consider:
"Almighty God, we who are willing to support almost any bill that will support our public image for the next election do now ask for courage to act for the well-being of the state in spite of opposition.
"We ask this in the name of One who never would have been elected on the basis of popularity."
Crew may or may not approve of homosexuality or Jones' Marxism, but he knew about the impact and delayed nature of ideas.
You may want to offer some prayerful ideas to the preacher in your own church or listen, for a change, to those he is now preaching - they may soon become law.
Rev. Crews offered his in 1964.
Symms Camp Sees 'Cover-Up'
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
May 12, 1979
The Idaho Statesman newspaper deserves a pat on the back. Oh, sure, they made a horrible mistake in their Wednesday edition, but they apologized Friday and in a fairly conspicuous place, believe it or not.
Here's the story, ie, part of it anyway, ever so briefly and, of course, as I see it with my own admitted bias. Unfortunately, though they most assuredly have gigantic bias too, they seldom, if understandably, admit to having one.
Idaho's U.s. Senator Frank Church recently voted in a Senate committee AGAINST a gas rationing bill, but then changed his vote FOR the bill. Church was the only senator to change his vote and that one vote was necessary for the bill to survive.
The New York Times carried the story on the front page, including Senator Church's "switch vote." The story also made headlines in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington(D.C.) Star newspapers. It also made the news in the Caldwell-Nampa papers.
But Boise's Idaho Statesman omitted the important pat that their hero Sen. Church's switch-vote played.
They reported that both Church and Idaho's junior senator James McClure voted "against" the gas rationing bill, even though they knew better and had press releases to the contrary from both McClure's office and First District congressman Steve Symms' office.
When they did not correct the error the second day, it was, of course, seen as yet another cover-up for Church, the one candidate they have supported long and vigorously in the past.
This was seen by the Symms and McClure forces as a kind of "dirty pool" reporting, so they went to the local TV stations for something like "equal time.' Both stations, Channel 7 and channel 2 refused. Symms' chief assistant Phil Reberger asked, "why?" They told him it was too controversial.
Now then, it's an open secret that an overwhelming majority of the news media has a love affair with Church and are super-protective of him and therefore most of his political positions.
Republicans, have for years, complained about such treatment, but for some dumb and some orthodox reasons have never been the least bit successful.
But young Reberger, is neither dumb, nor orthodox. In fact, he's a bright young fellow who's had a lot of experience in Insane City, D.C. That experience includes a long time with the famous southern independent senator, Harry Byrd of Virginia.
Reberger said to both Channel 2 and 7 "Okay fellows, then give me a letter of refusal so we can go the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and see why we can't even BUY time for the truth."
Well, needless to say, that created quite a furor of excitement, especially among the lawyers of both TV stations.
This part of the episode was on Thursday. Well, I saw Channel 2 TV news reporter Pat Costello interviewing Reberger in his office Thursday night, so I know he got the story straight - Symms' aide is also articulate and, although respectful of the media news-manglers, is seldom imtimidated by them.
Costello's last comment on his news broadcast, said, "Both TV stations refused to even sell Symms air time to criticize Senator Church."
THAT, of course, is a completely distorting statement. Reberger wanted the TV time to "criticize" the Boise newspaper's apparent cover-up - NOT Church. Although Church's vote, of course, is at the bottom of the issue.
Or is it REALLY? I have long warned Symms and his supporters that if he, Symms, does indeed ever decide to take on Idaho's senior senator in 1980 his biggest obstacle will not be Church, though he'll by no means be an easy mark.
Rather the apple-growing congressman will have to FIRST of all get "through" to the news media. And whether their frequent "deviations" are stupid or malicious, some penetration may now be in progress.
At leastRod Sandeen, the Statesman's managing editor, had the decency to admit in his Friday paper "we simply blew it ... The story should have run in Thursday's paper."
Of course, nobody likes to admit they make mistakes, but then, too, it helps to know how to get the vivid attention of the news media's lawyers.
Maybe one of them had a friend at the Statesman.
Call of the Wild Mostly Squawk
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
May 20, 1979
On May 24 Idaho Senator Frank Church will hold a hearing in Boise concerning probably lockup of even MORE Idaho lands in Wilderness area. But who cars? It could only affect from 3 to 8.5 million acres. (That's more area, incidentally, than the entire states of Massachusetts, Delaware and Rhode Island).
The subject is called RARE II for Roadless Area Review second time around. It's controversial, it's emotional, it's huge. It's effects are far-reaching for Idaho and almost NOBODY gives a damn.
Well, that's not 100 percent true. The environmental "green panthers" give a damn and THEN some, but those with a chamber of commerce mentality, around here anyway, have rarely taken much interest. One could label that a sort of "Rare Too," except that it isn't rare at all.
In fact, it is almost par for the course. The typical chamber mentality has, for years, tended to look upon government lands as a gigantic milche cow with 750,000 teats. That number is approximately the population of Idaho, where government owns about 70 percent of our land.
In a manner of speaking, it is also interesting. Not only is Idaho owned mostly by the government, but much of the privately-owned land is now government CONTROLLED, i.e., by one government bureau or another or by zoning or land-use planning forced upon Idahoans by one or another of an ever-growing maze of federal schemes.
Some state and even some local schemes are welcomes by a few people on the rather thin premise that: "if we don't enact a grand plan (on our own?) the feds will come in and ram their own grand plan down our throats." Sort of like breaking into jail in order to avoid confinement.
Okay, what's all this have to do with Idaho's U.S. senator holding land-use hearings in Idaho next week? Well several things. They're bad because they're misleading.
First of all, Senator Frank Church is NOT a dirty no-good commie-pinko who is seeking to do away with America in general and Idaho in particular. He's a sincere, well-educated, patriotic, concerned and dedicated liberal.
His chairmanship of these public land hearings in Idaho is NOT the same as having old Brer Fox himself hold hearings on who should own, control and manage this huge "public" gaggle of geese.
Admittedly, there are those who genuinely fear Church's rather extreme liberal politics as both far too sympathetic with many Communist countries and not sympathetic enough with anti-Communist countries. Well, okay, but that doesn't make him a commie-pinko.
Admittedly, too, some people are scared stiff that Church will somehow "subvert" the hearings. By this they mean FOR the government and AGAINST Idaho loggers, miners, livestock growers, Ma and Pa campers and the thousands of Idaho recreationists most of whom indirectly owe their jobs to the prosperity and jobs of the others.
But all of this is not to suggest that this writer sees Church as some sort of bad egg that doesn't smell. I do see the government intervention he continues to pursue as having much the same effect as too much sugar does to a mild diabetic, i.e., the illness isn't perceived until too late.
It is the intellectually constipated atmosphere and context within which these hearings are being held that is so bad and makes the illness so hard to diagnose.
Here's why. The basic distinction between the American system and that of the Soviet Union is "private ownership versus public ownership." Men of good will, on both sides, disagree about which of these ways is best.
But the least understood fact of all is that FREEDOM as well as prosperity flourishes most under a system of private ownership. Neither system is perfect. Neither is utopian. However, political liberals like Church sell their "case" for more government as if it WERE utopian. I tend to think they are sincere, but so are those who think there is, somehow or another, a free lunch.
Believing this with all their hearts, as they do, it is not hard to see why they seem to think the end justifies the means. THIS is what scares me. It gets worse every day, more public ownership and more private vandalism.
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin and the other founding fathers loved freedom most of all. Freedom from too much government. But freedom has somehow come to mean only freedom for a free lunch.
Let me urge everyone to attend the wilderness hearing in Boise. My guess is that Church's followers and the green panthers will have done their homework on completely locking up the whole goose - golden egg and all.
My other guess is that business's homework will be mostly about the milche cow's 750,000 teats and who can squeeze them "most efficiently."
Neither seems to know much, nor care much, about private ownership. But then neither does a cow, nor a goose, especially if they're fat, and have food - at least for today.
Surprise -- Economist Scores
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
May 26, 1979
At a recent convention in Reno an unusual thing happened. A huge gathering of oil dealers, distributors and jobbers listened with rapt attention to, of all things, an economist.
What's so newsworthy about that? Well, several things, but first of all economics is generally thought to be one of the most dismal and dull subjects known to man.
In fact, William F. buckley, the famous conservative author and star of the TV show "Firing Line," told some of his worried followers once that if they'd assign the teaching of sex education to professors of economics it would cease to be a threat to anyone.
And so it would, but there's one economist who's an exception. He's Dr. Barry Asmus of Boise State University (BSU). This bright and enthusiastic teacher surprised his Reno audience in two ways, (1) by not being dull. And (2) even following such a tough-act-to-follow as the famous commentator Paul Harvey, who got a standing ovation by the way, young Asmus held the intermountain oil barons spellbound for a solid hour.
"But the oil men are in trouble," you say, "so it's no wonder they listen.' True enough, but did you ever try to tell a businessman anything - especially about economics and government policy making?
Well, if you haven/t, I've got news for you! It's virtually impossible! Unless, of course, they're in enough trouble.
In any event Asmus told the slippery merchants (pun intended) that they were not only part of the solution to the country's gigantic economic illness, but were also a big part of the problem, i.e., for too long they had taken education, or, if you like, schooling, for granted.
"Education," said Asmus, "just may be too important to leave entirely up to the educators."
As per usual after a dynamic and generally optimistic (in many ways) speech many of the greedy, grasping, money-grubbing capitalist oil men asked, "Okay, professor, what can we do?"
Asmus replied, "Okay you asked for it, so get your feet braced because you're not going to like what I'm about to say." In fact, most businessmen seem to feel thoroughly nauseated at the suggestion he made.
"You're going to have to read something." After an intended, well-timed and unseemingly long pause of 15 seconds duration, and some were beginning to squirm a bit, Asmus' sober face lit up, again telling the oil men to relax - It might not be nearly so unpleasant as all that.
In fact, it could be a lot of fun. And while there's no doubt about the fact that the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life is in deep, deep trouble and is desperately in need of articulate spokesmen, the task could indeed by a rewarding one.
It came as somewhat of a surprise to the oil men that not all the educators are anti-business, nor, even, anti-capitalistic. In fact some are not only willing but anxious to hear and teach the production side of our seemingly forever consumer-oriented society - once they've heard the story from a believer.
Well, a local oil merchant, Bob Nicholes, owner of the company bearing his name, made tape recordings of both the economist's speech and Paul Harvey's. Bob tells me that he took orders for copies of both and received more requests for the economist's talk than Harvey's. "No discredit to Harvey," Nicholes added.
"I love the guy, but this Barry's what we've needed for a long, long time."
Asmus, in addition to his regular teaching duties at B.S.U., is research director for the increasingly popular Center for the Study of Market Alternatives. The Boise-based Center is a non-profit, non-partisan organization specializing in education seminars, one of which, for teachers only, is being held this weekend at a dude ranch in Yellowpine, Idaho.
One of the books Asmus recommended to the oil men is also super critical of some aspects of business, but it's made to order for Yellowpine. Its title is "A Time for Truth" by former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon.
The following quote from it gives only an inkling of the book's powerful and dramatic message: "The majority of citizens gather beneath the federal faucet. They agree that it pours forth a torrent, and that the handle appears to be missing. But rather than summon a plumber they jockey for position beneath the stream with all sorts of buckets, pans and cups."
"Thank Heaven our Center is different," says Asmus, "except for one small leak - we're tax-exempt."
Truth? Well, That Sorta Depends
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
June 3, 1979
"Isn't it time that we Americans stop engaging in destructive criticism of one group of us or another?
"Shouldn't we stop the criticism that inflames and divides and obscures and exacerbates the very real problems that confront all of us?
"Above all isn't it finally time that Americans have a right to expect their elected officials and their appointed representatives to refrain from these actions and tell us the unalloyed truth, whatever it is?"
Those are the truthful and ever so timely words of one of the few public officials whose new book "A Time for Truth" (just out in paperback) tries to do just that. He's William E. Simon, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Buy it - read it. I promise you it'll be the second best book you've ever read. It's even quite entertaining, albeit in a wry sort of way.
But Simon isn't the first person to come up with the idea of "telling it like it is," or demanding the truth.
In fact, one the most outstanding examples came from a newspaper publisher, believe it or not, who demanded that a certain candidate take stand on whiskey drinking.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, this particular candidate had already examined "both sides." I'll leave it up to you whether it's more humor or wisdom, or wit. In any event, here's the candidate's reply
"I had not intended to discuss this most controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know ... I take a firm stand on every issue ... regardless of how I feel about whiskey. And Brother, this is where I stand on this burning question.
"If you mean the Devil's Brew, the Poison Scourge, the Bloody Monster, the Defiler of the Innocent, that liquid that dethrones reason, creates poverty, yea! literally takes bread out of the mouths of babes;
"If you mean that evil concoction that topples religious man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous and gracious living down into the bottomless pit of despair and degradation, shame, helplessness and hopelessness, then, sir I am against this Brew of Satan with all my power. Whiskey drinking must go!
"However, if you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine and ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in the heart and laughter on the lips, and a warm flow of contentment and well-being into the eyes.
"If you mean the Christmas cheer, if you mean the toddy that puts a spring in the old man's step on a frosty morning, if you mean the drink that enables a man to magnify his joy and happiness and forget his debts and life's other tragedies, heartbreaks and sorrows,
"If you mean by whiskey, sir, that drink, the sale of which pours into the treasury untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for little crippled children, our blind, our pitifully aged and sick and infirm;
"And to build schools, hospitals and highways, then Brother, I'm for it!
"This, sir is my stand. I will not ... retract one word nor will I ... compromise.
"You asked for my stand on this issue. There it is."
Consistency Flightly Will-O'-Wisp
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
June 9, 1979
An Episcopal Church's national commission recommended Sunday that the church allow homosexuals to become priests.
The 2.8 million member denomination's Standing Commission on Human Affairs and Health said there should be "no barrier to the ordination of those homosexual persons who are able and willing to conform their behavior to that which the Church affirms as wholesome." Ah yes, a list - defined, no doubt, by majority rule.
Now don't just laugh, this is not only in far-off Washington, D.C. where it is already well know that the lunatics run the asylum, it is right here in River City, Idaho.
The Nampa and Caldwell Episcopal churches have only recently had some red hot controversy as to the same suggestions, concerning homosexuals, by their own priests who reportedly agree with their national commission.
And before you throw up at the suggestion yourself, if indeed you give a hoot at all, just remember: the same God made homosexuals that made heterosexuals - and they are, after all, human beings - and, it is reported, that Christ came to save the sinners, not the saints. Remember? Anyway, at least they've got a point.
Presumably, therefore, he loves both the homos AND the heteros so maybe the odd-ball minority is entitled to more respect from the almighty majority, whose penchant for ramming their ideas down the throats of the minority is centuries old and getting worse.
All of which brings me to the point I'd like to make. Why do you suppose the conscientious Episcopalian priests, who normally are so gung-ho for political majority rule in our society, have such a double standard, i.e., since THEIR majority wants no homos in the pulpit?
I do not bring up this matter in any sense of self-righteous proclamation, for, or against homosexuals. It seems to me a grand idea if people would just leave other people alone.
But to be "our brother's keeper" is, one supposes, just too big a temptation. Sort of like being a politician - that is to say, like wanting to play God. Especially is it difficult to resist when one gets hold of power, namely, political power, something which seems to fascinate more and more theologians these past few decades.
There is, of course, a humorous side to all this and while it's no laughing matter, perhaps, it is surely no matter to laugh. In that vein I was chiding my Episcopalian friend last week asking, "Why can't you love the homo's soul without putting him in the pulpit?"
Well, humor notwithstanding, I asked for it, I guess. He thereupon trotted out a brand new Associated Press (AP) news dispatch which jabbed me right square in the place where I sit. Please let me explain.
Now then, I used to be somewhat of an active Presbyterian. Oh yes, I know, they've been on the wrong side of nearly every political issue that I've been on for the past 10 or 15 years, but they're sincere.
And I don't want to tar them with my brush, but sending $10,000 to help Marxist Angela Davis and otherwise helping the similarly inclined Caesar Chavez, the labor union czar, seemed more than I could take from "my" church.
Also their undying support, even today, for the National Council and the World Council of Chuches whose financial support of the terrorist's murdering of innocent blacks AND whites in Rhodesia is beyond the pale. (They foolishly support U.S. boycott of Rhodesian chrome in favor of Russian chrome, believe it or not.)
Well, my Episcopalian friend said, "Okay, wise guy, how do you explain Sunday's AP news headline: 'Presbyterians urge boycott of J.P. Stevens (textile company)?'"
The Stevens company employs tens of thousands of mostly southern citizens in their non-union textile mills.
For over 10 years these employers have been law-suiting against the labor unions, and the bureaucrats. Still, in election after election, Stevens' employees have voted overwhelmingly "no union," but the Presbyterians are smarter and wiser, again, than the majority. They're wise and the majority of Stevens' employees are dumb, so the Presbyterians "boycott" to save the souls of Stevens' employees, no doubt.
A kind of super-inconsistency similar to the Episcopalian's majority rule - don't you agree?
Or is consistency - that is, Episcopalians saying, "God loves us all," homos AND heteros - merely the hobgoblin of little minds -; or, just queer ones?
H. L. Menchen Never Out-Dates
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
June 23, 1979
Most newsmen of at least middle age and especially those having any literary background at all would agree that the late H.L. Mencken was by all odds the greatest iconoclast of American journalism. Some of the more progressive ones, from time to time, like to go back and "rediscover" his genius.
Even today, Mencken's wit and wisdom is often cited as a standard of excellence of perception and tell-it-like-it-is clarity of American politics. He said it was clearly "a carnival of buncome" and on political conventions he observed, "These conventions are all the same. They don't vary by one percent. All bla-a-ah."
And on political candidates he had this to say, "I'm completely neutral. I'm against them all." (Isn't that great?)
One of the contests the witty and caustic journalist took great delight in dousing with cold water was the famous presidential race between Thomas E. Dewey and Harry Truman
Dubbing Dewey as "an incompetent rabble-rouser" Mencken zeroed inon Truman with a description destined to become almost prophetic of today's promise-'em-the-moon-and-all-the-green-cheese politicians.
Of Truman's presidential campaign promises he had this to say: "If he did not come out for spiritualism, chiropractic, psycho-therapy, and extra-sensory perception it was only because no one demanded that he do so.
"If there had been any formidable (voting) body of cannibals in the country he would have promised to provide THEM with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense."
We've come a long distance since that famous campaign but somehow the newsmen of today lack that healthy skepticism and steadying hand of humor so characteristic of men like Mencken and the late great Will Rogers.
Also not only their own humor but the humor of other writers and thinkers often evoked praise and emulation by great men who had something worthwhile to say about important affairs of their day.
One such person who caught the great journalist's fancy and admiration, and from whom today's journalists could profit, was the late author and scholar Albert Jay Nock, a man said by many to be the libertarian's libertarian and the individualist's intellectual.
Two things Mencken and Nock had especially in common were a keen political observation of human nature and an extreme distaste for organization. One of the more delightful examples of Nock's political commentary is contained in a letter he wrote to his friend Bernard Iddings Bell. A rather astute, if anthro-pomorphological, observation about dogs and cats.
It's dated June 5, 1944, and may have special meaning for anyone who's ever been owned by a cat.
Nock wrote: "As against the dog, I am in favor of the cat, having had largely to do with both in my time. The dog is nature's prize collectivist and authoritarian; he has the slave-mentality and can't be happy out of servitude.
"A natural-born New Dealer, you know, utterly lovable and devoutly given to all good works, you understand, but a ding-busted fool like your friend Henry Wallace, understand me, so you are devoted to him and all that, but you haven't a grain of respect for him, not a grain; now have you?
"You haven't, because he has no respect for himself, no dignity. The cat, on the other hand, has oodles of self-respect and is bungfull of dignity.
"He is an individualist and has no illusions about the social order. The greatest good for the greatest number doesn't interest him.
"He takes no stock in any scheme of enforced cooperation, none whatever. He wastes no sentiment on mankind for he knows that mankind if a most dreadful washout, utterly unworthy of his attention.
"So one is bound to respect the cat, though one may not like him, and when he turns his calm and experienced gaze on the world around him you can bet he's got its measure."
If newsmen today would but want a better "measure of the world" they'd do well to dust off an occasional book by either of these oft-times forgotten literary giants, Mencken or Nock. Who knows - maybe they'd even recover their own sense of humor.
Is Moscow Ready for Capitalism?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 1, 1979
The University of Idaho Alumni Association at Moscow has a long but not very noteworthy history. One, in fact, which is about as exciting as holding somebody's horse.
It was this way, at least, until 10 years ago when now Congressman Steve Symms was "fired" as president of that association in the fall of 1969.
Symms' ignominious dismissal resulted from, among other things, his rather candid criticisms and suggestions directed toward the school's "substance" in education.
Most people know that university alumni are expected to wear raccoon coats,silly hats and wave banners while cheering madly at their school's football games. If, indeed, anything else is expected of them it's to raise monies, both public and private, for the glory of ye old alma mater and not ask a lot of food questions about what the educators do with it.
All of which is not to say that most alumni activists want anything to say about anything that amounts to anything, very much. It is to say that if anyone should try to be so audacious as to advocate much of a change he or she had best be ready for a real fight from the school's administration if not from the faculty as well as, one supposes, the alumni.
What brings all this to mind just now is that Caldwell has furnished yet another board member for the U of I Alumni Association in the person of Mrs. Nathelle Oates (class of 1954). And while she is not expected to rock the educational boat like Symms did, she has already made the statement that she hoped she would be able to leave the board under more favorable circumstances than did Steve Symms as its president in 1969.
Although Mrs. Oates is not likely to advocate much by way of radical change for higher education she's no latter day liberal in sheep's clothing, either. In fact she's a very intelligent conservative, and one supposes, that if pressed, just might be persuaded to support her new U of I president's idea of a chair of free enterprise, for $600,000 no less.
In fact such was the suggestion of Symms in 1969 except that he called it a "Chair of Capitalism." That, together with his suggestion for realistic tuition charges, contracting with private companies to teach forestry and mining, led to his being clobbered by the university's alumni board.
Most of the flap surrounding Symms' being fired as alumni association president arose out of his having his name as an officer on the Idaho Compass, a journal of ideas and opinions with a lively interest in free enterprise education. The Compass referred to education, for example, as mostly a government monopoly and a "sacred cow."
Long before he had any idea of running for Congress the apple-growing farmer's alumni presidency was easily one of the most popular in university history, i.e., until he started "pushing" capitalism, free enterprise and trying generally to encourage education along the lines of private enterprise and a market economy.
Oddly enough, a former alumni president and then board member, Iver Longteig, a sometime conservative, was at least honest about the flap, saying, "Alumni presidents must be like salesmen and push the product whether the stuff is any good or not. You (Symms) should resign, but I admire your position and your guts."
All of this, remember, was 10 years ago. The apple-grower is still rocking the establishment's boat and since 1972 has been doing so as the most controversial and well-liked congressman ever to hold office in Idaho.
Some love the guy, but hate his politics. Many love both, some neither, (he got his biggest vote ever, last election, 60 percent) and few are in the middle, but one thing nearlyall agree upon and that is he's not phoney. He's still taking a gutsy stand, more often for the people inIdaho than for partisan politics.
But one thing for sure, he was in 1969 far ahead of the University of Idaho whose president, Richard Gibb, is right now, today, in the very act of raising money for his "Chair of free enterprise" at the university.
In view of this, Caldwell's new U of I Alumni board member should submit a written resolution asking her board for an apology for Symms and a vote of confidence for Gibb. Failing this, she may well decide to resign her position, as did Symms - with or without the support of the dull-witted businessmen alumni, most of whom, unlike Mrs. Oates, either don't know or don't care that the above travesty ever happened at "their" university.
Distributed courtesy of Libertarian Party of Idaho, PO Box 163, Boise, ID 83701
Inflation Lesson for the Illiterate
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
July 8, 1979
Last week a Chamber of Commerce bulletin nearly scared me to death.
My first reaction was one of economic outrage and, since it appeared in our local Chamber's very own monthly mailer, I promptly phoned our chief elected officer and explained to him my concern.
Much of the publication was quite good, at least orthodox and about what one would expect froma medium size town's chamber. But the scary point was a quote from the chairman of the board of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Shearon Harris, who is also chief of the Carolina Power and Light Company.
The high office he holds in the National Chamber certainly qualifies the man for being quoted in the local Chamber's publication, but one certainly hopes that its selection for reprinting thereinwas merely an oversight and not an outright manifestation of economic ignorance.
Were it not for the fact that most Chambers of Commerce are desperately concerned about economic education, I wouldn't have thought much about it. Also, had our local president reacted to my "complaint" like I hoped he would I might have dropped the matter.But I got no reaction whatsoever.
Maybe he didn't get the message, maybe he was too busy, maybe he disagreed. In any event, perhaps it's better this way.
Harris' statement appeared on our Chamber bulletin's page called "President's Message" by Kenson Pollard, a friendly, kind, likable and seemingly quite competent manager of our local telephone office.
Here's the U.s. Chamber chief's great and wise quote: "Business agrees with President Carter that all Americans must join in the fight to reduce inflation (not a word, mind you, about God, motherhood, nor even apple pie)."
"Restraint is needed by all decision-makers where they have influence over wages, prices, taxes and deficits. (remember, he said "... All Americans must join ...")
"This obviously includes legislators, public executives, labor leaders, and business people. We encourage these leaders to work towards the President's deceleration objectives."
Now then, I don't know just what President Carter's "deceleration objectives" are, but if they don't make any more sense than the Harris statement we're in even bigger trouble than I thought. And I thought, and still think, we're in big, big, big, trouble. I thought also however, that at least the Chambers of Commerce were not economically illiterate.
Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Harris was misquoted, but I'd guess he was not misquoted. Maybe he's merely semantically sloppy. Let's hope so, but I suspect otherwise.
Well, let's define ourterms. Webster's International dictionary, unabridged, and Random House's new big dictionary, both refer to inflation as "an increase in the currency (and or credit) of a country especially by the issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie."
Both refer to the fact that said increase is usually followed by "an increase in the general price level." An understatement if I ever heard one.
Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, that is, if you believe in dictionaries. One wonders that since almost every national organization, of any size at all has an office, if not a whole building, of their own in Washington, D.C. perhaps they have lobbied in a law against dictionaries.
On the faint hope, however, that words still mean SOMETHING - let's go back to Harris' rather incredible statement calling for "restraint." What on earth can "all Americans" do, or, one supposes, NOT do, about inflation? Well, if we're to take the dictionary at all seriously, NOTHING! That's the obvious answer.
Forgive me, but what on earth can a labor leader do about increasing the supply of currenty, unless it'd be to stop running that printing press he has in his basement? It's clearly illegal for him to print money (but okay for the government).
What on earth can "business people" do? could they produce so very many goods and services that the government's printing presses cannot keep up - thus forcing prices down? What a race, what a laugh.
The government and the Robin Hoods of the red-ink (black ink, too, i.e., the media), generally speaking urge us to define and think about inflation as "high prices." If we do that, then inflation is a kind of conspiracy, clearly the fault of labor unions and business, since it is they who put the price tags on their goods and services. But conspiracies make great news-copy, so it continues.
If we define and think of inflation as the dictionary does, however, then it is clearly the fault of the federal government, since only they can "increase the money supply." (Oops, there goes the media's "conspiracy" out the window.)
Oh yes, there's one place chairman Harris' "restraint" just might help; namely, some restraint in paying any attention at all to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the subject of economic education, i.e., inflation.
Firsthand Look at 'Un-News'
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
July 22, 1979
There is a very clever and saturating the national advertising media, i.e., on highway billboards, TV, radio and newspapers. It's clever, as I said, but it's negative. It's AGAINST Coca-Cola.
It's paid for by another national drink called 7-UP. I said it was an ad, but perhaps I should have called it a "crusade" because it calls 7-UP the "Un-cola," in ever so many ways.
How's that for being negative - and clever? Furthermore, it's working Coca-Cola's competitor drink is cutting away at the competition's soft under belly, its image and its name - Cola.
Even Coke's familiar shaped and labeled drinking glass is now pictured and shaped upside down and labeled "Un-cola - 7-UP." It's a great joke, a play on words and it's selling 7-UP.
But there's another sort of crusade which is no joke, and it, too, is selling something. It's called "un-news" - like un-Cola. It, too, is negative. It is against what the news media establishment doesn't like and doesn't want you to think very much about.
The term "un-news" is one coined by Bruce Herschensohn's fascinating little book entitled "The Gods of Antenna."
Here's how this perceptive author describes the new term in his chapter 7 called "The Un-news."
"In the Soviet Union, if they don't like something, they simply act as though it had never happened.
"In the early 1960's they decided Stalin had never happened. They took his body out of its Red Square tomb, buried it on the other side of the Kremlin wall, tore down every statue of his likeness, and eliminated his name in quickly reprinted history books. In no time at all Stalin was a non-person.
"In the early 1970's Solzhenitsyn's (world famous book) 'Gulag Archipelago' became a non-book in Russia. Within their system, non-persons, non-events and non-books run invisibly rampant.
"It can't happen here, (or so) we all thought. But it did. Like Stalin, the space race, and Solzhenitsyn, some American persons, events and books became non-persons, non-events and non-books."
I recently visited one of these very places in America where un-news is made, or so I discovered for myself, un-made. This was in the U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C. It was two days after July 4 and it was almost unbelievable.
I was in the capital city to attend a week-long seminar and the airline reservations were such as to force me to arrive a day early, so I phoned my very good friend Reed Irvine, whose syndicated column "Accuracy in Media" (AIM) appears regularly in this newspaper.
Reed invited me to accompany him to a news conference at the Department of State and made arrangements for a pass for me to get in as they are not open to the public.
The department's spokesman for the occasion was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tom Reston (unless I'm mistaken he's the son of New York Times writer James Reston). Most of the questions concerned the country of Nicaragua and its President Somoza's teetering administration.
Since Somoza's anti-Communist dictatorship has for decades been friendly with the U.S., Irvine thought it should be big news that three star General John singlaub in a recent speech at the prestigious American Security Council accused U.S. representatives (presumably U.S. State Department officials) of encouraging Somoza's national guardsmen to defect to the Communist guerrilla forces.
So the AIM chief asked theState Department deputy, "Is this serious allegation by the famous U.S. Army general true? and please comment."
Well, Reston actually tried to ignore the candid and forthright query, but when Irvine insisted on an answer the State Department man became impudent, actually snotty, ill-mannered and un-civil, (as in civil servant?) I thought it was disgraceful and sickening - and still no reply to AIM's excellent question.
Even Marvin Kalb, the TV news commentator, was moved to remark to Reston during the above encounter: "What you are NOT saying is far more eloquent than what you ARE saying." Commentator John Scali, who covers the United Nations, took the lively exchange all in, but said nothing. Martin Peret, editor of the super-Liberal magazine "New Republic" though not attending this particular news conference, summed it up recently by saying that reporters and columnists in Washington "behave like blackbirds on a wire," waiting for a Reston (of the New York Times) or a Kraft to "become bold enough to fly to another wire so that they can follow."
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, that's how "un-news" is made - right here in America.
Ah Ha! A Chink in Word War
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
July 28, 1979
Surely no true historian can feel that our country is immune from the fate of other nations in other times. And, in terms of today's concerns, Americans seem more and more likely to suffer a dictatorship by "freely" electing one.
Still, dictators are never freely elected in any country. they come to power through their own and other's molding of public opinion.
One of the ways they are able to mold this public opinion is with a kind of indiscriminate use of words. Indeed the Chinese philosopher confucious, when asked what would be his first deed if he were to be emperor, replied, "Why, to set about clearing up the meaning of words, of course."
Now then, lest you think this does not concern you personally, you might consider the word "inflation."
Everybody is against it, even Idaho's self-appointed and self-proclaimed militant-moderate, Erwin Schweibert, who also writes a commentary in this newspaper.
Last week his attempt to mold public opinion (i.e., his column) used just exactly that very word as a classic example of what I'm talking about. This compassionate man, who does his best to come down on the side of the political angels, revealed himself as not quite the political, and now semantic, basket-case he often appears to be.
In his column Erwin scolded me for scolding in my column U.S. chamber of Commerce President ShearonHarris' public use of the word inflation to describe "high prices.'
I cited the Merriam-Webster dictionary as defining the word inflation clearly as "an increase in the supply of money and credit." Hence, I said Harris was dead wrong.
Bear with me now as this is no mere piddling play on polemics. It is exactly how men of good will are allowing themselves to be lined up for a dictatorship - wittingly or unwittingly.
Here's the difference between the two definitions and, more importantly, why there are two so-called definitions.
If one defines the word inflation as "high prices" it, of course, logically follows that those who furnish goods and services, i.e., usually private owners and hence responsible for the too high price tags on their stuff, are at fault.
On the other hand, if one defines the word inflation as "an increase in the supply of money and/or credit," it, of course, follows that the government (not the merchants) is solely responsible for the too high price tags.
Now then, it is clear that these two definitions call for two completely different remedies and if we do not diagnose the ailment properly the patient may die. Or, said another way, a problem well-defined is a problem already half-solved.
But my friendly adversary Erwin, who labels himself a moderate, another word deserving of exposure, loves, yea nearly worships, government, claims, "Ralph especially likes the dictionary definition because it makes it easier to blame the government for it all."
Eureka, Erwin got one thing straight, but he doesn't like to blame the government,so he blames "us all." Of course, in the real world when everybody's to blame, nobody's to blame, so this diverts attention to the market place, greedy oil companies, greedy Arabs, greedy bankers, greedy house builders, greedy Idaho Powers, and greedy laborers, ad infinitum - all hog wash - all conveniently misleading.
But into our capitalist running-dog and ongoing opinion molding fight, Erwin did inject a hopeful "innovation." Albeit surreptitiously, and without fan-fare in his column, he added to the word inflation two more words. He used "monetary-inflation" and "price-inflation," both of which tend to clear up, "moderately," the semantic traffic jam.
And it best be cleared up pretty darn soon, too, since Americans are about to shift toward a "freely elected" peacetime dictatorship. It is first called wage and price controls and usually follows what we've almost got now - gas rationing.
One final note to friend Erwin: when you ride your economic bicycle on the socialist highway stick out your right hand once in a while and signal the turn (i.e., use of the new words price-inflation and money-inflation).
Who knows. We might yet take the training wheels off your bike.
Amid Hubbub, A Word for the 1 Percent
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
August 4, 1979
One of the big and influential organizations in Idaho is the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI). It is, for the most part, a kind of glorified chamber of commerce for big business, although they do have some medium and smaller size members.
As might be expected they lobby for the special interests of their members just like the labor unions lobby for their members and the Idaho Education Association (IEA) and others lobby for theirs.
Like most organizations IACI is, unfortunately, devoted mostly to political problem-solving as compared to philosophical or "ideas-have-consequences" problem solving. (Some evidence obtains that there might be a slight, if welcome, shift here, however.)
All this is, of course, ideologically vague and par for the course of most business organizations. And, to be fair, given the tremendous interference of government in business, it is more or less understandable for short term survival.
Still, they do indeed take sides openly on occasion. But on one recent and rather conspicuous-by-its-absence issue they were conspicuouslysilent, i.e., the popular one percent tax initiative to limit property taxes in Idaho.
There well may have been a good reason why they were silent, one can only speculate, but before California's vote on their Proposition 13, which turned out to be immensely popular also, there was an odd coalition of big business and public employee unions who jointly raised a huge sum of money to finance a statewide campaign AGAINST the big tax reduction. It still passed overwhelmingly.
In any event, comes now a conference in Twin Falls sponsored by IACI on two major issues: Energy and the one percent tax limit initiative.
Now then, that's fine and they are to be congratulated for their efforts, no doubt, but what seems quite odd is that their program of speakers on the one percent issue seem to be all bureaucrats or politicians who could be expected to be pretty one-sided "against" the one-percent tax idea.
Now, again, this may all be for good reason, we'll see, but in the meantime those of us who fear for lack of articulate spokesmen who FAVOR the one-percent idea would like to see "equal time" in all public forums.
So, toward that end, we offer here what just may be the most articulate, if briefest, case for dramatic tax reduction we've ever read. And, like charity, we think it "begins at home."
We're indebted for it to Howard Jarvis:
"A billion seconds ago was pearl Harbor.
"A billion minutes ago Jesus walked the earth.
"A billion hours ago man had not evolved.
"But, a billion dollars ago was yesterday afternoon in Washington, D.C."
Media Fraternity 'At Work'
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
August 12, 1979
The word game played by the media, at least in politics, has reached a new high, or, depending on one's own perspective perhaps, a new low.
A case in point is by columnist David Morissey in a recent issue of the Twin Falls Times-News. It concerned the campaign now under way to defeat Idaho's U.S. Senator Frank Church. Oddly enough, this is the same young writer who wrote a glowing column during the last primary election about GOP maverick candidate for governor, Butch Otter.
I said "glowing" partly because that column appeared in a paper with such a generally knee-jerk liberal editorial policy and Otter was generally bad news to them - especially since they were indeed knee-jerkers.
I used "glowing" partly, too, because that particular column showed some perspective, an unusual quality in the news nowadays.
But Morrissey, something of a media "comer," must be trying to atone for some of his past sins against his preacher-like peers in the news media, most all of whom are near-apostles at the feet of their worshipful master, the super-liberal Senator Church.
By way of a little background it should be noted that generalizations are always risky, but always necessary in news reporting as well as in commentary. Obviously, space limitation precludes covering in depth all aspects of most ANY subject. but what's interesting to watch is the almost fanatic consistency with which our media OMITS, or carefully edits with "friendly pen," coverage of those political controversies apt to damage their liberal hero, Church.
Until recently almost no one in Idaho political circles thought there was even a heathen's prayer of defeating Church, whose almost quarter-century-long tenure in the U.S. Senate is soon to be contested.
All that has changed recently and mainly for two reasons: (1) The hottest "political property" the GOP has had in decades is thought to be gearing up to run for the seat now held by church.
This candidate is, of course, Idaho's first District congressman Steve Symms. The former apple-growing former apple-growing farmer, whose immense popularity, especially in the face of his unorthodox and gutsy stands based mostly on principles of (Democrat) Thomas Jefferson and free enterprise, has the Church liberals scared stiff.
The second reason comes from a new technique in national campaign strategy called the "independent committee" approach. It was started by an even more abrasive and controversial character, campaign strategist and long-time political pro, conservative, Don Todd of Boise.
Todd's committee is called ABC-PAC, an acronym for "Anyone-But-Church political action committee." The word "anyone" is obviously chosen because the primary election has yet to decide just who will run for Church's seat and because Todd's followers, a rapidly growing number by the way, would probably like to have "anybody" the GOP primary voters would elect in place of church.
Todd's direct mail campaign for a new U.S. senator has done real, if quietly growing, damage to the MYTH of Church, if not the man.
But the senator's long-time secret weapon,i.e., the knee-jerk liberal press and loyal almost to a man, has become almost APOPLECTIC at the effect of Todd's ABC campaign.
Much more could be said of the ABC story and its underdog, under-financed and MIS-understood (by the media) motives - much more - some good and some bad, but they are not "under" the media. In fact they are on top of them in some ways, i.e., they're newsworthy and the media understandably hates their guts.
Comes now another independent "Committee for Positive Change" who wants to defeat - you guessed it - the liberal senator from Idaho.
This committee is headed by a tan, beautiful and charming Idaho political pro, Helen Chenoweth, also of Boise.
Her co-founder of the "Positive Change" committee is another well-known Idaho political pro and good-old-boy of Idaho politics, Vern Ravenscroft.
This committee has "moderate" leanings or so the press thought, and probably won't really be a serious threat to "our hero."
But"Positive Change," too, now seems to be a threat. They, too, are gathering in some funds. "Not enough to match Senator Church's huge out-of-state donations from the East coast," says Chenoweth, but since our being written up in Time magazine we're growing."
My own guess is they will be a real threat, too, to Church. A lower key, but long over-due threat, mostly via the fantastically expensive TV, i.e.,unless your pals in the TV give it to you free.
Comes now David Morrissey's column from Twin Falls Times-News. His tirade at Chenoweth and Ravenscroft ranges all the way from ill-informed, ill-conceived, to illegitimate and even in poor taste. In fact it is so bad, but so typically revealing that I've decided to devote an entire future column to it, so bear with me.
Meantime let me say that one gets lots of disappointing scars in politics, even behind the scenes, even from some former close friends who ought to know better.
One of those so-called scars (mine) hadn't quite healed up - until Morrissey's asinine if all too typical, harangue at Chenoweth and Ravenscroft supplied a timely Band-aid.
I'm sending them my check today, partly to defeat what may be a well-meaning but far too left-wing U.S. senator and partly to suggest a little moderation for my young friend Morrissey and his extremist attempt to curry favor with his peers.
Manual Tips Facts As To Topsy Government
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
August 18, 1979
A couple of weeks ago I visited in Washington, D.C. the office of Idaho's First District congressman Steve Symms. Let me hasten to add that I was in Washington on other business, but I did, I confess, spend some time in his office.
While it is indeed deplorable that Symms votes for too much government (i.e., more than I'd like him to) and while he also encourages his friends to visit the modern "pyramids" in the capital city, thus tending to give them somewhat of an awe of governmentality, he does do some things right.
One of the latter is that once in a while he tries to promote a healthy skepticism of government. Not enough, of course, but some. And we should be thankful for small favors, after all, he's been back there in that fever swamp ever since '72.
While browsing Symms' office library I came across an amazing document - a book, among book after book on, as you might expect, government. And more or less required in every congressional office - of course.
This book is entitled the "United States Government Manual. 1978-1979." The foreword describes it as "The United States Government Manual is the official handbook of the Federal Government. It describes the purposes and programs of most government agencies and lists key officials." 901 pages.
The book is, as stated, "official." The foreword is signed by Fred J. Emery, Director of the Federal Register and James B. Rhoads, Archivist of the United States.
One might say the book is a kind of "Reader's Digest" of the U.S. Government, by title and, as stated in the foreword; "Most departments and agencies have included a summary paragraph, appearing after the personnel listing, which briefly describes their role in the Federal Government."
Bear with me now. Most scholars on the subject agree that the singular most important genius of our form of government is the doctrine called the "separation of powers." Legislative, executive and judicial, three branches of power - separated - so as to keep ANY of them from getting too powerful or too big. And it's worked, too, for almost 200 years, but something has happened.
Now get this, the manual is quite logically divided, generally, into those three branches. Page 31 to page 70 for the legislative branch. Page 73 to page 88 for the judicial branch.
And the third branch? Well get your feet braced for the executive branch. Reading from the table of contents, now, the branch of the chief politician of the U.S. referred to as "the executive branch" begins on page 89 of the manual and does not end at 189 which would be more than BOTH the other branches combined. Nor does it end at page 289 or 389 or 389 or 489 or even page 6849.
In fact, it doesn't end until page 703 with the final entry being the "United States Railway Association." (I'll bet you didn't know THAT was a department of the Federal Government, did you?)
Well, well, that ought to tell us something. In a book of fine print, an inch and a half thick, all but 3/16 of an inch for just one branch of government.
And President Carter says we need two more agencies?
Money Talks? Well, Not Really
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
August 25, 1979
So much has been written lately on the subject of economics that I swear, sometimes I actually think the conspiracy theory people are right. (No pun intended.)
And furthermore, if there is actually a conspiracy I do believe the most sinister group of them is either the economists or the semanticists i.e., the money-mongers or the word-mongers.
But at last I may have found a couple of exceptions; the first is on economics. It's brief. "The general preoccupation with money led to several curious beliefs which are now so firmly rooted that one hardly sees how anything short of a collapse of our whole economic system can displace it.
"One such belief is that commodities - goods and services - can be paid for with money. THIS IS NOT SO. Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will.
"It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for - only with goods and services; but (over) 20 years ago this axiom vanished from everyone's reckoning, and has never reappeared.
"No one has seemed in the least aware that everything which is paid for - must be paid for out of production - for their is no other source of payment."
That's from Albert Jay Nock. He wrote it in 1943. Could it be even more true or more timely even today?
Well, think about it. Meantime here's a little bit from one of the semanticists who's a real innovator, too, with a new and fun slant using some ever-so-clever definitions. Watch for the hidden meanings:
monopoly, n. An economic monster made in the image of its creator - the state
negativism, n. A deplorable tendency to oppose the opposite of what I suppose
theology, n. Completely concealed disagreement
white supremacist, n. An inferior white man
chauvinism, n. Egotistical collectivism
unfair competition, n. Competition
apathetic, adv. Indifferent toward the indifferent; not caring whether one is ruled by Tweedle-crat or Tweedle-publican.
THAT, ladies and gentleman, is first class word-mongering and credit for it (the definitions) goes to L.A. Rollins whose clever column "Lucifer's Lexicon" can be seen regularly in what many see as the nation's most prestigious libertarian monthly, "Reason" magazine (Box 40105, Santa Barbara, CA 93003).
Their money-mongers and word-mongers are made to order for intelligent and open-minded persons. Their response to the conspiracy, if there be one, is to operate one of the best think-tanks on freedom in the United States.
Conspiracies: Back in Vogue
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
September 1, 1979
For some strange reason the American public seems almost hell-bent on conspiracy theory explanation for everything.
If it isn't the Democrats blaming the Republicans for conspiring to pile up all the welath in one pile (theirs) then it's the GOP blaming the party of Jefferson for organizing yet another giant mass of bureaucrats to redistribute that wealth.
Interestingly enough, BOTH parties want to use the government to bring about their own particular idea. Needless to say, that government is only too happy to oblige, whomsoever happens to be in control at the time.
My first dramatic encounter with "the conspiracy" was in the very early years of the tenure of Senator Church, himself a conspiracy theorist of the anti-business type.
He was speaking in Boise in a building directly across the street in back of the state capitol. The occasion was one brought about by an entirely different conspiracy group called the anti-Communist type.
Church, of course, has never had much sympathy for the anti-communist theory preferring instead to be FOR something, namely, government. Government is his business and he's for it - his particular type, of course, i.e., MORE.
At that particular point in time Idahoans were pretty well hyped up about the Communist conspiracy. Many saw America as getting the short and the dirty end of the stick all around the world. Also, about that same time, there was much talk about the whole town of Washington D.C. virtually crawling with Communists and Communist sympathizers, most of whom were alleged to be on the payroll of some sensitive government bureau. The latter not excluding the White House entourage itself.
Well now, of course, Church couldn't believe that stuff and anyway those were the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy so who in his right mind could possibly believe his U.S. government could ever be infiltrated by "bad guys?"
To make a long and colorful story short Senator church ended his anti-Communist speech with the following assurance to his audience about the alleged Communist threat and subversion with a bombastic: "REMEMBER, ladies and gentlemen, the DANGER is over THERE (pointing to the Soviet Union) and NOT over here" (pointing down at the floor, i.e., the United States).
I am reasonably sure myself that Church was sincere at that time. In fact I think that even now, after the fall of China, Korea, the Berlin Wall, the invasion of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, not to mention Communist duplicity in Vietnam, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, Nicaragua etc., etc., ad nauseum, almost all of which the anti-Communists warned, yes, even screamed about, that Senator Church still is sincere in his belief that our foreign policy has been a good one.
Not 100% good, perhaps, but for the most part he's been a big booster and architect of that ever diminishing-for-the-U.S. foreign policy, and he likes it.
All ofthis is not to mention Church's endorsement of the big government spending policies of Washington D.C.'s Democratic administrations during his almost 25 years in the senate.
Without a doubt Senator Church has "bought" more votes for himself with taxpayer's money than any other politician in Idaho history. Think about it! And I'm sincere, too, when I say I think he's sincere. WRONG, of course, in my opinion, but sincere.
Comes now the Anyone But Church Committee and the Committee for Positive Change, both independent groups, who want to bring the super-liberal U.s. senator's frightful (in their opinion) record to the Idaho public.
Two of the three Boise based TV stations announced August 30, that they will not air the TV ads from either of the two anti-Church committees.Too controversial.
THAT's freedom of the press, ladies and gentlemen. The media, most of it, is emotionally and politically committed to liberalism in general and Church in particular. Here's one small example.
After church's visit to Communist Cuba he is reported to have said something to the effect that, concerning the dictator Fidel Castro "I felt like I left a friend down there." Note how the media suppresses this.
So, I've got some news for the liberal news media and Senator Church: Maybe the "danger" WAS "over there," but with the advent of the popular apple-grower Idaho Congressman Steve Symms and now the independent anti-Church committees -
Well, the "danger," for Church at least, is now over HERE. And with the television media's devotion to Church - maybe there's something to those conspiracy theories after all.
Otter Aims Revenge at Don Todd
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
September 8, 1979
During the recent campaign for governor, or, more specifically, for the Republican nomination for that office, C.L. "Butch" Otter praised me for keeping him and Steve Symms "honest."
Those were Otter's words, not mine. It is not nearly so easy now to keep Otter honest as it was during the campaign.
An unfortunate example revolves, in a rather nefarious way, around Otter's unsuccessful bid for the office of governor of Idaho, an office for which I supported him with enthusiasm.
One of the reasons he lost the election was Don Todd, of Boise, then campaign manager for Republican Allen Larsen, who won the primary, but lost the general election to present Democratic Governor John Evans.
Somehow Otter blames Todd, i.e., gives him "credit," for Larsen's entire success, and, by extension, Otter's loss. Understandably, perhaps, whether credit or blame, he has hated Todd's guts ever since.
Comes now, again, Don Todd, manager of an independent committee named Anyone But Church political action committee (ABC-pac) to defeat Idaho's Democratic Senator Frank Church.
In spite of almost overwhelming opposition by the Idaho news media, Todd's ABC-pac has the Idaho senior senator virtually pulling his political hair and in near panic about his seriously threatened membership in the world's biggest club for politicians. Something almost nobody thought could be done.
Certainly the Idaho GOP party has not been able to pull off anything resembling such a coup. In fact Todd's apparent success, so far, has many Republican regulars so embarrassed at their party's seeming political impotence that some are denouncing Todd as "devisive and counter productive."
In fact (if indeed there are such things as "facts" in today's political and semantic jungle) the GOP party has never been able to put even a substantive "dent" into Church's political armored car until now. Small wonder many are embarrassed.
But the party need not take all the blame. The "independent committee" approach is a new technique on the political scene and in spite of the liberal news media's almost total devotion to Church in the past 23 years - Church can be defeated. Maybe he won't be - but now (finally) it is perceived that defeating him is, after all, possible.
In fact (forgive me) the "independent committee" approach has been so successful in other states that a second one, Idaho Committee for Positive change (CPC0, has been formed, also to defeat Church and is just getting off the ground.
Headed by political pro Helen Chenoweth and former Democrat-turned-GOP'er, Vern Ravenscroft, CPC promises to add a welcome "educational" approach to expose Idaho's senior senator's political techniques.
Church is, of course, virtually screaming for somebody - anybody - especially some Republicans to denounce Todd's ABc-pac.
Comes now, again, "Butch" Otter, champion of freedom, free speech and expression, yea, "even freedom of those newspapers (et al) who disagree with me" saying that over and over again.
But what does he say now, two years later? The headline in Idaho's largest daily paper (September 7, 1979) quotes the unsuccessful Republican candidate: "Otter rips ABC for 'hate' tactics against Church." Otter got a big headline and article in the Idaho Statesman, whose devotion to Church's liberal cause is, well, deep and abiding.
Church got his wish and from an important Republican. Church was quoted in the above article as saying, "Otter did the right thing. He is to be commended for it."
Now then, I admit that I feel somewhat sorry for Otter. He's struggled hard for an identity in the shadow of his billionaire father-in-law J.R. Simplot and that is no easy task - but at what price for political identity or recognition, or revenge?
Don Todd is by no means lily-white. He's made some mistakes. His tactics are seen by many as bad for Congressman Steve Symms' probable candidacy in 1980 for the senate seat now held by Church, but he's no hate-monger as Church, and now Otter, charge.
The only hate is Otter's - for Todd's rather questionable total blame for Allen Larsen's defeat of Otter (Bob Smith, former aide to Symms and co-manager of Larsen's general campaign was paid a higher salary than Todd, but he got no "blame" at all).
Two close pals of Otter urged me to "give him hell" in my column. Well, I won't do that, but I will say that Otter's blast at Todd clearly is at the expense of his old friend Symms' probable contest against Church.
It is at least reminiscent of former Attorney General Wayne Kidwell's parting blast of sour grapes at Idaho's "big business".
Part of Otter's reputation, especially in north Idaho, after his recent campaign is his inability to say "thank you for helping" to his campaign supporters.
Apparently he thinks he's found a way. But it's a strange one at best and beneath the dignity of the man many saw as possibly the fellow to lead Idaho out of the swamp of self-serving politics.
Edior's Get 'ABC's of Politics
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
September 15, 1979
While the whole United States cries out for leadership, Idaho just cries - period.
A case in point surrounds Boise's two independent political action committees (PAC's) whose sole purpose is to defeat U.S. Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho). What happened?
Well, MOST of the Republican "regulars" and many of the less regulars are furious at the prospect of a bare-knuckles political fight with the "undefeatable" Democrat Church. Some say BOTH independent committees at least should shut up on the theory that Church will probably win anyhow and most certainly will if the PAC's continue to say negative things about Church (i.e., they're crying out loud).
Boise's Idaho Statesman newspaper, long-time knee-jerk supporter of Church, ifnot "crying out loud" at both the PAC's, is screaming out loud like a mashed cat, and name-calling Don Todd, manager of ABC, with an avalanche of abusive adjectives.
They even went so far as to brag on how "responsible" the Committee for Positive Change (CPC) was in order to make ABC look bad. That label lasted only until Helen Chenoweth, manager of CPC, actually said something specific against their political hero, Church. Now both Church and the Statesman claim her criticism took some of Church's statements on Vietnam out of context.
To their credit, at least the Statesman takes sides. To their blame, they bawl about other's bias, while never admitting their own. Still, they lead the cacophony of conservative criticism, staunch in the zealous defense of their boy, Church. But notice, that right or wrong, they lead.
Comes now the Press-Tribune newspapers of Caldwell and Nampa who are not ordinarily, but are sometimes, complimentary of Senator Church.
In an editorial September 11 they repeat church's claim that "his record is being distorted by the two committees," and that "... he is being treated unfairly." (Note they neither confirm nor deny Church's cry.)
The editorial, not unlike Church, claims the independent committees "will not influence Idahoans" to vote for Church's likely opponent, Congressman Steve Symms. But in the next breath they allege that Church "is laughing and urging his followers to contribute to his enemies." Certainly both he and the Statesman complain bitterly and loud.
Indeed, if Church does welcome contributions to his enemies, ABC and CPC, his super-defensive welcome-mat looks more like a crying towel, if not one used to clean up a political nose-bleed.
But Press-Tribune's rather establishment-type editorial does make one seemingly pertinent point. They claim the eastern based green panther group, who called Symms one of their "Dirty Dozen," and fought him so hard last campaign, only served to "help" Symms beat his opponent. Therefore, they reason that ABC-CPC can only serve to help Church by fighting him. Egad!
Well, maybe so, but never in Church's 23 year super-liberal history has he been so on-the-defensive and it is NOT because of an eastern based group. Both ABC and CPC are genuinely Idaho based. Both receive less out of state resources than Church and he knows it. That's possibly why his crying appears so sincere.
The Caldwell-Nampa papers are also no doubt sincere, but it's not at all clear how, or even why, or even if - they think Church should be defeated. All that is clear is that the Statesman, who at least knows which side they are on, LEADS almost like Dr. Pavlov led his experimental dogs.
The GOP regulars follow, first salivating, then barking, then, remembering the "electric shock" of a fellow from Coeur d'Alene, years ago, who wanted to recall Senator Church, they jump to the signal of the master news-twister. Like Dr. Pavlov, they remember: "It worked before, it'll work again. Just ring the bell or turn on the juice. The dogs don't know what's good for them unless we tell 'em."
The Statesman leads the GOP's Pavlovian response remembering their 23-year history of miserable failure against Church, but ever so suspicious of others who just might succeed in their place. Instead of attack they merely react and cry out.
Noting well the confusion among Dr. Pavlov's Republican "dogs", the Press-Tribune merely counts their noses.
Meantime, Chenoweth should attack the whole news media, 90 percent of whom have been "fitting" THEIR context to Church's positions for 23 years. At least she should attack the Statesman's "out of context" charge against her (i.e., Church was on BOTH sides of Vietnam).
Chenoweth is understandably reluctant to fight the press - she knows they buy their ink by the barrel. But she does not attack the Statesman's charge now her silence will be seen as consent.
And as Church, if not the GOP or the Press-Tribune makes ever so clear - the best defense is always a vigorous offense. Still, somebody must LEAD it.
Symms Will Run, But Should He?
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
September 22, 1979
The following commentary may very well be the most unusual one I've ever written, at least on the subject of politics, and I support I'm sticking my neck out a country mile. Here's why.
Much speculation in the news media, both locally and nationally, surrounds the rumor that Idaho's First District Congressman Steve Symms may challenge Idaho's senior Senator Frank Church for the U.S. Senate in 1980.
Well, that, ladies and gentlemen is no rumor. The popular congressman has every intention of announcing just such an effort sometime around the first part of next year. It's almost a cinch.
While this is not exactly big news I have been watching the speculation about it with extreme interest for several months and must admit that it has gained more credibility than I ever thought it would. Still, I think it's a bad idea and I think Symms should abandon the project as an exercise in futility - his hundreds of close friends, conservative well-wishers and Church haters to the contrary notwithstanding.
I have not always thought this way, so permit me an ever so brief and ever so inadequate explanation, i.e., why I changed my mind.
I was one of those above-mentioned close friends of Symms. I still am. In fact Symms wrote his first announcement of his candidacy for Congress on my dining room table way back in 1972. To everyone's surprise, including mine, he won.
His candidacy began and for the most part his tenure in office ever since has succeeded in bringing new vigor, new ideas and new hope to the floundering political scene in Idaho. But we really didn't concern ourselves over-much at the time with getting elected. Rather it was to sell some all-but-forgotten ideas and ideals. If he happened to get elected - well, he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. He did, and the rest is history.
Comes now Idaho's U.S. Senator Frank Church and his foreign aide give-away, the biggest boondoggle in modern political history. this event was followed by the most spectacular growth in big government and giant bureaucracy in the history of man and almost all of it with the enthusiastic support and stewardship of the super-politician and senior senator from Idaho.
But try as they might the Idaho GOP, in election after election, proved to be no match for the New Deal Democrat. Almost a quarter century of it (23 years) and "Republican" controlled Idahoans still didn't get the message.
Comes now the chickens coming home to roost - even to Idahoans; two no-win wars, the loss of U.S. prestige all around the world, the super growth of world-wide Communism, the fall of Free China, government-caused oil crisis, government-caused financial disaster, the U.S. Panama Canal give-away, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
And, as if that wasn't enough, now Nicaragua has fallen to Communist-dominated revolutionaries. Most all of this with the support of our state department and the well-meaning liberal, Senator Church.
Well that may all well be, but as I have written so often in this column there is also the super-liberal and mostly Democrat news media almost TOTALLY devoted to Church. Many even seem to like Symms personally, but hate his political guts, and they'll butcher him with personal attacks and clever semantic tricks if it even looks like he's about to defeat their hero.
Consider this from the national Gannett News Service (Sept. 19,1979, Page 1B) (they also own Idaho's largest newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, who, in turn, vigorously supports Church) Symms is "... a conservative whose differences with the MUCH MORE MODERATE (my emphasis) Church promise a free-swinging ideological battle."
That, ladies and gentlemen is tantamount to a damn lie. If by any stretch of the wildest imagination Frank Church is a "moderate" then Steve Symms is a pastoral college president whose students love capitalism as a religion and pray for their college to make a profit.
Meantime, Symms' own political party, the stalwart Republicans, too timid to challenge a hostile media, are embroiled internally in a fierce fuss over whether or not to publicly denounce two rather successful independent political action committees who are rather successfully denouncing Senator Church. THAT is par for the GOP course as they gird for the game in 1980.
All Symms needs now is for a well-known Boise multi-millionaire and super liberal Republican to form a "Republicans for church" committee.
I'm told this, too, is about to happen. That, together with the above example of Gannett "News-twister" Service, leads me to urge Symms to punt quick before his team scores yet another touchback - at the wrong goal post.
We Told You So' Not Enough
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
September 29, 1979
Much flack in the news recently concerns Soviet troops in Cuba. Some accounts say they are "combat" troops. In any case, nobody seems to think they are troupes from the Bolshoi Ballet.
Now then, for those Californians who've only recently come to live in Idaho, Cuba is just 90 miles south, off the coast of Florida. That's about the same distance it is from Disneyland to San Diego, depending on how far you have to drive to find a parking place.
They're so close, even U.S. Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) chairman of the once powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee is concerned. At least he made an announcement to that effect recently, suggesting that perhaps the Senate would not ratify the Salt II treaty unless the Russian politicians took their troops someplace else.
Since former U.N. Ambassador Andy Young suggested that Russian troops "furnished a certain amount of stability in Angola" presumably Church thinks Communist Cuba is already stable enough WITHOUT the Soviets.
Indeed, Church must be concerned. He seems to think we need the Salt II treaty in the worst way, so to speak, and he just may have found it.
Still, the Idaho senator no doubt wants what he sees as best for his country (ours, too, remember?), but to suggest that we withhold our signature from what many see as a lousy contract with the Russians "until their troops are withdrawn" seems, well, a little giddy at best.
At least church is concerned. One can only guess what he'd suggest that we withhold if those troops were in Miami, i.e., as an "incentive."
But the Republicans are only a little better. They are saying that if Church had not helped emasculate the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) we'd have known about those Russian troops in Cuba "long ago." In fact many say that it has been an open secret for a long time that the troops were there, but the "timing" was right for Church-Carter image makers so they let him make the announcement "scolding" the Russians - for effect.
Or, said another way, Church is in BIG trouble at home and since the election is getting ever so close he must get some good publicity.
Whichever way you see your partisan party's point the GOP's saying things like "we told you so" falls a little short. It even brings tears to my eyes. Let me explain.
On August 15,1972, at 2:30 p.m. in Miami Beach, Florida, the Republican National committee's platform committee was meeting. They agreed to hear Dr. Anthony D. Sutton, an internationally known academic researcher with three books published at Stanford University and one from the U.S. Naval Institute, all on the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex and how gigantic it really is.
Well that isn't exactly big news, but what is news, or at least COULD have been, was what Sutton said about how the huge Soviet "machine" GOT that say: "Almost all - perhaps 90 to 90 percent - came directly or indirectly from the United States and its allies."
Now then, I know Sutton personally, and he's no amateur. He's controversial, it's true. So is Church and so is Congressman Steve Symms, the senator's probable competitor for the senate race next year, but Sutton is smarter than both Church and Symms put together, so let me give you just a few excerpts from Sutton's printed testimony before the GOP committee.
Remember this was in August, SEVEN years ago.
"Two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union were built with the United States help or technical assistance.
"The Soviets have the largest merchant marine in the world - about 6,000 ships. I have the specifications for each ship.
"All shipbuilding technology in the USSR comes directly or indirectly from the U.S. or its North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) allies.
"The soviet military has over 300,000 trucks - all from U.S. built plants. The largest of these is Groki and was built by the Ford Motor Company and the Austin Company, approved by our State Department as peaceful trade.
"The Soviets are receiving now - today, equipment for the Kama plant, to be the largest truck plant in the world. It will occupy 36 square miles. The Kama truck will be 50 percent more productive than their ZIL-130 truck. Well, that's nice," says Sutton, "because the ZIL truck is a standard for the USSR. And who built the ZIL plant? It was built by the Arthur J. Brandt Co. of Detroit, Michigan.
"And who's building the Kama plant? That's classified 'secret' by the Washington, D.C. policy makers."
Well, the list of Sutton's political aid-to-dependent-Soviets welfare program goes on and on and on. The Republicans meeting in Miami gave him 15 minutes - and no publicity.
Copies of Sutton's testimony were hand-delivered to both national news media wire services AP and UPI, but they did not use them.
Even if the GOP does say "I told you so" on the Russian problem they must have laryngitis when they say it - or, perhaps they're speaking Russian.
1980 campaign managers optimistic for Steve Symms - please take note.
What Are Politicans Paid For?
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
October 6, 1979
One of the problems of responding to the overwhelmingly liberal tendencies of the news media is having to restate in your own response what your adversary said first.
But a case appeared last week which you should enjoy, so bear with me.
The political editor of Boise's Idaho Statesman is Steve Ahrens, who tries harder than most to be "fair" in his columns to those politicians he writes about and still have an interesting story. Certainly his columns are an improvement over his predecessor, John Corlett, whose almost arrogant bias against the free market and against political "extra-conservatives" is, well, to be kind, almost legendary.
In the latter's defense I suppose it's fair to say that it's partly understandable, inasmuch as his son, Cleve Corlett, has for years been on the payroll of Idaho's extra-liberal U.S. Senator Frank Church.
In any event, at risk of my damaging Ahren's status by my praise, he "ain't all bad" as the saying goes, but his column defending the congressional pay raise smacked of self-serving praise.
It was not unlike a sportswriter justifying pay raises for professional athletes. They are, after all, his stock-in-trade for a livelihood.
Consider Ahrens', "... the bottom-line question is: did Congress deserve a raise or not? I believe they did."
That's like asking the fox if he "deserves" to eat some of the chickens. Left unsaid is the matter of: Can the farmer AFFORD to give up more and more of his chickens?
"If they are willing to fight the battle of survival in Washington, d.C.," says Ahrens, "we ought to be willing to pay them."
The key words there are "willing to." It's usually called "serving the public" by those wanting to glorify their occupation.
"If they are willing ..." Ye gods, they are not only willing - most fall over themselves, fighting, clawing, scratching, some even BEGGING for a chance at the job. Indeed, many will even promise just about anything, if you will merely vote for them.
The fact that they will first have to "take it" from somebody before they can "give it" to anybody is seldom mentioned. So arrogant has the process become that a few, e.g., the communists, will even boast about WHO they will TAKE it from. To their credit, often-times they are the more intellectually honest of those seeking the power of public office - to do good, of course.
Ahrens says he disagrees with Idaho's GOP Congressmen Steve Symms and George Hansen, "who claim Congress doesn't deserve a pay raise because it's doing a lousy job."
The political editor's only counter to that was, perhaps, the only intellectually constipated comment in the entire piece. He said - now get your feet braced for this - In response to Idaho's two "extra conservative" congressmen's dissent that Congress is doing a lousy job, Ahrens retorted: "That's a philosophical argument and we don't pay congressmen according to their philosophy."
Well, bless Bess! We DON'T? One wonders what on earth, save perhaps to add to pollution of the air waves, DO we pay them for?
The oft-times sincere political expert answers this, with, "Their pay is for being willing to make personal and professional sacrifices in running and representing us."
Well that just isn't necessarily so. Consider, Proposition 13 in California and the "One-percent" initiative in Idaho. And several nationally promoted and increasingly popular constitutional amendments to LIMIT the politician's absolutely ravenous appetite and greed for getting and holding public office.
I'd laugh, but for the tears of sadness in my eyes as a once great America slithers into the sea of politics-as-usual.
To his credit, Ahrens did make a couple of excellent observations, but he closed with yet another tear-jerker. Right after lamenting, "They haven't had a pay raise since 1977 - not sixty-seven, mind you, SEVENTY-seven! (Then it went to $57,500).
Now get this, Ahren's crowning closing comment: "A productive land like America should be able to pay its congressmen enough so plumbers will aspire to be lawmakers, not the other way around."
Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is probably the saddest of all the long list of unfortunate observations from this mostly sincere and, generally speaking, pretty decent young political writer.
But if the lawmakers don't eventually "aspire" to be plumbers how will we ever know whose philosophy "leaks" - and whose "pipes" will hold water?
Given their freedom to choose, me-thinks the public properly prefers plumbers. Have you checked their prices lately?
Trying Hard? Really? To Do What?
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
October 13, 1979
Boy, oh boy, do I ever hate to admit I'm wrong? Of course, I know almost everybody does, but I fear that my particular error is worse than most people's. Let me explain.
A recent Associated Press Wire service story quotes U.S. Treasury Secretary G. William Miller as saying, "The federal government is doing all it can to hold down inflation."
Now then, my first reaction to that statement was one of unmitigated outrage. It still is, but in a different sort of way. Miller's predecessor at the treasury is William E. Simon whose best selling book "A Time for Truth" (Berkley Books, paper back $2.50) says quite plainly that government is not only not doing all it can to "hold down inflation," but rather he says government is CAUSING inflation.
Well, somebody's wrong. One does not need a doctorate in economics to see that, but many academics who do have doctorates and who are drawing large to huge salaries from the government school system are still, even today, telling it both ways.
SOMEBODY'S crazy! I thought so anyway, at least if not crazy - misguided or some such. But the "USS Titanic" is about to sink and they're STILL talking as if it is merely a leaky water faucet instead of gaping hole in her hull.
Or perhaps its just a cranky sailor who doesn't like the ship's captain and merely claims the boat is listing 30 degrees to the port (read, left) in order to alarm the giggling pleasure-bent passengers. But something's certainly wrong and time is running out.
There is one thing clear, however, and that is there are TWO so-called definitions of inflation. One, used mostly by the media, the politicians and the social do-gooders, most of whom are fairly well-meaning, dwells on prices.
This definition uses the word inflation to describe the phenomena of high prices. Defined thusly one must logically conclude that, since the entrepeneur affixes the price tag to his goods and services, it is therefore his fault for "inflation" - ergo, some form of price controls is a must, i.e., more government.
The second definition found in orthodox library dictionaries uses the word inflation to describe "an increase of the supply of money and credit." Defined this way one must, of course, conclude that since only government can increase the supply of money and credit "inflation" is clearly the fault of the federal government - ergo, less printing press money, i.e., less government.
Some people say, "inflation is too much money chasing too few goods," but to say this is to suggest that we do away with the price system of allocating goods and services. Such can only be done inside a socialist command society and outside the system of private ownership. It is in this way that most casual observers see the socialist countries using some form of money and thus erroneously conclude that we only need to elect "good" officials for "good" government.
Now back to my having, perhaps, to admit I'm wrong. The John Birch Society has for decades insisted that America was in the grips of a giant, monolithic conspiracy to turn the U.S. over to the Communists.
I thought for most of those years that, instead, America was merely ruled by knee-jerk, muddle-headed liberals, well-meaning perhaps, but who had never net a payroll nor sold anything of value to anybody for anything, especially money.
In the words of the venerable Eric Hoffer describing the hippy society. "They've never laid a brick nor grew a blade of grass." I saw the Birchers as a super-patriotic, God-=fearing bunch of well-meaning citizens who were "against everything" and if they were "for" anything they were, at best, not very articulate about it.
But with Miller's statement, that "Government is doing all it can to fight inflation ..." and "we must accept a period of austerity and see that it is fairly shared," Egad! No WONDER people think there's a conspiracy. I'm beginning to wonder myself.
There is absolutely nothing that the average citizen in his individual capacity can do to stop inflation - unless, of course, we accept the late George Orwell's "newspeak" definition of inflation. That would be a certain invitation, to coin a word from the Birch Society, to certain slavery.
As I read the treasury secretary's statement, I see just such an invitation. And, however well-intentioned both Miller and I myself may be, we just might both owe the John Birch Society a pat on the back, if not admit we may be wrong.
College Profs's Snub Too Typical
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
October 28, 1979
Something happened at the local Chamber of Commerce's annual banquet the other night that you ought to hear about.
I was not there, but I heard about it and in no uncertain terms. In fact one of the city fathers was so outraged at what he saw that a mutual friend, another city father and witness to the whole affair, said he thought the other one was going to explode.
As is so often the case at chamber functions the principal speaker was a politician, U.s. Senator James McClure (R-Idaho) and when he was introduced, just prior to his speech, the entire audience rose to their feet in the customary gesture of respect generally accorded a member of what many consider the "most exclusive club in the world."
I said the entire audience rose to their feet, but that isn't entirely accurate. Two professors from the College of Idaho, together with their wives, remained seated in what appeared to my informant as a rather obvious gesture of, one supposes, a rather profound lack of respect for McClure.
First of all I doubt that anyone, certainly not myself, would want to suggest, even by inference, that these four people did not have the RIGHT to remain seated - for whatever reason.
Second of all, I am probably a little prejudiced. I happen to like Jim McClure. He's one of the few politicians I can stand.
It's not so much his conservative politics that I like, rather it's his political integrity. He's one of the least pompous, most competent and intellectually honest politicians Idahoans have ever sent to Insane City, D.C.
That is, of course, if one likes conservative politicians - and therein lies a particularly interesting feature of an otherwise uninteresting story. College professors tend to "hate" Republican politicians in general and conservative ones in particular. The College of Idaho professors (in general) as you might expect are, unfortunately, no exception.
Now then, in this day and age of people's penchant for ramming ideas down one another's throats by majority-rule, I realize conservatives are destined to sit in the back of the "intellectual bus" (i.e. the minority) and that college professors enjoy majority status in almost every intellectual encounter. Still, it seems ironic, at best, that most professors see themselves as champions of the minority - albeit a very selective minority.
But the real minority is, in ever so many ways, the business and professional man who makes up most of the membership of the Chamber of Commerce and pays much of those professor's salaries. The old saw that in a free society "nothing happens, unless and until somebody SELLS something" is almost a truism. Somehow only a small handful of professors seem to appreciate this.
Let me hasten to add that it's remotely possible that the two couples from the college meant no disrespect to McClure. Perhaps they just rebelled a bit at a timeworn and all too often superficial tradition of standing up to honor politicians - especially, ALL politicians. Certainly this writer could sympathize if that were the intent, but one wonders if they wouldn't have shaken hands with him.
But some regard for custom and convention and the status-quo seem in order, upon occasion, and to remain seated at a chamber banquet hosting a United States senator was surely meant to express something unconventional to others nearby.
It shouldn't take an intellectual giant to see that doing so spoke ever so loud, even shrill, under the circumstances, more than standing to honor McClure meant to the business and professional community.
One of the aforementioned city fathers swore he would phone Bill Cassell, president of the college, the next day and damn sure "tell him a thing or two." Whether he did or not I don't know, but I do know that the incident won't make Cassell's job of asking for donations from the business community to pay the professor's salary any easier.
In any case the incident could, and should, serve as a long over-due opportunity for business to inquire a little deeper into just why it is that, so often, so virile an anti-capitalistic mentality prevails on the C of I campus, even if it does on most.
Just one note of caution. Should the all too often dull-witted business community and the all too often dull-witted college trustees decide (shades of the millenium) to conduct such an inquiry into faculty attitudes you shouldn't do so on the basis of capitalism and self-interest. Especially if you don't worship college professors - for most of them are smarter than you are.
If you don't believe me, try getting THEM - to donate to YOUR philosophy.
It's An Easy Street To Trouble
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
November 5, 1979
There was a British economist back in 1936 who wrote that "Hitler is the foster child of inflation."
Well, what have we learned from these two great nations, England and Germany, whose civilized history goes back a thousand years and more? Apparently, not much, unless it's too follow them increasingly in their follies.
There are enough similarities, between the German inflation of the 1920s, for example, and the American inflation of the 1970s to strongly suggest that the hostile age of George Orwell's "Big Brother" may very well come BEFORE 1984, if present government policies continue.
Dr. Carl Wiegand, a big wheel in the prestigious Committee for Monetary Research and Education (CMRE, Box 1630, Greenwish, Conn.), makes this disturbing comparison in a recent issue of his committee's pamphlet "The Great Inflation; Germany, 1923 - U.S.A.?"
During the first World War, until then the costliest war in history, the quantity of money in circulation in Germany increased 340 percent, or roughly the same percentage as in the U.S.A. between 1950 and 1977. Prices rose by 125 percent in Germany and by 150 percent in the U.S.A.
Thus the inflation in Germany, caused by the first World War, was no worse than the inflation which the U.S. has experienced during 27 years of unprecedented "prosperity."
Wiegand, himself very much a German historian, says that Germany could have avoided the final collapse of the mark had it not been for the futile policy of "passive resistance" against the French invasion of the Ruhr. In January, 1923, it took 18,000 marks to buy a dollar; by August it took 4 million, and by November it took 4.2 trillion, thus adding six zeros in just three months!
But given the political situation and the popular demand that the government "take a stand" against the French, "passive resistance," even though financed almost entirely through the creation of credit, seemed the "right policy."
In our own U.S.A., the 50 percent depreciation of the dollar between 1968 and 1978 clearly could have been avoided. There was no compelling reason to increase federal spending from $184 billion to $450 billion, with a more than 100 percent increase in the national debt. For no compelling reason says Wiegand our money supply increased by 120 percent while our output of goods and services increased by only 33 percent.
But a curtailment of the "Great Society" spending spree was clearly a political not expedient. None of the presidents nor the Congress had the courage to convince the American people that the SOMETHING-for-NOTHING philosophy must lead to chaos.
"The cure for inflation," says Wiegand, "is a (government) policy of limiting spending to the available income, both in public and private life." Admittedly, of course, such is not easy for people and nations who have grown accustomed to (and educated to?) living above their means.
The dollar clearly in BIG trouble all around the world, could probably be saved if public and private spending were reduced to, say, the 1970 level. But apparently the American people, the bureaucracy, and the politicians are not willing to live within their means - so long as the credit lasts and so long as they ignore history.
Between 1924, at the end of the inflation, and 1931, German "prosperity" rested largely on credit. They borrowed abroad some 16 billion marks, used 7 billion to pay reparations, according to Wiegand, and spent the rest to finance its (drug-like habit of) chronic import surplus.
For half a decade foreign loans financed (Germany's) "fools paradise" - until the great depressions put an end to foreign loans. A deep depression set in and within two years Hitler rose to power.
Write CMRE, and get this wise and kind professor's little story yourself. And if you do, ask him why so many Jews in America STILL seem hell-bent on pursuing those same "liberal" government policies and politicians.
Lockup? What About Endangered Cowboys?
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
November 11, 1979
Cattle ranchers from throughout Idaho's Owyhee County and Jordan Valley, Ore., met last Tuesday in a Marsing school auditorium to discuss and oppose the creation of federal wilderness areas where they have traditionally raised cattle.
I attended that hearing and was both pleased and puzzled at what took place. I was pleased that so many people showed up, especially ranchers, both young and old, male and female. Of course, these hard-working, producing and frugal folks stand a good chance of losing their traditional and legitimate livelihood. It's logical.
But I was puzzled that so few business and professional people from Nampa and Caldwell showed up because they, too, stand a good chance of losing a big chunk of THEIR livelihood. Most owe much of their living, directly or indirectly, from the cattle, sheep, seed and feed produced in these grazing and growing areas.
One is reminded of the service station operator in West Virginia who felt it was none of his business how prosperous the coal mining business was since he just sold gasoline.
I was pleased that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), whose newly appointed state director, Bob Buffington, attended the meeting, only wanted to consider a possible wilderness area lockup of about 400,000 acres. I was puzzled they didn't want 800,000 acres. After all, it's all arbitrary anyhow and if a little lock-up is good why wouldn't twice as much be twice as good? Never mind that food must be PRODUCED by somebody before the government can REDISTRIBUTE it to anybody, even by their ever so popular food stamps.
Buffington said it'd do nobody any good to engage in name-calling at the meeting and added that his office was only there to listen to "specifics." Presumably he did not want to debate the general ethics of the government's land grab in the name of the "pee-pull." (In the Soviet Union ALL government action is done in the name of ALL of the pee-pull. Can't you just hear our own politicians advocating this or that government wilderness in the name of "the people?")
I was pleased to hear so many of the ranchers testifying who were so articulate and well-prepared with both maps and rhetoric. Perhaps they're beginning to get the big picture of the primrose path they've been led down for lo these many years.
I was a little puzzled though that these ranchers let Idaho State auditor Joe Williams (a Democrat by the way) nearly steal the whole performance by showing the similarity between the government's wilderness lock-up policy at home and that same government's asinine, even masochistic, foreign policy all around the world. Especially, Williams seemed to think, that applied to minerals like chromium which we buy from our enemy, Russia, while we boycott our friend Rhodesia who'd like to sell it to us cheaper. (Bless Joe's heart.)
I was pleased to see and hear my great and good friend Pete Cenarussa, one of the most popular Secretaries of State Idaho has ever had, certainly the most popular Basque sheep-herder. He followed State Sen. Walt Yarborough, a genuine cowboy himself and chairman of the meeting, to ask the audience to "be kind to the BLM's director Buffington" who was, of course, greatly outnumbered that night by the cowboys.
But I was genuinely puzzled by the REASON the popular Basque politician told us we should "be kind" to the no doubt well-meaning BLM bureaucrat. "After all," he said, "he's just doing his duty as the government directs."
Well, as I remember, that's all the German soldiers said THEY were doing when they were herding the Jews into the concentration camps in World War II Germany.
I was further puzzled why my friend Cenarussa, a genuine friend of the cattlemen, as well as mine, failed to tell us whether or not he gave a similar admonition to his Basque countrymen in the Pyrenees mountains of Spain when he visited there recently.
You'll remember the Basques there have been bombing and killing some of Spain's federal bureaucrats sent up in the mountains to supervise the "wilderness" they've been grazing for generations.
Too bad, too. No, I'm sorry, it's not too bad, it's tragic! But all those Spanish bureaucrats were doing - was their duty.
Same Ol' Government Rain Dance
By Ralph Smeed
News-Tribune
November 24, 1979
The long list of fanatic leaders throughout the world seems to get even longer and even more critical of the U.S. beginning, perhaps, with the take-over a few years ago at the United Nations (UN) by the poor and hungry nations.
But the poor and hungry are not only represented by the UN these days, nor are those so-called one-man, one-vote "nations" the only critics of Uncle Sam's less than smashing success at problem solving.
Comes now the "Ada County Retired Senior Volunteer Program" (RSVP) located at 1910 University Drive, Boise. Their newsletter says it is "Part of Action Sponsored by Boise State University."
Their editorial date November, 1979 discloses an interesting, if all too familiar, tune on the energy crisis: "... The U.s. seems unable to curb its high consumption rates for petroleum products. Our domestic oil companies are once again reporting ridiculously high profits..."
Now then, I'm not acquainted with the RSVP, but their "expertise" on energy sounds all too familiar. Indeed the Boise University affiliate organization seems to reflect the stereotype campus mentality emerging all across the nation. Note their editorial's last paragraph: "new exploration and discovery of alternative energy sources in the future will not help the poor or elderly persons who must stop eating to pay for fuel bills this winter.
"We think it's time our government gets off its haunches and helps 'we the people' for a change."
Much could be said regarding the fact that our government has already got off its haunches and THAT is precisely the problem.
The Department of Energy has hired more than 20,000 employees and spends $10 billion annually, more money than the combined profits of all the oil companies put together. All of which has produced utter chaos and not even one barrel of oil. And still the BSU retired persons program wants more?
Well at least they did not call for rationing. But since that's probably the next step (as it usually follows the pattern) I want to offer a timely observation made in an ever so tiny verse by Jerry Hill of Boise. it's called "Thomas Edison - Endangered Species". It goes thusly:
When supplies of light
Loomed extra tight
And candles flickered in the night
Tom tinkered with his bulbs of light.
Meanwhile less enlighted folk
Went on a different kick.
They clamored for the government
To ration all the candle wick.
Ration stamps they argued
Hour after hour
Will serve to make sure everyone
Gets their share of candle power.
But good ole Tom
Just tinkered on
and with his bulbs and lamps
He licked the curse of darkness
While dimwits licked their ration stamps.
Will Liberal Media Kick Hansen?
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
December 1, 1979
Idaho's Second District congressman, George Hansen, R-Idaho, has just returned from what he calls his "mercy mission" to the country of Iran.
Hansen was permitted to visit most, but apparently not all of the 49 U.S. Embassy employees now being held hostage by the religious rebellion leaders in Iran. He also discovered that there is a U.S. businessman being held hostage, too, making a total of 50 hostages.
Of the several controversial projects or "missions," as the seven-foot tall gutsy conservative calls his trips, the Iranian caper is by far his most controversial. And if he is not quite seven feet tall in the eyes of the typically liberal news media, he is ten feet tall in the eyes of middle class Americans. Most of them, at best, watch half-heartedly when they are forced to watch their media bleat about their once-proud and powerful nation, forced to its knees all around the world.
About this admittedly sad situation a few miscellaneous observations might be helpful. I'll list them in no particular order of importance.
1. The U.S. Department of State, which is usually charged with "negotiating" our international differences and promoting our national self-interests with other nations, has not been faring very well with the kidnappers who threaten to kill the U.s. employees. Indeed many observers claim that our "foggy bottom" cannot tell the DIFFERENCE between a plus and a minus for American self-interest.
2. Hansen has long been one of the State Department's outspoken critics. This may well have afforded him an opportunity to open up a dialogue with the kidnappers and even their religious fanatic leader.
The liberal establishment in America has for years boasted long and loud in favor of dialogue with dissenters of almost any kind, whatsoever, and under almost any conditions whatsoever.
You will remember liberal newsman Daniel Schorr and the Pentagon secrets. You will remember the liberal senator George McGovern who said he would "crawl on his hands and knees to our enemies in Vietnam presumably to open up a dialogue.
3. You'll remember Hollywood actress and outspoken liberal Jane Fonda and her trip to visit the official U.S. enemies in Vietnam. You'll remember the liberal Senator Frank Church's visit to communist dictator Fidel Castro in Cuba. You'll remember, too, Church's blowing the whistle on the CIa employees whose names were supposed to be secret. Some observers say his statements lead almost directly to at least one CIA agent's being assassinated.
4. Many others have attempted with varying degrees of success to take matters into their hands - but they were LIBERAL hands.
Admittedly these are not all parallel examples, except that you should note how tender and understanding the overwhelmingly liberal media tends to be when THEIR liberal sympathies are petted.
5. All this is not to say that Hansen's courageous and almost daring act will result in saving the hostages. Or even saving face for Americans. But it IS to say the media could help somewhat by allowing that even conservatives could be men of good will and still dissent with official U.S. foreign policy.
Indeed, one is reminded of one of the severest critics of the Idaho congressman who has long warned that, "America's foreign policy is so pathologically irrational that many people think there must be something clever hidden in it." I, for one, agree.
But other men of good will disagree. So let's have a bit more tolerance for them - even when they don't belong to the liberal establishment.
And who knows? Maybe if Hansen keeps his mouth shut for just a little bit, the media will wonder what he is up to. With their help he actually MIGHT pull it off.
Meantime let's not hold our breath.
No Wonder, There's Confusion
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
December 8, 1979
The Caldwell Elks Lodge has always been a patriotic group of good fellows. To their everlasting credit they're a bunch of flag wavers. I, too,an very much one of those flag wavers.
But us super-patriots, as our detractors so often refer to us, sometimes have a tendency to wrap ourselves in the flag and spout things like "Our country - right or wrong."
Of course, this leaves something to be desired, but the past few years seems to find us saying "Our country - but now I'm not sure whether its right or wrong, moderate or wobbly, up or down, or none of the above."
Without wanting to be the least bit critical of the good intentions of anybody, much less of us flag wavers, let me suggest at least one of the reasons we might look a little bit inconsistent if not a little silly to our critics.
Recently the Elk's Americanism Committee hosted a banquet speaker of some considerable note. he was Major General John S. Warner, General counsel of the CIA, now retired.
As you might imagine he was obviously a very knowledgeable and learned speaker and took the position that the nation's intelligence apparatus was not only of crucial importance, but is now in a sad state of repair.
He said that Idaho's Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) was definitely part of that problem and further that Congressman George Hansen (R-Idaho) hadn't helped much, in his opinion, by his recent trip to see the U.S. Embassy employees now being held hostage in Iran by what the U.S. press INSISTS on calling Iranian "students."
During the question and answer period I asked the general to comment on the fact that almost without exception the high ranking military officers testified in FAVOR of the Panama Canal treaty.
That is to say, those on active duty testified in favor of it. Those high ranking officers, who were retired, testified AGAINST the treaty - almost without exception.
The general responded to my question with a pleasant, if benign, smile saying: "Well, once the president and commander-in-chief has spoken those military chiefs are obligated to follow that line."
I countered with, "I thought perhaps you'd say that. However, don't you agree then, that those high-ranking military types testifying as expert witnesses, who admittedly do not have complete freedom to express their personal opinions, could be in fact misleading the American politicians and the voting public?
"Indeed, it seems to me," I added, "that, in view of all the retired officers testifying AGAINST the treaty and those remaining in office, who testified FOR the Panama Canal treaty one must assume that something's fishy."
In conclusion I suggested to the high ranking military lawyer that perhaps we should seek legislation granting freedom of expression for the military professionals.
"I think not," he replied, "we can't have everybody be boss." His response was followed by a modest applause from the audience and no further pursuit of the question.
Maybe such a glaring double-standard makes sense to a lawyer, but he shouldn't be surprised, then, when both Church and Hansen seem to be chasing foreign butterflies in opposite directions.
And, worse luck, it also tends to make us flag-wavers fight among ourselves.
Choosing Up New Sides? . . .
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
December 22, 1979
A recent hearing at the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in Boise reminded me of an old, and often true, saying that "politics make strange bedfellows." Except that this time it was somehow different and sort of upside-down or topsy-turvy.
The hearing concerned the regulation or de-regulation of the trucking industry in Idaho - at least some of that industry. I testified at that strange and interesting hearing and the results may well affect you, personally. Unlike most hearings it was terribly, if wonderfully, unusual.
First, an ever-so-brief background. The PUC is proposing to change some of its rules affecting truckers who haul: (1) sand and gravel; (2) agricultural products; and (3) livestock.
In their own words "The commission is asserting that the public is better served by removing anti-competitive restraints from truckers entering these markets."
That is the PUC's position - believe it or not. Doggonit, it's not complete de-regulation. It's not opening up free entry into the market for just anybody who wants to work But it is something. Just think of it - no "work permits" required in three businesses. One might say, in this case at least, that the government wants less government. I know it's hard to believe.
But now get this: business is against it. At least big business is and the labor unions who testified at the hearing were. Strange bedfellows, both not wanting the government to get out and mind their own business. Egad.
It is also true that some small operators, too, are opposing this de-regulation. In fact one of the most vocal and articulate questioners at the hearing was Mrs. nelia Hartwig, a sand and gravel hauler from Lewiston, Idaho. She was colorful, blunt and to the point.
The regulated carriers, as they are called, all had their representatives and lobbyists at the hearing to see to it that the PUB didn't let "just anybody" get one of those permits to work, i.e., to haul, in competition, what they are permitted to haul. The labor unions, of course, were there testifying to the effect that if the market to haul was opened up to "just anybody" there'd be cutthroat competition and thereby chaos and the "little guy" would go broke.
Now that's interesting! The largest trucking companies in the business, including the Idaho Motor Transport Association coupled together with the labor unions, all singing in the choir: "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds." We're all trying to protect the little guy! - from too much competition. Ho. Ho. Ho.
Of the PUC's specialists on this trucking proposal, Jim Kincaid, she asked, "Just why did you single out the sand and gravel truckers to de-regulate?" To which Kincaid responded, "Because there is quite a lot of competition in that particular category."
Well now, without wanting to prejudice the gentleman bureaucrat, he is to be applauded for a direct and honest reply to the lady's query. But the implication of his answer is devastating as I pointed out in my own testimony later in the hearing.
Kincaid, although not saying it in so many words, seemed quite plainly to imply that there was not a lot of competition in the OTHER categories of severely regulated trucking and we're hell-bent to keep it that way. As you know the reason the competition is so very limited is that it's AGAINST the LAW for anyone else to compete in those regulated markets without a work-permit from the PUC bureau.
Many small truckers, too, fear de-regulation and so testified at the hearing, but nobody testifies for the free market in principle. Well, of course, I did and a couple others did including, oddly enough, an ex-member of the PUC staff, Jeff dunlap. He did a good job, too. But there's no paid lobbyists for the free market.
The Idaho PUC is to be congratulated. For whatever reasons - here's one place they want "less" government. and business, at least the biggies and those visible at the hearing, want "more" government.
Sort of man-bites-dog, eh? No? Well, what then? Consider something. All across America men of goodwill disagree on political problem-solving. It's the same in Idaho.
But an interesting slant on a solution might lie elsewhere than the old "politics makes strange bedfellows."
Indications are that a new twist may have taken over. Something, instead, like: "bedfellows make strange politics."
Somebody Has To Be Marginal
By Ralph Smeed
The Nampa Times and the Idaho Free Press
December 29, 1979
A recent editorial in the Press-Tribune papers which was super critical of the almost certain Chrysler Corporation "bail-out" by the government deserves some criticism.
First of all I, too, am critical of the whole plethora of Uncle Sap's bail-outs all around the world. From furnishing and financing over 90 percent of the technology of Soviet Union (see Dr. Anthony Sutton's scholarly study thereof for the Hoover Institute, Stanford University) to the attempted bail-outs of ever so many tin horn dictatorships all over the so-called third world, by which the U.S. State Department has tried to "buy" friendship.
Not only in foreign policy has this Alice-in-Wonderland ploy proved an illusion. It still is, even today, but here at home it is also virtually the stated policy of our federal government toward Amtrack, or Penn Central Railroad, Lockheed, New York City, etc. ad infinitum. This is not to mention the Small Business Administration and various other federal agencies most (not all) of whom require proof of bad credit risk in order to get government money.
More, and more people scramble to get under the government spigot with their cups and saucers; more lately with their buckets and barrels.
It's even gained a certain respectability. Witness how even the semantics have changed: loans are now grants and grants are soon to become elevated by college courses in grantsmanship. This is not to mention food stamps for college students and perfectly able-bodied members of a labor union on strike.
During last winter's bitter cold those same labor unions kept families shivering and made factories who needed fuel shut down for want of coal already mined and piled up above ground - frozen - while they "negotiated" higher prices. Innocent third parties virtually held hostage right here in America while the principle parties in the strike argued who was the shaftee and who the shaftor. (And we wonder where the Arab fanatics got the idea of holding innocent third parties in hostage.)
What's all this to do with the Chrysler editorial? Well, aside from the "plenty of precedents" mentioned, the otherwise pretty good editorial seemed to say we're somehow better off now that the Cords, the Hupmobiles, Studebakers, etc. were "allowed" to go broke and are not now "crowding our highways."
Let me suggest that editorialists, both conservative and liberal, all across the nation have fallen into the same trap, i.e., that it's somehow competitive justice for Chrysler to go under (since they have no one to hold hostage in order to "bargain".)
They cite, Ford, General Motors and American Motors who are still going. Two and "one-half" companies out of how many 30 years ago? Ye gods, why blame Chrysler's management AT ALL along side of the so-called management of the U.S. Government? Chrysler is better managed by far.
What the editorialists and pundits seem to miss is that in order for a competitive market economy to function there MUST be what economists call marginal producers and free entry into the market. Those entrepeneurs who operate on the fringe of the marketplace are the ones who keep it honest - not the big wealthy operators in the lead at the time.
It is THESE producers who are by their very nature least able to sustain outside interference inthe form of politician's vote-buying gimmicks - those made especially to please the loud mouth hippies, eco-nuts, Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda collectivists.
It is not the Russian collectivists we should fear. It is rather the well-meaning editorialists, well-meaning bureaucrats and self-serving populist politicians operating almost OBLIVIOUS to both Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
It is THESE idealogues who escape the teachers, preachers,college professors,lawyers and lawmaker's attention today.
If the Chambers of Commerce and business and professional tycoons were smart they'd try "buying" some friendship among that handful of opinion molders who know the difference between LETTING someone go broke and FORCING someone to go broke. |
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The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy
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