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It May Be Beginning of World War III
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 3, 1982
Speaking of Polish jokes, the present mess in Poland is at the very best, no joke. It just may be the beginning of World War III, the protestations of the liberal doves to the contrary not withstanding. (Everybody knows Russia's behind the whole thing.)
Why do the doves protest that there can be no WW III? They merely insist that each side has such a big pile of nuclear bombs that to start such a war would be unthinkable by either side. By this reasoning they say let's stop the arms race and get back, one guesses, to more sane and common sense programs like food stamps and a search for more humane methods of killing jack rabbit hordes in Eastern Idaho. Both financed by, guess who?
How's this for a cruel Polish joke? The Poles are being liberated from the worldwide menace of Communism by a labor union. It's called Solidarity. Except that it isn't solid and it isn't working. About that mess a few observations:
Just for openers: (1) It isn't clear that it's any of the United States government's damn business, i.e., so says the Soviet government. And they just may be right. Consider something. Just why is it in the enlightened self-interest of the U.S. to finance a socialist system in Poland to the tune of a multi-billion dollar loan program which, by the way, is currently in progress, believe it or not? Or, if it is not "in progress," it is now in default.
(2) And, to add insult to injury, Robert MacNamara recently resigning as head of the World Bank says the U.S. should loan even MORE money around the world. News reports said MacNamara made the statement, literally "with tears in his eyes." One supposes his tears were somewhat akin to those of American farmers and entrepreneurs who, unable to borrow money to keep their businesses and their employees at work here at home, also have "tears in their eyes" at their 16 to 21 percent interest rate.
(3) The U.S. Department of State has known all along that the Poland government is a satellite of communist Russia. How come it makes sense for us to finance such a pro-Communist government in Poland and contrariwise it seems to make so LITTLE sense to finance the formerly anti-Communist government of Samoza in Nicaragua? Our balanced coverage media opines that it was bad because Samoza was a dictator. They seem almost contented now that the pro-Communists control Nicaragua and are expanding their influence all over Central America.
(4) The Communist government in Poland is also run by a dictator. Remember? His government found out they cannot feed their people on food stamps - not even with U.S. government money (now in default). Hey, Mr. and Mrs. America, that's YOUR money, not MacNamara's, not Jimmy Carter's, not even Ronald Reagan's. It's your money. And you're not going to get it back. Not at 20 percent interest nor at the 2.5 percent we usually "charge" the Russians for our wheat "sales" and to pay for the world's largest truck factory which we recently built for them - in Russia.
But President Reagan to the rescue. He and the U.S. State Department are considering some severe economic sanctions (an asinine term, by the way, reminiscent of Orwell's "1984" newspeak.) These measures include withholding "high technology" computers and wheat sales - from Russia. Well, God help us. At least the Russian government knows which SIDE they are on.
We are going to force Communist Russia to be nice by withholding our economic goodies? Heck, I thought that's what we were trying to do by building a bigger war machine, i.e., to SCARE them into being nice.
Perhaps it'd make more sense if we'd loan Russia all our guns, tanks, planes and submarines (now $200 billion per year) then, if they refused to be nice to Communist Poland, we could declare the loan to be in default. Wow, that oughta impress 'em.
For one thing - it'd sure cost less than financing both the Communists and the capitalists like we're doing now. And who knows? Maybe it'd even get our own interest rates down.
The Media Is a Little Too Free
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 10, 1982
Something happened in Caldwell the other night that reminded me of a suggestion the implementation of which I think is long overdue. The news media is so fond of asking questions of "selected" people, the more controversial the better, that they tend to MAKE the news rather than report it.
Of course this is not always the case and it is not always malicious, but more and more concerned citizens are coming to the conclusion that freedom of the press is just a little "too free." The logical end of that line of reasoning is, of course, just a little regulation - by the government. Who Else? That, for better or for worse, is censorship. Let me hasten to add, I'm against that.
But that's only half the story. What am I for? And what do I propose in the place of censorship, i.e., inasmuch as I am so severely critical of the media in general and the news media in particular? Well, it's really quite simple. Since the idea of investigative journalism has virtually the whole United States profession on a supreme power kick, why not let's investigate the news media?
Now then, since the media, with few exceptions screams like a mashed cat against both the government and business investigating themselves, the journalists would, no doubt, agree that someone else should do the questioning. Someone else who admittedly tended to be adverse to the power those media people tend to wield. Indeed, some wield that power with such intellectual arrogance as to pale, by comparison, even that held by politicians.
Can't you just imagine a TV panel composed of U.S. Sen. Steve Symms and Ralph Smeed "investigating," on statewide prime time television night after night, into the pro-liberal bias of most of Idaho's newspapers. This liberalism rivals even the most devoted Catholic's reverence for the popular Pope John Paul - if for less sainted reasons, of course.
Can't you also imagine the nation's number one media critic, Reed Irvine, of Accuracy in Media (Press-Tribune carries his column) directing an occasional panel on Idaho's government TV (Channel 4) asking that station's public affairs director, Marc Johnson (another professional liberal, by the way) why his idea of telling "both sides" is merely to find two liberals who disagree. Last year when Johnson interviewed AIM's Irvine he gave half the program to two local newsmen to rebut. One strains to recall a similar treatment accorded to the plethora of liberal government-worshippers Johnson so frequently uses on his programs.
But some progress emerges. Steve Ahrens is political pundit for the Idaho Statesman. Ahrens spoke to the Canyon County Republicans last week and had his feet somewhat held to the fire about press bias. I'm told that both sides learned a little something and that the exchange was (forgive me) helpful.
Well now, that might be some small progress. Therefore I have a further suggestion. Perhaps the Ada County Republicans will now reciprocate by inviting Canyon County's Rick Coffman, editor of the only non-liberal daily newspaper in the state. While it would no doubt entail some small risk on the part of the Ada County GOP group, since they've historically (some would say, hysterically), tried to sell their party's press relations by brown-nosing the media, it just might herald a new idea or two.
For example, the gutsy little maverick (he's no liberal) editor of Canyon County's largest circulation daily wrote an editorial a year or so ago excoriating the lawyers (and rightly so) about how hard it was to find a practicing lawyer who would openly and vigorously criticize one of his competitors.
If the Ada County group has any intellectual moxy at all they'll invite Coffman. It'd be fun to ask him why the media, almost without exception, refuses even to criticize, not to mention attack, one another, just like - you guessed it - the lawyers.
Why America Is Losing Ground
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 17, 1982
A little-noticed blurb in the news last week said, "While the economy in Europe and the United States is stumbling around, the Far East nations are buzzing along as if nothing had happened. In 1981 the Eastern nations gained from 3 percent to 7 percent in their exports. Japan increased hers by 10 times. That's a THOUSAND percent improvement." Why is America losing so much ground? And Idaho, too?
Another little-noticed blurb in the news last week was that, "One of the first victims of President Reagan's economic sanctions against Russia was General Electric Corporation's having to forfeit a $175 million contract with the Soviets for parts of the proposed oil or gas pipeline to Western Europe." But nobody asked where the hard money, if there was any, was to come from to pay the G.E. Corporation. (Ever had your children bring such a query home from school?)
Another blurb in the news was that, "The world's population is still growing by ONE MILLION people every five days." And sex education is still controversial (an understatement) in our own schools.
And last, but not least, there is still the news of the closing of Bunker Hill Mine and the prospect of losing 2,100 jobs in Northern Idaho. After years of the politicians and the environmentalists trying to milk more and more penalties from the mine owners the politicians are now loving "old Bessie the milk cow" as if there were to be no tomorrow. And maybe there won't be - who knows? But what are the little school children told about the greedy capitalist pig corporation's role in a capitalist society?
Well, their parents are being told through their well-meaning State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jerry Evans, that they need another law (egad) so that the government, through their agents, in this case the local school boards, can investigate how the non-government schools are "educating" the children, presumably about everything including, one supposes, sex education and where jobs come from and where gold and silver come from and, again one supposes, just why their own government is so hell-bent on avoiding both gold and silver as money, especially since both are Idaho products.
Let me hasten to add that my guess is State Superintendent Jerry Evans is not heading up some SINISTER plot to screw up innovation and intelligence in the non-government schools. He's heading up a SINCERE plot to screw it up. He's got plenty to do without adding yet another layer of bureaucracy to his state education department, which already has its hands full (i.e., forever needing more money and more employees.)
If the Japanese devastated the U.S. war machine at Pearl Harbor back in 1941 they did a far more devastating, if less violent, "war" on the U.S. auto industry in Detroit in the late 1970s. How?
I'll tell you how. The U.S. auto industry has been out-competed and out-priced by Japan and others and Evans apparently doesn't want that to happen to his government school system. His position is not at all unlike Ford Motor Corporation's recent request of Congress for protection from Japanese competition including, even, from that country's inferior cars. Some are actually inferior, you know, just like some public and some private schools are inferior.
Evans should, rather than proposing more laws, concern himself with the content of his government school's curriculum. Perhaps that way they'd have time to teach a better brand of economics, sex education and how to save the Bunker Hill miners' jobs thus making for happier blurbs in the news.
Since Evans is a Republican, he might better steal a page from his party's own Abraham Lincoln whose admittedly meager schooling at least taught him to think and write. In addition to the Gettysburg address, he wrote:
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should be doing for themselves."
Old Abe wrote that in 1864. Maybe young Jerry (Evans) should ask the Legislature to pass a law making Lincoln's "law" compulsory.
The heck of it is - if it worked, some clown would want to run Evans for governor.
And I'm not sure Idaho could stand two Evans in a row.
Money Is the Rot of All Evil (Really)
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 24, 1982
On the matter of the Bunker Hill silver mine in North Idaho and the 2100 jobs that are just about gone, maybe forever, a few observations:
(1) Don't get the idea that economics is a "dismal science" as has been so often said in schools. They just hire dull people to teach it - to future politicians.
Of course I jest. There are many fine, intelligent teachers of economics in many schools, a small percentage, perhaps, but they are around, here and there, nevertheless. Okay, then, why does so much economic illiteracy persist?
Good question. Let me see if we can throw some light as well as some heat on the question. If we're successful, maybe we can keep more mines, lumber mills, farms and other factories in Idaho from going broke. That's what's happening at Bunker Hill. Remember?
(2) First of all this means you! And me! So it's worthy of our time to consider.
(3) If there's a big connection between economics and having enough to eat - then where did we get off the track?
(4) How's this for openers? Bear with me "... all ye who labor and are heavy laden ..." and maybe you will see the connections between theory and practice. Moreover, it is more a case of bad IDEAS plaguing Bunker Hill than it is a case of bad guys, namely, the labor union men who decided to close down the mine and destroy the 2,100 jobs.
(5) The bad idea is the general preoccupation with money that has led to a curious belief which is now so firmly rooted that one hardly sees how anything short of a collapse of our whole economic system can displace it. The idea is that commodities - goods and services - can be paid for with money.
This is not so. Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services. But several decades ago this axiom vanished from everyone's reckoning, and has never reappeared. No one has seemed in the least aware that everything which is paid for much be paid for out of production, for there is no other source of payment.
Now then, if that is true, and no one needs a college degree to see that it is true - astonishingly true, why was the vote of the mine's labor union members so close as to whether or not the men would take a cut in both pay and featherbedding rules to keep their jobs?
(6) let me suggest that most members (and for that matter, most intellectuals) tend to believe unions are responsible for the rise in the U.S. standard of living. Believing this, it's only natural, therefore, that members tend to vote with labor union leadership.
But if unions had anything appreciably to do with the rise of the standard of living, then the prosperity of the Chinese and the hordes of East Indians can be solved by simply organizing unions over there. Put in that way, of course, nobody believes that unions cause prosperity. Unions do not create prosperity; they live off prosperity.
All of which is not to say employers, also, are not bad guys. They are, especially when they get political power just like when unions get political power, but when free market forces are left free, BOTH tend to be kept more honest. That's what free trade is all about. Indeed, when seen in its larger context, it means: "When goods don't cross borders - soldiers will." That by the way, is how to have prosperity and world peace, not by an arms race, or by schemes to distribute poverty equally.
(7) But public opinion believes that the improvement in the condition of wage earners is an achievement of the unions and of various legislative schemes. It gives credit to unionism and to legislation for the rise in wages, shorter hours of work, the disappearance of child labor, etc. The prevalence of this belief made unionism popular and is responsible for the trend in labor laws of the last few decades.
Since people think they owe their high standard of living to unionism they put up with violence, coercion and intimidation on the part of unionized labor and are indifferent to cut backs in personal freedom inherent in the union shop and closed shop laws.
It is true that most Republicans tend to favor Right-To-Work (RTW) laws to "solve" labor abuses, but such laws tend to assume it is the GOVERNMENT'S right to say just who deserves such a right and, of course, who does not. Democrats tend to oppose RTW laws since they, too, believe with the intellectuals and academicians in the myth of "govern-mentality," and the unions' idea of the route to prosperity.
But a strange thing happened during last Idaho Legislature. GOP State Chairman Dennis Olsen and U.S. Sen. Jim McClure publicly asked for the rejection of the RTW bill then being debated. They claimed, along with the GOP moderates who, by the way, hate being embarrassed by having to take sides against organized labor's muscle, that: "Gov. John Evans would just veto the bill anyway, hence it wouldn't do any good."
This writer at that time urged a more pragmatic approach. "Pass the bill," I said, "and let Evans take the responsibility." For some strange and politically convoluted reason, they refused. They saves Evans' life, instead. Egad.
Silver Goose Is Almost Dead
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 31, 1982
A whole lot could be said about the Bunker Hill mine shutdown in north Idaho, but by no means could we expect the volume of publicity surrounding that tragedy to even approach what the media gives to exterminating jack rabbits in eastern Idaho.
I've personally talked with two knowledgeable people on the East Coast this last week. Neither had seen anything in the news about the Bunker Hill mine crisis. What makes eradicating acres of rabbits with a stick so newsworthy and a factory shutdown involving 2,100 jobs NOT so newsworthy? (Both my Eastern friends had indeed heard about the jack rabbit "crisis" vis the news media.)
One wonders if too many Idahoans, including media people, have forgotten an old time story about factories, jobs and production in north Idaho. There's a statue across Jefferson Street in front of the Statehouse in Boise to remind us of that story. It is a bronze likeness of Frank Steunenberg who was governor of Idaho way back in 1905. It's part of Idaho's mining history we shouldn't forget.
There had been a lot of violence surrounding the labor unions in the north Idaho mills, so Gov. Steunenberg called out the National Guard to put down that violence. Remember?
The unions felt that was a union-busting move by Steunenberg and thus had him assassinated. At least that was how the Idaho court charged "Big Bill" Haywood and a fellow named George Pettibone, two of the labor union's leaders.
Both were activists in the miner's union and were alleged to have hired Harry Orchard to kill the Idaho chief of state. Orchard was convicted of killing him by planting a bomb on the front yard gate of the governor's home near what is now 16th and Dearborn in Caldwell. (The trial was held in Boise's old Ada County Courthouse, and was one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.) Orchard spent the rest of his natural life in the Idaho Penitentiary for the killing. Haywood and Pettibone were acquitted, having been defended by Clarence Darrow, one of the most famous of all criminal lawyers. The prosecuting attorney was the late William E. Borah, who later was to become Idaho's famous U.S. Senator.
I cite all this partly because of its rather obvious relevance to the important role the labor unions of today are playing in the present Bunker Hill mine affair and partly because of an insight on it by a former Idaho labor union-leader-member and firebrand socialist friend of mine who witnessed that famous trial right here in Idaho. He's Sherman Rogers of New York.
Rogers, still alive and living in New York City (he's close to 100 years of age) quit his job in north Idaho just so he could come to Idaho and scrutinize the soon to be famous courtroom scene which he told me unfolded there for five weeks. Although his sympathies then were all for the labor union side in the person of the famous "Big Bill," Rogers later became a capitalist (his term).
He spent much of the rest of his productive life trying to get business and labor union people to see how both their own enlightened self-interests were better served by exchanging financial information rather than brick-bats and violence. As a labor consultant he still blames business for refusing to share the devastatingly pertinent statistics which all companies have, or should have, that show how really small the percentage of gross income they retain as compared to that paid out to labor. All too often, according to Rogers, the capitalists insist on showing their financial reports to stockholders in such a way as to impress future potential investors how huge are their profits and financial successes. "Small wonder," he says, "considering the asinine way business communicates with their employees, that the labor unions see them as greedy capitalist pigs. I used to see them that way, myself, and in the early days I, too, hated their guts."
Maybe Rogers' story about the labor unions and the Haywood-Pettibone-Orchard episode has more relevance for today's Bunker Hill saga than we might think. It's true that violence has not erupted, at least not yet, but the goose that laid Idaho's golden (or was it silver?) egg is just about dead. And that's violence enough to those 2,100 workers if the Idaho mine never reopens.
In any event someone, either Gulf Resources Corporation or Gov. Evans' Idaho Department of Commerce and Development, or SOMEBODY should republish Sherman Rogers' book, "Why Kill the Goose?" It's been out of print for decades (published in 1947) but its gold-plated message for both business and labor as well as most politicians, all of whom seem hell bent on killing that "goose," is one of this nation's best kept secrets.
Oh yes, Rogers told me another story and one of Idaho's best kept secrets - an absolutely fascinating one - about the high honor paid to two of the most famous characters of the miner's union saga of that bygone day:
Steunenberg received the statue that I told you about. It's in Boise for his memory. Big Bill Haywood's body, some years later, was buried in the wall at the Kremlin. The same wall that honors Soviet Russia's highest dead leaders.
Like Steunenberg's statue, Haywood's tomb is still there in its place of honor.
But how many of us know why? Or care?
Surely, There Is Another Whey
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 7, 1982
By far the largest creamery in the area is located in Caldwell. It's been there since way back in the late 1920s or early 30s. The Dairymen's Cooperative Creamery of Boise Valley purchased milk from far and wide for over a generation, then shipped its butter and processed dairy products literally back out all over the country and indeed, to several foreign countries - for which, bless their hearts, thanks and hooray for OUR side. But some problems exist causing the company to come into some sharp criticism from Caldwell city officials.
The Dairymen's Creamery Association, Inc., has since expanded to beat the band and their operation now includes cheese, Grade A milk, etc., as well as a name change, but they still remain a coop under the management of Frank Krone.
Recently they built an addition onto an existing building. The addition went into the street right of way for a distance of eight feet on ground that they've been using for 50 years.
This encroachment onto Albany Street was clearly illegal and done, for reasons yet unknown, without a building permit. The creamery has also been causing a terrific increased load into the city's sewage disposal system. Quite naturally they use a huge amount of water as well as dumping considerable amounts of milk waste into the sewer, for which they properly pay extra money to the city.
Unfortunately this causes increased loads at the city's disposal plant. Fortunately, generally speaking, both the city and the creamery have cooperated. (Interestingly enough the creamery association has deleted the very word "cooperative" from their former corporate name, while Mayor Al McCluskey has added the following slogan to the city administration's name tags: "We Extend Our Hand".) They cooperate, quite naturally, because both organizations recognize each other's importance. Or, at least they HAVE in the past.
The pollution, or anti-pollution, standards set up by the federal bureaucrats place severe restrictions on the amounts and kinds of wastes the city may dump into the nearby Boise River. Still, one finds it very difficult to know just who to believe when it comes to how reasonable are those amounts they allow, but most assuredly the pollution problem in the Boise River is much better than years ago when my school chums and I used to swim in it near where the city's raw sewage was dumped.
All of which is not to say that the tremendous jobs, payrolls and tremendous contributions to the area's financial well-being is not of huge and utmost concern. It is also of critical importance to the area's farmers, farm and dairy supply stores, banks, schools etc., etc., ad infinitum. It is also important to know that city officials and city bureaucrats are charged with an generally do carry out their critical jobs of maintaining adequate and proper sewage and sewage hook-up arrangements.
However, something's missing in the recent flap about the creamery versus the city sewer and building permit rules. May I suggest that the missing item is the word "we." It'd be hard to say whether the city and its rules or the creamery and its payroll and the vast dollars it brings into this agricultural area's economy is the most important because both are so necessary and desirable. But it concerns "we," i.e., you and me, the super-conscientious mayor and most of the people. But that missing word, "we," is more and more lost sight of nowadays as the government's rules, rules and more rules proliferate.
Nobody wants anarchy. Anyone who raises such a question has an asinine and utopian view of the vast wasteland of too-much-government, all over America, foisted on us by a long-haired hippie mentality. But, unfortunately, business, particularly BIG business, has used government too often to avoid the otherwise cleansing effect of a reasonable and competitive marketplace. In any event we're cutting each other's throats. Government seems to suggest our interests are antagonistic when they are not, really.
City officials and bureaucrats who, too often, get their nose out of joint when entrepreneurs break the rules, often compare favorably with said businessmen when the latter seem to think their payroll and economic steam generating plants don't even "hiss" when they spring a leak. Let's remember that.
But that creamery is Caldwell's "Bunker Hill Mine" and we'd better not harass it too much or it, too, may close down. Far better we'd close that block on Albany Street, entirely, and give them the whole damned 80 foot right of way. They own both sides of it already. Maybe they'd appreciate that enough to pay for an occasional building permit and proper sewer hook-up.
Who knows - the creamery might even want to pay for a bigger share of our sincere and concerned city official's sewer and disposal plant. This would secure both our future and theirs.
Why, heaven knows, maybe manager Krone might even move back to Caldwell from Boise where he now makes his home. If he did, he might get better acquainted with Caldwellites. He'd at least find it easier to know who to thank, or, once in a while - to cuss.
Local Do-Good Most Dangerous
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 14 1982
Nampa's Chamber of Commerce has voted to ask their city lawmakers to demand a city license (sometimes called a work-permit) for doing business in their fair city.
Their new mayor, Winston Goering, seemed delighted to consider the proposal for possible enactment by his city council. About such a
proposal a few observations:
One wonders to what lengths the Chamber of Commerce mentality will not go in order to meddle in other people's affairs - through one level of government or another which, of course, they think they can manipulate - for the "public good." Or so they say.
Of all the asinine ideas and odd-ball claims made by the host of do-gooders descended up on this nation these local types are perhaps the most fearful of all. Fearful because the schemes seem so simple and innocuous - at first.
Consider Nampa Chamber manager Bob Adams' statement: "I just think the value received by business from a business license is (in the long run) going to far outweigh any expense or inconvenience." Isn't that what they all say? But the expense is not the point.
Here is what the Soviet Union's planners said: "After all, one needs statistics and information so that we can plan for the PEE-PUL." And they do just that - for each five-year plan. Remember? Never mind that their government's plan has little or no room for their Ma and Pa operators to enter the market. And what of the people's right to be left alone? What lobbyist cheers for that?
The idea of laissez-faire (French word meaning mind your own damn business) has been so long neglected and misunderstood by the government's compulsory school system that its govern-mentality graduates are now installed as THE establishment. In fact, the private ones are almost as bad, since they must conform in order to be accredited by the education bureaucrats for social status as well as government subsidy.
But back to Mayor Goering's almost classically fascist statement to the press: "The idea of instituting business licenses (was) suggested by both city and Chamber representatives in December about the need to identify businesses in the community ... and one way would be to have business licenses."
Perhaps the key to the flabby grips the Nampa businessmen seem to have upon the idea of freedom, free entry, private ownership, etc., is highlighted by Charles Koch, chief executive officer of Koch Industries and one of the nation's few business tycoons of libertarian persuasion:
"Businessmen have always been in the forefront of the crusade for government manipulation of the American economy. Nearly every major piece of interventionist legislation since 1887 has been supported by important segments of the business community."
It is said that "charity begins at home." Well, so does freedom and free enterprise and the moral antecedents from which they take their sustenance. Unfortunately, Caldwell's pro-business mayor, Al McCluskey, also had some enthusiasm for his colleague and neighboring city mayor's idea, saying to the press that, "If the Caldwell Chamber likes the (Nampa) idea we, too, will take a look at it." Presumably, one prays, "they" would look at ANYTHING before they'd reject the opportunity for yet another new law. To his credit, generally speaking, McCluskey spouts enthusiasm for free enterprise ideas, but one wonders why he didn't say to his Nampa counterpart: "It sounds like a damn poor idea. But, if they insist, we MIGHT take a look at it."
All of which is not to suggest that Goering is a fascist, or even anything remotely resembling the same. So far as I know he's a fine gentleman. But such an idea, even if it does emanate from a so-called free enterprise Chamber of Commerce in the good neighbor town of Nampa, ought to be met with severe condemnation. We've come a long way too far already along the road of another Goering of WWII, Germany - Herman Goering - whose responsibility was, among other things, for economic planning.
Consider what the German planner told war correspondent, Henry J. Taylor, while he was a prisoner of war in 1946: "Your America is doing many things in the economic field which we found out caused us so much trouble. You are trying to control people's wages and prices - people's work. If you do that you must control people's lives. And no country can do that part way. I tried it and failed.
"Nor can any country do it all the way, either. I tried that too and failed. You are no better planners than we. I should think that your economists would read what happened here ... will it be that countries will not learn from the mistakes of others?"
Oh yes, lest I sound a bit too harsh on Nampa's Goering, his Chamber's spokesman, Adams, said: "The licensing information would also help the business community by identifying the types of businesses of which the city has too few - or too many."
And, shades of Orwell's book "1984," Adams listed another benefit of the licensing: "It would identify every business in town so we can solicit their membership."
McClure Is Lost in D.C. Swamp
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 21, 1982
John Evans and Jim McClure, two politicians, both of whom are important in Idaho affairs, recently opposed a new bill to outlaw compulsory unionism. This may call for some disappointing, if not understandable, conclusions. Let me explain.
The proposed law passed both houses of the current Legislature by overwhelming margins. But one of the above-mentioned politicians, Democrat Gov. John Evans, vetoed the bill which hardly surprised anyone who is the least bit politically aware.
What did surprise many was that the Idaho Legislature almost passed their bill over the governor's veto. Two-thirds majority was easily obtained in the House vote to override, but failed by two or three votes short of the two-thirds required also in the Senate. The vote was almost a party-line vote with liberal GOP Sen. Edith Miller Klein, generally considered to represent banking interests, and Vern Brassey, a left-leaning liberal who usually sides with the Democrats on party line votes, bolting the Republicans. This, in effect, killed the right-to-work (RTW) bill.
While Evans could have been expected to veto the bill favoring out-of-state union interests the peregrinations of the other important Idaho politician, U.S. Sen. James McClure, were not too easily understood. These have led many of his old comrades from the Goldwater days, including this writer, to wonder if McClure's years in Washington, D.C.'s swamp and being up to his "assignment" in alligators have put him out of touch with Idaho.
For example, McClure voted some years ago for the infamous, anti-business and, since, must discredited OSHA law explaining that he thought otherwise "we'd likely have gotten a worse law." Later the senior senator and long-time friend of mine (still is, by the way) called for the defeat of another right-to-work bill during the 1981 Legislature. After that, to add insult to injury, McClure voted to extend the federal Davis-Bacon Act. This asinine law often adds an unnecessary $5 to $10 per hour to wages paid on government contracts.
And just a few days ago the conservative standard-bearing U.S. senator from Payette said on a local TV program that although he supports the RTW concept it was "untimely, unnecessary and might well hurt Republicans. Certainly I meant what I said a year ago (against a RTW bill)." McClure seems to be saying that the way for a Republican to get elected is to act like a Democrat.
Of course he doesn't mean this. He isn't a mean man. He means that the eastern labor unions are mean. Given this, he feels that the big super-wealthy labor union bosses will come to Idaho with their huge financial Political Action Committees (PACs) and defeat Republicans if they don't act like Democrats, i.e., vote for compulsory unionism.
I asked U.S. Sen. Steve Symms if McClure had contracted some sort of disease (other than Potomac fever) or perhaps a death wish. (The junior senator was as vigorous in favor of RTW, recently, as organized labor was vigorous against HIM in the 1980 election. Symms won anyway, though it was admittedly close.)
I said, "I thought we were in favor of people's freedom to choose. What the devil's got into McClure anyway? We've been sold out."
Symms: "Now, Ralph, don't be too quick to jump on Jim. He's a good fellow. Call him up and talk to him first."
Smeed: "The hell with him. I'm a good fellow, too. Let him call me. We've been old friends. He's the one who's lost touch. By the way, does he call anybody in Idaho anymore?"
Symms: "Well, I know how you feel, but don't sell him out."
Smeed: "Well, to hell with that. You tell HIM not to sell ME out. That's what has happened. Don't you see?"
Well, there was more - some of it so colorful it's not fit to print. But neither Symms nor McClure, intend to be sell-out artists. They do, however, tend to become part of the problem after enough years in office. It's called political pragmatism. It's an occupational disease.
They almost all get it in some form or another, sooner or later. Among Webster's dictionary definitions of pragmatism is this: "Men of power have had no time to deal with social morality." That about says it.
Let me hasten to add that I definitely don't see McClure's oddball acts as politically immoral. But it's interesting beyond being pragmatic that "Rev." John Evans' "sermon" explaining his veto of the RTW bill said: "... it distorts the facts and appeals to emotionalism when truth and reason are what is needed."
If Evans' veto message had stopped there I'd have given the race for sincerity - if not for letting others be free to choose - to the governor. But he didn't. The text of his veto letter ended with this incredible gaff: "I cannot believe the out-of-state interests promoting this (RTW) legislation truly have the welfare of the citizens of Idaho at heart."
Evans refers, of course, to the national RTW committee in Virginia. But the labor union headquarters, which vetoed the Idaho workers' vote at the Bunker Hill mine, is also located out of state, in Pennsylvania, as a matter of fact.
The workers voted 7 to 5 AGAINST the union and to keep the mine open. Remember?: But, not unlike McClure, the out-of-state union bosses in Pennsylvania saw the workers' vote as: "untimely, unnecessary and, (one supposes) might well hurt Republican candidates."
Unfortunately, given this kind of educational rhetoric, we might be witnessing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
College Bad Apple Flavor Strong
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 28, 1982
My friend Dr. Richard Gibb, president of the University of Idaho (U of I) speaking last week at the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce, says: "What appears as bias toward socialism on campus is mostly the bad apples, like those apples in business, i.e., most are good, therefore, not newsworthy." A devastatingly good point especially for his journalism department "apples," I'd say.
However, it's passing strange that, in their captive environment, well-meaning socialist-leaning professors who do know which side they are on (unlike the private-sector types) are often "countered" on campus, by professors and big business tycoons (et al) whose mixed economy message, if it's discernible at all, is not seen sympathetically simply because it's mixed. If the campus newsworthy "apples" weren't almost all left-wing, but rather an equal number were articulate promulgators of a free-market persuasion such as Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Manne, Thomas Sowell and others, then said "apples" would indeed be benign.
However, such is not the case. Unfortunately, it's partly because our private sector businessmen-apples who own the influential private establishment, but are rendered intellectually impotent and are controlled, ideologically, by the idea-mongers on campus. The latter are too often those "bad apples" Dr. Gibb spoke about in his obviously sincere, intelligent, but I think somewhat naive, explanation at the Chamber's recent luncheon.
Let me hasten to add that Richard Gibb is not a part of the "bad apples" on campus. His is an impossible compromise. In my view he's on the "good apple" side. However, ideologically speaking, a middle-of-the-road stance, no matter how sincere, cannot match an intelligent and aggressive offense on campus any more than such an offense can on the football field.
Like football, the team, the quarterback, the players and the coaches must be bale to point to their goal posts before they can succeed in getting there - not to mention leading others.
Unlike football, the ideas that "bad apples" are promoting so successfully are not, repeat not, to be measured by the old "how they played the game" of yesteryear, but rather whether they win or lose the minds of students to an anti-market economics mentality.
Right now, today, admit it or not, those who favor the individualist (i.e., non-collectivist) point of view are losing their intellectual fanny and all the fixtures - via the college campus elsewhere, too. And what's even more paradoxical - they're paying the freight both ways.
Both ways, to and from, the corral where the Sacred Cow of government education now stands contentedly feeding on - you guessed it - bad apples - mixed, mostly with good apples, but in the same barrel.
For example, Michael Harrington, one of the country's foremost socialists, will both teach and preach on the campus of Boise State University (BSU) March 4, 1982. But that's not so bad. What's disappointing is that his sermon will be "countered," if past is prologue, by two chairs in education at BSU, both provided in honor of a politician, namely, two ex-United States senators. One, Frank Church, the other, Len Jordan. Both nice fellows, by the way. Both wanting good government, whatever that means.
But tell me, gentle reader, which of the three: Church, Jordan or Harrington is most likely to preach a gospel to the university's idea-merchant congregation?
Better yet, which of the three is most apt to be an evangelist who knows and heralds the difference between a "good apple" sermon and a "bad apple" sermon?
Right now, we'll have to admit, the odds on campus favor Michael Harrington who, we can only hope, doesn't even have a government, tax-exempt, chair of socialism. He doesn't need one, though. All he needs - is the bad apples - and the journalism professors.
Let us pray.
Political Pattern Is 'Say Nothing'
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 7, 1982
In the United States today poll-taking has almost become a religion or at least a sanctuary for intellectual "worship."
Indeed, so bad has the situation become that almost no politician dares even offer his ideas to the public until he has first consulted a poll - if not a lawyer.
It's hard to say which, i.e., the poll or the lawyer, is the most devious in the mind of the public. The latter's healthy skepticism has almost been replaced by an unhealthy cynicism. But one thing for sure is that most polls on the subject tend to place lawyers alongside used car salesmen and politicians for being, well, to put it ever so mildly, untrustworthy.
That's bad. That's real bad, since not ALL lawyers are bad. Then why do lawyers get the limelight? Well, one reason seems almost certain to be the matter of the elusive nature of intellectual honesty. Let's see if we can shed a bit of light on some basic cause and effect relationships.
One of the places we might look at is where one would least expect it and that is in the political races for our law court judges. Now then, it matters not very much whether the race is for justice of the Supreme Court or a magistrate court (high or low), the pattern is pretty much the same. The pattern is: "Don't say anything," and they are almost always eminently successful, especially in their campaign literature.
Take our current race for district court judge here in the Third Judicial District. Two local judges currently "compete" for the seat soon to be vacated by Judge Gilbert Norris of Weiser.
Their names are Judge Milton Birnbaum and Judge Steve Drescher, both of Caldwell. Both men are known to me and I like both men personally. I have no intent here to impugn the motives of either, except to note that neither takes issue with the legal, but sad, status quo in his political brochures asking for your vote.
For example, neither brochure even says whether the candidate's been a Republican or a Democrat - not that it would matter much, but it'd be nice to hear one of them say that it didn't matter. (Birnbaum's been a long-time Democrat and I'd guess his competitor is not, but I cannot say, for sure, since he doesn't say either.) I used to ask lawyers why they played down their past political affiliation when they ran for judgeships and they offered some such stuff as: "The job's non-partisan." I laughed.
It's as though a Jesuit priest decided to apply for a school teaching job. When the school board chairman who was known to be hell-bent for balance in education, asked the former preacher which theory he preferred: the creation theory or the evolution theory (?) the clergyman answered: "I can teach it either way."
On Birnbaum's flyer (a 3.5"x4" card) listing his credentials as reasons we should vote for him he lists: "12 years as Magistrate Judge." Nothing as to whether he loves or loathes drunks or lesbians, whether he's soft on land-use planning or hard on muggers and rapists.
He does say something interesting next, however, and it's easily the most overlooked "credential" in that somewhat infamous history of legal requirements for a judge: "20 years in business."
Egad. What's a greedy capitalist businessman doing admitting publicly that he'd made a profit for 20 years? But wait. He didn't say he'd made a profit every year. Heck, he didn't even say (admit) he'd made a profit at all. Or, for that matter, even whether he favored capitalism over socialism. But then neither do the regular politicians say or admit which of those systems they prefer. Neither do they get asked by those watch dogs, the news media, most of whom could care less, since the subject's almost never sensational.
Birnbaum's card goes on to say that he successfully attended school in New York and has the blessings of the lawyer's bar both there and here, but he says nothing at all about his philosophy or even whether or not he ever played hooky or bribed the teacher with an apple. The card says something - but not much.
Lawyer-judge Steve Drescher's "non-political" advertising flyer measures roughly twice the size of his competitor's, but it says even less. One side says "Drescher" on one line and "District Court Judge" on the other - nothing else.
Turn it over and there's Drescher's photo - twice, once with his very attractive wife and cute little youngster and once by himself. It's quite obvious that if Steve did take a poll before deciding to run for district judge, his pollster must have said, "Judge, you're an especially handsome young man with an especially good-looking wife - so play it up."
Drescher did play it up, too. Over half the information side of his flyer (the other side had merely his name and the job he's asking for) is taken up by two photos. I do admit I wish I were even half so handsome as this fine young man, but it's just not clear that "handsome is as handsome does."
To his credit, the flyer admits he was "appointed" (not elected) district magistrate judge in 1978 and formerly served as deputy, prosecuting attorney in Canyon County. It also proclaims: "Honesty, integrity and hard work," but not a word about God, motherhood or apple pie.
Well, so much for the credentials of one of the two gentlemen, who will quite likely judge your lives in the coming years.
But before you laugh (or cry) just remember that intellectual honesty, like truth in advertising, begins at home. So let's all of us home-bodies tell our law court judges that they could at least set a better example for our political literature.
Who knows? It might even set a common-law precedent for the partisan politicians to let us know what they believe in - aside from getting elected.
Our Eyes Bowed to Government
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 14, 1982
I never cease to be amazed at the way honey bees swarm around the beehive where the honey is. I guess, to use the modern terminology, "They know where it's at." But then, so do people. At least, some people.
The annual Governor's Prayer Breakfast held in Boise last week may be a case in point. A politically aware crowd of over 1,000 got up in the wee hours of the early morning to get a decent seat to hear Charles Colson, extraordinary ex-advisor to President Richard Nixon. Also one supposes, to hear their governor. Colson was then, and is still, extraordinary. In fact he was without doubt one of the best prayer breakfast speakers they've ever had. I know. I've attended most of them over the past 20 years. But something was missing on the honey-like attraction of power and glory.
Colson and the born-again breakfast clubbers missed an ever-so-timely opportunity to ask their mostly sincere Moral Majority followers to do something different. In addition, that "something" would have been profoundly religious in a very good sense of the word. Or, how not to worship.
That opportunity would have been to ask those in attendance to stop worshiping government. People tend to fawn all over politicians, especially those big in the news. Certainly that tends to be where the power lies (pun intended, if you like) or, if you prefer, that's where the honey is. And it does bring the crowds out. Indeed, how often it is that when we want to get a crowd out to an otherwise important event, the first thing that comes to mind is which politician to invite. Why? Well, sad to say, it usually works. That's why. As a fine non-politician he could have expanded on that.
Still, Colson had a good message, I thought. In fact he made some remarks tending to indicate he no longer held politicians in such high regard as he once did. Thank Heaven for that. But he didn't take sides, nor did he tell us kindred souls how to know which side we should take.
While we're here on earth, presumably getting ready for Christ in the life hereafter, we need to know, also, something about how we can tell who to follow here on earth. That way the good Lord will perhaps forgive us for not being so danged politically illiterate. We are, don't you know? In a great big way we're dumb as a post when it comes to politics which, by the way, is the whole context in which the Governor's Prayer Breakfast was held - political problem solving.
Now then, all this is not meant merely as a criticism, particularly not at Colson personally. It's just that his admonition: "It's time to get out of the pews and onto the streets. It's gonna cost you something, because you're going to have to be different," (to which I say, Amen) just might be misleading.
Most people interpret that, particularly when it's said in a political atmosphere breakfast, to mean something like: "Get out there and politic all the harder." Egad, politic for whom, for what, against what principles and for which ideas?
They're not all good ideas, you know. Even the men (sinful man, remember?) are not all good to follow.
How shall we then live(?) as Francis Schaeffer asks. The great theologian's book by that name tells us well and outspokenly or tries to. But, unfortunately, no such suggestions at the prayer breakfast. In fact, it's almost as if they suggest we further elevate the politicians after we "get out of the pews and into the streets." Heaven help us, but where does one see more hate than in politics? It's non-political solutions that tend to promote peace.
For example, the Idaho State Senate Chaplain offered a prayer after Colson's truly inspiring, if somewhat ambiguous, message. I had hopes he'd offer something like, "Come to the Idaho Senate and see where the mistakes are made by a lot of little men buzzing around playing God, or trying to." But he didn't.
Perhaps he didn't try because the senate chaplain of New Mexico tried it a few years ago during their legislative session and it almost got him impeached. His prayer asked, "Almighty God, we who spend $10,000 for a bus so our children will not have to walk, and then budget $200,000 for a gymnasium so they can get exercise, do now seek guidance in all matters financial."
Rev. William Crews was the name of the New Mexico Senate's "whistle-blower" whose whistle scarcely got the media's attention as did the same whistle-blowing get against the CIA (whose guts the news media profoundly seems to hate.) Why? Colson could have told us, but he didn't.
The New Mexico chaplain offered another prayer that, for some strange reason, I think the former presidential advisor, now-turned-preacher, might have agreed with: "Almighty God, we who are willing to support almost any bill that will support our public image for the next election do now ask for courage to act for the well-being of the state in spite of opposition.
"We ask this in the name of One who never would have been elected on the basis of popularity."
That, ladies and gentlemen, took real guts. But what could Colson and the Idaho Senate chaplain say? After all, they were both sitting near Idaho's chief politicians, whose job demands popularity.
It was HIS prayer breakfast, i.e., the governor's, you know.
Throwing It Won't Make It Stick
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 28, 1982
Last week the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce's noonbreak luncheon was host to the Idaho Newspaper Association's chief spokesman and lobbyist, Robert Hall, of Boise.
First of all, Hall appeared to be no flaming liberal there to claim omnipotent and God-like qualities for his part of the media. In fact he seemed quick to note they do sometimes make mistakes, especially in headline writing, which, upon occasion, can tend to be misleading. As an interesting aside, he neglected to suggest a reason why said "tendency," when it does occur, seems to persist with the unerring consistency of a heat-seeking missile - in a liberal direction.
But the newspaper spokesman's most spectacular observation and by far the most revealing was perhaps the title (headline?) of his speech. It was: "The Press and the People - There Is No Difference." If that doesn't crack you up I've got 40 acres of swamp land in southern Mississippi I'll sell you real cheap. There's no difference between it and 40 acres in downtown Houston, Texas (neither one, by the way, has zoning, which gives my story added credibility.)
Seriously now, one daily newspaper belonging to Hall's association and whose consistency in hating the political guts of conservative U.S. Sen. Steve Symms is well known, recently carried the following headline: "Symms leaves for Southeast Asia on Junket at Taxpayer's Expense." (If that's not the exact wording it is close.)
The same newspaper was almost fanatic in its consistent support of liberal U.S. Sen. Frank Church who Symms defeated in the 1980 election. Had Church gone on a similar "junket," which he did many times to other parts of the world, the headline no doubt would have read something like: "Idaho's Own Senior Senator Leaves on Fact Finding Mission for God and Country." I urge you, gentle reader, try to remember during Church's almost quarter century in the U.S. Senate when a similar news headline accused him of going on a "junket" anywhere, not to mention: "at taxpayer's expense."
All of which isn't to say that "to err is human," nor is it to say that this writer doesn't wish Symms had stayed home to mind his own damned business. It is, however, to say that when Church, a liberal, goes to Soviet Russia, ostensibly to affect more trade with them it is patently okay. But when Symms, a conservative, goes to Libya admittedly with a trade mission to try to help sell Idaho wheat it is somehow almost sinister because Libya has a fanatic (according to the press) bad-guy left-wing dictator. One guesses the USSR dictator is merely a fellow liberal.
To his everlasting credit Hall did offer some interesting observations like: "Your local newspaper is often the largest manufacturing operation in town and you can scan the news in much better fashion in a newspaper in less time and more completely than in competing TV media." He also made a fine point that people who read are people who are better able to think. Also, gazing hour after hour into the boob-tube hardly adds to that particular ability, especially for children.
But one question put to Hall from the floor was particularly well-taken. It was to the effect that: "Why is it the New York Times corporation newspaper almost never even criticizes, let alone attacks, the Washington Post newspaper corporation?" In other words, if a U.S. oil company or a manufacturing corporation had a fraction of the power either of those giants exercises, almost daily, both papers would attack - regularly. Talk abounds, for example, about lawyers unwilling to attack one another. But, however true that is, lawyers seldom claim to be the watchdogs for the public against powerful public influences. The whole media, including newspapers, frequently justify their special privileges upon just such a claim.
Unfortunately, Hall seemed to miss the thrust of his questioner's inquiry responding to the effect that, "we must not risk having government weakening the doctrine of freedom of the press," or some such. Okay, then, how about risking: "Physician, heal thyself." It would work, too, if they'd attack one another honestly and with half the vigor they attack others.
In an excellent essay on that very subject Dr. Leopole Tyrmand of the Rockford College Institute writes: "The death of (media) discussion is a bizarre phenomenon. One refuses to believe that groups of bright people who live by the agility of their brains and fiercely compete for money have nothing to say about one another's ideas, suggestions and errors. It's inconceivable that Time never found a mistake in Newsweek's political reasoning, that CBS couldn't spot inaccuracy in NBC's reporting, that the Washington Post never had any objection to the New York Times' stance." Inconceivable? Indeed.
Hall was, nevertheless, in my opinion, a credit to his member's association. But for him to suggest, "there is no difference between the press and the people," brought to mind another comment from a friendly, but ever so perceptive listener:
"You can throw that at the wall, Bob, but you can't make it stick."
Some Abuse It, All Should Use It
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 4, 1982
Readers of this column are often treated to critical comments on news media handling of public policy issues. Many people are saying the media may be this nation's public enemy No. 1. However true that may be there is another side to the story.
That side and that story may very well be one of the unsung hero stories of this generation. It also may be one of the most under-noticed and, if I may, under-appreciated. It is the letters-to-the-editor section of your local newspaper.
In fact, the letters department may be what has taken the place of the old town meeting held frequently in the colonies and later the 13 United States in the early days of the Republic.
Americans tend to take their (our) freedoms, privileges, rights and responsibilities for granted, also to overlook our opportunities, i.e., to express ourselves - publicly. It's easier to pass the buck to the politician, the preacher, the bureaucrat, the police. Or, to those of us even more sincere and compassionate, we pass it to the Salvation Army with "Now there is an outfit that I can support." But not-too-often does a friendly check accompany the friendly and verbal endorsement. People forget, I guess.
Still, the letters-to-the-editor are well-known in newspaper circles to be one of their best-read features. It is also one of their best public services and they should be praised to the high heavens for that public services. Oh sure, I know that it also helps sell papers, but then so does better coverage of public policy issues help sell papers. And it isn't as easy to do as it looks, either. If you don't believe me, try writing even one letter to the editor every week, let alone every day, and try to satisfy a miserable, overbearing, egocentric, powermonger of an editor. Or, as in the case of the Press-Tribune, try to get your letter to satisfy even a super-intelligent, sweet, understanding, mellow-fellow editor with your literary genius. It ain't so easy, Buster. Try it and see. Who knows? You might be good at it.
And many people do just that. Many do it often and many succeed, too. Of course, some don't. Some abuse it, just like in most situations in life, but it's there for you to use - if you've got the guts merely to try and are willing to sign your name.
Where else, but in America? Just this last week, on Thursday, the Press-Tribune carried seven letters-to-the-editor. One of those was from a United States senator. Steve Symms was defending himself against a guy, Father Nathaniel Pierce, who hates his political guts. Where else but in America?
Another letter simply tore the pants off all four of the Idaho congressional delegation for their "blatant selfishness and greed." Where else than in America?
There were more letters, some you'd agree with and some not. Some even made sense. What was too bad, too damned bad, in fact, was that the letter writers didn't have an opportunity to read in advance nationally syndicated columnist Nicholas von Hoffman. This jackass was braying as usual about President Reagan's criticism of the media coverage of his (Reagan's) observations, again on the media. Where else but in America?
The next time you decide to turn on the television to get your news, gentle reader, just remember something. Your chances for an intelligent rebuttal to the TV news reader(s) are next to nothing at all.
And if you don't want to make an intelligent, or even for that matter, an un-intelligent, rebuttal to the TV news, then chances are good you just haven't been reading - you guessed it - the letters-to-the-editor.
Where else BUT in America?
Much Better To Be a Be-gooder
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 11, 1982
I've got good news and bad news. First, the bad news.
The whole world is on a power-kick, and it's too bad, too. Especially it is bad for the little buy who keeps getting hit alongside the head with an ax handle and all-too-often had trouble telling just who it is on the other end.
Even the preachers have taken to the power game. At least many have. In particular, the so-called modern (read, popular) church preachers who, having apparently failed to lead their flocks to the promised land, have taken to the political power game. They're hell-bent to lead people to "do good" - at government expense, of course. And the politicians are quick to oblige.
Time was when preachers were concerned with ethics and morality and making men over into good men, then sending those men into public life to show the way. But that's not fast enough they seem to be saying. We'd best not wait for the hereafter. We'd better get busy in the here-and-now. After all, since the days of "God is dead," well, gosh, what if it's true and we didn't do all we could? Or, moreover, what if we didn't vote for a few more programs? We might have missed a chance to do even more "good." So get out the vote and make it compulsory. Egad.
The power-kick is everywhere, not just in the churches. It's the labor union's stock-in-trade. Recall the North Idaho mines in violent uproar early in this century. When then-governor Steunenberg ordered out the National Guard to restore law and order, he was assassinated in Caldwell for that order. The labor union's infamous Heywood and Pettibone were tried in Boise for hiring Harry Orchard, later sentenced to life imprisonment, for killing the Idaho governor.
But Clarence Darrow, the country's most famous criminal lawyer of that day, pled successfully for the life of "Big Bill" Heywood, the labor union chief, with the claim that the world's labor movement would crumble if the Idaho court ordered the big labor leader to hang. (As an interesting aside, Heywood was pictured agitating in the current movie, "Reds," showing the Communist movement's early days in the U.S.A. Furthermore, Heywood's body was later buried in the Wall of the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia. It resides there today in the place of the Soviet's highest honor.) Labor union violence continues to this day.
Still, worst of all is the "bottom line" of the power-kick mentality - the arms race. It's currently consuming the world's leadership and, unfortunately, that little guy who's on the wrong end of those ax handles I mentioned. He, too, seems to have fallen for the international do-gooders whose answer-to-end-all-questions is more political power-kicks. Perhaps it's true that Americans learn nothing from history, except that they learn nothing from history.
Now the good news. There's a fellow in Caldwell who, for lo' these many years, refuses steadfastly to fall for all that power-kick stuff. Oh, sure, Caldwell has a host of other great people but, to my way of thinking, this fellow is kind of special. He came to Caldwell over half a century ago to go into business with Peckham Furniture Co., but when that didn't pan out he became an announcer for radio station KFXD (then here in Caldwell) and was known as "Uncle Bud." He's still here and he's still "Bud" to a great big host of friends. He's B.A. "Bud" Howard, who's been the principal agent in these parts, for all but about 3 of the past 53 years for the Banker's Life Insurance Company of Des Moines, Iowa, and who's justifiably proud about his age of 83 years.
So it's understandable that Howard is probably known to more people and, moreover, is probably a good friend of just about more people in the Boise (forgive me for using that word) Valley than just about anybody I know.
One could say a whole lot about Howard's wonderful wife and absolutely delightful daughters, but everybody talks about them. I want to say something about this fellow who's so outrageously non-political I just don't know how I ever even got to know him. It probably was because he sold me, years and years ago, some life insurance. (I absolutely hate life insurance companies, but that's another story for another day.)
Aside from Howard's wonderful persistence having saved a myriad of widows and families from financial hardship and worry over the years, he's also lightened other people's lives in many, many ways. For example, Bud has played music on his accordion for parties and friends almost for longer than actor George Burns has been doing the soft-shoe dance with that familiar big long cigar. And the Caldwell Lion's Club's "lying" just couldn't have lain half so well for all these years had it not been for Bud's accordion. I doubt he's ever charged anyone a dime for anything, except an insurance policy, in his life. That's his "power-kick."
And it's no doubt helped him sell life insurance, too. At least it should have, because almost everybody loves Bud Howard and each one's life is richer for it - his music, his personality and seemingly endless good cheer, I mean, not just the insurance.
But, perhaps most of all, aside from his super-fun (and not so unpolitical, by the way) family, I love Bud Howard for his power-kick hobby for years and years of sending out Heart Association memorials for other people who wish to remember persons and families whose loved ones have passed away. Heck, those memorials, the entire proceeds of which go to the Heart Association, not to him, are no hobby of Howard's - they're an obsession. I'll bet he works harder for the Heart Fund than he does to sell insurance.
No, Howard's on no power-kick, gentle reader, he's just a damned fine citizen who's learned during his 83 years on this earth that it's a whole lot better to be a be-gooder than it is to be a do-gooder. And a damned site harder.
I hope he lives forever.
Your Taxes Build Their Dreams
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 18, 1982
The recent controversy surrounding the Nampa proposal for a new golf course to be paid for by taxpayers should be written up and published for posterity.
Even Father Nathaniel Pierce, Nampa minister and columnist for the Idaho Press-Tribune, favors this semi-Marxist proposal for yet another "free lunch." For the pee-pull of course. (One wonders if so-called moderate columnist Erwin Schwiebert will avoid both extremes of this one, too. Extremes, in this case, meaning of both right and wrong.) At risk of over simplifying Pierce's April 11 column, it does serve as a delightful example of how far left our society has drifted, if not fallen.
Now then, one is tempted to denounce Pierce and his government golf course gang as a bunch of extremely liberal, if not left wing, bad guys pushing the taxpayers for more socialist ownership. But that would not only not be true, it'd not be very helpful in explaining where these free lunch ideas come from or how they come into being, since most are quite sincere. Still, if we don't get better explanations than we now tend to get from the present government gang and, unfortunately, most of the private gang too, we are destined to drown in another morass of name-calling. However much fun it is, and however sometimes on-target the labeling can be, it seldom does much more than sell newspapers. What we need to do is to drain the swamp.
The Nampa golf course controversy is not a new liberal versus conservative issue. There is plenty of precedent for government golf courses, i.e., government swimming pools, government parks, government libraries, government ball parks, etc., etc., and even plenty of monuments to the politicians of the past who promised them. However, we're slowly, ever so slowly, coming to realize "free" lunches cost money. But other people, leaders and followers alike, are still coaxing us to spend even more. Witness U.S. Sen. George McGovern and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O'Neil, both leading the crusade. Who's to say they too, are not sincere?
And Nampa's clergyman-columnist Pierce is without doubt sincere in wanting, along with Nampa's civil engineer, Sumner Johnson (et al), a new tax-funded golf course. Oh sure, they are willing to pay their share of the taxes, they say. But who is not willing? That's the issue.
Father Pierce, or if you like Columnist Pierce, is not a bad man, furthermore, he's my friend. He's a good man too, politically illiterate perhaps, but he's emblematic of not only so very many of today's preachers, but also so very many businessmen-golfers, i.e., the free lunch idea isn't all bad, because the private sector probably wouldn't build a golf course unless it'd make a profit.
Pierce ends his column's plea for Nampa's government-owned golf course with: "While I value the principle of keeping government out of the private sector, I must in this instance support the bond levy ... I'm not a golfer, nor do I stand to benefit in any material way (he's a spiritual man; believes in spiritual ways, no doubt) if a course is built.
"Rather, I am simply a citizen who has some dreams for the future."
Yeah! Just like so many people these days, especially in Washington, D.C. His dreams- your taxes.
They Pay or They Wind Up in Jail
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 25, 1982
The proposal for a new golf course in Nampa continues to capture the attention of concerned citizens. Hooray, I say, for concerned citizens and thoughtful controversy.
But right after the hoorays for those who want to whoop-it-up-in-favor, then the hoorays who want to hoot-it-down-against the tax-supported golf course, the thinking almost stops.
Whether we like it or not there are good and well-meaning people on both sides of the government-owned golf course proposal. But somebody's right and somebody's wrong. Okay, then, wise guy, which is which? Well, perhaps many of us try too often to settle important matters like a free, or almost free, golf course by trying to discern who's the good guy and who's the bad. Maybe that's where we've gone astray.
For example, in Soviet Russia there would be no question. The state would own it. The "state," that is the government in their country, owns EVERYTHING. Now then, don't laugh. There's a whole lot of good people in this country who see that scheme as a good idea.
There exists a tremendous amount of college and university professors right here in Idaho who are prone to say things such as: "What's so all fired bad about socialism?" They've been saying these left-oriented things for years and since the government began to subsidize education in a big way, especially higher education, we've sent almost everybody and his dog to college. What has been the result? Are we better able to think and reason now, after all this education?
I don't know, but the fact remains that otherwise good people, educated people, concerned people, disagree about these matters.
A new golf course is most assuredly a plus for any town, just as a new airport is a plus for any town. In fact, there was such a consensus for the plus of a local airport that government put money into both Caldwell and Nampa airports - only a few miles apart. It's called provincialism or, if you like, it's also called economic nationalism. The liberals have been trying to warn us conservatives about such for years. (Bless their well-meaning hearts.) I began to see what they meant a few years back, but then it hit me with mixed emotions because to cure the problem they offer only more of the same, namely, more government. Let me hasten to add that they don't see it as "more government." They tend to see it as something such as "more for the people."
It's interesting to note the tendency of left-wingers in general to use the word "people" in their rhetoric and their labels, e.g., "The People's Republic of China" (Red China), The People's Republican of Korea (North Korea) etc., etc. Even politicians in America are prone to call themselves "the people's choice" thus leading the crusade almost inexorably toward collectivism and away from individualism.
I hasten to add, gentle reader, that the righteous indignation felt by the left-wingers in this country is just as sincere, whatever that means, as the right-wingers are. In fact, they are just as sincere as those people who believe in freedom, but I fear that most folks have come to think, sincerely only in terms of one-man, one-vote. It's called Democracy. That word does not once appear in the Declaration of Independence nor in the U.S. Constitution, yet one can hardly pick up the newspaper or turn on the radio or TV without some clown spouting one or the other of those two collective words: (1) people (sometimes pronounced, pee-pull) and (2) Democracy.
For whatever it's worth this country, though referred to by most intellectuals in America as a "Democracy," is not really a Democracy, but is based on private rather than public ownership. "Our private system has somehow become bastardized by constant use of that word to the exclusion of words showing a kinder reference to private ownership, words such as capitalism, profit, risk, entrepreneurship, competition, etc. It's almost as if the words "private sector" are in a death-struggle with the words "public sector." And the word "people" is likewise in a similar struggle with the word "freedom."
Ironically much of the ammunition for these struggles is furnished all-too-often by American business, but that's another story for another day. The latter's success, however, at furnishing to the "pee-pull" the goods and services that the collectivists can so far only promise is really the miracle of modern history. Then what's happened to it? Why do we tend more and more to reject our private oriented scheme of private enterprise in favor of collectivist enterprise?
Well, one reason was pretty well summed up by Press-Tribune columnist and super-sincere Father Nathaniel Pierce whose bottom line favoring the government-owned golf course went: "I'm willing to pay my fair share of taxes for the golf course."
What he neglected to add was that EVERYBODY is willing to pay their fair share of taxes. If they don't pay - they wind up in jail.
And the conservatives still claim socialism doesn't work - ho, ho, ho.
Media Follows Double Standard
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 2, 1982
The Idaho Press Club had a meeting at Sun Valley last week and if you think they are not concerned about their own freedom of the press, then you're wrong. They are, indeed, concerned.
However, if you think they are particularly concerned about other (repeat, other) people's freedom, then you're wrong again.
Most members of the media would not agree with the above assessment and I hasten to admit that a pitifully small handful of exceptions do exist, but the generalization is a good one. What follows should be seen in that context and might be helpful to you, gentle reader, if you give a damn about understanding the media's seemingly weird and wondrous ways.
I flew up to Sun Valley mostly to watch a panel composed of two representatives of the partisan political apparatus, and four others from the news media. Their subject was to inquire into the media's coverage of political campaigns and, since the subject of balance and/or fairness to the various contestants was almost sure to arise, I wanted to attend.
Phil Reberger, who is chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Steve Symms, was the GOP representative and Ron Twilegar who recently resigned as Democrat state senator, represented what the media tends to view as the other side. "Unfortunately, the media's ideas of telling both sides is merely to find two liberals who disagree.)
Symms' man opined that the media's idea of conflict of interest was strange indeed when, during the 1980 Church versus Symms campaign, they got so feverishly worked up about the then congressman's silver trading speculations. So far so good, perhaps. But how come, Reberger wanted to know, the media was so calm and unconcerned about then Sen. Church's being chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while receiving good-sized campaign contributions from Jews, mostly out of state. His committee had a big influence on U.S. aid to Israel.
Somehow that rather obvious conflict, at least in the minds of many, was not followed by the in-depth discussion and analysis that I had hoped for from the media panelists. As a matter of fact, virtually no response at all was even offered. Certainly none was offered in defense of this seemingly rather obvious example of the media's double-standard unless the uneasy silence that followed was to be construed to mean: "Guilty as hell, your Honor, so what else is new?"
Well, one thing new they suggested was the subject of the political action committees (PACs) which were said to enable Symms to "take the high road" while the PACs did the dirty work on Church. "Just a minute," retorted Reberger, "where were you media people during all those past year's campaigns when the AFL-CIO political action committees, and Common Cause's PAC and the Dirty Dozen's PAC, etc., etc., who have attacked the Republicans in general and the conservatives in particular for many many years?"
Reberger was just great. He was so soft-spoken and mild mannered with the obvious merit of his criticism that not a soul even booed or hissed. In fact those media people in attendance actually seem rather bewildered, if not pleased, to hear some articulate criticism in reverse. (Father, forgive me for what I'm about to suggest, but maybe Symms SHOULD give him a raise.)
Twilegar's wit, charm, intelligence and liberal tendencies stood him, too, in good stead with the media club (no pun, intended). I'm somewhat chagrined myself when I have to admit that I, too, like Ron personally, but he's not all bad. Heck, there's even a few members of the media that I'm tending to like a little more than I used to.
In any event, the popular state senator offered this rejoinder, in passing, as possibly explaining the media's seeming paranoia at the new conservative PACs: "Well, perhaps the liberal PACs rhetoric has been much more reasonable and soft-spoken than the New Right PACs' heated style."
"Jumpin' catfish," I responded from the audience, "the media always scream like a mashed cat when they, too, get significant criticism. And to the extent that the liberal left-wing PACs may have been a bit softer spoken, it's only because almost the entire American news media has for years done the dirty work - shouting for the liberals. And done it, by the way, damned near free of charge."
I hasten to add that I do not agree liberal and left-wing PACs are either more reasonable or softer spoken. But the new competition (read criticism) only recently and intelligently leveled at the media, especially through direct mail, is having a salubrious and delightful effect on some of the more open-minded and less-threatened members.
I hesitate to say it, but a few more of the latter actually seemed in evidence at Sun Valley. Still, that's by no means the BEST evidence - is it?
Democrats Made This Debt Mess
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 9, 1982
Both the famous advice-columnist Ann Landers and U.S. Sen. Steve Symms were big in the news recently. Landers lampooned the farmers' jack-rabbit extermination at Eastern Idaho's Mud Lake and some of that area's newspapers canceled her super-popular letter-column because she had "recycled" some old letter-columns of hers.
Tut tut, methinks the media critics have not enough to do. As if the media doesn't regularly recycle, rehash and remold their news often in such a way as to bastardize their reader's, listener's and viewer's touch with reality, even to the point of insulting their intelligence, then I miss my guess. It's sort of like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. But I must admit it's fun to see somebody in the media criticizing somebody else in the media for SOMETHING, since it so seldom happens at all.
Symms saw the Landers' criticism of the Idaho farmers' effort to save their crops and responded forthwith to the popular advice-letter-columnist. To her everlasting credit Landers printed Symms' remarks and they thus went out nationwide.
It is an interesting aside that the Ann Landers feature is said by many to be the single most widely read piece in the newspaper world.
In any event, it's a media world in many ways and the Mud Lake rabbit crusade which got widespread and mostly hostile coverage in the nation's liberal press has now had at least one articulate and favorable Idaho rabbit extermination defender.
It was in a widely read media spot, too, thanks to two popular and reasonably visible personalities, namely, Ann Landers and Steve Symms.
Another Idaho media event and one which could reasonably be expected to emerge, sooner or later, is the Democrat candidacy of Larry LaRocco who wants the job now held by the already fiscally conservative Idaho First District Congressman Larry Craig. About that candidacy a few observations.
The challenger visited in Caldwell a short time ago being squired about by two young sons of two well-known Caldwellites, one the son of long time businessman-jeweler Earl Lovan and the other the son of the Rev. Don Frank, pastor of the Presbyterian Church.
I mention the Caldwell fathers of the two nice young men employed by LaRocco merely by way of some background-identity for LaRocco and by way of a sort of local interest coincidence, i.e., two fine looking young Democrats on LaRocco's payroll, I'm told, from the overwhelmingly Republican Canyon County seat of Caldwell.
Let me hasten to add that I see nothing at all untoward in this, merely that the GOP tends to take Republicanism (whatever that means) for granted in Canyon County. They might be overlooking some young political siblings who, for some reason, don't like the GOP political status-quo.
Now then, speaking of status-quo in politics, here's LaRocco on why you should vote out "Larry the Craig" and vote in "Larry the Rock": "The Reagan administration's high interest rate policy is," he said, "crippling Idaho's farmer, business people, timber industry and freezing young people out of the housing market."
Egad, WHAT Reagan interest-rate policy? The Democrats, who have practically owned and controlled Insane City, D.C., for more than a quarter of a century have run up such a pile of phony printed money and such a mountain of public (read, government) debt that anyone having money to "rent" would be out of his or her mind to rent it for very long and under any circumstances at anything but a gawdawful high rate for fear of even further money-inflation.
Those loaning money will not even get their purchasing power back, not to mention a reasonable return on their investment if the government continues to inflate. Even the interest payment on the national debt is enough to scare most investors out of all but the shortest of short term loans.
While most of the debt mess this country is in was caused by Democrat leadership and political power it is at least refreshing to hear one suggest some financial concern. It's too bad the super big spender, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, can't hear, (or would he ever believe in it?) young LaRocco.
Again comes the man after Larry Craig's job: "Current trickle-down economic policies simply don't add up." Wow! One wonders how LaRocco figured that one out. For example, President Reagan inherited 8,000,000 unemployed. Since he's been in office there's 1,000,000 more. One wonders how, given a hostile liberal news media and only a paper thin majority in the Senate, that he could accomplish so much in so short a time. Methinks LaRocco can throw that at the wall - but he can't make it stick.
Not even, as I pointed out above, with two perfectly nice young Democrat legmen from the usually, but maybe not now quite so comfortably, Republican Canyon County helping him.
Last week the Idaho Socialists announced they were going to take over or become more powerful in the Democrat Party. Perhaps LaRocco can at least capture SOMEBODY'S interest, if they do.
So far, many voters are finding it hard to believe the Socialists hadn't already taken over the Democrats - long ago.
Doctor Gives IRS Dose of Cents
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 16, 1982
A medical doctor friend of mine, R.S. Jaggard, Oelwein, Iowa, has been sending me his personally written newsletter for several years. This gentleman is a practicing physician whose excellent medical brains are rather remarkably matched by his social guts.
His most recent letter, free to anybody for the asking, is so sharp and short (i.e., for substantive statement on the government money-fraud) that I phoned him to ask that he let me use it in my column. Here it is with his enthusiastic permission. You should find it dramatically educational.
"The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) says that a silver coin labeled 'Half Dollar' is worth 50 cents. When I paid my 9-15-81 Federal Income Tax Quarterly payment, I sent a check for the appropriate amount and a shiny uncirculated 1964 Kennedy silver Half Dollar, plus an explanatory note that this was not an ordinary silver-plated copper slug, that this was a genuine silver coin. I asked the IRS to give me a receipt showing the value of the coin. They did. $0.50.
"I also asked IRS - What would happen if I bought a bag of 1,000 silver coins for $5,000 (five thousand Federal Reserve Notes [FRN]), and then sold the coins to friends at $5 each? Would I have any taxable income by doing that, I asked IRS.
"My letter was sent to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Washington, D.C. The reply I got came from John Edwards, District Director of IRS, 210 Walnut St., Des Moines, Iowa 50309, letter dated November 20, 1981. The pertinent parts of Mr. Edwards' letter are as follows:
"On September 30, 1981, your 1981 Federal Income Tax account was credited with an estimated tax payment of $.50.
The half dollar silver coin you sent has been credited at its face value, 50 cents. Monies used, both paper money and coins, in the normal course of business activity, are credited at face value unless otherwise agreed upon by the parties involved. You provide an illustration of this in your letter where you recognize a 1964 Kennedy half-dollar coin as having a value of $5 and agree to accept that coin in full payment for services rendered by you for which you usually charge a fee of $5. Therefore, the value of the coin is dependent upon the transaction itself and the intentions of the parties engaged in that transaction."
(Still quoting Mr. Edwards of the IRS): "The answer in the above paragraph is also applicable to the hypothetical question you pose concerning the purchase of 1,000 coins for $5,000 and reselling the coins at $5 each, for a total price of $5,000. Consequently, there is no gain or loss on the transaction." (end quote from Mr. Edwards). Now back to Dr. Jaggard:
"I wrote back to the IRS Commissioner in Washington, asking if this were correct. I got a reply from Mr. Edwards, referring back to my previous letter from him, and repeating that he was correct in saying all that.
"OK, let's take it from there. A silver coin is worth what the two parties to the transaction say that it is worth. OK. Let's see how this works, in 1982, when it takes about 10 Federal Reserve Notes to get one dollar in silver coins. (The rate of exchange is variable, of course.)
"I can charge my patients for my professional service in dollars in silver coins. If they don't have silver coins readily available, the XYZ coin company (which I just happen to operate at my office on a non-profit basis as a public service) can give the patients silver coins in exchange for their Federal Reserve Notes. Instead of charging the patient $10 in Federal Reserve Notes, I would charge the patient $1 in silver coins. After receiving that payment, I would have $1 in gross income. Then I could exchange my silver coins for Federal Reserve Notes, again dealing with the non-profit XYZ coin company. Then take the Federal Reserve Notes to the bank to deposit in my checking account, and write checks as usual for payment of my bills.
"At present, my office overhead is about 40 percent, and I pay out $4 for expenses for every $10 I receive in Federal Reserve Notes. However, in the silver coin system of charging and payment, I would receive only $1 in income for every $4 I paid out for expenses, so, I would have a net loss of $3 every time, and my net taxable income at the end of the year would be a Minus figure, so, I would pay no tax.
"A full service bank can offer checking accounts with balances in dollars in silver coin, as well as checking accounts with balances in dollars in Federal Reserve Notes. Those entrepreneurs who recognize the value of such a service and the system of charging prices in silver coin (instead of Federal Reserve Notes) can deal with others of like mind, and a whole community could cut their gross income to 10 percent of the present FRN level, and most of them would thus have no federal income tax liability.
"Regulations say I can give my Congressman only $1,000 for his election campaign. OK, I can give him 2,000 silver Half Dollars, and he can find out the true value of those coins when he exchanges them for goods and services. This will easily prove to him the fact that PRICES have NOT gone UP during the past 30 years, but, the value of the PAPER MONEY has gone DOWN."
Thank God for Dr. Jaggard's "medical" diagnosis.
Legal Dinosaurs Merely Grunt
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 23, 1982
I have an apology to make. If you'll bear with me I'll try to explain. This column as been more critical (I hope constructively) of politicians in general and Republicans in particular than probably anything else being published in Idaho.
For this there are two reasons: (1) they so richly deserve it. The public isn't particularly aware, you know, and (2) because I know more about the Republicans. Forgive me, but I was an active one for so long. My guess is the Democrats are just as bad, but often in differing ways. One thing almost always remains the same, however. Both parties depend on a superficial name-familiarity and a sort of tenuous tribal chant instead of well-articulated principles to achieve their ends.
But something happened recently which may herald a bit of hope. About a fortnight ago the Canyon County GOP Central Committee went public with what they called the county's "Judicial Study Report." Said report portends to shed both light and heat on what many see as excessive leniency and/or indiscriminate compassion in convicting and sentencing criminals. The non-partisan report is somewhat general, but seems mostly intended to focus on our magistrate and district judges. The GOP committee's report, believe it or not, expresses very little confidence in the present judges at either level.
It is not my intention just now to agree or disagree with the Canyon County Republican's judicial report. Rather it is to make a few observations in the hope that our judicial system can be improved. Seen in a proper context the so-called report may very well (at least, could) prove to be helpful. Unfortunately it has become such an emotionally-charged issue that its potential for beneficial change may be destroyed. The lawyers are simply up in arms. Some even want to "sue the bastards," i.e., the county GOP.
My reason for apologizing to some Republican laymen or, if you prefer, lay-persons is because "somebody" has not just stood there, for a change, but tried to DO something. Having tried, perfectly or imperfectly, they carried it out - based on what they perceive as some principles.
The Judicial Report covers the first six months of each of four years, namely 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, and is titled with an unusually meaningful, if humorously cryptic, heading from the Bible's Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged (also)." It covers four categories of cases and alleged slap-on-the-wrist sentencing from the Canyon County court judges: (1) Grant Larceny, (2) Burglary, (3) Assault with a Deadly Weapon and (4) Driving While Under the Influence of Alcohol (DWI). Only felony DWIs were studied.
Since the study, which I'm told took several weeks time of at least four persons to research, has become so controversial I will not attempt to make a judgment on it now. I will say, however, that much of the local legal fraternity's absolute fury about it reminds one of the World War II bomber pilot's observation: "You can tell when you're over the target when you start getting a lot of flack."
That may tend to be unfair to the lawyers. If it is, I'm genuinely sorry, but there's seldom to be seen a more cynical group when other people's freedom and responsibility in the press is up for public criticism. We're probably all a bit guilty in this regard, but when a person is sued in court the tendency all too often is for people to merely ask, "Who is his (or her) lawyer?" The proper query, of course, should rather be, "Who is right and who is wrong?" Better yet is to ask: "WHAT is right, rather than WHO is right." Even if such a sorry situation is not altogether the lawyer's fault and it may not be, it would help to mitigate the outrage currently being expressed by the legal fraternity if they took more visible public stands against many asinine laws and legal situations. Otherwise, the legal dinosaur merely grunts.
The lawyers quite logically plead that they cannot risk incurring the wrath of a judge by complaining about his court. Well, then, so the establishment legal fraternity cannot risk these complaints? Then who will? The judges, with the almost complete acquiescence of the lawyers, plead, "We are non-partisan, so we cannot make such public statements of philosophy." How then is the public to know? It just may be that the GOP report, with all its warts and errors (and it seems there are a couple rather glaring errors), is at least an attempt to get public attention on an obviously bad legal situation concerning crime and punishment. Too frequent news of repeated violent criminal offenders back loose on the streets indicates an alarming intellectual constipation from "some" legal place. If not the court system, then where? We need to hear some positive suggestions publicly, from the lawyers and judges instead of hostile threats and counter-threats.
All the lawyers and judges are not bad, and we do have a bad social condition that's fast getting worse. But it's a sorry pass when neither a member of the bar nor a layman can speak critically of another for fear of furious reprisal from his peers or his critics.
Maybe the whole situation is what brought Christ to say in Luke, Chapter 11:52, "Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."
So gubernatorial candidate Phil Batt isn't the only one whose crusade seems to be based on a "come let us reason together" pitch. I'd just hasten to add that neither is he the only Canyon County Republican who is sincere.
Media Pulls Wool Over Our Eyes
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 30, 1982
It's interesting to note how the national news media handles the subject of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina. Let me hasten to add that I don't see any conspiracy. It's much worse than that.
Forgive me, but I seem to see an enormous, gigantic, mammoth even massive intellectual constipation on the part of most of the media. Their so-called inquiry about the Falkland's would lead one to assume they were reporting on a big football game or super sports event of some kind, albeit a sort of sad one.
Not all of the TV news-readers, of course, but most of the interviewers and commentators, who'd like us to assume they were thinking deeply before asking their questions, are only good at one thing. That is they keep their voice activity going so the boob-tube addicts will think they are keeping up to date on current events. There oughta be a law - that the TV networks couldn't cover a story until it was at least a month old. Boy, what an improvement that'd be.
One might actually assume then, upon occasion at least, that the "in-depth" TV analysis was about something that made sense.
For example, why do you suppose the TV spokesmen never seem to bore in on and dwell on provincial Latin American apologists for Argentina's government? They have so screwed up their economy for so many years that they may have needed a war for some political diversion.
Their zany politicians, at least back as far as El Presidente Juan Peron, have been so sickeningly socialist and emotionally motivated as to make one wonder if our government has been aiding and advising them or the other way around. (Argentina's debt to the U.S. is about $17 billion. Remember?) Small wonder, judging from the Peron-like antics of U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neil's financial leadership for all these long years in the House of Representatives. Our U.S.-Argentina foreign policy in that light, is no doubt another "success."
And speaking of success: U.S. Sen. Steve Symms tells me Great Britain and Argentina not long ago negotiated an agreement between themselves that the English would more or less lease the Falkland Islands much as they now lease Hong Kong from Red China.
Argentina could have had their so-called sovereignty and the British could have continued to operate there and herd their sheep. But somehow the TV news manglers never seem to get around to telling that story. Neither do they ask just who gives a tinker's damn about 1,800 sheepherders, who LIVE there on those God-forsaken slopes, think about all this.
Symms was told that the two antagonist nations all but had their deal signed, sealed and delivered when some clown said, "Maybe we'd better ask the Falklanders what they think about all this before we turn over ownership, even under a long term lease, to the South American fanatics," or words to that effect. Well, they voted and the Islanders said "no." In other words the people living there on the land did not want anybody but the Britains to own or run the Islands. (Too bad we didn't let the Zonians vote on the Panama Canal treaty.)
So - that blew the deal. For better or for worse out went the negotiations, so-called, that the news manglers never seem to explore, i.e., what the Falkland pee-pul think. The national news media is on such an ego trip to tell others how to live that they can't see the forest on account of the trees (as if they ever wanted to.)
That's why I say it'd be far simpler if the media mess was indeed a conspiracy instead of so damned dumb. We could possibly, just possibly, expose a conspiracy about the Falkland Islanders and the mess the world's nations, with their super govern-mentality, has foisted off on the island's sheepherders - if the media were an ordinary conspiracy, that is, instead of an ego trip.
But about all the Falklanders are getting is fleeced an sheared by the fascist Argentine government whose army INVADED. Remember? And to make matters worse they're certainly letting the wool be pulled over the eyes of the rest of the world's "sheepherders" by the American news media.
Furthermore, speaking of pulling the wool over somebody's eyes, most of our own media giants were educated in journalism departments of the great universities all across America. In that sense, we must justify a few of our guilt feelings.
Meantime, most of the journalism professors and their foreign policy colleagues in these same universities continue to study - and condemn - the free market, private ownership ideal. The same ideal the Argentine government seems also to have condemned for so many years. Oddly enough, that same ideal hasn't fared so very well even in England since World War II. Has it, now? And the Falklanders are just today's pawn of that same government mentality.
Unfortunately, my guess is that unless President Reagan can get the journalism professors to support his dream of a balanced budget the U.S. may have to have another war to get us out of another depression. After all, isn't that how President Roosevelt got us out of the 1930s depression named after President Hoover?
Schools Don't Pray - People Do
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 6, 1982
For several months now the Rev. Nathaniel Pierce, who writes a column each week for the Sunday edition of this newspaper, has badgered me to: "Take a position in your column on school prayer."
He went on to say that fellow columnist Erwin Schwiebert had done so and that the least I could do was belly-up to the bar, so to speak, and take sides, publicly, on this burning issue.
Well, I'm not at all sure that his issue (I say "his" inasmuch as his profession is preaching at Nampa's Grace Episcopal Church) is exactly a burning one in the minds of the readers of this editorial page. Furthermore, I'm not sure I'm entirely qualified to treat the subject of school prayer in the good and comprehensive way that I think it probably deserves.
I'll make a few observations, anyway, however, because (1) I think it's important and (2) because Nat, as he's affectionately called by those of us not outraged by his absolutely unmitigated candor and political illiteracy, gave gutsy and intelligent testimony a year or so ago at a public hearing about a free market problem. I saw that as a burning issue way back then, but I'm sorry to say that to his everlasting credit, he was the only person from Canyon County to testify there AGAINST fascism and FOR individual freedom of choice. So here's one of the quid pro quo:
Now then, rightly or wrongly, to address the problem of school prayer. First, school don't pray - people do. At least some do. And many of those also want their children to pray. Just why they insist they pray in school isn't exactly clear except that children are compelled to go to school, presumably to learn, and praying parents apparently want to have their offspring learn that, too, in school.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with that outward display of reverence and/or respect for God or some Infinite Intelligence of one's own personal choice. Indeed, I think that my old public school's policy of reading, without comment, two or three verses from the Bible at the beginning of each day's class gave some decorum and gave some familiarity with an important community Christian tradition to the students. But the rub seems to center around and above term "one's own personal choice."
Some parents seem to think their children are not able to make intelligent personal choices. In fact, many people see that children tend to "ape" other children, their peers and some of their teachers in a kind of monkey-see, monkey-do fashion. Indeed, there seems to be little doubt that pot-smoking, dope-taking, cigarette smoking, etc., are direct descendants of peer group pressures from right inside the government's compulsory school system.
I hasten to add that such bad habits no doubt come from peer-group pressures in private and parochial schools also. But there's a difference; namely, the students and parents exercised their freedom of choice in selecting that non-government school. Having exercised that choice they can, or could until recently when the government got into education, exercise another choice - to change their mind and take their child OUT of that school. But now that's tending to become almost impossible, since private and parochial schools, almost without exception, can continue to operate ONLY with the express approval and rules of the government.
This approval is made necessary, some say, because people want to have their own freedom to choose - and thus too often do a poor job of choosing. It is precisely to remove that freedom to make personal choices that government ever (well, almost ever) comes into the picture, i.e., to take away from somebody the freedom to choose.
Some will say that government must furnish the money for a free education, otherwise the poor will go without school or education. Well then, it's a constitutional saying as old as the hills that: "It's hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate (read, manage) that which it finances."
To sum up an otherwise no win, if burning, issue on what is my stand relative to: "Should children be allowed to pray in government schools?" Forgive me, but I guess I'd have to say: "If it feels good - DO it." Just be prepared to go to jail if the government doesn't approve of your choice.
Property Rights Issue Devastatingly Distorted
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 13,1982
The subject of property rights has for centuries been one of the major concerns of men and their rulers, but seldom has such a key issue been so devastatingly distorted - even to the extent of becoming almost unintelligible to the intelligent layman.
Indeed, Thomas Jefferson must be turning over, if not spinning in his grave, at the utter chaos surrounding individual freedom and the major bulwark between America's limited government system and that of the Soviet Union's, namely, private property. (The USSR constitution assures many good things, even free elections.) It's too bad, too, since men of goodwill disagree about human rights depending on property rights, but there's no escaping the fact that ownership of property is the key to socialism - no matter how sincere and well-meaning its advocates.
Most of these advocates are to be found on campus after campus all across America, especially in the academic power centers of the giant (and some not so giant) universities. They tend to sit on the raises and research grants otherwise so often available to professors of a more collectivist or interventionist persuasion. For this reason free enterprise scholarship and writing has been hard to come by. It is necessary to show people how clearly and devastatingly defunct are the old government control ideas of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith. Unfortunately most students, even today, are denied much opportunity to hear articulate spokesmen and scholars who believe in the free enterprise ideas of Adam Smith, Ludwig Mises and, until only recently, even Nobel economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
Comes now the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York City which along with a few but growing number of other free market think-tanks, are challenging the left-leaning academic and political establishments HEAD ON. Not only do they use Friedman and Hayek but they've been able to ferret out a number of on-the-job intellectuals whose scholarship and writings are not only first class, but are already having an effect in the real world of hotter-than-a-firecracker ideas, or, if you'd rather, political issues which always follow ideas.
One example is their project called "Privatizing Public Lands - The Ecological and Economic Case for Private Ownership of Federal Lands." The Manhattan group is not only unusually sharp, but unusually communicative, fortunately more so than most think-tanks of its type and have thus featured a number of economists political scientists and others in clear support of the private ownership idea upon which the oft-times discussed, but little understood, free market concept is based.
One of the foremost experts featured by the Institute recently is Steve Hanke, senior economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisors. On leave from Johns Hopkins University, this very able advisor advocates using some of the vast acreage of government lands to pay off the national debt the carrying charge on which is holding interest rates so insufferably high. He says, "Government cannot act as landlord because it has every incentive to hoard assets because they pay no capital carrying charges, or rent, if you will, on the assets they have. This is precisely why we have the Department of Defense with warehouses full of vacuum tubes from 1935 radio sets. It costs the Defense Departments zero to carry those assets rather than liquidate them.
Hanke's research puts to rest the fear of some that wealthy Arabs might buy up all our federal lands. He also includes a plan to give an inside track to existing ranchers to buy the grazing land they are now using. He claims they are entitled to some advantage since the past federal lands scheme forced ranchers to pay twice for grazing, i.e., once in grazing permit fees and once in higher capital outlay needed to buy the private land required by the government bureaus in order for the rancher to be eligible for a grazing permit.
Hanke's studies, too voluminous to recount here, go much deeper to make the rational and logical case for privatization, but politics is not exactly an art of logic (wow, what an understatement) and private ownership is, indeed, the political hot potato of the decade. One of the promising lights, however, in addition to President Reagan's 1983 budget message which said: "We will move systematically to reduce the vast holdings of federal surplus land and real property" - is some long overdue leadership on the matter provided by Nevada's Sen. Paul Laxalt.
This immensely popular Basque senator said recently: "I believe a need does exist to sell some of our excess public lands. However, I intend to do all in my power to protect existing public land users from being locked out. To this end, I endorse a proposal developed by Dr. Steven Hanke, senior economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisors, that deals with protection of existing grazing rights."
Well, I'd say that's a pretty good endorsement for Hanke from the Sagebrush Rebellion state of Nevada's chief national representative. But no doubt the "free lunch" advocates of both campus and column all across American will scream bloody murder. They've been told, for example, by muckraking columnist Jack Anderson that privatizing ideas: "... could lead to one of the biggest land grabs by greedy private interests in the nation's history." So it won't be easy, freedom from an entrenched bureaucracy never is, especially when college professors in both private and public (read, "free") universities can and very often do articulate socialist ideas, even when they don't entirely agree with them, but the professors are woefully inadequate when it comes to capitalist ideas. Unless, of course, it's criticizing them. One should hasten to add, I suppose, that given the tycoons of industry's indifference toward ANY ideology, right or left, one can hardly fault the college professors. At least the latter seldom finance their dedicated opponents.
Still, hope springs eternal: another professor puts the doubt on the generalization. He's my friend Dr. John Baden, political scientist and director of Montana State University's Center for Political Economy and Natural Resources, who also spoke at the above Manhattan group's forum. He advocated that: "We sell or if we can't sell then give wilderness lands to the environmental groups. If they own the land they behave quite differently. The Rainey Preserve in Louisiana was conveyed to the Audubon Society and it worked."
But Baden saved his best until last: "I think that commercial timberland is an even better example ... the value of standing timber has increased faster in the past 25 years than the value of petroleum (yet) the Forest Service, having an asset that has until very recently been exploding in value, manages to lost $700 million a year on it."
Small wonder former Sen. Frank Church, an enemy of privatization, said: "Idaho cannot afford to own the federal land."
One wonders if some college professor told him that the feds COULD afford it.
Laws Bleed American Business
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 20, 1982
When the Nevada Legislature started the Sagebrush Rebellion in order to claim that state's ownership and control of the great gob (87 percent believe it or not) of federally owned real estate within their borders, I thought it was a great idea. Now I'm not so sure.
There are other seemingly good reasons to prefer state ownership and control of assets, but one is that control of anything by a state is almost certainly better than control by the federal bureaucrats. But maybe not much. It just may be state ownership is what's known as a "distinction without a difference."
Specifically gasoline has now come under the purview of Idaho's attorney general. As if the federal Department of Energy hadn't screwed up the world's oil and energy system bad enough to educate even the dull in our society - here comes the state of Idaho.
"We've received a number of complaints around the state," says my unidentified source at the Boise office of the attorney general, "against some oil merchants selling petroleum products, i.e., gasoline, too cheap, so we sent out about 250 letters for 'educational' purposes. That way no one can plead ignorance of the law as an excuse for selling below cost."
You think I'm kidding? Get this: 250 petroleum dealers got a letter from the attorney general dated June 3, 1982, the unbelievable first paragraph of which stated:
"Dear Sir:
In 1939 the Idaho State Legislature enacted the Unfair Sales Act and declared, as its purpose and policy of the State of Idaho, that the practice of selling certain items of merchandise below cost in order to attract patronage, lessen competition and destroy trade is a deceptive form of advertising and an unfair method of competition, that the practice misleads the consumer (look who's talking), works back against the farmer (remember, they gave birth to this law over 40 years ago), obstructs commerce and diverts business from dealers who maintain a fair price policy, with the result of unemployment, underpayment of employees, excessive working hours, non-payment of taxes and an inevitable train of undesirable consequences including economic depression. (No mention of bubonic plague) This act was designed to make illegal such practices and to promote the general welfare of the State of Idaho and continues to be the law in Idaho today."
That's the end of only the first paragraph of three and one-half pages of such drivel - but it's the law. What follows is even worse: the state bureaucrats prescribe just how the gasoline merchants will compute the profit and loss (one guesses the civil servants don't believe the latter exists, indeed, by this law they no doubt see loss as now illegal, immoral and at least less fattening than profit) on a gallon of gas.
There's more. Egad, lots more. "It's the law," says John Eric Sutton, Esq., whose signature made official the Orwellian piece of double-speak put out by the Idaho attorney general's office. He's the deputy whose official title is: "Division Chief of Business Regulations Division." Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the whole printed law itself was also included in Sutton's "Ode to 1984" letter to the gasoline mafia. In case they are too dumb to understand or too poor to hire a battery of Philadelphia lawyers to keep themselves out of jail - the state assists.
And speaking of jail - I'm reminded in all of this of my great and good friend Lowell Mason, now retired, who was appointed by then President Harry Truman as a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Speaking to a similar situation way back then at the federal level he (Mason) said, "American business is being harassed, bled and even blackjacked under a preposterous crazy-quilt system of laws, many of which are unintelligible, unenforceable and unfair. There is such a welter of laws governing interstate commerce that the Government literally can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. I say this system is an outrage."
What an intellectual giant Mason is, just 40 years ahead of his time, I guess. Perhaps even a prophet. But he was wrong in limiting his outrage only to interstate commerce.
And, speaking of outrage, General David Leroy and his brigade have elevated Mason's "welter of laws" to include instate commerce as well.
"Now Ralph", they're quick to remind me, "we don't make the laws - we just enforce 'em." So say most of the bureaucrats, both federal and now (as you can see above) state bureaucrats.
I said, "Oh, you only enforce what the law says, eh? Well, the law says that our Gov. John Evans is holding that office, illegally. The constitution of the state of Idaho, unbelievably, precludes Mormons from holding public office.
"So why don't you mail out another 250 educational letters to LDS bishops all over the state, warning them the Democrats might try to sell John Evans at less than 6 percent over cost - illegally, next election?
"I'll wager even gubernatorial candidate Phil Batt would agree that my 250 letters to the bishops would make more sense than your 250 letters to the wicked capitalists - even though both would be enforcing the law."
Prescott Might Try Insanity Plea
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 27, 1982
Two events, both big in the national and local news last week, deserve to be seen in some added context in order that we escape the old familiar trap: "The fool's burnt finger wobbles right back to the fire." One event is pathetic, the other humorous.
The first was news that John Hinckley, the man who shot and wounded President Reagan and others including an aide, James Brady, a man likely to be paralyzed the rest of his unnatural life, will not be punished. Hinckley was, after all this time, judged "not guilty by reason of insanity."
The resulting comment felt by the public at large ranged all the way from an unfortunate: "The jury of 11 blacks and one white may have been trying to send Reagan a message," clear around to columnist Pat Buchanan's complaint about Hinckley's face being on the front cover of Newsweek. Said he, "No, folks, John W. Hinckley Jr. isn't insane. We are."
Nor is such an observation a new one. The Rev. Edmund Opitz, senior staff member at the Foundation for Economic Education tried to alert us way back in 1961. Writing in his ever-so-timely essay, "Problems of Church and Society," his 21-year-old warning said:
"Protestant theology has contributed to ethical obsolescence in several ways ... one, indiscriminate compassion." Quoting his colleague Robert Fitch, Dean of the Pacific School of Religion, he said, "The usual moral distinctions are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we have more feelings for the murderer than for the murdered.
"Another device," he said, "is the Christian sophisticate whose big business is the attack on Puritanism and on bourgeois morality."
I cite Opitz's warning of over two decades ago merely because until only recently one could assume that most theologians (i.e., preachers both local and national) were pretty well unanimous on the definition of morality. Of course, we now see they are not agreed. At least if one judges by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his rather formidable multitude of conservative followers.
I note Falwell herein mostly as a symbol. He's by no means the only conservative spokesman for the religionists. Unfortunately, due mostly to the media's preoccupation with collectivism, there's only one way to be heard, i.e., get a big gang together. Then, the more violent it is the more newsworthy it is, generally. Quite obviously there are a great number of religious individualists "out there," but sadly enough, they find precious little expression in the modern church's "maudlin emotion."
Opitz ends his 21-year-old essay-warning with what veritably could have predicted last week's insanity verdict on Hinckley. It said, "If the Church marries the spirit of this age, she will be a widow in the next." And marry it she has, as both sides demand more government.
Now as to last week's humorous (in my opinion anyway) event. Canyon County Sheriff John Prescott was at his home out in the country. Two teenage hot-rod drivers were drag racing neck-and-neck at break neck speed down his country road. The lawman ran out into the road waving his arms in a frantic but unsuccessful effort to get the high spirited lads to stop. Their hot-rod antics no doubt suggested the extreme unlikelihood the youths would heed the sheriff's arm-waving warning so he picked up a rock and heaved it at the two guided-missile-like autos as they boiled down the public right-of-way.
Now then, reports differ, but judging from the press reports including a newspaper photo showing a crack in one hot-rod's windshield, an irate teenage claimed he tore up his transmission trying to stop and avoid hitting the county lawman.
Apparently the sheriff said he would have shot the tire of both cars as they went by if he had been warning his gun. (One teenager claimed the sheriff said he would have "shot us both if he'd had a gun".) But Prescott used the only missile he could find - a rock.
All of which brings up new questions: (1) Will Prescott's budget now require each deputy to carry a rock in his holster at all times? (2) Will the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sue in behalf of the teenagers for a broken windshield or a broken transmission? (3) Will a national foundation now be formed to outlaw rocks in the hands of lawmen? Or will they merely want to register all hand-carried rocks. (4) Will there be an opposite committee formed to demand our constitutional right to keep and bear rocks? (5) Rocks don't kill people, PEOPLE kill people.
One coffee clatch member asked of the whole membership therein assembled and laughing about the whole hot-rodders versus the sheriff affair: "Was that an oiled road or a gravelled road where this all took place?" To which I responded, "Well it wasn't ALL oil. Even the teenagers agree there had to be at least ONE rock on it."
One thing seems sure, however: If the hot-rodders do sue the fast thinking and resourceful sheriff (and don't laugh) he'll have a tough time pleading - insanity.
Sears, a Textbook Case of...
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 4, 1982
Last week Sears, Roebuck and Co. announced they were closing forever their large retail store at 5th and Cleveland in Caldwell, thus fulfilling a prediction made by the professional survey that I had commissioned some 10 years or so ago to study the economic feasibility of my FarmCity development on the opposite side of town.
Built in the 1930s on a site therefore occupied by the old Lincoln School where this writer received his sixth and seventh grade education, the two edifices hold an especially great significance.
When the old school building was sold and demolished no one expressed alarm or even concern. It was as if we'd always had adequate schools run by the government and, of course, we always would. One guesses that it was seen as a kind of consolidation anyway and probably more efficient education would result. In any event, few even asked. The assumption was (still is) all we need is more schools, more concentrated and more money. Well, we got all three. But whether we've taught better is an altogether different matter, a subject for another day.
The point I want to make is that business's needs, too, for the future must be taken into consideration by the public, i.e., if we expect them to take care of us. In regard to the latter, it is hard to say whether the school's indifference to business or business's indifference to education has been the most dull-witted, but one thing is clear - something in a downhill direction has been happening to downtowns all across America including Boise, Nampa and in this case, Caldwell. (Even with the federal government's urban renewal costing multi-millions of printed money Boise's downtown still seems forever stymied. It's been 15 years, remember?) Why? Well, some are beginning to ask why, albeit late as hell, but there're a few beginning to ask.
Mayor Al McCluskey of Caldwell, for one, has expressed alarm and is presently scouring the town for ideas. But one thing is missing, so far anyway; namely, how did we get here in the first place? For example, why did Sears, why back in the covered-wagon days, choose to locate its then spectacularly big retail store in Caldwell instead of the larger city of Nampa nearby?
Okay, I'll tell you what one Sears executive of that day told the late John Smeed, stockman, agriculturist, entrepreneur-first-class and (forgive me), former mayor of Caldwell. "The reason we chose to locate in Caldwell instead of Nampa, Mr. Smeed, is simply that we made an attitude and market survey. It told us that Caldwell, while much smaller, had a much better TRADING spirit (my emphasis) than Nampa."
Thus Caldwell enjoyed Sears' employment, purchasing power, added convenience, services, choices, etc., for its citizens for over 40 years. Thanks to what some would label the "greedy, profit seeking, self-motivated, individualist, capitalist pigs." Did we deserve 40 years of that Sears prosperity? Did we do anything to hasten its closing down?
That's hard to say, but it's interesting that Sears opened for one reason and closed for the same reason 48 years later - to serve and satisfy customers, in the sole opinion of those same customers, and thereby make a profit. Hey! Did you catch that key phrase - "in the sole opinion of their customers," that they must satisfy?
Gosh, one wonders why the local zoning and planning boards all across America have so little confidence in people deciding upon their own satisfactions without the thinly-veiled fist of those who designed the master plan with the ever growing governmentality.
But Sears is now closing, they say, still, to "serve customers." Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sorry if they leave, but I doubt one can get a candid and forthright statement if one asked their management why. Still again, it's their money and it's their decision. It's their risk and it's their reward - but it is and has been the citizens of Caldwell and environs that have gained, too. Everyone of us is better off having had Sears in our town, whether we traded there or not. The same also goes for the Golden Rule Store, Idaho Meat Packers, OK Sale Yard and many others who survive, but have seen better days in Caldwell.
It's interesting to note why the old Lincoln School opened and closed on that same spot. It was, of course, the same as Sears, i.e., to better serve their "customers," presumably the students. But with one principal difference - in whose opinion? Their customers? Ho, ho, ho. The Lincoln School's customers had little to say about whether they'd trade there or what kind of trading "spirit" they'd buy if they purchased schooling there.
The chairman of the board of Sears, Edward R. Telling, in announcing a new trading or banking business they are about to enter - a kind of financial savings and supermarket - may have given us a key to what they're up to and what it was the old Lincoln School management may have neglected to tell us about the ever-so-necessary "trading spirit" that still distinguishes the successful town or a country.
Speaking to the Economic Club of Chicago Feb. 25 of this year, Telling said, "A country that taxes interest and dividends at almost punitive rates ... that taxes capital gains solely resulting from (government-caused) inflation ... and taxes corporate profits twice when paid out as dividends is saying to its citizens in unmistakable terms - SPEND, DON'T SAVE (his emphasis, not mine.)
"For the first time in many years," said the retail store magnate, "thanks to the Reagan administration ... all Americans - big savers and small savers alike - can feel confident that saving offers them a better economic deal than spending."
Wow! If Mr. Telling can sell that story, well goshamighty, maybe Mayor McCluskey can get our new Lincoln School to move back into the old empty Sears building. Who knows? Maybe the pre-World War II trading spirit still haunting the old building would spook today's school board into re-publishing the old Sears catalog as a new textbook.
Accusation, Publicity All It Takes
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 11, 1982
Just prior to a meeting last week held in downtown Caldwell, the Democrat candidate for First District Congressman, Larry LaRocco, came in for two minutes to say hello and "press the flesh," as the politicos call it, in hopes of getting a few votes come next November.
A red hot liberal, you'll remember that he's running against incumbent middle-of-the-road conservative Congressman Larry Craig, former Idaho State senator and livestockman from Midvale. Young LaRocco, for those of you who haven't met him, has a great big bright smile, a great big black moustache and a delightful little wife to whom he ever-so-graciously introduced me. I'd never met his wife before and given the firm grip she used to shake hands my guess is she will make some points for him. At least I liked her right away.
Now then, just what a candidate's wife has to do with whether or not he's the man to vote for isn't exactly clear, but given the amount of intelligence (or, perhaps the lack of it) contained in the average election campaign one supposes a big smile from both the wife and the politician is par for the course. Still, I couldn't resist telling Larry as he paused a few minutes on the way out that he should have to pay a windfall profits tax.
"Why is that, Ralph?" he asked.
"Well," I said, "until the other day when unnamed sources accused Rep. Craig of complicity in some sort of sex scandal you had neither a wing nor a prayer of getting elected. Now you do have a prayer, and maybe, even a wing. If there is one single thing conservatives are against - it's sex. Don't ask me why, but boy, oh boy, they are against a lot of things - with vengeance, too, including change. But not like they tend to hate the mere mention of the word sex. Any way you slice it that's a windfall profit for you."
Mrs. LaRocco disagreed, of course, opining that, "Oh, no, we think we had a great chance to win even before the allegation came out." And her husband, as one should expect, said he had no intention of trying to exploit the story with, "I just intend to go on campaigning as usual" (One can assume he'll be pushing the big liberal policies of former U.S. Sen. Frank Church, his former employer and hero.)
Now, again, one can't help but like LaRocco and I doubt he holds any sinister intentions to accuse Craig of anything other than a recession-depression economic condition caused, in LaRocco's opinion, exclusively by conservative President Reagan and one of his prize Idaho supporters, Larry Craig. But the latter's opponent lost no time after the sex scandal accusation became public, in bringing his delightful little wife into public view. Bang! She's a real live asset now more than ever, since Craig is a bachelor. He's therefore fair game for the rotten accusations in the City of Sin, D.C., especially since Craig has given real pain to such as the Pennsylvania-based leaders of the Bunker Hill union who vetoed the North Idaho miners' vote to go back to work.
All of which is not to blame LaRocco, nor the labor unions, particularly, but it is to remember that when he was in Caldwell not too long ago he was seen "pressing the flesh" with the aid of two Caldwell boys presumably on his payroll, but in any event - without his wife. It'd be a great political temptation to do otherwise, I admit, but it hasn't been very long since LaRocco was in conservative Caldwell and Idaho's First District is a long and difficult one for any candidate to cover effectively in only 120 days. But again "gold is where you find it" in politics.
More than this, however, is something that gets lost in the way politics is handled by the news media, namely, anything goes! And if the accusations are loud and long and rotten then all the better, because they're seen as newsworthy. How long, for example, since we've seen a flurry of letters to the editor from the city fathers and the silk-stocking crowd who "run things" in every town, expressing outrage at what's newsworthy? And don't feel too smug at blaming it altogether on the news media - bad news sells. Ever wonder why! Well, look in the mirror once in a while, it might do us all some good.
Let me hasten to add, Craig denied the accusation with vigor, with venom and, I thought, intelligence. Pending the outcome of the investigation, now in progress, we ought to hear more conservatives and liberals and even mugwumps not just making jokes, and "I-wonder-if-it's-true" type expressions, but rather expressing outrage, outrage and more outrage at the fact that a mere accusation with publicity is all that it takes to destroy a courageous and outspoken politician. Whatever else you may want to say about Craig, i.e., too liberal, too conservative or middle - he's got guts and he gave, for example, the Pennsylvania labor bosses, and a few others by the way, a puffed lip over some hit issues in addition to the Bunker Hill mine fiasco.
Next time some clown repeats the above type of rumor, seriously, just thank your lucky stars its not about your, (repeat, your) son or daughter - then take it upon yourself to do something about it - and make sure that person's ideas and the principles he espouses are newsworthy.
They're Doing a Beautiful Thing
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 18, 1982
During the rein of then President Lyndon B. Johnson a program was developed and funded by the federal government (in those days, who else?) to "beautify America."
It was, of course, a nice, sincere idea, headed up by the president's wife, Lady Bird, and characterized in name by some as a "throw away something beautiful - at government expense" program.
Well, I want to say a bit less about federal boondoggles at other people's expense, for a change, and say a bit more about local people doing something "beautiful" - at their own expense, almost always doing so voluntarily, enthusiastically and usually resulting in a genuine windfall profit for the rest of us.
One such delightful and interesting happening has been taking place without fanfare right here in Caldwell for the past few years on Logan Street about half way between the Washington School and Caldwell Memorial Hospital. There, right in the middle of town, one might say, in a little two or three acre pasture, there are less than a dozen llamas (rhymes with mama), the South American beast of burden member of the camel family.
Now then, just imagine, right here in Caldwell the children and adults both can see at close range some of the most interesting animals of a foreign country - at no charge at all. Think of it. The beautiful and stately llama was domesticated about 1,000 B.C., and until recent years was mostly restricted to Latin America's Peru.
A full grown ram or male stands about 4 feet high at the shoulder and when the little offspring (called a kid) shows up they are so cute one could perhaps imagine that some toy manufacturer had concocted a spectacular replacement for the ever-so-popular teddy bear. While closely related to the camel, the llama has no hump. However, it does resemble the camel in other ways: it chews its cud, has tusk-like teeth in the front of the upper jaw, has feet divided into two toes with soft-cushioned leather soles and is a pacer. It walks with a long, swinging gait, the front leg and the hind leg on the same side of the body moving forward together.
The long-necked and wooly-covered llama comes from a stock that lived high up in the Peruvian Andes where there was for centuries almost no facilities for transporting goods and in many places it remains so to this day. The males can carry 60 to 100 pounds of freight for about 15 miles a day, but they'll balk and sit down if overloaded and no amount of punishment will make the animal carry excess poundage. If aggravated further it will protest by spitting a wad of its evil-smelling cud into its driver's face.
How well I know. I tried to pet one, once, during a trip into the South American Andes ruins of Machu Picchu about 500 miles above Lima, Peru. I could not have been half so surprised if instead of spitting he had bitten me. The look, of extreme disdain and impudence on the animal's face glowering back at me as he stomped off was probably more disgusting than his sputum.
A lot more could be said about these fascinating and beautiful animals including the fact that the earliest known ancestor to the llama and the camel evolved right here in North America some 40,000,000 years ago. According to the anthropologists, they migrated to South America and across a land bridge over the Bering Sea to Asia. But I want to make another kind of local point that I think is worth mentioning.
The beautiful little green pasture on Logan Street where the llamas live belongs to Mrs. Mary Lodge, wife of the late N.C. "Curly" Lodge, long-time automobile dealer and cattleman of Caldwell. So I said to her some time ago, "Mrs. Lodge, that's a damn fine service you are providing, especially to the children of Caldwell. It's sort of a zoo the admission to which is a kind of free lunch. The city or the county ought to give you a rebate on your taxes for providing such keen entertainment."
Well, Mrs. Lodge doesn't actually own the picturesque llamas which live in her pasture (she just rents it out to Dr. David Johnson, an M.D. who raises them as a profit-making hobby to sell for pack animals.)
But she was quick to seize the opportunity: "Well, you finally said something I can agree with, Ralph. Why don't you suggest it in that darned column of yours, sometime? Maybe they'll give me a tax break."
I may not be one of Mary Lodge's all-time favorites (she's not exactly crazy about bachelors or conservative Republicans and so far I've only been able to improve on the latter status), but she's sure doing something "beautiful for Caldwell" and America, too, for that matter. And I appreciate it because it's non-government.
I especially appreciate it, since it doesn't raise taxes or interest rates like Lady Bird's government program did, and still does.
If you appreciate it, too, tell her thanks next time you see her.
I Shouted at PBS"s News Hosts
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 5, 1982
The late Pete Hackworth, long-time chief editor of the then News-Tribune and Idaho Free Press, used to badger me to watch the government TV (Channel 4) program the McNeil-Lehrer Report.
"I know it comes from a highly suspect source, Ralph," he would caution, "but they spend a whole half-hour on one subject and they do make a stab at telling both sides. That has to be an improvement over the so-called private TV, whose superficial treatment of the news is all-too-often worse than if they didn't cover it at all." (Bad as they are, thank God for our newspapers.)
Well, after many months the government channel's nightly 6:30 program became a popular topic for Hackworth's and this writer's frequent discussion on public policy. Sometimes Pete would get angry and shout aloud at the interviewee or the interviewer, however, we agreed it was easily the lesser of the TV news evils. But last Wednesday's McNeil-Lehrer show was completely disgusting.
The red hot and famous conservative James Watt was interviewed by the government's paragons of virtue and balanced news report. Watt, you'll remember, is President Reagan's U.S. Secretary of Interior. It's a well known fact that, next to Reagan himself, Watt is the GOP's biggest money raiser at fund-raising events all over the nation. The liberal media, generally, hates his political guts and, judging from the all but disgraceful performance last Wednesday evening, these two newsmen must hate him personally.
On most programs, McNeil and Lehrer ask quite good questions, some tending to be hostile but many put to draw out the interviewee's positions in order to more clearly understand both sides.
But not Wednesday night. The government's newsmen were clearly out to get Watt's so-called hide. Still, not once did the ever-so-responsive Interior boss lose his cool or, for that matter, his smile. He answered every hostile query with a clear reply as he saw the question's intent. So onerous were the questions I took up a Hackworth technique, i.e., I even shouted at the TV hosts myself. I think the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) owes Watt, Reagan's controversial cabinet secretary, an apology.
Now then, I admit that the best questions in such an interview are the tough questions. This should give the interviewee a better chance to clear up misunderstandings and his or her critic's political motives, if he so desires. Watt did this in great shape with regard to California's knee-jerk liberal Gov. Jerry Brown's political-posturing criticism of Watt's Interior Department policies. But never once did the Boobsie Twins of PBS news offer a question or an observation that would tend to indicate even one Watt policy made any sense at all, let alone attest to his credibility as a decent person.
Worse yet, there may be a tendency toward bias, here, with the government TV system itself, even in Boise. First of all, let me say that I am a contributor to Boise's Channel 4. I'm glad to do this, not because I favor socialistic enterprise, which it is, but precisely because the government - franchised monopoly TV, sometimes called private TV, i.e., NBC, CBS, ABC (et al) are not telling the truth. Neither are they telling both sides of anything that amounts to a damn, especially a conservative or free market, private ownership point of view. So I support the only means of this kind of TV competition I can get so far, William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" is an exception, but Bill Moyer's leftist "Journal" much more than offsets it.
Now for Boise's public TV station, said to be run by the Idaho State Board of Education: The Center for the Study of Market Alternatives in Boise brought the nation's number one critic of the news media to Boise a couple years ago. Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media (AIM) is easily the media's undisputed "hair shirt." His analysis of the three major networks, the knee-jerk liberal New York Times, the Washington Post and others have caused these media Goliaths no end of "migraine headaches" and continues to do so to this day. Channel 4's then news director and red hot liberal, Marc Johnson, interviewed Irvine for 45 minutes, but failed to broadcast it for exactly one year (repeat, one year). Then, Johnson cut his half-hour Irvine program in half in order to give two Idaho newsmen the last half of the program for a REBUTTAL to Irvine.
That wouldn't be so bad, in itself, since I had been phoning Channel 4's manager every month for a year to urge their airing the Irvine interview. I appreciated it, reasoning that half-a-loaf was better than none, so I thanked the manager for this and added: "Now that you've set the precedent for half time rebuttals I'll be waiting and watching."
I didn't have to wait long. Boise State University was soon host to America's number one socialist, Michael Harrington. (Bless BSU's liberal heart.) Of course he was interviewed by Channel 4 for the full half hour, no less. Aside from the fact that moderate Jean McNeil, Johnson's successor, asked not one solitary hostile question of Harrington (it was, indeed, a syrupy interview) and aside from there being no half of her program to rebut the infamous socialist, Boise's government TV station ran that program - two times (repeat, two). Both times for the full half hour, of course. Egad!
I have twice asked Channel 4's affable and seemingly fair-minded manager for equal-time to rebut the big socialist, Harrington, still - you guessed it, so far, no dice. It's an interesting double-standard.
Only the Tax Assessor Notices
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 1, 1982
Caldwell Mayor Al McCluskey has convened a committee or two to look for some ideas to revitalize our little city.
Time was when this was not only a thriving and energetic trading city, but it was without doubt Idaho's foremost farm market or, if you like, agricultural market center. Then, all of a sudden, some say - something happened - Caldwell was no longer in first place. What did happen?
Well, in the first place (no pun) I doubt it was "all of a sudden." My guess is (1) it darn sure happened, at least something's gone astray, but (2) it's happened gradually over a period of several years, sort of like the soap factory worker who fell in the lanolin vat and softened to death. Not suddenly, just steadily, perceived by some, sure enough, but not many. At least it was not perceived by enough of the right ones, i.e., of the opinion molders and doers, perhaps.
In any event I'm not going to offer here a grandiose plan to solve McCluskey's newly-assumed political responsibility, but I just may be able to shed a bit of light on it. At least I should like to if I can. So bear with me for a little cultural history on one reason how we got here.
McCluskey's father, Harry, now retired at 84 and venerable sage of Caldwell's more aggressive days, was also mayor of Caldwell way back when. In fact it was then when he led a small, (repeat, small) band of businessmen who got together, with their own money, about 40 acres of ground west of town and literally GAVE it to Jack Simplot if he'd locate his then-proposed potato processing plant in Caldwell. It's called free enterprise - no government grant.
Well, he (Simplot) did locate here and the rest is history - good history, too, for Simplot, Caldwell, and its surrounding citizens. By the way, if you belong to a service club or similar group interested in a colorful, true and humorous account of Caldwell's history you should invite the former mayor, Harry. His is a great economics and cultural story. It includes the time he took in several gallons of bootleg booze on a long past due account receivable, only narrowly escaping the federal revenooers. The latter's typical lack of a sense of humor or sense of the efficacy and morality of the free market still causes untold hardship even today, hence it's too bad his son and present mayor, Al, doesn't seem to have the same irritation, if not outrage, toward the government meddler's plans for everybody's life and property.
But son Al isn't all bad, i.e., he's bad, since he's an aspiring politician, but he's not all bad. For example, he too, is a doer and does indeed, give a dang about why Caldwell needs re-vitalizing, not just downtown, hence his committee search for ideas to stimulate the local economy. But like most politicians he's wont to see the pragmatic propriety in having government at all levels - just get the hell out of the way. Merely keeping the peace is a big, big job, but one assumes not a particularly satisfying one to a politician, especially if he (or her) ego needs much attention. Yet, today's McCluskey rightly wants to give attention to downtown doers, so I'd like to offer an observation:
There's a new fellow entrepreneur in downtown Caldwell, on Main Street, with whom I am hardly acquainted, but about whom I've heard quite a lot lately. His name, appropriately enough, is just that - doer - Tom Doerr, as a matter of fact, and he's most certainly a "doer," all right. At any rate, he's doing a lot for downtown Caldwell by remodeling some fine old stores on Main Street. This, of course, helps other businessmen nearby and the consumer as well. In fact, while it isn't usually perceived, consumers also have a huge stake in an attractive, competitive and aggressive business community of successful tradesman. (Schools, please take note.)
I've noticed Doerr is doing some of his rebuilding in a most welcome place downtown, namely in the location formerly occupied by the infamous Tico Tico bar and beer hall from which so much violence seemed to emanate for so long and from which, to his everlasting credit, Mayor McCluskey's done his damndest to rid our town, along with trying to nail the irresponsible booze and beer drinkers.
Doerr's remodeling efforts were so welcome they led Caldwell Planning and Zoning Chairman Bob Carpenter, himself an acerbic crusader for truly less government meddling, not just the typical lipservice, to suggest that the way to revive our city is: "Every downtown businessman should give Doerr a $500 check to spend as he wishes. It'd just be great," said Carpenter.
Well now, that's not a bad idea. However, if we're to be consistent we might have to send entrepreneur Jim Vermaas, owner and re-vitalizer-first-class, a check for $1,000. Here's why.
Vermaas, a native of Caldwell since right after the Civil War, (well, almost) suffers from what many see as an almost incurable "disease," i.e., he's lived here all his life. Consequently, we tend to take doers like him for granted, but some years ago he successfully remodeled, with dramatic and excellent results, three ever so old eyesore-buildings downtown: The Old Mill-Block, The Office Center Building at Kimball Ave. and Albany Street, and The Main Street Mill, adjacent to and West of the 10th Street overpass.
Fortunately, of course, there are other doers and entrepreneurial do-gooders doing good, but unfortunately, usually, the only ones who notice are the tax assessors whose duty it is to - you guessed it - run right out and penalize the improvers. So far, they're the main ones who've noticed Vermaas' fine efforts.
The Individual Held Accountable
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 8, 1982
Not long ago a young man was thrown in jail in Boise for not paying several of that city's traffic tickets. It was Chris Peterman. Four of his fellow cellmates are said to have beaten and tortured him over a period of several hours, then murdered him.
Do-gooders of Boise rushed into the streets demanding to know: "Where has society failed? Where did we go astray?" All the while Attorney General Leroy investigates (guess who?) the Ada County sheriff. Egad!
Caldwell, too, has come in for more than its share of violence, shootings and stabbings. Only last week a police officer was stabbed while he attempted to break up a fight outside a local tavern. So far no one has identified the knife-carrying individual.
A policeman friend of mine tells me that the drunk who recently ran into a Boise physician's wife while she was riding her bicycle didn't kill the lady, but did succeed in knocking out all four of her front teeth. The drunk was driving while out on probation from a prior drunk driving charge.
Not long ago I mentioned to a local group of men assembled for a friendly cup of coffee that Caldwell Mayor Al McCluskey had a good idea. He suggested that convicted DWI drinkers be compelled to have special license plates on their cars for an extended period of time. Said plates would carry the letters DWI (legal abbreviation for driving while under influence of alcohol) followed by a number for identification.
Well now, you cannot imagine the flak I took from the coffee clatchers. I thought for a moment I had been misunderstood, but I hadn't. They were indignant at both myself and Mayor McCluskey for even suggesting such an asinine idea. "It'd embarrass his innocent wife," some opined. Another said, "His teenage daughter might have to drive the car." I replied: "What about their embarrassment when father is thrown in jail? Furthermore, that probably would cause him to lose his job, thus causing the added embarrassment of not being able to pay their bills?"
And what of the knife-wielding gutless wonder who stabbed the Caldwell policeman? Well, if one judges by the volume of news coverage it would seem the major emphasis is: "We must now have two policemen where we formerly had only one. We must now have a California-type riot truck to control the mob." But oh-so-very-little talk about apprehending the individual, the criminal knife-man who stabbed and ran.
To his credit, McCluskey volunteered $50 of his own money as a challenge toward the public's raising a reward for information leading to the conviction of the "switch-blade" gutless wonder. Still one fails to note next day's headline: "Mayor Intensifies Manhunt with Own Money." One guesses that's for a very good reason, i.e., it's not very newsworthy. Ho hum.
Now then, gentle reader, I'd like to make two observations: (1) Something's wrong. That doesn't take an intellectual giant to perceive, but the second one might (since so few seem to give a damn.) (2) The world is in the grip of an idea - collectivism. That idea is held in high prestige in many circles, too. It's held up, especially, by many well-intentioned intellectuals who deal in ideas. Unfortunately, it (collectivism) is hardly even discussed by influential businessmen who are almost oblivious to the world of ideas. The successful ones succeed in the area of competition, but fail miserably (repeat, miserably) in the arena of ideology. Indeed, most big businessmen have fallen all over themselves for years in order to finance idea people, most of whom hate their capitalistic guts. This is ever so pertinent to local problems, too.
If you doubt this just ask 10 of the next businessmen you see: "What's the title of Karl Marx's famous book for collectivism?" (The Capitalist Manifesto.) Many will be able to answer correctly. Then ask them to tell you the title of Adam Smith's famous book favoring individualism: (It's abbreviated title is "The Wealth of Nations".) Most businessmen will not be able to answer. Worst yet, few seem to even care.
The world is in the grip of an idea all right. The idea is also called group-think versus individual-think. It follows then, quite naturally one could assume, that group-think should be followed by group-responsibility, hence, indeed, it is. This just may be the reason the news media, which tends to follow as well as to lead public opinion, sees as newsworthy the attorney general's current investigation of Ada County Sheriff Chuck Palmer's jail management, or, in present light of the Peterman murder, mismanagement.
It just might account, too, for my coffee clatch friends' unwillingness to identify publicly (by license plates label) the "individualized" drunk driver.
Maybe, just maybe, fellow columnist, the Rev. Nathaniel Pierce, who favors the gun-registration mentality, could now help by favoring the drunk-registration mentality on license plates. It might not stop knifing of policemen and in-jail murders, but it could focus a little attention on individual responsibility instead of society's.
Idaho's Senator, Steve Symms
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 15, 1982
Just the other day a mutual, if out-spoken, friend of Sen. Steve Symms and mine said tome: "Well, Ralph, your hero Symms is getting to be like all the rest of those we've sent to Washington - just another politician." Though I agreed there were, indeed, some lousy deviations, the shrill tone of his criticism did draw a bit of "blood."
The friend was referring to our junior senator's: (1) vote to give a tax break to congresspersons who must maintain two residences (one in Washington and, of course, one at home) and (2) his recent junket, or, if you prefer, fact-finding mission to El Salvador and Panama, the report on which gave praise to the U.S. ambassador there. He gave apparent high praise to the smooth working of the Panama Canal treaty which Symms so bitterly opposed in his most recent election campaign against then Sen. Frank Church. The latter was long a chief proponent of our paying Panama a huge sum of money to take the strategic canal off our hands. An unfortunate contradiction for Symms.
There were other Symms defalcations of which our mutual friend reminded me, e.e., his almost first vote after he got into the U.S. Senate - increasing the national debt limit or ceiling. This followed hard on the heels of his eight years in the House of Representatives where he not only voted against raising the debt ceiling, but he frequently hit-the-ceiling, so to speak, in his crusade FOR the spending limit. Not he votes to restore billions in Reagan's tax cut in order to finance the biggest budget in U.S. history.
The most recent deviation from the apple-grower's once familiar "take a bite out of government" crusade is his vote to spend $750,000 to equip another gymnasium for the senators to exercise in. My usually reliable sources tell me that had both Symms and our senior senator, Jim McClure, not voted for the gym expenditure, so close was the vote, the measure would have been defeated.
Now then, it is not my intention here to hold myself out as the major defender of Symms' various and sundry political positions, much less his each and every vote. As a matter of fact, we have some hi-falutin' and deep-seated disagreements. But the charming, flamboyant and self-appointed free enterprise spokesman's 1972 campaign announcement and major position paper was, indeed, drafted on my dining room table. This caused the nationally famous libertarian author and scholar, Robert LeFevre (rhymes with wave), whose contempt for government's arrogance rivals that of Thomas Paine, to accuse me of helping "launch this otherwise fine young man into a life of crime." I feel thus constrained to offer a few observations in defense, or, rather, explanation of Symms' increasing number of deviations, and to some extent, perhaps, McClure's.
First, it is true that when a human being gets into the limelight he or she tends to become a role player. In fact, if one does not play the role voters perceive as proper or even expedient he does not get re-elected, the latter being one of the ever-so-many major understandings between the Demopublicans and the Republicrats.
Second, if one is to have influence in Washington, i.e., key committee chairmanships, etc., one is almost compelled to follow the powerful members of the prestigious Senate leadership. To make matters worse, most voters see this leadership, which is really more of a followership, as clever and often as a sign of virtue and power. (For what and toward what end is seldom asked.)
Yet power for the sake of power itself seems to be understood, perhaps even favored by the voters themselves. It's a sort of manifestation of jealousy and envy inherent in the egalitarianism consuming this country today.
Third, one of the problems seldom perceived by the public is the absolute trainload of proposed legislation pushed daily upon members of Congress and, more and more, upon their aides and assistants who tend, often, to be more in charge in Washington than the senator or congressperson himself, or herself. Still, how else can one keep abreast of a veritable hurricane of damn-fool legislation, if not by a horde of staff assistants? (Symms' staff is improving, however)
But leadership and followership are not always that easily distinguished between, even by sincere people. For example, if a politician admits he made a mistake or was "brainwashed" (remember George Romney?) he's assassinated by the piranhas in the press and the dull-witted voter. Contrarywise, if he refuses to compromise on principle he's seen by most observers as bone-headed and unbending. You can't win when you must control so many people's lives. They have my genuine sympathy in an oft-times questionable task.
Symms and McClure are both friends of mine and both try long and hard and I think more often than we tend to give them credit, to do the right thing. But they, too, are human. They get lots of criticism from writers, voters and mugwumps of all kinds (you can't imagine some of the asinine demands put upon them and their time) thus tending too often to make them seek refuge among their peer-group. It is here where much of our politics gets unduly complicated.
Today, all across America, a kind of group-think is consuming both teenagers and adults - it's called peer-group pressure. It's a sort of collectivism fostered, no doubt, by the trend toward centralization in our society. Big labor, big business, big government, big media, big schools, big EVERYTHING. It's the quantity, rather than the quality, theory.
Many see it as somewhat promoted by the one-man-one-vote idea, i.e., that's a quantity-only concept, too, you know.
Well, perhaps I'm too forgiving of Symms and McClure (don't laugh - they've a rotten job) but peer groups inevitably change. I just hope they haven't already traded their ole peer-group back home for a new peer-group in Washington, D.C.
Evans Is Sincere - But Wrong
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 22, 1982
The contest for governor of Idaho is easily one of the most important political races currently at issue in the state. Unfortunately, it is also one of the least understood. It could have been interesting, exciting and of great educational value to the voters, but I'm afraid it won't.
Lt. Gov. Phil Batt won the GOP nomination pretty much because his party thought he could win in November. That's precisely why incumbent Gov. John Evans "won" his Democrat party nomination. But just exactly why each should or should not be elected isn't so clear.
One reason it's not clear is that Evans steadfastly refused to meet his opponent in statewide TV debates. One reason he gets away with this is that the media will not insist that Evans debate. Without a more visible and thus identifiable image, especially on TV, the challenger will be hard pressed to win.
One Batt supporter said to him: "Most voters who are not already committed are having difficulty telling much difference between you and Evans." Batt was quick to respond that one reason was most of the media did not handle his press releases at all well. This writer hastened to ask, then, why didn't he take in after the press and give them heck in an intelligent, enthusiastic, aggressive and as only Batt can do, a delightfully humorous way? Goodness knows they so richly deserve it (i.e., vigorous criticism).
I showed Batt a new bumper sticker on a parked car at a recent political rally. It said, "Blame it on Reagan - the press does." I said "You should get a jillion of those printed up and put in fine print across the bottom: Batt for Governor."
But Phil refused. He's always had good relations with the press corps, he thinks, and perhaps they'll eventually come around. But those were Mickey Mouse times when Batt was no threat to most of the media's all-too-typical liberalism. At least he was no threat to one of its major standard bearers which, of course, Evans is.
Evans is a nice guy, I admit, but his loyalties are clearly for liberal state appointees and almost always for more government intervention in the marketplace. For example, Evans came down clearly on the side of the Eastern labor union bosses and against the majority of the Bunker Hill mine workers in Idaho when the latter voted to work for less money and keep their jobs. And he decided to follow Pittsburgh's big labor's typical lead, thus taking a positive position - for better or worse - not only vetoing the state's right-to-work (RTW) law, but effectively shutting down the huge mine and new Idaho employment opportunities.
Evans would deny most of this, no doubt, claiming to be the champion of the working man (who's now out of a job) and claiming to be honest and hardworking. I really believe he does believe this, too, for he strikes me as a sincere man. Wrong, mind you, but sincere.
It's just too bad that Batt's positions are not nearly so well understood even if he, too, is sincere (whatever that means). For example, Batt says whenever he's asked that if a RTW bill was placed on his desk as governor he would sign it, not veto it as Evans did. However, this is merely enough to infuriate whatever sympathetic labor union votes Batt might get, but it's neither vigorous nor articulate enough to inspire the non-union and RTW sympathizer to work hard in his behalf.
Another place the difference between the two candidates could be of help to the voters, if so much of the media were not so dull-witted or liberal leaning, is (1) the governor's position on interest and money and (2) where enough of the latter should and could come from to finance all these new jobs.
For example, Evans said recently, "We must somehow get a message to President Reagan to get these interest rates down. Cheap interest is terribly important now." Whereupon I asked him (Evans) how Reagan could accomplish this, to which he honestly, if hastily, replied: "He could print a little bit more money." I then asked him if years and years of "printing money" were not the very reason we got into this mess in the first place. But he was late for an appointment and didn't have time to reply further.
Unfortunately, questions and issues like these tend to be unanswered, even mostly undiscussed, in favor of what's come to be called "name familiarity." This has come to be the hallmark of both parties. It's called pragmatism, American style. It enables most candidates to shake hands, kiss babies and smile benignly into the boob-tube instead of having to face their competitor head-on in meaningful public debate.
And it is not likely to get better soon. For example, the political reporter of one of the state's largest newspapers told the Idaho Press Club recently: "I find it hard to relate to anyone who deals from a philosophical base, since I have to deal with facts." No kidding, gentle reader, that's actually what he said.
Now then, if that doesn't make Batt throw up, he might explain to that reporter how one could ascertain a "fact" except in the presence of some kind of philosophy. If he succeeded, however, Batt should then run for king, not governor.
A press release to that effect ought to make the front page.
Politicians' Brains Get Pinches
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 29, 1982
In a recent column I mentioned the great amount of peer pressure our U.S. senators were under. Early Sunday morning (too early, I might add) my phone rang. It was a friend who emphatically told me I was mistaken. Unaccustomed to making mistakes, I didn't exactly know how to handle the situation, but I told him to slow down and tell me his side. He did and it went something like this:
Politicians are not subject to peer pressure since for the most part they don't accept the fact that they have peers. On the contrary they suffer from pinch pressure.
"What in the hell is pinch pressure?" I asked.
"Pinch pressure," he explained, "is a political disease and very contagious. In fact, once elected, the politician is almost certain to get weaker. When it sets in, the politician's head swells internally so severely that it literally pinches the brain. In some circles it's called a social disease."
Well, as the explanation went on I began to think maybe I had been too hasty in labeling the problem of my pals, Steve Symms and Jim McClure, as ones of simple peer pressure. Indeed, it did sound as though they might be the victims of what my friend called pinch pressure.
This explanation would also help in understanding why your politicians seem to vote differently from the rhetoric they espoused in getting elected. This isn't limited to the federal level, mind you, and not even to the added state level, it could be happening to us right here locally.
A good example is the $1.2 million "Starr Temple" more commonly known as the new Nampa City Hall pushed through by retired Mayor Ernie Starr and a few peer citizens like current Mayor Winston Goering. In prior bond elections to build the temple (or is it a flat-topped pyramid?) the voters twice rejected the proposal. However, the politicians, knowing better what was good for them (i.e. the citizens, or some say, the simple minded voter) built it anyway, using federal revenue sharing (oops, debt-sharing) money instead of property tax. If that maneuver seems a little "slick," consider the possibility that their brains might be so severely pinched that they, together with the Chamber of Commerce, are minting silver coins to commemorate the building. Understand that I have nothing against silver coins. However, a Nampa coin will be hard-pressed to be a favorite of mine, unless, of course, they mint a coin commemorating Sunday beer sales and Nathaniel Pierce's hilarious columns.
If you say that example doesn't completely prove the pinch pressure theory since neither Ernie Starr nor Winston Goering (or Nat Pierce) are known for being overly conservative, consider this:
Canyon County is long-known for its almost penny-pinching, conservative county commissioners. So, it is interesting that in this slow economy, when dollars are tight, to witness the new construction at the courthouse in Caldwell. Remembering how conservative our commissioners often sound at election time, one would assume little need of the county for more room. Upon closer examination, however, one may only find room to disagree. The project is going to be used for expanding the commissioner's office space and giving them an additional meeting room consisting of approximately 25 percent of the space which, I'm told, is the whole bottom floor of one wing of the new courthouse.
The other uses being talked about include a "sallyport" for the jail (don't ask me to explain it, I don't even know if I spelled it right) space for the election department (to keep them from having to move election machines from the second floor twice every two years), an automobile license office (so pee-pull don't have to ride elevators to the third floor for license plates), and, last and hopefully least, more room for the courts. All told, the "conservative" and well-meaning commissioners are spending approximately three-quarters of a million dollars to put this project into space.
At one meeting one of the commissioners is reported to have said the spending was OK because it was, you guessed it, federal revenue (debt, remember?) sharing money, and if they didn't use it, "Boise would!" He also insisted that if they didn't provide the court more space (approximately 25 percent of the new project), in three years the court would order them to build more courtroom space. Just exactly how he knew what the courts will order three years from now was not made clear. However, he could be commended for his wisdom (no peers and no pinch), for some of the average pee-pull can't even determine what the courts are doing now.
The saddest part of this project, however, just might be the part yet to come. The elections department, the automobile license department, and the commissioners all move into the new wing of the courthouse, what will happen to their present office space? The answer, according to my friend who called on the phone, is that "pinch" pressure almost guarantees they will find enough government to fill the space.
Governor's Race May Liven Up
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 5, 1982
A short time ago I wrote that too many people claimed to have difficulty telling much difference between incumbent Idaho Gov. John Evans and Lt. Gov. Phil Batt. The former, of course, is the Democrat standard bearer seeking re-election in November and the latter being the GOP challenger. But there is another side.
Many folks, including this writer, claim that much of the media tend to overlook Bat's political positions for one reason or another, thus tending to give benefit of the doubt to Evans, since he's the incumbent. Some see this as intentional and malicious. They say this protects Evans, the candidate most nearly holding the media's typical left, or at least liberal, leaning preferences.
But some of my media friends claim such is not exactly the case. They say that both gubernatorial candidates are just nice guys and, furthermore, each personality is simply not colorful enough for the media to "do anything" with.
"Not to try to educate" during a campaign, by the way, is perhaps the single most agreed upon article of faith of all, repeat all, campaign advisors of modern political orthodoxy. I don't personally agree, but I must admit to being outnumbered.
Still, I do agree that the media does have a point, i.e., the candidates are tough to do anything much with, because, as this column has said before, both candidates are rather obviously sincere - wrong perhaps, depending on who you like, but sincere.
Comes now something which may liven up this particular race a bit. Evans has circulated a bumper sticker backgrounded quite graphically upon Idaho mountains with large letters "EVANS" and underneath in small letters "moving Idaho ahead." This is the most important part of a modern election campaign. It's called - name familiarity. It doesn't say anything. It's designed for just such a purpose.
It's patterned after the old Hollywood response to bad publicity versus good publicity. Movie personalities aspiring to be bigger box-office attractions were often heard to say: "Good or bad press - all I care is that they spell my name right."
And, of course, it works. Otherwise why all the billboards, bumper stickers, name tags, etc., all of which say absolutely nothing? It's a way to make the average boob-tube watcher "feel" informed when he or she walks into the voting booth and looks down the long list of strangers all asking for power to govern his or her life. The name which looks most familiar (remember, "name familiarity?") usually gets the boob's ballot. It's called one-man, one-vote.
Not all candidates approve of this asininity, however, but, like so much of politics these days, they get caught up in the system and few are able to break free. It's understandable, I admit, but it's also sickening. I relate all this just now, because it shows why good bumper stickers are so vital to an election, in this case Evans' election.
Ever since Evans has been governor he's threatened to veto any right-to-work (RTW) law should one ever get through the Idaho Legislature. Well, one did. And sure enough Evans vetoed it with enthusiastic gusto. This veto, together with the newspaper photo showing Evans waving a plastic trash bag filled with $6,000 of labor union money for having killed the RTW bill, has effectively labeled the governor as organized labor's political hero.
What's all this have to do with possibly livening up the lackluster Batt versus Evans "nice guy" campaign? Well, those people who see Evans as a bad guy because of his outspoken pro-union position have made themselves a bumper sticker, too. This one in memory of the biggest mine in Idaho history having closed down recently at the hands of, so they believe, the mine's labor union which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Penn. This new bumper sticker looks remarkably like the above-mentioned Evans sticker except that instead of the governor's name it reads: "Bunker Hill" in large letters against the same Idaho mountain background and colors as the Evans sticker. The punch line comes in the small letters under "Bunker Hill." In a parody on the governor's "moving Idaho ahead" the new line says: "moving Pittsburgh ahead."
An Evans aide labeled the humorous, if snide, bumper sticker as "vicious." Well, I'm not so sure, but it is an interesting and clever switch on the pro-compulsory unionism lobbyists. They have claimed for years that the organization lobbying in favor of the RTW law was from - out of state.
Sometimes the political chickens do come home to roost.
Don't Vote Until You Read This
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 12, 1982
Some of my friends who are lively libertarians are fond of the expression: "Don't vote - it only encourages them." That's supposed to be humorous and, indeed, it is. Still, there's truth in the jest.
Many say there's not much difference between Idaho's two contenders for governor, namely, Democrat incumbent governor John Evans, and his GOP challenger, Lt. governor Phil Batt. I don't agree, mind you, in fact, I think there are quite a few differences.
For example, the appointments each would make as governor would tend to be a lot different. Though there would be exceptions, Evans' appointments tend to be quite liberal while Batt would, in my opinion, tend to appoint those more conservative. All this in spite of Batt's image of being a moderate (whatever that means.)
But there is another race for governor of a Northwest state where the differences, thank Heaven, are much more clearly drawn. That state is Alaska, where my friend Dick Randolph is running on the Libertarian Party ticket. Don't laugh. He makes so much sense that he just might make it.
There are two members of that party in the Alaska legislature, i.e., there were until Randolph resigned this year to run for governor, but he's easily the hottest piece of political property the Libertarians have anywhere in the U.S. A responsible and skilled articulator of Libertarian philosophy, his campaign theme is simple and direct: "That individuals should be allowed to act in any peaceful way they choose, as long as they respect the same rights of others. Government's function is to protect those freedoms, not restrict them."
Randolph has just written a small book called "Freedom For Alaskans" (Dist. by Individuals for Randolph, Box 72874, Fairbanks, Alaska 99207, 108 pages) in which he outlines his critical concerns and his ideas or constructive change. It also has a foreword by the famous author Robert Ringer. Batt and Evans could well profit from some of the book's political observations, particularly since even a larger percentage of Alaska is owned out-of-state, i.e., by the federal government (about 96 percent) than those same out-of-state politicians own in Idaho (about 64 percent.)
In case you think only some of us Westerners have taken note of this supremely knowledgeable, decent and caring "politician" from the country's northernmost state, here's a recent newspaper quote from The New York Times: "Here on the northwest corner of North America, the Libertarian Party has mounted a credible effort to secure a foothold in the nation's political process. Point man in the campaign is gubernatorial candidate Dick Randolph, a state representative and the most successful Libertarian politician anywhere ..."
You'll note, gentle reader, I used quotation marks around my use of the word politician, above, to describe Alaska's Randolph. That's because he's so unusual. Consider his book's Chapter 3 entitled, "Land - Where it All Begins." The very first line is a quote from Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman: "Alaskans are living in the closest thing we have to a socialist state in America - the government owns almost everything."
Since the southernmost part of Alaska is about as far North as Belfast, Ireland, and Berlin, Germany, we might not want to think of it as merely the snow-bound home of Santa Claus (pun intended, since everyone knows Santa Claus' real home is Washington, D.C.) In fact, Fairbanks, centerpoint of the state and hometown of the Alaskan gubernatorial candidate, is about as far north as that great little country, Finland.
When one remembers that the major difference between the American system and the Soviet Union's system is the institution of private ownership, one would think this would be a major topic everywhere. One would assume the media would pursue this vital subject with Idaho candidates for their in-depth comparative positions. But, alas, the matter is only rarely ever brought up. Then, even if it is, it's almost always in terms of the "Sagebrush Rebellion" or some such genuinely middle-road, if not actually socialist, context.
Consider the profoundly forthright admonition of Randolph's on page 40 (and see if you can picture our own state's knee-jerk liberal media pursuing such): "Section 1 of the Alaska Constitution declares, 'It is the policy of the state to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest.' "
Flying in the face of almost all political pragmatists, who counsel candidates to avoid controversy (hence the idiotic emphasis on name-familiarity) the thoughtful Randolph explains the "black hole" in Alaska's constitution: "That sounds fine, doesn't it? A closer look will disclose otherwise. For instance, this section does not speak of private property. It calls land and resources the property of the state, property which the state may, if it decides it would serve 'the public interest,' allow us individuals to settle on or use.
"This section of the Alaska Constitution, as well as others that follow, virtually abolishes private property."
To the increasing number of Idahoans who are saying, "Don't vote ..." I'd like for them to add: "at least until you've read Randolph's little book." Then vote for our Batt or Evans - whichever one you think would have the most zeal for "Freedom For Alaskans. Because most of it applies to freedom for Idahoans, as well.
Nampa Builds At Our Expense
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 19, 1982
Since what happens in our neighboring city of Nampa affects us all, directly and indirectly, I journeyed there last week to witness the dedication of the most recent government "pyramid" built there at the direction of some of the modern pharaohs. It is called by many: "New City Hall," courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Most modern pyramids, both here as well as in Washington, America's mecca, have flat tops and restrooms. Other than that, however, their purposes are very much the same as in ancient times, i.e., a place for the plebes to worship The State and a monument to honor whichever king or pharaoh did the best job of promotion to get himself so honored. All at somebody else's expense, of course. Now then, this is not to say there are no other major differences between pyramids of old and our new government offices, even some of which serve a useful purpose. But what follows are some rather striking parallels that might otherwise be overlooked.
For example and some historical context, the Greek historian Herodotus, writing 450 years before Christ, describes the building of the Great Pyramid as follows: "They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For 10 years the people were afflicted in making the road whereon the stones were draggen ..." Today it's the taxpayers who are "afflicted" having voted down the New City Hall TWICE in elections held for that purpose.
But not to worry. The pharaohs stewarding Nampa's new shrine assured the people with a "Litany of Dedication" (no kidding, it was printed with exactly that heading) in the program with a section to be read entitled: "Leader (former Mayor Ernie Starr)" who read many items from the program. These were followed by a sort of chant from the common pee-pull after each item with "We dedicate this new City Hall," (no kidding, it was printed just like in the back of the church's hymnal) thus one supposes the pee-pull did, indeed, dedicate.
I'll save the first statement of the litany read by the "Leader" Pharaoh Ernie Starr, until last, because it was not only the best, but by far the most meaningful. Meantime here's a sample of some excerpts of items read for the pee-pull to chant at: (1) "A source of deserved civic pride" (freebie from mecca?), (2) "Our regard for each citizen, our respect for individual freedoms ... public health and safety - blending these ideals with justice and fairness to all." (methinks blending is a typographical error. Should have read, bending. After two voter turndowns how could they "blend" with "individual" freedom?), (3) "... reflections of local responsibility, (but not local money.)"
Then fourth, was printed for all the pee-pull to chant: "We dedicate the Hall ... and city personnel who serve and seek to make a living while keeping their own lives above reproach." (while not an exact quote, it's close enough to make one wonder why they didn't include the politicians in Washington, D.C. - where the money came from - to make a living while keeping the politician's lives above reproach. But then, maybe they thought that'd be a contradiction in terms.)
Comes now Pharaoh Starr, ex-mayor of Nampa, who really and truly is an otherwise genuinely nice guy (liberal as hell, but nice) in all his glory and splendor of this big pyramid dedication. The best, at least the most significant, statement of the whole affair: "It is indeed a privilege to attend a dedication ceremony where (not get this) the building is PAID for upon completion."
Jumpin' catfish. No kidding. Ernie Starr, that perfectly nice, gentle and caring man actually said that. Gosh, look what over 20 years in politics can do to a man's thinking. Here's our federal government ADMITTING to in excess of a trillion dollars of national debt (Nobel prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, says the debt obligation is more nearly 10 times the trillion) and they're still shoveling out money both at home and abroad. "At home" means Nampa, gentle reader, and Ernie says, "The new City Hall is paid for." Egad!
But to hear a nice guy and long, long time politician like Ernie Starr who's running for a seat in the next Idaho Legislature, by the way, make a statement like that - well, it's almost more than one can take. I myself, was choked with emotion and tried valiantly to hide the big lump in my throat - for generation(s) yet unborn.
Still, we can't blame it all on good ole Ernie. No sir. Mayor Winston Goering just lapped it up. Not a worry about Uncle "Sap" in Washington, D.C. And who else? The Honorable U.S. Senator, James McClure, The Honorable Representative, Larry Craig. The Honorable State Auditor, Joe Williams, and the Honorable State Senator, Leon Swenson, not one of whom let a peep out of himself at former Mayor Starr's "paid for" remark. Not one mention of the fact that the new City Hall money cost was merely added, added on, mind you, to the already gawdawful burden of the national debt. Not a peep out of even one of those "honorable" gentlemen. Not one peep.
Come to think of it, the Collier's Encyclopedia where I read about the Great Pyramid also said: "Egyptian burial customs, when they can be understood, were generally of a magical and religious nature." Well, things haven't changed much in 2,600 years, have they? A new City Hall paid for in a "magical" way. And in the presence of all this financial wizardry - not a peep even out of the conservative politicians present.
That has to be somewhat akin to "religious" blind faith in Egyptian politics.
Goble Knows What Side He's On
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 26, 1982
I have before me a kind of announcement by a college professor at the University of Idaho College of Law. The announcement printed on a letterhead size sheet of paper is, to say the least, unorthodox.
Whether it's in good taste or bad taste depends on one's political persuasion, I suppose, and, too, whether or not one thinks it was done partly as a joke. I'll tell you what it says now, but I doubt it was printed for much of a joke as I'll explain later. Meantime here's what it says.
"Dale D. Goble is pleased to announce that he has accepted a position with the University of Idaho College of Law and that he is no longer obligated to create legal-sounding lies allowing James Gaius Watt, (U.S. Secretary of Interior, D.C.) his cronies, henchmen and flunkies to break the law, rape the land and give the public's resources away.
"After July 20, 1982, Camas, Carol and Dale will be at 708 B Street, Moscow, Idaho 83843."
Now then, this law professor's printed announcement made the newspapers recently in the form of a mediocre size news item, partly because it moved U.S. Sen. Steve Symms to write University of Idaho President Richard Gibb questioning the propriety of such a gesture by a newly-hired law professor.
It hardly need be mentioned that (1) it was most likely embarrassing to the school president and (2) nothing will probably come of it, since the attitude and tone of Goble's announcement is more or less par for the law department's course at the U of I and has been, I'm told, for some years.
I bring this to your attention, gentle reader, for several reasons, but believe it or not, not to criticize Professor Goble's "declaration." Rather I want to congratulate him for attempting to tell-it-like-it-is. Or, at least as he sees it. I think it's great. Even if there was some jest or tongue-in-cheek in his printing the announcement, there has to be more than a little "truth in a jest" as the saying goes.
Most law professors at most universities are smoking, if not flaming, liberals, but what I appreciate about Goble is that he not only knows what side he's on, but is proud of it and has the grit to say so more or less publicly. This is what all professors should do, i.e., declare their particular philosophic persuasion at the outset - in any course - not only a course in law. But few are even half so honest.
General observations could be made about the U of I law school including that made by one of its graduates who is a practicing attorney in Caldwell. He tells me that since he attended the law school the place has become dominated by a bunch of middle-aged hippie-types and in his opinion reflects that condition in the school's influence today, both in its attitude and many of its graduates!
Another observation one could make is that Goble runs the risk of being disbarred by the lawyer's union, sometimes called the Bar Association. Their code of ethics subjects them to being expelled if they lie. The announcement's phrase, "legal sounding lies," seems tantamount to a bare admission. Well, doesn't it? Still, lawyers are a compassionate and understanding lot, especially when it comes to a defalcation on the part of one of their own kind. They may even chuckle at this one.
Another observation might be that during my brief visit with Symms about the matter he didn't seem too shook up with Goble's frankness and forthrightness (my terms, not Symms'.) But neither did he seem too shook up way back in 1969 when he was "fired" as U of I Alumni president for calling education a "sacred cow," which it is, and advocating that his school install a chair of capitalism. (That's no joke, either.)
By way of an interesting aside, this writer has tried for years to get the U of I Alumni Board to write a public apology for their predecessors having engaged in such "educational blasphemy" for stifling Symms' 1969 freedom of expression. But, alas, no luck, since rubber stamp alumni associations still love to milk "sacred cows" for all they're worth. It's also the modern form of tribalism.
All of which goes to show you why I sort of respect Goble's apparent guts and candor even though I probably disagree with him on most everything else including my admiration for the gutsy James Watt. And I'd guess, though I can't know for sure, my most-of-the-time admiration for another gutsy and candid fellow, Steve Symms, would be where Goble and I would disagree.
Still, I can't help but wonder why we almost never get to hear this kind of candid outward expression from conservative college professors. Or, judging from both the guts and the brains of U of I Alumni boards, one wonders if any conservatives even exist. Or, further, if the present board even cares.
Christians Should Do Homework
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 3, 1982
A great deal has been written about "The Communist Manifesto," but few anti-communists have ever taken the trouble to read it. What's even worse, however, is that few anti-communists have ever read Adam Smith's equally famous "Wealth of Nations," It is easily one of the greatest books ever written - a sort of capitalist manifesto.
Comes now another manifesto, published just recently, entitled "A Christian Manifesto." It's quite possibly destined to make a spectacular place for itself right up there near the top. Whether it will be a best seller or not is, of course, another matter. It most certainly should become a best seller, but without Johnny Carson's holding the book up to the boob-tube audience with that bright-eyed enthusiasm of his, after having interviewed its author on the "Tonight Show," it's not likely. Not likely, either, that the left-leaning New York Times will give it rave reviews, but they should. Here's why.
The author is Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, the American-born Swiss theologian. Famous in many religious circles and author of 22 books, he's one of the few professional theological intellectuals this writer can stand, not to mention admire. He's a rare and fine individual whose ability to convey what many would call complicated and esoteric religious concepts is little short of sheer genius. His two most recent books - "How Should We Then Live?" and "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" have also been produced as major film series.
His "A Christian Manifesto" is about something in our country that happened so subtly that few people noticed at first. He notes little by little, morality and freedom started to crumble. It came first in government, in education, in the media - and finally it began to shake our families and our own lives.
"Something fundamental has changed," Schaeffer says, "law and government no longer provide a foundation of justice and morality, but have become the means of licensing moral perversions of all kinds. Education has become the enemy of religious truth and values. And the media have provided the means for propagating the change."
As in interesting aside, Schaeffer seems to be saying something alarmingly parallel to what the great French libertarian statesman, Frederic Bastiat, said over a century ago in his classic, "The Law," about the era of the French Revolution.
An era, by the way, which looks strikingly familiar to - you guessed it - our own U.S. today.
Consider Bastiat's opening remarks: "The law perverted! And the police powers of the State perverted along with it. The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!"
A great little book, "The Law," (only 75 pages) published by the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, N.Y. It has other thoughts, too, similar to Schaeffer's common sense. But I digress a little. Meantime back to what's being said today about "A Christian Manifesto."
In this explosive book (published by Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois, 138 pages) Schaeffer shows why these changes happened. First he shows how we have failed to understand the problem - to see that the whole foundation for society has shifted radically from its original Judeo-Christian as is to a humanistic basis. As the humanistic view takes over, it necessarily destroys the whole way of life built upon the Judeo-Christian heritage. Second, Dr. Schaeffer calls for a massive movement - in government, law and all of life - to re-establish this foundation and turn the tide of moral decadence and loss of freedom.
"Schaeffer's provocative conclusion," says one of his admirers, "is that when the state directly defies the absolute law of God, its authority becomes illegitimate. In this case, the Christian is bound to resist the state by whatever means necessary - through direct legal and political action, and possibly through massive demonstrations of civil disobedience (if necessary.)"
This massive bit is not exactly my cup of tea and I'm not sure I completely agree with all of what this great theologian has to say in his modern manifesto. But a couple things do seem clear: (1) When one reads his Chapter Four about the books, "Humanist Manifesto I" (1933), and "Humanist Manifesto II" - the government TV (Ch. 4) show "Cosmos" theme becomes much clearer. "Carl Sagan)" the show's science-whiz narrator, "indoctrinated millions," Schaeffer says, with "The cosmos is all that there is or ever will be."
Now I'll be danged if I can swallow THAT either, and I'm not particularly religious. Gosh, how final! And what an intellectually arrogant assumption - for a mere mortal man - for Carl Sagan.
And lastly (2), the libertarians have a lot in common with freedom-loving, Christians, such as Schaeffer, who distrust today's swiftly-growing cancer of statism. I just hope they won't neglect to study each other's manifestos. Because, up to now at least, Karl Marx's and the Humanist's - are by far the most popular at American colleges and universities.
Pierce's Heart Rules His Head
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 10, 1982
Occasionally I get scolded by people who are irritated by my sometimes severe criticism of other columnists writing on this editorial page. I try to respect their opinions, but last week's column by Nathaniel Pierce contained errors of such massive magnitude that I fear for the public (mental) health and safety. Forgive me, but I must respond.
Columnist Pierce quite understandably fears for the public welfare. He suggests, as all modern liberals are forever and ever taught from government-grade-1 through government-grade-16 and beyond, that The State should intervene in the pee-pull's behalf. For their own good, of course, oft-times whether the people perceive it that way or not. And always, always, always at government (read, somebody else's - ANYbody else's) expense.
Pierce says, "The pure, card-carrying libertarian will frequently argue for an absolutely minimal role of government in our lives." Well now, I, for one, am not sure, not do I carry a libertarian card. Neither do I "frequently" argue for the minimal role for government - I always argue that way. It was Thomas Jefferson's way. I wish it was Pierce's way. I hasten to add that, to his everlasting credit, he sometimes does, indeed, argue for less government. But it's almost always limited to what the typical liberal sees as civil liberties, very seldom for economic liberties. Worse yet, now, he sees a "minimal role" for government as extreme.
It was therefore a surprise to see Pierce, who's usually more perceptive than this, echo Press-Tribune columnist Erwin Schweibert's typical "extremist" cop-out. Said Pierce, "... (minimal government) can be taken to an extreme with serious consequences." He then goes on to cite an example where some escrow agents actually collect monies from the payor and fail to forward said monies along to the seller - minus their usually modest fee for the service, of course. "Some agents even take bankruptcy," says the compassionate parson, "and it's impossible to get the money back."
"There oughtta be a law," advises the typical liberal, and Congress and the bureaucrats and most preachers, too, I must admit, are happy to oblige. It's true, there are scallawags and rascals and financial incompetents out there in the private sector. Some will give their customers the shaft, too. Some, admittedly, shoot that shaft in a big way, but shouldn't we stop trying to put the fox into supervising the chicken house? It is not uncommon, you know, for people to jump out of the private frying pan into the government fire. It's called the welfare state mentality. And it's gaining momentum.
After claiming early on in his column that, "It is uncharacteristic for me to suggest new ways in which the government should become involved ..." Pierce goes on - you guessed it - to suggest new ways for the government, both Congress and the state, to become involved. "In fact," said Pierce, "They would instill some confidence in the average citizen that the government is in fact concerned ... In my opinion, this is indeed the primary purpose of government."
My goodness! How concerned, how caring, how conscientious and compassionate this clergyman. (I really think he does try to be all of these, but his heart often rules his head.) So, let's just take a look at government's capacity for caring for the people's welfare. First off, it is not my intention to panic you, gentle reader, but it is absolutely necessary that you see how Pierce's (et al) confidence in government management of our financial affairs is, well, misplaces - to say the least.
The National Taxpayer's Union (NTU), 325 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E. Washington, D.C., prepares from year to year the Taxpayer's Liability Index. Now then, I hope you will forgive me for restating their huge figures (I hate gobs of numbers, too) but bear with me just this once. NTU's newest liability index just came in this week's mail, so I'll list what they call the gross cost in American dollars after each debt or liability item: "(1) Public debt: $1,050,000,000,000 (trillion), (2) Accounts payable: $267,000,000,000 (billion), (3) Undelivered orders: (487,000,000,000 (billion), (4) Long term contracts: $21,000,000,000 (billion), (5) Loan and Credit guarantees: $360,000,000,000 (billion), (7) Unadjudicated claims, International commitments and other financial obligations: $59,000,000,000 (billion)."
That comes to a grand total liability of eleven trillion, six-hundred fifty-two billion dollars, American. Not pesos, not lira, not marks, not even Confederate dollars, but legal American dollars.
Now then, Nathaniel Pierce, my sincere, compassionate, caring and courageous friend - and you are most assuredly all of these - is THIS, (liability) the "primary purpose" of government? Indeed, is it even moral?
Union Double-Standard Hard to Understand
By ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 17, 1982
This column is meant to express disappointment with President Reagan for something which must be laid squarely at his feet. It has to do with his i.e., the White House's, attitude toward labor unions.
By way of a little background let me hasten to add that I have the utmost respect for Ronald Reagan. I have had ever since 1964 when California citizen Reagan made his famous "The Speech" in support of U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater for president. It not only skyrocketed him into national political fame, but its inspiration begat so many $5, $10, and $20 donations to the national GOP that it put them in good financial shape for the first time in years.
So blunt, forthright and high principled were Reagan's remarks that the eastern establishment Republican National Committee (RNC) refused to run the video tape on national TV (by then it had run only in California.) The late, great Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm told this writer that had he not threatened, as Western Regional Finance Chairman of the GOP, to withhold the huge sum of money he had already collected for the RNC they would not have been willing to let Reagan's speech go on national TV. So bad has been the elitist and tending-toward-snobism thrust of the RNC for many generations that it's not surprising their otherwise decent social concerns are seen as uncaring and without compassion.
Well, Ronald Reagan has changed all that, particularly as two-term governor of California where he all but made Republican politics fashionable. He even made fiscal-sanity politically desirable with politicians.
Now, almost two decades later, Reagan is president of the U.S.A. and still mostly on a good target. But he seems to be less intimidated by complaints from the Communist dictator of the most butcherous bunch of politicians in world history, Soviet Russia, than he is by complaints from the organized labor unions in Washington, D.C.
For example, under former President Jimmy Carter the de-regulation of the airlines had become almost a reality. Considerable progress had also been started, under Carter, in de-regulation of the trucking industry without which regulation the Teamster's Union couldn't possibly stay "in business." Reagan's White House came along and changed the chief of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) who promptly instructed the ICC to "lay off" or "go slow" deregulating the trucks. Quite a dramatic switcheroo, I'd say, especially for an administration claiming to be spokesman for free enterprise and a free market.
Comes now a Reagan White House decision to cancel a scheduled appearance there by the San Francisco cabaret show called "Beach Blanket Babylon." "It was canceled because the group was a non-union production," said Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan's press secretary, "and might cause potential embarrassment to some of the congressional invitees and to the performers if the guests decided not to show up on that basis." (I confirmed this with the White House, myself.)
Jumpin' catfish! What on earth does that caring and compassionate man from California, now in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C., think about the little people - actors and entertainers (et al) who do NOT belong to a union? What does he (or is it the RNC?) care for the embarrassment of those congressional "invitees" who are NOT willing to pay tribute to compulsory unionism and their out-of-state union bosses? Shouldn't these rights be respected, also?
Gee whiz, gentle reader, this writer is not about to abandon one of the most obviously caring, compassionate and common-sense presidents we've had in generations, especially if he, or his advisors, thought they had to sell-out in 1980 to the Teamster's Union for money and votes enough to get elected (that is the way our one-man, one-vote system works, you know.) But how in the name of Moses, the Apostle Paul, King Solomon, Pope Paul or Brigham Young can the great unwashed public understand such a double standard? Is it fear of the Screen Actor Guild's sister union who complained to the White House?
It is true, I admit, that the general public, much guided by the government's compulsory school system, gives credit to compulsory unionism for the rise in wage rates, the disappearance of child labor, shorter and shorter hours in the work week, etc. Furthermore, they think they owe to unionism their high standard of living.
If unions had anything appreciably to do with the rise of the standard of living, then the prosperity of the Chinese and the East Indians hordes can be solved simply by organizing unions over there. Put that way, of course, nobody believes that unions cause prosperity.
Gov. John Evans and Lt. Gov. Phil Batt should both (repeat, both) be trying to explain this double-standard to that kind, caring, compassionate and otherwise common-sense human being in the White House. Don't you?
George Orwell's '1984' Is Here
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 24, 1982
Another friend of mine just won a Nobel prize in economics. I hope, most fervently, that Caldwell's hyperactive, enthusiastic and usually well-meaning mayor read the article in Wednesday's Press-Tribune. Let me explain how I think this great news article applies to three cities: Stockholm, Sweden; Chicago, Ill.; and Caldwell, Idaho.
George Stigler, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, received the 1982 Nobel prize for his research on market processes and the cause and effect of public (read, government) regulations. He received the award, of course, at ceremonies held annually in Stockholm to honor Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite in 1862. So much for Stockholm and Chicago.
A colleague of the great and grand economists and fellow free market advocates, Milton Friedman, also of Chicago, and Friedrich Mayek (rhymes with Kayak), of Austria, Stigler says: "You can say the reason we have regulation is because something is dangerous, like an automobile is dangerous. It was dangerous before regulation - and it still is, by the way."
That automobile bit isn't so important except it reminded me of an interesting point Stigler made at a small supper I attended way back in the 1960s and before the word "libertarian" became bastardized by the word-mongers. Said he, "If the market is left free the automakers might advise: 'don't drink while driving.' The whiskey makers, on the other hand, might advise: 'Don't drive while drinking.' The government would probably recommend another tax under the guise of protecting each from the other."
Unfortunately my blue-nosed friends somehow fail to see much humor in my academic friend's wise-crack, but he's a great teacher and his students, not unlike Friedman's and Hayek's, are having a tragically long, over-due academic influence in favor of the institution of freedom, market alternatives and less government. His humor, by the way, is a rare, but great asset in a usually socialist profession.
But back to Stigler's research which attracted the prestigious Nobel prize. He said: "We were worried what regulation does to the economy." He went on to demonstrate how markets have been adversely affected by economic legislation.
The Nobel judges said, "He is a leader in applied research on markets and industrial structure."
Now then, it's about the above term "industrial structure" that I want to show the connection, so to speak, of Caldwell with Stigler, Chicago and Stockholm. This writer owns several acres of property zones "industrial" inside our city. It has been in process of development and land reclamation by me personally for some 17 years - long before the eco-nuts and bureaucrats discovered the word environment and the statist's govern-mentality attitude.
We could have (perhaps, should have) sold out to a big corporation in order to properly develop what we call "FarmCity," Caldwell's agricultural and commercial park. But we didn't, preferring instead the local do-it-yourself bit and an ever-so-slow, inch-by-inch development. Lack of adequate capital has at least one substitute - time. And it's taken just that - years and years, but it's beginning to take shape and even grow a little.
Fortunately several lessees (renters) are beginning to do business, today, there in that new growing industrial zone. Unfortunately, as you might imagine, they now attract a certain amount of burglary, vandalism and opportunity for malicious mischief. Unfortunately, for him, a night watchman was laid off recently from employment in another industrial part of town. Fortunately, he owned his mobile home, but since he was seeking employment elsewhere, he needed a place to park it, hopefully near where he might find his chosen line of work as night watchman.
Fortunately, a mutual friend suggested to the unemployed watchman that: "Smeed and the Batt Trucking Company, a lessee in said industrial zone, used to have a trailer spot complete with sewer, water and electricity. Maybe, since the space is not in use, you can get them to let you use it free."
Well, he did. And everybody was happy. The watchman, who very much wanted employment, said: "Maybe I can get some of those nearby businesses to hire me on a part-time basis to watch their property." And, he did. Everybody was happy, i.e., until ...
Comes now The Building Inspector of the city of Caldwell. As directed by the city, or someone in authority anyway, most probably the Mayor, who has, heretofore, been really quite cooperative toward industrial development in "his" city - for sure including my FarmCity industrial area, by the way, he (The Inspector) said to us: "Where is your permission to park a mobile home on your own industrial property?"
I said, "Egad, you've got to be kidding."
"No, I'm not kidding," said The Inspector, "furthermore, you must pay $50 for that permission (permit) to use your own property which is hooked up to your own private sewer system" (not the city's).
All the nearby property, by the way, is industrial and is owned by this writer.
I said. "A permit? Yegads! We had a mobile office-type trailer here, before, several months ago. The facilities and the investment were no longer being used, thus we're merely using the same facilities."
The Inspector said, "That's no excuse. You must conform to the city's law."
Then I responded, somewhat exasperatedly, "But, for Heaven's sake! Who's complaining? Can't I face my accuser?"
"Nobody needs to complain," he explained, "it's in the city's master plan." He should have added: "... as mandated by Washington, D.C."
I must confess that The Inspector was just doing his job. Not unlike one supposes, the German guards at Dachau and Auschwitz. I guess one would have to say that that's what he gets paid for, and I have no malice whatsoever toward him personally. In fact, he's quite a nice fellow, but the late, great socialist George Orwell's "1984" has arrived, gentle reader. It's here! And you all had best see the connection(s) before it's too late, because bureaucrats and politicians SELDOM can.
In fact, Charles Dickens wrote a play in which his leading character said, "If the law says THAT, sir, then the law is an ass." This is exactly what I said to the Caldwell City Council when I went there to beg for my permit: "... this law is an ass." And they should see that it ought to be repealed.
Since both our daily newspapers government-loving reporters attending the above-mentioned council meeting refused to see the whole affair as newsworthy, I'll tell you next week about the Jefferson-like speech on private ownership that followed. I delivered it to the Sphinx-like council (Pat Mallea was absent) and the mayor after I paid by $25 tribute to "Caesar" for the "work-permit."
It would have been $50, but they hadn't yet got around to changing the law - up from the old governmentality, pre-inflation fee.
See you next week, fellow lemmings.
$50 Fee to Mind Own Business
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 31, 1982
Last week this column expressed dismay at Caldwell's asinine zoning ordinance prohibiting a mobile home in an industrial zone. The five acre area is all one ownership and none of the businesses leasing buildings there complain. In fact, they WANT the night watchman's mobile home to be located there to help hold down burglary and malicious mischief, but the zoners and planners master plan says no.
That is to say the government's master plan says "no" - unless - the owner pays $50 for the government's permission for the owner to vary from their master plan and for use of his or her own property. Egad! But that's not all folks. That $50 is every (repeat, every) year, believe it or not. That's not tax, mind you, it's tribute, not unlike that paid to the Caesars in days of old.
Unfortunately I seem to have offended, or at least severely irritated our good-guy Mayor Al McCluskey. He really is a good guy and works his tail off for what he sees as the good of the city. His Honor is also a long-time close personal friend, even a school chum of mine. Still a friend, at least I am still his. In fact, I'm probably McCluskey's biggest fan and booster in town. I agree with him, I'd guess, about 90 percent of the time. But within the other 10 percent? Well, you'd better look out. He tells me he's writing a letter to the editor to chew me a new place to sit down upon. He says even his charming wife's upset with me.
But then, big men in politics have tended for centuries to be overly sensitive to criticism. Most, depending upon how threatened they feel, tend to move swiftly to eliminate that criticism, or at least to render it impotent one way or another. Still, nobody likes criticism, not even the newspapers. Witness the Mayor's long time withering one-man crusade against this newspaper's quality and quantity coverage of local (read, Caldwell's) news. I respect this. It's a genuine problem, i.e., what's newsworthy and what is not. Newspapers, too, covet their ownership rights.
A newspaper worth it's salt agonizes about this question daily, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, depending on how you look at it. Compared to most, this paper is uniquely superior among today's majority (thank God that majority-rule of news doesn't completely apply - yet) in spite of much of their bad criticism one hears. But this is precisely the problem our good Mayor's myopia misses, namely, I couldn't get the local reporters of either newspaper the least bit interested, myself. I thought this was, still is, a significant piece of local news about zoning, private ownership, freedom of choice, mobile homes, responsibility, individualism, and burglarizing, all local.
Reporters from both newspapers, attending the City Council hearing flatly refused to cover this local controversy. I thought His Honor would jump with glee at a fellow comrade (me) who joined him in yet another "local news blackout" problem. But I made the mistake of adding, thereto, another criticism of the establishment, one supposes - "his" establishment. At least he's chosen to leap to its defense. Too bad, too. His instincts were toward freedom, the right of ownership, and free market enterprise before he became an active politician. I still think he's a helluva nice guy.
Well-meaning, and intelligent (usually) whether or not he's on a little too much of an ego-trip.
Meantime, back to the mobile home issue in a one ownership industrial zone ordinance and whether or not it's asinine. I asked the Council and Mayor, therein assembled, a number of questions including whether or not I should be allowed to face my accuser in the best sense of Thomas Jefferson's traditional American jurisprudence? No answer. I asked if they didn't agree that private ownership was a, if not the, primary distinguishing characteristic between our system and that of the Soviet Union's system? No answer.
By the way, gentle reader, lest you think in error that the principle issue here is some greedy capitalistic landlord versus some greedy power-grabbing bureaucratic government and therefore doesn't affect you - think again. Next time it may well be you that's appearing, knelt down, before Caesar's local reps asking for permission to install a child's swing, a teeter-totter or a tree house in your own back yard - for your own children - all nice and legal, at $50 each year. So it's not altogether 100 percent a spectator "sport." It is a kind of game, however, all in the name of conformity.
Forgive me. Now back to City Hall. I asked the conscientious Council and Mayor "just what were the bad conditions leading up to the adoption of this zoning prohibition of mobile homes in an industrial area situated such as mine is? No answer. One suspects, of course, there IS no answer save one which will not stand the light of day.
In fairness to the City Council, my presentation was not completely without its humorous side. Nor was it intended to be. These politicians are also politicians in the good sense of the word. They take a lot of guff, sometimes when they shouldn't have to. I suppose we tend not to appreciate, adequately, their dilemma and their exposure to asinine law suits and harassment.
But during my presentation His Honor butted right in to the middle of my statements three (repeat, three) separate times, with what I'm sure he thought were appropriate wise-cracks. Intentional or not, he thus made it extremely difficult for them to hear my Jefferson-like and lofty observations about freedom and enterprise. So perhaps the council is to be somewhat forgiven for not hearing enough of my case for repealing the asinine mobile home ordinance that very day.
The late, great cowboy philosopher-journalist Will Rogers may have had better advice for McCluskey than I had. During a visit to his Texas ranch, Will noted that, "Where other politicians made speeches, Vice-President John Garner just fishes. If all politicians just fished (instead of passing so many laws) we would be at peace with the world."
So, in the near immortal words of Father Nathaniel Pierce, "Peace, Brother Al and Esteemed Mayor - peace!" Let's fish.
Political Campaign Never Stops
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 7, 1982
"Thank Heaven the political campaign is over." One hears that everywhere, almost. What they mean, of course, is that the political electioneering is over, since the campaign never stops. We'll come back to that, but now folks can go back for tow more years to their favorite TV soap opera or beer bottle and ball game. At least they labor under such an assumption. That assumption, however, needs a healthy skepticism.
Thomas Edison, the great genius and inventor of hundreds of useful things including the light bulb, said, "There's almost no limit to which people won't go in order to avoid the labor of thinking." Still, the great man's billions upon billions of light bulbs seem to have shed precious little light on that fact - avoiding the labor of thinking.
As a case in point, I watched several newsmen, a day or two after the election, shooting the bull about the Nov. 2 event (the bull won, by the way.) The group was hell-bent upon seizing Edison's observation and so invented a well-known labor saving device themselves. It's sometimes called: "We'll do your thinking FOR you" and thus enable you to avoid all that labor.
The nightly program was on the government TV Channel 4 called educational television. It's entitled "The Reporters."
Both these titled tend to be misnomers, i.e., (1) unless you don't distinguish between education and brainwash and (2) unless the term "reporters" is meant to mean mostly editorialize instead of "report." Let me hasten to add that it is indeed hard to report so-called facts without injecting the so-called reporter's opinion. The problem is made worse, however, by these news manglers who claim (repeat, claim) to be so objective, if not downright holier-than-thou, even while "selecting" who is newsworthy.
The reporters, then, gathered there on Channel 4 began with great gusto to lament with sadness, almost to the point of being awake, the reasons nobody seemed able to defeat incumbent Congressman George Hansen in Idaho's Second District. Interestingly enough, former U.S. Sen. Frank Church, who held office for almost 26 years, never, repeat, never, got such droopy-eyed examination by obviously saddened news men. Why? Because they weren't sad, that's why. Almost all reporters, of course, are liberal-leaning to left wing and have been such for many years, but even those who are otherwise (there are a few) are put upon, by peer group pressure to select both who and what's newsworthy along peer group guidelines. Guidelines- of the liberal establishment. If they don't conform it's harder, much harder to be seen as a successful newsman.
The leader of the program, Marc Johnson, himself a card-carrying liberal, does otherwise quite a professional job, I admit. Still, though, quite honest to the label, he goes blithely on his way never seeing the news media personnel and establishment's modus-operandi newsworthy enough to be examined on his programs by guests critical or hostile to their ways and wiles. The media IS news itself, but rarely gets honest, in depth and on going examinations.
The famous or, if you like, infamous, comic book "Big Bad John" came in for so-called examination among the so-called reporters. I say so-called because nothing was said to favor the "other side" of the book, especially its contents. In fact, nothing about the contents of the anti-Gov. John Evans comic book received intelligent discussion from Idaho media during the entire campaign. Why? Because they didn't like it. That's why.
Furthermore, why such big sums of money for so-called comic books, etc., anyway? Well, one reason is due to the liberal bias of so much of the media. In fairness to many of them I must admit that they tend, sometimes honestly, not to see their own bias and prejudice. In fact, some of the most liberal ones are often the most fun. One of them, to his everlasting credit, was the exclusive reason this writer got started in the game. There are a few others, too, but even those are mostly statists of one stripe or another, i.e., very few favor the free market, if indeed they know very much about it. Why so few? Ask some of these media moguls why. But get your feet braces. Unless non-government or free market alternatives get proposed by a politician who they admire the media men are not likely to have ever heard of the idea, not to mention being on a power kick of their own. That's why.
The Channel 4 program did have a couple of redeeming features, but the sober, somber and sad faces there indicated little patience and almost no virtue for other than more and more politics to come, more and more laws to come and more and more statism to come.
And then that same news media tends to question over and over why so much money is poured into politics - the politics they, themselves, glorify.
A great newsman of by-gone days shot his most lethal projectiles at the enormous and inescapable power of The State. H.L. Menchen felt that, "The three great advances of our country were legal equality, free speech and limited government, and that the main gain of modern man has been the weakening of governments."
But he could clearly see, especially in his later years, that there was a growing mysticism placing faith in the power of The State to cure every ill and every problem.
This mysticism can be seen articulated, exampled and "reported" nearly every night at 7 p.m. on - you guessed it - educational TV.
Like I said, "the campaign never stops."
Don't Miss This Rare Opportunity
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 14, 1982
One of the few really top flight conservatives in America who writes a nationally syndicated column is James J. Kilpatrick. Just a few days ago he wrote that William F. Buckley Jr., his good friend, was without a doubt the most unforgettable character he's ever met. For Kilpatrick that's a big statement.
Well, the College of Idaho student body association is bringing this very same Buckley to speak on their campus Monday evening in their beautiful Jewett Auditorium. Any conservative, or liberal, for that matter, worth his salt and who gives a darn about public policy matters will not want to miss this rare opportunity - rare in these parts for sure.
Not since the early 1970s have Treasure Valley residents had the opportunity to hear the "bard of block-busting conservatism" launch his MX missile-like lexicon into the liberal loins of the left-wingers.
W.J. Monagle, student liaison officer in charge and the one perhaps most responsible for the big conservative intellectual's appearance on the C of I campus, said he expects a big crowd from Caldwell, Nampa, Boise and surrounding areas since there's supposed to be a lot of conservatives in the area. But it's my own observation in the past that it's the liberals who, more than one might think, enjoy Buckley's charm, wit and barbs for those governmentality worshipers who love big government.
For example the venerable Dr. George Wolfe, political scientist at the C of I for over two decades (now retired) is one of those "liberals" who says he wouldn't miss one of Mr. Buckley's "Firing Line" programs (Channel 4, Sundays at 10 p.m.) for all the tea in Chinatown. Professor Wolfe, lest you think he was the C of I's closet conservative, is also a great admirer of former U.S. Sen. Frank Church and for many years sent most of his top political science students to intern in Church's Washington, D.C., office. A recommendation from George Wolfe was almost always a lead-pipe cinch for an internship with the liberal senator. Just what the intelligently curious Wolfe sees in these two political opposites, Buckley and Church is, of course, clear only to him.
But then, neither is it clear nor consistent, for that matter, for Buckley to be appearing on the liberal C of I campus, having been invited there, initially at least, by the student and Frank Church fan, Monagle. He told me he was a Church fan anyway, I think it was last spring during one of our 15 or 20 phone conversations leading up to his Buckley invitation. A couple of those phone calls he made from way up in Alaska, by the way, where he and his roommate, Dan Symms, had gone for the summer to work in the fish canneries. So much for the persevering student who didn't give up easily (to put it mildly) when he decided to invite a hard-to-get celebrity to the C of I. Even, I might add, when said celebrity charges an absolutely outrageous price for his speaker's fee. (The C of I tickets, however, are a real bargain.)
There isn't room here to list anywhere near all of the famous conservative's books and peregrinatious beginning with his "God and Man at Yale" the non-fiction book which initially made him famous. It also warned others of liberalism's menace on American college campuses. We could go clear around to his CIA activity and his novels and even one entitled "Airborne" about his sailing his sailboat across the Atlantic, and many others. But this wise debater, presidential confidant, gutsy, and ever so controversial fellow has done something else I think even more worth noting, in addition to becoming a veritable institution in and of himself, albeit labeled, rather loosely a conservative institution and mostly by his own intellectual bootstraps. And that is to inspire others, conservative, liberal and libertarian alike. (He's even godfather to the children of the famous knee-jerk liberal economist, John Kenneth Galbraith.)
One of these, a libertarian with a giant intellect and one time editor of Buckley's erudite National Review magazine (President Reagan reads it cover to cover) left the conservative magazine for a more "pure" approach to freedom. This was Frank Chodorov, teacher, author and individualist first class. Years later in 1966, Buckley gave the eulogy at Chodorov's funeral. He entitled it: "Death of a Teacher," teacher being one of the highest labels in Buckley's vast vocabulary. He ended it with a quote from Chodorov, his esteemed colleague and bosom friend:
"If a student takes readily to such values as the primacy of the individual, the free marketplace, or the immorality of taxation, he is an individualist; if he swallows hard, he must be counted a recruit for the other side. There are those he was saying - and he took his thought from the Book of Job, and later from the immortal essay of Albert Jay Nock on the 'Remnant' - who are lately capable of understanding. Those who aren't, well they aren't; but do what you can for those who are." There couldn't have been anyone there at the funeral without a lump in his throat.
Well, Buckley has, indeed, inspired thousands both old and young, having started the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) the advisory board of which I'm proud to have served upon. But lest you think for a moment that Buckley's super intellect is his only asset, his secret weapon is really his keen wit and sense of humor.
For example, it is well known that his arch foe and political rival is former Congresswoman Bella Abzug, a pushy, cranky to conservatives, women's libber and an extreme liberal worshiper of Big government who frequently took Buckley and his conservative pals bitterly to task.
She is also, by the way, built like a triple-big version of Mae West with an even more huge and bulby rear appendage.
After a particularly lively exchange with one of her more sarcastic supporters about Abzug, Buckley is said to have remarked: "Oh, my no, I don't concede anything to Ms. Abzug, except, perhaps, my consuming desire, when I see her, to rush out and burn every mattress in the world." (You see why I love the guy?)
Go see Buckley in person at the C of I, folks. The students who've invited him deserve your support. And who knows? Maybe it'll help their popular and intelligent new president, Dr. Arthur DeRosier, to inspire even more students to persevere, successfully, like Monagle has.
Call DeRosier's delightfully liberal secretary, Lee Lenuson, for information. It's 459-5501.
No Need to Bribe Idaho Media
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 21, 1982
One of a few high class "conservative" think-tanks in America is the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace. It's located on California's Stanford University campus. One of the scholars there put his finger, in 1978, on why Lt. Gov. Phil Batt did not win in his recent quest for governor - in 1982.
The above mentioned scholar may be of British ancestry by in any event he used one of that country's slogans which currently tends to apply here in the U.S.A. It goes like this: "You cannot ever bribe or trust the good old British 'journal-ust.' But seeing what the man will do un-bribed - there's no occasion to."
The slogan aptly describes the Idaho media's reaction to Batt's recent campaign, the latter part of which embodied the controversial right-to-work (RTW) idea. In the opinion of a number of observers, Batt would have lost by a much larger margin had he not taken sides, albeit far too late in his campaign, for the freedom of non-union workers.
One flamboyant case in point of how the liberal news media handled the RTW issue was a so-called comic-book put out by a group calling themselves B.R.I.M.E.S.T.O.N.E. The cartoon book attempted to tell a little of the RTW idea and a lot about its principal political opponent. Democrat incumbent Gov. John Evans, who took sides against the law in an ever so vigorous and crusading way - against Batt.
The challenger, not having done his homework on its underlying economics and moral values and having, in fact, actually opposed a RTW law just a few years ago, was hard-pressed to mount a credible offense using RTW as a positive issue.
Typical of the liberal and more or less nihilist, if sincere, media writer was a political reporter of one of the state's large daily newspapers.
He said Evans spent $400,000 in his campaign, but would not have been elected had it not been for he "rigidly single issue RTW fanatics." This intellectual infant, on the issues of individual freedom, went on to "report" in his post election analysis of why Batt lost:
"Gov. Robert Smylie was the only survivor in the 1959 race when he alone opposed the RTW law (it lost 51 to 49 percent.) He (Smylie) alone "survived," the reporter claimed, while the Legislature was lost to the Democrats.
Now then, that reporter goes on, in his column, to admit that this year RTW "was the key issue in the governor's race." But then the reporter goes further to "explain" why. Take a deep breath, gentle reader, hole your nose, and try to get this: Batt lost the election (an election that he never, ever had, by the way) because, according to this expert political "reporter," because he (Batt) aroused the sleeping anger of organized labor. Not a word, mind you, about why Batt "won" his own county, Canyon, the most conservative county in the state, by an ever so SMALL margin.
Historically, Idaho politicians have been able to count on an overwhelmingly big margin of Southwest Idaho Republican votes from Canyon County to overcome the traditionally large Democrat vote in North Idaho. But in most prior campaigns Idaho voters had a candidate for governor who offered a perceived (repeat, perceived) difference between himself and his opponent. I supported Batt myself, and I think that in many ways we would have received much less government from Batt, had he been elected, than from many of his more "conservative" backers. But such a difference, if indeed, there was one (and I think there was) was not perceived by the Idaho voter. Batt's television commercial seemed, in fact, to be trying to say something such as, "Both candidates for governor are nice guys - but ours is an even nicer guy."
Political reporters, so-called, are fond of claiming to be non-philosophical, especially this is the claim of the one I'm writing about, but such a claim is at best asinine if not puke-ish. His recommendation "... the secret to getting a RTW law passed in Idaho: Close up the Freedom to Work office (which is indeed, philosophic) ... and just wait patiently for a Republican state to elect a Republican governor, which is virtually inevitable."
Hardly a word appeared in said media about the actual contents of the controversial and pro-RTW comic book itself, which candidate Batt inexplicably denounced."
If you'll buy THAT, ladies and gentlemen, I've got some swampland to sell you in southern Louisiana.
Meantime, back to the California scholar who said: "You cannot bribe or trust the good old British (now American) journal-ust ..."
Who needs a bribe? All the out-of-state labor union chiefs needed was a sincere candidate, Evans, and a misguided philosophy. Oh, yes, and a news media that couldn't - or wouldn't - tell the difference.
Academic Freedom and the C-I
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 28, 1982
A recent headline read: "College of Idaho Gives (Army) ROTC Plan Mixed Response." It might well have said the response was "mixed up." At least somebody's mixed up.
The U.S. Army's Maj. Lloyd Pederson, head of ROTC at Boise State University, brought the matter up with C of I officials last spring because of his feeling that "ROTC should be offered at every school in Idaho." Well, the well-meaning Army officer just set off a time bomb, albeit an intellectual one.
C of I's sharp new president, Arthur DeRosier, sought the opinions of both students and faculty on the matter of military scholarships available to prospective students for his private school. Since the latter is forced to compete with government universities financed with massive sums of tax monies. DeRosier is faced with the real dilemma to keep his college afloat. So far, at least, he's done a remarkably successful job at pulling his college out of almost certain bankruptcy. He's done this, too, without having to compromise unduly his own high educational ideals and vision of academic excellence and yet have the guts and stick-to-itive-ness to cope with the ever-present reality of the off-campus world. But it hasn't been easy. Nor, one guesses, will it be.
For example, consider some absolutely incredible statements quoting those intellectuals, mostly, one assumes, who were vehemently opposed to the ROTC proposal. Two objections: (1) Since the college is "Presbyterian Church-affiliated" and since that church has taken a strong stand for world peace, some feel ROTC would conflict with that position; (2) Some opponents feel that military training does not meet the academic standards to which the college aspires. One faculty member who asked not to be identified, said, "It's (ROTC) vocational training and the C of I is a liberal arts college."
Good point. Yet, one supposes, "liberal" could have meanings other than anti-military.
Said another faculty member who also asked not to be identified, "I'm basically a peaceful person. I'd rather see us have a peace academy than an academy teaching war." There you have it, gentle reader, ROTC "teaches war." Egad!
It must be true, after all, since it was said by a certified college professor.
Now then, at risk of stampeding these well-meaning professors into changing their minds, let me say that I, too, think the ROTC program - stinks - at least what little I know of it tends to. But I think this way for altogether different reasons than they seem to. I'll save those for a later date, however, and comment ever so briefly on the above professional statements.
The Presbyterian Church's "affiliation" with the C of I is about the same intensity, one guesses, as that that the Church of England gives to the Mormon missionaries over there, i.e., not much. And, small wonder. The Presbyterian's $10,000 to Angela Davis and the funds to the World Council of Church's mission to left-wing terrorists all around the world does use up a lot of money. Now, as to ROTC's being "vocational training," the C of I professor does have a point. But doesn't the C of I's teacher training qualify also as vocational training? Sure it does, and well it should, too.
I suppose I'd have to agree with the unidentified professor who says he's a "peaceful person and would rather see us have a peace academy than an academy teaching war." Not long ago this writer sent a donation to the group (liberal peaceniks, no doubt) promoting a "National Academy for Peace." I'd guess they, too, are sincere, as I think I am. But to suggest ROTC "teaches war" is to suggest that the Department of Health's crusade against venereal disease puts it in favor of illicit sex. Gosh! What political demagoguery. Perhaps the professor was joking. I hope so.
In any event, notwithstanding the student council's 10-6 vote favoring the ROTC offering and the subsequent veto thereof by the student body president, John Hanson, we should remember, "men of goodwill can disagree." But the well-meaning (no doubt) C of I professors might want to reconsider that those with whom THEY disagree, yea, even those in the Pentagon's ROTC just might be "men of goodwill," too. If they are, and here's my double-whammy best appeal to the C of I liberal (arts?) professors: Where on earth could you or we find a better opportunity to work the liberalizing arts to a better cause and effect than if you had those fine young ROTC men and women there on your own campus? Think about it!
Considering that the communists had to build the Berlin Wall to keep their own people in - and America is now having to consider a wall to keep people out who WANT in, then you task, even if it involved a little competition, could have proved very rewarding.
Pardon Me, But the Media...
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 5, 1982
Well, we've endured month after month of nauseating political commercials, empty rhetoric, silly posturing and candidates who boasted of their benevolent and noble-minded skill in spending our money. Still, depending to a large extent how the news media liked or disliked the candidate and his or her "posturing," there was a message - of sorts.
Much of said message may tell us more about the media, however, than it does the candidate(s). Consider what one of the nation's top newsletters entitled, "On Principle," says: "The New York Times (NYT) presented its DISTORTION (my emphasis) of the 1982 election. In its (so-called) analysis was the following gem. The GOP losses were the most serious since World War II for an elected president in the first mid-term election after his party captured the White House." According to the NYT, "The average loss has been 10 seats." Remember that number, 10, before you read on.
Now be patient, gentle reader, the above-mentioned and perceptive newsletter, "On Principle," goes on to explain how the liberal NYT motto should read: "All the news that fits - we print." Readers and fans of the NYT know their masthead has for years hoisted high the actual slogan: "All the news that's fit to print." But more and more non-liberal observers have decided that the once greatly respected "Great Gray Lady" newspaper has lost her virtue and thus now twists the news to seduce her patrons. Remember now, the Reagan GOP lost 26 seats in the 1982 election.
The newsletter goes on to explain how she exploits: "Through the clever use of qualifiers, the Times was able to construct exactly the type of case it wanted, to prove that the 1982 election was a massive defeat for Republicans. By arbitrarily choosing the period after WWII, it excluded from its calculation (similar) heavy mid-term losses suffered by Taft (57 seats - 1910), Wilson (59 seats - 1914), Harding (75 seats - 1922), Hoover (49 seats - 1930) and Roosevelt (71 seats - 1938 and 45 seats - 1942.)
"By specifying an elected president in the first mid-term after his party won the White House, the Times also excluded the losses of Truman (55 seats - 1946), Eisenhower (48 seats - 1958), Johnson (47 seats - 1966) and Ford (48 seats - 1974)." The newsletter ends the paragraph with a suggestion: "File this one under: How the (New York) Times fits the news - to its views." Well, it's not only in New York that this tends to happen.
This writer has, for almost nine years now, taken to task the news media and criticized their government-worshipping tendencies in their so-called reporting of the news. One of the editors in my early days as a columnist (forgive me) exclaimed: "Now, Ralph, you ought to get off the backs of the news media. These guys up here are going to think you're paranoid." Well, I never gave up. I'm still doing my darndest to draw intelligent attention to what many see as a real cancer-like blight upon our culture, i.e., media bias which is both witting and unwitting and, in different ways, getting both better and worse. (Let me hasten to add something to the everlasting credit of the Press-Tribune. I have been allowed to continue and at times, perhaps, even belabor my barrage of both constructive and destructive commentary about the news media of which they are, thank heave, one of the better parts.)
Meantime, lest you think that "On Principle" is all pro-Reagan you'd better guess again. Consider their further comment: "The silliest aspect of the 1982 campaign was the Republican slogan, "Stay the Course." What course?
Ronald Reagan has changed direction (attention, Sens. McClure and Symms) so many times in the past 22 months that it would take a navigational genius to determine his heading." For example: "The President's regulatory reforms are largely fictitious. What he intends to do about Social Security, perhaps our most pressing problem, is known only to himself and God ... The only viable solution to the Social Security mess is to phase out this boon-doggle as soon as possible before it does further damage to the economy as a whole ... The chances of this happening are two - slim and none."
Don Feder, editor of this relatively new, gutsy, perceptive and intelligent newsletter whose edit board can boast three non-liberal PhD's (believe it or not) and one of the few, if not the only, true free market members of Congress, Ron Paul, suggested to this writer to the effect that, "The election was indeed a mixed and confused bag. But the (knee-jerk) statist bias of the nation's media tends to obscure what little intelligence there is in politics."
If you like what he says, or, better yet, if you don't, write him at P.O. Box 761, West Springfield, Mass. 01090. If he's able to stay in business, "On Principle," he'll need your moral support - and then some.
'Shaft' Familiar to Taxpayers
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 12, 1982
Two widely divergent items were printed recently in this newspaper. Each offers a kind of window into the American public's mind, i.e., if the public, per se, can be said to have a mind. (It is reputed almost daily to have one, of course, but only an individual can have a mind, whether or not he or she chooses to use it.)
One of those items is a huge ad designed to sell "More" cigarettes, not only more of them, but that particular brand, "More." The ad measured 10 inches wide by 17 inches high. The left half is a tall, elongated package of cigarettes in red with two cigarettes partially protruding out of the top, inviting potential smokers to find it convenient to use "More." The real clincher is the right half of the ad. There is an equally elongated tall, slim, beautiful brunette with long, beautiful, flowing wavy hair with, you guessed it, a long cigarette in her fingers. She's wearing nicely tailored slacks which accentuate her long, no doubt beautiful legs, and long, slim high-heeled shoes.
Now get this: the only thing the ad says, in letters approximately one inch high, is: "It's more you." Nothing else, mind you, except, perhaps, the soft quiet smile on her face. Depending on what's already on your mind, one might say, her big, soft bedroom eyes. Oh yes, there is, of course, the brand name on the cigarette pack itself, "More," in letters one and two inches high. Clear at the bottom of the ad in small letters, perhaps one-half inch high, are these words: "It's long. It's slim. It's elegant." That's all, gentle reader, that's all the greedy capitalist pigs have to do in order to sell.
The ad reminded me ever-so-much of the current rash of political billboards and ads, with only the name of the candidate. Occasionally a photo appears, especially if he or she has a handsome smile, but because their faces don't appear on the ballot, photographs are used less and less. Sometimes a slogan of one or two or three word shoes up, such as "honesty and integrity" or even "responsive" which, like the cigarette ad, could mean "For Sale." But the bottom line is, of course, the lack of almost any content in the ad at all. By the way, have you noticed the Hollywood ads in the newspaper for movies? They hardly mention the content of the movies at all. One guesses they work, or the producers would change their superficial methods and approaches to advertising. Sort of makes one wonder what kind of thinking and what kind of attention-span the "public" schools are producing nowadays, doesn't it?
The second item to which I referred appeared in the newspaper lately in the popular comic strip, "Goosemeyer." He is a professional bureaucrat boss who goes around forever acting like the stereotype, tenured and unwitting one about whom we all joke. Goosemeyer's secretary is shown in the first section of this particular day's comic strip. She's reading the newspaper aloud to her boss: "The military just purchased a new $5,000,000 missile called "Shaft." Goosemeyer says, "That's a strange name." His secretary lays down the newspaper, looks up at Goosemeyer and says: "Not if you're a taxpayer."
I hope that you're a regular reader of this comic strip, because it has some good homespun philosophy in it, from time to time, as well as some great humor. However, I cite this particular episode in the light of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company's ad for "More" cigarettes for a very special reason, namely, the one so humorously expressed by Goosemeyer's secretary about the taxpayer getting "the shaft." The American taxpayer subsidizes the tobacco industry. It has for years. Remember? Now, were forced to subsidize ads AGAINST smoking. Egad!
Now then, whether you think that's only a little bit bad, or really bad, or gawdawful bad, you should consider something. J. Peter Grace, chief or W.R. Grace Co., pointed out the other day at the National Frozen Food Convention that, "If you tax something, you get more of it. The problem with the United States today is that we tax work, savings, capital, thrift and production. Then we subsidize non-work, welfare and consumption."
Perhaps subsidies are not all bad. Still, the suspicion lingers that maybe, just maybe, if the government stopped putting such a bottomless barrel subsidy on schooling we'd get less of it - and MORE education.
And, who knows? Maybe that way the ads for "More" cigarettes and "more" politics would plead, instead, for less of both. And Goosemeyer's secretary would have to "fight, or switch" - or get the shaft.
Russian Pipeline Deal Confusing
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 19, 1982
If you have been as confused as I have by the Russian pipeline deal to bring natural gas to Western Europe, then you surely have my sympathy because it is clearly the biggest East-West trade deal in history - and the most garbled.
Despite the fact that thousands of jobs in this country are at stake, we might want to pause from listening to the braying jackasses in Congress and in the news media, and think for a moment just where we may be going.
The Yamal pipeline involves 12 nations, billions of dollars in equipment sales for Western companies, and 120,000 workers in the U.S.S.R. alone. The Soviet pipeline is four times longer than the Alaskan pipeline - from Siberia's Urengoi gas fields to the Czech borders, then through West Germany, where it will plug into the systems of 10 Western European countries - with a Soviet dictator's fist on the faucet.
The U.S. Congress and the Reagan administration are, understandably, struggling with the pluses and minuses of the deal because the pipeline probably cannot be, or would not be, built without American technology and bargain-basement money credits. It may already be too late, but since import and export trade policy is so very vital to Idahoans, both the workers and the "worked," it should be absolutely fascinating to reconsider even at this late date.
Until I ran onto a perceptive article by Robert Bidinotto, I was at least torn between the usual "free trade" position of most libertarians on the one hand and the possibility of aiding and abetting our enemy (U.S.S.R.) on the other. While no one, of course, has a corner on infinite wisdom, this brilliant writer has the most cogent, and what seems to me, the best reasoned piece I've yet seen on the Russian pipeline.
Writing in the national newsletter, "On Principle," Bidinotto explains: "The Soviets, with a third of all known gas reserves, will pump 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas through the line annually, increasing European dependence on Soviet gas, from 9 percent of its yearly usage to 35 percent or more. The deal will also net the Soviets at least $10.7 billion per year in hard currency."
This "hard currency" is often more important to a country's survival, its economy and thus its ability to trade and compete than are its guns and ammunition. It has, for centuries, been one of the traditional tools or weapons of a country's foreign policy. It is especially so today.
According to Bidinotto, a consortium of Western European firms provided loans and credits, guaranteed by their governments, so that Russia could "buy" $15 billion in technology and materials from them. "Without these loans," he says, "the pipelines could not be built. Moscow, in turn, will construct the line, sell the gas to Western European firms for hard currency, then (in theory) repay the low-interest loans. We say "in theory" because Soviet Bloc nations already owe the West $80 billion in outstanding obligations."
What with all the multi-billion dollar U.S. loans to bankrupt Poland, Argentina, Mexico and a host of others, both Communist and non-Communist, one cannot be surprised at high interest rates and even higher quantities of paper money bogging down our own domestic economy. Small wonder both big labor unions and big businesses, as well as small ones, are in trouble. Yet they actually scream for government to "do more." That's seen as being positive, when "doing more" is exactly why the U.S. is in such trouble in the first place. Government has been "doing more," especially since our well-meaning President Franklin Roosevelt "did more" by recognizing the Soviet Union and getting us into World War II, many say, in order to get us out of the Great Depression. It did, however, stimulate the old economy. Arrauggh! Government is always, repeat always, willing to "do more," and make matters worse.
President Reagan is, I suppose, trying to "do the right thing," but the politicians abhor common sense, "Tip" O'Neill is hell-bent to say the government should "do more," while Reagan sometimes says they should do less.
All the while most libertarians argue for the "do more" pipeline. They claim it's merely free trade and individual rights. For example, the October 1982 issue of Inquiry magazine's editorial asks: "Should the U.S. government have the power to interfere with peaceful economic relations? ..." The libertarian Inquiry, by the way, is almost always red-hot for unlimited free trade and individual rights. I usually agree with them and still would like to ...
"But receiving stolen goods is not free trade," Bidinotto points out "and aiding and abetting criminals is not an individual right. One recalls that pre-Civil War plantation owners defended the slave trade in a remarkably similar fashion.
"When a hypocritical administration rationalization is the best argument offered by any ideological faction, our nation is in deep trouble." This is so, especially when the U.S. and its NATO allies loan money and furnish gas turbine engines or rotors, etc., without which the Soviet's pipeline cannot succeed. U.S.S.R. slave labor camps notwithstanding, jobs in our free society are also at stake. Reagan, no doubt, agonizes about unemployed American workers. But how can he (or we) justify the government "doing more" at $135 billion per year to arm and defend ourselves against the Russian madmen, when some even fear (certainly RR does) we must have the MX missile too, at another $100 billion, to defend against the same Soviets we're now trying to "do more" for? I wonder if it's not we ourselves who are mad. I'm just sorry space doesn't permit an in-depth discussion, here, of what Bidinotto entitled: "Consistency Down The Tube."
However, one observer has presented an intriguing suggestion. According to Bidinotto: "Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska thinks that if our NATO allies' commitments are so tenuous (e.g., Britain's anti-communist Margaret Thatcher, Socialist France's Mitterand; Germany and Italy are all getting pushy as heck for the U.S. to help with "their" depression-solving Soviet pipeline), then perhaps we should withdraw our American troops from Europe. This would force Europeans to fund their own defense and save us billions." (Moscow would have less cash, too, for war machines. And Americans would have cheaper interest rates.)
"And it would also help," suggests Bidinotto, "to end our sanctioning of the suicide of the West." |
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The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy
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