Ralph Smeed on Statism

Making Statism

Unpopular

Columns

Back

Foreign Ideas for a Campus

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 2, 1983

Happy New Year everybody. I have some really good news to tell you. In some ways it may sound a little strange and unbelievable, but it's true. At Texas A & M University there is a "Center for Education and Research In Free Enterprise."

It's not just a name-only tokenism, either.

Staffed with real professors with real PhD's, and all that stuff, the Center is making some waves in both the academic world and in the real world. The latter includes business, too, whose idea of "free" enterprise all too often seems to mean, really, "business" enterprise. There is, by the way, a real difference.

I am indebted to Dr. Robert Ring of Caldwell, a medical doctor friend of mine who has some interest in the subject of enterprise, for sending me a subscription to his Texas alma mater's news letter, "Pathfinder." It's headed up by a Dr. Svetozar Pejovich. I'm not sure what foreign nationality the director's family name indicates (Pejovich rhymes with mayo-vich) but the articles in his attractive, informative and unorthodox academic newsletter are even more "foreign" to a publication than one might expect to emerge from the typical Idaho college or university.

Consider some of the headlines or titles to a random sampling of articles in his Pathfinder. "Mistaken Remedies for Depression." This article outlines how business and government backed legislation in the 1930s to "raise prices and eliminate competition." Another headline reads, "Thinking the Unthinkable." Outlined therein is an explanation that criminal law originally emerged to deal with crimes of force and violence. "Gradually it grew, willy nilly," says the Texas A & M center's article, "to apply to behavior which involves no direct coercion of one person by another."

Under yet another headline, "Fear of Freedom", Pejovich's unusual newsletter goes on about capitalist acts between consenting adults: "On a more practical level, it is increasingly obvious that government's war on drug abuse is an expensive failure. The futile attempts to suppress the drug trade drain police resources away from combating murder, robbery and rape. Reported felonies per capita have risen more than three-fold since 1960, violent crime four-fold.

"The impotence of the law enforcement establishment on drugs incites a general contempt for the police. Enormous sums of drug money make bail and bribery easy. Law enforcement morale declines. Coercive crime mushrooms around the drug trade. It is time to restructure the market in drugs. Make criminals subject to the competition of legitimate businessmen."

Well, isn't that a strange comment? Yes, of course it is, but get the next one: "We can't even protect our kids from drugs in the government schools." (I'd like to suggest the author should have said that we can't protect our kids ESPECIALLY in government schools).

The headline on Pathfinder's page containing the above reads, "Guns and Drugs: Is Public Policy Really on The Side of the Angels?" When most on-campus publications are pushing more government the Texas center's article suggesting market alternatives is most unusual and, in my opinion, most welcome. This particular articles authored by Pejovich's perceptive editor, Morgan Reynolds. His final paragraph said, "Please do not misinterpret my remarks.
There is plenty of room for spirited debate about proper policy towards drugs and guns. The philosophical point that I insist on, however, is that morality is a human virtue - not a proper function of (T)he (S)tate."

On a final note, for now, on morality, Dr. Pejovich's Pathfinder says, "... that Henry Ford became a multi-millionaire by introducing inexpensive cars while Henry Royce, builder of Rolls Royce, never even became (once) a millionaire." The newsletter went on to say further that: "Chrysler Corporation has lost $3.4 billion over the last three years."

Well, it's easy to see where Pejovich and his parade of pathfinders are coming from, morally. The "foreign" sounds they make seem to suggest that our government's "Bail out" of Chrysler (for morality purposes) just goes to prove the Pathfinder article's point, namely, that morality is not a proper function of The State.

Mostly what they need to do is stop CAUSING unemployment and pursuing victimless crimes.

Lottery Idea Foolish

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 9, 1983

At least one large Idaho daily newspaper has come out editorially endorsing the idea of a government lottery as a revenue producer. Another large daily paper, the Idaho Press-Tribune, is about to do likewise, perhaps this very weekend. And, believe it or not, this last one in spite of my great, wise and vigorous urgings against their making such a foolish endorsement. What follows are some rambling reasons why.

One paper says they "support the idea of starting a state-run lottery for Idaho's financially ailing state government. Properly controlled, a lottery can be a valuable new source of state funds." Hogwash, I say. A lottery, which is, of course, an intellectually dishonest euphemism for the word gambling, is not a new "source" for anything, unless as proof that government can only redistribute wealth from the poor. Like their Social Security funds are already gambled away.

It is not "valuable" either, in any productive or job creative sense, nor is it new. Like booze it's been around for centuries and, if the damn fool governments of the world don't blow us all to smithereens beforehand, both booze and gambling will be around for thousands of years more. But it's this intellectual dishonesty that I'd like to highlight. The fact that the editorial word-mongers label it "lottery," instead of gamble, is only the first rung of the shaky semantic ladder. The root word "lot" in lottery should rather be replaced by the word "little," making a much more accurate, if new, word - "little-ry," because that's more like what you get from gambling, i.e., darned little.

Aside from the fact that it'd require a state constitutional amendment to legalize gambling, and aside from at least one editorialist's: "legislators are waltzing around the issue because of potential opposition from religious voters" (as if atheist voters were opposed it'd be okay) the idea's bad in and of itself. For example, it makes the gawdawful high cost of too much government even easier. Also, it's something for nothing. At least it's the appearance of "something" and the appearance of "nothing." Neither is true. The fact is that most newspapers are politically liberal and thus tend almost to worship the govern-mentality concept which the lottery would be. Government problem solving today has become nearly mind-boggling, first at the federal level (we're soon to be facing a $200 billion annual shortage) and now a bit less at the state level. Hey!

There's an idea. Why not have a big federal-run lottery and do away with state taxes and federal taxes altogether?

Meantime back to the intellectual dishonesty. It may tend, in some cases at least, to explain the news media's support of government-institutionalized and government-owned gaming. (Isn't that a nice new Nevadan-eze euphemism?)
Gaming, of course, puts government in a hypocritical position since it does allow selected "licensees" - who give government a cut of the take - to conduct "private" but not free market, gaming businesses. It's still gambling, but it puts enormous revenues into state-governments. Remember, now, Idaho's government schools get the lion's share of the huge whiskey tax. So, fellow blue-noses, let's not be exclusively hard on the gambler crowd lest we expose our own sacred cow's soft underbelly.

In Nevada, virtually all types of gambling are legal. Recently gambling was "legalized" in Atlantic City, N.J., because they were, like Idaho, hard up for money for more government. Still, repeat, still, the liberals in America, headed up nationally now by House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, the biggest financially irresponsible leader in this century - still - refuse to see too much government as the problem. They claim to bleed for the poor all the while raising their own salaries by virtue of a dirty, rotten, intellectually dishonest bill (but a very legal one which, by the way, passed) drafted in such a way that your congressman had to vote "yes" on a 15 percent congressional pay raise in order that those same politicians would not thereby automatically get a 27 percent pay raise. Yet the poor seem to eat it up - else why do the liberal politicians keep getting re-elected in the big-city states?

"The rather strange implication," says Robert Ringer in his best-selling book, Restoring the American Dream, "is that gambling is immoral unless the government is involved.

"Since every person who gambles loses money in the long run, I guess the reasoning is that citizens are protected so long as the government is the one who ends up with their money."

And last of all one lottery editorialist gloated: "Unlike taxes, lotteries are voluntary." So let's have a voluntary free lunch? Wow. Is a government money scheme "voluntary" when its umbilical cord if not its very life is dependent on politics?

A late, great political scientist surely answered this question when he said: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

Do you know who that great political scientist was? Groucho Marx. That's who. And it's too bad Groucho isn't writing editorials on voluntarism for some Idaho newspapers today. If he were, perhaps we'd be better able to compete with the ideas of another Marx, named Karl, who also had a rather odd idea of things "voluntary." HIS ends, too, justified the means.

We're Giving Ourselves the Shaft

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 16, 1983

It has been nicely said that, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Well, certainly no one can accuse the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce of being too consistent in matters governmental. Consider what their bright, young executive director, Roger Horton, until now no lover of today's "Big Brother" governmentality, made public last week for his board.

First, the Chamber board endorsed the greatest and oldest something-for-nothing (SFM) "drug" known to modern man, that is, a government-run lottery (read, monopoly) for the purpose of "raising" revenue. I put quotes around the term because a lottery doesn't raise anything. It merely shifts the lready-nearly-back-breaking tax burden off onto the dull-witted and the stupid. At least it's shifted to those members of the latter group who are semi-productive. Those who are not at least semi-productive are mostly on welfare already.

Especially burdened are the retired persons, by the federal government's SFN plan. It already has them in the gambling business - involuntarily. I refer, of course to the government's printing press money that's causing inflation. The printing press, too, is an old SFN idea of many governments. These ideas run clear back into biblical times. Remember dross in the silver, and later, coin clipping? Won't blind faith in government ever be exposed?

Making small grooves on the edge of our silver coins was an ingenious way of making clipping visible and exposing it when somebody, usually the government, sometimes called a king, would call in all the coins of the realm. They'd slice off (read, clip) a small shaving of silver from the edge of each coin. Then they'd return the coins. It worked, too, for awhile. But now our government seeks to outlaw more and more cash transactions by melting down the silver coins and substituting "sandwich" coins which are too cheap for even the government's "thieves" to clip.

In their defense, one has to sympathize with the Chamber of Commerce business representatives. They have a myriad of taxes and onerous rules and regulations which take more incentive out of their efforts. Business is already more-competitive-than-you-think in their efforts to be productive and make a decent profit. The downtown Caldwell crusade for renewal, for example, has been up and down for years. Recently, thanks to some new merchants and a few, older, more optimistic downtown businessmen, it's up again. There's new and hospitable music all over the outdoor core area and serious talk of a downtown old-time trolley car to squire patrons around the historic part of our fair city soon to be 100 years old.

But their talk about relief from taxes by a government operated monopoly-lottery and the optimism for yet ANOTHER layer of statism goes into orbit. "It's voluntary," they bleat. They justify what they don't believe in for themselves - gambling. And with lousy odds, to boot. Odds far worse than those paid out in Reno and Las Vegas. The Chamber of Caldwell has given up the battle, having lost it to the one-man one-vote idea which the famous Frenchman, Alexis de Toqueville, said over 100 years ago would kill the American dream. Said he, "America is great because America is good ... as soon as the people discover they can vote themselves largesse (he meant a free lunch) out of the public treasury, the system will collapse." It is in that very process today, my friends. Right now.

Still, they say to me, "Well, wise guy, what do you suggest?" I say it's very simple. You merely demand less government - and mean it. I've said that before, so I won't bore you again, here, except to say businessmen are so busy and have been for years, going to Boise and Washington, D.C., for this or that government scheme that they see it as a way of life. The opposite of this, a free market, is out of their vocabulary or their ability to articulate.

There are other ways to give ourselves the shaft, but one in particular comes to mind just now. Each time a business or professional man goes out and works himself into a big sweat, often at big risk, then produces a substantial improvement to renew his downtown store (or even his home or his office) the local assessor runs right out and PENALIZES him, after which the Chamber board suggests a lottery as a remedy for our problems. Egad!

Oh, sure, the assessor and his aides are just doing their duty, for which they are paid. I agree, and this is in no way to criticize those well-meaning government employees. One supposes the German soldiers in Hitler's army were being paid, too, albeit smaller wages, no doubt, to run the gas chambers for that country's entrepreneurial class - the unfortunate Jews.

Perhaps that may sound a little harsh on the Caldwell Chamber board. If it does, I apologize, for they, too, are mostly well-meaning. It's just that almost nobody these days wants, and believes there's a Chinaman's chance of getting less government. This writer is one small voice trying, actually, to sell that optimistic idea.

Another one who's trying, and succeeding, is the bright and ever-so-perceptive Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. They're pushing a better "drug" that SFN, or, even, LSD. It's Dr. E.S. "Steve" Savas' new book entitled "How to Shrink Government - Privatizing the Public Sector." David Stockman says: "Every taxpayer and elected official should read this book." It's available from the above institute at 20 West 40th St., N.Y., N.Y. 10018. Costs $15.

Methinks the Caldwell Chamber board should risk even drug-type withdrawal symptoms and get hooked on books instead of SFN or LSD or a government-run lottery.

If the $15 book is too big a gamble, my Chamber friends, for goodness sake call me and I'll get you one. I don't want the government to get into book-making, too.

Nothing Is Replacing the Old $

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 23, 1983

It is devastatingly true that most of the news about budget matters today, both state and federal, will be met with a ho-hum or a quick switch of the TV to a soap opera or a popular ball game.

Furthermore, it is no less true that government budgets affect you devastatingly, gentle reader, whether you like it or not. That's the good news. The bad news is that most people assume somebody else is minding the store, adequately. But they're NOT.

So what do we do if that's true? Well, it's not all that complicated, but you must do a small, repeat small, amount of homework and then act. Fortunately Congressman Ron Paul, a friend of mine and a medical doctor from Texas, has co-authored a book entitled, "The Case For Gold." Paul is no ordinary politician. He's one of those unorthodox Texans who's trying desperately to get a message across to enough Americans in time to protect them and the country from the ordinary politicians. His book is one of his many really quite successful efforts in that direction. Consider a few of his book's clever, clear and down-to-earth suggestions.

To begin with Paul says that some basic and easy to understand definition is called for concerning money, so he calls on none other than the great Thomas Jefferson.

Page one begins with: "In 1784 the debate over the money issue, Jefferson said, 'If we determine that a dollar shall be our unit, we must say with precision what a dollar is.' Our Founding Fathers followed that advise and in 1792 the dollar was defined as 371 4-16 grams of silver.

"From 1792 until Aug. 15, 1971, (12 years ago) the dollar was defined as a precise weight of either silver or gold. Since 1971, the dollar has had no definition (officially the definition was not legally rejected entirely. For more than 10 years the dollar has been nothing more than a piece of paper with government ink on it.

"More and more Americans have come to recognize this, and a loss of confidence in the currency has paralleled this recognition. The monetary authorities say it is unnecessary to have a precise definition of the dollar, claiming: "A dollar is whatever it will buy."

As an interesting aside, a good Rotarian friend of mine, Col. Lynn Spillman (U.S. Army, Ret'd) made the same erroneous claim 10 to 12 years ago about the government's then newly minted "sandwich" coins. After some year's Spillman finally got the message - in spades. He's been collecting coins as a hobby, silver coins, by the way, and old antique cars. The value of both goes up as the government which he so dearly loves, and has confidence in (Lynn is a red hot Democrat) continues to print paper money and mint "sandwich" coins, thus sucking his retirement funds right out of his savings account.

Forgive me this little digression, but I cite the example in order to demonstrate that right here at home, decent, responsible and otherwise intelligent citizens (and Spillman is all of those, plus he's a fine patriotic gentleman and good addition to his community) get hooked on the still popular "disease" of govern-mentality.

Now back to Ron Paul's "Case For Gold," and what you can do about the monetary muddle. Since the government's monetary authorities claim that, "a dollar is whatever it will buy," the medical doctor now turned monetary doctor and author, goes on: "This being the case, and the fact that the dollar buys less every day, and approximately one-third of what it bought in 1971, the dollar today is undefinable, and its value (merely) relative. It should be obvious that this loss of definition of what the monetary unit is, is directly related to the financial and economic problems we have today."

In the foreword to his little book published by the prestigious CATO Institute, 224 Second St. S.E. "Insane City," D.C. 20003, this super-intelligent and communicative Texas politician says: "The stage is now set; monetary order is of the utmost importance. Conditions are deteriorating and the solutions proposed to date have only made things worse. Although the solution is readily available to us, powerful forces, whose interests are served by continuation of the present system, cling tenaciously ..."

Write to the CATO Institute, my friends, and buy a copy of Ron Paul's book. Find out what's going on and what you yourself can do about it. Then do it. Because I'm getting tired of trying to do your homework and mine, too.

And, who knows (?) you might even sell your used copy of "The Case For Gold" to my intelligent and concerned friend, Spillman, who reads and collects used books, too.

I just hope he collects this one.

CIA Probable Cause of World War III

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 30, 1983

The College of Idaho was host Wednesday to a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief John Stockwell of Austin, Texas, attended Texas University, then joined the U.S. Marine Corps. After a successful and long term there, he said he was recruited to join the CIA principally because he was raised in Africa where the spy bureau thought they needed to place some of their bureaucrats.

Stockwell said that most of the information that the CIA employees sent into higher echelons of the agency and the White House was a "stacked deck" and enabled those in high places to interpret the information to conclude whatever preconceived notions they wanted. Indeed, upon occasion his department was asked to come up with a "case" to justify asinine actions in foreign countries. Much of this because the department's bosses wanted to be able to "sell" to higher authorities, regardless of the facts.

The audience of about 125 persons paid $3.50 per seat (students $3) in Boone Science Hall lecture room. It had been advertised for the C of I's Jewett Auditorium, but the smaller audience who showed up was thought to be appropriate if moved to the lecture hall. And it was. I mention this because the questions put to what has come to be called a CIA "whistle-blower" (there have been others) were overwhelmingly friendly and supportive of Stockwell's general anti-CIA story.

The audience appeared to be about half students and half adults from off campus. Unfortunately, as is often the case, there was no articulate spokesman from the opposite side of Stockwell's story. Especially this is so in controversial matters and few are moreso than CIA, especially on most campuses all across America. It's too bad, too, because Stockwell raised what I thought were some excellent examples of what appeared to be at best - stupid, and at worse, unnecessary deaths of large numbers of people, mostly in foreign lands, of course, where their primary responsibility lies.

And lies and lies and lies, according to the ex-spy, which (lying) seemed to him to be about all the CIA was engaged in during his many years of tenure in the organization. He said they lied to the American public, Congress and nearly everyone who matters except, one supposes, to the Communists. Soviet types and others with whom spies must keep their credibility in order to stay in business will seldom tolerate liars. Maybe it's because they're both in the same business.

Stockwell, as I mentioned, raised several good points, a few I greatly enjoyed, such as "the CIA exists to justify the expenditure of over $200 billion a year on defense." Another claim he made was that the CIA has untold thousands of employees and spends, unaccounted for, untold billions of dollars most of which is wasted at best. At worst the CIA causes a probability of World War III.

Hey, that's OUR side that he's talking about, gentle reader. That's us (U.S.). And to some extent, at least, he may be right. At least that's partly what my friend, Victor Marchetti, one of the early day whistle-blowers, seems to think. His book "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" was my first exposure to some credible witness in this arena.

I thought it was unfortunate that Stockwell claimed President Reagan was on record, before he became president, telling a newsman: "It's too bad we can't introduce botulism (disease) into the food of the poor." He further claimed Reagan said, relative to the student riots at Kent State University, "If there must be bloodshed then let it begin here."

Now then, I don't believe that. In jest or out of context, maybe. But I intend to investigate it a bit myself. Meantime, I do believe the ex-spy when he says the CIA is a massive bureaucracy causing trouble trying desperately to justify its existence for its own cancerous-like power and gargantuan budget. I believe him on that matter because that's what most of them do.

What I do not understand, however, and what I asked the handsome, soft-spoken, articulate and seemingly sincere former government employee, during the question period and afterward is this: "You have a good point, Stockwell. You may well be right on. But how does that make the CIA any different than almost every other government bureau in the whole damn federal bureaucracy?"

For example, the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), etc., etc., ad infinitum. Almost all are arrogant and arbitrary to those over whom they exercise power. And Stockwell suggested we vote for "peace-loving" politicians. Egad.

Oh yes, Stockwell says that we've been brainwashed in our grade schools to think capitalism, a system which (he says) is based on greed, is all good and the Communists all bad. He didn't offer any opinions on Communism in his lecture, but if he doesn't know any more about that then he does about capitalism - well, maybe Stockwell should head up the U.S. Department of Education, then maybe he'd "blow the whistle" on THEM.

Certainly it'd take a man with his rather obvious ability to bastardize the word capitalism any worse than the government education bureau already has.

Ask for Moratorium on Politics

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 6, 1983

Not long ago a new state senator, Terry Reilly, D-Nampa, proposed an immediate moratorium on foreclosures of farm loans made possible through the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA). This government agency guarantees and otherwise makes possible farm and ranch loans by extending the "credit" of the U.S. government.

I put quotes around the term credit because it is used in a marketplace context by Reilly in his proposal above. Such a context is grossly misleading. It's also used in such a context in a Press-Tribune editorial (Feb. 2, 1983) criticizing Reilly's proposed moratorium.

This is a kind of word-game in which the players confuse both the spectators and the players by sort of comparing apples with oranges. Or, said perhaps better, by comparing apples with lemons, that is, private sector apples with government sector lemons.

The editorial quotes Reilly as saying: "FmHA is now ... financing 4,630 Idaho farmers with a current delinquency rate of 27 percent or 1,250 (bad) loans." The editorial agreed with Reilly, to a certain extent, calling for "a break" to be given to those borrowing from the government agency. "But a blanket moratorium is not the answer," says the fairly conservative newspaper. It concludes, "If FmHA has a pre-foreclosure policy, it should be based on the potential for realizing the delinquent debt." If it can't be viewed as having a good chance, then loans should be foreclosed. Inveighed the editorial "... delaying the inevitable serves no one's interest."

It's hard to say who is the most visionary: the super-liberal Democrat senator, Reilly, and his financial compassion with somebody else's (not his) money, or the oft-times conservative newspaper.

Get this paragraph in the critical editorial: "In a sense, in fact, a loan from the federal government should carry with it an even more compelling reason for paying it back (than from a private loan company) because it is a loan from all of us to one of our neighbors. We loaned the money in good faith; it should be paid back in the same light." Egad!

Now then, this is not to condemn this fine conservative newspaper for supporting frugality, thrift and fiscal integrity, nor is it to condemn freshman liberal Sen. Reilly's financial compassion, but good goshamighty. Isn't SOME consistency called for? By someone?

Consider something my friends: If somebody took your money at the point of a gun (taxes) or at the point of a mouth (politics), then they lost it, or at least 27 percent of it, on a roulette wheel in Las Vegas, would you say, as the editorial did, "We loaned it in good faith"? Probably not.

Consider something else. If the past half-century's administrations in Washington, D.C., the overwhelming majority of which were (are) super-liberal Democrats such as the extremely sincere Reilly, used all those years pleading, begging, screaming, cajoling and howling for more government agencies and bureaus to loan and give "our" money and credit to those who, by definition, had to prove they could not pay it back in order to get the loan in the first place, (forgive me, I know the sentence is a long one) but wouldn't you ask for an immediate moratorium on politics-as-usual? I'd hope so.

But consider something else. So far as I can see both the newspaper and Reilly are probably sincere and otherwise intelligent (some doubt may obtain in the above case). If one uses the editorial "we," then we have loaned and declared a moratorium already on funds, or, some would say, bailed out, New York City, Penn Central railroad, Lockheed, Chase Manhattan and Midland banks who themselves had money loaned to Panama, hence the Panama pay-away treaty.

"We" loaned, and continued to loan, to Argentina, Brazil, Arab states, Mexico, Israel, Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia (et al) ad nauseum. There are also many African nations (so-called) who assassinate both leaders and followers and change names and ideologies so fast one can hardly keep track.

We even loan some to friends. There's Finland, South Africa, Rhodesia and Taiwan who tend to pay it back. Then we do our darndest to kick the latter in the butt, while declaring a moratorium on the others. Most of the others have collectivist governments, by the way.

Between Reilly's and the newspaper's position, just now, I'd have to opt for Reilly's. Why? Because there's a root meaning behind the word moratorium - mort. It's the Latin word for death, as in death-wish, for that just may be what we've got - a death wish.

By that I mean, Reilly may be closer to spotlighting the truth, even if for the wrong reasons.

Let's Don't Sell Steve Symms Short

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 13, 1983

The Ada County Republicans meet for lunch in the gold Room of the Statehouse each Wednesday while the Legislature is in session. They have a speaker on some topic of interest during the lunch hour and last week they invited me. The title of my talk was announced in both houses of the Legislature: "Whatever Happened to Steve Symms?"

The reason I chose the title was, of course, two fold: (1) It would get some attention and (2) because some Idahoans seem to think our junior U.S. senator, Steve Symms, has "sold out." Let me hasten to add that I don't think this is necessarily so, but they think this partly because Symms voted for the recent highway tax increase often called the "Five Cents a Gallon Tax" bill. (There's much more to it than that, by the way, but it was quite popular with many non-truckers).

Truckers claim the bill will raise their cost of operating each truck more than $5,000 per year and what with the highly competitive status of trucks, especially independent truckers most of whom are thinly financed, that could turn out to be disastrous. Especially they're angry since Idaho's other three members of the congressional delegation, McClure, Hansen and Craig, voted against the highway bill. The truckers and their friends are thus furious at the former apple growing junior senator.

Now then, I noted to the GOP members and guests in the Gold Room that Symms had made some other bad votes, I thought, namely, to raise the ceiling on the absolutely horrendous national debt in almost his first vote upon entering his new post in the US. Senate. This was especially bad after his eight years in Congress vigorously opposing several such lifts to the lid on the spiraling debt. There have been a few other significant votes of his with which I vigorously disagree. Still, the fact of the matter is, the overwhelming majority of Symms' votes and speeches to his colleagues over the 10 years he's been in Congress have not only been proper, but just exactly what he said he'd do. Thank Heaven he's fairly predictable, and that's usually to his everlasting credit, so let's don't sell him short.

Well, I went on to suggest to the Ada County Republicans that there may well be no way to reduce government, both state and federal (they all claim to favor that), EXCEPT to introduce what I like to call market alternatives. That is to say, instead of government alternatives to problem solving, let's abandon these "free lunch" government schemes with which politicians are prone to buy votes. Symms, believe it or not, has said this in debate.

Let's open up the marketplace and get rid of the politicians who promise in each election to bring Utopia to the pee-pull if they will just go to the polls and "vote for me all ye who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you succor and rest." Politicians can give nothing, but the lemming-type voters fall for the promises year after year, campaign after campaign. It gets worse every year and now it's about to collapse because the government treasury is bar, like merely the interest on the national debt is all but drowning the rest of the big government budget.

While I may at once be the junior senator's biggest fan and his biggest critic I must say with enthusiasm and sincerity Symms is one of the few members of Congress who understands that the major distinction between our system and Russia's system is private ownership. The roads and bridges which are said to be in a deplorable state of repair are, with few exceptions, all under government ownership.

Symms' reasoning: "Since highways are not privately owned, it therefore must be the government's proper job to restore and keep them in good operating order, else we can never produce our way out of the " 'free lunch' mess we're in caused by politicians."

Symms may be right, too. Still, in order to make at least some common sense out of the questions one must make some assumptions: (1) Assuming the highways are, indeed, in bad shape, and (2) assuming politicians and politics will not soon change, then somebody must pay the bill. Symms indicates, in such a case then, House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill and his labor union pals will have their pound of flesh. There is a Davis-Bacon provision in the highway repair bill forcing highway contractors to pay roughly twice the market rate per hour to construction workers. This also cuts in half the number of employees and jobs the bill might otherwise have paid for.

Another bad provision of the highway bill is that 20 percent of the so-called user-fee tax goes to the big cities mass transit. Not for highways at all. This is so because the political clout is just overwhelmingly in the hands of big spending, big city, big state politicians.

A bad bill. Admittedly a bad bill for these and other reasons, but that's politics. Still, Symms seems to be asking: "Where else and how else are we going to get the money for highways - the life-blood of a mostly super competitive transportation system. And will the job get done otherwise before the roads break up and go to pot?"

No, Symms hasn't sold out. Neither has our senior U.S. senator, Jim McClure, a good and long-time friend who voted for the damn fool Davis-Bacon Act in the first place - for reasons best known only to him. But he's oh so right most of the time.

Still, something is going hay wire. So I suggested to the Ada County GOP that at least one thing seemed unmistakably clear in favor of the Republicans; namely, that Idaho was lucky to have two first class men in the U.S. Senate. I'm proud to say, again, that each is a good friend of mine, and that both are capable and consistent.

At least they were when they lived here in Idaho among their peers. But they have a new peer group now - in Washington, D.C.

Capitalism Emerges at U of I

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 20, 1983

The state of Idaho suffers from a shortage of money, they say. Some call it a shortfall. Others call it a lack of adequate income. Still others see it merely as a modern "Tower of Babel."

One after the other, from too much spending to too few taxes comes the pitch, but seldom does the term less government, that is to say, really less government, get a fair hearing. Fortunately there is another side to the story. A new term is here, it's called market alternatives.

Unfortunately one seldom hears the latter term from college professors from whom ideas tend to get their credibility, but last week was different. Professors John Wenders and Katherine Hofmann, both unusual, but both economists from the University of Idaho at Moscow, gave a one and one-half day seminar for business executives at the Red Lion Riverside. It was entitled "Defending the Market."

The seminar lectures were the brain child of Wenders, formerly of Arizona State University where he specialized in the public utility arena and where he gave high priced and highly successful seminars on "government regulations." His general thrust is to the effect that usually the only regulations that work are those that the free market would have accomplished anyway if only it had been given a chance.

The lectures were made additionally meaningful and interesting by the commentary of Professor Hofmann, an enthusiastic and capable defender of the market system and recipient of the prestigious A.B. Davis award at the U of I last year for free enterprise, research and exposition.

While it's impossible to sketch adequately the day and a half seminar in this short space, there was scarcely any function of government, in the opinion of Dr. Wenders, that could not be better performed, for less money and in a more fair and equitable manner than could or has been done by government. He didn't mention police and fire departments, but, then, neither did anyone raise those particular questions - so convincing and carefully constructed was their "defending the market" system.

The University of Idaho (U of I) is to be most highly congratulated for thus launching in this area their economics department's "Chair of Business Enterprise" within which both Wenders and Hofmann operate, i.e., do research and teach. I might hasten to add that these two bright and articulate teachers are not the only fine free market private ownership oriented professors at the U of I's economics department but they are, indeed, unusual and praiseworthy for wanting to get some "visibility" in the Boise area. More so because the latter is where the honey-pot Legislature convenes annually to screw-up-the-market in new and innovative and ever-so-asinine ways and to keep others in the ever-shrinking private sector from correcting those errors.

Consider, for example, an excellent statement which appeared in one of the U of I chair's recent publications: "... the study of economic theory was the study of people running around buying, trading, and producing things without permission. That, after all, is the essence of free market economics and free market capitalism." Such is an example of what Wenders and Hofmann tended to say at Boise, in last week's seminar for business executives. Further, it's not only typical, but it's terribly, terribly long overdue - as well as praiseworthy.

Another, if slightly higher ranking, member of the U of I team deserving great praise for some great perception, perseverance and downright academic courage is University President Richard Gibb who started Wenders' and Hofmann's chair of "capitalism" in the first place.

Gibb started the chair three or four years ago with, one must assume, full knowledge that U.S. Sen. Steve Symms (then president of the U. of I. Alumni Association) was actually kicked out back in 1969 as alumni president for advocating just such a chair. That took real guts for Gibb whether you realize it or not, especially since only one, repeat one, U of I professor stood up publicly in 1969 for free expression. He condemned the Symms ouster. That fine professor, by the way, was from their chemistry department, so I'm told, and was known there as a super-liberal. So much for capitalism's emergence, finally, at the U of I.

I mention the latter term, "super-liberal," here, as an aside, also, since Press-Tribune columnist Sam Lang, wrote to say that when I used the term, recently, to describe State Sen. Terry Reilly, D-Nampa, that it was a sort of cheap "name-calling" trick.
Well, it ain't so, Sam. Your political myopia is showing. I like the tall, affable Reilly. But I do think it's curious that you think calling him a "super-liberal" is all that bad, as a kind of "name-calling" (your word) when I use the term. I don't even see it as necessarily bad, except considering their big-government loving style, to have another Democrat in the Legislature.

Heckfire, my friend Sam, you were a college professor once. Consider something. Do you think it would have been "name-calling" if I had called you a "super-liberal professor" back when so many of your professor-colleagues, whose label you proudly wore (as Reilly wears the Democrat label), were so damn "liberal?"

Something's Haywire at Home

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 27, 1983

Readers of this column are often treated with examples and comment on the news media's overwhelming bias, most of it in a left-wing (read, socialistic) direction. Such is still the case. But rare though it may be, exceptions do sometimes occur and a big one just did.

In fact, TWO did. The National Council of Churches (NCC) came in for a stinging indictment by way of the January 1983 issue of the Reader's Digest. The ever-so-critical article leaned especially hard on their penchant for Communist sympathizing. They zeros in on Marxist terrorist financing efforts of the NCC and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in foreign countries. The story was entitled: "Do You Know Where Your Church Offerings Go?" The sub-title was more explicit: "You'd better find out - because they may be supporting revolution instead of religion." The story then went on to demonstrate that that was precisely what both councils of churches were doing and, further, that it was bad.

If it comes as no surprise that the Reader's Digest would publish an article of left-leaning organizations such as these (NCC and WCC), then what follows should come as a man-bites-dog type of surprise. Namely, that CBS-TV's super-popular and left-loving prime time show, "60 Minutes," would even do a conservative segment, but it did. Most of that one hour was a shocking expose' of almost the exact proportion of the Digest's against the two councils of churches.

In fact, Morley Safer, who did most of the show's interviewing, could have almost been an anti-Communist (believe it or not) so severe and penetrating was the thrust of his investigative reporting. The title of his TV inquiry into the two huge religious organizations was, "The Gospel According to Whom?"

Even the national media's number one watchdog, the conservative "Accuracy in Media (AIM)" which is almost always super critical of the three major TV networks, was applauding CBS and "60 Minutes." Said, "These two ecumenical organizations have been attacked many times for nurturing Marxist propaganda and even giving financial assistance to Marxist terrorists. However (until now) this was not considered to be new by Big Media." But "60 Minutes" is big media, in spades. And they did, indeed, consider the NCC and WCC too far left for even CBS's usually knee-jerk liberal view of the world. So my hat's off to both these media organizations for their substantial exposure (at long last) of left-wingers. That's a welcome switch.

Now then, space limitations here prevent many details of the "60 Minutes" attack on the National and World Council church organizations, as told by CBS and the Digest. But lest you think all that left-liberal and Communist sympathy (NCC and WCC almost never criticize the Communists or leftists) comes only from churches in far off New York or Geneva, I've got news for you. It's right here at home. Maybe, gentle reader, even in YOUR own local church.

I want to emphasize there are vast numbers of great, sincere and dedicated people in all the churches, no doubt, and, further, that this is not to engage in guilt by association or "McCarthy tactics" as has so often been claimed by liberals to silence their critics. It is to say that it's not only charity that begins at home - so should common sense and responsibility. This includes us, in Caldwell.

Consider something: Back in the late 1960s Steve Symms and I tried to get our own Presbyterian Church to withdraw from the NCC and WCC but we failed miserably, not because there were Communist sympathizers in our church - not at all. We merely protested our church's dull-witted support of organizations who did sympathize.

Along about that same time Bob Nicholes Oil Co. sponsored a national news commentator on KCID radio. The conservative newsman broadcast that the national Methodist Church's youth magazine was supporting left-wing or Communist sympathizing articles and or opinion. So what happened right here in Ye Old Caldwell Towne? Well, I'll tell you. Nicholes received in the mail some of his company's credit cards cut into pieces by his customers, with notes to cancel their (presumably Methodist's) fuel accounts because of what the anti-NCC commentator said. He was indeed critical of the National Methodist youth magazines, but apparently too far ahead of the local Methodists who pay for it.

I myself attended a lecture at the local Methodist church, three or four years ago, during which an influential lay leader, who had just returned from their group's trip to Red China, spoke ever so glowingly of China's Communist system. "Chairman Mao is a messiah," she said three times during her lecture. I took that to mean he was a messiah to the Chinese, and not to the Methodist lay-lady herself. Oddly enough, however, she had no criticism at all of the socialist-communist system responsible for the intentional mass slaughter of tens of millions of its citizens. But the weirdest was yet to come.

The obviously sincere, if naive, lay-lady Methodist, who was from out of state, by the way, delighted in her enthusiastic portrayal to the Caldwell audience of China's socialist system. "So you can see," she explained, "why it compares much more favorably than capitalism, for example, in South Africa." Now then, as you probably know, South Africa is not capitalist, at least in the proper sense of the word. Certainly it is not market capitalism, but rather fascist in the classical sense, that is, largely private ownership but government-controlled. Its union-dominated apartheid government is lousy and repressive to ethnic minorities, but it does not slaughter masses of people. Egad!

I wrote later to ask the influential lay-lady leader how and where she came by her "definitions" and if she realized what a gross strangulation she was applying to the term capitalism. She didn't answer. I hasten to add that this is not to suggest Caldwell Methodists or the obviously NCC-type lay-lady are Communists. Not at all. I know a lot of Methodists. They're kind, sincere, honest citizens and they live right here in Caldwell, not in some far-off place. But something is haywire, folks, here at home. For example:

The Reader's Digest quotes Methodist David Jessup, who works for the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education. He documented $442,000 sent over two years by Methodists to Soviet-support groups in Cuba, Latin America and Asia, as well as to violence-prone fringe groups in the U.S. He also chronicled large sums of money similarly given to Marxist causes by Presbyterians, Episcopalians and the United Church of Christ.

If you don't believe the usually liberal "60-minutes" CBS-TV commentators, as this column has for years been wont to suggest, until now at least, then get a copy of the January Reader's Digest and read their six pages for yourself.

Then you might want to phone the capitalist, Bob Nicholes, and ask him how you could help get his radio program back. Better yet, ask him how you can get one of his credit cards. Use it. If you don't like his capitalism you could send his card (your money) to your worst enemy - that seems to be what most of the churches are up to.

Rules of Revolt in Effect Now

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 6, 1983

Fifty years ago today (March 6, 1983) there came a scary announcement: "All Caldwell banks close for 10 days." That was before ever-so-many of you young people were even born.

It was the year of "bank holidays" a term with which young people are, understandably not very familiar. But those who are somewhat with it tend to say, "It can't happen here." Well, I hope they are right, but I ran across another item in the January issue of the Caldwell Elk's Lodge bulletin with almost that very subtitle: "Who said it can't happen here."
But it did not reinforce my hope. Here's why:

The message their little newsletter, "The Elk's Call," had on its front page was so penetrating, so pungent and so pertinent in today's insane scheme of public policy that I'm going to risk irritating the public opinion tribal chiefs in Idaho. I'm going to share it with you right here and now.

The headline read: "Communist Rules of Revolt Seem To Be In Effect Now," with a subhead reading, "The following was clipped from the bulletin of a (Panama) Canal Zone Elk's Lodge. Who said it can't happen here?"

Here goes the text: In May, 1919, at Dusseldorf, Germany, Allied forces captured a very significant document; (entitled) 'Communist rules for revolution.' That was 64 years ago and while it has little to do, except indirectly, with a bank holiday in America 50 years ago, it does have to do with the familiar phrase, "It can't happen here - the people would vote it out."

The Elk's message continued; "As you read these rules now, 63 years later, keep in mind what you are reading and hearing every day via our news media." (Comes now the actual 1919 rules):

"A: Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial; destroy their ruggedness.

"B: Get control of all means of publicity, thereby:

"1. Get people's minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays, and other trivialities.

"2. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.

"3. Destroy the peoples faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule and obloquy.

"4. Always preach true democracy, but seize power as fast and ruthlessly as possible.

"5. By encouraging government extravagance, destroy it's credit, produce fear of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.

"6. Promote unnecessary strikes in industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of the government toward such disorders.

"7. By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues of honesty and sobriety.

"C: Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext with a view to confiscate them and leave the population helpless."

The Elks article then went on:

"My Brothers, the above is something to give some very serious thought to. It seems that rule by rule, this is exactly what is happening in our Great Country today. What, if anything, can we do about it??? Think it over Brothers - think hard."

Well now, isn't that scary and interesting? And from a group of fun loving, if patriotic, fellows and ladies. But don't forget they are not merely flag-wavers and sometimes sentimental status-quo buffs. Their fraternal B.P.O.E. lodge furnished the first $50,000, way back in the late 1940s, for the first modern hospital our city ever had. Others having failed to raise the necessary enthusiasm and funds, two or three times previously, that 50 grand actually launched the successful Caldwell Memorial Hospital drive. The new facility opened in 1949. God bless the Elks and the hundreds who followed with their muscle and money to complete the hospital.

But another front page message in the January issue of Caldwell's "The Elk's Call" ended with a message from Exalted Ruler, Henri Pilote, to the effect: "Attend lodge, my Brothers and bring a brother with you." That's expected, of course, but it's sad, sad, sad that his question at the bottom of the above "Communist Rules ...," written in 1919, had to end with "What, IF ANYTHING (my emphasis), can we do about it?"

Oh well, maybe it "can't happen here", but the bank holiday did.

Education Getting Good Marx

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 13, 1983

It was my most sincere intention to have this column speak to the improper issue of the school's using school children as purveyors of political literature. The obvious double-standard and blatantly illegal ploy disturbs me each time it comes up. It's because government schools enjoy a monopoly position in the education market. But now I'm not so sure that that double-standard is so newsworthy as another. Here's why.

Last week the Nampa school system sent home with the children literature asking for their parents' political support for more money for educators. I checked, and since it is against Caldwell School District policy to use the children as purveyors of political propaganda (when we agree with them it's called important "information," instead of "propaganda"), I'll cite one statement, then, from the Nampa School District.

The circular, sent home via the little children, had this to say, i.e., if the politicians actually cut the government schools 10 percent as proposed: "... would result in a 10 percent reduction of school supplies, support staff and teachers in the Nampa school district." Authorized by Nampa Superintendent of Schools Russ Joki (no pun), the circular urged the students to urge their parents to attend a political meeting to support more money.

Now then, I don't have any quarrel with the teachers or the administrators wanting more money, nor do I see a conspiracy in using the children to whip up emotion for that end. But I do see a double-standard when they fail to allow the other side a similar vehicle and/or forum through their school monopoly.

For example, not everybody agrees on these matters, especially if one judges by so many voters turning thumbs down on so many bond override elections, etc., when they're allowed the choice. furthermore, why not allow circulars to go home via little children on the subject of abortion and freedom of choice, on contraception, on school prayer and/or meditation, or on phonics versus the look/say method which some say accounts for many children's inability to read and spell adequately.

Answer? Apparently it's only when the officials agree with the issue. Or, it's only when it involves more money for government schools. Non-government schools do not have this problem, that is, they do have a kind of freedom of choice. Not whether or not to have abortion. No, I mean they're free to choose to pay for their kid's schooling TWICE. By compulsory public school taxes (over 70 percent of the state's budget) and by free-to-choose private tuition, if they don't happen to like government schools. To put it into a sexual context, upon which so much of our disgusting and coercive social mores seem to turn these days, it could be called "rape," i.e., it's acceptable to one party, but not to the other. And it's sure as hell neither voluntary nor fair. Moreover, it often leaves its coercive side effects for a lifetime.

But my decision to get off the backs of the educators this time is partly because I sympathized with them. We passed compulsory attendance laws for students and compulsory pay scales for teachers based on a thoroughly Marxist economic law, namely, the labor theory of value. And they are forced to labor under that law or else get out altogether. And that's not fair.

You remember, of course, the labor theory of value says that the wealth of a nation is owed to the workers, since it is they who produce it. Oversimplified, somewhat, it follows that a good or service that takes two hours (or two workers) is worth twice as much as what ever requires one, hence the longer they stay on the payroll the more they're worth.

Most teachers I've talked to think that's asinine, but then many attend university each summer to get yet another academic degree, thus tending to prove that teachers are paid for their ability to learn - rather than their ability to teach.

Here's another double-standard: the Boise Public School System, last week, sent home the same sort of political propaganda (you see, I'm somewhat against the idea, hence it's propaganda) asking for political support via the children. Now then, I think that's especially interesting. Here's why.

A year or two ago, the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA) in Boise requested permission to circulate to teachers only, mind you, an essay entitled. "Who Killed Private Schools?" It was a plea favoring private schools and offered $1,800 in prizes for teacher critiques, similar prizes both for and against the scholarly essay.

Guess what! The Boise School Screening Committee turned thumbs down on their teachers having the opportunity to earn some pretty easy extra bucks, saying, "There is no place in the Boise school system for such a contest."

At least the Boise school system establishment's screening committee saw CSMA's private school contest for market alternatives as potentially newsworthy. That is, they attempted to censor it by banning the contest altogether. Tut, tut and tut, For shame.

In any event the Boise school bureaucrats' perception was sharper than either of this valley's two daily newspapers' education reporters. Neither of the latter saw the "censorship" as newsworthy, so you did not read about it.

Come to think of it, maybe the only way the teachers thought they could get delivered into parents homes what they (the teachers) saw as newsworthy was to have the little children carry the message.

Pays To Be Foreign Debtor

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 20, 1983

Not long ago Idaho State Sen. Terry Reilly, D-Nampa, called for a moratorium on Federal Farm Home Administration (FmHA) loans to farmers. He said this was necessary because FmHA was now financing 4,630 Idaho farmers who had a delinquency rate of 27 percent or 1,250 bad loans - one out of four.

The Idaho Press-Tribune editorial, Feb. 2, 1983, followed Reilly's suggestion a few days later with one of their own, namely, that the new Democrat representative's "moratorium" idea was a lousy one and should forthwith get the axe. Both these fine gentlemen, that is, Reilly and the editorial writer representing the Press-Tribune, may be overlooking the obvious, something we tend to think only government these days seems hell-bent to do.

Reilly's party is almost always throwing a fistful of taxpayer's money at every conceivable problem under the sun, but at least he's consistent, even if fiscally absurd.

But get this from the editorial: "We loaned the money in good faith; it should be paid back in the same light ... Besides, we're talking about a federal government already some $1 trillion in the hole." (The National Taxpayer's Union, by the way, says the government's obligations are much nearer to $11 trillion).

Let me hasten to say that in my opinion both Reilly and the Press-Tribune are pro-farmer and both, I believe, are reasonably compassionate. But, jumpin' catfish! Is there no room at all for consistency in public policy dialogue? Certainly there will not be if the media doesn't demand and shout for it at the top of their usually powerful lungs, but even with consistency some context is also necessary. With it we might see that our asinine foreign policy is dictating our asinine financial policy at home.

Here's where Reilly's financial case is the more consistent. In a recent column in the Washington Inquirer, an excellent non-establishment newspaper in "Insane City, D.C." there was some revealing perspective concerning federal money policy tending to support Reilly's position:

"In the same week when banks were foreclosing on farms and auctioning them off at less than their value to the same banks that held the mortgages, the Federal Reserve Board was quietly pressuring U.S. banks to expand their unsecured, uncollectible loans to insolvent Third World nations.

"Jerry L. Jordan, a former member of Mr. Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, let the cat out of the bag in a speech Jan. 14, 1983. He said the Federal Reserve has passed the word that its examiners would give a hard time (his words were 'closer scrutiny') to banks which have made bad loans to foreign countries UNLESS those same banks INCREASED their bad loans to foreign countries.

"This mailed-first-in-the-velvet-glove message to the banks is clear. The Federal Reserve policy requires banks to be hard nosed and to foreclose immediately on any American farmers or businessmen who can't repay their loans; but when foreign countries can't make their payments banks are ordered to forget about the principal completely and to extend new loans to enable countries in default to make their interest payments."

Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul A. Volker was "conveniently unavailable for comment," according to the information in the Washington Inquirer column," ... but Fed spokesmen confirmed Volker's policy that new loans to foreign countries in financial trouble "should not be subject to supervisory criticism," and that the recent unsecured $5 billion loan the Fed gave to Mexico was "intended to set a precedent for other loans to countries having debt repayment problems."

When Idaho farmers and businessmen go bankrupt, one supposes, it's just tough. "That's the risk you take in the private enterprise system," they seem to be saying.

I say, what private enterprise system? Whatever's left of it is so convoluted with the socialism of the Democrats, the fascism of the Republicans, and mixed with the oft-times sincere compassion of well-meaning politicians such as Reilly that it's small wonder so many voters see private enterprise as a phony system. In such a context it is, indeed, a sham and a shame.

The Washington newspaper column ended with, "But when the bankers take their depositors' money and send it overseas never to return, the America Lasters say, 'Just keep the pyramid going;' we'll cover up your mistakes and unload the losses onto the backs of the American people."

Boise-Cascade's Ferytale

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 27, 1983

Father forgive me for what I'm about to do - I'm going to call into question (1) the efficacy of spending even more of Idaho's tax money on schooling (not to be confused with education) and (2) the suggestion made last week to do just that - almost without qualification, believe it or not, by a big businessman.

Ordinarily I wouldn't timidly step in, as I intend to do, "where angels fear to tread" (on America's sacred cow, education) except that said suggestion came from one of the most popular and genuinely good-guy big business tycoons and apparent free, private, competitive enterprise supporters in the whole United States.

John Fery, chairman of the giant Boise-Cascade Corporation, One Jefferson Square, Boise, heads up a fine and important and, so far as I know, very well-managed forest products company. Last week the front page story in a large daily newspaper was headlined clear across the page: "Fery backs tax hike to aid schools." Describing his idea of a 4 percent tax increase over 1983 appropriations as "modest," Fery was quoted as adding, "but at least they would preserve current levels of quality."

Now then, I have a great deal of respect for John Fery. He has guts, too, an ingredient so many corporate tycoons either don't have much of or because of bad press they seldom use openly when it comes to public policy. A small example of unusual courage in that arena was his decision to publicly support political maverick Steve Symms in the 1980 race for the U.S. Senate against then incumbent establishmentarian Frank Church. There are other reasons to respect Fery, even if one disagrees with him, but I trust my respect is not here at issue.

Further, I'm sure Fery is highly-educated although that may or may not account for his successful company's being well-managed. That is to say, the great J.R. Simplot's giant company, too, is well managed, while its chief, Jack, as he's affectionately called, merely completed the eighth grade. Certainly few could say, however, that Jack was not highly-educated, although perhaps not highly-schooled. So how do we define quality?

Again, my remarks are not meant as disrespectful of these big businessmen. Not at all. But it is interesting to note that business in America is perceived to favor, if not exactly represent, free competitive capitalistic enterprise. If this be true, then, why can't we hear good-guy businessman, Fery, push private entrepreneurship and proprietary-type market alternatives for the education services and needs of Idahoans and Americans? Or at the very least, why doesn't he tout private non-government education such as the College of Idaho (C of I) whose academic record is a high one? But he pushes, at least publicly, only government schools and higher taxes.

"Private schools cost too much," many say. I say that's not necessarily true. My estimate is that it probably costs less at the C of I than it does at the government (or public) universities - it's only the price that is higher. If the truth were known, and unless government schools are extremely different than other government entities, they will cost far more than privately-run schools. So why doesn't Fery promote the private sector?

To their credit, many of these businessmen, quietly support private colleges such as the C of I for one reason or another, but the reasons they do somehow get buried in the almost blind worship of so-called quality education, while meaningful definition of "quality" seldom sees the light of day. Worse yet, one wonders why trustees of institutions such as the C of I, many of whom wield great political influence, do not publicly decry the state's dumping of more and more massive sums of tax money into the bank accounts of the huge competitors of the small colleges, i.e., the government colleges and universities.

Against such competition few can survive. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer do survive. All the while corporate good-guy capitalists such as Fery push for more government schooling. Boise State University, by the way, offers night school courses in Caldwell that duplicate those offered by C of I and at only slightly over half the latter's price. Egad, John. That's fair competition?

Of course, higher education is not the only issue, but it is there that the ideas get their fuel and their spin into intellectual orbit. That's where the muscle is - ideas. And the politicians follow the idea people who've "educated" the public. It's not the other way around. And it never will be, In order to get elected politicians must, repeat must, follow the ideas of people. And Fery failed to even mention where either the educators, the politicians, or the ideas were headed.

In his spectacular new book, "The Squeeze" the brilliant James Dale Davidson catches the spirit: "... the results of our current educational endeavors were never intended to be the training of worthy successors to Aristotle and Shakespeare. (Shakespeare, it should be noted, was largely self-taught. Some Shakespeare scholars, such as A.L. Rowse, have argued that this lack of university training may have been an artistic asset rather than a liability.) Education has been persistently advertised as ... the American way of life ... an economic investment. This is why the discussion of education always comes around to ... job prospects. Indeed, teachers and the education lobbies themselves have almost nothing else on their minds.

"To the extent that there has been ANY (my emphasis) public philosophy on the matter, that is the sum and substance of it. We seek education not because we wish to be wise, but because we wish to be rich ... We not only spend far more on education than can possibly be construed as an investment for economic growth, we also certify teachers who cannot add fractions, and we tolerate politicians who either cannot or dare not keep their budgets in balance."

In view of these and other substantive considerations Fery failed to make a so-called quality case that raising Idaho taxes another 4 percent would do much more for education than raise both the cost AND the price.

New Twist to Higher Tax Flap

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 3, 1983

It looks as though someone has found the intellectual courage - at last - to call into question the size of the "bottomless barrel" from which the government school lobby seems to think cometh their money. Together, Idaho House Speaker Tom Stivers, R-Twin Falls, and Rep. Rachel Gilbert, Boise, R-Ada, have collided head-on with what many call America's "sacred cow," the public education lobby.

Other politicians, of course, have also had brains and the courage to use them against higher taxes, but few have had enough guts to go public in political competition with the state's most powerful lobby, the Idaho Education Association (IEA).

There's a new twist, however, to the current flap over increasing taxes for schooling. It's the appearance on the political scene of two tycoons of big business, both headquartered in Boise. Last week Boise-Cascade's chief, John Fery, sallied forth for higher school taxes and this week, Paul Corddry, chief of Ore-Ida Foods, a division of the massive Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Corporation, declared to the effect that without higher taxes government schools and therefore the quality of education might deteriorate.

Interestingly, Corddry, who is also a respected trustee of the oldest institution of higher learning in the state, the College of Idaho (in Caldwell), said nothing about the added burden placed on that college's ability to survive when the government continues to dump such massive sums of whole tax dollars directly into their government college competition. For example: Boise State University, Idaho State University, University of Idaho, Lewis & Clark College, North Idaho College and College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. Egad, no wonder taxes are high. C of I professors should, at the very least, be disquieted.

Now then, I'm sure Corddry is a friendly, intelligent and sincere businessman, but, like Fery, he neglects to make the case for either (1) "fair competition" with private schools or (2) a clearly stated philosophical premise for education without which a rational case for more money or less money for anything cannot possibly be made.

Indeed, as the great economist, Ludwig von Mises, has made so devastatingly clear, "Economic calculation outside a market economy is impossible." This is why socialism won't work and Mises' whole life and voluminous writings went to explain it. But you have to strain to find any economists in the U.S. government who have even heard of him, let alone studied and advocate his works. Small wonder, too, given his devastating support of market alternatives about which one tends to hear so very little these days, either from the big education lobby or the big business lobby.

It is at once both paradoxical and ironic that businessmen, especially big businessmen as constituted today, are usually perceived by the public as representing free enterprise. The term implies the concept of free market which in turn requires the institution of private ownership and private property in order to operate as perceived even by Mises' predecessor, Adam Smith, whose "invisible hand" has been all but completely amputated from its function in the hallowed halls and with the giant lobbies of big business, big education, big labor and big government. The total of all this is, of course - Big Brother.

This isn't to say that Fery, Corddry (et al) are not sincere, nor are they necessarily in bed with "rabble-rousing" education zealots who put out bad statistics and bad information.

Business, particularly big business, has a bad image. Maybe they are trying to stroke a public hopelessly hung up on the political free lunch. Business's lousy image and thereby bad press, however, has been brought about for the most part by the very institutions, teachers and professors they support almost without qualification and have been for decades.

Perhaps rich people's guilt feelings tend to motivate them. In any event, it is hardly bad business for their corporations to pay Fery and Corddry their huge salaries and perks which are reliably reported to be from $250,000 to $350,000 per year.

Nonetheless, it is indeed bad reasoning to infer, as one must if the tycoons are quoted accurately in the media, that market alternatives (i.e., competitive enterprises) are proper in the production of food and forest products and, contrariwise, not proper where the government's compulsory school system is concerned. Why no such observations from business?

Still, I have a great deal of respect for both the highly-paid Fery and Corddry, especially in their respective private fields, but I have equal respect for the lowly-paid Stivers and Gilbert in their public field. I just wish competition and privately-owned entrepreneurship played a bigger role with all four of these quarreling but otherwise fine people - the tycoons and the politicians.

I'd hasten to add, however, that I'll bet the tycoons will win this one because they have the tax-gatherers on their side.

Oddly enough, that is something the critics of big business have been saying for lo' these many years.

Haet Sent Craig Wrong Way

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 10, 1983

If there is one stimulus to which a politician responds it is heat. Not light, mind you, heat. A case in point is moderate conservative Congressman Larry Craig whose 1980 campaign was in competition with super-liberal Larry LaRocco. The heat of that campaign is still influencing Craig, unfortunately, in a bad way.

The issue and the only item LaRocco seemed able to raise during the campaign was socialist ownership of land. Thanks also for that to the super-liberal news media.

Let me hasten to add that not all the media is super-liberal, but those who are absolutely dominate those who are not. Since the latter seldom publicly criticize the others, in most cases at least, they deserve being lumped together with the super-liberals and thus belittled.

In any event, Craig appeared on a TV interview last week and the heat referred to above not only showed through, but one was hard-pressed to know for sure which Larry (LaRocco or Craig) was explaining the "federal ownership of lands" issue. The TV interviewer posed the usual query put by most "blackbird" journalists, (i.e., all roosting on the same wire - when one flies they all fly) asking Craig: "Do you approve of selling off our public lands?"

The question calls for its own answer. The Midvale cattleman-politician has been asked that 1,000 times and, if the Idaho media has their way, they'll ask it 1,000 times more until next election when yet another socialist-leaning Democrat wants to "do good" by begging for government power. That's about all that seems to turn the left-leaning media on.

Now then, I recognize that most people "educated" by the publishing and movie-making crowd as well as most of the educators in the government's compulsory school system are not in favor of the government's selling anything, much less selling something they now perceive as free, since few even see much wrong with the spiraling trillion dollar debt.

Of course ownership is never free, especially when the government accountants accrues no capital carrying costs (interest) of owning 70 percent of Idaho. They cannot, yea, must not show a profit and indeed have as a kind of reason for their existence to go further into debt each year. It's called the annual budget appropriation and, like Topsy, it grows and grows, almost without exception, in each and every bureau in the whole range of government. The farther the political chiefs are from the natives the faster it grows and the less sense the management (the bureaucrats) makes - with one exception. The whole idea of government ownership is perceived as a "free lunch." and this is the myth which they say is responsible for what little success challenger LaRocco had against Congressman Craig during the last campaign.

I like Craig, so I don't expect him necessarily to champion the cause of private ownership of the exorbitant 70 percent of Idaho real estate and thus bring about his certain defeat next election. In fact, I'm told that at the height of the Craig-LaRocco campaign the polls showed a 25 percent drop in voter acceptance of Craig as a result of the so-called public land debate. Many say it was because LaRocco's socialist ownership idea was better understood than Craig's non-socialist idea.

But therein lies the problem. Craig and the GOP, generally speaking, have little going for them except a kind of non-defined, non-socialism idea. It's been called "me-tooism." It's been around for decades, but just how they expect to win acceptance of a fine Jeffersonian idea and then win an election on "me-too," or as in Craig's case, "not me," since he says he's against "selling the family jewels" - I don't exactly know. But they do manage to win a few elections mostly because the socialist Democrat's personality-cult does an even worse job of seeking power by promising both the moon and a free lunch.

Still, I do expect Craig, at the very minimum, to make articulate counter-accusation by soft-spoken definition of LaRocco and Company's idea. He should call it what it is - socialism. If those proposing it are then thereby socialists, i.e., if the shoe fits, make them wear it. He (Craig) could do it, too, by having a staff that's keenly aware and so keenly articulate that the socialists will in the future be as afraid of being labeled socialist as the present Republicans seem afraid of being labeled capitalist.

I phoned Craig's staff to express my concern at his inept TV "defense" of the main difference between our system and that of the Soviet Union, that is, a free market and private ownership (as regards public ownership of both "free" sagebrush and "free" forests). My suggestion was that they might want to send their natural resources staff specialist to the University of Washington at Seattle April 22-23. The U of W is having a national symposium entitled, "Selling the Federal Forests," and will furnish a forum for both honest socialist proposals and honest capitalist (sometimes called privatization) proposals. I use the word "honest" because, to the best of my knowledge, none of the experts speaking there will be running for office.

Unfortunately, Craig's national resources staff specialist "wasn't interested" in learning the case - from one of the rarest and most distinguished panel of experts ever to be assembled in the United States.

Like I said, folks, politicians respond to the heat. Not the light.

Interestingly, the likable LaRocco, too, responded to the heat. After he lost the election he became an account executive at the capitalistic E.F. Hutton stock brokerage company.

Media's Bias Out in the Open

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 17, 1983

With your indulgence I'd like to rise (some might say descend) to the defense of the news media.

Some members of that group who swarm annually around the Idaho Legislature circling like buzzards or bees watching for bits of "honey" or bits of "carrion" to enjoy themselves, or carry back to their nest, have opened our eyes. For this we are indebted to them. But I fear the good, again, may be lost in the shuffle.

Recently the headlines said, "News media rates Idaho legislators in this session." Their evaluations went on to level mostly criticism, but some praise on individuals and groups as "the media" saw them. Canyon County's delegations and many of its conservative politicians came in for noxious, if not nauseating notice, from "the media" and received first prize for such as "worst legislator, worst delegation," etc., etc. As you might imagine, those representatives "the media" saw as conservative came in for the most ridicule.

Now then, in fairness to "the media," these ratings and evaluations did contain something of a jovial air about them (liberals tend to have a better sense of humor), but under it all they were dead serious. In any case, the least one could claim was that theirs was "truth in a jest" and they had a perfectly delightful time evaluating, i.e., passing judgment on those over whom they hover since it's their professed job as "reporters." (Forgive me, but I'll explain my increased use of quotation marks in a moment).

Well, one hardly need mention that the conservatives, generally speaking, were outraged at the "news media," who had cast them unfairly in their crusade for doing the conservative work of the Almighty. Indeed, if politicians agree upon anything it's that we conservatives do tend to see ourselves as a bit self-righteous, e.g., a sort of Idaho states-rights moral-majority.

Quite properly, the legislator-conservatives who'd just been criticized severely, some say even in poor taste, lashed back in retaliation. "We'll show 'em," they said. And they did, too. With some sense of humor, by the way, and some good sense of meaningfulness and communicative criticism, they counter-evaluated their media antagonists by name.

I'll save you, gentle reader, the agony of the personality-cult so thoroughly worshiped by the typical media crowd. For that reason I won't repeat "the media" evaluators names, but suffice it to say that "the media" did not, repeat did not, include or even ask all those reporters and news persons covering the legislature. THAT'S why I used the above quotation marks around the term, that is, in this case "the media" only included a fraction of its members, about 10, two of whom refused to have their names made public. Ho ho ho.

Their rating and scoring, however, on their news source legislators did come in for some severe criticism, some of it in the form of a qualified "we were wrong" apology from one of the newspaper's managing editors.

But the real seminal criticism, even if somewhat mild, was swift, plain and forthright. It came from the Idaho Press-Tribune's political reporter, Sam Lang, who also covers the Legislature. Certainly he is no conservative newsman. Nevertheless, this former college professor-turned-newsman scolded his colleagues. (Media people love to call one another colleague. One supposes it reminds them of how the legal profession tends to glorify and brown-nose one another). But Lang, to his everlasting credit, had the courage to stick his nose, and maybe his neck, out from under the tent for a breath of fresh air. He blew the whistle on what he saw as "... a negative effect on the media coverage of this legislative session." So I'm happy to rise to defend Lang. His gesture, though perhaps modest to many, will be seen by some as having let down his self-serving colleagues, since peer group pressure among media adults is just as fanatic as among teenagers. So let's give a warm and friendly handshake to Lang. He doubtless likes his peers, but he doesn't worship them.

Still, where in hell's Lang been? He says it had a negative effect on coverage of "this" session. Heck, it's had a negative effect for years and years on persons holding a conservative, and/or a less governmentality, point of view. Some of us have been screaming against this from the top of our political and philosophical lungs for a long time, but with only modest results - until recently. So, the bias is finally becoming evident, even to the self-satisfied media.

Therefore, I want to rise also to the defense of Marc Johnson of PBS-TV's Channel 4. This affable, knee-jerk, card-carrying, super-liberal newsman (he's otherwise quite competent, by the way) has taken considerable, if friendly, public criticism from me. In my long-time crusade against liberal media bias and slant, Johnson has defended my criticism (somewhat) among his media peers and he was the only one at Channel 4 with the courage to let his name be used in the above story criticizing conservative (mostly) legislators. Others, but only in the print media, consented to the use of their names as responsible for "the media's" rating game. I say bless their candid hearts. I hope they do it again.

So, unlike Lang, perhaps, I'm all for having the media people's opinion (read, bias) out in the open - at last. Likewise I want to applaud Marc Johnson's decency and open-mindedness when he let me castigate the media's bias for a half hour on his TV program last fall.

I'm just not sure now, however, that Marc ever watches his own program.

Greed Caused Inflation

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 24, 1983

Some time ago a lady's thoughts appeared in a letter to the editor. I'm going to pass these along to you.

"Dear Editor," she wrote. "I am 10 years old. I am just discovering the high prices of food and electricity. How come prices are so high? If anybody can help me find out, please write this in the editorial page."

That's it folks, that's all there was. I've checked a bit, and I think the Little Lady's letter is genuine and her suggestions certainly is on the minds of most adults these days. Unfortunately, most of us tend to be less direct, so I thought I'd reply.

I'll try to help you with your question. "How come prices are so high?" But you must understand that not everyone will agree and that, here at least, we have to be brief and try to simplify.

Most things people want are scarce, i.e., there are not enough things, that is, goods and services, to go around for everybody to have all he wants all the time. So these things have to be divided or allocated among people who want them.

Generally speaking, there are two ways to allocate these things: (1) By a voluntary scheme called the pricing system where people use their purchasing power to buy things offered by other people who have goods and services for sale.
Almost always the more scarce a thing is the more people who want it will pay, hence the higher price. (2) The other way to allocate things is to have the government dictate or set the prices. A big problem with this is that people who produce the things almost always feel the government dictates too low a price and so the tendency is to produce fewer things 'cause they're all gone and nobody wants to produce at the government price. Many say the only fair way is for the government to regulate prices "fairly." Otherwise only the rich can buy things.

Most of these people who want government regulated prices are decent, honest and sincere people. But, so are most of the people who produce things for sale - in spite of the ever-increasing number of influence peddlers who try to tell us otherwise.

Another way to look at it, Little Lady, is to see that our whole world economic system is really a giant and sophisticated barter system. Men used to exchange directly, things like wheat and bread, for things like yarn and cloth or leather and shoes. They still do, but this is, of course, cumbersome and awkward, so money was invented as a sort of "grease" to make things easier for people to exchange their goods and services. It works, too - until the politicians get to "greasing" voters' palms (with other people's money). But the politicians discovered centuries ago that this stuff called money also got scarce, so they decided that they should control it.

They could make it scarce when they chose to and they could make it plentiful when they chose to. So they passed a law giving themselves that great power. Our Constitution calls it the "power to coin money and regulate the value thereof." It is all quite legal, but the more money the government "coins," i.e., prints or creates today, the fewer things it will buy.

It all went quite well until the politicians, who tend to promise a lot in order to get elected, became so greedy to get elected or stay in office, that they (the government) actually ran out of money. They couldn't keep up with their spending without risking a taxpayers' revolt. Those were back in the days they had to balance their budget.

Well, this was the case when the government used "hard" money, silver and gold coins. These were scarce and it was difficult to increase the supply, thus tending to limit government. So the politicians, both Democrat and Republican, "passed a law" to let them print an almost unlimited supply of paper money. (It's called a "central bank" in other countries, or the Federal Reserve System in the United States). This way the politicians, (the government) can pay for all those many things they promised the people in order to get their votes. It's called inflation. It makes prices go up. Thus the price or market system is outlawed and replaced by the government dictator system. Inflation is an increase in the money supply, not an increase in prices. Repeat, not an increase in prices.

There are other reasons for your "how come prices are so high?" some important, but this is the most drastic and most important, and least understood - both for you and the politicians, some of whom are, I fear, sincere.

Walter Opp for Mayor of Boise

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 1, 1983

Hello Idahoans. Here's some good news for you. At least for those of you in and around Canyon County, especially, but not exclusively, Nampa.

There has been proposed a gigantic $100 million shopping center to be built north of Nampa on 96 acres known as the old Tiegs Corner.

The economic and political ramifications of such an undertaking are, of course, far-reaching and understandably controversial, since some homeowners nearby (farmers, mostly) and some businessmen in both Nampa and Caldwell will, or may, suffer some loss. That's unfortunate for them, but there is even in their case a competitive "good side," i.e., such a huge installation can hardly help but bring lots of additional purchasing power into the area. That will also bring opportunities as well as problems if, and I repeat if, the surrounding communities will work like gophers in a ditch bank to properly exploit the opportunities and minimize the bad sides. Economists call these conditions tradeoffs and it is to draw attention to a few of these aspects that I submit the following random thoughts in no particular order of importance.

First of all, both downtown Nampa and Caldwell were in trouble long before the Karcher Mall shopping center was built. In fact, that is precisely why it succeeded as well as it did. Like most towns of old, they were themselves "shopping centers" of sorts, owned and managed mostly by members of the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall. Snow removal, garbage service, streets, sewers, parking, police and fire services, etc., etc., were mostly provided by the city government - not always in the fairest way, perhaps, but generally pretty well done and it lasted and served us for generations.

Along came a new management and financing technique called the shopping center mall. Like it or not, the new technique brought more goods and services to more people in more and better ways that they (the customers) preferred over the old ways so that a new era was ushered in. Mall tenants lease payments now include services formerly furnished by city government.

The flamboyant promoter-contractor-entrepreneur, Walter Opp, of Nampa, says he thinks his Treasure Valley Square will be a great boon to the area as well as a profit-making success for his investors and those businesses who would be occupying spaces in the new mall. Authorities in Nampa say that Opp and company would pay for all utilities as well as highway interchange off-ramps, etc., hence all these would add to the financial and political hurdles yet to be overcome. They must be tremendous indeed. So there is yet a long way to go.

Still, given the intellectual constipation of many tradesmen and zoning and planning committees of both city and county, the huge complex may yet get launched. For example, it should be remembered that years ago both downtown Caldwell and then downtown Nampa were solicited by entrepreneur-promoter Harry Daum, then owner of Karcher Mall, for permission to locate his complex inside their respective downtowns. But they zoned him away. The rest is history and applause for Daum.

Here's what this writer would hope to see Caldwell and Nampa citizens and businessmen do, now, instead of trying to get the government, along with the typical groups of environmental, anti-progress hippies, to stop Walter Opp and his risk-and-profit seekers.

(1) Promote building and betterment of farm-to-market roads such as those to and from another fine agriculturally productive area, namely, Emmett. (I tried this for years with scarcely EVEN moral support from downtown Caldwell merchants. All the while Emmett valley farmers begged for more market access. They still do, today).

(2) Stop fighting each other with the old high school football game mentality, i.e., "Kill the (Nampa) Bulldogs, kill the (Caldwell) Cougars." In business this attitude almost certainly runs off trade to Boise that would otherwise be better served and better satisfied in Nampa and Caldwell. While such ideas are not new with me, I know full well the present anti-free enterprise, anti-progress, pro-government and pro-planning and zoning committees that have been afflicting our "twin cities" for decades will not easily remove their self-defeating "knife" from each other's back.

But now that Opp has opted for a big mall with big tenants such as those Boise Mayor Dick Eardley tried to coerce into his 19-year-old downtown mall plan for his city, there is a gesture Caldwell and Nampa might agree upon. It has to do with political prostitution.

Since those big business tenants that Eardley tried to seduce with his government-plan told him to "shove it" Caldwell and Nampa should now join in sending Eardley a giant horseshoe floral piece. The card should say: "Thanks. With your help we just may be replacing the world's oldest profession."

Something Optimistic

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 8, 1983

Just the other day a friend said to me, "Ralph, why don't you people in the media write something besides negativism once in a while? If you people wrote something up-beat, something optimistic and cheerful, it might produce such a cultural shock that something fine might come into view even if it were just an illusion."

I said immediately, "Great idea, Pete. I've given that considerable thought, myself, even to the point of making vigorous and similar criticism of my own friends in the media. Both of them responded with, 'But people, generally speaking, do not want to read about good news.'"

Perhaps it has something to do with our human nature tendency to feel sorry for ourselves and thus to get our jollies, so to speak, by reading about the folly and foibles of other people who are worse off or have worse moral character than we do ourselves. To the extent that this is somewhat true, and I think it is, we can thus feel - a little bit better, a little bit less bad, maybe, a little "holier-than-thou." Perhaps.

For whatever reason(s) the "bad news" condition which dominates our print and electronic media almost hour by hour,l day by day, month in and month out, is really serious. Indeed, many others in addition to my friend, Pete, see this bad news condition as getting worse, so I'm going to look into the matter of good news and good ideas and report back to you, Pete. Be patient, though. Give me a little time and I'll think of something good to write about and try not to get "fired" as a columnist at the same time (don't laugh).

But it won't be easy, especially with a touch, unbending, omnipotent and dictatorial editor who doesn't always see the virtue in my great wisdom and profundity, i.e., that preservation of the free market and individual freedom of choice ideas which is, in and of itself, a real kind of good news.

For example, the federal government in its great wisdom recently issued an edict, directing restaurant owners to calculate and thereby assess their waitresses an added 8 percent on the restaurant's or cafe's gross retail sales and then send that additional money into the cavernous mouth of the federal tax-grabbing Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The excuse for this asinine and arrogant new and ever-growing government tax-grab is said to be that waitresses are getting rich. They are said to get lots of cash for their extra good courtesy, attention and service (or why else would folks give them a cash tip?) and then sock said tip into their pocket without reporting the cash on their income tax return.

Well bless my soul! Waitresses, too, are now said to be cheating our benevolent and protective bum, Big Brother, the federal government. So Uncle Sap, as he is sometimes called, since he cannot manage to balance his own skyrocketing budget, is out after the waitresses in a purely collectivist tradition befitting that of one in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Here's how:

The government edict mandates that the cafe owner assess the mystic 8 percent "received in cash tips from your waitresses and waiter employees, so send the money in to us at the IRS since so few employees send in said money voluntarily. The IRS "forgot" to add, however, that they demand the money (i.e., 8 percent of the cafe's gross sales) from the waitresses WHETHER OR NOT they (the waitresses) actually receive the money from their customers. Egad!

A case in point happens in Caldwell. The sitting jury(ies) from the Canyon County Courthouse are taken to a nearby cafe. Two recent juries food bill came to almost $159. There is, of course, no tip. That may or may not suit you, gentle reader, but the waitresses must pay 8 percent tax on it - tip or not tip. That's a $12 penalty.

Sickening? You bet it is. But there's something worse. Guess what? Most waitresses blame the county commissioners for not coughing up the added 8 percent for tips, so they can pass them on to the federal dinosaur. The IRS gets the money - the commissioners get the blame.

Unfortunately, these fine waitresses have their cause and effect - backward. The good news, friend Pete, is: they're beginning to get the message.

Politician Gives Rare Credit

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 15, 1983

Only on rare occasion does one hear of a politician giving credit to someone to whom he or she is indebted. Perhaps this is to be expected, since taking credit (whether deserved or not) is mostly how they go about getting re-elected.
The latter, in many ways, is what it's all about.

So it was a welcome surprise for me to get a letter last week from my friend Ron Paul, a medical doctor from Lake Jackson, Texas. He is also a politician, a second term congressman and an intelligent, sincere and first-rate human being. You may be interested in one of the reasons why.

What makes him unique is not merely that Paul thinks his country is in big trouble. Many politicians on all sides tend to agree on that. He's so very unique because he's an articulate, intellectually honest political spokesman for responsible individualism who, at the same time, is able to get re-elected on that platform.

Now then, I've known for years that Paul is one of the few politicians who is enthusiastic about the Austrian school of economics and I have thus respected him, but his comments about our mutual mentor, friend and teacher, Professor Ludwig von Mises, and the debt of gratitude he owes to this giant of a man is, I think, quite interesting. Here's part of what Paul's letter said:

"I think I've done at least some good for America these past few years in Congress ... but I couldn't have accomplished a thing without a man by the name of Ludwig von Mises. (Although he was) ridiculed for years by many Establishment economists, I'm glad Dr. Mises was my teacher. He is the greatest of all free-market economists.

"Thanks to Dr. Mises I understand the disaster brought on by government meddling in our economy. On the Gold Commission, on the Banking Commission, in debates and in White House meetings I always use the arguments Dr. Mises taught me ..." Paul says the liberal's reaction thereto is something to behold.

The Texas doctor-turned-politician said he knew the arguments. For example, that recessions and depressions are caused by the government. "We knew it ... in (our) bones. But it took Ludwig von Mises to prove it, with 25 books and 60 years of lecturing. The left has never forgiven him. Indeed the (education) Establishment shut him out of the prominent universities. Someone (free-market outsiders) had to PAY (his emphasis) the university in New York to allow him to teach there."

I had heard this story several times from Leonard Read, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, and close friend and colleague of the great Mises, but to hear from an incumbent politician - giving credit instead of taking it is, well, I think rare and worthy of note.

Paul's letter continued: "Dr. Mises never let all the academic bias get him down. He fought socialism until the day he died in 1973 (at age of 92). He was a decent man, and the father of REAL (his emphasis) free-market economics. I owe him more than I can ever repay."

Well, gentle reader, how do you like "them apples?" And out of the mouth of a grateful politician. Wow! Quite a switch.

Paul said that Mises' books have been a real pragmatic aid to his political crusade (imagine that). For example: he said (1) that only gold and silver can prevent the death of the dollar. (2) The Federal Reserve was created to protect the big banks and help them profit from money inflation. (3) Socialism can never work, because true economic planning requires freedom, and (4) that government's inflation robs working people in order to buy votes from the welfare class.

I'd hope that my adding an "Amen and Amen" to my friend Paul's letter will encourage folks to read his new book "The Case for Gold" published by the CATO Institute. It's simply one of the clearest and best books in print about our country's devastating monetary muddle.

*****

On an entirely different, if happy, subject, I note that Press-Tribune columnist Nathaniel Pierce has returned from a trip to Europe. He wrote last week that he and his absolutely charming wife, Audrey, who accompanied him, rented a car in England. Said Pierce: "It took considerable time in England getting used to having to drive on the left side of the road." Methinks this might have been entitled "Pierce's Progress," since that's got to be the first occasion in which it has not been instinctive for Pierce to do anything AUTOMATICALLY - on the left.

A Great Man Is Dead

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 22, 1983

A great man is dead. A most influential force in public affairs in Idaho, the gentleman was known personally by only a tiny percentage of the Gem state's citizens who became his students.

Leonard Read, president and founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) at Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, passed away at his home last week after a relatively short illness. He was 84.

A large number, if a small percentage, of Idahoans will remember this grand man as the sage and star performer in many Idaho economic seminars sponsored since 1975 by the Rational Alternatives Forum and afterward its successor, the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives in Boise. Although labeled "economic," the seminars held in McCall, Coeur d'Alene, Priest Lake, Lewiston, Boise, Sun Valley and Bogus Basin covered far broader subjects than just economic ones.

His institute was based on the philosophy of freedom not only in economic, but in all other areas of life as well, and in a most responsible way. "Hurt no man - and then do as you please," said Read, and he lived his four-score-and-four in a manner that would have pleased his heroes: Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Frederic Bastiat, Albert Jay Nock, Ludwig von Mises and a number of others; all, repeat all, of whom were super-skeptical of statism, that is to say, too much government. His life was a magnificent, if quiet, sort of crusade to articulate and revive their message for less government and more individual responsibility.

After some years as executive manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Read left to organize FEE in 1946. He was its first and only president. The foundation, located on five acres of a former estate up the Hudson River an hour or so from the Big Apple, sponsors both weekend seminars and longer ones in the summer for followers of its "freedom philosophy." This writer came under the great sage's influence during one of them in New York in the summer of 1965 when the late Ludwig von Mises was lecturing there. Said by many to be the greatest economic thinker since Adam Smith, Mises' more than 20 scholarly books and 60 years of lecturing produced the most devastating intellectual exposure of socialism's failure ever written.

But thanks to so much bias, intellectual arrogance and simple fear of competition on the part of the academic community all across America, too few teachers have ever heard of Mises' monumental works. Still, thanks also to the quiet, gentle and intelligent Leonard Read and his enthusiastic pupils, Mises' books, articles and even his (Mises) students, such as Israel Kirzner of New York University, Hans Sennhoiz of Grove City College, Murray Rothbard of Brooklyn Polytech and guru of the National Libertarian party (et al), are fast gaining a bigger spot in the academic limelight both here and abroad.

Further, some observers say had it not been for Read it is likely that his close friend, colleague and Nobel laureate in economics (1974), Friedrich Hayek, might never have gained enough recognition to have been considered for the famed Nobel Prize in the first place. Since that time two more of Read's libertarian pals have been awarded the Nobel honor in economics, Milton Friedman and George Stigler, both of the University of Chicago. One of the popular Friedman's favorite essay-examples of the miracle of the market is one written by Leonard Read. It's entitled, "I, Pencil," and relates how only market forces, and not government forces, can produce something as simple and useful as a pencil.

Though having sent lecturers all across America and abroad explaining the "freedom philosophy" for 35 years, his followers have never organized a mass movement - a fact that never seemed to bother Leonard Read. Instead, he liked to recommend such books as Richard Weaver's "Ideas Have Consequences," which he demonstrated over and over.

About politics, he suggested that if one wanted to be an influence in the affairs of men, then one should stay out of politics. "Become informed," Read liked to say, "and let the politicians follow you. They must follow somebody in order to get elected."

He was, himself, a majority of one when he said, "Every good movement in the world has been led by an infinitesimal minority. Go back 2000 years. Jesus had only 12 followers - and one of them was a bum."

"Ours is not a teaching problem," according to FEE's founder, "it's a learning problem - yours and mine. Do a real learning job on yourself, Ralph," he used to tell me, "and believe you me the rest will follow. You can count on it."

Hundreds of his Idaho students will miss this giant man, Read, who parlayed his high school education into authorship of 29 books, the presidency of a fabulous freedom foundation and a place of friendship and admiration alongside Nobel Prize winners - clear down to this insignificant and amateur newspaper columnist who last week lost just about the greatest "blood relative" he ever had.

Govern-Mentality Rampant

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 29, 1983

A recent Press-Tribune editorial scolded U.S. Sen. Steve Symms for his press release which charged that the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had a hand in the death of an illegal alien. The INS made an oblique sort of denial.

It seems that Benjamin Sanchez, alleged to be in the U.S. illegally, suffered a fatal heart attack while fleeing in haste from INS agents in the Glenns Ferry area.

It is, of course, sad that Sanchez lost his life whether or not the agents were hot on his trail, and I'm sure both Symms and this newspaper are sorry. But for anyone to suggest as the editorial did, that because "it's the law" and therefore "legislators like Symms (should) come up with an immigration law that makes sense and is enforceable" begs the issue.

Symms has long been suggesting that America is fast becoming a kind of police state. Certainly, if one merely counts the ever-rising tide of law after law and law after law passed during each session, not only by Congress, but the Idaho State Legislature as well, one must severely question the wisdom of where in the heck we are going and why? The police, of course, rightly retort with the Nuremberg defense: "We are merely doing our duty in enforcing the law."

Still, one remembers that that is the substance of what the German soldiers said when they were condemned for rounding up the Jews in Germany and herding them into the gas chambers.

Here at home, for example, the greedy tax grabbers in Washington now tax waitresses for their tips, calculated at 8 percent of their employer's total food and beverage sales - now get this - whether or not they receive the tips. A new level of arrogance.

And the Press-Tribune "challenges" Symms to come up with a law that "makes sense." Such a challenge, gentle reader, is a contradiction in terms. And almost everyone knows it's getting worse. Not only is it getting worse, but as the squeeze gets tighter the people tend to blame each other instead of the governmentality of statism. Witness that many of those waitresses are scolding their customers who do not tip the 8 percent "tithe" which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) grabs by withholding from the waitress's pay check.

Now, to return to the parallel and government-caused problem of illegal aliens, Symms tells me that about 90 percent of the aliens are not on farms, but are all over America, in factories, food service places and labor intensive industries.
Yet 50 percent of the illegals that are apprehended come from the farms. To repeat, 10 percent of the illegals are on farms and 90 percent are in various buildings, warehouses, docks and restaurants, that is to say, they are INSIDE somebody's property.

But where do the police go to make their raids against 10 percent of the alien law breakers? Why, they go OUTSIDE on somebody's property (farms) apparently because the INS agents don't need a search warrant to rampage across a farmer's property. Interesting isn't it? A nice convenient double standard, that is, search warrants are required in factories, but not on farms. Why?

Well, I'll tell you one reason. Because the govern-mentality of statism is run rampant. The Press-Tribune, to its everlasting credit, and unlike most of its invariably liberal daily newspaper colleagues, has often crusaded against such runaway increases of government problem-solving, yet now we hear: "Pass a new law, pass a new law," even from them.

Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty is something like "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses ... (aliens)."
But the media seem forever to miss something these days. The goddess of liberty's beckoning in those days was to a "workfare" state where a person's property was his own, his house was his castle, he (or she) could keep what he earned. Aliens flocked to our shores and became English-speaking American citizens, mostly policing themselves.

Today they come to a welfare state where owning property has become suspect and the state has become god-like, all powerful and demanding over half the people's daily income.

Even that is not greedy enough, so they print dishonest money and pass more laws as if there were no tomorrow, while the Press-Tribune challenges: "... national legislators like Symms to come up with (yet another) law - that makes sense."

God save the Republic.

Physician, Heal Thyself

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 5, 1983

A few years ago I engaged the services of a college student to make an inventory of the types of magazines in the waiting rooms of doctors' offices in three of Idaho's larger cities.

The question has been raised as to just who favored socialized medicine and who opposed it. Lest you think the answer is obvious please be reminded that good evidence has it that the trucking industry, the railroads, the dairy industry, the banking business and a whole host of others actually favor government regulation of their businesses.

In fact, many of these so-called private organizations secretly favor government regulation for several reasons, not the least of which is that there is often some kind of government subsidy, guarantee or some kind of licensing scheme to keep out their competition. The most recent of such schemes, even to get slight mention in the all-too-often intellectually constipated Idaho news media, are the present spearmint and the proposed peppermint marketing orders which are on the way in, so to speak, and the trucking industry's hauling license permits - said to be on the way out.

So the socialized medicine schemes, both present and proposed, as well as the government work-permits called medical licensure, are by no means new or unique.

It is, of course, important to add that a number of medical doctors sincerely oppose most forms of government interference. Unfortunately, whether out of ignorance of "how to" or cowardice of "willing to," most doctors are not individually aggressive in their public opposition to government medicine. It was in pursuit of the above "how to" that our survey of doctors' office literature was instigated.

The offices of 100 doctors in Boise, Nampa and Caldwell were surveyed (two refused permission) for magazines in which one could reasonably expect to find the case against socialized medicine. Just under 1,000 pieces of literature were cataloged and the results were spectacular. Almost no magazines were found in which articles routinely could be expected to make reasonable, caring and articulate cases against socialized medical care.

Let me hasten to add that good non-liberal publications do, indeed, exist, e.g., National Review, Human Events, Conservative Digest, Reason, The Freeman, Inquiry, Private Practice and others. But not a single one turned up in our fairly extensive survey. This is not to say, of course, that other doctors' offices not surveyed do not have reading room literature with the anti-socialized medicine message. It is to say, however, that the tendency exists that doctors, generally, seem unwilling to support personally and publicly their own case against government interference.

Newspaper commentaries tend to get mailed around the country and sometimes wind up in the hands of activist organizations. So, since I wrote two columns about the above dull-witted tendency among Boise Valley doctors, it is not surprising that a national medical magazine contacted me for permission to reprint my story about the doctors' default in "equal time" reading material for their almost-captive audiences.

Of course I was happy to oblige and urged the doctors' national magazine to publish my column about a glorious and free opportunity open to concerned doctors with a modest amount of public guts. That was over two years ago and so far as I know the story was never used. Somebody vetoed the idea. Too bad.

Now then, some doctors and some hospitals no doubt sincerely favor socialized medicine and that is, of course, their right. Certainly several local doctors, along with Caldwell Memorial Hospital and Nampa's Mercy Hospital, supported and lobbied the state government to stop their competitors, Dr. Wilford Watkins and his associates, when the latter proposed an ambu-care center and birthing clinic across the street from Nampa's Catholic hospital. One wonders, however, at their lack of candor. Conclusion? Nobody, it seems, likes competition.

I'm reminded of a parallel in all this "monkey business" by Nampa's new $100 million shopping mall proposed by developer Walter Opp. Spurred on by Boise Mayor Dick Eardley's steadfast opposition to shopping malls outside "his" city's downtown, Opp's mall is reported to be gaining. But it is opposed by other nearby town mayors who - you guessed it - don't like competition.

It's just occurred to me that perhaps many of our medical doctors are different. Maybe, instead, they like competition - so long as the government runs it.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 12, 1983

When Nathaniel Pierce, whose weekly column appears alongside this writer's, begged in jest for a "full presidential pardon" for Idaho Rep. George Hansen, I chuckled.

You'll remember the fuss stirred up in the government-loving media concerning the congressman's alleged misbehavior for not properly filling out some federal disclosure forms. Although I feel strongly that Hansen is getting the typical liberal shaft and will emerge absolved of any serious misbehavior, I admit to seeing the humor in Pierce's witty remarks at the all-too-often humorless conservatives - his favorite target.

But last week Pierce went too far, humor or no humor. His suggestion that President Reagan's tax cuts were only for the rich, and inferentially at least, at the expense of the poor were unforgivably ignorant at best and unforgivably Marxist at worst. This last because it's an old cliche of the Communist modus-operandi to scream that the rich capitalists always exploit the poor, thus a revolution is proper in order to give the poor people an even break.

The whole world is in the grip of that idea and contrary to China's Mao Tse-Tung's "power (influence) comes out of the barrel of a gun," an all-too-big a chunk of it comes from preachers, columnist and politicians who, in order to gain political influence, preach envy between the classes and governmental re-distribution of the wealth as a cure.

Lest this seem a bit harsh let me hasten to add that I'm not calling Pierce a Communist. The columnist has something to say, sometimes, that not only needs saying but seldom is there anyone with guts enough to say it publicly. I'm often saddened by my conservative friends and religious critics of Pierce who urge me to urge the Press-Tribune officials to "purge Pierce." It is too often easier to purge a pundit than it is to meet his arguments. But the unfortunate tendency of Pierce, and too many other preachers as well, is to use the old worn-out schemes that followers of Karl Marx love, namely, the progressive income tax and the preaching of envy against those who produce great amounts of goods and services for the "pee-pul" and thus get rich.

Perhaps worse is Pierce and party followers who almost never condemn liberal politicians such as Ted Kennedy, George McGovern and worse yet, the super-powerful House Speaker Tip O'Neill, said by many to be the most fiscally irresponsible politician of this century, Rep. Hansen's power and influence pales alongside O'Neill's, yet Pierce can't seem to master even modest mention of criticism of Congress's chief liberal. On all counts Hansen comes in above O'Neill - except one. Power.

Pierce apparently would have us believe that the first open and avowed conservative president (Reagan) since WWII is too much in favor of the rich capitalists. I submit, gentle reader, that America is no longer number one in producing ANYTHING except, perhaps, empty politicians and empty promises. Maybe there's a reason.

The prestigious Value-line Investment Service published the following information in June 1978. It says something about how the rich capitalists producers, who Pierce so casually criticizes, have been "rewarded."

Remember, now, they said this in 1978: "On Wages, Prices and Profits. These were the percentage changes: Steel wages (1952-77), up 450 percent; Manufacturing wages (1952-77), up 297 percent; Steel prices (1955-76), up 172 percent; Trucking wages (1950-73), up 264 percent; Building wages (1950-73), up 248 percent; Auto wages (1950-73), up 195 percent.

"Auto prices, Consumer prices, Durables and Appliance Prices for the same period (1950-73) were up 50 percent, 84 percent, 38 percent and 19 percent respectively."

Forgive the statistics my friends, but they can tell us something, so bear with me. "PROFITS (my emphasis) on sales (1951-55 and 1971-75) were as follows: Manufacturing down, 15 percent; Autos, down 36 percent; Steel down, 31 percent: Oil down, 38 percent.

"Return on net worth (real): Manufacturing down, 67 percent; Autos down, 85 percent; Steel down, 99 percent; Oil down, 61 percent. These statistics computed from: Council on Wage and Price Stability, Bureau of Labor Statistics and the First National City Bank of New York."

That message from Value-Line Investment Service back in 1978 should have told us something. It didn't. Neither did another message given to us several years earlier, again by the great Communist, Chairman Mao. He said, "America is (merely) a paper tiger."

Our production is down, our wages are down, our profits are down, our national defenses are down. Our pants are down - thanks, too often, to well-meaning preachers in the pulpit and paper tigers in the press.

In Defense of Hansen

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 19, 1983

Today is not the first time this column has claimed the "establishment" tends to lean on its critics. The more effective the criticism becomes the more irrational or even despotic the retaliation. Idaho's Second District Rep. George Hansen is a case in point.

Hansen is in the news again these days due to Big Brother's bureaucrats, namely, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The government alleges Hansen did not properly file some required disclosure forms concerning his and his wife, Connie's, finances. So huge are the numbers of forms and so vast and far reaching are the ramifications of Big Brother's piles of paperwork that even ordinary citizens who NEVER rock the boat are often led to give up rather than to fight the paper tiger. Hansen, however, does rock the establishment boats. And so they're hell-bent to get even with him.

One doesn't have to love the indefatigable congressman's extra conservative history in Idaho politics to small something rotten in Denmark. Further, one doesn't have to hate Congress because it's one of the most intellectually dishonest, double-talking, self-perpetuating, egocentric, power-mongering, vote-buying bunch of pork barrelers in modern history, to know that some of its 535 members tend to get the dirty end of the deal sometimes when they try to do the right things, especially if its' unorthodox.

Sometimes they are conservatives, sometimes they are liberals, yet the establishment, i.e., the power in the U.S. government, is vigorously liberal and has been for half a century under BOTH political parties.

While I'm not a long-time apologist for Hansen, nor am I for those many conservatives who too often care very little for other people's individual freedoms, I do think before we adjudge Hansen a few things should be remembered: (1) His seven-year hassle with the IRS wound up in 1979 with that agency's refund to him running into five figures. (2) It heated up after the tragic Teton Dam break-up when he championed the floor victim's case against the IRS as that agency tried to charge a capital gains tax against the payments Idahoans received for disaster damages. (3) The liberal establishment has never forgiven George Hansen for his having led the fight against the Fed's OSHA in the Bill Barlow case. That case highlighted what the late, great author-prophet, George Orwell, was trying to warn us about is his famous book, 1984, about Big Brother. (4) Hansen led the successful legal fight against the liberals who claimed Idaho and other states had no right to change their mind on their vote for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The Idaho Legislature hastily voted for compulsory equality via ERA, then changed their mind and rescinded it. The women's libbers claimed the states has no right to rescind. (5) The Iranians held scores of American government employees hostage for over a year in an illegal and immoral impasse while the U.S. paper-tiger government wrung its super-liberal State Department hands. At his own expense and at great personal risk, Hansen took off for Iran to see what he could do for the hostages.

Despite the media's and the State Department's touting the gushing liberal Ramsey Clark who tried unsuccessfully to talk to the Iranian fanatics (the government actually sponsored Clark's trip), U.S. officials refused even to talk to Hansen upon his return. Note also the subsequent national media snub of the courageous congressman while they were actually fawning over liberals, hippies, peacemakers and anti-everythingers. The liberal media blackout on the potential of Hansen's effort was all but total. This last in spite of what respectable sources tell me were some influential Iranians Hansen reached and first-time breakthroughs he made while in Iran. For example, he was the only American to ever get in to visit with the hostages to give them hope.

There were other non-establishment peregrinations of the Idaho congressman, some of which this writer didn't approve at all, but it's interesting how the politically liberal media and the politically liberal IRS are virtually the only source of criticism in the on-going crusade against Hansen, the conservative dissident. He's spent $75,000 in legal costs so far, and no end in sight.

All of this is not even to mention the congressman's blunt and bold book, To Harass Our People, and its devastating attack on big government: "... to help expose the shocking and dangerous practices of the IRS." It's signed: "Congressman George Hansen.

Is it any wonder he's always in hot water with the establishment?

Political Labeling Interpreted

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 26, 1983

The subject of labels and labeling, especially where politics or philosophy are concerned, occupies the irritated attention of many people simply because it forces them to do some thinking and allows others to escape the chore. But if we're to communicate with one another above mere sign-language and thus live more peacefully and efficiently we must do so with words, i.e., labels. Let's look at a couple of the more abused ones.

Since the words Republican and Democrat have lost so much of their meaning by each organization trying to obscure what they really and truly want (other than to get elected) we might begin with them. Many people say Republicans tend to be more conservative while Democrats are more liberal. Okay, but that's not particularly helpful if we ask, "liberal with what and conservative with what?"

Therefore, many suggest the main differences lie in which if the two wants conservative doses of government (i.e., less) and which wants liberal doses (i.e., more). But then it must be added immediately that Republicans, to the extent that they sometimes want less government (they tend to lie a little, too, especially at election time), tend to want less government only in economic matters while the Democrats tend to want less government only in individual liberties.
Unfortunately, both parties tend to agree only when the question involves - more government, not less. Thus a "ratchet" effect comes into play. Result? More government. It's almost always AGREEMENT between both Democrats and Republicans that produces more and more laws; more and more government. Only upon rare occasion does government increase when both sides do NOT agree.

This is why cynical observers, that is, those who still believe two plus two equals four and not 22, have dubbed successful politicians: "Demopublicans" or 'republicrats." Democrats tend to prefer socialist solutions (out-right government ownership, thus control) and Republicans tend to prefer kind of fascist solutions (private ownership, but government controls such as licensing, government guarantees, zoning, censorship, franchised monopolies and the like). Both sides, then, tend to suggest one classic solution - power. Political power, of course. And the citizen-voter, whose burnt finger wobbles right back to the fire each election, seems forever to wonder why violence - in the streets, in the schools, on television, on the book racks in our domestic and our foreign policy - is increasing almost daily.
Power corrupts. It's almost inevitable.

Small wonder, I'd say, since so much of it begins right in the schools. Right in the English class, especially, where the meaning of words, labels, are too often shown to be meaningful or not, depending mostly on how we vote. Balderdash, you say? Maybe so. But suppose it were true. How would we vote intelligently if we couldn't tell the difference between the political labels, or words" George Orwell predicted the mess in his book 1984.

I'm indebted to a clever and valued friend, Dale Peterson, who suggested to me last week at least a partial, if humorous, route out of the Orwellian politico-educational swamp. I've taken some license with it, but here's the gist:

It's entitled, "How to tell Republicans from Democrats:" (1) Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere. Republicans form censorship committees and read them as a group. (2) Republicans consume three-fourths of all the watercress produced in this country. The remainder is thrown out. (3) Democrats give their out-of-style clothes to the Salvation Army. Republicans wear theirs forever. (4) Republicans tend to keep their shades drawn, although there is seldom any reason why they should. Democrats ought to, but don't. (5) Republicans study the financial pages of the newspaper. Democrats put them on the bottom of the bird cage. (6) Democrats eat the fish they catch. Republicans hang them on the wall. (7)

Republican boys date Democrat girls. They plan to marry Republican girls, but feel they're entitled to a little fun first. (8) Democrats make plans and then do something else. Republicans follow the plans their grandfathers made. (9)
Most female teachers are liberal Democrats, i.e., anyway, the ones who have the most fun are.

Paradoxically, however, although I myself have been labeled too conservative, I could never seem to find one liberal enough.

Declaration of Liberty

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 3, 1983

Last Wednesday I had the privilege of making a short address to the annual God and Country Rally at the Municipal Park in Nampa. I was asked by one of the ministers in charge to make a "Declaration of Liberty" for the 4th of July. I'm going to share it with you, but first a brief explanation.

Mayor Winston Goering gave the main address which was preceded and followed by some delightful music and an especially good choral group from the Calvary Assembly of God. The master of ceremonies was Maj. Ed World of the Salvation Army who added a touch of humor along with his calm and obviously sincere spiritual remarks.

One of my friends who heard my Wednesday evening "speech" absolutely insisted I use it for this, my 4th of July column. So, here it is without any of the trite one-man, one-vote stuff. It's at the suggestion of one man - period.
Except that his super-enthusiasm was, well, it seemed sincere. (And I admit, probably what I wanted to hear). In any event, here's my remarks:

"Ladies and gentlemen: My assigned task on this occasion of God and Country Day is to make a statement entitled a 'Declaration of Liberty' - and make it in four minutes.

"Well goodness gracious sakes alive, that's like asking a hard core Republican to convince a hard-shell Baptist to turn from his wicked ways - when all of us know that it's the Republican who probably needs the salvation. And I'm to do all that in four minutes?

"My guess is if you don't completely agree with me that you'll at least sympathize - if my Declaration doesn't 'sell' the first time around.

"Most of us who stand for liberty or the free society become exasperated, even angry, at our opponents. This reaction is almost instinctive, but I am convinced that it may be a mistake. Actually, if any exasperation is called for, it might be better directed at ourselves. Why do I make this claim?

"Assuming freedom or liberty, since that's my assigned topic, to be the true and right way, which I do, those folks on the other side of the fence play a part, no less important than ourselves, in its attainment. Again, why? Well, the vision of truth, the development of man, all programs - material, intellectual, moral, spiritual - are the result of both action and reaction. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his famous essay, called it, 'the law of compensation.' He said, 'No man thoroughly understands a truth until first he has contended against it.' Here's a self-evident fact: It is impossible to move forward unless there by something to thrust or push against. So let me suggest a not-so-obvious opportunity:

"Let's view our opponents as welcome springboards - be grateful for their existence. 'He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill,' wrote the famous conservative, Edmund Burke. 'Our antagonist is our helper.'

"Our philosophical and ideological adversaries are doing their part. (More than one on each Sunday's editorial page of the Press-Tribune.) Sometimes, indeed, it appears that they may take over. In fact, their action is well nigh overwhelming, so enormous is its scale. But it is our reactions that are faulty. For the most part, we react in the form of name-calling, disdain, often bitterness. How should we react? What is the intelligent way?

"I'm suggesting we should use their faulty notions as springboards to make our own case. If our reactions were adequate, they would cause freedom to appear like a brilliant star in the darkness - all eyes would be attracted to it.

"What I am saying, I mean my Declaration for Liberty for this occasion today, is but another attempt to light a candle for liberty: It's - do your homework on America! Most folks have never even read the Declaration of Independence, let alone the Bill of Rights. So I repeat, do your homework. Read, read and don't stop.

"As the famous Scotsman said, 'All the darkness in the whole world cannot extinguish the light from one wee candle.' Accent on the 'wee'. Wait! Make that 'our' candle, because there is indeed a great deal that must be done and done soon, in the disappearing cause of liberty.

"In fact, ladies and gentlemen, if you think that the darkness of tyranny and too much government is already too much for your individual candle - then burn it at both ends. It worked 200 years ago and it'll work again if you do your homework on liberty.

"It's my Declaration for America, my friends. I just hope and pray that it's yours.

"Thank you."

Balance Missing at Ch. 4

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 10, 1983

On the evening of July 6 the government television station KAID-TV (Ch. 4), oft-times referred to as Public Broadcasting System (PBS), broadcast a program on the proposed sale of some government lands.

The nightly program is hosted by the popular and liberal, Marc Johnson, and is called Idaho Reports. At issue was the proposed sale of approximately 14,000 acres of government land out of 11 or 12 million acres in Idaho managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

As per usual, these nice-guy, quasi-bureaucrats' idea of telling both sides of an issue is to find two liberals who disagree. I say they are "quasi" bureaucrats simply because Jack Schlaefle, affable, intelligent, liberal and sincere long-time manager of Ch. 4, tells me that they receive "half" their income from the private sector as opposed to getting it all from the government sector (i.e., taxes and deficits). So I, too, am a friend and supporter of Schlaefle & Co.

Hence this is not at all to criticize the Ch. 4 people if only because the three major so-called private TV network monopolies (ABC, CBS and NBC) consistently refuse to afford equal time for the non-government sectors. For example, conservative William F. Buckley, Jr.'s Firing Line can only be heard on government TV, even if ever-so-late Sunday night.

But notice how Johnson structured last week's proposed government land sale panel: (1) the competent BLM chief from the Boise office, by definition representing government ownership; (2) the Idaho Conservation League, a preservationist organization wanting to preserve the status quo, i.e., collective ownership of land, and, to their ideological credit, opposing on principle the sale or transfer to the private sector of any government land at all; (3) the president of the Idaho Cattlemen's Association who by the nature of his position must represent his membership, some of whom welcome the private ownership idea and some of whom abhor it; and (4) a former Republican state senator who thought even the statist GOP was too conservative so bolted his party to become a liberal Democrat; and (5) Marc Johnson, himself, whose awareness that a free market and private property is the major and newsworthy distinction between our system and that of Soviet Russia is, well, parallel to movie actress Liz Taylor's concern for a permanent husband.

So what did the Ch. 4 panel concern itself with? The fantastic and "massive" sell-off (mind you, it's only a proposal by the BLM to offer for sale) approximately 1 percent of the land now federally owned and managed by that agency in Idaho.

Now then, both positive and negative arguments can be made for sale of these particular packages of land which range in size from 2 1/2 acres to 1,400 acres, most of it without reasonable access to anyone but the rancher whose land totally surrounds it. So that is not my complaint with the lack of balance in KAID-TV's Idaho Reports land panel.

My complaint is that the environmentalists (some call them environmental extremists since they're always against everything that's productive in the case of the private sector) are always, repeat, always, on these programs representing pure collective ownership. There is almost never anyone representing, i.e., on principle, pure individualist ownership of government lands.

The controversy surrounding U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt stems to a large degree from the hysteria promoted by the collectivists and almost never publicly opposed by articulate individualists. Further, hardly ever are free market alternative proposals allowed on-going public discussion. Perhaps the only remaining public figure to promote publicly the idea of private ownership of government land is President Reagan himself. Even Rep. Larry Craig and Sen. Jim McClure are in the process of selling out one of the president's chief campaign promises - to sell some, repeat, some, government land. Less than 2 or 3 percent, in fact. (BLM lands, by the way, contain virtually no public parks.)

Do you realize that right now the U.S. government owns 770 million acres - 34 percent of all the U.S. real estate? For example, the Feds own: 89.5 percent of Alaska, 86.1 percent of Nevada, 63.8 percent of Idaho, 63.6 percent of Utah, 52.5 percent of Oregon, 48.7 percent of Wyoming, 46.6 percent of California, 44 percent of Arizona, 35.5 percent of Colorado, 33.2 percent of New Mexico and 30 percent of Montana. Egad!

Forbes magazine put it this way: "The American dream, since this land became free, has been to own a piece of it. Millions do not, and even more millions hope to."

The Feds, by far the nation's biggest, greediest landlord and the most expensive manager in the history of the world, owns too much already.

But, so far at least, we're not likely to hear that side of the story from the government's very own TV system.

Fascism in the Mint Field

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 17, 1983

Readers of this column may remember about 3 1/2 years ago when I complained bitterly because my inquiry to the University of Idaho failed to uncover any, repeat any, information against the moderately fascistic agricultural marketing orders. Reason? They didn't have any, that's why.

Both the economics department and the ag-economics department were contacted. The ag professors had some information in favor of marketing orders, but nothing against them. To put it mildly, I was furious. Students could find out how to solve problems via more government but not through less government, i.e., the free market. Egad! (No wonder the U of I alumni board fired their then president Steve Symms back in 1969 for advocating a chair of free market capitalism. Believe it or not!).

You remember, of course, that marketing orders are the government device a voting majority of farmers can use by invoking a federal law passed back in the mid 1930s to limit, repeat limit, crop production. Hop growers, for example, have one. Spearmint growers have one. Tobacco and peanut growers each have one, and there are and have been others, all in order to keep up the price of the particular crop.

One can scarcely blame hard-pressed farmers for such a scheme when they see labor unions and big business using that self-same government for compulsory limitations on THEIR competitors. Like the labor unions who are more visible, it's great for those who are "in," but it's bad for those laborers who are out and want in. Even so, it's lousy public policy, especially for those capitalists who otherwise spout: "We're for free enterprise - and you should be, too."

Well, time came and went since the 1980 mint growers' election and a majority of the mint farmers succeeded in forcing the minority growers (those who voted no) to agree that henceforth the majority would tell them who could and who could not grow mint and thus stay out of jail. It is today illegal to grow mint without a "government permit," ostensibly because otherwise farmers would grow too much mint.

Comes now the University of Idaho Plant and Entomology Research and Extension Department located at Parma. These professors are and have been doing some fine work on plants, that is, crops grown by farmers in Idaho. So let's all say: "Bless their hearts. They are helping farmers grow more for less, thus there will tend to be fewer hungry people in the world and more food and fiber will be available at the cheaper price." Right?

Wrong! Well, that is, they really are a bunch of pretty nice guys and as typical college professors go (typically) the U of I extension professors are some first class human beings. So what's wrong you may ask? Okay, here's what.

Recently the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce sponsored a tour of the Canyon County U of I extension services. I went on that tour. At the U of I Parma station our group was shown many fine plant experiments of growing farm crops in process ostensibly to help farmers "grow more for less" - but with one glaring exception.

We were shown a nice field of mint which the agricultural professors told us had in past years been the site of several experiments. This year the mint field was being used to find out the optimal amount of irrigation water for the best mint production.

In view of the relatively recent passage of the mint marketing order (law) to limit the amount of mint farmers were free to grow - legally. I felt compelled to ask the manager of the U of I Parma farm: "Professor, isn't it somewhat contradictory for you government agronomists to be out here trying to help farmers grow more mint for less when at the same time the government has just passed a law compelling farmers, instead, to grow less mint for more?"

Well, what could the nice professor say? He defended the process of government crop research as best he could, and he did, too, at least pretty much to the satisfaction of most of the "my-country-right-or-wrongers" on the ag tour.

Still the suspicion lingers, that if those nice-guy economists at the U of I in Moscow had had adequate information over 3 1/2 years ago, that is to say, AGAINST, instead of for government agricultural marketing orders, the U of I farm professor might well have replied:

"Mr. Smeed, you've just uncovered the U of I's most infamous hybrid-cross - government and agriculture. Let us pray that this mint monkey-business will be seen for what it is, namely, a devastating social "crop failure."

Fed Schemes Rip Farmers

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 24, 1983

Last week this column spoke to the issue of gawdawful federal agricultural marketing orders in Idaho. This type of government edict is similar to the scheme successfully promoted by the American Medical Association (AMA) to limit competition and raise prices.

It works, too, thanks in large measure to the part that the University of Idaho (et. al.) play in "teaching" government alternatives as if they were superior to market alternatives. I criticized this U of I education mess in last week's column, but unfortunately said mess is approximately the same in all institutions of higher learning in Idaho, not just at Moscow (no pun). Interestingly, Boise-Cascade's president, John Fery, seems to think Idahoans should spend even more on schools. Apparently they should raise THEIR taxes and pay for HIS idea, namely, "Good (government) education is good (private) business." Egad!

Comes now the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) with more "good education." This particular government scheme gives it to the farmer - directly in the overalls, as does every ag department scheme sooner or later. This time, ALRB has said that a farmer must get permission from the United Farm Workers (UFW) before changing his farming practices. The Central California Growers Association and the Pacific Legal Foundation are assisting just such a local farmer in appealing this very affront to his individual rights.

ALRB's judgment was the result of farmer Paul Bertuccio's decision to let part of his garlic crop go to seed rather than harvest it as a fully grown crop. This meant that fewer workers were needed. ALRB concluded that because of his action Bertuccio bargained in bad faith with the UFW by not informing them of his decision in advance.

Lest Idaho farmers might say: "So what? We live in Idaho, not California. Idahoans aren't so damn dumb as those odd balls down south," they should remember that much of the Gem State's law is patterned after the older California legal arrangements and precedents. Unfortunately we follow them in many other trend-setting areas, as well, such as economics and schooling practices. So, Idaho farmers, get your feet braced. Even if this one gets shot down there's apt to be yet another similar scheme to follow soon. It's the price farmers pay for trying more government alternatives to ag problems.

Said another way, it's the politically impotent and naive farm bloc "feeding the alligator hoping that he won't eat them 'til last." So, let's don't think for a moment that what happens in California agriculture doesn't or won't affect what happens to farmers of famous potatoes, etc., in Idaho.

ALRB went on to explain that farmworkers should have collective (there's a meaningful word) bargaining power over management decisions relating to growing and marketing of crops, thus they assessed Bertuccio for back wages plus interest that were "lost" by workers because of his decision. Damages could reach $2 million.

The oppressive decision gives growers, especially with small and medium sized farms, a veritable nightmare. To insist that a farmer bargain with UFW before dealing with soil conditions, weather conditions, harmful insects and swiftly changing market conditions may make sense to planners in Communist Russia, but certainly not in this country, i.e., so far. Still, when groups of farmers petition the government for bail-out schemes there will always be bureaucrats willing to oblige - and control - and politicians thus willing to buy their vote with the money. It can hardly be otherwise.

ALRB claimed that the sale of the garlic crop for seed rather than for the market was not necessary to avoid loss of profit, but it's at least interesting to note that UFW does not invest its income or "profits" in farms managed by labor unions. They nevertheless concluded that in the absence of compelling circumstances farmer Bertuccio was not free to consider his buyers' needs regardless of the job needs of his own employees.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the First District Court of Appeals against the ALRB decision. Since then, ALRB reversed its position which should benefit Mr. Bertuccio's appeal.

If you mint and hop farmers who cherish your freedoms to choose want to thank PLF or send them a few needed bucks their address is 455 Capital Mall, Suite 600, Sacramento, CA 95314.

Sweet dreams - you dreamers.

McClure-Craig Act for Sale?

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 31, 1983

Of all the disappointing acts in the circus concerning President Reagan's campaign promise to sell some of the greedy green giant's surplus land holdings, the recent action of U.S. Senator James McClure and Congressman Larry Craig is the worst to date.

Last week the two Idaho Republicans publicly called for Reagan to drop the controversial land-sale plans to sell far less, repeat, less than one percent of the 340,000,000 acres owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Here's why. Last election the Democrat candidate, Larry LaRocco, was getting nowhere in his contest against incumbent Congressman Larry Craig, so he decided in an all out last ditch effort to accuse Craig of wanting to sell off huge amounts of government land into private ownership. Plainly, a damn lie.

Put another way, LaRocco accused Craig of being a free market capitalist, i.e., get the government out of the greedy landlord business and put the tax exempt land on the tax rolls. Such a political accusation is, somehow, more controversial than to accuse one of being a "card carrying" socialist, thanks in large part to most of Idaho's socialist system of higher education and a liberal news media thoroughly sympathetic to socialism - with few exceptions.

Now then, Craig has always been politically "soft" on private ownership of land, so the LaRocco accusation was clearly a political ploy, a typical one used by those who advocate socialist ideas. Such was virtually the only kind of ideas offered by LaRocco's campaign.

An unfortunate side effect of the recent McClure-Craig denouncement of Reagan Asset Management Program was to offer a politically expedient opening for LaRocco to crow: "I told you so," which he lost no time in doing. Even more unfortunately, Craig and his GOP advisors, either from fear or lack of conviction, refused to label LaRocco's plan for what it was, that is, pure socialism. Somehow, however, the liberal media does not see this as newsworthy thus tending to justify Craig's being somewhat intimidated by the knee-jerk socialist ploy.

And it is not without its political reality, either. During the campaign LaRocco's baseless accusation succeeded in dropping Craig's huge lead down a whopping 25 points, but fortunately there were enough realists among Idaho voters to stop the drain in Craig's plurality.

Still, the battle drew political blood. Thus LaRocco - like the little banty rooster - crowed, flapped his wings and retired back to the chicken coop, content that he had once more done his duty by making the sun rise. His "I told you so" about Craig was all but an outright lie, but he says he may run again. That's if the GOP continues to avoid labeling LaRocco's ideas for what they really are - left wing.

But McClure should know better. He's usually smarter than to use that "moderate" crap in Idaho. He knows full well that private property is the single most distinguishing feature between America's system and Soviet Russia's system of government owned property. That's an inescapable truth, but he won't say it. Why?

McClure and Craig are up for re-election next year. That's why. It's clear that McClure and Craig have re-read said poll taken in the last congressional race. They've clearly stuck their political finger in their mouth, held it up to the wind and said "There goes the mob; they need a leader ... and how can I do any good if I don't lead them back into power?" (One wonders: Power to do what?)

Well they have a point, you say? Okay, they do. And it's rather obvious. But they refuse to make the political case for private ownership just like the Republican National Committee (RNC) has refused to do for decades. Apparently they think, should they ever get in power, they'll need some favors, too, to pass out to friends. 'Twas ever thus.

But unsuccessful 1980 gubernatorial candidate, Phil Batt, a moderate and sometimes conservative Republican, found himself in a similar dilemma with the Right to Work (RTW) issue. In his heart he knew he was right, but it was controversial as all hell. So he was "soft" on RTW until too late in the campaign. Absolutely no one was inspired and, since, to his credit, he refused to promise socialist Utopia, he lost.

McClure and Craig should consider another poll - i.e., the 1982 general election. Look. The two Idaho Republican congressman received a total of 170,150 votes, statewide. Both won. Republican Batt received 161,157 votes, statewide. He lost by 4,208 votes while his GOP pals together had 8,993 to spare. Had he championed RTW as a freedom issue, he'd likely be governor today. Too bad GOPers didn't have a little clearer signal.

McClure inferentially referred to Reagan's plan to sell less than one percent of the 340,000,000 BLM acres as "... disposing of federal lands at a pell-mell pace." Is that a damn lie, too? Well, it's at least not championing the truth about America, for which a clear signal is long overdue.

As for Craig, at least where championing private property as a freedom issue is concerned; we may as well have elected LaRocco.

Despite His Job, I Like Him

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 7, 1983

It is a great gift to the people of Idaho that my good friend, Jerry Evans, former superintendent of the Caldwell School District and now state superintendent of public instruction, didn't get into politics at an earlier age.

Why? Because he is, indeed, an astute politician and astute politicians are both the pain and the pleasure of modern America. The late Chinese Communist dictator, Mao Tse Tung, said with some insight: "America is nothing but a paper tiger," and it is the politicians who mold, motivate and manage that "tiger." Evans is one such molder that Idaho is lucky to have - if with some small reservation.

Although I sincerely value and cherish the decades-long friendship, ours is one of outstanding worthy adversaries concerning education. Consequently, his recent letter to me began in light of his clever insight(s) and his political sixth sense of indirection. "Dear Ralph," he began, "seldom do I read anything that causes me to say, 'I sure wish Ralph Smeed would read that.' However, today I found just such an article. It is enclosed. Sincerely, (signed) Jerry."

I'm sure it violates no confidence to say that friend Jerry is a red hot advocate of the government school system without being anti non-government schools as well. But there is deep doubt in the minds of some of us whether a state's high priest of government schools can be totally objective with his power and also stay in office.

So it was no surprise that Jerry's letter included an article from the Journal of Education Finance from the office of the governor of Florida's Education Policy Coordinator, Professor Kevin Alexander. As one might imagine the article was against tuition tax credits as proposed by President Reagan.

It was entitled, Adam Smith, Religion, and Tuition Tax Credits. Without wanting to ascribe blame to Evans for each statement of Professor Alexander's (Evans didn't actually say he approved the article, but I'm making that assumption, nevertheless, for rather obvious reasons), I want to pass along some spectacular, if double-standard quotes from it so you can get an idea of how the government school mentality tends to function.

The article opens with: "Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether churches are more interested in religion or income. (Karl) Marx once said that "The English Established Church ... will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39th of its income.'" Thus opens Alexander's attack on tuition tax credits as "income to the church." Stay tuned.

It's difficult to do the anti-tuition tax credit article justice without seeming to tar Evans with its brush, but some of its points are pungent indeed: "Thomas Paine, along with other of America's founding fathers, observed that a union between Church and State was not only detrimental to religion but had adverse effects on the economic condition of the temporal state as well. Paine pointed out that ... Church and State are not driving the cotton manufacturers from England to America and France."

"Historically," says Alexander, "the tax exempt status afforded churches has given religion a competitive advantage in the marketplace." Certainly where American churches are controlling so many businesses today tax advantage is awesome, for sure. Alexander quotes a church spokesman of 1960, the Rev. Richard Ginder: "The Catholic Church must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T. and T. and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the U.S. government."

The professors' article cited Adam Smith as opposed to funding the church from general revenues of the state, something most voters would likely applaud, but his anti-tax credit, pro-statism zeal flew out of the ballpark with his claim that churches "merely" wanted to do away with their competition - as if the government schools WANTED competition? Ho, ho, ho.

But the best quote of the professor's essay to belittle the private parochial school effort was indeed, revealing: "The inculcation of religion has no particular positive benefit to the state except possibly to the extent that most religions impart certain moral and ethical values which are desirable in society."

Well, gentle reader, there you have it: "The state is my shepherd - I shall not want." Sometimes called public education, many say that what is needed is just that - certain moral and ethical values which are desirable.

My friend Jerry Evans is still a good man. I just wonder which is these amazing statements he was aiming at me.

Looking Beyond Your Nose

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 14, 1983

Rep. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was quoted recently as condemning President Reagan's program for selling some (less than 1 percent) of the stupendous amount of government-owned lands. Presumably Sen. James McClure agrees, since the announcement of the hearings to be held next week here, the press labeled: "McClure-Craig land-sale hearings."

But it was Craig, specifically, who alleged that the Reagan program's purposes for selling some government land had been rearranged. That is, what had been "last priority" - to pay something on the government's staggering national debt - now appeared to be "first priority." His statement reflected this kind of stance: "Over my dead body, you will. Debt pay-off is a lousy priority."

This may be good politics, too, considering that absolutely nobody, nobody, nobody gets elected nowadays by wringing their political hitch-hiking thumb along the super-highway ("freeway"?) called the national debt, but it is fast becoming almost indistinguishable from high-speed DWI (Driving While under the Influence) of the heady wine of politics.

Now then, if I had my druthers, I'd have had the government sell off enough land to pay the senior Social Security recipients who were compelled, for lo these many years, to pay into the bankrupt scheme enough to make it solvent. Needless to say, I did not have my way, but an almost parallel and sound suggestions was made: So near are we to national bankruptcy, that the funds from the sale of government lands should go to reduce its cancer-like and burgeoning debt.

The resulting howl sent up by the very collectivists who got us into our big spending mess in the first place could be heard even through the rusty pipe ear-trumpet of the Congress. The latter, always in need of a scapegoat, sent their lackeys in the media (or is it the other way around?) in hot pursuit after Reagan's Paul Bunyan of the Public Playpen, James Watt. Watt never did particularly favor private ownership, but rather wanted to make government ownership "efficient."

Ye gods! Unfortunately, Watt thus served the media well but failed to explain and support capitalism.

Craig and McClure, all the same, deep under the socialist "DWI" of political reality, should not surrender without a well-fought fight. Both men, sincere and conscientious fiscal conservatives, are typically intimidated by the media and thus tend to throw in the towel when that media steadfastly refuses to recognize the enormity, not to mention the morality and thus the newsworthiness of balancing the budget by less government. Less government means, by definition, more individual rights and responsibilities.

Further, the media refuses to force McClure and Craig to make clear what neither seems willing to say, that private ownership is the single most distinguishing characteristic between our system and that of Russia. That's a classic definition which the media effectively clobbers with a style reminiscent of The State's hobnail boots.

Just so that McClure-Craig (et al) won't completely belittle the national debt pay-down idea let me remind them of something with which they could defend both themselves AND President Reagan, notwithstanding the hostile and socialistically sympathetic news media.

In case anybody gives a damn, here it is. According to my friend, James Dale Davidson, president of the National Taxpayers' Union (NTU) in Washington, D.C., "The U.S. treasury recently (1982) asked Congress to raise the national debt ceiling to $1.275 trillion. This is a fascinating figure in view of the fact that since 1971, the permanent debt ceiling of the U.S. government has been fixed by law at $400 billion ... (and) our Social Security system itself has a deficit of $5.8 trillion." And no end in sight.

Remember now, a trillion is 1,000 billion and 1982 is only 11 years later. That's a 250 percent increase. Do you think the U.S. will be the first government in world history to escape paying for its sinful, sickening, socialist indebtedness?

The Holy Bible (Ecclesiastes 10:19) says, "A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry; but money answereth all things." With a federal debt now in the trillions, we are running out of both money and answers. The "money-changer" planners in our legislative temple on Capitol Hill apparently heed history and the scriptures far less than they heed the modern socialist's political "free lunch."

If you're wondering whether the truth-will-out at McClure-Craig's sincerely concerned hearings next week, go to see for yourself.

But don't forget, they'll be counting noses. "That's how truth is determined in a Democracy," the late, great H.L. Mencken told us, "by counting noses." Egad!

And the Caesers of ancient Rome explained the pragmatics of a politician: "Vox populi, vox del - the voice of the people is the voice of God."

One Man's Junk Is Another Man's

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 21, 1983

Do you get a veritable blizzard of junk mail almost daily as I do? I've been saving all mind for a one-month period, intending to write about them. I'll do this one of these days, too, but today's mail was such an unusual batch (not all junk) I decided to launch an early trial run and see what fun it'd be. So here goes.

On top of the pile and in order of more importance is an envelope from the Alaska Libertarian Party, Box 104073, Anchorage, Alaska 99510. It was a note from my friend and former longtime state legislator, Dick Randolph, (Libertarian Party, believe it or not) thanking me for my order for 20 copies of his absolutely great little book on public lands: Freedom for Alaskans. Ninety-five percent of his state is owned by the federal dinosaur in Washington, D.C.

Next is a form letter from U.S. Sen. James McClure setting forth the guidelines for his and Rep. Larry Craig's Boise "hearing" to count noses on the proposed sale of a small percentage of government lands.

Under McClure's letter is one from "The Honorable James G. Watt c/o Americans for the Reagan Agenda ... (to) support his program to re-arm America, balance the budget, and restore traditional family values." Reagan, by the way has strangely changed his mind on why interest rates go up via deficit spending. Tsk, tsk and tut, tut, Ron. For shame!

Next a form letter-copy of Joe Hautzinger's letter to another Nampan, Dave Edmark, thanking the latter for his key help in the recent campaign on the "No Tax Hike Committee." Congratulations fellows, but there's even better reasons than yours.

Next a form letter from the Idaho Republican Party, Box 2267, Boise. I haven't opened it yet, since I hate to see a grown man cry - especially when that man is me. It's the GOP's "silent principle" that maketh me weep.

Now a form letter from the National Right to Work (RTW) Newsletter, 8001 Braddock Road, Springfield, Va. 22160. I know that one almost by heart. It sometimes makes me cry, though, because holding innocent third parties hostage, as the labor unions so often do in their "negotiation," may have taught the Ayatollah of Iran some similar bad habits. Remember? I wonder why RTW never uses that analogy.

Next on the pile is a letter from my good friend, Congressman Phil Crane, stumping for The Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund, also in Washington, D.C. (I guess everybody's head office is there in that most asinine and powerful of all cities in the world). On the outside of Phil's letter right under the stamp is this cheerful note: "The liberal bias in the news media simply must end!" Hooray for Phil. Still, it's almost as catastrophic that even conservative Crane steadfastly refuses to publicly criticize his Republican National Committee (RNC) for its consistently lousy and "born loser" approach to using the news media for lo these many years. The GOP naively thinks the media types are for sale, so to speak, i.e., that if they brown-nose them long enough they'll get an even break.

Unsuccessful 1982 gubernatorial candidate, Phil Batt, discovered this to his dismay, but too late. No, gentle reader, to their credit most of the media is not for sale. They're merely ideologically left, in most cases, but then so are 90 percent of their university professors to whom corporate tycoons such as Boise Cascade's John Fery want to give even more taxpayer's money.

Comes now an envelope from Dr. Jerry Falwell, speaking of press hatred, 499 South capitol St., Washington, D.C. 20003. I seriously doubt anyone since anti-Communist Joe McCarthy has evoked such hatred by both the media and academic liberals as has Jerry Falwell. (One of my media pals calls him Jerry "Foul-mouth" to express his extreme disdain for the TV preacher). I just grin and add that, "He's just succeeded in doing the same thing you liberals have been doing for decades - pushing ideas via the government and majority-rule (emphasis on rule)." Falwell's letter says they're $700,000 in the red.

That leaves 15 unidentified pieces of "junk mail" for next week, maybe. But I will confess there's one I can only mention as perhaps the sole piece of mail I've ever received from Washington, D.C., that did no say: "Send money ..." In fact this one contained my prepaid air travel arrangements and a brochure about the famous Mayflower Hotel in Washington where I'll by staying this week for three or four days - at my host's expense. Not a dime of it from government.

My obligation? To take part in a theoretical conference entitled, "Why America keeps losing." It's timely.

Do you suppose we can give U.S. Sen. Steve Symms a theory on why the U.S. Post Office monopoly should be carrying junk mail?

This Week's Column Filled with Junk

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 28, 1983

Last week's column on junk mail brought to me some humorous comments, but it isn't all fun and frolic. Indeed, especially so, since one is reminded of Lady Bird Johnson's old government program to beautify America - "It's so easy to throw away something beautiful ..."

But I had 15 more pieces of (not all) junk mail to tell you about when I ran out of room, so here we go again. There's a flyer from friend Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media (AIM), 1341 C Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. He reminds me my annual gift subscriptions have run out and would I please renew them and add more? They need the dough. Yes, I will send AIM newsletters this year for Christmas presents. Reed thus does us a favor, not we him.

Next a letter from State Sen. Dave Little, Box 68, Emmett, Idaho 83617. Dave's piece was hand-written so I knew it wasn't junk, although it had the state's "great" seal on it so I almost tossed it out. This cowboy politician expressed that our regrets were mutual as to McClure-Craig's so-called public lands suggestion to toss the privately-owned "baby" out with the government owned "bath water." Friend Dave says they should be fighting socialist ownership instead.

Comes next an offer from Wausau Insurance Companies, 11975 Westline Drive, St. Louis, MO 63141. Wausau says call us on our watts line for a fast and free auto insurance rate quotation.

A long distance insurance agent? Not for me. I'll just stay with my friends at Harrison-Frank Agency. They're local.

The libertarian newsletter Update, 1320 G Street, S.E. Washington, D.C. 20003, is next in my mail pile. They made a survey asking: "How much of the time do you think you can trust the government to do what is right?" Options were three answers: "(1) Always (2) Most of the time and (3) Only some of the time." Those questioned were members only of the three major political parties including Libertarian. One hundred percent of both the Republicans and Democrats were tabulated, but a huge 40 percent of the Libertarians were not recorded. Why? Well, they wrote in as a response "Seldom or Never" - though that wasn't presented as an option. Interestingly enough NONE of the Republicans or Democrats surveyed did that.

The political scientists who took the survey told Update they were pretty amazed - especially since 87 percent of the Libertarians also said you can trust ordinary people "most of the time." Hmmmm. Isn't there an updated message here? (Pun intended).

Forgive me this next one. It sounds like I concocted it, but I swear it just came in this same stack of mail. It's from the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), P.O. Box 1149, Menlo Park, Calif., 94025, an absolutely first class west coast "think tank." Their press release on Industrial Policy - A Cure Worse than the Disease? can almost be summed up thus: "Before we jump on the industrial policy bandwagon, we should determine whether it has worked in Japan and Europe. Here's why.

Professor William Ouchi of UCLA, author of Theory Z - How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge, dismisses the idea that, in his words: "MITI (Japan's Minister of International Trade and Industry) knows all, sees all and tells everybody what to do." The truth is just the opposite, he says. The Japanese government intervenes far less directly in economic policy than the U.S. government does.

IHS tells it well: "IF advocates of (U.S.) industrial policy want to find the key to Japan's success, they should look to Japan's culture and its comparatively free-market, low-tax policies." But I'll be danged if you can find that side of the story in your major news media. It's even hard to find in Idaho colleges and universities.

Then there's next a reminder from the University of Idaho's College of Business and Economics, Moscow, Idaho, about the "Long-term Planning Committee" meeting. I'm on their illustrious advisory board, much to the dismay of that school's philosophy professor, Mr. Nicholas Gier, who passionately opposes that college's chair of business enterprise. High on the list of leftist Gier's pile of "evidence" that the chair is bad news is this: "Why, even Ralph Smeed who's an ideologue thinks the chair is a good idea."

My defense is simple, not unlike the narrow mind of philosophy professor Gier. It is (1) that Webster's dictionary defines ideologue as: "The study of ideas, their nature and source." And (2) there is a monumental confusion in our state as to the nature and source of some common sense philosophy as presently omitted from the government's compulsory school system.

The source for much of this confusion is a plethora of professors, such as Gier, whose thoughtless criticisms in a subsidized classroom cannot be freely chosen - or ignored - like junk mail.

Can't Define Away Inflation

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 11, 1983

Two authors of a book soon to be published in California for nationwide distribution asked me to write a brief commentary on today's unnecessary confusion about the term "inflation."

Some of my friends who reviewed it thought I should also use it in my column. What follows here is the unedited version. I hope you find it useful.

"The authors of this book are very much concerned about the interpretation of words - and rightly so. In fact, by no more than an interpretation of a word or a phrase, history has noted the slaughter or countless thousands of innocent people, often unnecessarily or even unintentionally. Treaties of peace have been interpreted as instruments to foment war. When the Jewish establishment who held the reins of power in that day refused to accept Christ's interpretation of Hebraic law, the Christian church was born. This altered the course of Western history. Pretty hard to dismiss that as 'just semantics.'

"In 20th century America, the establishment's interpretation of one word, 'inflation,' is tearing at the very foundation of our system of economic enterprise. It can be seen by the simple juxtaposition of two interpretations of the same word. A rare thing happens today. No matter which definition is used, it has an exactly opposite (not merely different) meaning in terms of coming to grips with a solution to the problem of inflation.

"In other words, to grip the solution one must identify the culprit. One definition points logically and squarely at the individual (i.e., the entrepreneur) as the bad guy causing high prices. The other definition points logically and squarely at the collective (i.e., the government) as the bad guy causing high prices.

"Today's high prices are the inevitable result of more and more artificial money chasing up the prices. More money being 'printed' by government inflates or puffs up the quantity. That's inflation. That's bad. More money saved by individuals out of production is how capital is formed. That money does not inflate. That's good. Government simply prints money, but it is individuals who produce goods.

"Whichever definition one accepts, however, one should remember that we cannot have our cake and eat it, too, so notice carefully how slick the two definitions of inflation work to point out (or avoid) who is at fault. The definitions either point to the government's responsibility or to the individual's responsibility. Interestingly enough, the two definitions tend to be mutually exclusive in terms of identifying our culprit.

"One definition defines inflation as the increase in prices. Using this definition, any intelligent person would logically reason, since prices are so high, and since the entrepreneur places the price tag on his goods or services, that the high prices must be his fault. Consequently, we reason that wage and price controls of some kind must be applied by government to curb unfair and runaway prices.

"The other definition states that inflation is the increase in the quantity of money or money substitutes (usually followed by a rise in the general price level). Since our Constitution gives Congress the absolute power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, it has been interpreted to be legal (if not moral) for the government to do this and to print almost unlimited quantities of money and to increase credit whenever politically expedient. This the government is presently doing and in a way that not one person in one thousand can detect.

"An over-abundance of money is like an over-supply of anything else; the value of it decreases. Therefore, the money we have in our paycheck or savings account buys less. Since the government 'counterfeiters' are 'printing' feverishly almost day and night, prices will not come down unless and until we decide on which interpretation of the word inflation we want our lawmakers to use.

"Until our politicians view the proliferation of the supply of money and credit as the REAL evil behind our problems of inflation (by whatever definition) the present policy of too much government will not even be slowed down. Prices of everything will go through the roof. Thus we will continue to outlaw or render impotent the pricing system as a method for telling the producers and savers when to produce more and when to produce less, when to save more and when to save less. It is only when producers save, that capital is formed making it available to help employees to produce more so that they too can save for a rainy day.

"That rainy day may now be upon us is a bad storm due in large part to past interpretations and definitions of one word - 'inflation.'"

Blame Ourselves for Our Problems

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 18, 1983

So much has been written and spoken on TV about the recent murder of 269 civilian passengers on a Korean Air Lines 747 on the way from Alaska to Korea that some of it even makes sense. Still, two things omitted from the discussion are so glaring, I want to pass them along.

First, the media has rightly interviewed just about everybody. Even the communists, both here and in Soviet Russia. Some people has been alarmed, some outraged, some would seemingly be satisfied only by the U.S. shooting down a Russian airliner. Still others, such as one professor at Harvard, said we must develop better electronic devices to avoid another case of mistaken identity. Egad.

The first omission that seems so glaring to me is that no one seems to have seen or heard an official of the John Birch Society interviewed by the national media.

It will be remembered, of course, that Rep. Larry McDonald, D-Ga., was aboard the KAL 747 and thus killed along with the other passengers. What many readers may not know is that McDonald was only recently made president of the John Birch Society, easily the most anti-communist organization in the world.

My question is, why interview all the apologists and critics of the barbed-wire republic of Soviet socialism and not interview in depth several major John Birch Society interviewed by the national media.

It will be remembered, of course, that Rep. Larry McDonald, D-Ga., was aboard the KAL 747 and thus killed along with the other passengers. What many readers may not know is that McDonald was only recently made president of the John Birch Society, easily the most anti-communist organization in the world.

My question is, why interview all the apologists and critics of the barbed-wire republic of Soviet socialism and not interview in depth several major John Birch Society spokesmen? They're the nation's most outspoken critic of the very organization whose decades-long predictions indicated a likelihood the Soviets would commit such a senseless murder of innocent civilians.

The second glaring omission is any sensible retaliation America and its Western allies could muster up as a penalty. Let me suggest something fairly simple, perhaps something too simple for our State Department's "Foggy Bottom" bureaucrats.

First, and simplest, President Reagan could send all Russian diplomats back to Russia. The U.S. is practically crawling with them. All should be sent home. He could then later let them back in if it was decided they were ready for civilized behavior.

But more than that, America could unilaterally decide something ever-so-effective, namely - stop financing our sworn enemy, the Soviet Union.

Consider the Soviet "purchase" of American grain once embargoed by President Carter. This has since been abandoned as "robbing our own farmers and benefiting foreign farmers who'd sell it to Russian anyway."

But it is not sanctions which rob the farmers: it's the government's subsidized farmers who are robbing the farmer.

Government price supports, farm loans, insurance and export assistance via the Export-Import Bank, etc., have, (1) encouraged over-production, while (2) buffering farmers and grain exporters from risk of Soviet defaults. It's the U.S. taxpayer who both subsidizes the East-West grain "trade" and takes the risk.

The Soviets get an added plus of below cost interest rates. This subsidized every step of the way by government loan guarantees and other assistance - a giant U.S. government hypocrisy that undermines us with what few common sense allies we might otherwise have in foreign countries.

Further examples abound, but one of the worst is that we are financing the Soviet butcher's natural gas pipeline. The Yamal Pipeline will involve 12 nations, billions of dollars and 120,000 workers in the U.S.S.R. alone.

According to the prestigious newsletter, On Principle, a consortium of Western European countries provided loans and credits, guaranteed by their governments, so that Russia could "buy" $15 billion in technology and materials from them. Without these loans the pipeline could not be built. Moscow will construct the pipeline, sell the gas to European firms for hard currency, then (in theory) repay the low interest loans. It is "in theory" because the Soviet bloc nations already owe the West $80 billion in outstanding obligations. Heaven help us.

President Reagan tried to compromise an end to his Russian pipeline equipment embargo so the U.S. could get along with our European "allies" if they would agree to (1) an end to subsidized European credit to the Soviet bloc; (2) tighten controls on certain high-technology exports to Russia; and (3) drop the future plans for a second pipeline.

But our "allies" told Reagan to shove it, which he did.

All this to promote trade by state-owned companies of the West, while we profess private ownership of the means of productions in our schools and our press at home. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Such trade is not an exchange of value for value; it's a transfer of the benefits of a free society to a slave society, financed by stolen property. And receiving stolen property is not free trade, just as aiding and abetting criminals is not an individual right. One recalls that plantation owners in the post-Civil War South defended the slave trade with a remarkably similar argument.

Government TV Soft on Schools

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 25, 1983

Early last week the government TV (Ch. 4) program, "Idaho Reports" inquired into the controversy about Idaho school's compulsory attendance laws. But the questions put to the members of the panel and their responses were mostly disappointing and largely off target.

Panel members were Idaho State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Jerry Evans; Dr. Ted Comstock, chairman of a Nampa school board; and Larry Olsen, president of Family Education Association, Box 171, Buhl, Idaho.

The latter is a group devoted, at long last, to helping parents who want to school their children at home, hence the compulsory attendance laws are of much interest to them.

My term "off target" (above) is leveled at the TV program simply because, for example, Comstock's remarks were almost 100 percent orthodox elitist. They added little to what most people see as some sort of disaster in today's government school system. He did, however, voice his sincere concern for compulsory attendance laws.

Evans is a career educator formerly of Caldwell and made a fine statewide reputation while superintendent of the Caldwell School District by his lecturing, cajoling, promulgating and educating about his idea of something loosely called "equal funding" for Idaho schools. It translates pretty much into more state money for schools and, thereby less tax burden, less tuition, and less fees at the local level. It also launched him, successfully, into state politics.

Evans is also smart, ambitious, quite sincere (for a politician), politically capable and communicates well. The latter poses a problem, however, since he, like most modern educators, is almost consumed with an egalitarian view of finance, i.e., whatever the problems of the government school monopoly, a fistful of money will cure them. Just how can one evaluate adequate funding of anything, anything, anything, without first clearly grappling with the basic philosophic premise underlying, e.g., the particular course or school's curriculum? It's almost never openly stated.

But not to worry, non-government schools, too, have increasing money problems, thanks, in large part, to the latter's having to compete with government subsidized schools who "sell" schooling incredibly far below cost.

The show's host as usual was the popular, if singularly left-handed, Marc Johnson, who sometimes asks penetrating, searching, even sometimes properly embarrassing questions of his interviewees. But not this time. Even with excessively short shrift given to the famous educator-critic John Holt, and another highly educated advocate of home teaching at the beginning of the Ch. 4 program, Johnson failed to hold either Evans' or Comstock's feet to the fire. Perhaps it's the "Sacred Cow" image of schools (not to be confused with education), but both establishment educators escaped any tough questions during their defense of Idaho's compulsory attendance laws.

For example, why didn't Johnson, who almost always seems well prepared beforehand with his questions, ask Evans why so many parents want to educate their children outside the public schools today? That is to say, why do parents feel the government schools are so bad? Why are so many private schools opening almost weekly all over America?
And why and how are Idaho schools so much better than the others? And how have they "done it" at so much cheaper price than the other schools from which there is such an exodus of children into private and home schools?

Johnson hardly got from Olsen even a moderate statement of skepticism of the public school system. Surely he had plenty of it for Idaho schools - else why does his "Family Education Association" even exist?

Both Evans and Comstock indicated that students should get a comparable education to the one they (Evans and Comstock) are furnishing in the public schools today, but that is precisely what parents do not (repeat, do not) want. They want for their sons and daughters a BETTER education than they perceive them to be getting now. To be able to read and write well; to learn how capitalism is superior to socialism; about religion and Christianity as well as humanism; to experience freedom, responsibility and discipline in the absence of peers on drugs and getting pregnant out of wedlock. This "education" doesn't cost - it pays.

It's interesting to note also that these parents are competent enough to breed, and bright enough to vote for their fearless leaders of both politics and education, yet not intelligent enough to choose where, or even if, they should send their children to school.

Oh yes! Johnson, whose sense of humor is superior to many of his colleagues, might have got a chuckle if he'd asked Evans and company: "If your government schools are doing such a good job as to be the standard for all students, then why is it necessary to have a law compelling them to attend?

Watt: His Candor Enrages Media

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 2, 1983

It looks as though U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt has "had it." Why? Well, he's made a lot of special interests angry, that's why. But they are not new interests angry, that's why. But they are not new interests as the liberal media would have us believe. Of all those who are calling for the gutsy politician's resignation there are none who haven't wanted him out long before his recent off-the-cuff remarks.

As a little background here's what he said with some context added which most of the Watt-hating liberal media censored. Sunday's UPI story on page 6 in the relatively middle-of-the-road Idaho Press-Tribune: "Watt is under fire for telling a group of lobbyists Wednesday about the panel: 'We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.'" In context, it isn't even unkind.

Now then, Watt is so terribly controversial not because he is blunt and outspoken, but because he is perceived to be - for private property, for the free market, for limited government and for capitalism. Oh yes, add one more for good measure: Watt is thought to be vigorously anti-Communist. HE is not only courageous and obsoletely not intimidated by the left-liberal news media, but he absolutely outrages the media moguls. It's what they think he stands for that they hate.

When the American press sets out to bring a political maverick to his knees they usually get the job done whether said boat-rocker is an outspoken conservative or a non-statist liberal. But the only time Watt gets on his knees is to pray to his God.

His God is definitely, so he claims, NOT the government. By the way, I'm told he does pray quite frequently and quite openly and is deeply religious, whatever that means. Still, whatever it means, it absolutely drives his adversaries up the wall, but did you ever see this in print? I mean this ogre, this representative of the greedy, capitalist-pig coal miners and this rip, rape and ruin-the-forests politician actually praying to some supreme entity - instead of government, that god which the media, generally speaking, almost worship? Of course you have not. And you probably won't. Worship these days, is usually "good news" and the press finds good news ever so difficult to deal with, not to mention conservative personalities in public life who are not easily intimidated.

In fairness one should add that readers do seem more willing to read and devour bad news than good. Still the suspicion lingers, if good news were pursued with the same liberal zeal that they now pursue the bad we'd all love the be-gooders more than the do-gooders.

Regardless of Watt's actual desires to sell a small portion or a large portion of the greedy government's sprawling millions of acres he is perceived as wanting to "sell off" (a la George Orwell's "newspeak") all he possibly can. I know for a fact that this isn't true, but, again, he must do most of his communicating through a hostile news media.

And last, but not least, according to the Confederation of the Associations for Unity of the Societies of the Americas (CAUSA, International) there are two concepts alongside which Communism cannot exist, namely, private property and God. Watt is perceived by the media to be red hot for both. True or not, this seems to make him a threat.

Furthermore, the theoreticians from CAUSA claim that, "the reason America keeps losing (i.e., their fanny and all the fixtures) is that the theoretical underpinnings of Communism are not understood."

Toward that end I was invited to and did attend one of their theoretical seminars at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago. Let me say their fine presentation would do credit to any that IBM might put on for their high level executives. It was so successful they are presently seeking nationally known media people to attend a similar seminar in two or three cities in Europe. I wish them luck and Godspeed.

I mention all this in the hop of showing conservatives they should give moral support to our leaders who have beliefs they agree with and guts enough to pursue those beliefs against ignorance, cowardliness and sin. Moral support for leadership is something conservatives are too often more stingy with than they are with their money to support ideas. And believe me, they're slow to support new ideas.

Unfortunately, Watt is, I fear, more competent and articulate in religion (God) than he is in free market capitalism (private property). But like it or not he is perceived as a leader or both. So if a decent man is shot down for the above candor with decent if abrupt words, then conservatives everywhere who were stingy as usual with their moral support, publicly, deserve to lose.

In Defense of Nat Pierce

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 9, 1983

If there's one word today with which I have a regular quarrel it is "consensus." True, it has obvious and popular merit, but what is not so obvious is that it's too often a substitute for through, i.e., group-think.

A case in point concerns the Rev. Nathaniel Pierce, reigning Episcopalian minister of Nampa whose weekly column is found on this editorial page. Here is the overwhelming consensus among conservatives most of whom freely offered me their opinions of Pierce after his recent demonstration against America's nuclear bombs: "Ralph, why don't you lean on Idaho Press-Tribune editor Rick Coffman and have him throw that jibbering (sic) jackass out of the newspaper? Why does he let him write that trash, anyway?" etc., etc ., ad infinitum.

Readers of this paper will remember Pierce led a small, but not insignificant band of followers recently to protest a U.S. Department of Defense train hauling nuclear bombs through this area to the West Coast. The controversial preacher and his band vowed to "sit on the railroad track right in front of the next train hauling nuclear bombs through Nampa." This is their way of opposing nuclear war and favoring a "take-our-pants-down-and-Soviet-Russia-will-take-theirs-down-too" defense policy for the U.S.A.

In other words, they are hell-bent against nuclear bombs, nuclear war and the gawdawful arms race in general. Their tremendous front page publicity and TV coverage gave long and loud testimony to the newsworthiness of their rather bizarre tactics in an effort to make their anti-war or pro-nuclear-freeze point, in particular, and the arms race in general.

But isn't everybody, repeat, everybody, against war and killing? Of course they are. Of course we all are! Then why, in heaven's name, does the peppery and ever-so-controversial preacher go through such wild and weird antics to make his or their point? To which the rather obvious answer must be: "... because nobody seems to be listening to the rest of us who are also against war and bombs, especially nuclear bombs?" At least in his opinion nobody seems to care.

I told Pierce, myself, I thought he and his little band of followers did their case a gigantic injustice by demonstrating against ONLY the United States government's warmongering and not against Soviet Russia's warmongering. For example, not long ago one observer cited an interesting fact that in recent history the U.S. had entered 19 foreign countries and stayed in - not one. The Russian government, on the other hand, and during the same time period, had also entered 19 different countries. The difference was that Communist Russia had not removed itself from one. I'd say that was a difference in our favor. (Not to mention their slaughter-house tactics).

"Soviet Russia," I've told Pierce, "had to build the Berlin Wall to keep their people safely in the workers's paradise. The U.S. may have to build a wall to keep Mexican wet-backs from stealing INTO America - to work." I'd say that was a difference in our favor. The list could go on and on and most of it obviously in our favor.

And another thing, how long has it been since we've seen a demonstration in favor of capitalism, especially on campus in America where ideas get their spin for future use? Not often, eh? Well, there may be a connection. Perhaps it's part of the reason Pierce has such a weird opinion of America and what makes her tick - higher education. In America, generally speaking, too many "highly educated" people have similar socialist leanings.

Yet curiously, most of my conservative friends calling for the demise of Pierce both from his sitting on the railroad track and from the editorial page of the Press-Tribune, break their fanny to send their children to college where they seem to get much the same "message." Well, at least many get it there, I'm afraid. And one of them may have been Nat Pierce, an exceptionally bright student with a degree from Cornell University in civil engineering. After trying that profession for a period and without satisfaction, he went to Cal-Berkeley's College of Divinity and got a degree in theology. He liked it and he's working at it, much to my sometime dismay. He's bright, but what direction did college(s) take him?

Okay, what's the point of all this? The point is that despite the conservative consensus on Pierce I, for one, am not about to urge Coffman to throw him off the editorial page even if he would. (I doubt he'd listen to my great wisdom, anyway).

Why? Two reasons: (1) Pierce, wrong though I insist he be, has more guts to stand up publicly for what he believes than most of his critics, and (2) maybe if he stays in his office writing for "our" editorial page the nuclear train won't have to spill those guts all over the railroad tracks.

BBB: Is It Anti-Business?

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 16, 1983

"For the second time in two months the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has charged that an outside promoter is reaping excessive profits from a fund drive conducted on behalf of the Jaycees." Thus began a recent news story about the Boise Busy-Body Bureau (BBBB) scolding the Jaycees' money-raising project.

As if the federal, state and local bureaucrats were not causing the private sector of our lives enough trouble we now have to suffer a "private" bureau(crat) to harass the non-government sector. I put quotation marks around the term private because the BBB is giving it, wittingly or unwittingly, a new definition or at best it's a distinction without a difference, i.e., from "public." The latter term itself is a prime example of George Orwell's newspeak from his famous and prophetic book 1984.

Ken Thornberg, super-conservative director of the Boise-based Treasure Valley BBB, claimed his organization is not quarreling with the Jaycees or with Dan Crane who was hired by the Los Angeles promoter firm of capitalist, money-raising "mercenaries" who contracted with the Boise Jaycees to do their work for them. Thornburg said the BBB rather disapproves of "the fact that the contract is written so much in the promoter's favor."

Well, "Bess Bess and slap my leg. If that ain't 'quarreling with the Jaycees' then baled hay fed to a healthy bull never gets digested." In an ever-so-nice way Capital Jaycees President Clarence Heinz said that he was satisfied with their contracted 20 percent projected profit for the Jaycees. He further stated, "I feel that should be left up to us and not the BBB. We're not out to take anybody."

Balderdash! Heinz was too soft. He should have said it was none of Thornberg's damn business. But this is a day and age when mind your own business (MYOB) has about disappeared. I might hasten to add that to Thornberg's everlasting credit he is not using the government to pass a law against what he's against. At least not yet. And not in this instance. He is, however, using a similar mentality.

For example, it would have been great had the BBB suggested, instead, a different firm who would have been willing to perform the Jaycees' work for them at a cheaper price or in some other way superior to the Los Angeles firm of hired proxies. Maybe the reason is that BBB didn't know of one or that they deal in do-gooderism rather than promoting truth-in-labeling, or competition or market alternatives in a privately owned and free (MYOB) society. It is such a mentality, no matter how sincere, that drives America further and further and faster and faster toward a utopian and totalitarian state of mind that always precedes the totalitarian State itself.

Let me hasten to add that Thornberg is no totalitarian. He's a decent, sincere, flag-waving super-patriot, whose BBB must get some publicity from time to time in order to survive. In this he does very well. But I for one just wish he's investigate the price that all the other clubs, charities, hospitals, etc., pay for professional money raisers. His BBB could then promote truth-in-labeling.

It'd be interesting in that light to hear his opinion(s) on just what is a fair (or a windfall) profit for each of the different and various organizations. Still, if his BBB started in on truth-in-labeling they'd soon have to zero in on the Boise politicians that Thornberg sometimes lobbies. If that became his crusade, however unlikely it might be, he'd have to (repeat, have to) get off the Jaycees' back. Why? Well, he'd be so busy with the politicians he'd have no time for anything else.

******************

Last week, Press-Tribune columnist Nathaniel Pierce justified his sitting-on-the-railroad track crusade against war. He also criticized a recent Press-Tribune editorial comparing his law-breaking civil disobedience to that of Claude Dallas' shooting of a BLM game warden. "Foul," said Pierce: "In civil disobedience there is no violence and no personal gain; whatever gain comes of such witness benefits all..." A bad comparison.

I agree with Nat on this particular protest. A better editorial comparison would have been Watergate and Richard Nixon: No personal gain there, and they both did it "for our own good."

Media Failed to Get Crane

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 23, 1983

The recent court case involving Virginia DeMeyer, a lawyer employed by the office of the Idaho attorney general, has generated a lot of controversy. Some of both the heat and the light of the DWI (driving while under influence of alcohol) case arose out of the tragic accidental death of two small children, one of whom was towing the other in a little red wagon behind a bicycle when DeMeyer's car struck.

Certainly the media's role in letting the public know about the rise in alcohol-related accidents is their proper function and the local media covered the events of the trial in a manner most folks saw as fair and in depth. Further, the newspaper's letters to the editor gave the public and is still giving them ample opportunity to vent their views both for and against the legal fraternity's and the legal system's handling of the matter.

But not all DWI cases involve a death of innocent third parties and not all are covered so in depth and, if I may say, so apparently fairly by the media. A case in point is the one by my friend and long-time Illinois congressman, Phillip Crane.
You may remember, he was a super-conservative, one-time candidate for the 1976 GOP nomination for president of the United States. Such limelight often stirs up a series of news media "events." For whatever it may be worth here's something of what happened to my friend Phil's DWI charge. It may be useful to compare with the DeMeyer coverage.

"Phillip Crane 'very drunk', waitress testifies." So read a Chicago newspaper.

A second headline claimed, "Crane red-eyed, drunk: waitress."

These inflammatory headlines appeared in Chicago area newspapers after the first day of his trial.

I had heard a little bit about my conservative friend's story and the one-sided coverage it was given by the typically liberal media, so I asked Phil for his, repeat his, side of the story. Together with a friendly reference to a mutual friend of ours, Crane's hand-written note came last week. It suggested I might "... like the subject matter" of part of his latest fund-raising letter.
"I had been stopped in California for driving too slowly on the Highway 101 and after having three or four beers earlier that evening was charged with driving under the influence.

"To their credit, these same papers acknowledged my acquittal - though not as prominently - but in so doing did not quote from the defense witness and, instead reiterated the charges made by discredited prosecution witnesses.

"The witnesses for the prosecution revealed their biases in their testimony on the stand. They were activists in the (nuclear) 'freeze' movement and obviously upset with me when I informed them Leonid Breshnev had to love the freeze movement in America because it relieved him of any pressure to restrain the massive Soviet arms build-up which continues to this moment.
"None of this, predictably, was reported in the press.

"Nor were the statements of the Marine officers with whom I spent all but 20 minutes of the evening in question.

"Nor was the testimony of Dr. John Manwaring, a pathologist in Marin County since 1950 who had testified for the District Attorney in hundreds of cases involving DWI.

"Dr. Manwaring, upon learning the details of my case, volunteered his services free of charge because of his conviction that this case never should have come to trial.

"In fact, ALL (his emphasis) of the prosecution's testimony, according to the Jury Foreman, was so replete with contradiction, misstatements, inaccuracies and personal opinion that the jury returned a unanimous not guilty verdict within 30 minutes.
"In a letter to me after the trial, he stated; '...it is a mystery to me why the case ever came to trial.'"

Crane said that the judge, at the outset of the trial, asked the district attorney why he was determined (even) to try the case.
Crane's letter said more, much more, including a quote from the late, great writer, H.L. Mencken's essay, Newspaper Morals. He wrote: "Knock somebody in the head every day. You must give a good show to get a crowd, and a good show means one with slaughter in it."

Of course, Mencken used the term "slaughter" to mean whoever the reporter was writing about. Of course Crane wasn't slaughtered, but his distinguished political career was forever crippled.

All of which goes to suggest that as bad as this writer thinks newspapers oft-times are - both the local public and Ms. DeMeyer just may be ever so luck to have the one called the Idaho Press-Tribune.

'Big Media' Won't Forgive President

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 6, 1983

Merely because one views the United States scene from Washington, D.C. there is no assurance the observations will be necessarily superior to those made in Caldwell. Still, opportunities do exist for some different perspectives so, since I'm here in Insane City for a few days, here's some good news and some bad news.

The good news, of course, is that U.S. forces liberated the little Caribbean island of Grenada. The British curiously forced them into premature independence some time ago, leaving a political vacuum which the Cuban Communists were ever so happy to fill. Everybody knows that President Reagan has no intention of staying in Grenada longer than it takes to run off the unwanted Communists, restore the free society and rescue about 1,000 medical college students.

But the national (liberal) news media is furious. They are still croaking about their not being consulted prior to the military's landing the Marines. In my view that is not only good news but it's merely not taking along a certain corps of "enemy troops", i.e. the national news media. Conservatives and moderates alike here in this "zoo" seemed pretty well agreed that Reagan did the right thing, but the big medias are outraged that they were not trusted and therefore left behind. Were it not for the 1,000 medical student's almost unanimous praise for the U.S. Marines the media's rage would by now be apoplectic.

The bad news it - 1. If the island is now secured why aren't they sending the medical students back to their studies? 2. There will be a continuing withering media-fire against "Reagan's War" as some will be phrasing it night after night and wire service story after wire service story. The establishment media: Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, New York Times.

All of which reminds me of what U.S. Senator (then Congressman) Steve Symms said after the Vietnam War: "South Vietnam had the United States for an ally and North Vietnam had CBS-TV."

It will be interesting to hear, read and watch how the Grenada-Communist-Reagan-Big Media story unfolds and "turns" in the next few months. I used quotes around "turns" since we were taught in school to read from left to right, but in order to understand the Big Media in the U.S. today we may have to turn and learn to read all over again. That is to say-from right to left.

etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum, will by and by change this popular - with the American public - story about Grenada into another conservative foreign policy "blunder". They turned the biggest military victory in the Vietnam War into a reported defeat. All this by news media story alone. It was called the "Tet Offensive" by North Vietnam forces and they were devastated by South Vietnam and the American military, believe it or not. A book was written to expose that whole media mess, but so complete is the death grip the media in America that few people ever heard of it. It was entitled The Big Story, by Peter Brayestrip. It's 600 pages were published in paperback by Yale University Press this year. Get it. Read it, otherwise your friends won't even believe it, let alone your enemies.

More next week from here in Washington where I met Secretary of the Interior, soon to be privatized, James Watt the real moderate and four star general P.X. Kelly. The latter is the commandant of the Marine Corps., whose troops were "negotiated" into a "ceremonial mission" in Lebanon, not unlike the one of the State Department negotiated for us a few years ago in Vietnam.

We Need to Win Battle of Ideas

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 13, 1983

So much goes on here in Insane City, D.C., that most any attempt to report on it is almost certain to mislead for at least two reasons; (1) what appears to be the case on the surface is rarely the case underneath and (2) if one's "report" is smooth and convincing it tends to leave the reader with an impression of having heard - and understood - at least the most important parts of the story.

But I witnessed two events this past week which deserve comment because the routine big media coverage back here will not likely send it to you.

First, I went out to Andrews Air Force Base to see first-hand the huge cache of arms and ammunition the Marines captured on the tiny island country of Grenada. The implications of this mountain of communist-manufactured rifles, sub-machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and anti-personnel cannons and mortars with millions of rounds of ammunition will doubtless impress all of the hawks in America but, I fear, few of the doves. Even the 8-wheeled armored personnel carriers on display suggest a proportion to the communist bloc countries' effort to export violent revolution to a degree never before thought possible. It is still going on all over Central America, i.e., right under our very noses, closer to home than Grenada.

But my intent herein is not to try and impress you with what I think is an obviously huge amount of guns, ammunition and aggressive revolutionary-supporting military ordinance far in excess of what the average American realizes, even at this late date and virtually right in our neighbor's backyard.

Rather, I intend to suggest as I did to the officers in charge of the air base just outside Washington, D.C., that America's pleadings for peace and trade in the Caribbean have been scoffed and ridiculed. So, the Marines have landed. They've liberated a grateful Grenadian group of citizens and American medical students.

Now, having won the battle of guns and ammunition, so to speak, what will happen to the battle of ideas? What ideas? Well, the ideas of Karl Marx in his "revolution of the proletariat" - that's what this whole monkey business is about all over the world. Still, most Americans have scarcely given it a thought.

So, with that in mind, Thursday I asked for an audience with the chief of public relations for the Pentagon. I'm told I'll find out pretty soon whether my request will be honored. My host and tour guide to the Grenada arms cache display, an Army major, told me he was "terribly interested" in what he thought was my intelligent and timely inquiry. He would pursue trying to get me the Pentagon interview which I requested.

Now, on another note, I'll give you gentle readers some great news. Last week at a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC ) on government "industrial policy" there appeared a most unusual economist testifying with a most unusual (for Congress) message. Dr. Alan Meltzer's message which will doubtless go unmentioned on the nightly news said in part: "Further, there is the often neglected issue of freedom. Even (if) it could be shown - and I don't believe it can - that on average industrial policy would make a marginal improvement in our real standards of living, we should be unwilling to sacrifice freedom to decide, to spend, to produce, to set wages and prices and to allocate capital. Many countries that have adopted the industrial policies - France, the U.K., Japan in the '50s and '60s - imposed controls on capital movements. Formal or informal controls on prices, wages and interest are common where the state imposes its judgment in place of the market. These restrictions on freedom not only reduce allocative efficiency, they restrict the rights of individuals to allocate their incomes and express their individual judgments."

I intend to ask the Pentagon officials if I get my interview whether or not their reserve officer students are getting THAT message in the great universities to which they (the Pentagon) contribute giant subsidies all across America. We need to win a battle or two on that field also.

Business Groups Fights for Nothing

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 20, 1983

Here's another interim report from Washington, D.C., or if you prefer: "Insane City," D.C. Certainly not everybody will agree on the latter characterization of this, the political capital of the world, but ever so many will agree and daily use the expression "this is a veritable zoo."

But there is one organization here that is indeed a breath of fresh air. It's called the "Council for a Competitive Economy" (C.C.E.), 410 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003.

What's so unusual about this outfit?

Well, they are almost the only group of pro businessmen here in Washington who do not want something from the government. In fact their reason for existence is to help stop businesses all over America from asking the government for more and more interference or help for ANY reason.

Here's the most unusual way they look at "the zoo".

Every time a legislature meets, and almost every time a bureaucrat sits down at a desk, new laws are passed and new regulations issued that screw up and destroy the economy, interfere with consumer demand, and severely restrict the freedom of business owners and managers. This growing "politization" of the economy seems to go on and on regardless of the politicians or the party in power.

Where does all this political pressure come from? Who is pushing to see that more and more new laws and rules are enacted?
Believe it or not, Rich Wilkie, the bright and articulate president of the council, says a primary culprit is BUSINESS. Many businessmen really prefer not, repeat not, to operate in a free market. At the same time they are paying lip service to free enterprise, they are demanding tariffs, subsidies, licensing, or some other form of political protection from the rigors of competition.

Of course, sometimes they argue that they, or their lobbyists, are working merely for "one small intervention in the economy." But this only reveals that they either don't care or don't realize that the net results of their "small intervention" makes business a greater threat to the survival of our economic system than any of its enemies.
Thousands of special interferences add up to a tremendously over-regulated and distorted economy. Indeed, some predict that if something isn't done soon to reverse the trend the U.S. will not take free, private enterprise past the 1990s.

Can anything be done to turn America's course around from its apparent death-wish toward corporate fascism and open it up to freedom and prosperity?

The C.C.E. has assembled a unique group of businessmen and individuals who believe the answer is yes. They claim what is needed is a change and a new and different strategy for restoring a free market. That strategy is summed up as PRINCIPLE. The council's only goal is economic freedom. They not only advocate productivity and growth, but the common justice of voluntary trade, private property and individual rights.

They do not tout merely noble ideas and casual cliches, they publicly expose and chastise those businessmen who seek special privilege and government protection.

Unfortunately, almost every big business in America has a huge suite of offices, lobbyists and staff here in bed with the power brokers, thus enabling political bedfellows to bastardize free enterprize's bargain.

While there is no doubt that labor unions too are doing "their thing" here aggressively seeking government favors, the C.C.E. feels the free enterprisers do the most damage to the image and thus the ideas of free enterprise. Therefore they don't oppose some - they oppose all forms of government intervention in the marketplace: regulations, subsidies, tariffs, corporate taxes, and those piles of special privileges designed to help some businesses at the expense of competitors and customers.

They thus advocate worldwide economic efficiency and elevate the moral principle of economic freedom. This will, in my view, guarantee the council a new credibility never before associated with business or free market capitalism. I just hope they are not too late.

Reds Get $$, U. S. Gets Bill

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 27, 1983

This writer is indebted to Roy Bosley of the J.R. Simplot Company for: (1) Taking the trouble to read a report on government by J. Peter Grace, chief executive officer of W.R. Grace & Co. and (2) moreover, for bringing it up in a way sufficient to get my attention.

Thus when Sen. Steve Symms introduced me to Mr. Grace recently at the senate budget committee hearing here in Washington, D.C., I was able to carry on a somewhat more informed and aware conversation about some of his ideas. (Graces' intelligent candor and enthusiasm reminded me greatly of Idaho's own Jack Simplot.)

Grace is chairman of the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PPSSCC) a prestigious committee not unlike the Hoover Commission Report way back in the Eisenhower years.

Grace claims that the PPSSCC recommendations, if followed, could result in saving the government some $300 billion over three years.

This intelligent and seemingly super sincere business tycoon asked me if I thought "his" committee had any better chance of succeeding than did the Hoover report. To be honest I had to say no, but that (1) I wishes him well and (2) who knows? It just MIGHT work if he took it upon himself to see that it did. He would have to spend the same massive amount of money, time, and talent to make it work that he spent making his investigation into government spending and asininity in the first place. This I doubted that he and his prestigious group would persevere and do. In fact, my guess is that the PPSSCC will go down in history as the most monumental failure, ever, of U.S. businessmen who typically want only to make the "welfare state" cost-effective.

But fortunately Grace is not typical and government cost control, per se, was Peter Grace's mandate, not ideas, not philosophy, not ideology, if, indeed, there is any chance at all of separating these necessary qualities. Furthermore, Grace is no average businessman as was testified to by his response to Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) whose penetrating and intelligent query stirred the equally penetrating chief of Grace. The senator asked: "I note you have the presidents of two of the nation's largest banks on your committee, Mr. Grace. Each earned in excess of $150,000,000 profit last year and paid zero corporate income tax. Do you think that fact enhances the credibility of your committee? And how do you account for that?"

Grace responded: "Damned if I know, Senator. I don't suppose it does. And I can't account for it, but then it wasn't any of my business either." Metzenbaum then asked if he (Grace) thought such banks paying "zero corporate income tax" was good public policy? To which Grace replied, "No, Senator but you've been around this place for about 100 years - how in hell did it get past YOU?" (his emphasis).

Needless to say, I will do all I can and urge others to do likewise to help Grace's cost survey to control runaway government, but the problem is awesome, awful and even sickening. Still, I wish him mind-boggling success. He's made a massive beginning, i.e., each of the Grace's commissions' 37 printed volumes is approximately the size of the Manhatten, N.Y. telephone directory. But will anyone listen? And will the media let it be popular even if they do? Still, more depends on what Grace and his very competent crew does from here on in.

Still, for example, here's just one of the hurdles Grace's "cost-effective" mandate as structured could hardly address: According to Dr. William J. Quirk, professor of law at the University of South Carolina, "The West has given away over the past 10 years some $800 billion of (our) accumulated wealth to the Red, Arabs, and Third Worlders in the greatest transfer of capital in the history of the world and more is given away every day ...

"And they all want more. The bankers want more from the taxpayer. The Russians expect a new #70 billion for Conecon (the Russian bloc trading group who owe us about $80 billion now) by 1986.

"The Reds don't care how the West pays - it can use the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a front to funnel money to Rumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and, probably soon, Poland, but it has to pay. The Third Worlders want at least $80 billion a year. The president says we have an 'unbreakable commitment' to increase funding for the IMF.
The IMF Oil Bank, he says, is the 'linch-pin' of the world's financial system. Some financial system. Some linch-pin." (Symms, by the way, voted against the IMF Bank bailout.)

And Grace wants to make government efficient. Egad!

'Double-Speak' At Its Best

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 4, 1983

We hear a constant chorus: "Our children cannot read." And, indeed, many cannot. But can the adults write? Or even make sense?

I have in my possession a remarkable document called "An overview of project READ:S (Reading, Education, Accountability, Design: Secondary)" given to me through a friend from the Department of Education here in Washington, D.C. The READ:S paper is from Idaho's very own Coeur d'Alene School District No. 271, and it describes a proposal asking for a federally-funded program that proports to teach our children to read. It has. I understand, already received almost $80,000 from the federal government.

A quotation from its section OBJECTIVES IN METHODOLOGIES: "... the content-area component of instruction emphasizes the transfer and manipulation of the acquired priority reading competencies in the every day reading and studying of the student in his/her content-area subject matter. Content-area teachers receive in-service training in the construction and use of functional teaching/learning modules in the vocabulary, study skills in comprehension skill development based on the adopted hierarchy of adult, priority reading skills." And it goes on. And on.

Gentle reader, this is vintage statism in general, and Department of Education (read schooling) in particular. Obviously, the people who wrote this piece are well schooled in finding their way through the laborious, linguistic labyrinth of what Frank Choborov called, "Washington, the America Mecca."

They know good bureaucratese is good grantsmanship. READ:S portends to teach a junior or high schooler to "functionally utilize his attained reading skills that result in proficiency." Translation: teach them to read well. These students will have "alternative forms of each module written at different levels of difficulty/complexity over the same content to provide for students performing at different levels of proficiency." Translations give them more difficult assignments as they progress.
This is an Orwellian masterpiece example of his 1984 News-Speak jargon, masquerading as expertise. But who were the leaders of the school district wanting to please by writing this stuff? Washington, that's who. The latter responds to this sort of bureaucratic obscurity. To open the Washington printing press purse strings, rise up and scream. Scream like a mashed cat. It usually succeeds.

READ:S is part of a national educational organization called "The National Diffusion Network." Perhaps it should be called "The National Confusion Network." And, as for READ:S itself, they could make one small change that would do a little good. Drop the acronym, and the colon, and call the program READ, or, even: Right to Read.

But what the heck? The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI) just recently spent some $200,000 in an equally sincere, if misguided, piece called "A Study of Higher Education in Idaho." It was, however, different from READ:S for two reasons: 1. IACA spent $200,000 instead of $80,000. and, 2. IACI spent their voluntary contributors' money - not tax money.

Still, READ:S' and IACI's proposals both came to similarly tax-funded, though quite unintentional conclusions. Namely, that government-schools are business's very own free lunch (their report was absolutely silent about private schools) and non-government schools are soon to be a relic of the great George Orwell's famous phrase, "double-speak." That's at least in part a reference to Idaho businesses and some Idaho school districts. Translation: not all, repeat, all of our problems are here in Washington, D.C.

Who Should We Believe?

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 11, 1983

Last week Sen. Steve Symms held one of his town meetings in Nampa's new City Hall auditorium. His notices mailed out to citizens said, "it's important for me to hear about your views and concerns."

Symms must be super-sincere about it, too, since some of his constituents received four, five and even six separate notices via the government's monopoly mail service. One supposes that's partly because the junior senator is "number two" (remember Avis Rent-a-Car's ad: "We try harder"). He's just behind Idaho's senior senator, James McClure.

But today's age-of-the-computer mailing list warrants a separate notice each and every time a letter or number changes. Its voracious appetite can gobble forever rejecting only those names and addresses which are exactly (repeat, exactly) alike. So much for the computer's contribution to politics.

On a more substantive note, there was standing room only at the town meeting with what this writer thought was a somewhat more intelligent than usual series of questions from the audience. Typically in such meetings as this, people tend to come from positions more or less ideologically parallel to the speaker's or merely to request information or clarification. One was not. It was soft spoken, but ever-so-competitive. It deserves amplification.

One young man, though not openly hostile, wanted to vigorously challenge Symms' rather obvious pro-military, pro-Reagan, pro-Grenada liberation, pro-capitalist and anti-Communist stance. He asked the conservative senator what business America had invading the ... whose activities consisted mostly of lengthening a nice civilian air strip to about two miles in length. In fact, said expansion was, he suggested, being done by a peaceful construction company from Great Britain, no less. The young man offered proof that the Reagan-Symms Pentagon was probably lying about Communist trouble-makers in Grenada and that the Cuban construction workers were just that - workers, not Castro military mercenaries in disguise.

His proof? The young man held up a newspaper column by a liberal columnist from the Chicago Sun-Times which absolutely excoriated Reagan and company for all sorts of bad-guy antics in the Grenada caper. "Why was the U.S. such a bunch of bad guys?" the columnist seemed to be asking. Perhaps he was outraged to be denied his freedom of the press to report first-hand that once famous and reassuring message: "The Marines have landed and have the situation well in hand." But I doubt that, especially from a U.S. media liberal.

Now then, Symms referred to his having sent this writer to Andrews Air Force Base recently to inspect the Communists' huge cache of captured (by the Marines) ammunition, anti-aircraft and anti-personnel cannon and submachine guns, etc., since he (Symms) couldn't attend himself. All of the guns were made in Communist bloc countries. Part made in Czechoslovakia and the barbwire Republic of China and the rest manufactured in that peace-loving fatherland famous for murdering unarmed civilian airline passengers, Soviet Russia. The pile of captured Reg guns, cannon, ammo and big armored cars filled the huge U.S. Marine Corps hangar.

As requested, I responded to Symms' deference to me that the big pile of Communist ordinance, some still marked as "diplomatic papers and material" for the embassy, was hardly necessary for hunting game, sport shooting or attracting tourists to Grenada.

Well, as you might imagine, the young man was not at all impressed either by Symms' explanation or by my having added a bit of on site inspection of the captured communist evidence of ill will at the Marine Corps Air Base near Washington, D.C. But the young anti-anti-Communist (not pro-Communist) youth did put one genuinely good question to Symms.

The inquiry was to the effect that each country's patriots tend to say: "It is my country, not yours, that fights the just war." In other words, "My country, right or wrong." And each one's propaganda, i.e., news media, makes counter claims that, "It's our country that really wants peace." Symms' young antagonist's question was: "Tell me, senator, just whose propaganda are we to believe?"

In spite of the young man's seeming intractability I thought his last an excellent question. Symms might well have responded: "Well, young man, our Congress and our news media are in a neck and neck race to see which one can destroy this country's credibility first.

"But for now at least, I'd suggest you give the benefit of your doubt to the nation that shoots the fewest of its own people trying to leave their country."

Enemy Is Over There, Not Here

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 18, 1983

One must surely congratulate the peaceniks, freezniks and hard core flashers of the turn-the-other-cheek variety in their crusade against the United States military build-up against Soviet Russia. That is to say they're quite successful - if inconsistent.

The local chapter of the take-our-pants-down and the Russia bear will take-his-down-too theory is headed up by the Rev. Nathaniel Pierce of Nampa. His fame as a minister of the Gospel and editorial gadfly columnist in this newspaper is exceeded only by his ability to get publicity via his and his little band of followers making a kind of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "sit-in" on the railroad track. This when the train comes through town allegedly carrying the American military's nuclear bombs to the West Coast.

It's "big news" says the media and Pierce and Co. get their side all over the front page and in several spots on the "idiot-box" TV. (Unfortunately, his antagonists seem strangely content with their pooh-poohs and bah-humbugs.)

Now then, I have no particular quarrel with almost any group or individual wanting to protest today's nuclear arms race or, for that matter, arms race of any magnitude. Because it is, indeed, insane given the one-man, one-vote mentality governing our nation and the one-dictator, one-Politburo "vote" despotizing the Russian people and fingering the Soviet nuclear trigger.

Neither do I think Pierce and his Catholic bishop peacenik pals along with his local freezenik demonstrators are insincere. (In fact, this writer's public defense of Pierce's super-dramatic flashing for peace-at-any-price courage brought the nastiest, if dull-witted, letter from a reader calling me names for "defending Pierce." ) It's mainly that his team's public attention is phenomenal.

But my protestation to Pierce is this: "Why, if war is so terrible, Nat, do you protest against only one side? And even then, you rail against the lesser evil of the two (or more) belligerent countries." Surely, the lesser evil of the fist-shaking countries is the United States - even if one measures only by which government has slaughtered the fewest millions of civilians or shot down the fewest airliners. Grizzly? Yes, but still true, notwithstanding our largely leftist big media corporations in America along with Pierce's same left-liberal, better-Red-than-dead mentality.

I've asked Pierce, "Why wouldn't your crusade be given added credibility, Nat, if you would also, repeat also, protest with great gusto against the Communists or at least the Marxists whose arms build-up exceeds by many, many measures the arms build-up of America's?" But blank comes the answer. Blank to me, at least.

But an answer of sorts appears to be the liberal's only absolute (they are fond of claiming that nothing is absolute) and that is that no moral distinction be made between Communist Russia and the United States of America. The liberal's idea seems to be epitomized by the New York Times explaining away the barbaric shooting down of the Korean airliner 007. Said the Times: "The Russians made a grievous mistake that they found too humiliating to confess."
Poor babies. The huge newspaper that "prints all the news that fits" went on about the Reagan administration "browbeating" of the Soviets: "But they do not routinely massacre innocent travelers."

Well, perhaps they don't. But neither did Hitler's Nazis ship everyone off to the concentration-extermination camps. Still, Pierce and Co. make no such connection.

The liberal's unshakable belief seems to be that the Soviet Union and the U.S. despite their differences, are - fundamentally similar: both want peace; both prepare for war; both have weapons that can blow up the world; one invades Afghanistan; the other invades Grenada; both intervene in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Ho hum.

Why? What seeming asininity is it that prevents such liberal mentality as Pierce and Co. from simply naming these acts as "murder and rape" for that's just what they are? What perverse viewpoint could make them so infinitely more willing to vilify an American James Watt than a Soviet Yuri Andropov? (e.g., compare the column inches against each.)

Meantime, President Reagan, a man every bit as sincere and intelligent as Pierce and his followers, seems to be a bit inconsistent, too, saying we can view Moscow as a friendly "competitor" when it comes to bargaining about arms control and grain sales, and as a deadly enemy when it comes to determining (with Congress) the Pentagon's budget. Egad.

Let us pray.

Caldwell's 100-Year Portrait

By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 26, 1983

Following hard on the heels of a great 100th anniversary celebration of the official founding of the city of Caldwell is a time-capsule to encapsulate the past 100 years. It's for the benefit of interested persons 100 years in the future.

Now then, please don't laugh - or for that matter, don't cry. I say don't laugh, for it is indeed a monumental task and important to many thoughtful persons, too, who think history matters. I say don't cry either, for in all probability you won't have to do any of the hard work so necessary for any successful project. The latter thanks in large part to the intelligent and indefatigable efforts of Mrs. Lorene Bales Thurston and a tiny band of dedicated co-workers.

The capsule's burial will probably be delayed past the official 1983 until the spring of 1984. That will offer more pleasant weather for what its promoters hope will be large group of Caldwell citizens, friends and on-lookers to help celebrate the capsule's being sent on its 100-year journey into the future. Furthermore, the gathering of photos, stories, artifacts, etc., to be interred in the capsule has proven such a huge task it has taken longer than was thought when the project was first suggested by James Oates. A long-time resident and respecter of history in general and Caldwell in particular, Oates had hoped it could be done in 1983.

Such a delay, however, will better enable the contents of the time-capsule to be cataloged and then appropriately displayed for the perceptive public to see before it is sealed up for the next 100 years. Mrs. Thurston, a daughter of one of the city's oldest and respected families, was a kind of unpaid chief of staff for gathering and organizing much of the photos, artifacts and stories for the Centennial Celebration and thus noted. "We surely should take some time and note the pertinent information along with the things we bury so that somebody, 100 years hence, won't have so many headaches as we did trying to figure out who was who and where was what with the information we gathered from the past 100."

It's almost a certainty to unintentionally omit honorable mention for somebody without whose efforts, time and talent "the job" couldn't have succeeded. Still, there are those, often unheralded, upon whom our heritage actually depends. They deserve huge, if all too inadequate applause and cheering - in lieu of the appropriate salary, of course. Ahah! One supposes that's some of the reason why so many today urge with great zeal that the federal government furnish the money for such posterity projects.

Fortunately or unfortunately "posterity" is not the only one who's having to pay the bill. Mrs. Thurston, her family and co-workers have, however, paid much of this bill for us in advance with their dedicated and far-sighted non-government efforts.

Part of that for which we will not have to pay is for the capsule itself. Jim Dakan, who's furnishing the concrete, metal-lined box free of charge, says that it measures 5.5 by 2.5 by 3 feet, hence has more room for some items of interest than have so far been offered. (Many great items are already accepted.)

So if you know of something that would be of interest to people opening the capsule 100 years from now please get in touch with one of the many fine committee members by calling Betty Jo Garber Keller, the beautiful and charming secretary of Mayor Al McCluskey. She will be glad to give you their names.

But don't call the already overworked Mrs. Thurston unless you know her personally. Egad, maybe that's why she's so historically overburdened already - she knows just about everybody, who is anybody, in the whole western Snake River valley.

It's interesting and appropriate for this occasion, however, to note that: "The only thing Americans learn from history is that Americans don't learn anything from history." So it is both likely and properly to be seen as our mayor's main message to try to change that condition by being such a persistent pusher for the recent and highly visible 100 year anniversary celebration for Caldwell. For this he's due and has received his praise. Yet, as Bismark has noted, "... the main thing is still to make history, not to write it." Yet again, as Nehru said, "One does not change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall."

Caldwell's time capsule will be our "portrait" in 100 years. See what you can do now, personally, to help the "painters."

Meantime, Happy 1984. And don't forget the history of the greatest Painter of them all whose birthday we celebrate today.

The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy