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Taking Vo-Ed Out of the Schools

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 4, 1981

The Idaho Legislature is about to meet again in just a few days. Most members are fearful of finding enough places to "cut government spending" in order to comply with that current political mood all across the country.

Since almost 75 percent of the state's budget goes for education and the political witch-doctors are locked into a pitched battle with the academic witch-doctors each wringing their hands hoping nobody will notice what's been taking place, we're got problems.

Do you want to know why? Okay, we could begin by looking to see if "the emperor indeed was wearing any clothes." For example, I suggested recently to one of the state's big shots on the board of education that they use the state's financial dilemma as a good and opportune reason to abandon their vast vocational education complex.

"Egad, Ralph," I was gold, "vo-ed is the most popular department we have. We'd be tarred and feathered if we even cut it back a little. And besides, who would teach the young people how to make a living?"

Aside from the "popularity contest" reason for deciding how to run education (Thomas Jefferson's ideas was to teach them the three Rs) I responded that I thought qualified educators said liberal arts was the most important part of education.

"That's quite true," came the reply, "but the parents and students don't agree." Well, well, now that's interesting indeed. If the parents and students are to decide then why does the government claim that "public" education must be compulsory?

Of course there is no rational response to such a question. Except the usual one like: "No one is in favor of the free market - for ANYTHING." But some would, perhaps many would, if the schools would feature exciting courses in it and hire exciting teachers to teach it. Ah ha, that'd be the day. If they hired exciting teachers to teach economics they'd have to teach about freedom and the free market. if they did this - goshamighty - why they'd find themselves in the awkward position of having to question government's compulsory education. Wow, that'd be pretty risky. Wouldn't it?

Well, maybe, but my big shot friend in the government's education bureaucracy did pose at least one good question about vocational education - namely, who would teach "vo-ed" and how would it get financed?

I suggested that a far better way, and a perfectly voluntary one, was on-the-job-training. That's a far better way to teach it anyway and it could quite adequately be financed by abandoning the archaic and asinine idea called the "minimum wage law."

the idea that anyone can pass a law and raise wages just must be material for "One Flew Over the cuckoo's Nest." Unless, of course, you think the taxpayers should continue to subsidize big business' "need" for skilled workers.

Educators are divided on this issue, but they tend to love authors and like to quote authorities, so if you'll forgive me I'd like to quote a famous social scientist and educator, the late Dr. Paul Goodman in his book, "Compulsory Mis-education." He may well have the key to solving one of Idaho's biggest budget problems, i.e., education - "free" and compulsory.

Goodman, as many educators do, loves brains. He cites no less a brain truster than the late, great genius, Albert Einstein:

"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction has not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry for this delicate little plant stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake," said the great scientist, "to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty."

There you have it, folks. You don't have to read Goodman's whole book, "Compulsory Mis-education," unless you want to. Just consider the beautiful common sense of that great thinker, Einstein.

Except, perhaps, for one reason. The educators and the legislators, no matter how sincere and conscientious they no doubt want to be, have only one tool to solve their problem - politics.

Unfortunately, the great scientist failed to tell us the connection between politics and common sense.

Then again, maybe he didn't fail. Maybe there isn't any connection.

Freedom Over Wall?

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 11, 1981

Some years ago I spent several days in West Berlin. It was there I learned something first hand about the so-called "dumb Polacks." (Believe me, we seed some similarly "dumb" Americans).

The Amzoo Hotel where I was staying is situated right in the heart of the city. One day I looked outside and the whole downtown area had been brought to a screeching halt by a giant swarm of students from the the mammoth University of Berlin. The streets were wall-to-wall mob -with thousands and thousands of students.

They were demanding that the government do something about the news media. Among other things, "It was horribly slanted," they said, "toward the capitalist point of view."

The streets were literally swarming with uniformed cops, squads of mounted cars with high-powered water-cannon "shooting" at point blank range in an effort to disperse the mob so auto traffic could flow.

A few days prior to this the students had inflicted about $20,000 damage to a newspaper's new skyscraper building. It had been erected within only a few yards of the infamous Berlin Wall with the explicit and public intention of its owners to give an "Up yours!" gesture to the Communists.

This whole scenario unfolded in only a few minutes almost as if it had been planned for my specific benefit. It had not, of course, but the feeling was certainly dramatic and sort of scary.

I had been in the midst of a political mob rally once, years before, in downtown Lima, Peru. It too made me a little uneasy, but it was peanuts compared to this one.

For my part it was especially exciting, since I had spent the day before touring all over Communist East Berlin. One didn't need to be an intellectual giant to notice the gray, drab pallor that hung over both the atmosphere and the people's faces in East Berlin.

I know it sounds like I'm red-baiting to mention this in contrast to the super-productive marketplace atmosphere of West Berlin together with the bright and happy expression on people's faces, but it's true. The contrast was striking to anyone caring to look.

About 30 minutes later I was out on the street and the center of attraction in a sidewalk debate, shoulder to shoulder with a dozen or so of the student demonstrators.

Now then, in such a situation it is not difficult to be the center of attraction. Foreigners can be spotted a mile away and I must admit the students were hot-to-trot at the prospect of controversy and, to my surprise, fairly friendly.

"How come you students don't demonstrate against the Communists took," I asked, "after all wasn't it they who built the wall - not the capitalists?"

"Oh, we do," came the reply, "we dug tunnels. We dug lots of tunnels under the wall in protest to it."

That struck me as awfully one-sided, so I said, "That's what we Americans call one rabbit versus one horse." In other words, "You play youthful pranks on the Communists in moderate protest to the Reds. But to make your gesture against those you call capitalists, in the free world, you bring the huge city of Berlin to a complete standstill. You coerce innocent third parties and get worldwide press."

To my almost complete amazement the admitted socialist leader of the student group agreed that I did indeed have a point, "... sort of," he said.

But an older student, nearby, popped up: "Ah, that's no point at all. And besides, there's just as much freedom on the other side of the wall as there is on this side."

Comes now the Polack. A small fellow, in his 30s, an obvious blue-collar worker who'd been quietly taking in our little 20 to 30 minute debate. He was absolutely outraged. "Why you unmitigated jackass (not an exact translation). I was born in Poland, on the other wide of that wall. I've been trying for 12 years to get in there to visit my mother and those S.O.B.'s won't let me. Don't give me that crap about freedom."

Well the police had already broken up our little gathering twice and here they came again, probably just in time or my new found Polish pal would have "straightened out" my student antagonist - flat. But it wasn't before I had a chance to ask two of the student economic majors if they had studies any of four famous "capitalist" professors (I named them, of course), three of which were German. They'd heard of only one, but had never read his books.

I took this great little Polack, with one of the students, to my hotel for supper. The German ale was great, but not half so great as my freedom-loving Polish friend. In fact we nearly got smashed trying to decide whether he should have been president of Berlin University or the academic dean.

I never learned whether my friend ever got in to see his mother (he was still trying, years later), but I'll guarantee you one thing. If the Russians do invade Poland, and if he did get in, they'll never get him out - alive.

Oh, Lord, It's Hard To Be Humble

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 18, 1981

Last Sunday's editorial page in this newspaper contained five separate commentaries, in part - all bad, including my own. About each, and in no particular order of importance, a few observations.

Given that a paramount function of editorial page commentary is almost always criticism of somebody else somewhere else I thought that to internalize it a bit might be fun and, who knows, maybe, even slightly useful.

To begin with the editorial itself was going fine on the matter of "internal bickering" which the editor claimed had come to dominate the sheriff's office "like the plague." Hopefully, the editor opined, the new sheriff may "adopt a new demeanor of professionalism for the office."

So far so good until the editor decided to tone it down, i.e., it's called "trying to suck and blow in the same breath." A good figure of speech, but he loused it up with: "Men will disagree, and the right to disagree is the handmaiden of democracy." Egad. WHAT democracy?

One supposes the editor, as so many of his ilk all across the country, would have us say: "I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the DEMOCRACY for which it stands ..." Disgusting, isn't it? Thank Heaven we don't have to "pledge allegiance" to newspaper editors. (I do, of course, but you don't.) If you agree with me write him the nasty letter to the editor he so richly deserves.

Next comes my colleague Erwin Schwiebert whose super-interventionist columns can almost always be counted upon to be consistent - all bad - wrote a good one for a change, i.e., he's not consistent, after all. Erwin, you know, just "loves" government. Yea though he walks through the valley of the shadow of the College of Idaho, he doesn't "deliver us from evil." Instead he usually urges more government. But this time he didn't. He fooled me.

Oh, he bragged on the legislators for becoming "more efficient" than they were when he was a member there, but then he switched (I can't believe it, myself) he concluded: "However, it hasn't seemed to help in making sessions shorter." One might reason therefrom that Erwin actually wanted shorter sessions.

He followed that with: "How come we have such perfection of means and so much confusion of aims?" And just when I was about to conclude that I had him figured out he asked that absolutely delightful question. It just goes to show you that, super-nice guy that he is, Schweibert plainly just can't be depended upon - to be bad, consistently.

Then there's another one of my colleagues and super-nice guy on the editorial page, Phil Batt, or, as the newspaper by-line labels his column: "By Lt. Gov. Phil Batt." One guesses that that is how the Press-Tribune's editor assumes Batt's name will appear on the ballot, come next election, when the popular Republican runs for governor. (He is, you know, and I'll probably vote for him, too).

But Phil is going to have to go some to push Schweibert out of his self-appointed, or, if you like, self-annointed position of leader of the "militant middle." But Phil's Jan. 11 column of buttering up the girls (read, women) should stand him in good stead for the distaff vote. It may entirely push Schweibert out of the middle. Get his on ERA; "An employer should be able to hire a preponderance of male help if the job consists of frequent lifting of heavy objects."

Wow, what our aspiring politicians won't do to buy a few votes. Ye gods! "An employer should be able..." It's enough to make a grown man cry. Who the heck told Phil that it's any of his damn business who an employer hires - male or female? Unless, of course, he wants to play some sort of god.

Phil's a competent politician, and he'd make a good governor. But he's not THAT good, nor that competent.

Comes now my colleague-columnist Nathaniel Pierce, presiding priest of Nampa's Grace Episcopal Church (speaking of "playing God").

His title is the "Reverend" Pierce, or, more often "Father" Pierce. Now then, just why the newspaper doesn't afford Father Pierce a similar by-line courtesy to the one they accord columnist "Lt. Gov." Phil Batt isn't clear. (Unless they, like Schweibert, secretly "worship" politics as a No. 2 religion? Many do, you know. And it's getting worse, not better.)

But then, "Nat," as he's affectionately called by those of us who don't hate his intellectual guts, is not running for office.

And thank heaven for at least that one favor, i.e., Pierce isn't in politics. Still, maybe he's worse - he's in the pulpit. And, forgive me, twice on Sunday. If one considers the editorial page a "pulpit," anyway.

But Nat can see no Soviet Russian threat at all. At least he never mentions one. Likening a U.S. military draft registration to registering guns, he seems to think the rest of us are "nuts" where public policy is concerned. Fortunately or unfortunately, and not only in the latter case, he often makes just enough sense to be infuriating; sometimes downright embarrassing.

And last but not least, columnist Smeed's piece, on the Polacks was so near to the truth, righteousness, justice, goodness and mercy one could only marvel at its lack of humility.

But, then too, it's indeed hard to be humble when you're great.

Okay, Let's Talk about Phairness

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 25, 1981

Some time ago an article appeared in the New York-based Idaho Statesman headlined: "Smeed Plans to Publish Circular to Lash 'Liberal Bias" of Media." It announced, if somewhat prematurely, my intention to publish PHAIR Ink, Inc. I'm vindicated already. Here's why.

The article was written by Rod Gramer much briefer, but with a reasonable similarity of emphasis as the one I gave him during our telephone interview. The word PHAIR is an acronym for "Propaganda, Harassment, Accuracy in Reporting." The news item caused a small, but intense, flurry of irritation in both a North Idaho and in a Pocatello newspaper. One of my criticisms the above article quoted was, "The press criticizes everybody except its own members."

Well, Boise's TV Channel 7 not only proves this, but goes one step further and makes "news" of muckraker columnist Jack Anderson's innuendo attack on Idaho's newly elected U.S. senator, Steve Symms.

Anderson has been noted before as a close friend of Idaho's former Sen. Frank Church and, one supposes, he felt he had to take a few pot shots at Symms, the man who just recently put his fellow liberal out of business.

I fault Channel 7's news director Sal Celeski more than I do the acerbic Anderson. It's one thing to have asinine accusations everywhere about us these days, but to make his kind of innuendo "news" sounds like Celeski is at best hard up for news or, at worst, well, low class. The column's headline read: "Symms Odds-on Favorite for (nation's) Worst Senator."

In it Anderson claims Symms' conduct in 1978 convening a meeting, closed to the press, was an act of desperation. The columnist's only point seemed to be saying Symms' "secret" guest speaker was a representative of Libya's left-wing dictator, Colonel Khadafy. It was somehow a bad idea because, "Symms was from a potato producing state and hence had nothing in common with the dictatorial regime in far away Libya." Anderson failed to note the tremendous amount of Idaho wheat which Symms was trying to help sell for Idaho farmers.

Anderson added another "reason" for the Idaho congressman's "unfitness to serve," i.e., that Texas tycoon, Bunker Hunt, was somehow sinister when he tried to buy silver with the paper money the government was foisting off onto him and the American public.

Hunt, according to Anderson, "nearly wrecked the silver market a year ago with his financial manipulations." According to my Idaho silver sources: "that's a damn lie and Anderson knows it if he took ever a superficial look into the matter." I quite agree.

Anderson's convoluted column (Lewiston Morning Tribune, Jan. 18, 1981) goes on: "In 1979 Symms co-sponsored a measure that would have forced the government to stock-pile silver - a move that would have sent silver prices skyrocketing at a time when Hunt was the biggest holder of silver in the country.

"Symms himself bought silver before introducing the legislation. He defends it on the ground that it would benefit his Idaho silver-mining constituents."

If indeed that was Symms' main defense (which I doubt), he's an even bigger jackass than Anderson claims. Symms and I both bought silver before the legislation was introduced - about five or six years before. And before Symms had ever met Bunker Hunt, by the way.

Anytime your government DUMPS its silver hoard in order to "punish" silver speculators - something's rotten. And not in Denmark, either. If the Idaho politician and I had had our wits about us (i.e., a few more "Bunker Hunt" guts) we'd both have made a cool million. Any fool could see it coming - imagine the government melting its own silver coins. It was insane. They shouldn't have needed a law to stop them. But the politicians need paper money and silver gets in their way.

And Symms' history was indeed "unsavory" (Anderson's word), since he tried to stop the government from pooping away its gold hoard, too. Unfortunetly, for you and me, he was just partially successful. He could only get a law forcing those braying jackasses in Washington to mint into medallions a small percentage of the gold that they STILL dump.

He tried to get them to mint gold dollars instead, but took the medallion scheme as a sickly compromise so that the "little guy," too, could at least buy some gold, along with the tycoons, to protect himself against the government's dog-eat-dog counterfeit paper money.

And speaking of dogs - Anderson must have a pet one that's sick to its stomach. This dog must have found the rest of the columnist's Jan. 18 manuscript and then threw up on it just before it was mailed to Anderson's publisher. Because THAT is exactly what the rest of the muckraker's column looked like.

Too bad! Channel 7's Celeski and Company must have thought it looked like "news."

Healthy Skepticism Not Enough

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 1, 1981

Not very long ago the Idaho Press-Tribune criticized the lawyers because they did not "openly" condemn their colleagues when one of them did something bad.

Judging from the legal profession's general public image, one supposes that'd be quite often, their so-called public "rating" hovering somewhere near bumper-to[bumper with used-car salesmen and reporters.

I don't know that either profession is quite that bad. In fact one of the all-time best college professors, at whose feet I ever had the profound pleasure to sit and learn, was fond of comparing his profession with used car salesmen. He concluded it was easier for a professor to hoodwink his "customers" than it was for a car salesman to hoodwink his, since he will at least let you kick the tires.
Given the general state of latter-day learning in America (e.g., the three R's and the study of economics), I'd guess the car salesmen were the safest bet.

But the Press-Tribune did indeed have a good point. They seemed to think their "people's right to know" should include making the lawyer's bar association make public the chastisement of their colleague's bad business conduct. As it is now, if and when the law clubbers do scold one of their fellows, it is all done in secret.

I thought the editorial made quite a good point, but the chairman of the disciplinary board of the Idaho State Bar Association, Dean Miller, Esq., of Caldwell, thought otherwise. In fact, he took the editor severely to task in the latter's letter to the editor column saying pretty much what you'd expect to hear in defense of lawyers. Some defense is made necessary by their government license protection, hence a free market's competition is precluded.

But he made one point that I thought was an excellent one and, in my view, put the legal eagles back up there on the wing again - at least for the moment if not for the mischief. While one supposes Miller almost had to admit to the old "cover up," of sorts, he came out swinging with an accusation of his own at the news media profession. (Neither lawyers nor editors are the world's oldest profession, yet, so take heart.)

The lawyer's advocate challenged that even if the legal profession did do poorly in chastising their fellow comrades "openly and publicly," (he admitted absolutely nothing, by the way) then the news media hardly criticized their own comrades at all. Indeed, they didn't even have a kangaroo - let alone a kangaroo court. Except, at least by inference, to jump on others or presumably to pocket their own perversions in the pouch of obscurity. Many things are just not newsworthy, remember? Ho, Ho, Ho.

Well, in any event, I thought that both spokesmen made some good points, but the bottom line still remains, i.e., seldom can anyone hurt you much unless and until you trust them. It's here that a healthy skepticism, indeed - more - a super healthy skepticism becomes more and more to be desired in all walks of life. For example - anybody for some more skepticism in politics?

And speaking of politics, it gets forever harder and harder to tell whether the lawyers or the news media are making the politicians harder to trust.

And, too, since the politicians have now wormed their way so deep into the automobile business - remember Chrysler's bailout - along with the acquiescence of most of the lawyers, the media, the educators and all too many used car dealers, by the way, we've just about had it.

I had some hopes maybe we might trust the college professors. But now that Mrs. Janet Hay, president of the Idaho Board of Education, is requesting another 2 percent increase on the sales tax, I'm afraid a healthy skepticism is not enough.

What I'm afraid of is that neither she nor they will let us "kick the tires" before we buy their old used "horse and buggy."

The Bell Tolls for Jarboe's G.O.P. Supporter

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 8, 1981

My phone has been ringing off the hook. What happened? Well, you may remember I supported a Democrat last November for the Idaho State Senator. It was Bob Jarboe, my next-door neighbor.

Some explanation may be in order because what happened was sort of interesting and, in a way, kind of fun. This is, of course, no big surprise in ehavily Republican Canyon County.

The fun has been the reactions since then. Many of my conservative GOP friends breathed a sigh of relief when the Democrats lost in November. But last week Jarboe was again in the headlines as he was considered lead contender for the Idaho State Democrat Party's executive director. This is what caused my phone to "ring off the hook," to give me particular hell.

The comments, mostly in a spirit of relatively good humor, went something like: "Ahah! I told you so, Ralph, Jarboe's true colors finally came out." Others said, "Hey Ralph, what happened to this big conservative you were pushing for the state Senate last November?"

There were, of course, some expressions of mere sadness at another seemingly nice young man reverting to a "life of crime." At least that's what Robert LeFevre calls politics. He's the former president of Rampart College and presently one of the country's leading theoretical libertarians. He made the statement to me back in 1972 when I told him that our friend Steve Symms had been elected to Congress. "What's he going to do," asked LeFevre, "use the power of government to reduce the power of government?" (I'm still flinching.)

But I'm still glad I supported Symms back in 1972. I don't agree 100 percent with everything he's done, or not done. In many ways I'm now his severest critic. (He's no Greek god, you know. They only act that way because people tend to "worship" politics. And, besides, what's the use of having power unless you abuse it?)

And I'm glad I supported Jarboe back in 1980. Why? Because he seemed to be advocating dramatically less government. I freely admit to "he seemed to be ..." because we will never know how he would have voted. And what may be more important, how he would have used his influence as a state senator.

I admit, also, to a certain disappointment as he will probably take the Democrat Party's head job. After all, I'm told it'll probably pay around $30,000 per year.

But I'm not disappointed for the usual reasons. I'll list a few for you.

(1) I was not particularly against Abrahams. I was FOR less government. Still am. (Abrahams is a friendly person, just not a free market one.)

(2) What do the Republicans expect Jarboe to do after losing? Slash his wrists?

(3) Also I never ever said he was "conservative." I said I thought he was for expanding individual freedom of choice. I admit the Democrats have a miserable record in this regard, but - so do the Republicans. They're slightly better I admit, but there's no evidence the G.O.P. has a MONOPOLY on freedom, especially when it comes to giving it to others.

(4) Jarboe was born into a Democrat family, went to the government's compulsory school system (mostly Democrat, certainly politically liberal). He then attended the College of Idaho, whose only claim to "conservative" must be a burning desire to maintain the "liberal" status-quo. Good goshamighty. What do Canyon County GOPers expect? They dump huge sums of money, including their taxes, into most all the institutions of which Jarboe is an intellectual "product."

(5) Again, what do they expect? Jarboe, after offering what he saw apparently for the first time two or three years ago, namely, a pitifully few free market, private ownership and limited government ideas, offered them up to Canyon County voters. They rejected them, and him. At least they rejected his carrying them under the Democrat banner.

(6) So Jarboe crawled, after the election, back in under the covers, i.e., Democrat covers, where he thinks he's likely to be appreciated (for $30,000, yet?).

It's admittedly a quandry and a dilemma - politics. But while I do think the GOP has a better record, at least a lot less socialistic, than the Democrats, we'd best not forget something.

If it had been left to the regular Idaho Republican Party back in 1972 their hero and now U.S. Sen. Steve Symms would never have gotten off the ground.

Hopefully they (and he?) won't push their newly discovered GOP popularity and exclusiveness - too far.

Oh To Be "Commissar of the News Media"

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 15, 1981

After all these years of defending my friend, political hero and now U.S. Senator Steve Symms, I have learned to be somewhat calloused at criticism. In particular - political criticism.

But now that that political maverick has become a member of the "most exclusive club in the world," my longtime loyalty may begin to pay off. How? Well, I intend to ask my friend for the job of Commisar of the News Media.

My first new regulation will be to limit publication of news to only one day per week. Radio, television and newspapers will, if I'm appointed, only disseminate news on Sunday. Now that the Moral Majority is in power everybody will be in church on Sunday hence the "news," which is almost always bad, won't do anywhere near so much harm. I have consulted my friends about it and both of them think it's a delightful idea.

But there's another more serious aspect of all this, namely, less "news" will allow more room for the columnists and commentators to explain what their friends mean.

As it is now Walter Cronkite comes on right after President Reagan's speech with something like: "Now then, ladies and gentlemen, what did the president really say? With us today are news groupies Barbara Liverlip and Paul Fluke of the BSS network to tell us."

And so it goes with Walter, Barbara, and Paul, and, forgive me, other top flight local, commentators. I mean, for example, especially FAther Pierce and Saintly Ralph, paragons of local virtue as seen by the great and ever-so-perceptive Press-Tribune, both are ever-so-limited in space to explain what they have to say about their politician pals.

Just imagine how nice and educational too, by the way, it would be if Pierce and Smeed were not limited by all that miles and miles of crap that comes into news offices on the UPI and AP wire services. Trivia, trivia, trivia. Twenty-four hours a day the teletype grinds it out, page after page, after page, day in, day out.

It's no wonder that there are so many ads in the newspapers. There is so much news that it takes lots of ads to separate the news stories, usually furnished by the politician's news staff telling the voters they shouldn't believe the ads.

The greedy capitalists dominate the newspapers and the air waves, you know, urging people not to save but to spend, spend, spend. We simply must have some limit on the news. there simply must be more room for us columnists to explain things for you the gentle reader, listener and viewer. After all a six pack and a can of peanuts will only last so long and there isn't much explanation in sports except, perhaps Howard Coe-sell.

All of which brings me back to my original point in having Symms get me appointed Commisar so there will be more room to explain the above spend, spend, spend idea so insufferably and endlessly promoted by both the media and (repeat, and) by the greedy capitalists. In fact it seems to have invaded Symms' heretofore high falutin' principles of limiting government which I've been defending all these years.

Surprisingly, almost his first act as a new U.S. senator was to vote to raise the debt-limit ceiling on the national debt for his hero President Reagan.

After screaming to the high Heavens against eight years of such votes while he was our congressman - now this. You see why I need more space to defend Sen. Symms, who's still my hero.

Requiring even more space is another fact. After accusing President Ford of "sniffing glue" when the late liberal Nelson Rockefeller was chosen by Ford to be his vice-presidential running mate, Symms, last month, hired Idaho's No. 1 Rockefeller fan, Oriette Sinclair, to manage his Twin Falls office.

The former GOP National Committeewoman is a long-time liberal pal of former Idaho Congressman and super-liberal Orval Hansen. Symms' office explains that, "she works super-hard for all Republicans." This doesn't include, of course, Idaho's other conservative congressman, George Hansen. Sinclair worked unsuccessfully, but super hard, to defeat and replace him with super-liberal Orval, who campaigned for Church last October. Egad.

Requiring quite a bit of space, too, is the fact Symms, some years ago, hired two female aides for his "Insane City," D.C. office. They were enthusiastic supporters of then U.S. Sen. Frank Church. While one was there I guess she did a good job as press aide.
I say "I guess," because liberals usually write well. Some even change their minds. Maybe this one did. Maybe Oriette did. Certainly Symms did on raising the debt-ceiling.

I'm sure there must be room for a good explanation. Even one for what happens to a politician's reasoning when he gets Potomac Fever. The trouble is simply that our space to explain gets too limited. But some explanation is increasing - at least in the New York-based Idaho Statesman.

They called Symms' vote to raise the debt-ceiling the same as they called Frank Church's votes to raise it - "an act of statesmanship."

Laws Shouldn't Be Always Necessary

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 22, 1981

One of the few "heroes" most libertarians hold in high esteem is the late Albert Jay Nock, a literary giant and author of many books, essays and magazine articles.

In fact one of his most famous books "Our Enemy the State" was published in Caldwell by Caxton Printers and if you haven't read it you're unnecessarily denying yourself of some fine reasoning on human affairs and behavior.

But one of Nock's greatest observations is also one of his simplest. Its essence is: "When it's all boiled down, the main difference between civilized man and the barbarians is good taste and manners."

I'd like to expand on that just a little bit in this day and age of solving every problem with: "there oughtta be a law" which, quite obviously, isn't working very well any more. Oh sure, our enforcement isn't much either. In fact our courts often seem to have more sympathy for the murderer than for the victim. But in addition to that the rest of us too often seem to have almost abandoned our own good taste and manners and the moral support they require.

For example, how long has it been since you've been in a fairly nice restaurant or cafe where some clown sits down at a dinner table and leaves his hat on? Or worse yet, wears it while seated across from his lady? Egad! Unfortunately, one often notices this to be a habit of many cowboys whose manners, to their everlasting credit, at least where women are concerned, are often somewhat elevated above the norm. Or, at least they used to be.

What happened? Well, one can easily lose one's hat to a thief. But in a small community like ours such is not often the case. And then, of course, if one had a $100 Stetson one could always lay it in a nearby seat or chair if he didn't trust the other customers. Many wear their hat as if to make one wonder if they also wear it to bed. It's almost as if their hat is a kind of "red badge of courage." Maybe they're just asserting their "right to belong."

In any event whether it's still a mark of good breeding or not, and if my memory serves, it was once a genteel custom to lift one's hat as a simple act of courtesy. It grew out of medieval custom of removing one's helmet as evidence of friendly intent, just as one would lay down his sword or rifle.

And it was not all that long ago when it was considered quite as boorish in England as it was in this country to wear one's hat in the house. At least that's according to "The Standard Reference Work" of the Standard Education Society. For whatever their opinion is worth - I looked it up.

The matter of "indifference to custom" is certainly no one else's business if one lives alone, but when others nearby are to be considered it would surely seem that good taste and manners could or should play a significant role before we run to "City Hall" to pass a law, i.e., to tell others how to live.

Since the matter of hat courtesy has long been of interest to me (not at all that my own lousy manners have reached lofty heights), I tried the Encyclopedia Americana for some insight on the related matter of etiquette.

Here's what they offered: "Social etiquette consists in so many small observances that a tolerable familiarity with it can be acquired only by a considerable intercourse with a polite society.

The matter of always "passing laws" having about run its course should press us to pursue other means toward a much needed and improved civil behavior. Now then, admittedly courtesy, good taste and manners such as hat etiquette may be no panacea for all that ails us these days, but consider some sidelights to this little "homily" I found further along in the encyclopedia regarding etiquette and manners.

"Quickness of sympathy and a certain fineness of observation are more needed for skill in this sphere, than mere power of intellect." (So there's still hope.)

But the real "intellectual zinger" came in the next paragraph: "The term is derived from the French word 'etiquette' - originally a slip of paper affixed to a packet to indicate its contents."

Now then, I read "packet to mean a man's hat, in this case, and if its "content" doesn't include enough BRAINS then we can't be too surprised if somebody screams the all too familiar "there oughtta be a law." And "City Hall" is ready "to serve," again. In which case - egad!

Freedom to Work Is Issue

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 3, 1981

The ever-so-controversial issue called the right-to-work (RTW) law got an unexpected shot, but not in the arm, recently from U.S. Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho. He said it very well might defeat Republicans at the next election. Therefore they should defeat the current bill. How's that for the pragmatics of principle?

Now then, McClure's coming out against RTW makes about the same amount of "waves" as his colleague and junior senator Steve Symms' recent vote to raise the ceiling on the national debt. This is especially so after Symms' nearly evangelistic crusade against such an act during his eight years as a congressman.

Let me hasten to add, before I'm descended upon by hordes of Symms-groupies, that I think neither he nor McClure have "sold out" to the forces of evil. At least not unless one sees as "evil" politics-as-usual like it is currently practiced by both parties.

I know both these men as well if not better than almost anybody in the state and neither of them are sellout artists. Each is a sincere, honest, flag-waving, patriotic, well-meaning and quite intelligent conservative. Furthermore they are usually right (pun intended).

Unfortunately, neither is libertarian.

Understandably, but unfortunately, both are almost completely surrounded by knee-jerk conservatives and conservative thinkers. To his credit I must say "almost," since one of McClure's top aides did, at one time, have excellent free market (read, libertarian) credentials.
But leave it to conservatives to excel when the spirit of freedom threatens the establishment, especially if they are "intelligent" conservatives. Again, and to his everlasting credit, the senior senator usually tries to excel with a touch of class.

Still, it was more than class that was needed when McClure, followed by his well-meaning lawyer friend, Dennis Olsen, both lambasted RTW efforts in the present Idaho Legislature.

Olsen, also a super-sincere, if typically paternalistic, conservative, is state chairman of the GOP. Unfortunately his sincerity may not suffice to convince the growing sentiment for freedom, especially among the handful of younger members of the Republican State Central Committee. He gavelled down as out of order the dissenters who favored the RTW House Bill 6, which, by the way, carried the House 49 to 21 last week.

Both McClure and Olsen have sincere fears that the horribly misunderstood issue will make the labor unions "mad" in the next election, thus causing them to spend enough money to defeat the GOP, now a majority in the Legislature. It is something of a "Catch-22" dilemma.

The big corporation lobbyists have, of course, taken their usual status-quo position of "don't rock the boat." They're getting along fine, hence they use their considerable influence on McClure and the confused GOPers to "hold the line" on the age-old fight between labor and management. To the extent this is true, (and there is some small truth in it) said fight is almost always between "big" labor and "big" management. The small businessman and the individual worker, both pawns caught up in the big political powerbrokers' struggle, get the shaft.

But the real fight, emotional and intense though it certainly is and has been for generations, is NOT between labor and management. It is rather between two groups of workers, i.d., the union group that is "in" and wants to say in - as opposed to the other group who is out and wants "in."

In other words, those workers who have the jobs and who have "organized" a union quite understandably want to keep those jobs. Unfortunately, it is also understandable for those workers who are out of a job and are, generally speaking, willing to do more work or do it for less pay in order to get one of those jobs.

As a matter of fact, this conflict of interest would be so very clear and understandable, were it not for the multi-million dollar "educational" organizations who work feverishly to make it obscure.

But the issue should be called freedom to work. And those RTW folks who get sore when union members shout "freedom to work - yeah, but for less pay," should not get sore. That's the only moral way to gain entry into any market, i.e., to offer something at a lower price or better. Like the Japanese worker got into the auto busines. He gets $6 per hour while U.S. workers get $20 per hour. Note, too, Japan's worker thinks his boss is doing him a favor. It's true, and it cannot be otherwise, because 2+2 equals 2, not 22.

The question should be, rather: Can either the labor unions or the politicians or the Republican Party raise the American worker's income?

Of course they cannot because they don't understand a free market, hence we don't have one, because of fear. And their past history of fear insists they cannot change - so the least they could do is to get their multi-million dollar so-called "educators" out of the way.

They'd best hurry, too, before Japan's and Germany's "on the job training" puts us all out of business.

Hold Their Feet to the Fire

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 8, 1981

Recently this column was somewhat critical of Sen. James McClure for his public statement calling for defeat of the then currently proposed right-to-work (RTW) bill. The following week it was defeated.

The several phone calls I received regarding my criticism of McClure's criticism were all, repeat all, critical of my position. So, as politicians are wont to do, please let me explain my "vote."

First of all I should like to say that not only is Jim a close personal and long-time political compatriot of mine, but I still like and respect him - even when he's wrong. Furthermore it is frequently overlooked that had he not chosen to come out firing "both barrels" in the recent Church versus Symms Senate race our mutual friend Steve would be back on the farm picking apples. All of which is not to say that McClure has not been a better and a more effective politician ) read, statesman) since Symms 1972 arrival in Washington, D.C., he has. I mean, he's also human.

But having said this about two of my best political friends, I'll hasten to add that each receives tremendous pressures - philosophical, political, and pragmatic. However, if somebody doesn't attempt to "hold their feet to the fire" they are virtually a cinch to move toward more and more government. It is in the nature of today's politics - and it's getting worse, not better.

Also, the Republican National Committee (RNC) will seldom be "in there" fighting for freedom and less government. So, somebody must. And if you and I don't work overtime we'll lose what little we've gained if, indeed, we've gained anything but a new label on the rhetoric. Only time will tell.

Meantime, let me give you an example of what McClure, the state and the national Republicans, the RTW supporters and others could and should be saying about what I like to call "the pragmatics of principle." Somehow their idea of pragmatics, or tactics, too often translates into something more akin to "let's give in" this time and "let's fight" someday later when we have nearly a cinch to win.

Admittedly this tactic has a point. But "to win" what? Well, they mean get 51 percent of the vote, i.e., the 49 percent can go to hell, one supposes.

However, what about the idea of compulsory unionism? What about the idea of who actually owns the job? What about the freedom aspects of ruling out free entry into the job market? What about the long-term social aspects versus the short term? If the lawyers and the doctors are allowed to "license" to keep their competitors out - why not allow the laborer to keep his or her competitor out?

Well, neither my friend McClure nor the RNC nor, even, state chairman of the Idaho GOP, Dennis Olsen, took the trouble to ask - publicly. This is why ideas atrophy. Why they become out of date, if not completely discredited. Politicians have been told not to try to "educate," especially during a campaign. I say, hogwash! If our story, i.e., our ideas, won't stand honest examination in fair debate, then we deserve to lose.

"We fight against a stacked deck," or so some politicos say. "They have emotion on their side. All we have is facts." Ho, Ho! Is that so? Well, then, let's get us some more emotion. How?

Well, here's one way. They could use the liberal's own biggest gun - racism. If you don't agree with this type of liberal and if he can't counter your argument any other way, chances are good he'll call you some sort of racist.

If he or she does, you could recount the nationally famous black economist, Dr. Walter Williams, who was considered for head of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors.

"Even a cursory review of the labor movement in the U.S. demonstrates how organized labor, with but few exceptions, sought to exclude Negroes and other minorities from many job markets. Exclusionary devices have ranged from union charter provisions that restrict membership to 'white only' as well as violence against minority workers, to collusive licensing agreements between labor organizations and the (government).

"In fact past Negro leaders almost unanimously condemned unions. Booker T. Washington was a life long foe of trade unions and W.E.B. DuBois (the famous socialist) called them the greatest enemy of the black working man.

"Union discrimination against minorities needs no documentation here. Instead we need to understand how our (government's) labor laws and institutions make union discrimination more likely and more costly to minorities."

How did these laws get on the books? Well, I'll tell you, gentle reader. By selling ideas, better presented and by articulate spokesmen who care and are seen to be caring.

By getting the preachers all riled up about something besides sex, namely, violence and threat of violence in the "sale" of these ideas.

It's done every day that the Legislature and Congress is in session stacking the deck.

Compromises Cause Unease

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 15, 1981

One of the few great wisecracks of President Ronald Reagan's brand new administration just has to be his recent retort to the newsperson who questioned his foreign policy.

"Aren't you pursuing another Vietnam when you ship arms and aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador, Mr. President?" the newsperson asked. "Oh no," replied the new conservative chief, "I'm merely continuing the policy started by the Democrats. After all, I've only been in office six weeks and I haven't even fired a shot."

Well, Reagan is a fine man, well-intentioned and compassionate, not completely unlike former President Carter. Still, he's philosophically radically different. Thus we can expect really different policy directions for the U.S. ship of state.

But "radically different" is not to say that he's radically opposite. In other words, the more or less liberal Carter and company could be expected to favor a free market in the area of ideas and civil liberties, but want the government to run the economy - jobs, profits, prices, rationing, trade, etc.

The more or less conservative Reagan and company, it could be said, are opposite only in the sense that they tend to favor a more free market in some economic matters, but want the government to run the morals.

This sort of dichotomy, to some degree, accounts for what many libertarians tend to describe as "the more things change the more they remain the same," at least where government is concerned.

Certainly this is why many are already uneasy about Reagan's early compromises, while wishing him well and good luck in an all but impossible task. Indisputably he is a sincere, able and intelligent leader who is not responsible for 30 years of liberal Democrat fiscal insanity.

But one of his majesty's loyal opposition, Sheldon Richman, writing in the Libertarian News recently, voices what some observers see as "politics as usual" at best and maybe portends of bad contradictions, if not worse.

For example, one of the new president's more free-market oriented advisors, Martin Anderson said, "We are talking about reducing the growth of federal spending. We are not talking about cuts in federal programs."

Another top advisor, according to Richman, cautioned, "We don't want to dismantle the government. We want a well-managed conservative welfare state." Yet another Reagan advisor said, "Reagan intends to hold spending GROWTH by 1985 to 50 percent." No wonder Reagan economic advisor Alan Greenspan told the Wall Street Journal that, regarding economic policy, it didn't matter which candidate was elected.

"Can we expect Ronald Reagan to cut government spending, cut taxes, end (government) money expansion, allow gold and silver money, deregulate and decontrol?

"One of the striking political lessons of the past 20 years," says Richman, "is that government growth accelerates regardless of the party in power.

"Nixon and Ford strapped on new controls and regulations in the economy, then presided over bigger-than-ever budgets and deficits.

"One thing in particular will make this result worse under Reagan than it would have been under Carter: Reagan will grind down the economy in the name of free enterprise.

"In the process," opines the bright young libertarian writer, "he (Reagan) will devalue free-market arguments and discredit true advocates of laissezfaire.

"At the end of Reagan's term, the American people will be told that freedom was tried and failed. At the very least this couldn't have happened under Jimmy Carter."

This writer hopes with a purple passion Richman is wrong. But British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a great pal and ideological comrade of Reagan, is being led down that very same primrose path - today.

There Is Honor Among Realtors

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 22, 1981

One hears almost daily about how futile it is for only one person to do anything about the country's sad state of affairs today. The result is, all too often - nobody does anything.

One businessman in Nampa finally had enough. He decided to speak up all by himself. Here's a real live drama in the U.s. It should be in the Reader's Digest.

Senate Bill 1127 was introduced to compel real estate licensees to go back to school "continuously." It's called "mandatory continuous education." It's pushed by the Idaho Association of Realtors who claim that they only want to upgrade their members' skills by government compulsion.

Other professions, too, have used the law attempting to stamp our poor quality practitioners (not fraud, mind you, just poor quality) so all they are after, they say, is to upgrade theirs.

My guess is that most of them are sincere enough, not unlike the new Moral Majority, but about all they do is to keep out their new competitors. A few are frank enough to admit this is their primary purpose.

Comes now Bake Young of Nampa, 34 years in the real estate business. His awards and recognitions are too numerous to mention here, but they include "Idaho Realtor of the Year," a plaque naming him "Farm and Land Broker of America" and a term as national president of the "Farm and Land Institute," the third largest national realtor group in America. He's one of the nation's most distinguished citizens on the real estate profession.

Young had been told the 11-member Idaho State Senate Committee on Commerce and Labor was committed to favor the compulsory education bill, six to five. So he secured permission to testify against the bill, head on, in committee.

"I am pleased to oppose this bill because it is wrong in application, and most important, it is wrong in principle. Because of my opposition," said the Nampa real estate merchant, "I am sure the charge will be made by faceless critics that I am opposed to education when nothing could be further from the truth." (Young has seven years of college and has has taken almost every supplementary course ever offered to his profession in the United States.)

"So let me make it absolutely clear: I am not opposed to education. I am vigorously opposed to compulsory education and that is both wrong in application and extremely wrong in principle.

"Philosophically, Senate Bill 1127 is bad medicine. Adequate education exists now on a voluntary basis. Literally hundreds of courses are available. And as Sir Walter Scott said, 'The best part of every man's education is that which he gives to himself.'"

Young's testimony seemed to come alive as he warmed to his subject. "The education director of the National Real Estate Institute says that the only education that is really effective is education voluntarily taken."

Young told the committee that the history of the license law's mandatory education has a lousy track record nationally, since four out of five licensees wash out in the market place within five years.

"As a former school board member," Young said, "I am very familiar with mandatory compulsory education. And all over America we are learning that millions of Johnnys and Sallys can't read. The fallacy is that we equate compulsory attendance at school with LEARNING. There's a big difference."

The state of Oregon legislature's Sunset Review Committee recommended abolishing their real estate licensee's continuous education. Hence that committee said, "We can find no evidence of consumer protection from the Oregon Continuous Education Program."

Young told the Idaho Senate committee that the Idaho real estate establishment, though perhaps well-meaning, was trying to ram their Mickey Mouse real estate course down everyone's throat "at gun point."

"Senators that is wrong," said the Nampa broker, "You know it. I know it. Even they know it. This means the state will deprive me of the right to make a living in a profession I've spent a lifetime in if I refuse to take it.

"Senators, this is RESTRAINT OF TRADE. I am certain the Supreme Court would agree. If this bill passes it will be my pleasure to take this case before them and see what the Supreme Court justices think.

"Senators, somebody is trying to play God in my life, and I don't like it. For, unlike the Almighty, they exhibit no compassion, no love, no infinite wisdom, no understanding, and regrettably, no mercy.

"This continuous education is obviously bad legislation. I urge you to vote no."

Well, they did. The senators voted unanimously and killed the bill.

So next time some clown tells you there's nothing one man can do - tell him where to do. Or, if you like Bake's way of putting it, tell him to stop trying to play God in your life.

Aaarraugghh - The Urge to Kill

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 29, 1981

There seems to be an almost hysterical tendency for lawmakers wanting to pass a law when they see a problem about which important people are angry.

To be quite frank about it I, too, suffer this tendency from time to time especially when I'm driving my car so I suppose it's all too natural that our legislators so seldom exclaim "hands off" when their important constituents want yet another law.

Most everyone at times has something of a split personality but it seems certain to take on a new dimension when we get behind the wheel of a car. I've seen men who'd go out of their way to hold a door open for a strange lady on foot when entering a supermarket.
That same fellow when he's behind the steering wheel of his auto will, often times, go out of his way and endanger that same lady's life in his indiscriminate haste to get into a new lane of traffic.

When just a tiny bit of courteous pause for her car to pass would help avoid an accident he (or we?) rush headlong to get in front of her car - and for what? To assert our indiscriminate competitive nature, I guess.

It is particularly infuriating when I'm driving down the roadway at a speed even Erwin Schwiebert would agree was moderate and then to have some clown waiting at a stop sign actually spin his wheels hurrying to just barely squeeze in front of my car causing me to brake a little in order to slow down for him. This I can tolerate except when I look up into my rear-view mirror and see that there were no vehicles at all behind me, none within a country mile. A 15 second pause would have enabled him to enter my lane of traffic behind me with room to spare. Aaarraugghh - the urge to kill.

Somehow when a person's face or name, rank and serial number, so to speak, is not out there in plain sight (no hidden behind a steering wheel and windshield) where his peers can clearly place the blame for his or her lack of courtesy or manners, the neighborhood ethic often goes un-used. No doubt you could add many examples of your own to a long list of infuriating examples of those other jackasses and his or her thoughtlessness while driving a car, but I trust you get the idea.

What to do? Well, just one little idea for starters that could do some good, perhaps even a lot of good, for virtually no additional cost to Idaho transportation czar, Darrel Manning, or law enforcement czar, Kelly Pearce. Next time they print driver's license books of instruction they could include a chapter on "Vehicle Driver Courtesy." The test could include lots of questions to assure that the message got through to the applicant successfully.

The courtesy chapter could well have a sub-title: "What you always wanted to know about sex and highway safety, but were afraid to ask."

The word sex would do two things: (1) it'd get everyone's attention and (2) it'd emphasize that the lack of driver's highway courtesy includes both sexes and saves lives as well. If it were cleverly and convincingly written by somebody who believed in it, i.e., courtesy, not sex, the idea just might catch on. And who knows - if it did catch on the liberals who are fond of criticizing what they call the "police mentality" might, just might, be cajoled into believing that law enforcement people are not all "pigs" after all.

Indeed, if given the chance maybe even they (the cops) might respond by showing some appreciation once in a while when a motorist or a truck drive who just bent the law a little bit, but didn't endanger anybody's life or limb, merely needed to be reminded to be more courteous.

As it is now, the policeman's quota to write a minimum number of traffic tickets a day is about the only way his boss has of knowing whether or not the officer is on the job. So my guess is that if the smart traffic cops had their way they'd rather "grade papers" on driver's license exams for courtesy than to write traffic citations for pig-headed drivers whose thoughtlessness may have endangered somebody's life.

And maybe, just maybe, our politicians would then see their way clear to trade the current every-year session of the legislature in exchange for one every TWO years. They'd only need half as much time, you see, since they'd only need to pass HALF as many laws - courtesy, having been properly and enthusiastically integrated into Idaho driver's attitudes would have cut the need in half.

In any event, it'd be a courteous and intelligent gesture on the part of the politicians. Don't you agree?

Laws Make Sin Profitable

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 5, 1981

"Today's column was to have commented on the Idaho Legislature and how both the business community and the Republicans who tend to dominate it are still hell-bent to use the law. Indeed, to use it against their competition if not against freedom of choice itself.
"But whatever might have been said in that column was transcended by the tragic event ..." So began a column last Monday by the Idaho Press-Tribune's political reporter, Ralph Nichols, commenting on the attempt to assassinate President Reagan.

Nobody, but nobody in their right mind wants to see any peaceful person even shot at, much less assassinated, but men of goodwill can and do disagree on what to do about violence.

Nichols claims, "violence drives us in fear away from freedom and toward a police state." Well, I agree, to a large extent. But then he makes the quantum leap. "It is almost always made by these knee-jerk liberals who tend to dominate the literate in general and the media in particular."

His "leap" was almost absolutely predictable. Said he, "We must become outraged enough that we demand an end to the sale, circulation, and ownership of small handguns." (Presumably, large handguns are okay.) Well, wouldn't you know? He has it all figured out how to stop this insane violence - pass a law. He proposes the same success story we had with prohibition. And it worked, too, for the Mafia and other organized criminals who could not possibly have survived selling whiskey until the government's zeal to samp out sin made it so supremely profitable.

Now that booze is legal those supremely rotten elements in our society have gone into the narcotics business where that same government's zeal to stamp out sin still provides a black market and therefore obscene profit for those persons willing to deal in fear, fraud and force, i.e., violence.

It's interesting that Frank Church-type liberals, like Nichols, are sincere, well-educated and caring persons who tend not to want laws against drugs, have this hang-up to favor laws against guns. They are, oddly enough, the same well-meaning persons who tend to push laws that molly-coddle ordinary criminals.

If you haven't noticed where that line of reasoning has brought our society just ask one of the growing number of persons who have been mugged lately. Odds are that the mugger, if by chance he was caught - even red-handed - had a record of several other previous crimes of violence. One wonders why, when this pass-a-law mentality doesn't work (and it doesn't, you know) the liberals want to pass yet another law, and another, and another, ad infinitum. Egad!

Perhaps their penchant for this super-persistent aberration stems not only from the liberal's almost fanatic faith in government, the bigger the better, but their haunting distrust and misunderstanding of private property rights - guns, as you know, are private property.
These same persons wanting to at least "register" guns (how long afterward until the police state comes around to gather them up?) are fond of saying, "Well, we register automobiles and driver's licenses, don't we?"

Aside from the fact that the Second Amendment to the Constitution does not say: "the right of the people to keep and bear automobiles shall not be infringed," (It refers to their right to "keep and bear arms," of course) the comparison is a non-sequitor at best, if not invidious.

The Constitution is concerned with freedom from too much government. "To keep and bear arms" is to be prepared, if necessary, for a revolution against an oppressive government. The founding fathers were clear on this ever-so-negative point, but the intellectuals, of whom conservatives are fond of pooh-poohing, have succeeded in substituting an ever-so-positive point by their "newspeak"
concerning the constitution and their packing the U.S. Supreme Court, i.e., our present manifestation of the welfare state, predecessor of a police state.

In a notable article attacking control of handguns, St. Louis University law professors Donald B. Kates Jr., chided his fellow liberals, "for not applying the same logic to guns that they use for marijuana laws."

He pointed out that there are over 50,000,000 handgun owners in America today, and that, based on polls and past experience, from 70 to 80 percent of Americans would fail to comply with a ban on handguns.

Unfortunately, columnist, Nichols may turn out to be a prophet. Maybe he'll have to help bring about the police state he so disdains. After all, against 70 to 80 percent of America's gun-toting citizens, a police state would certainly need a friendly journalist.

Business Is Its Worst Enemy

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 12, 1981

You surely must have heard the "old saw" that: "With Friends like good old Bill - one doesn't need any enemies."

Well, some of us have been saying that for years about American business. Still, few are they who will listen, at least up until recently, since it's hard to get anyone's attention. Especially when they already have power, prestige and-or money. This all too often means politicians, but not in this particular case.

I am talking now about those businessmen who "manipulate" the politicians. Of course, we are used to hearing the liberals who have been telling us how bad were the robber barons of yesteryear and their greedy profit-seeking successors of today. I can agree, believe it or not, but those businessmen are no more greedy and often have less political clout than the labor union chiefs who, for the most part, finance the liberals. It's a lot like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.

I should add, I suppose, that the liberals and their labor union mentality may have most of the common sense on their side, i.e., between the so-called capitalists and their so-called antagonists, the labor union liberals. How's that? Well, at least one very seldom sees those "liberals" donating huge sums of money to those groups who, as a group at least, are well-known to hate their guts.

The corporate giants have for years poured vast sums of money onto campus after campus where most of the professors have a field day preaching the wage-and-price-control-mentality and other more sophisticated forms of government intervention. One guesses it's mostly motivated by an "honest" attempt to "buy" friends. At least the idea has manifested itself into this nation's major explicit foreign policy - buying friends.

Moreover, the socialist-minded crowd has the good sense not to put their money into feeding its opposition. And to their ever-lasting credit the liberal left-leaning types have the good sense to notice that not all college professors are for sale. Many are genuine socialists. Some admittedly, are closet varieties who have never heard of Adam Smith nor even Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman. Unfortunately, there are few businessmen also who have never read even those two famous free market advocates, not to mention a host of their followers, most of whom must grub for the few grants from the corporate giants to explain free market capitalism. Perhaps it's because most of the corporate executives graduated from those same campuses financed in large part by businessmen who, if they did by chance read anything about the free market - don't LIKE it today.

Comes now (at least) The Council for a competitive Economy (CCE), 410 First Street S.E., Insane City, D.C. By gosh, these businessmen are different. And they're getting some considerable degree of attention, even in the super-interventionist news media. Not is the New York-based Boise Statesman, yet, I admit, but in the New York Times, the super-liberal Washington Post and numerous others across the country. The Statesman, for some strange reason seems to have a kind of special hatred for free market capitalism unique, even, among the ever-so liberal journalists, e.g., it's hard to get more "liberal" than the Times and The Post, but they try.

To give you merely a small idea of CCE's idea of communicating the problem they have a "Roses and Raspberries" page in their monthly newsletter, "Competition." It's a kind of man bites dog switcheroo, and it's finding its mark as to who's trying to suck and blow in the same breath.

For example, a recent "raspberry" went to the Portland, Ore., and Michigan Chambers of Commerce for opposing tax-cut or tax-limitation initiatives. The Portland Chamber opposed a property-tax-limitation initiative, while endorsing bonds for Civic Stadium improvements. (Sound familiar?)

Of particular interest to Idahoans could be a recent CCE raspberry to William Agee, former Idahoan, graduate of our own University of Idaho, big business tycoon, and bosom pal of our own Sen. Steve Symms.

Said CCE's "jab" criticizing the chairman of the huge Bendix Corporation: "(he) advocated government economic revitalization (so-called). Agee endorsed direct government financial aid to steel and some of the other core industries. He also called for a real partnership between government and business."

With friends like that - the free, private, competitive economy, indeed, does not need enemies. So write your congressman - push the free market.

But when you write your congressman, gentle reader, don't forget your senator, Symms, Agee's pal. In fact, you might write them both. Inquire what each learned about the free market at the U of I and what either of them are honestly doing about it today.

Public Schools Don't Educate

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 19, 1981

Education in America is in crisis. According to the prestigious CATO Institute, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have been falling for the past 17 years at a rate of about 1 percent a year.

At a University of California campus where only the top one-eighth of the high-school graduates can enter - a significant percentage of them need corrective English courses.

Many businesses are finding it difficult to hire employees with basic reading, writing and mathematical skills. One industrial spokesman for ILG Industries of Pennsylvania, says, "Our number one problem is poorly educated workers. They are the main factor limiting our growth."

At Mutual of New York (MONY) 70 percent of all correspondence must be corrected or retyped because typists don't know how to spell and punctuate. (Sound familiar!)

The education establishment replies in its own defense that not enough money is being spent on education for that student-teacher ratios are too high. But the facts just don't back up these claims. The cost of government education per pupil has risen from $920 to $1,500 in 20 years. These figures are AFTER being adjusted for inflation. The ratio of teachers to students went from 1 to 25 in 1960 to a 1 to 18 ratio in 1975. Administrative personnel rose even faster.

Admittedly these national figures may very well be much better locally, but the political conflicts are certainly bad and growing right here in Idaho. Parents, teachers, education bureaucrats and special interest groups selling books and paraphernalia argue over what will be taught in the public schools.

Some want sex education, some don't. Some want prayer every morning, other fight this as violating the First Amendment. Some want to exclude gay teachers, some want the schools to speak positively about every lifestyle, including gays.

Some people want back-to-basics and the teaching of the creation "theory" (note the semantics) while other groups want an unstructured course of study and strict reliance on science.

the CATO Institute's Policy Report sees the problem in a rather unique and, in a word, sharp way. "The problem," they say, "is that ALL these desires are legitimate. Parents should be able to choose the kind of education they want for their children." One could note that's precisely what my friend and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman's new book, indeed his entire life, is all about - being "Free to Choose".

The famous black economist Walter Williams, who grew up in Philadelphia's black ghetto and who teaches at George Mason University and Temple University, lectured recently at Boise's Center for the Study of Market Alternatives. He had something unusual to say about government education. His intense concern for blacks adds an almost pregnant pertinence.

"A state monopoly in the production of a good or a service enhances the potential for conflict by requiring uniformity; that is, its production requires a COLLECTIVE decision on many (features) of the products, and once produced, everybody has to consume the identical product whether he agrees with those (features) or not.

"State monopolies in the production of education enhance the potential for conflict by requiring conformity in issues of importance to many people (i.e., prayers in school, ethnic history, saluting the flag, et. al.). All these are highly controversial issues receiving considerable court attention and have resulted in street fighting and heightened racial tensions."

Other parents in Chicago have turned to Marva Collins' Westside Prep School. This intelligent and super-courageous black teacher in primary grades has achieved spectacular results in a one-room school teaching poor black students who had been judged failures by the public (read, government) school system. Thank Heaven they were free to choose.

The single most important thing, then, to be done about education in America is to give parents and students more choice; let them become REAL consumers of education. Then the government schools would face a real market decision on whether their product was worth purchasing - not to mention, worth holding a near monopoly.

Easily the most scandalous aspect of the education crisis is the almost total silence on the issue by politicians. This includes, of course, (forgive me) Idaho's famous-foursome, McClure, Symms, Hansen and Craig. What failures of public policy could be more shameful? I'd say: keeping silent about free-market alternatives.

But it is said, "silence is golden." It is also, often, yellow. Fortunately or "foursome" is not yellow. Not yellow, indeed. But they're awful, awful quiet on government education.

So let's hear it - foursome - for some freedom of choice, for some kids.

Trying to Bribe the Educators

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 26, 1981

There is a strange organization headquartered in Boise about which you should become very interested. Indeed, whether you're a liberal, a conservative or a mug-wump you should pay particular attention to The Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA).

These people are perpetrating upon the education establishment in Idaho an almost dastardly deed - virtually a kind of intellectual blasphemy.

They are trying to bribe the educators in Idaho, with a money-grubbing scheme yet, into doing something strange about the idea of government schools versus non-government schools, namely - THINKING.

Now then, if you don't give a damn about education or, if you'd rather, schooling, or if you don't think there's a difference, or if you don't like a challenge then this story isn't for you.

But if you do like an intellectual challenge, the Center's cash awards for the best critique of a very controversial and thought-provoking essay entitled, "Who Killed Private Schools?" may well hold promise of some real fun. Let me explain a little.

The Center is a non-profit (they're sorry about that) educational outfit devoted to the study of - you guessed it - market alternatives. You know, free market, private ownership and limited government ideas. The kind the Chambers of Commerce, the National Republican Party and a host of the businesses and trade organizations in America give lip service to, but very little else. In fact, it's these ideas that Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman claims motivate most intellectuals and businessman AGAINST free enterprise - though for opposite reasons.

But back to CSMA's unique essay by Samuel Blumenfeld, a well-known, if controversial educational writer in America. Here are some excerpts from the essay on which Idaho teachers are to be rewarded for their criticisms, both pro and con.

"In 1818, without compulsory attendance laws, over 90 percent of Boston's children attended school." These were mostly private schools, of course.

"... the previous historians usually asked, why did it take America so long to adopt public (read, government) education? Instead of, why did Americans give up educational freedom so early in their history?

"The DISTORTION (author's emphasis) in these textbooks is so great that it is not really a matter of simply revising history to correct it, but of actually telling it for the first time."

Blumenfeld says that from the very beginning (around 1800) the Unitarians and the socialists were prime movers and leaders of the organized movement that was to wind up in the creation of our compulsory public school system.

"But the Prussian system was a model of centralized control, and it had the one feature that Robert Owen (he established a communist colony at New Harmony, Ind.) considered indispensable for a successful state system: state training schools for teachers. It was acknowledged by the Prussians that you cannot really control education until you control the teachers and their indoctrination. In other words, teachers were to be the front-line troops for statism."

So you begin to see, gentle reader, why CSMA's publication, "The Classical Liberal," says this essay contest may well turn out to be the most controversial in Idaho education's history.

However, even if the essay achieves much significant attention among Idaho educators it is not at all assured it will get much if any play in the news media. For some strange reason the media, especially in Boise, usually dominated by the east coast liberal establishment, tends to put down hard any pleasant reference at all to free market ideas (read, capitalism) in favor of one kind or another government solution. The latter including, even though its infamous track record such as Social Security, Chrysler Corp., the U.S. Post Office, Amtrak, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam, is atrocious and getting worse every day.

CSMA is offering two sets of cash awards for their contest, half of which by the way, will be judged by at least two top-flight members of the Idaho State Board of Education. Sixteen hundred dollars will be awarded, half to the government school side and half to the non-government school side. The latter to be judged by CSMA's own scholars.

Unfortunately a kind of misconception has somehow been allowed to obtain that the term "public" education is substantively different from "private" education. While many say that's "a distinction rather than a difference," two things seem clear: (1) The small private college is almost certainly on the way out and even now is still absolutely unwilling to scream at the state's dumping massive sums of money into their competition and, (2) the main "pitch" most of these schools have as an incentive to give money to subsidize their below-cost pricing system (which is exactly like their government competitor's, by the way) is that it's "tax deductible." Egad.

In any event, education just may deserve all the attention it's getting. If not all the money. So if you know some teachers who can write and like money and have a little imagination, have them call CSMA for details. Call 342-1984.

That's no joke. Their number is actually 342-1984. And like the great George Orwell said, "It's almost here."

Let's Begin Knocking Heads

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 3, 1981

Much is in print these days on the matter of selling beer and wine on Sunday. You'll remember that it is legal to sell them inside the city limits, but not outside. So here's some random thoughts on booze and the news media.

Most folks would agree that people who tend to abuse the so-called right to drink alcohol foist an undue burden on other people.
They do this in all sorts of miserable ways from our having to smell their bad breath and listen to their bad and loud language all the way to some drunk driving head-on into a peaceful and happy family on their way to church. All dead on arrival at the local hospital - except the drunk, "who sustained minor cuts and bruises." A proper justification for legal outrage if there ever was one.

But, what to do about the other varying degrees of bad social behavior? As we've been taught, most of us run to the nearest office of government and ask them to pass a law against everything we don't like. Indeed, so popular has this form of social arrangement become that it rivals baseball as a national form of entertainment. It's called politics. It's a scheme to tell others how to live and conduct their affairs, indeed if they don't agree - to FORCE them to, and to do it our way.

Now then, I am patently aware that there is a decent, honest and understandable need for some, repeat some, government. No one in his right mind denies the need for at least some limited government, and there's virtual trainload of public discussion about that need. But unfortunately there's only a wheelbarrow load discussing the "limit."

I should like to add that our running to government to solve the drinking abuse problem is, in a way, somewhat similar to those who are screaming for gun-control to stop gun abuse. If one had to choose the single most likely item about which our reactionary news media was the most predictable, it'd almost have to be gun control. Nearly any excuse is enough to make the news manglers leap to the fore with, "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, something has to be done to control crime and violence. It's getting worse, so certainly gun control must be a logical place to begin." Sound familiar? They'd like you to think that theirs is the Voice of America, i.e., the gospel according to Walter Concrete and the giant liberal network "News-choosers."

But they never attack booze. Did you ever think of that? Not, seldom. Never. In the case of crimes involving gun-toting violence, the news commentators forever leap to suggest turning our problems over to the most arrogant, violent and braying jackass of all times - the federal government.

But again, no booze. I think I've never ever heard an important news man, certainly in the national media, advocate the elimination of whiskey, not to mention beer or wine, in the way that they quick-draw their own network "guns" to eliminate guns. Think about it.

Now then, back to the local wine industry. It is, of course, a focal point of new attention on wanting the freedom to sell wine outside the city limits on Sunday. In fact, many say the main winery in the valley may not survive unless allowed to sell their product on Sunday and it may well be true. It's just too bad that those same wine and grape producers were seldom so loud, nor were they so articulate and so visible at past legislative sessions when other people's freedoms were being eaten away. Now it's their freedom, and they want it back.

But farmers and producers of agricultural products generally tend to be conservative, not liberal, not libertarian, hence they tend not to say much about, freedom - especially other people's freedom - which public policy is enacted over the years, taking it away.

Well, again, what to do? I say let's discriminate. Let's begin with knocking some heads and knocking some butts - of people who abuse other people's rights to peaceful enjoyment of their person and their property.

Let's put some of those beer can and wine bottle throwers in jail for a short time and those guzzling drivers murdering on the highways into the electric chair, swift and sure.

Then let us get on with the job of peacefully minding our own business, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great big job, and there's a lot of people even in public office that would like that too, believe it or not. But it's a little hard demanding they be "do-gooders" in our behalf.

Then if the news media, for better or worse, fail to see that "minding our own business" is newsworthy, perhaps we can pass a law prohibiting news on Sunday.

Told to Stick It Up Their Nose

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 10, 1981

Last week was the College of Idaho's (C of I) prestigious "Women's Symposium" held annually for several years and perhaps their most successful and significant event involving off-campus friends and alumni.

Even though its management and operation is virtually an all female event, the women's liberation movement in America has unfortunately led these ladies to de-emphasize the resulting polarization by changing their title. It is now officially named, forgive me, "The Spring Symposium." Egad!

The new title, while somewhat understandable, perhaps, bears about the same relationship to springtime as newspaper headlines often bear to the content of the story, i.e., hardly any. Newspaper headlines, however, understandably, have to sell newspapers. The lady boosters of C of I do not have anything to sell - or so they have claimed for lo' these many years (ho ho ho).

But joking aside, these members of the distaff side of our society have, to their everlasting credit, done a rather remarkable job of bringing to the C of I campus some lively and entertaining speakers over the past years. Much could be said about the particular philosophy or slant or views held by the majority of these symposium personalities in past years, but one thing for sure is that they have generally been fairly interesting and often somewhat controverisal.

Last year's speakers were Barbara Quint (ladies first, okay?) whose title was "Personal Money Management." She delivered an enthusiastic pep talk on how to avoid taxes and increase the return on savings and investments. She got a great laugh, but reinforced both of her points when she noted that it was (1) sometimes cheaper, tax-wise, for a couple to live out of wedlock and (2) that many community property laws to the contrary notwithstanding, a wife should have legal claim on her half of the "loot" even if she decides to "run off with the tennis pro."

Both speakers could legitimately be labelled liberal, but there the similarity ended - whim wham, thank you Mam. Quint is a Hubert Humphrey liberal and George Charles Roche, president of Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Mich., is a classical liberal more in the shadow of Ronald Reagan. Though he might not agree completely with the characterization it is nontheless true that the latter has given a major address on the Hillsdale campus at least twice in recent years and their current graduation speaker is Reagan's Secretary of State, Alexander Haig.

A small liberal arts college, Hillsdale is about the same size as the C of I with something like 1,000 students.

With private colleges dropping like flies all across America, Roche's school has just wound up a successful fund raising crusade $30 million richer than when that drive began about three years before. Ever so many wanted to know, "How Come?"

In an ever so soft-spoken manner the tall, dark and handsome Roche, who in this sense bears a remarkable resemblance to the C of I's new president, Arthur DeRosier, attempted to throw some light on the subject (I should hasten to add another somewhat striking similarity between the two college leaders, i.e., both are extremists in that each has an extremely beautiful and charming and intelligent wife. And I'm note kidding about that one damn bit. In fact, each has an extremely unfair advantage therein.)

Roche told those assembled at a small dinner, the evening prior to the symposium, that "300 small private colleges had to close the doors last year. Further," he said, "the education plant and equipment in America is over-built, since the students from the baby-boom days were not graduated." In other words - tough times ahead for small private colleges.

"Some colleges will survive," Roche said. "Those that do will be the ones who stand for something and whose trustees will back them up in that stand."

The federal government's bureau of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) demanded, some years ago, that Hillsdale submit to their (HEW's) regulations on how to run the college. "Since we take no government money of any kind you have no legal right to tell us how to run our school," Roche retorted.

"Oh yes, we do," replied HEW, "you take students who in turn take our 'G.I. bill' money. Some students also take our government loans."

Well, both Roche and his trustees, within the best liberal (read, classical liberal) tradition of Thomas Jefferson, and the French Revolution's Frederic Bastiat (Roche's personal hero) explained to the symposium a significant part of the "How Come" success of Hillsdale College versus HEW: "We told them to stick it up their nose."

Meantime, and $30 million later, legal action between our government and Hillsdale is in the courts.

Who says you can't fight city hall?

Political Influence Catastrophic

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 21, 1981

There is a relatively small, and unusual, if not somewhat radical, foundation just up the Hudson River a few miles from New York City. It's called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) at Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y. Some people call it a kind of think-tank.

It's small, one supposes, because it supports ideas. It's unusual because of the KINDS of ideas it supports. For example, those concerning a free market, private property, limited government and the moral and spiritual antecedents necessary to their proper, if fast disappearing, function.

Each year FEE, as it is affectionately dubbed by its supporters all round the world, including a modest sized but intellectually virulent band of followers in Idaho, have an annual trustees meeting assess the progress of their activities. Their annual banquet speaker this year was U.S. Sen. Steve Symms from Caldwell.

The Idaho senator is in pretty high-powered company there, considering that FEE's people very rarely acknowledge the beneficial presence of politicians, preferring instead to emphasize the influence of a free market. Most political influence they see as being consistently bad if not perhaps catastrophic.

Preceding Symms at FEE's annual trustee meetings has been a long line of intellectuals and businessmen who understand and support the ideas of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Mises (et al) spread over almost 35 years of "idea mongering" - from the base there on the Hudson River.

So it's a pretty high class league that Idaho's former apple grower, congressman, and now senator has entered. Whether or not one sees him a an intellectual giant the fact remains he had an unusual message for that prestigious audience. A unique and timely message, too, I thought, since I was fortunate to be there and hear it.

Symms told the gathering of the faithful that the problems of our country are to be found on OUR side - not in the other fellow's backyard, as we often tend to think.

Now then, that ladies and gentlemen is not exactly the regular bill of fare the august body of FEE's "keepers of the flame" were used to hearing. Not even Symms' good friend, the 82-year-old Leonard Read, president of FEE.

"The great Leonard Read," said the senator, "regardless of how intelligent, yea even profound, his leadership in the pursuit of fine ideas, cannot do the job alone. Nor can the fine staff he's gathered here adequately promote this job of 'learning' as he calls it. You and I must take these ideas home into our own communities, articulate them and make them come alive."

There is, of course a tendency that most of us have from time to time to see the problem, as Symms called it, as one of "teaching" others if not actually "preaching" to them. He may not read and heed all the message that his great and good friend, Read, has explained ever so carefully, but he got some of it. And reasonably well, considering, if one doesn't judge too carefully by the preregrinations of the politicians in Washington, most of whom see their role only as one of compromise and being pragmatic.

"I'm afraid," said Symms, "that I cannot offer you a great deal of hope of a government turn-around if those of you in this banquet hall and most of your friends leave very much of the job up to us politicians in Washngton.

"All too few of our country's political leaders have even a limited understanding of the free market, capitalistic ideas of Adam Smith, Leonard Read and FEE. Ideas that we need so desperately, now."

Symms went on to explain that, for example, when he wants to open some government-owned land in Idaho, now locked up in legal wilderness, some of his Southern senator-colleagues are quick to ask in return for their help that he help them expand the tobacco "monopoly." And so it goes.

"It is ideas," said Symms, "as you already know. But SOMEBODY must take them back home and make them come alive like they've done out in Boise at the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA).

"They have accomplished some minor miracles with only a champagne appetite and beer income. They have taken the following idea from FEE (and Mises) and applied it successfully through their seminars for both teachers and laymen.

It is, namely, that: "The average man is both better informed and less corruptible when buying in the marketplace than when voting in political elections." Symms said that he knew that to be a fine idea, but he urged, "we need some help back home to sell it to more members of the Congress."

Another highlight in Symms' speech was that there is indeed a practical side to theories and ideas. "It's just too bad," he said, "that so few politicians in Washington have heard these ideas articulated like they're doing at FEE in New York and at CSMA in Boise."

I thought Symms added something articulate for himself, too, by way of a little stature.

A 'Typhoid Mary' Operation

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 7, 1981

"It may be true that you cannot fool all the people all of the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."

That is not true merely because the historian Will Durant said it. Not at all. The great scholar said it precisely BECAUSE it is true.
Idaho's First District Congressman Larry Craig may or may not be intending to fool all of the people, but he is at least performing a "Typhoid Mary" kind of operation capable of doing the same thing. It has to do with Social Security and its disastrous and catastrophic fiscal situation. By any ordinary standard, except political witchcraft, it's bankrupt. Fiscal authorities have been warning of this for several years. Now, it's here!!!

Apparently Craig isn't exactly sure whether he wants to be part of the solution or part of the problem, so in not un-typical fashion, for a politician, he has decided to be both.

Consider this. Last week we received an official card from the freshman congressman telling us he'd be available ".. at the following locations on the dates mentioned to discuss the serious problems facing our Social Security System." The card then named dates and times in Caldwell, Lewiston, Boise and Coeur d'Alene for his appearance.

But in a front page story dated June 3 an aide explained that, "Craig felt it more important to remain in Washington, D.C. to vote on several veteran's benefits bills." One supposes "veterans benefits" meant ADDITIONAL benefits.

Certainly no one begrudges even added benefits for disabled veterans. Unfortunately most of the rhetoric surrounding veterans benefits during decades past has been, for the most part, a kind of social security system for the healthy veteran as well. Such has been a good ploy for politicians to buy votes from many powerful veterans' organizations. All of which is not to say that deserving veterans do not exist, nor that the non-veteran citizens don't owe a debt to veteran citizens - they do. But the country's going bankrupt at the hands of these vote buyers and do-gooders. So, in the words of the public school's speech teachers who gave such effective pear-shaped-tones to those same politicians and do-gooders: "How now brown cow?"

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, here's Craig's administrative assistant, Dick Minard, reading his absent boss's position on the Social Security fiasco: "... an unreliable reservoir for the needy. It is without a doubt, virtually on the brink of a collapse.

"In 1950 the program served 2.5 million people at a cost of $522 million. Today it provides assistance for 36 million people at a cost of $174 billion." (Remember now, that only ONE billion minutes ago Christ was walking on this earth. Scary, isn't it?)

So much for the new Idaho congressman's fear and warning of impending financial disaster for the U.S.A. Comes now another mailing from that same sincere politician. (He is sincere, by the way. I know because I voted for him and I never ever vote for anything but a sincere politician.) This second mailing is also quite recent having been mailed especially for and to high school graduates. It's a 15-page pamphlet whose title page read: "(How to get) Financial Aid for College Students. A guide to Federal, State and Private Sources."

That was the title. At the bottom of that same front cover page - wouldn't you know? - "1981 Compliments of Congressman Larry Craig, 1st District, Idaho." (Egad! Shades of Frank Church?)

It isn't exactly clear if the "1981" is an intent by Craig's copy people to suggest that the whole YEAR of 1981 is the "compliments of Larry Craig." Few would buy the congressman's ability, of course, to deliver such a big package. But then we must remember that election time for congressmen is less than a year and a half away.

Page after page of the booklet extol the various loans, grants and-or outright giveaway schemes for Craig's student-constituents to get government money. One particularly pertinent paragraph is entitled "Educational Aid Under the Social Security Act." It ended with "For more information on the level and availability of aid, contact your local Social Security Administration office."

But wait! There's hope on the last page, entitled: "College-Sponsored and Private Assistance Programs." At least one out of 15 pages of Craig's pamphlet he gives to private problem-solving - the sector from whence all, repeat all, the money has to come.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, "How to Have Your Cake and Eat it, Too - in one easy lesson." It might also have been called: "A Lesson in How to Suck and Blow in the Same Breath - 1981. Compliments of Congressman Larry Craig."

Russians Outgun Us

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 14, 1981

Just a few days ago I received a letter dated May 20, 1981, from the American Security Council (ASC). As some of you already know, this is a prestigious organization dedicated to a rational, reasonable and adequate military defense of America.

Their advisory board reads like a "Who's Who" among leading military figures.

Now then, what did this organization want? Well, I'll tell you, gentle reader, they see this country's military defenses in a sad state of affairs. They see the flag of America and the "republic for which it stands ..." as representing a second-rate military power. That's right - second rate. Second to their main competitor, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the one against which we are said to spend over $130 billion a year. A year? Yes, you heard it, each YEAR. That's not just a one time expenditure which gets discussed each time the Congress meets. They actually spend that much money each year. The next year it begins - all over again.

Have we actually lost our minds? I don't know, of course. I wish I did. But I don't. I don't even know how much we can afford, but this group, many of whom I know quite well and sincerely respect personally, seem to feel that whatever we can afford and whatever amount we're spending - it isn't enough. The Russians are not only playing catch-up, but they are now, today, way out in the lead. In shipping fleet, warships, tanks, missiles with nuclear warheads, etc., etc., they easily outgun us. And for what? Defense?

The USSR"s history in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere around the world would not seem to suggest the reason was merely defense. And now Afghanistan, a poor, scroungy little country that's having a tough time just surviving with guts, main-strength and awkwardness is suddenly INVADED by these self-same Russians. Bent on defense, too, no doubt. Oh yeah?

Well, more could be said, including the Soviet's claim that they were invited in by the Afghanis to restore order. "The same as you Americans claim that South Vietnam invited you into their country," say the Communists. I seem to remember that the fighting was in the south - not the North. Also the South Vietnamese had the U.S. for an ally and many say the North Vietnamese had CBS-TV for an ally. Remember who won. But the ASC, unfortunately, is not media oriented.

Now back to the ASC and an adequate North American defense, whatever that is. As I said, I am no expert, but the Soviets, in my humble opinion, represent a giant threat, indeed, to the survival of free nations. Not only America, but other nations and individuals as well. So, what to do?

Well, comes finally the punch line. The ASC wants me to participate, "Because you are an opinion leader in Caldwell you have been nominated to serve on our National Advisory Board." And now get this, ladies and gentlemen, "to participate in our National Security Issues Poll."

Oh God, who is in Heaven above forgive me, but please help us for we have lost our way. We spend money like there was actually going to be no tomorrow - $130 or $140 billion, or more, each YEAR and even the experts want Ralph Smeed and his confused and ill-informed, if well-meaning, pals to participate in a poll to decide how much of our precious blood and treasure to spend, and on what - for our survival.

Oh kind and wise and benevolent and Heavenly Father forgive us. Especially forgive those of us who labor and spend hundreds and hundreds and, yes even hundreds more, of millions of dollars to build for the Soviets the largest truck manufacturing plant in the world on the Kama River in Russia. (Many of the supplies for the Russians in Afghanistan are being hauled in those very same trucks.)

Help us to understand, too, Almighty and powerful God, why their country has to build Berlin walls to keep their people in and our country has to build barriers to keep other people out - and then, given THAT in our favor, our government can't even win a propaganda war. That's the same propaganda war (remember?) that we bought and paid for with wheat "sold" to Russia on credit at 2 percent interest.

How then, in the name of goodness and mercy, can we expect that same government to win a - shooting war - even if us dummies do happen to get 51 percent in the National Security Poll?

Make Law Respectable
by Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 21, 1981

Two interesting speakers were guests of the Caldwell Rotary Club recently. Both were heads of law enforcement bodies (no pun intended, since both men were very much alive, even if the subject matter - law and order - of each did indeed tend to suffer at least the appearance of a fast approaching kind of rigot mortis).

First appeared Richard Dormois, newly appointed Chief of Police of Caldwell. His major concern, understandably reflected somewhat that of his boss, Mayor Al McCluskey, namely the recent spate of violence and intimidations in and around the city park and some dance halls serving alcohol.

There were of course, other concerns, but the attention given to their importance was secondary, especially as it concerns the Mexican-American community. The chief said they are better equipped to handle some of these matters how that they have obtained sufficient "riot gear." Presumably this is to enable his policemen to protect their person while the rowdy are protecting their rights.

Burglary and robbery (the world's first labor saving device) are on the increase, and warnings seem to be in order to keep your door securely locked and travel, if you must walk out at night at all, only in well-lighted walk ways. What's the cause of all this?
Well, President Reagan's principal advisor, Ed Meese, was quoted recently as saying that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was probably responsible for more criminals roaming the streets than any other single factor today.

During the question and answer period following his Caldwell Rotary Club speech. Chief Dormois was asked to comment on Meese's opinion, but Dormois' rather terse response was a refusal, "... to be drawn into a debate concerning any group of organized lawyers."

Our policemen have the duty to brush up against both the scum and the sweet of society and for my part at least they are entitled to a better shake of the dice from our social status game. They give us an awful lot for an awful little. The least we could do, it seems to me, is offer them "equal time" in their (our?) contest against crime. But we don't.

For example, did you know that local police are not allowed to investigate most civil rights cases? Those matters are reserved for the big brother boys, the F.B.I. "Instead, these usually wind up investigating only the local police" said one law enforcement member who preferred to remain anonymous.

A sad state of affairs, you might say, and I'd most certainly agree on the side of our police. But there is another side to the matter. If people are to respect the laws we must take the laws respectable. This can only be done through the people's "right to know" and understand. Our police must be able to tell it like it is.

Well, if law enforcement officials actually fear that their freedom of speech has been infringed - Wow! We're in pretty bad shape, given the continued rise in crime, particularly crimes of violence. Let me hasten to add that Dormois did not say that in so many words - but he should have, i.e., if that's what he thinks.

So should others, if that's what they think, and that's what most of them tell me - privately.

Kelly Pierce, head of Idaho's Department of Law Enforcement followed Chief Dormois a week later at the Rotary luncheon. Asked to comment on Reagan advisor Meese's opinion of the ACLU influence, Pierce replied with a grin: "Some of my friends think that the ACLU is right and some of my friends think the ACLU is wrong. And I always agree with my friends."

Now that might not have been his EXACT quote, but it was most assuredly the sum and substance of it. And if that seems a little more of an over-cautious avoidance of the ACLU matter than Dormois' maybe I can explain.

It's rumored that Pierce may soon be in contest for mayor of Boise, the seat now held by Dick Eardly, who, so far, hasn't seen the need for price control of beer (like the Pierce bosses) and city control of raw milk (like the Dormois bosses). Egad!

Drugs Became an Ideology

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 28, 1981

A short time ago Idaho's Department of Law Enforcement chief, Kelly Pearce, gave an intelligent and informative talk to the Caldwell rotary Club.

As was reasonable to expect, he reported on the increase in crime in Idaho and made a rather convincing plea for us average John Q. Citizens to become involved. He told us to watch for possible criminal behavior and report it to the police. "Without the support of you, the public," Pearce said, "the police cannot possibly enforce the law - adequately." Indeed the indication was that, at least in the area of drugs, we are actually losing ground.

Pearce said that Idaho has only 22 trained narcotics officers "in the whole state." Now then, I don't intend to suggest that 22 drug officers is too few or too many for this state, but I do want to suggest that twice 22, or yes, four times 22 officers is not necessarily what it's all about.

Unfortunately the intellectual level of the usual discussion about drugs is mostly limited to just whose hate for drugs is the strongest. That, ladies and gentlemen, in my opinion, is bad, bad news. Just for the record please let me say that I, too, am against drugs, e.g., marijuana, heroin, pot, LSD, etc., etc. Furthermore my friend and sincere drug hater, Kelly Pearce, gives me credit for "hating drugs" just as much as he does. We differ, however, on what to do about the problem.

"Hating drugs," by merely employing more narcotics agents as Pearce and most law enforcement agents suggest, serves only to drive the price up even higher. This, of course, tends to force an addict or dedicated user into crime in order to finance his or her expensive habit. Not at all unlike the whiskey prohibition of the 1930s. People's demands, whether they be asinine or sublime, will be met either in the black market or in the so-called legal market.

That's sad as sad can be in far too many cases. But the law chief could have done his Idaho constituents a far greater service had he seen fit to get off what some people call a kind of police-mentality, namely, "I just enforce the laws, I don't make 'em."

Well, that's at least partly true. But Pearce told the Rotary Club that Stein Beer Distributing of Boise was being investigated by his department for charging too much for beer in Payette, Idaho. Ye gads! How is that any of the government's
doggone-nose-in-everybody's-business anyway?

Answer? "It's the law," said Pearce. I say, BALDERDASH. There's been lots of laws the police look at and then look aside because they don't make any sense. "But we got a verbal complaint," said Pearce, "so we had to investigate." Ho, ho, ho. How come the rest of us have to sign a written complaint when we want an investigation?

Okay, gentle readers, you fill in your own answers, but here's where the so-called police-mentality should be looking and speaking about to what might be called the "Rotary-club-mentality."

It's what Francis Schaeffer, the famous Swiss theologian calls: "The work ethic, which had meaning within the Christian framework (then) became ugly as the Christian base was removed. Work became an end in itself - with no reason to work and no values to determine what to do with the products of one's work.

"And suddenly, in 1964 at the University of California at Berkeley, the students carried these ideas about the meaninglessness of man out into the streets. Why should anybody have been surprised? Many of the teachers taught the ultimate meaninglessness of man and the absence of absolutes, but they themselves lived inconsistently by depending on the memory of the past.

"Was it not natural that one generation would begin to live on the basis of what they had been taught? And at Berkeley in 1964 the results were visible, full blast."

According to Schaeffer drugs had indeed been around a long time, "But following Aldous Huxley's ideas many students (then) approached drug taking as an ideology, and some as a religion."

They hoped that drugs would provide meaning "inside one's head," in contrast to objective truth, concerning which they had given up hope.

"Psychologist Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, author-philospopher Alan Watts and poet Allen Ginsberg were all influential in making drugs an ideology," says Schaeffer.

You might want to inquire of your kid or your neighbor's kid what kind of an ideology he or she's been getting at college or university these past several years.

Methinks perhaps Pearce should inquire of his "police-mentality," however sincerely motivated, what kind of an ideology they use to keep "mopping the floor" while the federal and state departments of education "faucet" runs all but wide open.

It's 'Squatters Rights' Revisited

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 5, 1981

The Idaho Press-Tribune published a political cartoon recently which, if taken the least bit literally, would do considerable harm to reasonable use of government lands, namely forest lands.

The cartoon showed a giant factory in the far distant background with its huge bank of smokestacks belching forth great gushing gobs of black smoke polluting the otherwise nice clean, big sky. In between the giant factory, presumably a sawmill, and the reader examining said cartoon was several miles of forest lands leading right up into the foreground wherein the Forest Service had constructed a big sign.

The sign read: "James Watt National Forest." But the forest, rather what HAD been a forest, had been devastated, denuded and completely logged off in a massive, plundering timber grab by the money-grubbing capitalist pigs who owned the belching smokestacks in the distance. Capitalist exploitation - a real live tribute to Karl Marx himself.

The artist's intent was to lampoon (read, harpoon) the current crusade of criticism toward government ownership and control of the whole great out-of-doors. It has numerous labels including multiple-use concept: timber is a crop; this is my land; Save the Environment, etc., etc., but the most politically virulent just now is the Sagebrush Rebellion started by some thoughtful freedom lovers in Nevada (i.e., freedom from too much government). It's now in Idaho, too.

The Nevada Legislature, you may remember, passed a law declaring their state ownership of all the federal land within their state's borders. It was a kind of "squatters rights" revisited. Since most of the land in Nevada is kind of sagebrushy and the people thereabouts a hearty breed of hardworking individualists who had had it "up to here" with the arrogant feds, the lawmakers' crusade caught people's imagination all across America. It was dubbed the Sagebrush Rebellion. The name stuck. A movement began. The clarion call of states rights, which once distinguished the United States, again reared its ugly-duckling head - for individualism versus collectivism.

Comes now Ralph Nichols, political reporter and columnist of no means proportions for the august and noble (compared to most) - Idaho Press-Tribune. His column of June 30, 1981, entitled "Rebel goal is private ownership" gave real depth and meaning to the above-mentioned extremist cartoon against President Reagan's new Secretary of the Interior James Watt and his (Watt's) outspoken criticism of big government ownership; (former Secretary Cecil Andrus, R.I.P.).

Get this from columnist Nichols' forensic foray favoring the familiar free lunch. "If the (Sagebrush) rebellion were the wildfire its advocates would like us to believe it is, why would they have to solicit money ...?" How naive. The reasons are manifest, but for openers it's partly because former Secretary Andrus and multi-millionaire actor, Robert Redford, have offered to give or raise $5 million for the University of Idaho (U of I). The money is to be used to study and presumably save the environment from the greedy capitalists.

President Richard Gibb of the U of I brings an all-time high and new dimension to the word naivete when he loudly proclaims "Oh we will not - I assure you - take a dime of that money if there are any strings attached to it." Ho ho ho. Believe me, gentle reader, he ACTUALLY said that.

But Nichols, too, brings an all-time new dimension as well as new volume to the typical high pressure and high pitched hiss (read, h-i-ssss) we so often hear in the media these days against the institution of private ownership itself.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that the simple comcept, certainly in material terms, that distinguishes America's system from the Soviet Union's system is private ownership, Nichols saved his column's best burst of steam for one final sagebrush hiss. I quote his incredible quote:

"And never, ever has anyone connected directly with the Sagebrush Rebellion stood up and contradicted outright the statement by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, that the ultimate goal of the movement is the private ownership of now public federal land." Egad.

Thanks to the Press-Tribune's knee-jerk liberal cartoonist we can now better understand their political reporter, Nichols, who is really a pretty good writer, especially when he's "hissed" off.

Glib Gibb Assures 'No Strings'

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 12, 1981

The president of the University of Idaho, Richard Gibb, spoke last week to a meeting sponsored by the Sagebrush Rebellion. Of major concern was the offer from movie actor Robert Redford and former U.S. Secretary of Interior Cecil Andrus to raise $5 million for a sort of super department of the environment at the university.

Gibb pointed out to the audience, many of whom were skeptical if not downright hostile to the idea, that almost everything a university does is controversial and since both Redford and Andrus are big name environmentalists THIS proposal was extremely so. "But," he assured the audience, "we will not take a dime of the $5 million if there are any strings attached, whatsoever."

As the evening wore on the charming and, some thought, glib president had most of his listeners eating out of his hand. In fact there came to be an almost hallowed tone to such terms as "protecting" inviolate the almost immaculate conception so far achieved by the school's "fine reputation." For which side, of course, was not discussed.

Gibb's excellent story telling ability, especially those told at his own expense, stood him in good stead with what could have been an understandably hostile audience. By that I mean hostile at least given the anti-private ownership "reputation" of most university campuses all across the U.S.

One supposes, therefore, that much precedent exists for extreme skepticism if and when a university is called upon to "study" private ownership ideas as compared to government ownership ideas. Such is the above case.

Notwithstanding the fact that most of the evening's questions about the $5 million fund were more or less Mickey Mouse in substance (i.e., the lack of it) a Boise-Cascade official whose company he said generally favored the whole idea, did suggest he was appalled that the school had proceeded this far without a written contract.

Of interest to some of us was the fact that the university is already receiving $3 million annually from industry to do research for them. This disclosure may account to some degree for industry's lack of zeal in pursuing what was REALLY on most everyone's mind, namely, the kind of philosophy that would tend to dominate the new super department of environment.

Gibb cited to the audience a letter and newspaper column I had written to and for him suggesting that the U of I's supposed super-clean reputation was "clean" mostly from any depth in the philosophy of free competitive capitalism and private ownership. Were that not a fact I for one would not be so skeptical of yet another almost-certain-to-be liberal advocacy school within the university. Goodness knows we've already gone a long, long way down the anti-growth and anti-production road. (Instead of our usual world's first place in jobs, production and standard of living increases last year America experienced a below-zero grade in total production. Ye gods, is that the new America we all want?).

Gibb responded to my inquiry with a humorous wise-crack aided and abetted by his pal, Pat Harwood, president and public relations head for the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI).

Before the laughter had died down he asked the audience for another question, thus avoiding mine. Given the charge I had made, albeit humorously, that a sort of elongated hiss (read, hi-i-sss) emanates from the U of I whenever the term private ownership is "studied," one guesses Gibb was wise to avoid the subject.

The university chief had said earlier in the evening "Why, we even get the accusation that our chair of free enterprise is dominated by big business. Isn't that a laugh?"

Well, neither Harwood nor Gibb are ALL bad, indeed both have done some good deeds for business enterprise, but given the $3 million the U of I is already receiving from business, not much of it one guesses understandably from "little" business, and given Gibb's clever avoidance of my charge that his school is already too knee-jerk liberal on free market alternatives, it is easy to see why some folks see his chair of free enterprise as "dominated" by somebody.

The evening's finest and most ironic wisecrack, however, came from a Nampa real estate merchant and admitted Sagebrush rebel, Ken Young, who opined to his conservative friend, State Rep. Tom Stivers, R-Twin Falls.

Said he, "Stivers, I'm not sure I don't trust Andrus and the movie actor, Redford, more than I do you guys."

"For Heaven's sake, why?" inquired the influential GOPer.

"Well," explained Young, "they're out raising money for the socialist cause - voluntarily. You guys take my taxes against my will and give it to the same crowd."

Whole Government Land Mess a Mistake

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 19, 1981

Nicholas von Hoffman's recent assessment of Interior Secretary James Watt's administration of government lands and his regulatory responsibilities (Idaho Press-Tribune, July 2, 1981) is surely as good a case as one can make for the fact that the whole government land mess is a mistake in the first place.

I suspect that this isn't what von Hoffman had in mind, but let's look at what he said:

(1) Secretary Watt is lax in his collection of royalties from existing oil and gas leases on government lands.

(2) Secretary Watt is leasing too much land for exploration.

(3) Secretary Watt is careless in his treatment of state's rights.

(4) Secretary Watt is not enforcing environmental protection laws as eagerly as he should.

Von Hoffman concluded from this almost religious chant of alleged Watt sins that Doomsday is just over the horizon. We are given a choice, it would appear, between Watt's Armageddon and von Hoffman's apocalypse. Unless, of course, as von Hoffman would have us believe, Watt could be evicted from his position as the nation's chief landlord and sent back to his parish where von Hoffman feels that he (Watt) belongs.

All of this hyperbole and rhetoric makes good reading for the famous syndicated columnist's readers and it may fire up the Watt-Reagan-Symms faithful, but what does it really tell us?

Well, suppose that we didn't have all those federal lands. Suppose it was in private ownership, and in keeping with the American free enterprise tradition. How many newspaper columnists stop and reflect occasionally on why we have all that federal ownership in the West in the first place (nearly HALF the total land area)?

The eastern states seem to get along reasonably well without very much (about 4 percent of the total land area). That's some indication of real advantages in not having so much federal government involvement in the economy.

Let's reconsider von Hoffman's list of allegations:

(1) If oil and gas lands were privately owned, then one could reasonably assume that the owner would have a binding contract with the lessee - thus a penalty for not promptly collecting the royalties. More important, the landowner would not have access to the government treasury to pay for any of his deficits if he didn't operate his business prudently. Deficits are common, of course, for most government agencies. We might remember, too, that the landowner would likely be paying some taxes on his property.

(2) If the government lands were privately owned (to his credit, even von Hoffman avoids the misleading euphemism "public lands"), then the market system rather than politicians and government bureaucrats would be deciding when and where it was best to drill for gas and oil and dig for coal and non-fuel minerals. If you think that the market system doesn't handle these tasks as efficiently as politicians and socialist servants, then you should stop and reflect for a few minutes on how well the Soviet Union handles their productive activities.

(3) And now an easy one. If we didn't have any federal lands then we wouldn't need Secretary Watt, or my friend Secretary Andrus before him. We wouldn't have to get our blood pressure up, therefore, because of their arbitrary treatment of states' rights, and perhaps more important, individuals' rights. We might recall that under Andrus, the Sierra Club headquarters in San Francisco had more to say about important sectors of Idaho's economy than the governor's headquarters in Boise did.

(4) The NON-enforcement of some of our environmental protection laws may be necessary for our economic survival. Our recent binge of environmental legislation (nearly two decades) has left us with a terrible hangover. Businesses have gone broke, workers have been and are being laid off, and taxes and prices have risen. Our present economic sickness is directly related to some of our environmental protection excesses, and many suspect that the final returns are not in yet, especially on our mineral shortages. And, too, lest we forget, Mr. Carter didn't do too well at the polls last year by running on his environmental extremist record (where are you, Erwin Schweibert, now that we need you?).

So, how do we get from where we are to state ownership, or, better yet, to the private ownership of resources where I would like to see us go? Maybe we cannot "plan" the transition. Most of the so-called public planning that I've observed doesn't work very well, anyway, nor does it give the kinds of results that most of us would like to see.

Such a transition will only happen, and probably rather quickly, whenever the American people discover that their shares of stock ownership in the federal lands are not paying any dividends. Indeed, they are being assessed each year to cover the huge deficits being run up by their management. To make matters worse, it is even against the law for those shareholders disgruntled with said management to sell their assessable shares.

If Secretary Watt is to be faulted, in my opinion, it is because he doesn't make information of this kind better known. Which, by the way, also goes for his knee-jerk conservative pals; for example, Reagan, McClure and Symms.

One Retches at the Witch's Brew

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 2, 1981

President Reagan's temporary victory for his tax cut, while admittedly a real victory of sorts, must still wait for the real test, i.e., how much would you bet on the future management of a company operated like the government?

For example, a company whose chief executives get elected by promising the most at election time. A "company" whose objectives are not only obscure for the most part, but indeed are often contradictory in both its foreign policy and its domestic policy.

The time was when our government aided only one side in a foreign country's entanglement. So greedy for power have we become that now our country aids BOTH sides. It's called the "balance of power" theory. One supposes, however, that it's good for business.

But on the domestic front our government does its damndest to be anti-business if not downright anti-capitalist by clamping controls, quotas, taxes, double taxes, and restrictions of every kind and nature seemingly to assure that U.S. companies are in a poor position to compete. Witness that last year for the first time in history we had an admitted "negative increase" in production - we went downhill. The great hope of mankind, the good old U.S.A. went downhill, even statistically.

Examples are everywhere and abundant, but one of the classics of the feds is to subsidize the tobacco industry and raise the already astronomical tax rate to finance a national campaign against smoking. It's almost as if they hate Cuba's cigar-smoking Communist, Fidel Castro, so much that that's the most imaginative "anti" they can come up with, i.e., to be anti-smoking. You'll remember the liberal news-media have long since rendered anti-Communism a severe no-no in polite society - so what else is left (no pun)?

So Reagan and Co. have their work cut out for them if they intend to make government efficient (who cares about freedom?) without the fundamental use of the pricing system and the profit system within a framework of private ownership. The latter, of course, being the classic difference between our system and that of the Soviet Union.

All of the above is not so very confusing, even contradictory, however, when one considers that it's not only the news media who have made anti-anti-Communism a dirty word, but also the liberal academic community. By and large, all across America the schools under the watchful eye of Big Brother and his federal grants-in-aid have labored long and hard to expunge the greedy capitalist ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin and Adam Smith. Indeed, one retches at the witch's brew students must get in order to be so consistently anti-capitalist in their long march through the academic swamp guided by what Idaho's high priestess of education, Janet Hay, chooses to call the "spirit of free inquiry." (it's not so free, one guesses, when the socialists "fish" therein with academic alligators and the capitalists "fish" therein with

Comes now, the college of law at that great bastion of balance, the University of Idaho, Moscow (our Moscow - not the Ruskies!). Your school is now legally representing a Bow and Arrow club right here in Idaho. Said club and others are filing suit in court (no kidding now) to enjoin the Idaho Department of Transportation from making some safety improvements along U.S. Highway 12 on North Idaho's Lewis and Clark Scenic Highway (from Lewiston to Missoula, Mont.).

The Bow and Arrow club led by what many say is Idaho's leading environmental extremist lawyer, Scott Reed, do not WANT the highway improved. It might cause more truck traffic and more Ma and Pa campers to travel their scenic playground. Robin Hood Reed and his merry-men-archers want the area left alone. They like to hunt there, so to hell with the commerce and trade which want to travel that highway. And to hell with the Ma and Pa campers who are too old and-or too poor to backpack the Wilderness by ways and trails.

All of which is not to say that Robin Hood of the red ink Reed and the Bow and Arrow environmentalists do not have the right to be heard. It is to say that Idaho's university law department has no damn business taking part (believe it or not) as an ADVOCATE in the legal controversy surrounding said highway improvement. And that, I'm told, is exactly what they are doing.

In the opinion of Idaho Transportation chief, Darrell Manning, himself a red hot Democrat, two state agencies are representing opposite sides of the same controversy.

My guess is the U of I law department chiefs are, like Reed, environmental extremists of the first water, but along with U of I's President Richard Gibb, they claim it's "good balanced practice for their law students."

In Manning's own words, "their so-called public hearings invited every group who had anything to do with State Highway 12 except the group who runs it." His group, the Idaho Department of Transportation, which has already proposed the scenic highway be improved.

SOME balance, President Richard Gibb, SOME balance.

Bernie Fisher, for Governor?

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 9, 1981

There is, at last, something new on the political scene in Idaho. It is, believe it or not, a move to draft Bernie Fisher for governor.
You'll probably remember Col. Bernard Fisher now of Route 1, Kuna. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his spectacular rescue of a comrade-pilot show down behind enemy lines during the Vietnam war. The war hero radioed his fellow pilots to strafe the abandoned air strip, which was totally surrounded by Vietcong rifles and machine guns, while he landed his plane to pick up the American who was under severe enemy fire.

Then came the radio reply: "We can't cover you Fisher, we're out of ammunition." Back came Fisher's now famous message: "Well, FAKE it then. I'm going down after him anyway." The rest, of course, is history. The rescue, which had about a 10 percent chance, succeeded. And for his act of bravery "above and beyond the call of duty," Fisher was awarded the nation's highest honor.

What's all this have to do with the man's qualifications for governor? Okay, that's a good question. In fact that's what I asked State Rep. Gene Winchester, R-Kuna, long-time close friend and neighbor of the retired Air Corps colonel, when I drove down to Kuna to see if there was anything to the so-called move to draft Fisher.

Well, it's true. There IS something to it. Winchester seems to think, "... true conservatives in Idaho do not get a fair hearing through much of the GOP apparatus and secondly we're not so sure Lt. Gov. Phil Batt can beat incumbent Gov. John Evans."

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Does the GOP have another split in the making or another "Steve Symms of 1972"? Symms, you'll remember, had no prior political experience - none - and therefore could not possibly get elected. But Symms didn't know that. Further, he didn't particularly CARE if he got elected so long as he could promote some rather odd-ball ideas. Many of these ideas are not so odd any longer thanks not much to the GOP experts and thanks almost not at all to the University of Idaho in general and the U of I Alumni Association in particular who "fired" Symms in 1969 as their president for advocating some such anti-establishment, i.e., odd-ball ideas. U.S. Sen. Steve Symms - a prophet before his time?

All of which is not to suggest that promoter-without-portfolio Winchester has entirely convinced Fisher to throw his hat into the gubernatorial ring, but the idea is far from absurd. A political statistician of considerable experience and talent showed several colored chart photos to an audience gathered to consider Fisher as a candidate. "If one considers the rather obvious conservative voting strength of Otter, Ravenscroft and Larsen in the last governor's race," said the statistics expert, "then adds to that the energy, strength and zeal of the 'Moral Majority' who also feel somewhat disenfranchised. Fisher could be a darkhorse in the making. I'm not ready to say he is, already, but he most certainly could be."

If there ver was an intelligent, affable, decent and down-home type of all-American "Mr. Clean," Fisher is it. This retired airline pilot, Air Force colonel, father of a beautifully close-knit family, member of the Idaho State Parole Board, war hero, farmer (actually farms about 80 acres west of Kuna and raises goats and dairy heifers) is about the last person on earth to be on an ego kick or power kick so often common to political aspirants. This fact in itself has a certain touch of reality and freshness to recommend it, not to mention the political desirability of a candidate who doesn't particularly want the job.

"I know our country is in trouble," said Fisher, "big trouble. I know, too, there are lots of people in Idaho who seem to want more of the same policies in our state that led the federal government into a big mess. But I'm not exactly sure I'm the man who should run for governor. There are other good, concerned men, more experienced than I am, although I do agree that somehow conservatives often seem to get the short end of the political stick. So I'm not ready to cop out, yet, either. If there's enough support for my candidacy I suppose I'd at least take a look at it - a skeptical look, but at least a look."

I phoned Phil Batt, easily the front-runner for the GOP nomination, and asked his reaction. "Bernie is an absolutely fine human being, handsome, has a big winning smile and a lot going for him. But politically I think I wouldn't have too much trouble beating him in the primary. You can quote me as saying he's a first class person."

Then came a quick sort of Batt follow up, "But don't quote me with such enthusiasm that it sounds even for a moment that I WANT him to get in the race."

Thankfully, You Can't Print Gold

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 16, 1981

A dozen or so years ago one of my close friends was visiting with me about our federal government's growing tendency to debase the people's money by the simple process of using the printing press - and using it at a scary and ever increasingly high rate of speed.

The government does this, of course, for a very simple reason - because it is dishonest.

In order to get elected or to stay elected, politicians promise a great many things to a great many people. In order to pay the fabulous cost of these things they raise taxes. But taxes make people angry, so instead the politicians resort to printing paper money. There is virtually no limit to the amount of it they can, and do, print. When civilians do this it is called counterfeiting and is against the law, and it is almost just that simple.

Schemes like this have been going on for centuries, but one way to protect one's self from being ripped off is to convert or sell one's paper money for hard money like gold or silver.

This is why gold and silver coins have been getting so scarce for the past 10 or 15 years. Perhaps you've noticed. It has been taking place under the administration of both political parties and while Republicans tend to belly-ache a little harder about "spending" and "fiscal responsibility" they know that in order to get elected or to stay in power they, too, must promise much and spend more. Not their money, of course, YOURS. It is not at all unlike getting hooked on illegal drugs except that when the government gets hooked, i.e., does exactly the same thing, it's all perfectly legal.

So what to do? Well, some rich people see this going on and can buy large gold bars called bullion. Many banks and other big outfits do just that. But what about John Q. Public? He cannot afford to buy gold in such large quantities. Indeed, until only a short time ago it was not legal for him to even OWN any gold, in most cases.

My good friend and I had many further visits about this matter and we agreed that if either of us were ever elected to public office we'd try our damndest to do something to enable the little guy - John Q. Public, to protect himself from the politicians and their promises-for-votes all being paid for by printing paper money.

Well guess what happened? My friend did just exactly that. He got himself elected to high public office. The Congress of the United States in fact, where he proceeded to work hard and successfully to make it legal for the little guy to own gold. That way the little guy could protect his savings from the politicians. At least he could if he had a few dollars to spare.

Even those who had no savings at all would be better off since the government's printed money counterfeiters cause the worker's paycheck to shrivel up. And it's these workers who are so dependent upon the savings of those people who do have a few bucks to spare. It's called "capital formation." That's where capital comes from you know, and it costs on the average something like $75,000 to finance just one American worker's job.

As I said, my friend succeeded, with the help of a few other like-minded colleagues in the House of Representatives, to repeal the law against owning gold back in the mid 70s. But the little guy was yet to be able to take advantage of the new "escape" clause to protect himself from the printed money politicians. Why? Well the government, which owned almost all the gold, sold it in such big heavy bars of bullion the little guy couldn't afford to buy it.

So what to do? My friend, the congressman said to me, "We've got to make the government mint some gold coins so John Q. Public can afford to protect himself at least to some degree from the greedy politician's printing press paper money." And guess what? With the help of some of those same congressmen my friend succeeded in getting a law passed (in 1980) forcing the U.S. Treasury to sell as coins a small portion of whatever gold they do sell off.

I said "coins," above, but they are not coins. That would be going too far toward suggesting sound money was once more fashionable. Instead they are called "medallions." The law is called "The American Arts Gold Medallion Act." One supposes that my congressman friends didn't have enough political clout in order to get a gold bill passed to mint old-fashioned gold coins, so they had to get the politically powerful liberals to help. The liberals have said for years they are great to promote art and artists, so no doubt they agreed to help if it promoted art.

HR 14279 became Public Law 95-630 signed by President Carter on Nov. 10, 1978. John Q. Public now has the freedom to spend his printing press paper money in order to buy gold. He doesn't have to, mind you, but he CAN. Now that's real success.

My friend has been successfully in politics in other ways, too. Since then he was elected to the United States Senate - last year.

And sort of in commemoration of that event he had his darling wife drop off a large folder-type packet at my home last week. It was printed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Mint, Office of Marketing, Washington, D.C.

It consisted of something in the order of 5,000 words with photos of the medallions and the artist whose names they will honor.

I haven't yet finished reading the entire packet about the medallions, but I think there's a reason it's so hugh.

About 10 of its pages are needed to describe how complicated it is in order for John Q. Public to buy gold "coins."

Funny Thing About Bunker Hill

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 20, 1981

One of Idaho's largest employers, the Bunker Hill silver mine of Kellogg, is closing for good. Or, if you'd rather - closing for bad, since its 2,100 employees will be out of work.

It's bad for the company, too, in case anybody cares, since they lost $7.7 million in the first half of 1981. They've had not only a big payroll, but it's also been a huge source of taxes for Uncle Sam of Washington, D.C. and cousin John (Evans) of Boise, both of whom no doubt deeply mourn the disaster at Bunker Hill.

Now then, nobody, nobody, nobody in their right mind could possibly think there's anything good about this sad state of affairs, but there is (forgive me) something funny about it. If we are going to avoid this happening again and elsewhere we'd better well consider how it got that way.

Along that direction a few observations:

(1) Gov. John Evans, a decent, kind and caring man manifested his kindness by vowing to "make all the resources available at the state level" to help ease the problems at the mine. (How comforting.) One wonders if Evans made the statement after he heard the company's mother lode was clobbered by the $7.7 million loss or after he heard it was actually going to close down.

(2) One wonders, too, if Evans, First District Congressman Larry Craig or gubernatorial hopeful Ralph Olmstead, all of whom went to Kellogg, thought enough to suggest to the 2,100 voters there that the Washington, D.C. "miners" had dug up so much paper money in lo' these many years that people panicked into buying silver thus driving the price sky-high. That's government managing our money. It's more properly called Gresham's law. Remember? Bad money drives out good money. Always has, always will.

But no politician will say this, least of all the politicians whose administrative assistants, being well-disciplined by the Republican National Committee, demand that their boss NOT try to educate the voters into fiscal sanity. "It's not the way to win votes," they bleat. The way to win elections or to stay in office is DON'T try to educate. Just talk and don't say anything. (At this most are eminently qualified.)

(3) It is admittedly not funny, but it's passing strange that this economic disaster, if not downright holocaust, doesn't cause enough pressure on the electrician's union to bring mobs of workers and management into the streets. Why? Well, seven unions are represented at the Bunker Hill mine. Six of the unions voted yes when the company asked them to take about a $1 an hour pay cut to keep the mine going. The electrical union voted no, so the mine is closing down. Now THAT'S real brains from labor's union leadership. Egad!

Well, maybe the government will make another loan like it did for Chrysler, Lockheed, Penn Central, etc., etc. But wait! Speaking of the government, perhaps ex-Sen. Frank Church will run again and use his very great powers of persuasion to get the government to run Amtrak through North Idaho. Wallace and Kellogg's mines could be made into a national museum-shrine and maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans would come to pay homage. They just might make it a tourist attraction, you know, especially if the government served free lunches on the train. Come to think of it why wouldn't they almost get in line to visit the Bunker Hill shrine since Idaho politicians seem to be "worshipping" there all of a sudden.

Maybe it wouldn't even be a joke - you'll remember the politicians in Russia have "Sold" their voters on lining up in long queues just to go look at Lenin's tomb in the Kremlin. I don't know what admission they charge, but I'll bet the Russians don't lose as much money as Bunker Hill is losing in the silver mine.

I jest, of course, and I know that it's no laughing matter. But it's been said there's usually truth in a jest. Well, there's truth in this one, too. Asking the politicians and the unions to solve economic problems is almost an absolute, if cruel, joke.

Public opinion believes that the improvement in the condition of the wage-earners is an achievement of the unions and various politicians. It gives to unionism and to legislation the credit for higher wages, shorter hours of work, the disappearance of child labor and other changes. Not true, of course, nevertheless they believe it.

The prevalence of this belief made unionism popular and is responsible for the trend in labor legislation. Since people think they owe to unionism their high standard of living, they condone violence, coercion, and intimidation on the part of unionized labor and are therefore indifferent to the curtailment of personal freedom inherent in compulsory unionism.

During the last legislative session "Cousin" John (Evans) threatened to veto the freedom to work bill then being debated in Boise. "Uncle" Jim McClure, silver-haired senator of the silver state, unbelieveably rejected the freedom to work effort as therefore futile and unwise, saying: "... hence the bill should be defeated." It was. And without even any education taking place.

No doubt some intellectual incest exists twixt our political relatives. Methinks they've bred more than a bastard child.

Greatest BSU Need Is Good Quarterback

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 6, 1981

The recent decision to reinstate the Boise State University football player who had been seriously disciplined for cheating on a test has some of the academic community somewhat up in arms.

They are upset because they think that where athletics are concerned - anything goes. Ever wonder why they think that? Because it's true, that's why. At least it's partly true. Just look at the huge football stadiums and costly physical plant dedicated to other sports, too, in which only a few students can play. Of course, they do tend to pay off in terms of esprit de corps, i.e., school spirit. Reminds one of the old days preceeding the fall of the Roman empire. Bread and circuses to keep the masses pacified. It works, too.

You may remember the BSU quarterback who hired a classmate to take an exam in his (the quarterback's) name. To maintain some semblance of amateur status the ballplayers have to pass minimum grade standards in order to play ball. In order to win ball games, however, the coaches (and the university presidents?) must have good ball players. Unfortunately not all the good athletes are good students and vice versa. So exceptions are made and the records are sometimes bent a little so ye old home team can look good.

Well, the quarterback's bogus test-taker not only flunked the test, worse yet, he got caught. Now then, the government school system's miserable record of even teaching students to read and write, not to mention do their sums and write a comprehensive paragraph has even driven some educators to public outcry.

One such outcry came from BSU's Academic Grievance Council who suspended the cheating quarterback for the fall semester. So far so good.

But BSU's President John Keiser thought the quarterback received too tough a disciplinary action, so he countermanded about 50 percent of the grievance council's order. He knows BSU needs good quarterbacks more than it needs grievance committees if the school is to win ball games.

It all sort of reminds one of President Gerald Ford when he pardoned ex-President Richard Nixon. Ford thought the political-ball-playing GOPer had suffered enough and, after all, we had to get back to the job of running the country.

So Keiser has a point. After all, he has a super-big job to do, running a super-big school and trying to keep the masses happy - especially the "masses" who love football, especially when they WIN ball games.

On the other hand, all the academics have to do "teaching" students is to show up for class. Coaches, you'll remember, have to PRODUCE, i.e., have to win. How long has it been since you've heard of a mediocre football coach saving his job by having tenure?

To be sure this is not to condone Keiser's granting partial immunity to the quarterback (the latter's not having been coached how better to have chosen a competent proxy doesn't even speak very well for BSU's teaching ability). I just wish the public could see what a tough job it is to be a high level bureaucrat like a government university president. He has to win ball games with supply and demand oriented "teachers," called coaches, whose department MAKES money, while having to teach students something (nobody knows just exactly what) with, largely anti-supply and demand professors whose departments COST money. if that sounds contradictory, wait.

When Keiser first came to Boise he observed that since BSU was situated virtually in the shadow of Idaho's marble palace of politics and its legislature, "we" had something like almost a mandated opportunity to teach politicians and bureaucrats and government.

Well now, don't laugh. (You may have felt as I did upon first hearing of the new BSU prexy's "mandate" - I retched.) But the university has all but accepted a proposed new department that may put all the school's problems in proper perspective.

It's to be called Boise State University's Frank Church Chair of Public Administration. It is to be endowed by the friends of the former senator and to honor both his name and, one supposes, politics.

What may not yet be clear is whether Keiser intends to send his coaches and professors to learn from the politicians and bureaucrats - or the other way around.

Tax Gimmicks Abound for Rich

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 13, 1981

There was a rather unusual letter to the editor last week which was worthy of note. It came from U.S. Sen. Steve Symms and was directed to Press-Tribune columnist Erwin Scwiebert's criticism of Symms' subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee.

The freshman senator chairs the estate and gift tax subcommittee whose direction is presently toward "reducing the (death) tax burden on small businessmen, farmers and families." Schwiebert opposes such tax reduction and so stated in one of his recent columns. Symms took on the articulate spokesman of the militant middle moderates point by point and, generally speaking, did quite a good job.

However, there was at least one important point upon which the Symms' letter was surprisingly silent. It deserves public scrutiny because our getting-phonier-by-the-minute economy is already so full of tax gimmicks and so empty of producer incentives that "America the Beautiful" may soon be sung to the tune of "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" or, "Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over."

Since the issues and consequences of estate and gift taxes will, presumably, get pretty well aired in the coming months, I want to zero in on the point Symms' letter overlooked or, for some odd reason, avoided.

Probably Symms' best point was that America's small businesses and family operations tended to be wiped out over the past 25 years due to the death tax burden and, however well - intentioned, that the typically Marxian idea of redistributing the wealth serves mostly to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. A scheme, unfortunately, rather well articulated on campus after campus all across America for lo' these many years.

Now then, the matter of college campus is exactly the area the former apple growing senator "forgot" to mention in his letter to the editor. Schwiebert's vested interest for the past several decades has been education, in general, and securing tax-deductions for rich people, in particular. At least people rich enough to give some of their money to the College of Idaho at Caldwell where Schwiebert has been employed over the years as one of their most successful fund raisers. Needless to say, the bigger the government's "death tax" burden the better the prospects of Schwiebert's special interest of raising money, since itis aided by the proverbial tax deduction.

Let me hasten to add that Schweibert's no Marxist, far from it. Neither do I think the college by whom he's employed uses professors of that persuasion. Nevertheless, their financial well-being is largely dependent upon an idea which serves, to some substantial degree at least that general area of thought - a large redistributionist tax burden.

Symms' letter comments further on Schwiebert's "Finally the point is made that estate and gift taxes have led people to split up their holdings and give a portion to charity because it includes a tax break." His (Schwiebert's) "portion to charity" does not mean, in the main, charity, rather it means particularly: "a portion to his COLLEGE" from whence comes his livelihood.

Now then, neither the super-conscientious moderate nor his College of Idaho employer can be faulted for inventing the tax gimmick for education. They didn't. But then, neither are they likely to criticize, not to mention, condemn it.

All of which is both honest (legal, anyhow) and under the present governmentality, clever and expedient. Further, this is not to impugn the good offices and intentions of either the C of I or its hard working fundraiser-columnist, Schwiebert. It is, however, to suggest that HALF of Idaho's Senate delegation overlooked something big in his otherwise excellent letter-to-the-editor defense of abolishing what he calls the tragedy of the death tax.

That "something" is this. How likely is it that college students will get to hear from their teachers a very convincing case for big tax cuts when (1) their college's financial welfare depends so much on the scenario outlined by their fun raiser, Schwiebert, who favors high taxes to help him raise money for his "private" college?

And (2) how likely is a private college to articulate private sector problem-solving (as contrasted to the government sector problem-solving) when so much of the college's financial health depends on a high-taxes gimmick for the rich?

Especially when that gimmick is provided by - you guessed it - the government.

Schemes Buy Votes

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 20, 1981

Last week I received a leaflet from an outfit called A Citizen's Organization for a Sane World (SANE). As you might imagine they are against military spending.

I might have thrown away the literature, but it was mailed to me by a good friend who owns a large farm supply store in Caldwell and whose ideas tend to range clear across the whole ideological spectrum.

Now then, let me state what I see as my friend's major claim(s) and his major fear based mostly as I read the above SANE flyer. He writes, "Did you know that 70 percent of all scientists and technicians are doing ONLY military programs?"

Well, no, I did not know that. It's scary, but I'd guess it just may be true. I don't like it, whatever the percentage is. I'm sure it's not only scary, however, but since a government bureau (the Department of Defense) is doing it, it is also probable. I just don't know what to do about it. Let me explain.

The flyer points out (1) Increased spending will worsen, not cure, our economic ills. (2) It will cause more inflation. (3) Since the lion's share of our research talent and funds goes to military projects we get a further productivity decline. (4) We get fewer jobs since (government) dollars spent on weapons systems create far fewer jobs than those (government) dollars spent on civilian projects.

That, roughly speaking, is my friend's, and SANE's, pitch. Summed up again in their words, "Real Strength and Security: Conversion To An Economy That Meets Human Needs."

Now then, what scares me is that my friend and SANE make a certain amount of sense. Unfortunately, they don't address the other side of that coin. No pun-intended, but "that coin" has long been replaced by paper money inflation caused in large measure BOTH by the liberal's gargantuan welfare schemes and, repeat and, the conservative's big military spending schemes. Each group claims good intentions. But what they don't tell you is that those "schemes" are, mostly, to buy votes. Admittedly they are often motivated both by the liberal's sincere, but indiscriminate compassion and the conservative's sincere, if foolish way of stimulating the ole economy.

No matter how sincere both SANE and my friend might be they still refuse to address what scares the conservatives and the military whom I believe are also sincere. These people remember the Soviet Invation of Poland (remember about 40 years ago?) and when the U.S. stood idly by during similar and more recent invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and before that when they built the Berlin Wall to keep their citizens from escaping "the worker's paradise." They remember Cuba, too, and many other examples even more significant.

And more recently - Afghanistan. Ye gods, man, have we no memory at all?

For some reason our side never seems to see fit to mention our giving independence back to the Phillipine Islands, Okinawa to Japan, etc. Even though we police-actioned Korea and Vietnamed ourselves to disgrace in Southeast Asia we did not "occupy" afterward in the sense Russia's puppet and staellite governments "occupy" afterward.

Maybe, just maybe, gentle reader, we liberty-lovers, if indeed that's what we are, should team up with SANE and get what used to be called the government's Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) "mentality" off our backs along with the military big spenders off our backs, too.

Maybe that way there'd be enough money and research talent to figure out two question: (1) Why does Russia have to build a Berlin Wall to keep their own people IN while the U.S.A. cannot keep foreigners OUT without a wall?

And (2) Why, given the above "in and out" contrast, can't the U.S. government's other bureau, the Department of State, ever win ever a propaganda battle?

Perhaps SANE and my intelligent businessman friend could better make their point if, instead, they suggested a new U.S.A. first-line-of-defense: (1) Stop financing the Soviet's war machine. For example, we built them the world's largest truck manufacturing factory on their own soil. And (2) Stop feeding their poverty class with wheat provided by own own poverty class - the poor American taxpayer.

I'll bet he (the taxpayer) could use an outfit called SANE. But he'd better not let a government bureau run it.

Why Didn't Reagan Tell It Like It Is?

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 27, 1981

Thursday night President Reagan came on national television speaking directly to the American people. So what? Well, let me respond to your "so what," if indeed, that's what you asked.

My response is that I've got good news and bad news about the still popular (so far, anyway) conservative president's speech. First the good news: I said Reagan spoke directly to the people. That means his message did not have to be filtered and interpreted through the news media most of which is hostile to his moderately conservative politics.

Now for the bad news. He didn't say anything. Oh sure, he did say some things he'd already said several times before, but he failed to explain one of the most important - maybe THE most important, namely, why his message gets so garbled if not downright lied about.

Not along ago some news media person, who typically played the self-appointed role of watch-dog of the people's pottage, asked Reagan: "Mr. president, many of your critics say your economic recovery plan has not worked like you promised and is not bringing the country back to more jobs, more pay, more defense and less taxes and less government. What do you have to say to that?"

"Well," said the very communicative president, "they're right. It is not working. It doesn't BEGIN until October." Quite properly Reagan restated that remark in his speech, but he failed to put it in the context that is almost universally the same treatment his budget message usually gets via the liberal news media. Unfortunately that kind of good response seldom gets heard by the public because 90 percent of the Reagan policy "news" and commentary is not conducted in his presence. Of course, it cannot always be done that way, but therein lies the crux of the problem.

The crux I speak of is that the new media is owned and controlled lock, stock and barrel by liberal writers, liberal editors, liberal TV news commentators and others of a vigorous philosophical persuasion. They're almost diametrically opposed to everything the Reagan program stands for.

Let me hasten to add there are, of course, exceptions. Some of these are in strange places and perform yeoman service, bless their mini-minority and courageous hearts. But they're scarce as hen's teeth and almost as hard to identify. Maybe that last is the only way they can survive the liberal peer-group pressure which is, believe me, almost fanatic.

I submit to you, gentle reader, that the Reagan budget cuts as identified and "explained" by the national media make it appear as if the conservative president had already cut last year's budget by HALF and have his Scrooge-like chains clanking down the dark hallway to the now more than empty federal treasury, preparing to cut off the other half.

That's to hear the media tell the president's message. The truth is that this year's budget will be even larger than last year's. The only cuts the Reagan administration has so vigorously promoted so far have been cuts in the INCREASES already programmed into the super government by past years and years of big-spending liberals. The huge controversy, and we've by no means heard the last of it, is only about cutting the increase. It is not about cutting the budget in a manner the ordinary citizen would imagine.

Well, so much for "equal time" to the so-called radical right. But why didn't President Reagan SAY that to the American people? Listen, I was told this summer at a meeting with about 20 of Reagan's top chiefs, Sens. Paul Laxalt, Jesse Helms, Jake Garn, S.I. Hayakawa, Secretary Richard Schweiker, chief advisor Ed Meese (et al) that, "If we could just stop the increase in Social Security payments we could balance this thing right soon." But they didn't know if they could sell it - politically.

Ye gods and jumpin' catfish! They sure as hell cannot sell it if they don't tell the PUBLIC about it in a clear, convincing and caring way. One of the greatest military generals of all time said it very well, "When the trumpet falters, only few will rally."

Well, Reagan and company should stop letting the news media blow their trumpet. They need to either do an end run around their tremendous TV anchor-man trumpet blowers or do a line drive through them. And censorship is not at all called for, either.
What is called for is to TELL IT LIKE IT IS and do it on national TV. That's something the Republican National Committee (RNC) has either never understood or never favored. Why? Let me make a guess.

With his own mouth Walter Knott, of the famous Knott's Berry Farm, told me in 1964 that Reagan's famous speech for then conservative candidate for president, Barry Goldwater, was REFUSED for adding to the national TV campaign - by the RNC.

Knott insisted, RNC still refused, Knott, who was then western treasurer for the GOP, threatened to withhold the money already collected. RNC finally gave in.

That TV "show" put Ronald Reagan into national politics and pulled the GOP completely out of debt.

Since then, the RNC seems to wonder if either one was a good idea.

That's a Bigger Hole than One Imagines

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 4, 1981

The Congress of the United States raised the ceiling on the national debt again Wednesday. In case you hadn't noticed it has now sunk to $1 trillion in the hole. That's a bigger hole than one might imagine. Let me explain.

Since it is true that statistics and figures can be made to sound awfully dull let me try something a little bit more meaningful. Perhaps it will make what seems to me to be of absolutely staggering importance seem important to you.

Just for fun just imagine that you were president of a giant corporation far back about the time they crucified Jesus Christ on the cross, for what some called his bad political judgment. Remember now, that was almost 2,000 years ago (1981 years ago, to be exact).

This corporation, let's call it Utopia, Inc., was in some ways a whole lot like our federal government today except that, of course, it was a whole lot smaller than our federal government. But it was quite similar in that Utopia, Inc., pooped away a lot of money every day. As president of this company you really didn't have to worry too much, however, because your chief treasurer told you that your predecessor had left you while a whole billion dollars of capital.

Now then, a billion dollars today doesn't seem like a whole lot of money, but in those days that was real big dough, so big in fact that you and your treasurer decided that you could lose a thousand dollars a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year - until further notice, so to speak.

"In fact," said the treasurer, "I don't think we'll even miss it. I'll let you know if it's any different, so forget it. Go and have a nice day."

Well, you went. And sure enough your company lost a thousand dollars a day, 365 days a year for a thousand years. Oh sure, you would have died long before the thousand years were up and so would your treasurer. But he was an ever-so-clever fellow, as treasurer of Utopia, Inc. You, the president of the company, knew that in the beginning. If he had not been a very clever fellow you would not have trusted him with the company's $1 billion of capital. Okay?

He was so clever, however, that he set up the company in such a quiet way as to assure that it would continue down through the generations to come and continue to lose a thousand dollars each day.

Do you know that your company, Utopia, Inc., 50 generations later, would still not have exhausted all of its capital? That's right. It would still be going at a continuing loss of a thousand dollars a day, a thousand years later. Well, no, that's a little misleading. It would still be going (losing) two thousand years later.

Of course, now, a loss of a thousand dollars a day isn't exactly a fine legacy for you, as president, to have left behind for your company and your stockholders, but in terms of not having yet, even after all those years, exhausted all of the $1 billion that your company left, it's a very big deal - okay?

Okay. But would you ever have guessed that as of today, almost two thousand years later, at one thousand dollars a day loss the original $1 billion would last for yet another 800 years?

Your company, Utopia, Inc. which started with $1 billion way back at the time of Christ and lost $1,000 a day would still be going for almost another 800 years. Holy cow! How about that.

Well, gentle reader, that's just how a billion is big. Real big, eh? Okay, but a trillion is a thousand of those billion.

Now then, I asked my pal, U.S. Sen. Steve Symms right after he became senator, why this year he changed his eight year voting pattern of vigorously voting against raising the limit on the national debt. He said "they" really put the heat to him explaining that the U.S. government had to "be responsible and pay its bills. After all, what would happen if the government didn't pay its bills?" Then, too, one of his (Symms) professor friends, a kind of libertarian one at that (sorry) in New York, said "Steve, you'd better go along with Reagan and do what he says. Symms did, once. I'm sorry to report that.

But I'm happy to report that Wednesday, for some reason, Symms voted right, i.e., against raising the debt limit ceiling. Hopefully the old Steve Symms of 1972 is returning (I hope, I hope, I hope).

So our national debt is now a trillion dollars - remember, that's a thousand billion. Goshamighty! Oh yes, and Idaho's senior senator Jim McClure, voted for raising the debt limit ceiling - again. Presumably "... so the government could pay its bills."

I wish I'd have suggested to Jim as I did last week to Steve that it was my understanding that the Constitution had a debt limit ceiling precisely so the government (read, the politicians) could not pay the bills.

Presumably, so that you and I could pay ours.

Power, Freedom Are the Same

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 11, 1981

All writers and would-be writers, I'm told, have their detractors and their cheerful, if not always welcome, critics. But as former Gov. Bob Smylie once warmed me, "When you take sides publicly, Ralph, you're fair game for the critics."

Some of my critics including some of those in this very newspaper, believe it or not, (would you believe involving even the omniscient publisher and the godlike, if not exactly divine, editor?) accuse me of sometimes writing over the heads of my readers.

Well, one wonders. But then, one soon relaxes having remembered the news media suffers from myriad other problems, some of which even make sense.

So, especially for those scribes and pharisees of the fourth estate, here's a little fairy tale I received in the mail some time ago from what members of the media are wont to call a "usually reliable source." It's a fairy tale for those whose attention spans are a bit shorter than other's, but it also has a few good and familiar characteristics of Aesop's fables. It was Aesop, you'll remember, who served us so well way back when the words education and schooling meant the same thing. Remember now, it's just a fairy tale and it's just for fun.

****

Once upon a time, in the merry old land of Sunny Slope Valley there lived an apple grower named Steve. Steve was very independent and valued his freedom. Back in those days Steve valued his freedom so much he even defended other people's freedom.

As happens with most societies over the years his government grew bigger and bigger and Steve was startled to notice his freedoms were disappearing. "This will never do," he said. "It's nothing short of plunder and I intend to do something about it."

So Steve, with the help of some friends, printed a compass to show the people the way back to freedom. But no one would follow it. In fact some monks of the Alumni tribe at the university thought Steve's compass was bewitched and hence tried to persecute him.

One day he said to his friend Ralph, "I will go to battle. Freedom is the issue." Though seen by many to be the valley's sorcerer, Ralph cautioned Steve that freedom is something that must be felt and to truly have freedom the people would have to win it for themselves - no political magic could win it for them.

But Steve was sure he could help by not being a typical politician. Instead, he'd be a politician who would educate.

In the early years Steve was very successful and after slaying several bureaucratic dragons was declared a knight and sent to the posh Potomac Valley somewhere up the Potomac River.

Although all those in the Potomac River Valley had to drink from the government trough, life in the valley wasn't all that bad. Everyone there was a hero of sorts and much smarter than the natives in any other valley. In fact they were so much smarter they felt it was their duty to tell everyone else how to live their lives and how to spend their money. Not everyone listened of course, so they built an army and a police force to give their decisions muscle. All decisions were, naturally, for the people's own good.

Now Steve, being fresh from Sunny Slope Valley, was very critical. "The people don't want your wisdom," he shouted, "they want freedom." Although he was quite irritating to the older residents in the valley they tolerated him and sometimes would chuckle to themselves saying, "Eight years of drinking from the Potomac trough will change him." Steve overheard this one day and laughed himself for he knew he would never stay that long. Maybe two years, maybe four, but no longer.

But as often happens time got away from our hero and four years turned into eight and he decided to stay in the posh Potomac Valley. The polluted water from the Potomac had affected his voting from time to time, but nothing very serious, so he sent word to his old friends that he might stay just six more years because he said he could gain even more power.

"Power?" asked sorcerer Ralph. "I thought you wanted freedom." Steve said, "I think I'm on to something here, Ralph. Power and freedom are the same thing." Being of sound mind, but weak stomach, sorcerer Ralph threw up.

So in his ninth year, Steve began drinking heavier and heavier from the polluted Potomac. Being more powerful now he was even allowed to use the sacred government goblet to guzzle with. He was even seen guzzling a little pollution from the tobacco and sugar lobby.

The people from Sunny Slope Valley heard about Steve's apparent problem of drinking from the polluted Potomac, but being typical voters few were concerned. They knew that in fairy tales everybody is protected by a knight who slays the dragon and all live happily ever after.

******

But remember, folks, this is just that - a fairy tale.

Business Enterprise Not 'Free'

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 18, 1981

It would astound most people to discover how many corporate executives have almost no interest in promoting a more market-oriented economy.

Contrary to the popular public perception, there is a huge difference of opinion within the business community about the extent to which free markets could, or should, function.

Okay. So what else is new? Well, I can tell you a little something that is new. There is about to be installed at the College of Idaho (C of I) a new Department of Business Management. It is to be headed up by a promising new dean, Dr. James Kelly, presently of Idaho State University at Pocatello, but soon to move his residence to Caldwell. My usually reliable sources tell me that already the new department stands a good chance of being one of the most popular of the college's offerings.

While it could well be argued as to whether the new department will have the most salubrious effect on its students or the remainder of the liberal arts faculty at the C of I, it has long been my position that the liberal arts are by far the most influential. They may even be the most important, as well, the average businessman's mentality to the contrary not-withstanding. But let's take a look.

The new business department is being funded, to start, by a $200,000 gift of the grocery store tycoon, Joe Albertson, or at least by the successful company which bears his name, as will, quite appropriately, the C of I's new department.

But all of this apparent good news gives a few of us some pause amidst our understandable good cheer. Now then, Joe Albertson is a jolly good giant. Indeed, only recently he gave the college a million dollars (no strings) which gave sufficient impetus to others who also gave a few million and - or forgave similar amounts of old college debt. I know him personally, too, having done a little business with him years ago and saw him then as a jolly-good even before he became a green giant.

So suffice it to say Albertson is a first class citizen. So, too, no doubt, are his corporate lieutenants who administer his community-minded projects, but one wonders where they all got their ideas of just how (not to mention, why) free enterprise education should be "taught." Their ideas might be of interest.

Why? Fair enough to ask. But almost nobody looks a gift horse in the mouth - understandably - still, almost nobody even asks. Such is where the almost blind faith in schooling has led us these past several decades. Led, in many cases, by well-intentioned businessmen.
For example, just what the difference is between free enterprise and business enterprise isn't at all clear. What IS clear, however, is that the University of Idaho's new "Chair" has carefully been entitled as one of "business" enterprise. Not, please not, "free" enterprise. Free, of course, signifying free market.

Consider what the auspicious Council for a Competitive Economy's ever-so-clever president, Richard Wilcke, says on the subject.
"Even among business owners or managers who loudly profess their allegiance to free enterprise, there is reluctance to push beyond minor modification. Most business associations and educational foundations put their emphasis on giving consumers, teachers and students economic education about the business system.

"Unfortunately, many of these educational programs are so vague and watered down that they raise more issues than they settle ... it simply will not work for the business community to be dragged kicking and screaming into economic freedom. (They) must be knowledgeable and committed (to the free market) themselves."

Now then, here's where I don't know Albertson nor his lieutenants well enough to say - just now - just what the effect of the C of I's Albertson School of Business Management will be. I do know that it could (repeat, could) introduce the idea of free market economics, itself, onto the college campus for the liberal professors. THAT would be real progress.

But don't hold your breath, gentle reader, don't hold your breath, i.e., if one is to judge by one of the newly-appointed C of I trustees, anyway. At a party the other night, this new trustee took in after me for my years of constructive and ever-so-wise criticism of higher education, in general, and the C of I imparticular. Boy, are we in trouble? (Fortunately, or unfortunately, we were both stone sober, too).
She gave me Hail Columbia for being too pre-occupied with economics and then insisted that I fund a chair of economics, libertarian variety (whatever that is) for $200,000. Wow! A nice compliment. But what she used for logic was typical knee-jerk liberalism. That's something one finds on too many college campuses already.

Methinks perhaps Albertson and professor Kelly might want to consider first trying their new business course on the C of I trustees. If it works on them it'll be a cinch to help the students.

But like I said - don't hold your breath.

Congress All But Sold Us Out

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 25, 1981

If there is anybody in the state of Idaho who has had better conservative credentials than Ralph Smeed I don't know who such a person is. There are those whose credentials are as good, but, in opinion, none better.

I say this because I fear we conservatives may not have all the answers, at least politically speaking, that I once thought we had. I once thought all our country's problems each had a simple solution - elect a conservative. He was more apt to have common sense, be fiscally conservative, be honest and sincere, cut out waste and, generally speaking, make government efficient. (For this last, forgive me.)
As things were and had been for over 30 of the last 35 years the liberals had things so terribly screwed up that almost any change, I thought, was certain to be a tremendous improvement.

Well, I still think the liberals were, and are, in fact, big spending if not irresponsible idealists whose political panacea for every problem is to throw a bundle of government money (not theirs) at it and it would sure go away. If it did not go away, well, "We just didn't throw enough money at it," they'd retort. This danger is still with us, I'm afraid, but not all on account of the liberals.

President Reagan's election, if it said anything at all, told us that the American public wanted "less government and more defense." After all, President Lyndon Johnson convinced us that we could have both guns and butter so we did not raise taxes for a pay-as-you-go war. Now we're being coaxed to go in a similar direction by almost everybody but Reagan himself and a pitifully few others. The rest of the congress has all but sold us out, saying: "Because of the political difficulty of real budget control there is no alternative but to postpone the scheduled tax rate cuts, allow inflation once again to boost taxes surreptitiously and go back to all of the old liberal ways.

Today the national debt is a liberal trillion dollars - that's a one followed by 12 zeros. The interest alone (and don't kid yourself, this will be paid by someone by blood, by guts or by a dictator) computed at today's 20 percent rate is $20,000,000,000. That 20 billion dollars - each year. Just think how hard it would be to get the congress to vote a one-time billion dollar appropriation (not to mention 20) today, even for, say, highway repair. And the interest is each and every year and getting worse.

Also each year is the military appropriation, not just a one-time appropriation. That's $130 or $140 billion - each year. Ye gods! But, you may say, not all the debt pays 20 percent interest. True enough. But just how long do you think it will be before it does?

Comes now those baddies, the liberals. I thought some years ago, they were all bad, remember? Well now they are screaming "hold that line, hold that line, hold that line." I wonder why, of course, but I'm glad - I guess. I think they begin to fear something.

Maybe, just maybe, they fear we might be losing our freedom(s). To their everlasting credit the liberals seem to have a sixth sense about freedom, especially the loss of it. At least in the abstract they sense it.

Oh, sure, they don't usually see the connection between private ownership and freedom. Certainly the news media liberals don't see it. If they do, they're against it. But some of the liberal intellectuals are beginning to see it. And it is those idea-people, mostly liberals I'm afraid, whose articulate spokesmen led us into this mess who may now hold the way out - in their very capable hands. Capable, at any rate, when it comes to leading the great "unwashed" masses who may vote for the leaders who love liberty and, God help us, now responsibility.

It was the late, great liberal George Orwell, himself a genuine socialist, who long ago gave us his famous books: "Animal Farm" and the now famous, because it's here, "1984," that so vividly explained the tyranny of modern big government - communism. (Where were the conservative authors then?) I know but few conservatives, even today at this late date, who have read both of Orwell's classics.
Thank Heaven Reagan is one of those conservatives who reads. He's read Orwell, too, but he isn't getting much help - at least not enough - from conservatives who claim to love economic liberties and property rights, nor liberals who claim to love personal liberties and human rights. Neither side wants to give an inch.

But what is a human right without a property right? And how long can the former last without the latter? Not long - as we're beginning to find out.

The great libertarian scholar, Murray Rothbard, explains that a property right is merely the extension of a human right. So perhaps we should help Reagan get the liberals to run the U.S. foreign policy and push human rights - without the federal checkbook.

Unfortunately, if they agreed to do that, he'd probably expect us conservatives to run the domestic policy and push property rights - without a subsidy for business.

More Grotesque Than a Witch

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 1, 1981

Halloween comes but once a year. But Halloween economics - even more grotesque than the face of a witch - goes on all the time. Let me explain.

It is increasingly fashionable to speak of bad-guy corporate control of our lives, even to claim that, by seeking profits, corporations abuse the community's preferences and thereby cause economic and social ailments such as high prices, worker exploitation, even to ozone shortages.

Of course, it is always comforting to the purveyors of hate and envy to blame some easily identifiable bogeyman. Perhaps because of their size, large corporations (and by extension, many that are not so large) are often seen as a sinister force with a jack-o-lantern-type greedy grin.

Focusing discontent on an imaginary bad-guy can rid one of the labor of thinking, i.e., understanding economic events. It is not always easy to comprehend why the prices of food, housing and gasoline rise, nor why some people are wealthier than others, nor exactly why air is polluted. (Studies on Los Angeles' smog have gone on for decades.)

On the other hand it is convenient to blame supposedly inhuman and reportedly inhumane corporations and their pursuit of profit for our problems. We are encouraged in this silliness by those who do not comprehend the free market, private ownership economy or by those who prefer a society of Big brother and his boot-licking commissars. In addition to being more free and more humane a market economy is also vastly more efficient.

Some corporations do, indeed, own huge resources, and corporations altogether do produce most of the products we consume. But the corporation has emerged as the dominant business institution in our extraordinarily productive economy because of its ability to serve community preferences, not to stifle them.

By limiting possible losses of owners to the total of their stock ownership, the corporation has been able to attract the enormous finance so necessary for that large-scale production which efficiently provides goods at lower costs. That same large size has also enabled stockholders to obtain the services of managers and other specialists, thereby freeing the owners from the complex job of management.
Even super-large corporations do not have the power to force consumers. Businesses try to persuade consumers to buy their various products, including Halloween candy and the witch's broomsticks. But it is the consumer who chooses to accept or reject among the variety of offerings.

For example, consumers have been rejecting many automobiles produced in America because those cars have not been the kinds consumers now prefer. This punishment, meted out by consumers, has sent domestic car makers to government to beg for relief from foreign competition. It has also promoted dramatic attempts by domestic manufacturers to revamp their products in accordance with the "revealed wisdom" of consumer preferences. Both of these efforts; (1) to seek political protection and (2) to satisfy consumers' economic demands - underscore an absence of power of the car industry to control consumers.

The survival of any company, large or small, ultimately depends - in a free market, that is - on its ability to provide what the community prefers. When it is successful a corporation is rewarded with profits. When it is unsuccessful, it is punished by losses.

To argue that corporations violate the community's or the country's interests by pursuing profits or even tax deductions is to conjure up economic goblins and invoke the sorcery of Halloween economics - the kind, for example, one usually finds in our government-loving news media.

Most of the latter's political reporters, by the way, would rather CARVE up a corporate jack-o-lantern, for fun, than to encourage somebody to grow a real one for food.

The Bad News Is Adultery Still on List

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 8, 1981

In San Diego there was started a newspaper entitled, GOOD NEWS. It lasted only a few months because they couldn't sell it to enough reders. "No readers, no advertisers, hence, no Good News newspaper," or so went the news account of the story I read.

In years past there were also two or three radio stations started with the exact same idea. Sad to say, they too, failed. Why? Well, try this on for size. Maybe we tend to confuse "simple" solutions with "easy" solutions.

For example, almost every one tends to feel sorry for themselves at one time or another (indeed, too often) therefore we feel less bad upon hearing frequently of someone else's bad news. It's much like that old saying: "Misery loves company."

Most folks sensed the above bad conditions as simple (which they were) and thought the easy solutions (which they were not) could be found in electing a political messiah. So they selected well-intentioned politicians in the 1920's who increased the printed money supply and brought about the depression of the 1930's.

An now, guess what? Here we go again. We're hooked on inflating the money supply, again, causing the inevitable skyrocketing of high prices. So, fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, the next road you are about to travel may not be as smooth and easy as your messianic, tour-guide, politician claimed it'd be. But it almost certainly will be simple, i.e., "what goes up - must come down."

Okay, wise guy, what's all this have to do with the too-high price of gasoline, food, clothing, housing and the recent loss of my good neighbor's job? "Hell, I'm even beginning to fear for MY job, lately." One hears it more and more.

Well, let me suggest something. First, the parable of Moses who came down off the mountain saying, "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that I was able to get Him down to only 10 commandments. It is THAT simple. But the bad news is that one - adultery - is still on the list."

Now then, if you think the latter will be easy, especially after we've been hooked on it for lo' these many years (at least monetary adultery) what follows here may not be your cup of tea. On the other hand, it just might.

I, too, have good news and bad news. First the good news: On the weekend beginning Friday evening Nov. 20, the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA) in Boise will host its 11th annual "F.E.E." seminar entitled "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Free Society" (and its moral and spiritual antecedents).

If that title sounds a little preachy, it really is not. Far from it. The Center's is probably the least preachy educational seminar you've ever attended - and quite probably the most exciting. Held in prior years in McCall, Coeur d'Alene, Lewiston and Sun Valley, the prestigious group of speakers will this year be at Bogus Basin, 17 miles above Boise.

If the gyrations of government money policy, housing policy energy policy, welfare policy, defense policy policy, etc., etc. (ad infinitum) have your head spinning, and if you "care" as the hippies, environmentalists, no-growth extremists, war mongers, politicians, do-gooders and even the Ralph Smeeds keep wondering - well, then, the F.E.E. seminar is probably just your meat, and potatoes, and tea.

The panel of speakers are made to order to respond to questions raised at the first part of this column and, in fact, by most news media columnists everywhere. It's a one-of-a-kind experience which, in the minds of the directors of CSMA, cannot be obtained elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

A brief mention of the seminar's new speakers includes Dr. Perry Gresham, recent past president of Bethany College in West Virginia. He is author of many books, teacher in seven great universities, has honorary degrees from 15 North American universities, member of the board of directors of six large business organizations. But don't let all these credentials fool you. I know the great Perry Gresham very well. He's not only a trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y. (the brains of these seminars) but he's an absolutely delightful, intelligent and practical human being. He is also entertaining, i.e., to those who know and care, that "good news and bad news" is the difference between simple solutions and easy ones.

In addition to three regular staff members, all expert in their own fields, who have been to Idaho before,
the Saturday evening speaker is Dr. Barney Dowdle, Forestry Resources professor at the University of Washington.

An expert on the so-called public land controversy, Dowdle's lecture promises to be controversial, but definitely not partisan. He is also an academic advisory board member of CSMA.

Now the bad news: The seminar costs over $10,000 to put on, so call the Center at Boise, 342-1984 and see what they have to offer about TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch).

Vern Hinkle of Idaho Land and Gravel Co. has some good news, however. He personally will guarantee a cheerful refund of the adulterous tuition price if you're not 100 percent inspired.

Big Mouth Stockman a Delight

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 15, 1981

About the current flap in Washington D.C. concerning Budget Director David Stockman's big mouth and its near-catastrophic effect on President Reagan's try for federal fiscal sanity - a few observations.

I'm mad as hell, and my name is NOT Eddie Childs whose bright red bumper stickers with that same message helped inspire, if not restore, the American dream last presidential election.

Stockman's off the record statements about the Reagan crusade to cut the budget dramatically, "... including $10, 20 or 30 billion of waste in the Pentagon," put many conservatives into orbit ahead of even the fabulously expensive space shuttle. But much of it delighted me.

For some strange reason most conservatives seem hell-bent to forget that the U.S. Department of Defense is just another government bureau - albeit a pretty important one. It used to be called "The War Department" before the Madison Avenue P.R. boys changed the label to "defense." We remember so well that Marry Poppin's wonderful song: "A little big of sugar helps the medicine go down." And it worked, too, and it's still working. The defense budget is almost as big as the old U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) budget. Remember? And even then the goo-goo welfare boys managed to bury an astronomical portion of HEW's cost into the cavernous hallways and tunnels of the gigantic U.S. Department of Agriculture under a euphemism called food stamps. What an absolutely gawdawful lie - but it, too, worked. And it's STILL working.

But the conservative's hero-worship of the Pentagon and the chests full of medals worn there by their crew-cut generals and admirals and their defense-at-any-price budget is not the only problem. Neither is their seemingly inordinate fear that "the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming," the only problem.

Why? Well, the liberals on the other hand seem to believe that such people as bad guys, namely, Russian bad guys don't even exist. In fact, many of the liberals seem to think that bad guys don't even exist here at home - right in front of their very eyes. The scum of the earth such as murderers, rapists, robbers and muggers, dope merchants and violence-prone individuals of the most rotten sort often go free or out on technicalities or are paroled after short terms in jail. Liberals almost seem apologetic for them.

Why? Well, you should ask them, but many seem to need a cause and since most ordinary folks won't buy their so-called cause (many call it indiscriminate compassion) they turn to the federal government for a grant. And there's always some fellow liberal bureaucrat there to help them get it. Did you ever hear of the new-speak term: grantsmanship? Okay, it's a great new word isn't it? It's been invented by the liberals. In fact there are, believe it or not, courses in many colleges and universities all across the country in how to rip off Uncle Sam or, if you like, Uncle Sap, the taxpayer. The course's label is often quite frank and open such as "How to get more from your government." And why shouldn't the college professors think it was all right? After all aren't THEIR courses almost always priced below cost and therefore subsidized? Of course they are. (This should tell us something.)

But back, more particularly, to Stockman and his recent big mouth statements. Perhaps, just perhaps, he's right. At least to a large extent. For example, Sen. Steve Symms said this to me the day following Stockman's statement: "Unfortunately, people like David don't understand the media until they get burned hard enough by it. Politics is, in many ways, a dirty, vicious game. I'm sorry that it is, but one finds that that is one reason so few politicians try as hard as Stockman did to rock the boat. And the media, almost always liberal, compounds the problem out of all proportion. Media people love the power they have and seek in all sorts of ways, mostly left, to exercise that power. It's too bad the public doesn't become more outraged about it than they do.

"But we can't be too hard on Stockman, Ralph, he's come a long way. He was a card-carrying liberal, himself, not too long ago, who came out of Yale Divinity School and has had a real, genuine, if not complete, political revelation.

"And almost all those critics who are dancing in the streets over Stockman's admittedly unfortunate statements are the very ones who want us to return to that same welfare-state mentality which got us into this mess."

I liked that, but then I asked Symms if his colleague, U.S. Sen. James McClure, had "sold out" by his recent vote for organized labor's Davis-Bacon Act Amendment to raise the cost of government contracts?

He replied, "No Ralph, Jim has not sold us out." Symms' vote was opposite McClure's. "I'll explain next time I talk to you."

Methinks Symms' story on McClure may be harder to sell than his story on Stockman.

Intellectual Honesty Hard to Find

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 22, 1981

One hears much these days about citizens who would like to vote for an honest politician. Just what they mean by "honest" is seldom made clear. My guess is that, generally speaking, most of us mean by the term "honest" that we want a politician who AGREES with us, i.e., if we ourselves are honest.

But there is a growing number of people who, by the term "honest," really mean intellectually honest. And in today's politics, news media and business world those are becoming harder and harder to find.

Take the Idaho Constitution, for example. Article VI Section 3 of Idaho's Constitution begins. "No person is permitted to vote, serve as a juror or hold any civil office, who is a bigamist or polygamist, or is living in what is known as patriarchal, plural or celestial marriage ..." Or, it goes on to say, who advocates such beliefs shall not vote.

According to many observers, the simple translation of that passage means that Mormons are not permitted to vote, serve as jurors or hold public office. I agree that that part of our Idaho Constitution should have been changed long ago.

But not all the politicians are politicians. Here's what can happen. Some years ago when I was a member of the Idaho State GOP executive committee, the Idaho League of Women Voters was "pushing" for a brand new Idaho Constitution. They questioned me as to my views on said proposal and I said, "No, because the present one tended to restrict government and today's GOVERN-mentality was already headed the other way and their idea of a new constitution would likely tend to be a PERMISSIVE one, thus making it worse. "Let's amend the old one instead."

Probably because the League's policies being almost always for more government they never called me again.

Why not amend the constitution, you ask? Good question. I'll tell you ONE reason why. Some years ago the Boise Chamber of Commerce received a suggestion for amending the constitution to correct something almost as asinine as the Mormon passage. I think it had to do with preferred stock issuance, or some such.

In any event one of the legal-eagle members of the committee considering the matter recommended the chamber not take any action at all. The idea being that the sooner the dissent with the old and bad constitution swelled up the sooner we'd be able to "sell" the idea of a new one. Nobody objected and no improvement was made. Egad!

To find an intellectually honest crusader these days often flies in the face of some weird forces since so very many of them push for more and more laws. No wonder the cliche: "The more things change - the more they remain the same" and the other one: "Bedfellows make strange politics." So it is today.

Idaho legislators, now in office, are SWORN to uphold the Idaho Constitution Why don't they? How can they? Not many seem to worry about it. Small wonder respect for the law is slipping.

Republican Sen. Robert Dole was quoted in National Review a few years ago as saying that their recent campaign for president and vice president consisted mostly of "Constructive Republican Alternative Proposals but unfortunately only the acronym of that phrase seemed to come through."

Dole noted, of course, that that acronym spells C-R-A-P, which is about what the Mormon passage in the Idaho Constitution amounts to.

But five will get you 10 that even the NEXT legislative session won't even pass a memorial to help publicize the matter. But it would be intellectually honest, by anybody's definition, if they did.

Why don't you and I help them? And who knows? Perhaps in the future after the Mormons have COMPLETELY dominated the lawmaking apparatus they will be grateful and not pass any laws against those of us who cannot even run water up hill.

Logic Rarely Used in Politics

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 29, 1981

The fine old cliche one hears so often that, "I've got good news and I've got bad news ..." has become almost worn out from being used so much. But that's exactly what I have today, so get your feet braced.

The "good" news is that letters to the editor, especially when they are well-written, are perhaps one of the few intellectually honest institutions of individualism remaining in America's long line of that precious tradition. For this we may owe a real debt of gratitude to the newspapers, even though they do add a great deal to the readership of a clever publication.

Comes now quite a good letter to the editor of the Press-Tribune, from a Joe Tilley of Nampa, a self-described retired government worker, i.e., from the U.S. Air Force. He complains in rather plain and seemingly logical terms about Idaho's two U.S. senators' recent vote "... for the $3 billion Tennessee-Tombigee Waterway pork-barrel project." Tilley cites the government TV's McNeil-Lehrer news report (Channel 4) as indicating, "this project is only a means of sending good money after bad."

Further, Tilley likens our two senators' waterway vote as something akin to the recently defeated liberal Sen. Frank Church's anti-conservative and thus anti-Idaho thinking record.

Now the bad news. Tilley makes some admittedly timely and good observations, however, conspicuously absent from them was any suggestion that (1) such projects, if at all sensible, might be best financed, owned and built by private companies and (2) that the politicians, once having "invested" almost $1.5 billion in a pork-barrel scheme in the first place, but having already completed most of the shipping locks and excavations, faced a real dilemma in whether to abandon "their" initial investment. (3)

And last, but far from least, what makes the obviously sincere and intelligent retired military man think that logic and common sense have very much to do with politics anyway? Or, for that matter, how COULD they have very much to do with logic, etc.?

It was generally the founding fathers' view that, with the possible exception of Tilley's own military (many call even that government bureau a boondoggle of astronomical proportions), there is virtually no economic enterprise which should be constructed by or even OWNED by the federal governmentality.

U.S. Sen. Symms tells me to the effect that to have stopped the completion of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway now, after almost completing the project, even if it was once indeed a pork-barrel scheme, would have been an even worse waste of taxpayer's hard earned money. (Idahoans might write and ask Symms for his figures which he claims led him to such a "logical" conclusion. But figures, of course, can usually be found to support most anyone's point of view - especially when the money to pay for them comes from the community pot. I would have used the term: "community storehouse," but, somehow, "pot" seemed to be oh so much more meaningful.)

We are, no doubt, indebted both to Tilley's otherwise intelligent letter and the newspaper's willingness to print it. But I worry a lot when intelligent and concerned citizens are forever suggesting what they usually choose to label "honest" or "efficient," government. Too bad Tilley, or for that matter, Symms, or McClure did not suggest assembly of some figures to show whether or not the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway should be sold to private enterprise. You could then, and only then, bet that that way good money after bad money would be ascertainable.

How about it Tilley? Let's push the politicians for private ownersh-reasoning.

Still the suspicion would linger: the political board of directors (i.e., Congress) would be dependent for their figures on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - another government bureau, yet.

Laws, Laws and More Laws

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 13, 1981

Last week we were told that yet another layer of government is to be foisted upon an otherwise "free people."

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jerry Evans "instructed the public" all right, albeit with more public than instruction. He will propose to the next legislature that a law be passed to allow local school boards to decide whether private schools are doing their jobs. Egad! It's as if they didn't have enough to do already.

Evans said such a law, if passed, would allow (we'll come back to his clever use of semantics) school boards to analyze the quality of education at private and parochial schools. The purpose would be to determine if children in these schools are being educated comparably to children in public schools.

Now then, one wonders that if indeed they ARE being educated "comparably" to children in the government's compulsory schools, whether such "educating" would constitute grounds for fines and imprisonment (pun intended).

One wonders, too, if Evans' word "Allow" is his own semantic choice. Certainly the benign effect of the use of such a word tends to soothe. Moreover it tends to put the lie to the real effect of almost all law, i.e., to compel folks in what they would do, or not do, without such a law.

Note that if a private school REFUSED to allow local school boards to enter onto the premises to inspect and then to condemn or condone the quality of the education being given, or, if you like: being thrust down the throats of the little children therein ensconced - then Evans' word "allow" takes on more muscle, more meaning, and thus a not-so-benign connotation. Doesn't it? Of course it does.

Evans told me last year that he had been requested by the federal education department of then President Jimmy Carter to send them the number of students enrolled in non-government schools in Idaho. He could not comply because private schools were not required to register (i.e., not yet, anyway) so he dutifully requested the 1980 Idaho Legislature to compel them to register. One supposes, that way Evans could look good in the eyes of the federal education bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Fortunately the bill was defeated.

Why else have them register? Perhaps Evans himself thought they should be registered, inspected, supervised, regulated and indoctrinated "... according to the authority invested in me, so help me God." And why not?

So I asked him, right then and there: "Well, Jerry, why did you propose such registration last year?" He replied, with all the simple and honest sincerity at his command: "Why, Ralph, I only wanted to register the private schools so that I could do my duty. I had no intention to supervise, regulate, or harass them in any way."

All of which reminds this writer of the ever-present and similar request of the anti-gun lobby: "We just want to REGISTER the guns and their owners, we don't intend to regulate nor to harass them..." All they want to do, I believe sincerely, is to reduce crime.

And all Evans wants to do, no doubt sincerely, is to reduce ignorance. In this, virtually all men and women of goodwill agree. Evans, too, is a man of intelligence and goodwill. He is also a good friend of mine of long standing - at least I consider myself a friend of his and I don't want to change that. But something's wrong, ladies and gentlemen, something is wrong.

For years now, the more that government involves itself into schooling the more common-sense-education seems to suffer. Yet all we seem to hear from our leaders if for more and more government.

Perhaps the great Daniel Webster eyeballed it best with this: "Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."

As we all know, or should know, PAPER MONEY is exactly what empowers most politician.s They also almost always suggest more government, ever so often in the name of quality education.

Perhaps Evans should rather propose a law to "allow" school officials to mind their own business. If it were not for so much government paper money - maybe they could not afford to do otherwise.

The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy