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Roses, Raspberries for the New Year
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 4, 1987
Happy New Year everybody. Without a doubt the world's most spectacular example of the message "Happy New Year" is the Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade held in that city on New Year's Day for the 98th year last Thursday, Jan. 1. So, here are some comments.
Roses for the wonderful parade people who have been sending such an amazing message of good cheer and beauty for all to see - virtually free. It isn't free, of course, since the cost must be borne by somebody, somewhere, and since the parade, its promoters and participants are on no government payroll, the "pay" must come 100 percent from the private sector.
Raspberries to our politicians and bureaucrats who tend to think only in terms of guns and tanks, ships and planes, men and money with which to coax and coerce America's enemies and adversaries all over the world. Just imagine the effect of even $1 billion of video tapes and video machines distributed (smuggled if necessary) behind the Iron Curtain countries of communism showing in living color the spectacular spectacle of love and luxury Americans almost take for granted - free - each new year from Pasadena. I'm dead serious!
Roses to the two major TV networks who broadcast Macy's wonderful Thanksgiving parade in the Empire State's huge No. 1 city - also free. At least it was free to the viewers and the thousands of on-lookers who lined the streets.
Raspberries to the one TV broadcasting team who steadfastly refused to mention even once Macy's Department Store by name. Egad! (Sorry I forgot to make a note of which team so refused.) One wonders, sometimes, why the big capitalist companies so often have such a poor image among the proletariat, but with friends like most (not all) the TV media moguls, capitalism needs no enemies.
Roses to Macy's Thanksgiving parade down the middle of New York City's "main street America." Not so large, of course, as the rose Parade but just as exciting to those who were equally privileged to see Macy's tribute to the "consumer's capitalism" parade on Thanksgiving Day - also free.
Raspberries to Macy's managers, however, for never having once designed to mention by means of even one float - the capitalist system - their system, if you please, that allowed it all to come to pass. It was typical, perhaps, but ever so sad, considering the favorable worldwide exposure and competition so effectively promoted by our ideological competitors (e.g., communism, socialism, Fabianism, statist do-gooders, etc., etc.)
Meanwhile back here at home:
Raspberries to the political reporters and pundits in Idaho (especially Boise) who so severely criticized former Idaho House of Representatives Speaker Tom Stivers, R-Twin Falls, a conservative, for "stacking" the important committee chairmanships with his own favorites. Since Stivers is no longer there (refused to run) these same media people see "moderate" Tom Boyd (the new speaker) doing the same thing merely as "getting a firm grip on government." Balderdash.
Gov.-elect Cecil Andrus, also a darling of the liberal press, continues to get the kid-glove treatment from the media as he uses perhaps the most ruthless meat-axe treatment in decades firing both first and second echelon department heads in state government. This writer doesn't particularly object to Andrus hiring or firing whomsoever he pleases. It is the blatant double-standard so consistently used by our so-called watchdogs of the government - the almost universally knee-jerk liberal news media.
Roses to God in His infinite wisdom for controlling the weather, hence, so far at least, denying the politicians and bureaucrats the opportunity of creating yet another government department, i.e., weather control, and really screw things up.
Good cheer for 1987.
Enough Wrong for Both Sides
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 11, 1987
Caldwell is in the news these days - in spades. Some folks say they are afraid those "spades" may be used to dig a grave for our fair city. Well, however well-intentioned the City Council and its adversary. Mayor Pete Cowles, claim to be, and this writer thinks that both sides are all quite sincere, the controversy at City Hall is hardly serving the best interests of the city's public image.
A few things about the flap may need some examination. Because any discussion of public (read, government) affairs must of a necessity be made up of generalizations. Those of us who give a darn should remember that. But it is usually the particulars that cause the big blow-ups in such a controversy, consequently what follows here is an attempt to shed a little light and not quite so much heat on the fight.
Mayor Cowles was elected to his office by getting more votes than his competitor, "fair and square" as the saying goes. But so did the members of the City Council, including those members who seem to be voting against him fairly frequently thereby incurring his fury and wrath.
One thing perhaps should be kept in mind even though the voters are already busy lining up to take sides. All of these officials came by their official responsibilities the same way, i.e., they were elected.
This should remind those citizens of Caldwell, especially those who are now spark-plugging a recall (no kidding) of two councilpersons, that these two were also elected "fair and square" just as was the mayor. Both are no doubt sincere in their decisions just as is the mayor no doubt in his.
I don't want to get into the particulars of the fight for what seems to me to be an obvious reason, namely, that that is not the city's main problem. The main problem is just who is responsible for which official duties? On this matter my understanding is that the mayor is the chief administrator of the city and as such it is his obligation to administer the affairs of the city as set down in policy decisions made by a voting majority of the council.
While there is much that this writer does not know about what has gone on behind the scenes it is perfectly clear that some of those policy decisions have made Cowles furious. Not the least of such decisions was the council's refusal to approve Cowles' appointment of former Councilman Gene Betts to fill the vacancy left by former Councilman Bill Norman who resigned to go on a mission for his church. The fear was that Cowles was stacking the deck.
Now then, I happen to like Betts. I personally would like to have seen him confirmed by the council, but a majority of the council members refused to consent to the admittedly very young mayor's "advice." The relations between mayor and council have continued to get worse ever since that controversy. Remember now, "we" elected the council just as "we" elected the mayor. In their collective wisdom a majority of council members, some of whom had served with Betts under a prior administration, decided they wanted someone else.
This may seem too basic to be interesting and it is indeed very basic, so much so in fact that it doesn't lend itself to a good, lively (and controversial) news story. For this reason, one supposes, the media unfortunately makes very little mention of such facts. The public's superficial interest, by the way, tends to prefer political war over political peace, hence the media is glad to comply.
Space limitation precludes much that could and should be said here, but one thing seems clear. Councilwoman Durand Marcus' insistence on having what she described as "job description" (read responsibility) for city officials could have opened up another item too long buried, namely, the mayor's "job description" and the councilperson's "job description."
Methinks the mayor was elected to administer within the policies set down by his "board of directors" however bad he thinks those policies are - until the next election, of course. And to be a good sport about it when he cannot persuade a majority of the council members to do things his way.
In an obviously furious display of temper to the public on local television news last week Cowles said to the effect that he was "running things" in Caldwell and the (dissenting members) of the council members had better well take not of it.
Tut, tut, Mr. Mayor! One is elected to hold office - not to hold leadership. The latter must be won, repeatedly, by winning the confidence of the voters, including those voting on the council, no matter how intransigent they may seem on occasion.
Fooling Enough of the People
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 18, 1987
"It may be true," said the great historian Will Durant, "that you can't fool all the people all the time. But you can fool enough of them to rule a large country." Many people say it is much the same with the new "ruler" of Idaho, Gov. Cecil Andrus.
Now then, this writer has known Andrus very well since he was governor the first time and I consider him a friend. However, I thought Idaho was (and it still is, by the way) reeling under far too much government already, so I was less than enthusiastic for his election.
Well, he won fair and square and judging from the number of Republican appointments he's been making, albeit most are fairly liberal near-Democrat types, one can assume he is sincerely trying to use a some-what bipartisan approach to governing the state. I genuinely congratulate him.
But I must also hasten to add that I hope he will grant those of us who believe in a lot less government the same degree of sincerity. Having said that I want to suggest right up front that Andrus believes in more government, genuinely. That is the reason he wants the Idaho Legislature, for example, to repeal the 3 percent investment tax credit. It alone is supposed to add $14 million to the state's total tax.
Unlike Will Durant's observation, however, I doubt Andrus is trying to "fool" a lot of Idahoans in order to "rule" them. I rather think he actually believes that politicians and bureaucrats are smarter at employing capital expenditures than is the private sector from whence the tax money cometh in the first place.
He just tends to forget that repeal of the 3 percent tax credit is most assuredly an added new tax and one that tends to penalize the small businessman and entrepreneur more than big business. It is those small businesses that furnish 80 percent of the jobs in Idaho and it is they who are hurting more each time the tax penalty goes up.
Idaho's-good-natured chief of state has another idea crusade that portends also to hurt the small entrepreneur, but again I doubt Andrus is trying to "fool" the public. He is misleading them, you understand, but only just as the typical liberal Utopian zealots have been fooling the public for decades, i.e., that government can do it better for us than can the competitive marketplace. My case in point is day-care licensing, which Andrus claims every other state has, except Idaho (They all had AIDS, too, but Idaho didn't until recently.)
It is for this reason, says my newly-elected governor, that we must enact a day-care licensing law, but he overlooks the fact that almost all the child molestations that occur today in day-care centers come from licensed ones.
The bad part of licensing is not only the added expense of yet another layer of bureaucrats and meddling do-gooders but the small businesswomen (they are usually women) that are forced out of business due to the awful financial and paperwork burdens. Furthermore it is also discriminating against women, who compose by far the largest number of customers of day-care centers.
One informed lady, who by the way is not in the day-care business, tells me women will bear the greatest cost in implementation of these new laws. Many are barely earning $4 per hour and cannot afford the inevitable increase in day-care costs, hence will be forced to put their children in small, unregulated homes. Thus, once again their freedom of choice is limited even further by well-intentioned but misguided do-gooders.
No, Gov. Andrus is not in my opinion trying to "fool all the people all the time," but he is fooling enough of them to rule a large state - Idaho. This is because neither he nor the news media nor the graduates of our super-liberal (generally speaking) government school system and thereby the public are even acquainted with, let along sold on, market alternatives to political problem-solving.
Wouldn't you guess, even his newly appointed chief of economic development, Jim Hawkins, a Republican businessman who should know better, wants to raise taxes of our already over-taxed and over-regulated Idaho lumbermen, miners, farmers and others (except, perhaps, big business) in order to give even more money to our already socialist-oriented government school system. All in the name of some ambiguity euphemistically called economic development. Egad! Butch Otter, where are you now that we need you??
Throwing Money at Public Education
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 25, 1987
It has been said by some wise man that "those who refuse to heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them," and we are about to do it all over again - believe it or not.
One supposes that said lessons of history would be properly taught in school, probably in high school, but at least in college, yet those holding politically-powerful positions in this state are almost all graduates of one or another college or university with little evidence of such historical awareness.
A case in point is both the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI) and Gov. Cecil Andrus' newly-appointed business tycoon head of Idaho's Department of Commerce and Development, Jim Hawkins, both of whom seem to hold some sort of mystical super-faith in the "healing power" of some undefined concept of government schools.
The latter is thought to contain the answer to Idaho's sad economic doldrums, never mind the lack of historical back-up for such mysticism all the way from Rudolph Fletch's famous books: Johnny Can't Read and 10 years later his sequel to it, Why Johnny Still Can't Read to the monumental, if scary, presidential blue-ribbon committee on education's alarming report "A Nation at Risk."
While some exceptions no doubt exist the blue-ribbon panel made a great general statement that virtually everyone knows save Andrus, Hawkins and IACI about education (read, government schooling) in America. The official report said, "If a hostile foreign country had perpetrated upon America today's sad state of affairs in American education it would be looked upon as an act of war."
Even if Idaho's schools were not all that bad one wonders why the leaders would not at least use some healthy skepticism about staking Idaho's critical economic health recovery upon merely throwing yet another fistful of money at our government schools. They get 75 percent of the state's entire budget now.
Two or three years ago IACI, a lobby group mostly dominated by big business in the state, spent about $200,000 for a Colorado group's study on higher education in Idaho. Some say a large share of the funds were paid mostly to promote, or if you like propagandize, their report on higher education which read a whole lot like it was produced by the knee-jerk liberal Idaho Education Association (IEA).
For example, their report called for increased salaries for teachers even though Idahoans already spend a larger percentage of their per capita income on education than do the majority of other states. They also called for an added system of community colleges to help students manage their transition from high school to college.
Thus IACI would seem to suggest our schools were not doing their assigned job very well else so-called junior colleges wouldn't be called for to make such remedial "transitions."
In fact, so bad were the recommendations of the IACI report that the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA) commissioned a critique thereupon which was inspired in part by conservative former Speaker of the House of Representatives Tom Stivers.
Paradoxically the CSMA critique was critical of IACI's recommendations in large part because the business-oriented group's ideas seemed so devoted to statism and ideological liberalism. Unfortunately they seem to favor non-market spending schemes. The CSMA critique called for freedom of choices in both private and public schools publicized by several interviews and two press conferences.
As you might guess the media reporters only scarcely noted in the news the CSMA critique with no follow-up mentioned at all, while from time to time there was repeated reference to the IACI "liberal" report which the likewise liberal media personnel tended to favor.
In fact, the Idaho Statesman virtually struck out any reference at all in its news columns to the CSMA critique. The TV stations, however, generally gave it a good play.
Written by a nationally known author-educator from Massachusetts, the CSMA critique's foreword may give us a clue to what's missing in the current Hawkins-Andrus-IACI crusade for massive additions of money for government schools as a scheme for Idaho's economic recovery.
Here in part is the Massachusetts expert's foreword: "What struck me most on reading the (IACI) report was its total emphasis on form and virtually none on substance. The assumption is that a system of tax-funded community colleges will automatically provide the quality education the citizens of Idaho want - as if buildings and faculties provide quality simply because they exist. If this were true, America would have no educational problems at all.
"There is also the assumption that increased salaries for faculty will improve the quality of instruction. But the probability is that they won't. There is some correlation between teacher salary and performances, but not much, certainly not enough to overcome the administrative obstacles to quality."
Concerned Idaho lawmakers, please take note that both big business and the media reports on non-government schools and non-statist market alternatives during this session will no doubt be "reported" with the same historical bias as usual.
Wage Laws Hold Back Minorities
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 1, 1987
We remember the recent celebration to commemorate what has come to be one of America's most famous landmarks, namely, the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. Given to America in recognition of her freedom for so many common citizens, the French people who built and donated the monument saw something great over here that was virtually brand new in the whole world. Hooray for them.
So much was said about our Lady of Liberty during the celebration that I won't rehash it here except to note that most of what was said had to do with the virtue of immigrants rather than the freedom, institutions and liberty already here that attracted them in the first place. Sad to say, however, some of these are disappearing today right under our very noses.
So let us examine the experience of ethnic groups that have migrated to the urban centers of the U.S. in search of economic progress. Jews, Italians, Chinese, Irish, Japanese and many others settled here and were usually despised and subjected to legal harassment for decades after their arrival. Nevertheless, members of these groups have been highly successful in moving into the mainstream and frequently into the highest strata of American life.
Discrimination did not keep them depressed. Whey were they able to advance whereas today's bottom-of-the-ladder minorities seem to be forever stuck there? Have conditions changed in some way which would explain the difference?
The answer is yes.
With the movement to the cities, the process of economic advancement began for the majority of the black population, just as it had for the Jews, Italians, Chinese and others in the previous century. What factors are militating against blacks now that did not hinder the progress of the other groups?
A rather large number of such causes could be identified, but let's take a look at one of the most significant. A big difference we can cite is today's existence of minimum-wage laws. They set a wage floor below which an employer may not pay. The proponents claimed the reason for this law was to raise the income of the poor workers. The real reason was that it would stifle competition from lower wage areas, such as the South. For this reason, the minimum wage bears a kinship to the infamous Jim Crow laws. And it sounded good, politically. Still does.
What the lawmakers either did not see or chose to ignore is that the amount of one's pay depends upon his value to his employer. If the law says that you, the employer, cannot pay anyone less than $3.35 per hour, you are not going to hire people who, because of lack of skills and work experience, cannot produce for you at least $3.35 worth of revenue per hour.
What the minimum wage does, then, is to prevent one from getting his start by cutting his "price." It prevents a teenager, for example, from going to an employer and saying, "I know I don't have a work record to prove my reliability, but I'm willing to start at a low wage. All I would like is a chance." That is exactly how the earlier immigrant groups began their climb up the ladder, but today that option is gone.
Because they cannot find work, millions of young blacks, Hispanics and others remain unemployed or unemployable. Frequently they turn to crime or drugs. Or, it you've been in downtown Boise lately on Friday night you've seen hundreds of teenagers "cruising," a simply mindless weekly event of driving cars hour after hour around the block. Maybe they think everything else is illegal.
Frequently, America's young people, not having anything else to do that is legal, turn to crime or mischief. If not, a life of indolence on welfare awaits them. It is not capitalism, my friends, that has caused this. It is the government. It is that government that has evolved after (repeat, after) the Statue of Liberty era.
I am indebted to the august Foundation for Economic Education in New York from whose work the above scenario was adapted, but others of high standing echo similar sentiments. Dr. Walter Williams, the famous black libertarian economist, himself a product of a genuine black ghetto and a broken home, says exactly the same thing about the minimum wage laws,i.e., they are virtually destroying black teenagers - especially.
As we might expect, super-liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, and the Idaho Statesman are today pushing for an even higher minimum-wage law. One wonders why these two don't demand a real liberal increase in the minimum wage, say $20 rock bottom. Then they could export the rest of our workers' jobs back to Europe and Japan.
Battle Rages On for Our Freedom
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 8, 1987
The battle for freedom of choice rages on in Boise, especially now that the Legislature is in session. You may recognize it as such, i.e., as a battle for choice. In fact, many say that it is all too often a battle against freedom of choice.
Of course, not everybody agrees about these matters. But everybody should care and also take care that what passes for freedom at first blush is not something far different in disguise. Take day-care licensing, for example. That battle is about to rear its ugly head again soon.
I say "ugly" not because the people who push its passage are bad people. Not at all. In fact, they feel they are helping to stop child abuse and child molestation while at the same time raising the standards of day-care practices all over the state.
However, in their zeal to push utopian schemes of their ideal world they ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of child abuse cases occur in centers already licensed. Given any measure at all of individual parental responsibility or accountability, all day-care licensing does is keep out competition, especially from the poor who would like to enter that market.
Another scheme about to "hit the fan" is something loosely referred to as a freedom of choice issue - legalized gambling in the form of a state-run lottery. Pushed ever-so-vigorously by both liberals and conservatives, including some newspapers who ought to know better, the scheme rather should be called the state-owned lottery. Its proponents never mention the fact that government has no business at all in yet another business.
Furthermore, the lottery is also pushed as a more or less painless substitute for taxes. But the politicians and bureaucrats will still spend whatever sums of money, large or small, that a government gambling scheme might bring in and spend it foolishly just as they tend to do now when they spend the other massive sums of money they take in in taxes.
Which brings us to another nothing-for-something scheme this Legislature is being put upon to do, namely, repeal of the investment tax credit. Designed as a government scheme to encourage business to invest capital in the state (almost the only way possible to create new jobs) the law merely allows business a legal way to keep the money that was theirs in the first place.
Gov. Andrus says, and I fear greatly that he is terribly sincere in this, that he (i.e., the government) can spend the $14 million its repeal is supposed to add in taxes more wisely and at more benefit to the state than can the businesses who earned it in the first place. Some logic, eh?
But Andrus' programs cost money. Lots of it. Especially his George Orwellian scheme to throw another fistful of money into the state government's compulsory school system. Government schools et 75 percent of the entire state budget now. It's euphemistically called "economic development" and who in today's depression times can be against economic investment (read, jobs)? Egad, George Orwell, where are you now that we need your "newspeak" so often?
Unfortunately, not all the schemes to bar free entry into the private market come from the Legislature, although that body does tend to set such a tone; that is, to keep out the competition.
For example, the city of Caldwell officials recently encouraged a new entrepreneur to go into the automobile wrecker and towing business. After the expenditure of considerable time and money, the advertising started. Then guess what happened?
Those businesses already in the wrecker and towing business descended upon City Hall bawling like mashed cats to cry foul. Complaining - you guessed it - that they don't want the new competition to enter the market. Who does?
But what else is new?
Well, it seems Caldwell officials in their infinite wisdom "license" wrecker and towing businesses. It is not a law, you understand. That would have to treat everyone equally. No, it's a regulation saying new applicants must be in business at least a year before they are allowed to go on the city's "priority list."
So the police, who are, of course, often in charge at the scene of an accident thus usually designate who gets the wrecker call. While this is not exactly licensing per se, nonetheless it serves the same ends. It tends to restrict free entry into the market, just like the "boys from Boise" try to do.
Never mind that the new kid on the block already has five years experience in the wrecker business. Caldwell has done it again.
Here's Some Good News for a Change
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 15, 1987
This column frequently criticizes much of the news media for its (our?) many faults, particularly our double-standards such as Press-Tribune political reporter Sam Lang's pervasive penchant for hyphenating conservatives, but not liberals, e.g., ultra, extra, extreme, right-wing, moderate, name-calling, irresponsible, knee-jerk, even - responsible.
By the way, Sam isn't all bad either. If one compares him with the other media members at the Legislature, for example, we are lucky to have him.
In any event, Paul Harvey is one media mogul who does like conservatives and thinks, and acts accordingly, that good news in and of itself is newsworthy. Not unlike me, he also excoriates the media from time to time, but more importantly, he isn't the only columnist who loves to be putting out some good news. I do, too, so here's mine.
January's Congressional Report (CR) a fortnight ago tells of an amendment offered and pushed by U.S. Sen. Steve Symms asking his colleagues to reduce the budget only 5 percent across the board for Senate committee staffs. He also voted against the recent unconscionable pay raise, by the way, but here from the CR is conservative Symms' "good news," an unusually candid effort for responsibility:
"It may mean when someone retires from the committee staff, that we cannot hire anyone to replace him. I am saying the Senate is a good place to start on fiscal restraint.
"As I mentioned last week in the debate it is a miracle the Potomac River is not red with the red ink that spills out of the Capitol here in Washington, D.C., and runs out in the river.
"Last night over on the House floor everyone gave the president a round of applause when he mentioned reducing government spending and balancing the budget. Here is an opportunity. I say to my colleagues, 'Fish or cut bait.' Let us reduce all these budgets in the Senate on the committee staffs by 5 percent ... let us save some money and set an example and start the year off right."
Remember now, the national debt was increased $1,000 billion in just the past five years and America's budget deficit for one year is as huge as was the entire budget of only a few years ago.
"It is after all," Symms went on, "the 200th anniversary of our Constitution, and I shudder to think that the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution would literally be turning over in their graves if they could see the fiscal mess we brought on this country by not being able to restrain spending."
Sen. Ford, D-Ky., entered in to complain Symms' 5 percent cut was after "... we have allowed only a 3 percent cost of living for (staff) salaries." My, my. Poor baby. And with so many taxpayers entirely out of a job at home.
Symms was undaunted, however: "... if we really want to wring out the fat and reduce the spending of this government ... (let's) do it by starting right here in our own house by operating with a little bit less money.
"I would have to say that one of the things that happened in the last 40 or 50 years around here was the Congress, probably if they had smaller staffs ... might have passed less laws. If we got the government out of the way there might be less people that are impoverished because they would not be regulated out of existence, legislated out of the job market by Congress passing laws and interfering with the Americans' ability to compete.
"The mining industry in my state ... have to comply with OSHA, MSHA, EPA with NEPA, you can go on down the long list ... and then they have to compete with foreign-produced minerals that do not (have to) comply with those ... This is just a test vote to see how many people in this Senate really want to do something about stopping the hemorrhage of red ink that is turning the Potomac River literally red."
Now get this next gasser from Sen. Ford's Elmer Gantry-type response to Symms: "Now is not the time to cut back here. Now is the time we need the best we have to help our (voter) constituents. You can say they are taking a cut and that is partly our fault, but I have as much political courage as you have."
Well now, methinks the liberal Ford has about the Same amount of "political courage" as the Ford Motor Co.'s infamous Edsel had class, i.e., not much. In typical style the motion was tabled.
Nonetheless, Symms may well deserve a hyphenated label this time. How about "genuine-conservative" or better yet, a "newsworthy-salesman"?
But let us not hold our breath waiting for the liberal media to report is as such.
Symms - Telling It Like It Is
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 22, 1987
Last week this column drew attention to most media writer's tendency to hyphenate the conservative label with ultra, extreme, etc., but not so with liberals, the latter being the political group with whom most media people tend to agree.
Such a technique whether used wittingly or unwittingly can be a devastatingly dishonest use of a double-standard.
But there are, of course, many occasions when an adjective or an adverb used to expand or focus a label on some public person is most helpful in conveying the writer's intended message - above the table or under the table. This writer suggested two hyphenated labels for Idaho's conservative U.S. Sen. Steve Symms to describe his recent efforts to reduce government spending 5 percent in Senate committees. What were the two labels? (1) Genuine-conservative and (2) newsworthy-statesman.
While Symms' amendment to cut a mere 5 percent from the Senate committee staff was subsequently voted down by his liberal colleagues the debate prior to the vote was both interesting and in my opinion should have been newsworthy. Here, from the Congressional Record (CR) of only two or three weeks ago, is why.
"Mr. Symms: Mr. President, the senator from Kentucky (Sen. Ford D-Ky., a liberal who was debating against Symms' proposed 5 percent cut) said something that I really agree with ... I have offered this amendment (because) the administration's budget includes authorization to continue our practice of lending money to people all over the world who go into business to compete against our producers, including copper miners, coal miners (such as) the senator from Kentucky has, silver miners and lead miners or farmers that we have in Idaho. The U.S. taxpayers have financed our own competition all over the world."
Interestingly enough, the Idaho junior senator is generally thought to be something of a rubber stamp for the Reagan administration, but the above is a rather stinging, if somewhat rare, criticism some of which could well apply to American big business's foreign operations. Symms' CR speech continued:
"My thought is that if we take the 5 percent cut I am going to offer an amendment ... to cut the $1.8 billion which the administration (that's Reagan's administration, remember?) wants to dump into the International Development Bank to compete against our own producers in this country. Then we wonder why we have a trade imbalance.
"Senators may come in here and cut some of the giveaway programs where we try to pave the world with our money. We have been doing that at the expense of the working men and women of this country. It has been happening with Republicans and Democrats in office for the past 40 years and it's still happening." Good goshamighty!
Remember now, this is coming from conservative GOP Sen. Steve Symms and it is darned seldom a Republican will ever scold another Republican, especially his own president's administration, now to mention properly comparing them with the scalawag Democrats.
But Symms is trying to "tell it like it is." Somehow, it still isn't newsworthy. One guesses the media is usually so statist oriented that even the good guys in the rest of the media are fearful of being looked upon as some sort of non-conforming "deviates." (Pun intended.)
Symms goes on "on the record" too, by the way, in support of his amendment to make even a paltry 5 percent cut in the Senate's own bloated bureaucracy:
"I know the distinguished secretary of State (Shultz) will be testifying tomorrow and he will probably be in there asking for an expanded foreign aid program and an expanded loan portfolio to dump money into the World Bank and the International Development Bank to compete against the Kentucky coal miners and forest product worker. That is not good policy in the judgment of this senator. It is irresponsible and irrational."
Well, ladies and gentlemen, Symms may not be the greatest living statesman. He certainly comes down with a case of Potomac fever once in a while, and he most certainly sold me out when both he and Idaho's senior Senator Jim McClure voted in favor of the Senate's asinine and dishonest non-germane amendment scheme ... Still, by general comparison with today's professional politicians, he may even be great. Consider the following from the same speech:
"My Symms: I will say this, I am for less government by giving them less money. This country is being buried with government. We excessively tax people; we overregulate them; we interfere with them. Then we wonder why we have a competition lag with foreign countries." Howzzatt for a freedom message, folks?
If you conservatives agree that this kind of effort by Symms should be newsworthy, but unfortunately is not, then tell one of your friends in the news media. Or, better yet, tell both of them.
Better still, call or write Symms and give him some encouragement.
More Than One Message in Amerika
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 1, 1987
The American Broadcasting Company has pulled off a rather staggering feat for modern television. It is the movie called Amerika, a fictional story about how Americans might be expected to act 10 years after the Soviet Union had taken over this country.
The story dragged on for 14.5 hours, some say thus making it dull. Others say the long-playing story gives the $35 million investment of ABC adequate time to unfold its story more "naturally with nuance, subtlety and texture ... and realistically." Oddly enough such widely divergent groups as the John Birch Society and most of the news media both praise and condemn the mini-series, if for quite different reasons.
While this writer saw only about two-thirds of Amerika the story came on to me as one with certainly more than one message, hence it is no surprise that so many different reactions were expressed by different observers. This brings me to note an observation made by my friend William F. Buckley, bon vivant gentleman of the right and super-bright host of Firing Line.
Asked ever so frequently during the Nixon years what he thought about then Vice President Spiro Agnew's attacks on the "nattering nabobs of negativism," the liberal media, Buckley would reply: "I'm rather more interested in the press's own reactions to Agnew's."
This is my observation to Amerika - in spades, given the tendency for Americans to avoid unpleasant probabilities.
For example: staggering national debt and getting worse yet no one seems much concerned; a staggering defense expenditure on top of our subsidizing and financing the Soviet Union with 2.5 percent interest loans; a huge truck factory financed in Russia by the U.S. government; U.S. military high tech needlepoint ball bearing machines without which U.S.S.R. missiles could not reach our territory, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Where then do Americans go to express some reasonable concern if not screaming outrage?
Well, Amerika furnished this and more. It even provided a good dose of what the liberals love to laud, namely, "the Soviets are human beings just like us" with sentiments, fears, fantasies and all that.
Still, the media furnished a good shot at liberal reactionaryism on NBC's Phil Donahue show, for example. The ultra-liberal Donahue had Kris Kristofferson on satellite TV from the U.S.S.R. where he was visiting on the day after the movie's first night showing Sunday a week ago. Also on Donahue's stage was Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media (AIM) and William Colby, ex-CIA chief under Nixon and Ford.
One has to hand it to Donahue for having noteworthy and often controversial characters on his programs, but Kristofferson could not have given a better performance and testimony against his country's and favoring the Soviet Union's foreign policy if he had had a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other.
This, of course, is his right as a free U.S. citizen. But it is just tragic that people of his liberal ilk fail to point out in such situations that it should be made public that Soviet citizens do not likewise enjoy such freedom of expression. Colby did less harm, but not much. Both he and Kristofferson gave the U.S.S.R. the benefit of the doubt much as if each had some sort of guilt-complex at having allowed the movie to "criticize" the Soviet government.
But Reed Irvine made the best point in what turned out to be mostly a U.S. apologizing and ABC bashing exercise.
Responding to Kristofferson's anti-U.S. policies in general and the Amerika program's "scoldings" in particular, Irvine said: "Kris, in the interest of the balance you seem to think is missing, why don't we have another 14.5 hour TV saga entitled, Russia? In it we could show how their country and people might react 10 years after the American army had taken over Soviet Russia."
One could easily show Red Square in downtown Moscow with McDonald's hamburger stands, Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-ins with taxis and compact cars and motorbikes driven by their owners the workers. Why there might even be toilet paper for sale in supermarkets without long, long lines of customers and ration stamps.
Can't you just see Soviet bureaucrats virtually gasping as hordes of Russian individuals run around producing things without permission - for others - in search of a profit. Gosh! Such potential to make love not war.
If you didn't get to see ABC's Amerika, my friends, then find a pal who videotaped it and if necessary pay him or her $20 to show it to you (it's worth more.) True, it is not perfect. In fact, it leaves much to be desired. But it was enough to provoke a University of Minnesota female student almost in tears on Ted Koppel's Nightline last Monday night to scold ABC's Amerika executives saying: "Why, you people (ABC) made the Russians look like evil men." Egad!
One wonders if that girl's parents are paying for their daughter's education at the University of Minnesota with American dollars or Russian rubles.
Raspberries to Presidente's 'Friends'
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 8, 1987
One of the most popular subjects treated in this column is the roses and raspberries feature. It's fun to do, of course, and provides a bit of entertainment added to what we hope to be enlightened commentary. But I hope there is another dimension that, wittingly or unwittingly many of us enjoy at times and that is seeing somebody get a well-deserved pat on the back.
Raspberries to most conservatives who, with a few exceptions, tend to find it extremely hard to give much moral support publicly to others of like mind. For example, where are Reagan's conservative pals today?
Roses to Harry D. Schultz, the financial newsletter tycoon, who writes "The World's Most Honored Newsletter."
This is his claim, of course, but I think it is true. The Guinness Book of Records says he is the world's highest paid investment consultant in its 1981-1985 editions. From his headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, the globetrotting, super-candid wizard often writes - now get this - that financial newsletters are the only remaining free press in the world that conservatives can trust.
On a first name basis with most every leader in the free world, Schultz says conservative President Reagan will not be in office at the end of 1987. This champion of world free trade and free enterprise leaves little doubt that Reagan will have been hounded out of office by the knee-jerk liberal media.
Roses to media critic Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media (AIM) for his suggestion on two nationwide television broadcasts calling for a sequel to ABC-TV's 14.5 hour mini-series Amerika. The new TV series would be entitled Russia and would show how the Soviet Union and its citizens might look 10 years after the American Army had conquered and occupied that country imposing free agency. A spectacular and clever proposal.
Raspberries to the Republican moderates in Boise (mostly) who are falling all over themselves in support of Gov. Cecil Andrus' political payoff to the teacher's union, the Idaho Education Association (IEA). In the best tradition of George Orwell's famous and prophetic book 1984, these people are calling the throwing of scores of millions more dollars of taxpayers money at government schools "economic development." Remember Orwell's "newspeak" when freedom is slavery, war is peace, weakness is strength etc., etc.? Well, neighbors, 1984 is here - in spades.
Roses to Idaho's Lt. Gov.. C.L. "Butch" Otter, who had the guts to veto the bill to raise the legal drinking age for Idahoan's from 19 to 21 years. The bill was meant, Otter says, to cave-in to our federal government's Big Brother blackmail threat to withhold millions in highway funds if Idaho does not obey. Butch's libertarian instincts at times infuriates some Mormon legislators who like to legislate morals.
Raspberries to one of these poor-spirited members of the LDS church, Rep. Mack Neibaur, R-Paul, who raged at Otter's veto: "Butch just shot himself in the butt." But Otter, who may be more familiar with the Mormons' standard works (i.e., their three main books) than is Neibaur, for their advocacy of the concept of free agency means being free to choose, was right as rain based on principle. Otter said also the federal intrusion was (is) furthermore a serious violation of the doctrine of states' rights.
Roses for the Idaho Press-Tribune education article last Sunday entitled "Where are all the scholars going?" In it is cited an interesting statistic, namely, that in 1984, the last year for which the figures are available, 3,007 students left Idaho for out-of-state schools, but 3,633 came into the state schools. That's a "net gain of 626 students" entering Idaho's government schools. They can't be all bad.
Raspberries for the Press-Tribune writer of the above article who, though obviously intending to make a case for sacred-cow schooling in Idaho, missed the point of a net gain of students. Also missed was Idaho executive director of state board of education Charles McQuillen's odd statement: "Idaho's students are voting with their feet." That's odd, friend Charles, because in most countries "voting with their feet" means leaving a state not entering one. Tut, tut.
Roses for Sen. Rachel Gilbert, R-Boise, whose request for consistency and uniform legal application of Idaho's "Little Hatch Act" gets less friendly attention from political reporters than it deserves. Gilbert's bill would apply the same treatment to school teachers that the law now applies to other public employees. The law says now that public employees may not run for office where they can - and do - vote themselves salary increases and benefits. Good luck Rachel, but common sense is hard as heck to sell in the Idaho Senate where you work.
The Business of Embarrassing People
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 22, 1987
My observations last week about the media being motivated more by power lust than conspiracy brought an interesting phone call.
It suggested columnist Peter Johnson's loud applause for the media contained an even more flagrant and sinful mistake than the ones I mentioned.
The Statesman columnist, former Bonneville Power administrator and big business tycoon, did indeed make such an odd statement March 10. Here it is:
"Reporters and editors are professionals. And (as such) because of their intelligence, extensive education and accumulated experiences, they possess a competence vital to our interests. They must enjoy the freedom to make judgments in the application of their expertise."
Johnson makes his assertion, but not his case. Unfortunately the media tends not to care much about anyone else's freedom. Only their own. It is, of course, true they need freedom to report, but their awesome power not only adds to their "application" but their influence with which they often try to mold society in their own image.
Let's take a look at where most of the media folk are coming from as they go about the country in pursuit of what Johnson terms "our interests." Let's remember, too, that in a large measure these tendencies include local media folk, especially as they respond to peer group pressures such as media professionals in their collective style tend to do.
In a now famous, exhaustive and really professional piece of academic research on the big media elite, George Washington University Professor S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, professor at Smith College, came up with the following profile of how the Big Media elite see themselves:
"Predominantly white males; 40 percent came from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania; only 20 percent had fathers in blue collar or low status white collar jobs; 75 percent agreed with the statement that the West had not been helpful to Third World countries (despite $260 billion in foreign aid); 56 percent said the U.S. exploits Third World countries and is the cause of their poverty; 66 percent believe government should be in the business of redistributing income; 86 percent said they seldom if ever attend religious services; 91 percent voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, 87 percent voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, 81 percent voted for George McGovern in 1972 and 81 percent voted for Carter in 1976; 75 percent do not think homosexuality is wrong; 85 percent uphold the right of homosexuals to teach in public schools; 54 percent do not regard adultery as wrong; only 15 percent strongly agree that extramarital affairs are immoral."
So much for Johnson's idea that the media: "... must enjoy the freedom to make judgments in the application of their expertise." I agree to a considerable extent, but wouldn't it be great if even a modest percentage of these media types, almost all of whom are graduates of a journalism course in one of our major left-leaning universities, were to express conservative values?
Lest you think these attitudes don't show up in their programming consider: Phyllis Schlafly, the attractive and famous conservative who led the successful fight against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), was not invited to appear before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., until a year after the ERA had been defeated. For the almost 10 years it was alive, those who supported the ERA were frequently provided the platform.
According to Richard Viguerie's bomb-like book The Establishment vs. The People the giant "CBS challenged a statement by President Reagan that the Soviet ship, Alexander Ylynov, was carrying military cargo to Nicaragua. CBS showed video tape of the ship and pointed out that no military cargo was visible. What they did not tell viewers, however, was they had purchased the tape from Communist Cuban film crews."
Joseph Sobran, the brilliant senior editor of conservative National Review states it well, "Embarrassing the president has become the standard activity of the news media and the prestige press. Conservatives sense bias in journalism, and they are right, but ... the problem is not inaccuracy ... the problem is that minions of the media are constantly digging for facts, leaks, "gaffes," and other trivia that will put conservative and anti-communist forces and indeed the entire American tradition in the worst light. Liberals and communists are spared this kind of gaffe research. Mr. Reagan and Jesse Helms, not Tip O'Neill and Ron Dellums, are the targets of investigative reporters ... the CIA is embarrassed, not the KGB; the sins of our allies, not our enemies, must be brought to light ... Once you grasp that contemporary journalism is in the business of embarrassing people, the bias is fully disclosed. As James Burnham has formulated 'the iron law of liberalism:' 'the preferred enemy is always to the right.'"
All of which is not to say Johnson is a bad fellow, or, even, necessarily, a liberal. It is to say he's wrong, in spades, about most of the media's merit as watchdog with good ethical judgment.
He could be right, however, about what he lauded in the beginning as the press's "extensive education," which the rest of us are getting from them - in the end.
Both Sides Suffer from Deadly Pains
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 29, 1987
A friend suggested that perhaps if we tried a little harder to define the enemy, so-called, they might be easier to deal with.
I say "so-called" enemy because not all the liberals are enemies. No, I haven't sold out and gone over to the other (read, liberal) side, but in all good sense some adversaries are oft-times helpful for a variety of reasons. This is true not only because many liberals are sincere, kind and well-meaning, but also because they have a point that may help keep us honest - as the saying goes.
So without attempting to exhaust the subject in all its important aspects if should be helpful to define our terms a bit so we can be clear just who those rascals are that we contest against today. We do this not only in the political arena, but in other places as well. Our friends in the liberal camp may also find the discussion of use in case they see some conservatives also as well-meaning, kind, sincere, etc.
In this regard I am indebted to my great and good friend, Dr. Perry Gresham, president emeritus of Bethany College, Bethany, W.Va., who so wisely suggested to me many years ago: "Be slow to ascribe to malice, Ralph, that which can usually be explained by stupidity."
With that in mind and on a serious note as well let's make a few general observations remembering, as in most things, there are important exceptions. If we can gain a little understanding we may well be the richer for it, and who knows, maybe our liberal adversaries will, too. Thus we may all be a bit better off.
Liberals tend to support what they call human rights (civil liberties) more and property rights (economic liberties) somewhat less. We have often heard in years past their accusation: "You conservatives think property rights are more important than human rights." While conservatives would decry such a charge one can at least understand their concern. Still, property rights are altogether a form of human rights.
Liberals want the government to stay out of civil freedoms such as freedom of speech and the press, freedom of lifestyle, thought, etc., freedom of teachers to teach whatever they see fit in the classroom and so on, but they urge that same government to regulate and control the economy.
Conservatives, on the other hand, want the government to stay out of the economy, generally speaking, but seem pretty comfortable when asking that same government to regulate and pass laws to govern the morals.
Where each feels the strongest he wants more government.
Again, there are, of course, a good many exceptions, but most fair-minded observers agree that the generality is a strong one and seen in such a light it is a helpful one in predicting what position(s), especially in pending legislation, both conservative politicians and liberal politicians will tend to favor.
As an interesting aside, those persons of a libertarian persuasion tend to be different from both liberals and conservatives in that they want the government to stay out of both civil liberty legislation thus depending more on the general acceptance of a free market and individual liberty ethic. But more on these folks another day.
Seen in this light, then, I believe one can better understand the passion felt by holders of strong views in both the conservative camp and the liberal camp and, too, see that each, indeed, has a point.
Some of us, at least in my own personal case, prefer to see ourselves as former conservatives, anti-communist ones if you like. "Former," in many instances, because the almost cancer-like growth of The State since World War II is no less than frightening and tends to grow faster and faster from both political camps.
The conservatives' tendency to not want to do anything for the first time gets us but little more than the liberals' tendency to want change just for the sake of change.
This accounts for a ratchet type of action on the part of such a law-making body as the Idaho Legislature. Being made up of a great majority of Republican and Democrat moderates, so-called, adds up to about one-half liberal statists and one-half conservative statists. Each group tends to get their way when the State gets its way, i.e., yet another brand new law - on top of all the thousands of others.
It's called statism. Or, PAINS (Politically Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome.)
How Do I Spell Relief? B-A-K-K-E-R
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 5, 1987
Well bless Bess, as the saying goes. Or maybe it should be instead, bless Jim and Tammy Bakker and Oral Roberts. Why? For getting us some long overdue relief. Something like R-O-L-A-I-D-S to relieve us of the big liberal media's tenacious and almost insufferable preoccupation with what has come to be identified as Reagan's "headache" - Irangate. Indeed it is as if the media were merely out to get Reagan. To which one might say, what else is new?
But Reagan is not the only source of the liberal media's super-irritation and/or super-hate. The conservative and popular president has had for years a secret weapon against which the liberal establishment has not been able to launch much of an offense, i.e., the conservative evangelical movement.
Comes now the Rev. Oral Roberts, whose huge national television ministry from Tulsa, Okla., has for years inspired hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of God-fearing folks. Much of Roberts' success came from his zeal on TV. Probably sincere, in what the Bible calls "faith healing" Sunday after Sunday after Sunday for decades. (Roberts is not political, but he is nonetheless evangelical.)
As an interesting aside, when Roberts became successful enough at his invoking the Lord's healing without medicine or with spiritual medicine, the first thing he did was to build a hospital. Then he built a beautiful multi-story prayer tower near his nearly 4,500 student Oral Roberts University (ORU).
I tell you this not necessarily to endorse all his many activities. Neither do I say he's "probably" sincere as if I had usually big reservations. In fact I have similar reservations about some other ministries, many of which are right here in Treasure Valley. I say these things to note this fellow is also a big time operator. One of his hobbies is flying his own P-51, a famous if aging fighter plane of WWII era.
These activities seem to be such as to infuriate the big media elite as well as the small. Some of the latter's salary (Dan Rather) are reported to be above $2 million per year, so one supposes high living and high salaries for TV preachers wouldn't be the sole factor in said media's irritation.
Another TV preacher with a huge following and huge financial resources, said to be upwards of $175 million, is the Rev. Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy, who formerly headed up the PTL Club. PTL stands for "Praise The Lord." Of the many successful TV ministries heard on Sundays, both Roberts' and Bakker's were the most newsworthy. This time they raised a lot of eyebrows both religious and otherwise. But in widely divergent ways.
Roberts said his tremendous financial obligations, presumably his hospital and his TV ministry, needed lots of money ($8 million) to be raised through his efforts by a certain date, or "the Lord will call me home." Presumably he meant the Lord would take his (Roberts') life. Needless to say most people just laughed. He raised the money, however, so we'll never know, will we?
Jim Bakker was similarly spectacular, being charged with adultery and his wife with taking drugs. Sad! Sad indeed, especially since these things tend to discredit other TV preachers who are doing well pleasing millions. Guilt by association is in itself a sad if all too typical modus operandi in public life especially in politics. This, too, is sad, especially now.
It is tempting to suggest the big media elite is so gleeful about the TV preachers' predicament because most evangelical ministries are conservative and tend to support our conservative president. It's tempting, especially seen in this context.
First of all, the TV evangelists are running huge businesses - not unlike the huge church businesses such as the worldwide Mormon Church or Catholic Church. They all require huge sums of money. Often times it becomes difficult to raise money especially after they (Roberts) bit off more than they can chew. But Jim and Tammy Bakker apparently just have feet of clay. About all their sinning proves, however, is that they are quite human. Still the media dwells and dwells on their sins.
Well, these preachers are raising their money from their flocks - voluntarily. Remember? And how does the government raise their taxation money? With the IRS. By force or threat of force. Compulsion! And how does the latter spend our money? Foolishly? Yes. They even send some of it to the communists. Surprise, surprise. Interesting comparisons, don't you think?
And now what about our hero and worshipful master of the State religion - Brother Reagan, the conservative? The media will one day finish with the other ministers we hope, then we will no doubt go back to the government's sinfulness. So what? Well, both liberals and conservatives need media watchdogs.
But do you suppose after the media's understandable encounter with the religious folks we can expect to see on TV some old film flashbacks? How about one on our liberal President John Kennedy's "Bay of Pigs-gate" and the subsequent investigations the media forgot to dwell on back then.
Growing Mob of Advisers
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 12, 1987
There is an interesting phenomenon taking place in Canyon County politics since the Legislature adjourned. It is occasioned by the pending resignation of Rep. Mike Strasser, R-Nampa, due to his leaving the state for a job in Oregon.
There is one year remaining in his two-year term of office, thus appointment to the conservative's vacant seat would give the appointee a one-year head-start incumbency in the next election.
According to media reports there are or will be at least a dozen applicants vying for the vacant seat. Early reports said upwards of 20 people were interested. Egad. Why in heaven's name are there so many who portend they are qualified to tell (read, compel) others how to live their lives? One remembers, then, that's pretty heady wine and has been for centuries.
Well, Americans are said to learn almost nothing from history except that they never learn anything from history. Saturday, April 11, will tell us who are the three nominees put up by District 13 (Strasser's own official district name but it is dominated pretty much by Canyon County, its most populous area) from whom Democrat Cecil Andrus will choose the one to fill Strasser's vacant seat.
Unless, of course, the governor decides, as well he might, to let Lt. Gov.. Butch Otter make the choice in return for the considerable support Otter has given Andrus during the Legislature.
In either case this writer will not speculate on who should get each of the three nominations for said vacancy since no one has seemed to emerge so far who has any identifiable credentials for filling conservative Strasser's seat. Certainly Andrus, if indeed he makes the choice, will choose the least objectionable (to him) nominee from the three proposed at the April 11 meeting of the floterial District 13, chaired by John Favillo.
The latter was former Canyon County chairman prior to his being "purged" from that post by anti-conservatives Janet Hay, Patti Ann Lodge and their more or less "moderate" pals. Lodge replaced Favillo as county chairman.
Much could be said about the coup engineered by this group, (Hay, Lodge, et al.) but more about that another day. Suffice it to say that the group's philosophy is remarkably parallel to the one pushed by the powerful education union, the Idaho Education Association (IEA) headquartered in Boise.
I should hasten to add, however, that one of their heroes, William "Bill" Taylor, R-Nampa, to the pleasant surprise of many conservatives, turned out to be quite a conservative spokesman and much less a rubber stamp to the IEA than was anticipated. So who knows, maybe the Saturday meeting of District 13 will, by the time this column is published, have nominated a good conservative choice albeit not likely to be one on whom the super-liberal IEA will spend the huge sums of money as it did on Taylor in the last primary election.
This, of course, was to ensure the defeat of former Canyon County Republican Rep. Robert Forrey, outspoken and articulate arch foe of the IEA. Only time will tell about Taylor and whether his political future belongs alongside conservative Canyon County's. So far it looks pretty good.
I say all this mostly to point out that the Republicans in general, and their District 13 in particular, may not like the person finally chosen by Democrat Gov. Andrus (from said list of three.) But no more than our faulty system of communicating with one another affords, particularly in the arena of political philosophy, we will not know for quite some time just what kind of person it is "we" have chosen to replace Strasser.
What we will know, however, is that there is an ever-present and growing "mob" of people out there as the comic strip Peanuts says, "anxious to act in an advisory capacity."
Unfortunately, most of them seem to want to do that "advising" via power - which usually means abuse - through politics. And as Press-Tribune managing editor Rick Coffman likes to put it: "What's the use of having power unless you can abuse it?"
Letters to Editor a Valuable Tool
By Ralph Smith
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 19, 1987
Today is not the first time readers of this column have been treated to the opinion that letters to the editor are a great American tradition affording a fine forum for the proletariat to express its (their) views. Letters are all of that and much, much more.
Nonetheless, there is no small concern among some thoughtful people interested in public affairs that such individual expressions of opinions are somehow not made by genteel and proper people of substance. By substance, in this case, is meant intellectual substance, of course.
Now then, exceptions to the above are not hard to find, but neither is support for said concern difficult to find. In fact, close observation will all too often show what many see as noteworthy - the absence of a goodly percentage of a community's leaders' names in the letters' columns. Said leaders tend not to show up in the newspapers as often as their influential position(s) in the area would seem to warrant - especially in the news stories.
Good and sufficient reasons can be found for much of this condition, but leadership roles in our communities are changing not only seasonally, but almost monthly, causing many to wonder if they should "be silent and be thought a fool or to speak out and remove all doubt."
One need not be an intellectual giant to note there is some risk therein, but to exercise leadership in total silence is to leave ordinary folks to play, with less than a full deck of cards. We deserve more.
In any event, the reporters of today's news have a huge responsibility not only to report the stories accurately, but to report all or even most of the sides to all of the stories. Given the tendency of people to love stories about violence, sex, sin and corruption it is probably our good fortune to get as many "good news" stories as well reported as we do. But one excellent way of getting other first-class opinions, even expert opinions, on a wide variety of important subjects is the institution of letters to the editor.
In an effort to encourage more people to write letters perhaps a bit of historical perspective would be helpful, maybe even interesting, and, given today's unfortunate penchant for snob appeal, possibly give letter writing a touch of class.
"As a newspaper feature, letters are as old as American journalism itself," writes Kalman Seigal, letters editor for the New York Times.
"Since World War II the number of letters written to American newspapers has risen dramatically. Estimates ... put the current number of writers at 8 million. (A real live condition we ignore at our peril.)
"The letters to the Times are most often serious, thoughtful contributions ... on major issues, prepared with care, knowledge and often after thorough research. They are also puffs of emotion composed in white heat. They are sometimes irate, sometimes silly, puckish, trivial and ponderous. They are, as much as any other index, an accurate measure of ourselves."
It is in this last that I should like to disagree with the Times' letters editor. Elsewhere in his book he relates his paper uses only 7 percent (7 out of 100) of the letters it receives. This could hardly be "an accurate measure of ourselves."
Still, just consider that it is the policy of our own Press-Tribune to print all (repeat, all) the letters it receives if they meet policy guidelines. Don't laugh, my friends. This is a genuine effort on their part to avoid stacking the deck against their readers. A laudable policy, by the way, as well as a great opportunity.
On another wave length, there is yet another fine, intellectually viable and important point to consider; namely, that next to Ann Landers the letters section of newspaper is the most widely read feature. It is right here that much of the intelligence, mores, ethical concerns, understandings, sense of decency, work ethics, even the sense of humor of our community are influenced and spotlighted. Further, like it or not, they will be influenced in a big way.
Be that as it may, many great persons still live in many small cities and towns such as Caldwell, yet too few speak out - publicly. Why?
Well, many reasons. Some good, some not. One thing seems certain, however: "Silence isn't always golden.
Oft-times it's merely yellow." Letters can help us to determine which is which.
Don't Take Letters Column For Granted
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 26, 1987
There is an old American tradition which, though not exactly seen as such, we tend to take for granted - letters to the editor. They have been around since the 1700s, but there were many competing newspapers way back then, each city having at least two papers (large metropolitan areas often had more) each tending to keep the other one honest.
Unfortunately the centralization we so often see creeping into today's channels of trade tends to reduce the number of competing papers willing to serve the public. Nonetheless, the diversity of ideas can usually get a hearing through letters to the editor. For this we should not only be thankful but we should do what we can to upgrade the effort and increase its usefulness.
In 1947 the Commission on Freedom of the Press said, "... (newspapers) can and should assume the duty of publishing significant ideas contrary to their own as a matter of objective reporting, distinct from their proper function of advocacy." Unless this is done, the report warned, "the unchallenged assumptions of each group will continue to harden into prejudice. The mass medium reaches across all groups; through (that) mass medium they can come to understand one another."
According to Kalman Seigal, letters editor of the New York Times (NYT), "Letters are also finding a place in radio and television. Broadcasters have been airing excerpts from listeners' letters while seeking a format for the electronic media as effective as the letters columns in newspapers." Note our own KIVI-TV (Channel 6) also had editorials now.
Who writes letters to the editor? According to the Seigal, "Everyone does. Surprisingly there is little formal research available, although one study of about 10,000 letters shows that men wrote 46 percent of all letters to the editor and women 37 percent ... Of the letters attributed to men, 23 percent came from clergymen; 21 percent from lawyers, civic leaders and minor officials; 18 percent from active politicians; 15 percent from secretaries of organizations; 12 percent from disgruntled public servants; and 11 percent from publicity seekers.
"Among the women letter writers, 42 percent of those who wrote were spokesmen for various movements and groups, 28 percent were teachers, 16 percent were working women and 14 percent were housewives."
Perhaps the greatest inhibition for most people who might otherwise contribute a letter of their own is the tendency to think only people who have nothing else to do write such letters. Not so! Here is a small list of very busy and famous persons writing letters to the editor of the NYT. (From Seigal's book, Talking Back to the New York Times):
John Maynard Keynes, probably the most influential economist (so far) of this century, wrote from London on June 23, 1934; Albert Einstein, from Princeton University, May 1, 1935; Leon Trotsky, from Mexico, Nov. 20, 1939; John Foster Dulles, New York, March 6, 1945; W.E.B. DuBois, the famous black communist, Nov. 8,1946; Henry L. Stimson, Long Island, March 24, 1950; Wm. F. Buckley Jr., New York, Oct. 7, 1960; Margaret Mead, New York, June 18, 1964; Arthur Rubenstein, the famous pianist, Paris, April 16, 1968; Dean Acheson, Washington, D.C., Nov. 17, 1969.
"Spiro T. Agnew (vice president of the U.S., remember?), Washington, D.C., June 18, 1970; John Kenneth Galbraith, economic adviser to several Democrat presidents, Cambridge, Mass., June 16, 1971; Reed J. Irvine, famous media critic and later chairman of Accuracy in Media (AIM), Silver Springs, Md., June 16, 1971; Lyndon B. Johnson (remember him?), Washington, D.C., June 19, 1962; Linus Pauling, Nobel Laureate, Pasadena, Calif., May 8, 1958; Edward Teller (H-bomb), Berkeley, Calif., Nov. 3, 1961; Will Durant, the celebrated historian, Great Neck, N.Y., Nov. 12, 1938.
There are thousands of others, good men and good women, yet it was Durant who noted: "It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."
Write your own letter to the editor and help make their "fooling and ruling" a whole lot more risky. And who knows (?) maybe keep them a little more honest, too.
Time to Give More Roses, Raspberries
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 3, 1987
Roses to Lt. Gov.. C.L. "Butch" Otter who was the principle speaker for the Caldwell Corps of the Salvation Army on the occasion of their annual banquet last month. In his speech entitled "Private Welfare versus Government Welfare," Otter reported that it costs the government about $1.25 to deliver $1 worth of welfare to a recipient. It costs the Salvation Army just under 10 cents. Tell you something?
Roses again to that same lieutenant governor who during the session of the Idaho Legislature just ended did everything short of turning handsprings hurrying and scurrying to and fro bending everywhere to help Gov. Cecil Andrus. He (Andrus) got virtually every new spending scheme and program proposal he wanted together with many of the tax increases they will call for.
These roses, however, really should be paid for by Andrus because in a rather odd "payment" for Otter's enthusiastic support Andrus just recently appointed an opponent of Otter's from Payette. Donna Jones was one of these names submitted by GOP delegates from District 13 to fill the vacancy left by conservative Rep. Mike Strasser of Nampa who moved to Oregon.
Why should Andrus furnish the roses for Otter? It seems Jones not only is virtually owned by the liberal education lobby from whence cometh almost blind support for Andrus, she actively campaigned against Otter's recent election.
Roses for Caldwell's Chamber of Commerce, Caldwell Unlimited and subsidiary organizations who talked Big Brother in Washington, D.C., out of a $669,000 federal grant. The money is to build more sewer and water lines to the airport and the area said to be serving the proposed new convention center near the Bob Nicholes Oil Co. station on Interstate 84. The grant money is also to aid financing the expansion of IDEA Manufacturing Co. The total package is expected to add 600 new jobs to the area. Seems a little high, but let's hope it all works.
Roses for Mike Maenaka, Steve Wilmorth, Terry Rinearson and their pals who talked a host of Caldwell businesses into donating a huge amount of merchandise toward a memorial for the late and very popular high school coach, Charlie Alvaro. The merchandise was sold at auction for more than $13,000. The money is to equip an athletic playing field at the high school.
Roses for those wonderful eager-beaver souls who got the beautiful trees planted in the downtown area of Caldwell a few years ago. A real scenic addition to our fair city. More roses should go to those responsible for downtown's neat trash containers alongside many of those same trees. A real asset to a clean and appealing city.
Raspberries to those persons responsible (or irresponsible?) for the lack of maintaining many of the above trees. Some of the trash baskets and trees are maintained by a few merchants who take it upon themselves to do such a task for everyone's benefit. But the merchants association is frustrated. It seems the city, whom one would assume to be the logical entity to maintain these attractive and relatively new sidewalk amenities, is unwilling to pick up the slack on those not properly maintained.
Oh well, Mayor Pete Cowles said on TV recently that he (and not the council) was "running this town," so maybe he can get the fire department to do the job; he seems to have them handily in his pocket. That is to say, they played a big part both in the mayor's original election and in last week's devastating recall of the three council members who contradicted him.
Let's just hop, however, that their enthusiastic politicking turns out to pay off to the city better than Otter's appears to have paid off for him.
Political Labels Don't Mean Much
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 10, 1987
In his column which is syndicated statewide, Associated Press writer Quane Kenyon wrote last week about a publication put out by Secretary of State Pete Cenarrusa's office that in his opinion is a "gold mine of information ... for Idaho politics."
It is a 205-page report on political contributions, spending and lobbyist activities in 1985 and 1986. Every contribution of $100 or more is listed, making it practically a "who's who" of the sources.
So far, so good. The problem, however, comes from the impression one gets from Kenyon's column reciting, for example, miscellaneous monies spent on the Andrus-Leroy contest for governor, the Risch-LaRocco race hotly contested for the Senate seat long held by Jim Risch, and other examples. Like so many news stories these days, what is often more important are the items political experts such as Kenyon tend to leave out of their "analysis."
Now then, the Associated Press writer is not a bad fellow. As political pundits go, readers should be less outraged by his (Kenyon's) stories' slant than many of the typically liberal reporters that one sees from day to day in the media. Nor can a super-sensitive and sincerely intentioned reporter tell complete versions of each and every story that comes along. There simply is not enough space.
Still, room for criticism abounds all around us if for no other reason than that these writers and TV readers-of-the-news seem to avoid (like the plague) any specific criticism of each other as did many of the great newspapers in days gone by.
As I said, Kenyon is not particularly bad as reporters go, but he does make certain assumptions, for example, that tend sometimes to leave his reporting weaker than it needs to be. For example, the assumption that there is typically a whole lot of difference between Democrats and Republicans in the Idaho Legislature.
A case in point, though by no means malicious at all, came up in his column last week (Press-Tribune, May 6.) Such a reference may well be common practice among the liberal media folk, but this writer thinks it is terribly misleading especially to the general public. Here was Kenyon's final punch-line paragraph:
"Republicans have dominated the Legislature for nearly 30 years. And GOP legislative candidates draw the most political contributions. Republicans received $759,831 in the 1986 election, while Democrats could scrape together only $533,040."
One needn't get his or her nose out of joint at Kenyon's use of "Republicans received..." their money as if it came down as a kind of manna from heaven, so to speak, while the poor minority Democrats, doubtless on their hands and knees, "... could only scrape ..." their money together. It's called literary license, if it's even noticed at all. It's done almost as a matter of style. I doubt Kenyon had even an ounce of ill will in his heart when he chose the term. But it happens - nonetheless.
The problem that does distress careful observers in today's political scene is the assumption that "the Republicans," having 30-year control of the Legislature, comes from a somehow meaningful difference between the parties according to some set of principles. Said principles, however, remain utterly completely unstated, undefined and are seldom if ever even referred to by the media.
Maybe we should get Cenarrusa's office to publish a "who's who" as to the Idaho politicians' political philosophy or the dominant trend of their voting for taxes, i.e., more government or less government. That way the reporters who tell us what goes on in politics would have better labels than merely hyphenating the conservatives with "ultra, extreme right-wing, extra" etc., etc., ad nauseum. (Note these are not applied to liberals.)
Who are some of the Democrat-type Republicans? Well, in no order of importance a few are Kitty Guernsey, Chris Hooper, Janet Hay, Dorothy Reynolds, Hilde Kellogg, Pam Bengson, Steve Antone and Terry Sverdsten. There are others, of course. Many are probably as sincere and intelligent as any conservative. They just can't get elected as Democrats, but this way they can usually vote liberal.
All of this is not to say the media are all bad. Neither is it to say that Democrats or Republican moderates (so-called) are all bad either. It is to say, however, that one cannot tell the players without a program - and a clearer one than Kenyon's.
Saying Goodbye to Your Money
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 17, 1987
The late, great sage of American politics and humor, Will Rogers, was fond of saying, "Everybody's ignorant, but just about different things."
Consider two publications (read, versions) on the recent session of the Idaho Legislature. Both are products of intelligent and concerned "experts." Both are, to say the least, widely divergent.
Consider the first from three state senators, Skip Smyser, Atwell Parry and Jerry Thorne. The three seasoned and experienced Canyon County politicians, in a signed pamphlet, have this to say on the front page. "During this past legislative session we along with the rest of the Idaho Legislature tackled old and new problems alike. The result won't please everyone, but it was a meaningful and productive session."
The message is too long to reprint all of it here, but they went on, "We felt it necessary to support this (the fifth cent increase on the sales tax) in order to adequately fund public schools." The senators' final paragraph began, "On the whole it was a good legislative session for the three of us." All of this was along with the usual political rhetoric of how very responsible they were. Egad.
Comes now Russ Westerberg, chief of the prestigious Associated Taxpayers of Idaho and easily the state's number one expert on Idaho taxes. His non-partisan profession is the effect of taxes on the economy in Idaho. His April 1987 wrap-up newsletter on the recent Legislature had much by way of a sad, sad commentary about what the three Canyon County senators called their "meaningful and productive session."
Headlined, "$106.4 million in new taxes and 79 legislative days later" Westerberg's newsletter began: "April 1, the day traditionally observed by practical jokers, the joke is on the Idaho taxpayer, and it is an expensive one."
The taxpayers' chief went on to say "With $432.38 in new taxes per every man, woman and child in Idaho having been imposed in the last five years by the Idaho Legislature, some taxpayers seem now to accept the prospect of annual tax increases as a foregone conclusion. Why does the Legislature consistently believe that government must be insulated from the same economic environment that is forcing many businessmen, wage earners and farmers to get by with less?" He concluded by saying we cannot "tax and spend ourselves into prosperity."
An understatement if I ever heard one, but too many of us tend to be a little bit dull-witted and understandably disagree on how to draw the line between cause and effect. The latter is further confused by the media's almost consistent efforts to draw this line for them. One might better say: to spout their line for them.
Now then, statistics frequently leave a lot to be desired, but one has to do something, especially since some see our "school bus" heading for the cliff and others, also wanting to drive that same bus, see it heading for the great schoolhouse in the sky.
Forgive me if statistics bore you, but for whatever it's worth - and it is indeed worth something - here is what some of our better known Canyon County politicians have voted for (last session) in terms of what the Associated Taxpayers of Idaho (my source) entitled "Taxes and Fees Imposed by the 1987 Legislature."
Listed here are how each representative voted for the following total of taxes and fees in 1987: Liz Allen-Hodge, $2,700,000; Ron Crane, $3,000,000; Dolores Crowe, #9,738,000; Janet Hay, #95,708,000; Dorothy Reynolds, $98,558,000; Robert Schaefer, $17,838,500; W.O. "Bill Taylor, $21,344,600; Mike Strasser, $19,328,000.
The Idaho Senate was only slightly better, but hardly enough to explain our three senator's euphemistic "... a good session for the three of us." Here, in part, are the totals they voted for in the session they called "productive": Sen. Phil Batt, $79,808,500; Atwell Parry, $79,408,500; Skip Smyser, $72,538,000; Jerry Thorne, $13,058,500.
With Sens. Parry's and Smyser's so-called "productivity" bringing in in excess of 550 to 600 percent more taxes than Sen. Thorne voted for, one can easily see how some politicians produce more than others.
There is, of course, more to politics than these particular statistics and while Batt's total "tax vote" was as high as Parry's and Smyser's he did not sign the senators' "pamphlet on political productivity." In fact he (Batt) told this writer he was appalled at this session's big spending and that he thought Westerberg's above-mentioned "version" was a good one.
Even the Libs See This Injustice
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 24, 1987
The famed philosopher Thomas Carlyle said, "Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world." One wonders, therefore what he would have thought about Idaho's former Congressman George Hansen about which today there is much of that popular opinion.
But that opinion is taking on a really interesting transformation recently due in part at least to some important liberals (believe it or not) who seem strangely if genuinely concerned about the conservative politician's civil rights. Said concern may very well be sincere.
If that sounds inconsistent coming from this writer as a long standing critic of the liberals it is perhaps understandable. But it makes some sense, so please hear me out.
Most everyone knows Hansen was singled out of a large group of congressmen for prosecution for alleged violation of some ethical and technical disclosure laws for federal lawmakers. After his indictment there was a whole herd of these politicians who rushed to amend their former filings.
Probably the most famous of these politicians is former Democrat vice presidential candidate and liberal congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro whose violation of said disclosure laws are generally considered to be much worse than Hansen's. Today she not only remains outside the law or threat of indictment but even above meaningful criticism of the press.
Suffice it to say that while most Democrats, Republicrats and even some moderate (whatever that means) Republicans were understandably happy to see Hansen put behind bars, so to speak, most everyone thought he would be incarcerated in one of the country club type "prisons" usually reserved for white collar crimes and political prisoners. But it wasn't so. U.S. Sen. Steve Symms says Hansen's being harassed.
It may come as a surprise to some naive people to hear that America has indeed any political prisoners at all, but no less a person than President Reagan's vice chairman of the Grace Commission on government waste and inefficiency says we do. Jack Anderson, certainly no conservative rubber stamp, speaking in Salt Lake recently says there is no doubt in his mind that George Hansen is a political prisoner today.
While it may be seen by many as merely self-serving for conservatives to take sides for Hansen and claim he is being harassed and mistreated in prison to say nothing about his being denied a trial by jury of his peers as guaranteed by the Constitution, it is something else for Hansen's former adversaries to take his side.
Comes now Lloyd J. Walker, a Twin Falls lawyer, former state chairman of the Idaho Democrat Party and long-time political activist and pusher for liberal causes. High on his list of priorities to defeat for many years was defeat for the former congressman and GOPer George Hansen.
In a letter to the editor of the Twin Falls Times-News April 22, Walker had this to say (in part): "On this occasion I am very sympathetic to the problem being faced by former Congressman George Hansen and his wife Connie. He is in the hands of the Federal Parole Commission with which recently I have had a great deal of experience. They have no interest whatsoever in the individual's (civil" rights or thoughts. The federal bureaucracy is absolutely out of control. It has utterly no concept of money or people."
It is too bad space prohibits reprinting all of Walker's letter. Nonetheless it is to his credit that while by no means endorsing Hansen's political philosophy he repeated his sincere concern for Hansen's treatment and an alarm at the bureaucracy's arrogance.
From farther east in Idaho comes political editor and columnist Chuck Malloy in writing in the Idaho Falls Post-Register, a paper certainly not known to be any political fan of Hansen. In his column of May 10, Malloy says (in part): "Even Democrat Rep. Richard Stallings, who is far from being a political fan of Hansen, has said that the Justice Department should have used more discretion."
Noting praise or condemnation for Hansen is "not at issue here," Malloy goes on to say, "The large question is whether Hansen should have been singled out for prosecution ..."
After selling his house to pay the $40,000 fine Malloy says a parole commission hearing officer wants to lock up Hansen until at least Nov. 5 "... for an offense, which on the scale of things, (today) is hardly more serious than a parking ticket.
"It has never been proven that Hansen has cheated the federal government out of a dime. And aside from making life miserable for a few bureaucrats, it cannot be argued that Hansen is a threat to the physical well-being of society." Hansen was recently handcuffed, put in leg-irons with chains around his waist and booked into jail under a phony name to hide him from the media. All for breaking an asinine condition of his parole.
Malloy winds up with, "It's about time for the president, attorney general or whoever to say enough is enough." To which I say, amen.
Conservatives could take a lesson from these liberals on civil rights.
Take Away Ivan's Ear in Washington
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 31, 1987
Most of you who give a hoot about anything in public affairs have been reading about how the U.S. State Department (some would call it the U.S. Stupidity Department) has been managing the location and construction of our embassy building in Moscow, but you haven't read much about the Soviet Embassy over here in our Insane City, D.C.
The Russian building is located in an absolutely prime spot on Mount Alto, a hill overlooking Washington, D.C., while the U.S. Embassy in Moscow is located in virtually the lowest if not the lousiest spot in town in the Soviet capitol. A rather neat double-standard.
The news media has pretty well told the U.S. public about our Russian embassy which the Soviets insisted on constructing without any U.S. supervision (believe it or not) in Moscow, thus providing almost unlimited cover for their agents to install wires for a honeycomb of listening devices within the very walls built to house the U.S. State Department offices in that far away and hostile land.
"Stanislov Levchenko, who defected in 1979, has said the top floor of the Soviet's new Mount Alto embassy (in Washington) is full of antennas that collect micro and radio waves, waves emanated by all electronic equipment," says U.S. Sen. Steve Symms in a major article in a recent issue of the Washington Times. "According to surveillance technology specialists, that equipment includes computer terminals, electronic telephones and electronic typewriters, not to mention the many kinds of communications devices commonly used by our national security agencies."
The strength of the signals need not be great. Current technology enables scientists on Earth to receive signals of less than one watt from space vehicles hundreds of millions of miles away. The Soviet Embassy is within five miles of the most strategic buildings in our national security system from which thousands of signals emanate each day.
"The first thing necessary to gather and sort these (electronic) emanations," Symms says, "is a clear line of sight to their source. The only other needs are listening devices to receive them and a computer system to reconstruct them into usable data. The Soviets have the last two, and the United States has provided the first - the Mount Alto location" (Symms' emphasis.)
I visited this location during a recent trip to our capital city and it is indeed imposing and impressive as it looks down at all of Washington, D.C., in a direct line of sight upon the veritable nerve center of the free world. I'm told that from their vantage point the Russians can tap almost any phone call in the city should they choose to do so. And we wonder why we flub our dub so often in our foreign policy efforts, many of which require secrecy.
As I said, the media told us about the asinine arrangements our State Department "negotiated" for construction of our embassy in Moscow entirely by Russian workers - if you can comprehend such idiocy and "doublethink." But it took revelations about embassy espionage and sex scandals about U.S. Marine Corps security guards and their selling U.S. secrets to focus serious media attention on the new Soviet Embassy here in Washington.
Even so, our embassy in Moscow has been turned into a virtual antenna for the Soviets' KGB spies while our U.S. Department of Stupidity still seems to continue to do business as usual.
According to Symms, the State Department bears the primary responsibility for embassy security, but it has expressed little concern about the Mount Alto problem. It gives the Soviets what amounts to a combination to the safe here in America.
"Congress" he says, "must force them to act. And the time to act is now. Current embassy agreements must be canceled and new agreements must require the Soviets to move off Mount Alto to another (lower) location in Washington no more than 90 feet above sea level."
Symms and Rep. Dick Armey in the House have introduced a joint resolution to do just that, so write or call them now, because I fear they will need your moral support to stop the Soviets' electronic monkey-business.
Why? Well the national media won't focus attention on it. They are too busy with their own electronic surveillance on the bedroom secrets of the Rev. Jim and Tammy Bakker.
Presbyterians and Defense Policy
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 7, 1987
Many people who watch public affairs these days know there are circles within the circles of the churches of America. There are many different reasons for the existence of said groups; some are religious, some economic, some political and probably others known only to active members of each church.
So far this is all to the good, but the circle I want to tell you about just now is both political and religious. It is also not all good mostly because today's church establishment isn't entirely intellectually honest.
If one doubts the latter statement, consider that many believe the modernists in popular churches have virtually abandoned the fundamentalists, hence the obvious super-popularity of the TV evangelicals and others who tend to offer a somewhat more fundamental (read, religious) form of worship than the mainline churches tend to use.
The giant Presbyterian Church is a case in point. It is mostly liberal, both theologically and politically; at least it is in its hierarchy, leadership and activism, e.g., it has long been a stalwart in support of the liberal National Council of Churches and the left-leaning World Council of Churches. The liberal stranglehold, however, may be showing signs of weakening, especially within the ranks of the United Presbyterian Church USA.
Comes now the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc., of Springfield, Pa., an admittedly more conservative (although they seldom use that word) oriented group or circle of believers who opted some years ago to try to work for reform from within the system. This is rather than to splinter off into another separate faction as is so often the case with religious dissenters. And do they dissent? Yes - in spades. Here it comes.
In the current issue of their tabloid newspaper, the Presbyterian Layman (May/June 1987) is featured a special letter from The Session (the ruling board) of Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Wichita, Kan. I want to nominate them for the religious letter of the year award for all categories. It is low key, but power-packed and courageously logical such as one seldom sees today in church circles.
"The 194th (1982) General Assembly adopted the following guidelines for investment of its funds: 'It shall be the policy of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church not to invest in common stocks of corporations that are among the 10 leading military contractors (in dollar volume); that are among the 100 leading military contracts for more than 25 percent of their sales (measured per a church formula); that makes the key nuclear components for nuclear warheads.'"
Note these people never condemn Soviet Russia, the regime that liberals seem to see as moral equivalents to the U.S. This writer sees that as only one example of their (liberals) not being honest.
The Wichita Session's letter continues, "The Rev. Daniel Thomas of Princeton Theological Seminary, chair of our denomination's Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment, claims these guidelines help the church put its money where its mouth is in our search for peace.
"Corporations affected include Boeing, DuPont, General Tire and Rubber, General Dynamics, General Electric, Grumman, Litton Industries, Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, Raytheon, Singer, Sperry and 12 others.
"At present the Presbyterian Foundation and the Board of Missions have approximately $2.4 billion (that's with a B) and an additional $1 billion controlled by other agencies and institutions of the denomination to invest."
Here comes the power-packed punch line: "Presbyteries, synods and other Presbyterian institutions are encouraged to follow the national (church's) criteria. If local churches are to take the General Assembly (the super-hierarchy of the church) seriously, then we (Wichita) would expect every pastor and session who agree with this policy to announce from her or his pulpit that pledges, tithes and offerings will no longer be accepted from members who are (also) employees of these 24 companies.
"The real issue at stake is whether we can trust the competence of the General Assembly in the arena of our nation's defense.
"We can survive our denomination's mistakes supporting the Nestle and grape boycotts. We can survive our national church's paper (editorials) on every social-political cause from environmental issues to baby formulas.
"However if we follow (our church leaders) on how to achieve peace through national defense, and it turns out to be wrong, freedom and peace will be lost and millions will be slaughtered as they have been in Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
"Our General Assembly cannot sole its own problems, such as thousands leaving (our) church every year and over 1 million lost in our Sunday schools where supposedly we have knowledge and expertise. Why should we trust our national church leaders' wisdom in national defense where (they have) precious little knowledge and no expertise?"
Now then, will some real Idaho Presbyterian laymen please stand up?
Dealing with 2 U.S. 'Ghettos'
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 14, 1987
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have for you some bad news and some good news. The bad news first Wilder farmer, businessman and longtime state Sen. Phil Batt, R-Wilder, has decided not to be a candidate for next term in the state Legislature.
There is scarcely a soul in the whole statewide GOP and most Democrats as well who would doubt Batt could easily win another term if he so chose, but he's "disgusted and disappointed" with the whole political mess. Even though we didn't agree on some things concerning public affairs I am quick to add that Batt brought some brains and background to the Legislature that will be sorely missed.
As an interesting aside, I hope that I will be able to announce before too long an extremely important project to which Batt's particular talents and ability are greatly suited. For him to head up such an innovative endeavor, as I hope he will, would mean great progress for Idahoans, but he has not agreed yet to do it, indeed he hasn't even been formally asked. But a small, if confidential, group has been at work in the embryonic states of a neat study the implementation of which could mean the saving of many millions of dollars for Idahoans.
In any event, I can tell you this much: that it has in an oblique sort of way to do with privatization, but more about it perhaps (with a little luck) another day, if and when it is to be made public.
Now for the good news I spoke of. This past session of the Legislature has pointed up two facts about Idaho lawmakers and opinion molders: (1) that education has come to be the state "religion." Not only has the Legislature spent money they haven't any idea where it's coming from, it has dubbed the almost blind pursuit of it, i.e., government schooling, "economic development." Egad! And who among you, so say the high priests of the reigning Idaho liberal establishment, can speak against economic development?
Furthermore, (2) we can virtually spend ourselves rich in the classrooms of our children, from womb to tomb, if you will, if we would just believe! Amen! It is what the do-gooders of today call the real world's kind of faith-healing.
And they, together with the business and union's special interests, don't think 75 percent of the state's entire budget is enough for Idaho taxpayers to cough up to finance something euphemistically called education.
That word, euphemism, brings up the main ingredient in all the big spending money business of the last Legislature which seems to get almost no public discussion, not to mention in-depth examination. The ingredient is - education toward what sort of philosophy? What kind of values? Indeed, whose values? And, to end almost before we begin to scratch the surface, toward exactly what goals are we to educate? Is it to be liberal arts, vocational ed, humanism, creationism, evolution, nihilism or just exactly what is this Holy Grail toward which we lunge so loudly and long?
Good questions? You bet your boots. But we get no answers. We don't even state the problem - at least in public discussion, except money.
Comes now the clever, conservative and articulate Carl W. Salser, chief operating officer of University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO) in Corvallis, Ore. UPAO is a national conservative good news organization for academics and others who find it tough today to find anyone, especially in higher education, who is interested in teaching something other than knee-jerk liberal values and philosophies. Here's a taste of their menu.
In the lead article of UPAO's Universitas (May 1987), the professor's unique newsletter, Salser writes of a book authored by James Buchanan and Nicos Devletoglou entitled: Academia in Anarchy. Salser says early in their book the authors make this observation:
"University education, when examined through economist's eyes, assumes characteristics of a unique (weird) industry. This is because: (1) those who consume its product do not purchase it; (2) those who produce it do not sell it; and (3) those who finance it do not control it."
Then near the end of the book, they refer to the massive university monolith, dominated by hide-bound faculty rigidity, and suggest that "a few such structures will no doubt survive, even until such times as they can be labeled prehistoric."
Salser says, "But for other institutions, it is the author's belief that the intellectual ghetto lies just ahead."
That's not new news for conservatives, but they seldom get to see it in print. So hats off to UPAO and soon to be ex-state Sen. Phil Batt. Why Batt, also? Well, while he didn't use these exact words Batt made it clear to me that he thought the recent Legislature, too, was in many ways an intellectual ghetto.
I'd offer just one observation: It is that both "ghettos" may well have the same root cause, namely, that the ones who get the glory are not the ones who pay the bill.
Handing Out Roses & Raspberries
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 12, 1987
This week's "Roses and Raspberries" concerns, principally, three friends of mine, or at least comrades-in-arms, and their contradictions.
Roses to the editor for his piece in last Wednesday's Press-Tribune for trying to blow the whistle on the federal government's stupidity in monkeying with agriculture's pricing system. It has to do, of course, with the politicians' brainless attempt to repeal the law of supply and demand. They pass a law to increase production of dairy products and then buy out whole herds of dairy cows to decrease production.
All the while the State Department uses farm commodities and prices as a tool of foreign policy both as blackmail and reward to foreign countries. Then when dairy products are in extreme surplus they buy more of those same dairy products from New Zealand. The latter responds by not allowing American Navy ships even temporary docking privileges in their seaports.
Roses to Sen. Steve Symms as pointed out in the Press-Tribune editorial for his effort "to pass legislation forbidding the addition of non-farm bills to the agriculture appropriation measure." His bill lost, 61 to 30.
Roses again to the Press-Tribune's observation about the absolutely horrendous cost to the taxpayers for such louse-ridden programs by noting: "Oh the money is there all right, just a printing press away." What a great line to suggest Congress' witless and wild ways to finance their vote-harvesting.
After citing the sad outcome of Symms' fruitless attempt at legislation forbidding such additions (called non-germane amendments) of non-farm features to agriculture appropriation bills, the editor properly notes: "Senators, obviously, aren't going to legislate themselves out of an easy way to attach a piece of pork." They refer, of course, to the label, pork-barrel, a term of derision for which most politicians are famous, or infamous.
Raspberries for Sens. Symms and James McClure, both of whom are devastatingly responsible for helping promote and preserve this ever-so-intellectually dishonest and unprincipled scheme. It drains (as in parasite) the main thrust of a particular piece of legislation by attaching an amendment which is not at all germane or relevant to the parent or host bill. Such is almost always attached to a very popular bill which the president dare not veto, also one other opponents will not vote against for fear of incurring the wrath of lots of unwary voters. Thus the "parasite" gets in free.
Raspberries in spades to McClure because this writer has unsuccessfully begged, badgered and cajoled him for many years to legislate against the non-germane amendment scheme when he was in the House of Representatives. The House has a rule against the unworthy and deceitful, if admittedly pragmatic, contrivance. This is to some degree a credit to House members except for the fact they can easily go to a sympathetic friend in the Senate who can then use their "freedom" to phony up the measure.
Roses to U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, who introduced the bill that this writer could not get either McClure or Symms to sponsor (i.e., to outlaw non-germane amendments) during the time each of them was in the House nor since then when each has been in the Senate. Such is the insufferable, if understandable, "good ole boy" routine held onto so tenaciously by members of these conniving and exclusive political clubs.
Raspberries to both McClure and Symms who voted against Bentsen's beautiful bill to restore at least a bit of intellectual honesty to Congress. As you might expect Bentsen's bill was defeated with Symms saying to Idaho's senior senator, "I probably shouldn't have voted with you, Jim. I'll never be able to explain my 'no' vote to ole Smeed." Well, thanks Steve for small favors.
Raspberries to the Press-Tribune for not pointing out this non-germane foolishness again and again and especially this time. After all, the politicians too often prosper by the media allowing them to suck and blow in the same breath.
Roses, however, to that same Press-Tribune for the editor's perceptive and final line: "It's no way to run a railroad but apparently it is the way things are run a railroad but apparently it is the way things are run in that great manure pile in Washington, D.C."
Well, I agree, of course, thus affording me the opportunity to relate a limerick attached to an almost perfect miniature John Deere tractor and matching manure spreader I gave Symms as a gift years ago when he was merely a member of the House. It stood on a shelf in a prominent place in that office for years, but his present staff sees fit to hide it. It reads:
"They stack it thick in Congress
It's really kind of raw.
What should be spread by tractor
They enact - and call it law."
Labor's Attempt at Disinformation
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 28, 1987
Many years ago when Frank Steunenberg was governor of Idaho there was a lot of violence in the north Idaho mining towns due to the militant labor unions striking against the mine owners.
Gov. Steunenberg took direct action to stop the spread of the violence by calling out the state's militia or National Guard. He stopped the chaos all right and the violence, but the labor union leaders of that day had him assassinated because they mistakenly figured their movement would fail without their being able to resort at will to violence or the threat of it to get what they wanted. The assassination took place in Caldwell, but the statue in memory of the governor was erected in Boise and still stands today directly across the street from the Liberty Bell in front of the State Capitol.
While labor union-inspired violence still erupts from time to time these days the need to call out the troops to restore order tends to be lessened, but a more sophisticated form of "persuasion" seems all too often to have taken its place. It is called propaganda by its detractors and education by those who use it.
In fact the AFL-CIO has for decades had a political action committee (PAC) whose sole function is to do just that - educate and persuade both the public and the politicians. The media tends to criticize only the business PACs in the past few years, but the union's PAC was super-active long before.
They call it the Committee on Political Education (COPE) and it spends huge sums of money.
Comes now a real life example of such education right here in Idaho. Jim Kerns, president of AFL-CIO's Idaho organization, said last week that "27,000 Idaho residents have left the state of Idaho permanently due to the recent passage of the state's new right-to-work (RTW) law."
RTW bans compulsory union membership or the payment of dues as a condition of employment. Idaho became the 21st state to pass such a law. Said Kerns: "They're (the 27,000 people) leaving because they don't want to work for Taiwanese wages anymore."
Aside from a rather obvious non sequitor Kerns' reference to "Taiwanese" low wages instead of Red China's even lower wages may suggest to some that the labor union leaders are less hostile to communist countries' low wages than they are to anti-communist countries' low wages. The fact that the Taiwanese employ far more freedoms than do those in Red China seems not to interest Kerns at all.
Unfortunately the Idaho labor union president ignored the Associated Press story only a week before his foolish observation blaming RTW for people leaving Idaho. To the extent jobs have to do with new people coming to Idaho or others staying in the state the facts are rather more nearly just the opposite to what Kerns suggests, i.e., the AP story on the front page of the Press-Tribune (June 5) told us that Idaho employment (jobs) was the highest it has been in the past seven years. True, many problems exist, but Kerns' story is classic disinformation about cause and effect.
Kerns' special interest is to fight freedom to work, sometimes called voluntary unionism, so that his "business" can prosper without having to be accountable to his customers. Compulsory unionism is a multi-billion dollar business in this country and has been for years, but big business, big labor or big money not withstanding, it is ideas that ultimately have the consequences. As Adolf Hitler taught us about ideas: "If you tell a big lie loud enough and repeat it long enough, the people will believe it." So Kerns and Company may know more about reality than we do, in this case at least.
Let me explain. While ideas do have consequences it might still be more accurate to say that some ideas have consequences. Why? Well, ideas sometimes stand in an illuminating relationship to some objective reality, but often, perhaps most of the time, that is not their primary function.
"Instead," says the great Jeffrey Hart, senior editor of National Review, "they are vehicles of social communion, symbols of social status, claims to moral superiority, instruments of the will to power. ... In this functional chaos, the whole question of the truth of an idea easily becomes a kind of embarrassment."
More than a decade ago Hart laid out the key sentiment of ideas so clearly in a lecture at Hillsdale College in Michigan: "It is important to grasp the degree," said the brilliant professor of English who also teaches at Dartmouth, "to which ideas are in fact social constructions, serving social needs. One of the fundamental propositions of the sociology of knowledge holds that the plausibility of a view of reality depends upon the social support it receives. We obtain our notions about the world largely from other people, and these notions continue to be plausible to us because other people affirm them."
Hart's analysis shows us Kerns' notion is to have people affirm that the world of the voluntary unionism is not round, but flat.
Agricultural Holocaust: Not News?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 5, 1987
An interesting story is unfolding both in Washington and in the farm economy back home. I say "interesting," but somehow it hasn't been very newsworthy. And I'm not sure why.
The story concerns the agricultural holocaust surrounding the producing for sale of most all agricultural commodities in America. U.S. farmers seem well able to produce food and fiber, but cannot seem to sell them for a profit.
In fact, most of them seem not even able to get enough money back so they could break even. If they could they might be able to produce and try again after the market cleared, but so bad are these conditions many other enterprises, including banks, are in something of a panic because their main business is to serve the farm economy.
Why has this plague come upon us? Well, U.S. Sen. Steve Symms R-Idaho, claims that a great deal of the problem is caused by the federal government's subsidy of the international banks. Development banks such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others have been loaning vast sums of money to many foreign countries who in turn have taken over markets that for decades have been customers of American food and fiber producers.
U.S. farmers have been devastated by the federal government's financing of our own farm fold's competitors, hence nine of the nation's largest farm organizations have joined forces with Symms in a coalition to stop the "ag-suicide" of America. He calls it FAIR, foreign agricultural investment reform.
"Every year," says Symms, "the U.S. government sends millions of collars in contributions to international banks, which in turn loan the money to foreign countries. The banks require that the money be used to produce agricultural and mineral commodities that can be pushed out on the market to generate quick revenue for (bank) interest payments. This means they must sell the products far below production costs, and market prices come tumbling down.
"Sounds like racketeering, doesn't it? While this cycle goes on, the debtor countries go deeper into debt, the banks amass huge profits and the American farmer loses his shirt! He loses his markets to countries operating at a loss; and what he can sell, he sells for prices made artificially low by the banking scheme."
Symms, whose FAIR efforts have been joined by Idaho's First District Congressman Larry Craig, might have mentioned (but didn't) that the U.S. State Department has been using farm commodities in similarly asinine hokey-pokey schemes as one of their tools of foreign policy "negotiations."
Farmers are thus pawns of political, not market, prices.
Liberals love the word negotiate, by the way, especially when it concerns foreign aid. I might agree with the "aid" part if the letters were capitalized and made plural, namely, as in AIDS. Unromantically considered, the liberals' medical, financial and agricultural policies often lead to a sort of economic "AIDS."
But back to the FAIR scheme. Here are a few more examples: Last year the World Bank sent $162 million to Nigeria for the production of grain, $109 million to Mexico for livestock and poultry (remember when the country told President Carter to go to blazes when he asked for a break for the U.S. during the oil shortage?), $30 million went to Mauritius for sugar, and $302 million to India for producing fertilizer.
"This lunacy must stop," says Symms. "This kind of lending policy doesn't develop, it destroys it (and also) destroys the American economy by soaking the hard-working American taxpayer, and the livelihood to the American farmer." All this foolishness while the international banks "amass huge profits," suggests FAIR.
"Since 1981," according to Symms, the U.S. share of vegetable oils has fallen 33 percent, while Argentina's share shot up 567 percent. The increase in Brazil's share of world beef exports was seven times (700 percent) that of the United States."
Similar statistics cover soybean oil and cotton, but somehow these absolutely alarming figures still do not seem to be newsworthy to most of the American news media. Of course, in fairness to them, there is a virtual blizzard of information (not to mention disinformation) that crosses their desks each day. But to a farmer facing bankruptcy that's awfully small consolation for such massive mismanagement. Or could it be, shades of the millennium, that spending such monstrous sums of other's people's money in this way suggests somehow - a conspiracy?
Certainly that'd make more sense than what is suggested by Washington's congressional hearings these days in pursuit of a scapegoat.
Statism Ruins Politicians' Minds
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 12, 1987
It is with some trepidation that I forego writing much about Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North who is far and away the most responsive, intelligent thoughtful and charismatic witness in 25 years of various public hearings held by an oft-times dull-witted and arrogantly partisan Congress of the United States.
But take heart, my friends, if they are indeed on a self-serving witch-hunt, and I think they are, the hearings will eventually come to a close, at least when Central America comes to be spelled with a "k".
I want to suggest, however, part of the reason such foolishness and self-serving comes to have such a hold on our congressmen. With innocuous beginnings and apparently superficial goings-on they just may give us some insight as to how a monumental bureaucratic, partisan and lousy state of mental health comes to take over the attitudes of our politicians.
As an example, let us take the case of the congressional calendars congressmen send "free" each year to their voters back home. This writer objected strenuously to then-Rep. Steve Symms the first year he sent out such calendars from his Washington, D.C., office back in 1972. He informed me then that all he knew about them was that one day there showed up dumped in front of his office a truck load of the approximately 12- by 24-inch calendars printed in multi-colors on fine slick paper - with his name printed plainly on the flap provided there for that purpose. Each politician gets a truck load.
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen for your viewing pleasure a beautiful monthly timetable in living color.
Your tax dollars at work. All for your convenience, of course. Not for the congressmen nor the senators, but for you. Ho ho ho. The title page in classic and artistic 18th century style type says "We the People" and it displays a big image of the capitol building. It is too bad the cover page doesn't say, instead, "We the Politicians" and show thereupon a photo of the government money printing press. The inscription should say something like, "Don't forget me (us?) come next election because I'm that helpful fellow who sent you that beautiful calendar with all those pretty pictures taken of the monuments around Insane City, D.C. Remember? All free.
Such blatant and self-serving advertising should be exposed by the news media for just what it is, but the media loves to see the game played over and over again, year in, year out. And after all, the expense is admittedly peanuts when one compares this freebie with all the gigantic ones used to buy votes from the special interests of big labor and big business.
We simply must stop this mentality that so adversely affects congressional hearings, foreign and domestic policies of America (not to mention Lt. Col. North), the Republican conservative's armed forces and the Democrat liberal's welfare state. Thus, I asked another genuine friend of mine, First District Congressman Larry Craig, why taxpayers should pay through the nose for the advertising and vote-buying of the Senate and House politicians. I asked for an honest answer, one I could publish and attack fairly and squarely, since I thought the scheme a devious one on which the politicians are not even required to vote on each year. It's just conveniently automatic, legislated in prior years of course.
In customary fashion, but after great delay, Craig responded last month. His letter was, as is his usual style, decent, thoughtful and I think sincere. It was also well-reasoned, stating pros and cons and after an apology for his long delay answering my letter's request "... you made some excellent points," he decided the calendars were justified, of course. Of course!
"They have been distributed (automatically) for decades," said Craig, and without reference to the particular massive sum of money it costs annually (they genuinely if conveniently don't know just what the actual cost really is) my good friend concluded with this:
"The question (on the calendars) seems to me to be this: can we celebrate the magnificence of this country and the character of its people without celebrating the prominence of the state over its citizens? I submit that we not only can but should. Whether the calendar(s) in question or the subjects of its photos achieve that is something I can't judge."
My god, that's an actual quote.
To his credit, other parts of Craig's letter made more sense, thank heave. But consider his: " ... prominence of the state over its citizens?" That mentality, my friends, is what in large part dominates the otherwise nice guys in Washington. It is - statism. It is raw, ravenous, rapacious, real and recurring. And for the most part, I think, understandable.
If you can't agree it's understandable, just remember what the super-Marine Ollie North said last Thursday in his sworn testimony. Asked what the differences were between Vietnam and Nicaragua he replied, "10,000 miles." Then he explained, "But contrary to what is thought in many circles we did not lose the war in Vietnam. We lost it right here in this city."
Liberals Slant Irangate Analysis
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 10, 1987
On the matter of Irangate here are some observations about which you are not likely to hear very much by the mostly liberal major TV anchormen as they seek to "explain" the meaning of the testimony, especially by Lt. Col. Oliver North.
This also applies now to North's boss and chief of the National Security Council, Adm. John Poindexter, who, while not nearly so colorful as his much decorated and extremely articulate Marine Corps aide, may well turn out to be the real hero in all this.
Poindexter chose to "take the spear" which means of course to take the main blame in the current congressional witch-hunt.
"Sometimes it is permissible to break the law - if the cause if noble." That is not a quote by conservative radio commentator and columnist Paul Harvey who broadcast it on his program last week. It is a statement by the late liberal Robert Kennedy, made while sitting as attorney general of the United States. No congressional hearing committee subpoenaed Kennedy to appear before its egocentric membership of second-guessing special prosecutors. Remember?
A host of specialists, columnists, commentators, lawyers, jurists, aides, even Watergate experts and former politicians have been interviewed daily and nightly during intervals between the testimonies of North, McFarland and Poindexter. This is to give breadth no doubt to the network version of the whole affair. These observers have indeed offered a wider perspective, but note if you will how few of these come from the ranks of outspoken boosters of President Reagan.
Conservative and articulate members of the media do exist, believe it or not, nevertheless almost all of those interviewed by the TV anchor types are moderates at best if not unmitigated government-worshippers.
A few non-liberals come to mind who are conspicuous by their absence or used in such fleeting and temporary glimpses as to be of little threat to the liberal media head-hunters most of whom literally hate Reagan's foreign policies.
(PBS is slightly better.)
Some of us would enjoy hearing, for example, jurists and legal specialists who believe the separation of powers doctrine to be the very heart and genius of the Constitution. The executive branch has always had the duty and power over foreign policy, at least until recently. But now the Congress, which is full of wet-liberals, wants to run foreign policy, too. They do not agree with Reagan; indeed, they fiercely oft-times openly oppose the president's anti-communist pronouncements and policies even to the point of financing communist and Marxist governments and policies throughout the world. Egad.
Some well-known public figures and experts who would in all probability point out some of these things during the hearing breaks and recesses might be: Barry Goldwater; conservative columnist Robert Novak; conservative columnist and White House aide Pat Buchanan who was interviewed a time or two but not allowed to go into much detail. This is probably because he is both articulate, reasonably aggressive and extremely knowledgeable. The great Paul Harvey; William F. Buckley Jr. of Firing Line; Bill Rusher, publisher of National Review and one of the most articulate, aggressive and knowledgeable debaters and commentators in the whole nation.
There are lots of others, but the liberal media is ever-so-reluctant to give these people any more prime-time exposure than they simply have to. There is Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps the sharpest and most articulate conservative female in America, but she's so attractive and can be so charming as to be too darned risky for the media's (unstated) purposes. True, there are exceptions. ABC has had a few excellent conservative interviews, but danged few.
Why do you suppose they avoid like the plague such conservative and anti-communists as Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media (AIM) and in a first class category all by himself, Chuck Armour, chief of the John Birch Society (JBS)? But then, the latter would be expecting too much one supposes, since the media generally refused even to interview important officials of the JBS in any depth at all when their national president, Rep. Larry McDonald, D-Ga., was murdered. That was when passenger airliner KAL 007 was shot down. It was shot down, remember, near South Korea by a Soviet Russian communist fighter plane. (They have never even apologized for this, by the way.)
This is the same government that Reagan, Poindexter, North & Co. are trying to stop from gaining yet another beach-head base in Central America. The Congress, fraught with gobs of wet-liberals from both parties, does not even admit that many congressmen leak secrets just like a sieve and thus cannot be trusted in national security matters.
Indeed, they see such leaking as their way of implementing what they see as favorable foreign policy.
Most of these same congressmen also saw as favorable America's giving of more than $100 million to the same communist (Sandinista) government of Nicaragua (after Somoza, believe it or not. Remember?) that the Russians are financing down there today - about three hours south of California.
Saddle Up, It's Little Britches Time
by Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 25, 1987
Once again my friends I've got good news and bad news for Caldwellites. First, the bad news. The Caldwell Little Britches Rodeo is in big trouble. One of the all-time best sporting events for young people from far and near could have big financial problems - and it's a darned shame.
One of Caldwell's most enthusiastic service groups is the Caldwell Exchange Club whose last year's members numbered 52. This gung-ho participatory bunch is no doubt one of the best rodeo boosting groups in the nation.
Most service clubs tend to raise money among their own members by mere donations and then hand out the money with little or not regard for the agonizing nitty-gritty stewardship as to how the money actually should be spent.
Not so with the Caldwell Exchangers, by golly. Along with a few adult cowboys such as Walt Love, Lyle Buhler and two or three others, each almost a local rodeo institution himself, the Exchange fellows work and work hard, believe it or not, to see that the Little Britches success is assured.
Now in its 23rd year the Little Britches Rodeo clients (ages 8 to 18) are down from 1975's 400 youngsters to around 162 last year. This year will probably be down a few more. While it is always a chore to get enough working members and friends to put on the show year after year the problem is not because the stock is other than first class, nor is it because the Exchangers leave any stone unturned to present the young cowboys, cowgirls and the audience with a top show. This they do, in spades.
But club members report that they depend largely upon friends and relatives of the little cowboys and cowgirls to make up most of the audience. With contestant numbers down to under half what it used to be and bigger expenses, most of which are fixed if not higher than ever, their job is tough as saddle leather.
There is good news, however, even if it is kind of like a brindle-colored cow. (For you city dudes a "brindle" critter has ancestry that is, well, sort of mixed.) Part of the good news is that when things are tough sometimes we tend to see things a little more clearly. Moreover, we need to remember the Exchange Club and its hardworking cowboy, cowgirl and city-slicker-dude pals who have done a great job for young rodeo people from all over the west.
Youngsters from as far away as Canada, Texas and California have traveled to our fair city just because ours was (still is) a great amateur show and fine, fine entertainment for our friends. For example, Caldwell's own Dee Pickett, a world champion cowboy, got his start when Lyle Buhler first signed him up as a little fellow in the little rodeo's earliest years.
Others in the national limelite on the adult big-time rodeo circuit include Wayne Thawley and Lee Woodbury of Caldwell and Johnny Davis of Homedale, so one never knows just which of the contestants will grow too big for his little britches and go professional thus bringing fame to family and friends.
Not the least of the benefits we all tend to take for granted are the economic benefits of these bronc busters and barrel racing young contestants. The Exchange Club has an operating budget of more than $20,000 even for this year's somewhat smaller show. This doesn't include the hotdogs, ice cream, popcorn, soft and not-so-soft drinks the adults buy and sell during and after each of the four night's events. There's also motels, meals, gasoline, etc., etc.
Last year's program listed more than 167 sponsors from Caldwell, Nampa and Boise, many of whom sell nothing at all to the young cowboys and cowgirls, but see the whole picture in the community as beneficial both profit-wise, morale-wise and people-wise.
Since it started back in 1964, thanks to Bill Crookham, the super-energetic corn seed tycoon, gadfly and all-around bon vivant to whom Exchange members seem to give most of the credit, club members get from $5,000 to $8,000 donated each year by merchants to help with the prizes. The latter includes four $400 saddles and 20 sterling silver and gold belt buckles, each worth $75.
Since the National Little Britches Rodeo Association (NLBRA) forbids the payment of money awards these prizes are terribly important. This is a big deal also because no tax dollars go into the individualistic rodeo sport as they do in government-school related athletic programs. Those tax dollars further aggravate the NLBRA club's ability to finance and compete.
Perhaps the matter of competition is an area into which the Exchange Clubbers may have to enter, i.e., if they are to survive. The competition, in addition to the super-addictive boob-tube gong-shows and violence ridden, booze-oriented junkie TV stuff is the Western States Rodeo Association, another Little Britches-type organization. Their prizes are mostly money - just like the adult rodeo, but forbidden by NLBRA rules.
Thus this new young people's rodeo association, so I'm told, is scooping up ever-so-many of our former Little Britches "customers" and beating the pants off us adult entrepreneurs. One guesses kids, too, like money.
In any event, hats off to the Exchange Club rodeo gang for an incredible 23 years of success and service to Caldwell and the kids. They'll have another good show July 29 to Aug. 1. They surely hope to see you there.
Bales Legacy of Entrepreneurship
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 2, 1987
A significant and colorful era of Caldwell and the Treasure Valley area history came formally to a close Aug. 1 with the closing of and old-time family business. The Bales Lumber Co., located at 4th Avenue and Indian Creek since 1950, is no more. Its owners have decided to retire.
The business has been managed since 1966 by Ned Thurston who joined the firm back in 1948 under the tutelage of J.F. "Frank" Bales owner/founder of the original lumber yard. Thurston and his affable and charming wife, Lorene, have been sole owners of the firm since 1976, but it is with Mrs. Thurston's father, Frank Bales, that the colorful and historical part of the story unfolds.
"History is simply a piece of paper covered with print," said Otto von Bismark. "The main thing is still to make history, not to write it," And "make it" is just what the entrepreneur Bales set out to do. With the possible exception of a couple years in the Idaho Legislature back in 1915 he was always engaged in productive enterprise. It was then that Bales, a Democrat, introduced the legislation first making it possible for Idahoans to pay their taxes in two installments instead of one. Making taxes more palatable, as was also done through employers' withholding taxes from employee paychecks, has no doubt helped pacify people from showing proper outrage in protesting the absurd growth of government.
But innovation as practiced by Bales was just beginning to get in gear, so perhaps we can forgive this builder whose entrepreneurship was responsible for building in 1916 the first Bales Lumber Yard. It was on the site now occupied by the Irrigators Lumber Co. at 7th Avenue and Albany Street. The latter was started by J.G. Conley who purchased the facility in 1920.
Much of the original wood structure is still in place and in excellent shape although massive remodeling and expansions have been made over the years.
Perhaps the most evident signs of this early day and innovative building contractor's handiwork are the scores of concrete silos and grain elevators easily seen on farms and feedlots from one end of our valley to the other. Probably the largest of these was owned by the Idaho Meat Packers in Caldwell. The huge concrete grain storage bins 40 or 50 feet high covering almost an acre were a well-known landmark for decades and were demolished only last year as the familiar old slaughterhouse was closed down.
The term entrepreneur is an apt one for Bales who built another Bales Lumber Yard and trucking service in 1931 at the location presently occupied by the Caldwell police station at 6th Avenue and Main Street. Later, in 1950, he built yet another Bales Lumber Co. in its present location.
I'm not sure where his shop headquarters were located when Bales built the grain elevator which is still standing, by the way, as the center structure in Caldwell's Farm City on North 21st Avenue. But the 40-foot-tall, round grain silos are a fine example of concrete workmanship. This is especially so in view of the fact that they were built during World War II when both men and material were scarce as hen's teeth.
The grain elevator's apparatus was a veritable monument to what could be done with wood, tin, shingle nails, stovebolts, etc., all in short supply. I rewired that whole building myself some 35 years ago and I remember marveling then at the contractor's work.
Proper regard for Bales' creative and ingenious ability to "make-do" with a severe shortage of materials caused by the big war could hardly be fully appreciated by most young folks today. Not only were materials hard to come by, but so was ample money, which builders had to husband carefully so as to keep themselves and their employer(s) in business.
An excellent example of this was Bales' specialty of tearing down, moving long distances and reconstructing the many old CCC camp buildings that were built in the area during the 1930s. Some of these were even used for dormitories, offices and classrooms at the College of Idaho during and after the war. Others were used to house and feed poultry and sheep right here in Caldwell long after the war was over, but food was still in short supply.
Bales' 4th Avenue store was dreadfully damaged by an arson-caused fire in 1975, but was rebuilt with some extra additions.
Perhaps the features young people as well as old-timers in the area will enjoy most are the old photos the Thurston's have always displayed in the lumber yard office for their customers' pleasure. Taken in August 1920, one remarkable photo measuring about 8 by 40 inches shows Caldwell's Caxton Printers in a wood-frame building about 25 by 75 feet at about its present location on Main Street.
Lots of other buildings and people are shown among the artifacts in Bales' lumber office and have been for many years. Some events, too, are depicted such as the Dairymen's Cooperative Creamery celebration in 1925. But perhaps best of all is and has been the warm and friendly hospitality lavished so generously upon their many friends and customers by Ned and Lorene Thurston.
Frank Bales, who passed away in 1966 at 81 years of age, produced a great legacy of entrepreneurship and a great family of which both he and the community can be proud. Traditional values such as these are still the real guts of America.
Reagan's Yo-Yo Foreign Policy
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 16, 1987
Whatever happened to intelligent curiosity? Liberals have it, they tell us, but also claim that conservatives are against it. At least they say conservatives are against change while contrariwise the latter claim that liberals favor change merely for the sake of change itself.
There is, of course, some truth to both charges, but what we need most of all is to have intelligent spokesmen and then to give those spokesmen with whom we agree moral support. To give said support publicly, consistently and as often and as articulately as possible is to make it stick. In this day and age of determining truth by counting noses I know of no other successful way. It's slow but it works.
One of these spokesmen is the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Their news pages and policies tend, unfortunately, to be a rubber stamp of the liberal and giant New York Times, but their recent edit column deserves both wide attention and high moral support:
"The Reagan-Wright peace plan will go down in history as Ronald Reagan's Bay of Pigs. Barring some dramatic event, Nicaragua was lost once and for all to the communist empire during this past week, just as Cuba was lost when the exile invasion failed (in 1961.)
"Instead of an up or down vote on more aid to the (anti-communist) Contras, we now have the Central Americans' unenforceable peace plan - a mirage about which even the administration is uttering serious-sounding fatuities (read, foolishness.)
"Presidents, though ever attentive to their legacies, sometimes miscalculate the judgments of history. Within 24 hours of his decision to withhold air support for the Bay of pigs invasion, John Kennedy said: 'What is prestige? Is it the shadow of power or the substance of power? We are going to work on the substance of power. No doubt we will be kicked in the can the next couple of weeks, but that won't affect the main business."
The Journal might well have noted also that the Democrat-controlled Congress at that time did not even ask for a congressional inquiry about this unmitigated disaster, not to mention special prosecutors or a committee witch-hunt as with today's Iran-Contra-versy. But their other insights were much on target:
"Unlike most capital-bred politicians Mr. Reagan has always been able to stay focused on 'the main business.' He understood as most of Washington did not, that American people would support the exercise of military power against Granada, Libya and the hijackers of the Achille Lauro. (Much of this by the way, was with the stewardship of Lt. Col. Oliver North.)
"Now he has inexplicably decided to play by Washington's rules. As he sits down to write (or instructs moderate chief of staff Howard Baker) this week's address to the nation, he might consider that all the applause he's hearing is from the other team's fans."
The Journal pointed out that Nicaragua's neighbor's so-called peace plan is "appeasement." And why not? They have no choice because they are "out-gunned." You may remember, although the national media all but squelched it, while the U.S. argued over whether or not to give Nicaragua the promised $100 million aid Soviet Russia gave the communist Sandinistas $300 million more.
This seemed to have no effect at all, believe it or not, on committee chairman and super-liberal Sen. Daniel Inouye, (D-Hawaii.)
"After the North testimony and the accompanying rise in public understanding of the Contra's cause, it appeared logical that President Reagan would carry the fight to the Congress for increased military aid for the resistance," said the WSJ, "but he decided not to fight and so the Central Americans have decided not to fight.
"Over time, this country's allies will mark the results of Ronald Reagan's Bay of Pigs as it has every other such American fiasco. Cuba remained a Soviet satellite. Vietnam became a Soviet satellite.
The shah's successors in Iran destabilized a strategically vital region and are now signing accommodations with the Russians. Under the terms of the Guatemala Plan, Sandinista Nicaragua, a Soviet satellite, will remain after the Reagan presidency ends. The Brezhnev Doctrines wins (again.)"
As an interesting aside, it is indeed strange that America once led enthusiastically by Reagan to keep and then to give away the Panama Canal is now willing to risk at least a mini-war to keep the Persian Gulf.
Ollie North said it, "We have a yo-yo foreign policy." Or did he say we're led by one?
To Feel Happy, Just Pass a New Law
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 23, 1987
Some people are never so happy as when they are unhappy. Rep. Patty McDermott, D-Pocatello, is unhappy because she had a hard time finding a qualified building contractor; that is to say, she couldn't tell which of those in business were qualified, so she wants to become happy with another new law.
She is often happy to find unhappy situations which she is sure can be corrected by "Those in Authority Doing Something." This is especially so when it pleases McDermott's labor union bosses whose lifestyle is both provided for and enhanced by government control(s) with which they can keep the little-guy entrepreneur out of the market.
McDermott wants to pass a law to force all building contractors to buy a work permit (license) from the government in order to compete in the building trades. This is the "Doing Something" referred to above under the guise of the government protecting the public from shoddy workmanship and bad-guy builders who shaft their customers and their creditors.
While there is an element of truth in what McDermott cites as a problem, one has only to look around a bit to see that when the government man says he's here to help you it is most often the case that he is here to take your freedoms away and give them to somebody else. The latter, in this case, is the labor union bosses whose very existence is threatened by contractors who refuse to pay tribute for freedom to work and compete. This is for the most part similar to the guys of the freedom-to-work, sometimes called right-to-work, issue.
This writer phoned several building contractors in the area only to find that they were almost evenly divided on the matter. But one contractor who ordinarily is a gyrating supporter of the free market, individual responsibility and less government supports McDermott's on-again, off-again licensing law. He said "I support it, but only if it is not compulsory." This is, of course, a contradiction in terms. But he explained: "What does one do with these general contractors who don't pay their subcontractors?"
A mutual friend, and long-time building contractor also in on our conversation quipped, "That's easy. Don't deal with them unless their credit's good." That is why the state and others contracting for work demand a contractor's bond of a size sufficient to cover the cost of the construction - beforehand.
McDermott no doubt sincerely sees such law-passing as merely representing her labor union constituents from whence cometh most of her clout as a politician and most of her support to be re-elected year after year. But let us see what Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, the famous economist and, in my view at least, moral philosopher, has to say on licensing in general.
In his book Capitalism and Freedom, published by the University of Chicago, the great man observes: "As long ago at 1938 a single state, North Carolina, had extended its law to 60 occupations. But with what joy of discovery does one learn about the licensing of threshing machine operators and dealers in scrap tobacco? What of egg graders and guide dog trainers, pest controllers and yacht salesmen, tree surgeons and well-diggers, tile layers and potato growers?
"And what of the hypertrichologists who are licensed in Connecticut where they remove excessive and unsightly hair with the solemnity appropriate to their high sounding title? In the arguments that seek to persuade legislatures to enact such license provisions, the justification is always said to be the necessity of protecting the public interest.
"However, the pressure rarely comes from the members of the public who have been mulcted or in other ways abused by members of the occupation. On the contrary, the pressure invariably comes from members of the occupation itself."
Friedman quotes from another economist, Walter Gelhorn, who says in his book Individual Freedom and Governmental Restraints that "75 percent of the occupational licensing boards at work in the country today are composed exclusively of licensed practitioners in the respective occupations."
And again, this may be in some ways quite sincere, for it is hardly common sense to have, say, carpenters, no matter how skilled, decide who should have a license to practice law. But wait, McDermott, when she's not passing more laws against the contractor's free market economy, is a lawyer herself.
I phoned my contractor friends again and, to a man, each thought himself eminently qualified to say who and how many should have "work permits" (licenses) to practice law.
Don't laugh! Can you think of a better way to reduce government? Why it might even lower the skyrocketing cost of the lawsuits. Paul Harvey said last week the nation's lawyers enjoy an average (repeat, average) income of $125,000 per year.
Two-Sided Roses and Raspberries
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 30, 1987
It has been said that there are two sides to every story, to which I am quick to add - at LEAST two. Often more. Columnists and others wishing to make their own story hold more water tend to use words in a fiercely one-sided way not always obvious to the unwary. A couple examples, just for openers:
Raspberries to Press-Tribune columnist Bob LeBow, whose Aug. 16 column entitled "Leave Central America Alone" (one supposes because the communists are ahead), referred to the two Central American fighting factions this way:
"The leftist guerrillas ... and the rightist death squads..." Now then, LeBow, who is a jolly good fellow, tends to favor the leftists who are backed by Communist Russia and I tend to favor the rightists backed by the anti-communist Reagan-led U.S.A.
Roses to LeBow's other side of the Central American story, however, with which I heartily agree; namely, "Live and let live." It's just too bad that both he and Press-Tribune columnist Erwin Schwiebert strangely often fail to communicate that same good idea to and for the Soviet Union. Neither do they seem to apply it to the U.S.A.'s policy toward anti-communist South Africa.
Roses to a minority member of the national news media and regular Press-Tribune columnist, Paul Harvey, who reported a two-sided story last week on a senator who got in trouble telling a joke. Said he, "New York has more lawyers and San Francisco has more queers. If you wonder why," said the senator, "it's because San Francisco had first choice." But a curious twist was just where the so-called trouble came from. Harvey reported: "The complaint was from San Francisco."
Who says conservative news commentators and newspersons don't have a sense of humor. Well, I do, for one, but the Press-Tribune is out to change that, especially with their black and white comics page, which has some great strips. For instance:
Roses, (to cite but a few) to IPT's strip Born Loser, who says he never hates going to work on Mondays. He explained why in last Friday's comics: "It's getting there (to work) that depressed me."
Then there is B.C., the caveman and big-bosomed woman who is always clubbing the poor snake. Last week a caveman came up to their patent office (a big rock with attendant behind and stone tablet designating "Patent Office") pushing a baby carriage: "I've just invented the horseless carriage." The B.C. bureaucrat said, "Hogwash." Then the caveman responded pointing into the carriage: "Well, you don't see any horses in there do you?"
But one strip deserving honorable mention is entitled Frank and Ernest. In addition to having a great sense of humor, its artist, Thaves, has got to be a libertarian. Frank and Ernest are a pair of pals always together and, by design, so grossly ugly and stupid they often appear to be cute, if not lovable. They come up, however, with a pun-type play on words so clever as to suggest a kind of compelling, if accidental wisdom. One of my favorites shows the pair sitting across the desk from an IRS auditor whose facial expression is grim and scolding. Frank speaks: "So our check bounced, eh? Well, surely you fellows know about deficit financing."
Hats of to the IPT. There's more, lots more, including Ann Landers, by far the most popular feature nationally in any newspaper with her uncommon common sense (but once in a while, lousy) opinions and advice.
Roses - in fact, a dozen - for Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago's department of political philosophy. His best-selling book The Closing of the American Mind is a stinging indictment of higher education in America. Just how a book criticizing the most gigantic scared-cow of all time, both on and off campus, could make it to the best-seller list is not clear. Even the author is surprised. Says conservative columnist James Kilpatrick: "It is heavy stuff. Yet it is selling like bagged ice in mid-August." On Bloom's severe critique of schools and especially higher education Kilpatrick concludes: "They are failing in their essential mission, to imbue their best students with a clear idea of what an educated human being is." And "... it is beautifully written."
Roses to Idaho's high chieftess of government education, Janet Hay of Nampa, whose longtime pilgrimage to the utopian shrine of big-spending formal education is well, well-known. But she, too, is pushing the book. "Almost everyone in the middle class has a college degree..." says Bloom. "But - inevitably but - the impression that our general populace is better-educated depends on an ambiguity in the meaning of the word education ... It is not evident to me that someone whose regular reading consists of Time, Playboy and Scientific American has any profounder wisdom about the world than the rural schoolboy of yore with his McGuffy's reader." (See why my "rose" for Hay?)
However, it is said that "no two people ever read the same book." So, we'll wait to see whether Janet read the "same book" I did.
Defining Liberal, Conservative
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 6, 1987
One of this area's high ranking school administrators made such an egregious error recently concerning political labels, I thought perhaps I should restate a sort of nutshell version I wrote some years ago. There are others, but the popular labels are liberal versus conservative and since the above-mentioned school president's confusion centered around only these two, I'll confine this little digest to them only.
Hopefully one day he will express some interest in the later term libertarian - then we can really have a field day. The definitions were written a dozen or so years ago and leave out, no doubt, more than they leave in. But for my friend's purpose I think these two will be more than a little bit helpful.
As Charlie Brown of the comic strip Peanuts was once led to remark, "This world is filled with people who are anxious to function in an advisory capacity."
It is this anxiety most conservatives see as a threat to the American way of life, especially when it's implemented with government compulsion (laws) and its concomitants, centralization of power, decline in production and loss of individual responsibility.
Conservatives believe the world has just been witness to the salvation of a whole nation in a little over two centuries. This witness through modern communications has shown all nations what material abundance is possible through free enterprise production. It's precisely because conservatives indeed care that they want to retain this system.
The confusion persists because production's cause and effect are not understood. Liberalism suggests we divide it and conservatism suggests we multiply it. Misguided persons on both sides suggest the government compel it. Therein lies the punch time, "compulsion!" A positive plan or program by liberal definition seems to be a government plan to compel. A private plan seems to be no plan at all.
Most conservatives believe our Constitution was designed on principles as valid today as in 1776. The people and the states were granting the federal government certain very limited powers - the people themselves having received "their rights from God." Essentially in the manner of the Ten Commandments, the Constitution, too, was properly negative.
By contrast the old-world governments granted certain of their "powers" to the people. A radical departure.
The conservative program by popular standards is said to be negative as though that were always bad. The Supreme Court seemed more conservative in a 1943 decision of Board vs. Barnett when it said "One's right to life, liberty and property, free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote, they depend on the outcome of no election." The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy to place them beyond the reach of majorities. Seems almost bizarre, now, doesn't it?
The authors of some of our references have a valid point concerning the liberals' "equity" premise. However, parts are missing; namely, the premise of equal protection under the law which still enjoys at least some lip service and, secondly, the double standard of the liberal concept of law. Do it TO some and do it FOR others. Regardless of how well-intentioned they are, they propose no stopping place. Conservatives fear national as well as personal bankruptcy.
While the economics of this "debate" are little understood some things do seem clear. Liberalism proposes the "easy" solution (i.e., the tax-money poultice) to all problems with almost no enemies on the left. Conservatives are so credentials conscious we appear to lack the compassion so necessary for appeal to others of good will, but whose decisions are emotionally based. Also we tend to be skeptical and have colder personalities.
The liberal, while advocating big government expenditures, is curiously conservative with expenditures of his own. Liberalism seems to have unlimited faith in government and almost none in the individual - especially where property is concerned.
The middle of the road (mixed economy) is not an economic system that can last. It is a method of the realization of socialism by installments. What we need is neither anti-socialism nor anti-communism, but an open, positive and enthusiastic endorsement of that system to which we owe all the wealth that distinguishes our age from the comparatively restricted conditions of ages bone by. (College and university trustees are notoriously dull to this fact.)
Things are great by comparison. And most conservatives like to suggest that instead of liberalism's comparison of those at the top of the ladder with those at the bottom of the ladder (a neat trick) rather we would compare America's ladder with other ladders, top and bottom, then act conservative so we can afford to be liberal.
GOP, Take a Lesson from Libertarians
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 13, 1987
Last week saw the Libertarian Party's national convention held in Seattle's giant Sheraton Hotel right smack in the middle of town. Highlight of the three-day meeting was, of course, the party's nomination of former Rep. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson, Texas, for president of the United States and a former state representative from Alaska, Andre Marrou, for vice president.
Paul was for six years a Republican conservative member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas and left a successful medical practice there to enter Washington, D.C., politics. He established an enviable record for dramatically less government, sound money, intelligently firm fiscal policy and a non-interventionist foreign policy. In fact, this bright and courageous doctor of medicine applied such a consistent scalpel and strong medicine to the phoney-baloney disease that dominates Insane City, D.C., as to make even Idaho's Sen. Steve Symms look like a big spender.
Marrou was elected to the Alaska Legislature as a member of the Libertarian Party. If my memory serves he held offices there for a couple terms, but recently moved to Las Vegas, Nev., from whence he will conduct his nationwide campaign for vice president on the LP ticket.
Marrou, while bright and articulate in his own right, is not the only Alaskan to hold office in that state as a member of the Libertarian Party. Former Idahoan (from Sandpoint) Dick Randolph held office as a legislator first as a Republican and then for some years as a Libertarian. Randolph, insurance executive and author of the book Freedom for Alaskans, was extremely popular and while in office articulated almost all the important principles of his party to the chagrin of many of his Republican colleagues. These principles included dramatically less government, the fast disappearing human right of private ownership, especially to real property, and general free entry into all markets. So Marrou in many cases comes from a great spot to champion the LP cause.
As an interesting aside, the state of Alaska has much less privately owned property than any other state in the union and, believe it or not, even less than some communist countries. This fact, of course, is seldom referred to in news media accounts about America's northernmost state. It also says something about the Republican Party's devastating, even alarming, silence about private property. The latter is no doubt the single-most important distinction between America's system and the dictatorship from which Alaska was purchased - Soviet Russia.
I discussed this sad state of affairs with my friend and former U.S. Secretary of Interior Cecil Andrus, now governor of Idaho, but he expressed no concern at all. While this is indeed sickening to those who know of it, it says little more for the Republicans who almost never even bring up the subject. At least Andrus realizes which side he's on, i.e., government ownership of Alaska.
Back to the Libertarian Party meeting in Seattle, where their candidates are often deep into the subject of private ownership: By all odds the most charismatic and colorful of all the serious candidates for the Libertarian's president was Russell Means of South Dakota, former left leaning liberal crusader for American Indian rights. An Indian himself, his fame, or as some would prefer, notoriety, came a few years ago with his participation in the violence during the "Wounded Knee" Indian reservation fight with federal authorities.
While I was only an observer at the Seattle affair, I did get to visit at some length with Means. He told me that before his trip to Nicaragua, where he was outraged at the communist Sandinista's arrogant abuse of Mosquito Indians' human rights, he could easily make headlines in the U.S. media almost at will. But when he abandoned the leftist causes and became anti-communist, he could scarcely make any news at all, not to mention make headlines. This rather traumatic experience led him toward the Libertarian's "party of principle."
Known as a gut libertarian and not so familiar and articulate as Paul is with political issues, Means emphasized over and over that the whole of Indian culture was precisely libertarian. He was thus libertarian and was qualified for the party's presidential post, he thought.
Admittedly, not all the delegates bought the Means born-again libertarian conversion, since they voted Paul 193 to Means' 120 delegate votes, but when he addressed the assembly to decline a nomination for vice president (having lost the big race) he showed real class:
"Thanks for the honor, but I tried that vice president stuff once when I ran with girlie magazine owner Larry Flynt who ran for president." The crowd cheered as he threw his support to Marrou for VP saying, "Andre is a real freedom fighter. I do have one final statement, however."
Then came the best of Means' whole crusade: "I come from the most racist state in the union. I nearly became a racist myself, but the Libertarians rescued me. And I'm thankful." I thought I saw a tear in more than one or two delegates' eyes. And maybe a new vision or two in Means' eyes.
It tugs a little at this writer's heart, too, if I may, that the Republicans could be on the way to losing these precious capacities altogether.
We're a Republic, Not a Democracy
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 20, 1987
One can scarcely pick up a paper, magazine or even a semi-popular book these days without seeing the word "democracy" almost beaten to death by over-usage even to the point of near word-worship.
In fact, it is used, abused, stated, over-stated, over-used, over-worked, revered, adored, idolized, recited, not to mention celebrated, dignified, ennobled, even imposed sometimes and spoken as if in hushed tones, yea, even as unto a sort of deification. Why?
Well, I'm not just sure why, but there has to be a story here someplace in this pile of used horse hay. Maybe it has become sort of a crutch used by today's word people as a substitute for something else. Meantime we tend to rid ourselves of the constitutional word - republic.
One wonders how, in this year of celebrating the 200th anniversary of our great Constitution, could the word democracy become almost near-nirvana? When it doesn't even appear in either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence why all the rush toward its virtually endless repetition? Even the Pledge of Allegiance tells us something.
Consider the way I recite it sometimes at our Rotary Club: "I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the democracy for which it stands." It should be stated, of course, "... and to the republic for which it stands" but I often recite it using democracy in an effort to get somebody - anybody - to think a little bit about the mindless mimicry so many of us these days give to our priceless heritage.
The great Sir Thomas Macualay, English author-statesman of the mid-19th century tried to give us some warning when he said, "I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both." But today's Americans seem destined to eschew history and tradition even to the point sometimes of downright ridicule of many of our heroes. This is done usually by liberals crusading for change - for the sake of change.
One supposes that if the crusade of another value, equality and egalitarianism, isn't today at least partially intended to substitute voting rights (i.e., one-man, one-vote no matter how well or ill-qualified the voter) in the place of property rights.
Now then, before you well-meaning liberals get on your high horse of guilt-trip-itus, let me hasten to add that many non-liberals also have good intentions for society and for individuals. Said non-liberals tend to think private property rights are simply human rights to the ownership of property. Seen in this light one can readily tell why the communist Soviet Union rulers are so dead set against this single most important factor. It distinguishes our system from theirs.
In fact, four libertarian Nobel laureates since 1974 have held such "property rights" views and are articulating them with increasing understanding worldwide.
Comes now another intellectual of unusual proportions on the matter of "democracy" especially as it is treated or mistreated in today's universities. In his current best-selling book, The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom gives us something to ponder during our Constitution celebrations. It's a fascinating, if stinging, indictment criticizing American higher education in general and democracy itself in certain important ways. These are seldom talked about in universities.
Using one of history's all-time greats, Alexis de Toqueville, Bloom notes the French genius, "shows a democratic regime causes a particular intellectual bent which, if not actively corrected, distorts the mind's vision."
According to Toqueville: "The great democratic danger is enslaved to public opinion. The claim of democracy is that every man decides for himself. But even if men seek authority, they cannot find it where they used to find it in other regimes. Thus the external impediments to the free exercise of reason have been removed in democracy.
"So, unless there is some strong ground for opposition to majority opinion, it inevitably prevails. This is the really dangerous form of the tyranny of the majority, not the kind that actively persecutes minorities but the kind that breaks the inner will to resist because there is no qualified source of non-conforming principles and no sense of superior right.
"Repugnance at the fact that the popular taste (of the mob) should rule in all arenas of life, is very rare in a modern democracy."
So, my friends, next time you hear the word "democracy" overworked (and you will) celebrating our Constitution's 200th birthday ask the speaker if it is the republic - or the democracy - for which he stands.
Keep Government Out of It
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 27, 1987
Do you suppose the people of Idaho realize their seeming enthusiasm for what is loosely termed a legalized state lottery is just that - a state (government) lottery? I doubt it, but even so, the possibility exists that the "lumpin proletariat," as the public is called in Russia, would demand it even if they did understand the lottery to be yet another of government's business enterprises.
Aside from what many see as just a fun thing the lottery is indeed a political business; that is, it promises something-for-nothing, promises to reduce taxes, promises to make the customers forget their troubles and woes and in typical campaign fashion promises, promises, promises.
It is phony as a $3 bill. Well, almost. Just like politics it promises to take a "little bit" of money from a lot of people, then give it to a few lucky ones in order to get their support. Not so in the case of the lottery. The "few" lucky ones are replaced by one lucky one (With such a free lunch mentality as tis it's small wonder America's foreign competitors are clobbering our producers.) Why not privatize the lottery before it starts? But no! We all want the government to operate yet another business - a lottery. Or so one must suppose.
Maybe folks just don't know what lousy businessmen governments are. Lousy and huge. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a think tank in Dallas, the federal government is the nation's biggest employer, biggest borrower, biggest lender and biggest landlord. (They own about two-thirds of Idaho already and Governor Andrus and the tree-huggers want even more. Egad!)
"It's also the biggest owner of ships, grain, warehouses and trucks. Currently the federal government accounts for 25 percent of all U.S. economic activity. It employs (almost 5 million) people. It occupies 2.6 billion square feet of office space (four times the total office space in the 10 largest U.S. cities.) It collects and spends $8 billion every workday, or about $1 billion an hour." Believe it or not. But who gives a damn? Almost nobody.
But wait! Maybe there's a little hope yet. The same NCPA report says a study of privatization in the U.S. In 1986 shows an upward trend. "Instances of state and local privatization (of formerly government operations) activities increased by 5 to 10 percent in 1986. The number of private firms seeking to provide public services increased by 24 percent. California and Kentucky became the first two states to contract out the operation of some state prisons."
As an interesting aside, where is our hero C.L. (stands for Cecil's Lackey, he says.) "Butch Otter who has heretofore so well championed private sector solutions for Idaho? We surely could use his public moral support in this direction once in a while. Dallas (Texas) is saving as much as 18 percent of its mass transit budget," according to NCPA, "as the first city in the nation to contract out the operation of its regular bus routes."
Chandler, Ariz., became one of the first cities to design, finance, build and manage a new wastewater treatment plant through a private contract.
So perhaps the tax producers "R-O-L-A-I-D-S" will come to be spelled as privatization if we can just hold out long enough. But the NCPA report also says, "A 20-year-old male worker earning the median wage can expect to pay $32,767 more in Social Security taxes (now get this) than he and his family will (ever) receive in Social Security benefits." And the Idaho Press-Tribune, a conservative daily, continues to crusade for what it knows can only be yet another government enterprise - a state lottery. Good goshamighty!
Comes now another "government enterprise," Idaho's Public Broadcasting System (PBS) sometimes known as the government TV, KAID-TV, Channel 4 in Boise. Two more stations, one in Pocatello and one in Moscow (no pun intended), make up Idaho public television, a mostly delightful bunch of people, mostly liberal or left-wingers by the way, programming mostly a great series of programs seldom seen on their competitors' so-called private TV networks.
Maybe before I continue I should explain the above wisecrack. Three of Channel 4's top personnel left the Boise station last year to take important positions in three major political campaigns; all were liberal or left-wing candidates. They had every right to do this, you understand, it's just to wonder now that KAID-TV has canceled conservative William F. Buckley's Firing Line program, can Channel 4's producer Bruce Reichert's popular Big Fish Stories in Idaho ever again be taken seriously?
But back to government in business: Channel 4 just announced a new program to sell (and be right up front about it) advertising to corporations - for a fee, of course.
One of their beautiful brochures selling ads for Idaho PBS says it fairly well: "When you advertise in IDAHO CHANNELS, your organization will be associated with Public Television."
See why I prefer the term's "Government TV" and "Government lottery"?
AMA Gets Its Comeuppance
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 4, 1987
How does one go about criticizing medical doctors when these are the very people to whom most of us go first when we are in pain or distress of some sort. Answer? Most people don't say anything unless, of course, it is to complain about the costs, which are often astronomically high and getting higher. But even then, oft-times much of those costs are hospital charges or testing of one kind of another not usually caused by the doctor himself.
Most certainly the family medical doctors and even the specialists come in for the lion's share of the community's applause and respect. And rightly so, at least 90 percent of the time. But the trade association to which most of these super-respected practitioners belong is not held so highly in awe and respect. At least not always, but the American Medical Association is forever the establishment - in spades.
The AMA, to which almost every doctor belongs and without whose membership the individual doctor can hardly survive, is the medical profession's political, economic and even cultural lobby. After the National Education Association (NEA) and the AFL-CIO labor union the AMA is probably the most powerful and affluent professional or trade association in the U.S. They do a lot of good, furnish their members with many fine services and publications that no doubt help them serve their customers better. But when organizations get so big and so powerful they often become corrupt and intellectually arrogant, just as have the NEA and the AFL-CIO, who also very much dislike their competitors.
Comes now the American Chiropractic Association who, along with five chiropractic doctors, sued the AMA for conspiring against and/or boycotting chiropractors. The AMA, the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Radiology were found guilty on Aug. 27, 1987 of having conspired to destroy the profession of chiropractic in the United States.
"In the 101 page opinion released in Chicago, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled that the AMA and its co-conspirators had violated the (federal) Sherman Antitrust laws of the U.S.," according to the current Journal of the American Chiropractic Association. The ruling finally came after 11 long years in court. Egad!
"Judge Getzendanner ruled that they (the AMA et.al.) had done this by organizing a national boycott of doctors of chiropractic by medical physicians and hospitals using an ethics ban on inter-professional cooperation. (They) took active steps, often covert, to undermine chiropractic educational institutions, conceal evidence of the usefulness of chiropractic care, undercut insurance programs for patients ... subvert government inquiries ... and engage in a massive misinformation campaign to discredit and destabilize the chiropractic profession. Evidence at the trial also showed ... activities to maintain a medical physician monopoly over health care in this country." So said the ACA journal.
Judge Getzendanner then ruled: "I conclude that an injunction is necessary in this case. There are lingering effects of the conspiracy: the AMA has never acknowledged ... " and indicated she is still working on the Orders of Injunction.
The ACA journal says, "The decision confirmed the AMA as the leading professional violator of the nation's antitrust laws. (In fact), in 1943 the AMA was convicted of a criminal violation of antitrust ... for its attempt to destroy an innovative and cost-cutting health-care insurance and delivery system. The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of the U.S."
Claiming the profession of chiropractic to be the nation's second largest primary health-care provider group, the ACA journal declared, "Evidence in the case demonstrated that the AMA knew of scientific studies implying that chiropractic care was twice as effective as medical care in relieving many painful conditions of the neck and back and related musculoskeletal problems."
Well now, how do you like "them apples?" Of course, one must remember all this does not necessarily include your doctor or mine. Doubtless some doctors disagree. Yet one would think, therefore, some big protests would surface in the media from said doctors, but so far not a peep. In any event, competition and free entry into the healing market may yet help bring freedom of choice in health care. And maybe a price break, too.
Still, the suspicion lingers: what will the chiropractors do to stop competition, in the future, when they become part of the health-care establishment?
Oh No - More of the Same
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 11, 1987
Last week Northwest Nazarene College (NNC) hosted its second annual public forum. The theme was, wouldn't you guess, "Economic Development: Boon or Boondoggie?" Aside from the rather obviously sincere intentions of all academic institutions, including NNC, the conference was forever yet another rubber stamp for the establishment.
Oh sure, the establishment is not always wrong. In fact, that's about all the traditionalists have to offer and a case can be made that very much change is very often wrong. Such being in the nature of things traditional, i.e., having stood the tests of time - it works.
But as Abraham Lincoln so wisely told us, "When our problems are new we must think anew and act anew." Thus the whole political and educational multitude have rallied behind the euphemism loosely referred to as economic development. NNC, wisely, was right in there swinging alongside the government colleges and universities. All boon and no doggie.
Space limitations preclude my mentioning all the speakers, but a Boise lawyer, Phil Barber, did try to say something besides the establishment's catch-all slogan which is, "We must spend more money for education like Massachusetts did." Barber said Japan changed their cars' steering wheels from the right-hand side to the left-hand side in order to supply the export demand in the U.S. "It worked," explained the Boise attorney and chairman of that city's Area Economic Development Council, "but American car makers refused to change. They would not put their steering wheels on the right-hand side for export to Japan."
This writer suggested such an explanation, while partly true, was too simplistic. Japan had relatively free access to the massive U.S. market. The U.S. car makers, contrariwise, had extremely limited legal entry into the rather narrow Japanese car market. But then, the world of lawyers is indeed a paper world and one supposes it thus looked good enough on the affable and charming Barber's notes.
It must have looked good enough, also, to the panel's moderator, Boise Cascade's Steve Aherns, for he never moved so fast during the entire forum as he did to change the subject after my comment on Barber's. If one thought the whole NNC forum was somewhat loaded with those favoring government interventions of one stripe or another, all to help business of course, the best story of the whole morning's session without doubt came from former Boise State University economist John Mitchell, now a senior vice-president of U.S. Bancorp in Oregon.
Attesting to the almost evangelical crusade to build and plan for capitalism's economic miracle-producing corporations to come bail us out of our depression, the engaging and effervescent economist said: "This all puts me in mind of the natives down in New Guinea during World War II. They saw all those war planes flying forth and back over their islands so they ran out in their loincloths and worked feverishly to build airports and jungle clearings hoping against hope that an airplane would land on one. Sort of reminds me," opined Mitchell, "of this rush today to build industrial parks."
"Jumpin' catfish, an economist with a sense of humor," I mused. So Reese Verner, an ex-lawyer, one-time state senator and now developmental officer for NNC, wasn't all bad when as organizer of this forum he picked some speakers with a bit of humor. Best of all, that, with truth-in-a-jest.
Unfortunately the ex-professor didn't like Idaho's "1 percent law" as it came to be known a few years back when it was voted in in a statewide referendum by a wide margin. Idaho voters are not so mesmerized by more and more government solutions to every problem. Unfortunately, again, in the minds of many, the Idaho Legislature began right after the 1 percent referendum's passage to render it impotent and ineffective. So much for the voice of the people.
Mayor Winston Goering graced the NNC forum along with Congressman Richard Stallings, D-Idaho, Paula Samis, chief economist for Mountain Bell, and Dr. Jim Weatherby, executive director of the Association of Idaho Cities, who thought Idaho cities should control more decisions and have more powers of their own. One supposes he, too, wants more tax money to make his Idaho Association of Cities members more viable since he seemed enthusiastic for more government assistance.
Much in attendance was the state's No. 1 cheerleader for economic guidance and development, Jim Hawkins, Idaho's Department of Commerce director. He is no doubt the state's leading spokesman for more (a lot more, by the way) money for higher education as the cue for the economic miracle we all hope for. So hats off to Hawkins and NNC.
Still the suspicion lingers - with all of Hawkins' sincere and highly educated efforts to boost Idaho's flagging economy - his captains of business may be directing too strange a request at higher education, including NNC.
Since both capitalism and socialism flourish in Idaho one wonders which of the two our professors of higher education understand the best - or want to help the most.
Flowers, Berries for Friends, Foes
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 18, 1987
Raspberries for Reese Verner, Northwest Nazarene College's director of development (money raising) who headed up the private school's recent public affairs forum. It was entitled "Economic Development - Boon or Boondoggie?" A good and proper question for the forum's theme.
But Verner's panel and speakers were all boon and no doggie. Yet, many say rubber-stamping the government education establishment is still the way to raise money. Never mind why private schools are so much cheaper (and better?) than government schools - and private developers, likewise, than government developers.
Raspberries for Boise State University's student government and faculty who voted down the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) application to form a chapter on campus. Rumor has it that some students are presently trying to start a conservative student campus newspaper to help counterpoint the liberal establishment paper (and faculty?) presently on campus. Heaven knows one is long overdue.
Roses for the U.S. Department of State, but this particular bouquet should be paid for by the Russian government. "The State Department bestowed its 1986 Security Engineering Office of the Year award upon the individual who supervised the technical aspects of the new, bugged and wired U.S. embassy in Moscow. Fredrick Crosher received a $5,000 award earlier this year for his work." Egad! This according to the Intellectual Activist, an excellent newsletter out of New York City.
Roses to Caldwell's new committee, Citizens Requesting a Safer Highway (CRASH) between Caldwell and Karcher Mall. The excessive traffic and the rather concentrated number of businesses built up far too close to the road along with the relatively high speed of the through traffic traveling between the twin cities make it a real hazard. Once off, it's especially tough to get back on the road. It is four-lane, at last, but lack of turn bays and other safety features are making it increasingly dangerous for those who work and do business alongside its shoulders.
Raspberries to McDonald's hamburgers ("Umpteen billion sold" - most of them. I think, to cars traveling Nampa-Caldwell Boulevard) for giving fast food a good name. Too good, in fact. Why? Because they thus create so much added traffic on and off the above mentioned risky boulevard (Cleveland at Linden.)
Their readerboard sign, which blanks out good visibility for cars wanting to exit safely onto the highway from the popular hamburger house, is right smack in the wrong place. If it were raised only give feet higher right in the same spot it would help. The new sign could be called a "McTraffic Helper." Maybe owner Bill Hall of Nampa would win another national award. I'd hope so.
Raspberries for Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus. The popular Democrat vetoed a privatization-type bill designed to keep state government from going into competition with private enterprises. The state's gigantic printing business is enough to make Ben Franklin turn over, or spin, in his grave. There exists a host of other businesses that Idaho bureaucrats try each year to justify and expand and expand.
The license plate factory, long operated by the state penitentiary, is perhaps the least obnoxious because no one else is conducting such a business. But the list is growing and given the anti-capitalistic bias of so many politicians, in both political parties by the way, Andrus should be leading the crusade to privatize government - not veto it. After all, he could call that "economic development," too.
Raspberries for Lt. Gov. Otter. C.L. (he says the initials stand for Cecil's Lackey) "Butch" Otter is his official name. A long-time advocate of private property, free market and limited government ideas and a self-labeled conservative/libertarian type thinker, Otter was quoted in the press recently: "I can think of no appointment nor any (political) decision Andrus has made since becoming governor that I would disagree with."
Makes about the same amount of sense as Idaho Power's vigorous moral and financial help given to the Democrat governor during last campaign. Andrus, you will remember, almost single-handedly killed Idaho Power's huge and expensive campaign to build the coal-fired Pioneer Power plant between Mountain Home and Boise. In consequence of that:
Raspberries for Logan Lanham, vice president of Idaho Power and chief architect of their Andrus caper who obviously thinks: "If you can't whip 'em, then join 'em."
Oh, yes, Otter wants to be governor the worst way. Maybe he's found it.
Sizing Up the GOP Flock
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 25, 1987
Last week saw the Western States Republican Leadership Conference held in Seattle. I attended that meeting the main purpose of which was to expose each of the GOP presidential hopefuls to Western party leaders and activists.
All were there, George Bush, Robert Dole, Alexander Haig, Pat Robertson, Jack Kemp and Pete duPont along with National GOP Chairman Frank Fahrendopf, Maureen Reagan (the daughter), conservative Congressman Newt Gingrich, Secretary of Interior Donald Hodel and a host of others.
I note all these names partly to suggest it was an important occasion for Republicans and partly because I got to visit privately with some of them, albeit for relatively brief periods of time. Perhaps the one I hated the most to miss hearing, although not yet an announced candidate, was ex-Democrat and former U.S. Ambassador (to the U.N.) Jeane Kirkpatrick. I respect and admire her because of her tendency to speak her mind in candid respectful and intelligent ways. For some strange reason(s) Republican bigwigs tend to go far out of their way to avoid telling it like it is - in politics. Maybe in Kirkpatrick's case it's partly because she's only recently become a Republican.
Although attending this conference as a member of the media, I have been attending similar GOP parleys for more years than I should like to admit. It is for this reason that I want to make a few observations: Hard as it is to believe there seems to be a sense of humor creeping into the grand ole party. Not a big one, mind you, but a real one nonetheless. For those of you who don't know it that is a big deal because GOPers tend to be stuffed shirts (about 90 percent, I'd guess.)
For example, Alexander Haig's speech ended with a real clever little humorous poem admonishing the GOP to beware of (Dole's) "pineapple juice" and not to get "Bushwhacked" when they choose their presidential candidate. But he got an even bigger applause from the audience when during the opening part of his remarks he said, "I must confess to feeling a certain pleasure as I witness the opposition - eating their young." A warmer side of Haig than we are used to seeing on network TV.
Vice President Bush, for the most part I thought, received merely polite applause. The front cover of Newsweek magazine's current issue said it best under his Marlboro Man-type photo at the helm of his fancy sail boat: "Fighting the Wimp Factor."
Even this writer felt a twinge of sorrow for him and his lackluster campaign until I remembered it stems from his philosophy of the same name.
Dole was clearly most "in charge" of both where he was coming from and where he was going. He is experienced and not intimidated by the press, so tends to exude confidence. But charisma he ain't got, folks. Politics is an emotional art, not a reasonable one, so charisma is the name of today's game. He'll have it tough.
I saw Idaho's Republican State Chairman Blake Hall of Idaho Falls at the Seattle meet. He is a bright young lawyer (sorry) and tries to reflect reasonably his party's diverse ideologies from left-wing liberals to limited government Jefferson-type conservatives. His impossible task, however, was predictably reflected in his newspaper account following the conference when he reflected - you guessed it - the GOP establishment saying to the effect, "Bush was most popular with Dole a close second." He scolded presidential candidate the Rev. Pat Robertson of Christian TV broadcasting fame by suggesting Robertson was not at all popular and made himself even less popular with uncomplimentary references to first lady Nancy Reagan.
Neither did he like Robertson's not-so-oblique charges of President Reagan's "balancing the ticket" with a liberal vice president. Robertson did not mention George Bush by name but it was clear who he meant.
So you see, my politically aware friends: "You sees whatcha wants to see." I sort of like young Blake Hall and sympathize with his impossible leadership task, but my perceptions were all but opposite to his. I thought Bush and Dole had little but polite, routine, even mechanically enthusiastic applause. (Dole more than Bush, for sure.) But the real enthusiasm of the meet was reserved for the charismatic Christian who to his everlasting credit did his damndest to tell-it-like-it-is. Robertson has won several significant if early polls in some key areas around the country, but don't hold your breath waiting for the big media to tell you about them. Paul Harvey frequently condemns this routine "news" bias, yet it makes and breaks politicians.
But Robertson isn't my man (former governor of Delaware Pete duPont is.) Still, I must admit the Christian broadcasting tycoon clearly had the Seattle meet's non-establishment Western GOP enthusiasts in his pocket.
GOP Developing Sense of Humor
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 1, 1987
Here's a surprise. The Republican candidates for president of the U.S. were interviewed last Wednesday night and, believe it or not, it was actually interesting. True, maybe it wasn't exactly spectacular but the party of stuffed shirts, an unfortunate label yet one all-too-often richly deserved, is changing - even adding humor.
One of my heroes, William F. Buckley Jr., editor-in-chief of the conservative magazine National Review and host of the government TV's (PBS) Firing Line program, was co-host and the famous and popular Democrat Robert Strauss was the other co-host and co-interviewer. This Firing Line special program almost exactly paralleled a similar exchange last summer when Buckley and Strauss interviewed for another hour and a half all of the Democrat presidential hopefuls.
KAID-TV is to be congratulated for airing both these public affairs programs on Firing Line. This way the interested public can get each candidate's ideas and statements direct without the networks' swell-headed anchormen telling us (i.e., giving editorial commentary disguised as impartial analysis) what the candidate really meant. Given the excessively liberal ideology held by 90 percent of the media persons who regularly comment on these matters, America's left-wing establishment is granted a tremendous political advantage virtually free of charge. So we're glad for small favors.
The general tone of the "debate" was quite friendly, even humorous at times, as Democrat Strauss played his partisan roll well suggesting with a grin to his friend Buckley that "Republicans were rich and thus had an unfair advantage over his party's hopefuls." Everyone laughed, but then the conservative magazine chief sat upright in his chair, stopped the show and pleasantly but firmly demanded: "Let us see a show of hands of any (Republican) candidate on this platform whose financial statement is not exceeded by John Kennedy's, Lyndon Johnson's or Franklin D. Roosevelt's?" This brought the house down with laughter, since obviously none of the GOP candidates were as wealthy as the three named Democrat presidents. Even Strauss, who was both charming and intelligent throughout the entire evening, broke into a big laugh.
Other moments of mirth occurred as the evening wore on serving to mitigate much of the traditionally grim image most Republicans have, rightly or wrongly, carried for generations. So genial in fact was the good will expressed during the whole evening that candidate Pat Robertson made a big deal of suggesting Strauss should join the Republican Party since he had once tried to move the Democrats at least slightly to the right.
The Christian broadcasting network chief was led into making such an invitation because three different competitor candidates right there on the podium had openly given credit to him for bringing a tremendous number of new members into the ranks of the GOP. Most of them came from the evangelical groups and the Democrats. I found this hard to believe myself, but Ronald Reagan's charm, principled rhetoric and even some bold follow-through at times may have given the party leaders a good self image.
If Robertson partly deserves the label of the "Republican's Jesse Jackson" he didn't get all the evening's accolades for forthrightness. Comes now a near-libertarian with genuine alternatives.
My favorite candidate by all odds is former governor of Delaware, Pete duPont, whose response to the co-host Democrat brought the longest and loudest applause of the evening.
Strauss' philosophic loyalty to government in general and Democrats in particular led him to laud his party as really, seriously, sincerely superior somehow (the exact statement escapes me) to the GOP whereupon duPont said in effect: "Hold on! We have just been witness to a fine gentleman jurist candidate for the Supreme Court (Bork) absolutely savaged by the Senate Judiciary Committee - mostly Democrats." The applause was overwhelming.
DuPont's well thought-out market alternatives for Social Security (at least supplemental thereto), his advocacy for freedom of choice and competition in schooling via educational vouchers, etc., are almost libertarian, even a bit risky.
Columnist Herb Cook Jr. adds more: "Good or bad, the appealing thing about Pete duPont's ideas is that he HAS some. And he's not afraid to stand in front of 40 people to make his pitch. When was the last time you heard George Bush take a firm stand?" Sort of reminds one of the old Steve Symms' pre-Reberger days, doesn't it?
Notwithstanding the GOP hopefuls even with their genial and competent co-hosts, the humor hallmark of the whole campaign so far has to go to Johnny Carson. Probably a liberal, the TV variety show host nevertheless has likely made more money using truth-in-a-jest humor than anyone in history. Of conservative Pat Robertson Carson observed: "He is the only candidate for president who is being raked over the coals for sleeping with his own wife."
Roses, Raspberries to Friends, Foes
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 8, 1987
Roses for the Idaho Press-Tribune,whose crusade for a government lottery is well-known and of long standing. While the IPT doesn't necessarily advocate a lottery run by the government, per se, they no doubt realize that that outcome is the only one in prospect. Nevertheless, in spite of their superenthusiasm for yet another layer of government in business, they ran a severely damaging editorial cartoon last Wednesday against the lottery they love. It showed a poverty stricken family at the super table all with turned up noses at their "good." Explained the mother; "It's called million collar soup! We ran out of money again, so I cooked all of your (father's) lottery tickets." Cartoons can be as devastating as editorial commentary and this was a first-class example.
Roses to unsuccessful candidate for Caldwell City Council James Trieb whose comment to the Press-Tribune furnished perhaps the most insight and humor of an otherwise dull, visionless and issue-free campaign. Asked what he thought of Mayor Cowles' rather unprecedented public endorsement of his (Cowles') five favorite Council candidates office seeker Trieb declared: "I don't know why the mayor wouldn't endorse me - I never did anything against (his) fire department or police department." For those who don't follow city politics the Fire Department employees are widely considered to be important political activists both in Cowles' first election and in the recall of three council members that followed. One hardly needs to note none of the three were exactly big fans of the assertive mayor.
Roses to the committee called CRASH, which is literally up in arms about the dangerous traffic congestion on Cleveland Boulevard especially from McDonald's drive-in out to the Karcher Mall. Members' recent rally-march from Blacker's at Ustick Road out to Happy Day Ford got quite a lot of media coverage. They cited many serious accidents along that bag stretch of highway and demanded somebody do something - and soon. Everybody agreed, of course, including several city and state politicians.
Raspberries for the many (not all) merchants along the highway in question who moved their businesses from town out onto the boulevard precisely because the traffic was "bad" in the first place. Presumably, had it not been bad, so to speak, they would not have placed their establishments on the high-intensity highway. So, in a word, it is something of a Catch 22 situation.
Roses for newly re-elected Caldwell City Councilman Jack Raymond whose presence graced the concerned marchers' group protesting the dangerous roadway. Said he, if partly in jest: "I wonder what would happen if the state highway commission were to call for a tax on all these businesses who front on the highway in order to pay for their new road improvements and widening of right of way?"
Roses for Press-Tribune columnist Gayle L. Moore who is also a former local teacher and a full-time high chieftess of the Idaho teacher's union. Last Wednesday she told us in her column some of the reasons why teachers are so politically active. She gave us 30 topics to ponder, and while many made good sense, most had to do with fewer hours and more money. This is about what the rest of us want for ourselves. Most folks, however, tend to forget that political wage, price and management controls in a government bureau, such as compulsory public schools, simply must be "done" politically. Where there is no freedom of choice there is no other way, since private schools are not considered at all.
Raspberries on the other hand for Moore's Topic No. 9: "Teacher testing. The states ... seem to have discovered that the idea is not worth the trouble." Balderdash. In Florida and I think Texas the government mandated they hire minority teachers, but when they did many of the teachers couldn't pass the literacy tests. Not worth the trouble? No wonder. Topic No. 19, "Accountability," she says, "means different things to different people..." One gathers this is also "not worth the trouble," especially if the political activists don't have to face a free market.
But the teacher's union chieftess, who I'm told was loved by her students when she was a Nampa teacher, saved her best for last.
"The 30 points list is by no means complete," said Moore. But she summed up their political activism by quoting another teacher: "Educators will get out of politics when politicians get out of education."
Still, it is hardly lack of due process, said a famous supreme court justice, for the government (read, politicians) to regulate that which it pays for.
Dealing with the Smoker
by Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 15, 1987
Last Wednesday night there was another TV presentation on smoking. Hardly any subject, save the more recent, alarming and deadly epidemic of AIDS has brought so many discussions. So far there seems to be no relief in sight, not even with R-O-L-A-I-D-S. Why doesn't this endless jawboning seem to get us anywhere?
At the risk of sounding too simplistic, let's make a few random observations. First of all, there has been some improvement, at least from the standpoint of non-smokers. Passengers who use the scheduled airlines have been treated to a larger and larger section of non-smoking seats on the airplanes. Still, the stink of cigarette smoke tends to move about the cabin especially to those seated near the smoking section.
Restaurants, coffee shops, cafes and particularly dining rooms in the better places usually have designated areas for smokers. But courtesy, good taste and manners being at the sorry stage they are these days, many dining customers light up their smokes anyway, thus fostering the legislation non-smoking people have promoted and sold to the public. This has produced a mixed bag of results, but the smoker mentality has been and still is a rather arrogant attitude for civilized people. They can't (or won't) consider others' rights.
One thing seems sure, at least for the short run; that is, that statistics get us almost nowhere. They've been around for years, big, bad-sounding ones, too, even to the perverse effect on many new babies born to mothers who smoked all during their pregnancy. When human behavior gets this screwed up, my friends, something is rotten in Denmark.
Now then, I don't suggest we abandon all statistics and research nor the sales pitch that "smoking isn't good for you."
Further, smokers should be more mindful of courtesy and rights of others to breathe air reasonably free of tobacco stink. But what do we do with these nicotine sucking air polluters that stick with us? Are theirs problems of morality perhaps?
One wonders, then, whether or not we should indeed "legislate morals?" My guess is that there is a better scheme given the fact that the federal government spends great sums of money to subsidize tobacco and then again great sums advocating we not use it. They even tell us it causes cancer. Small wonder the religious cults claim that "the end of the world is near." We're nuts. We are indeed, nuts.
But not all of us are nuts, you say. True! Then why does the dilemma continue? It is so easily within our grasp to do something intelligent. And we wouldn't even have to spend $300 billion to $400 billion to protect us from ourselves as we do now, ostensibly, to protect ourselves against the U.S.S.R. All we'd have to do is stop subsidizing (rewarding) those who produce smokes.
I mean a better question than "can we legislate morality?" might well be: Why do we legislate - immorality? That would be far easier to enforce, easier to pay for and (forgive me) it'd even make sense. Except for the fact we'd have to depend on a bunch of nincompoops in Congress. Almost nothing these politicians do makes sense, with the possible exception of those who want the government - to do less.
One way the government could do this, i.e., spend less, might be to direct their dialogue against smoking into a new area theretofore unexplored in almost any area the government touches. The area I speak of property rights, is the single most significant thing that distinguishes the political system of the U.S.A. from the system in Soviet Russia.
Some of the world's truly famous anti-communists were and are socialists, but they never advocate private ownership as a basis for dialogue within which we should, or even could, preserve, codify and expand freedom and responsibility.
To sum up all these different parameters surrounding the smoking pollution problem, let me suggest that one big reason the clean air and clean water crusades are so difficult of solution is that the ownership of both water and air is communal. Each is held in common. Note I did not say communist, I said communal or collective. Soviet collectivism is based on communal ownership of everything, while America's system is, or was anyway, based on individual ownership.
Then why do we quest for solutions to our "right" to stink up clean air with schemes outside the arena(s) of private ownership? Instead we beat to death the obvious, i.e., smoking is offensive. Opponents say it is not - to them, and it is their right to smoke.
We should be saying, "you are invading my property (air space) which I own or have rented while I am in this place. So, cease and desist from your aggression against my air space."
It would change the whole dialogue away from the struggle for power and toward a free, responsible and moral marketplace mentality.
Analyzing the Witch-Hunt
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 22, 1987
The liberals in America virtually own or control the intellectual and idea establishment, all of which may very well be to their everlasting credit. But they also tend to deny their adversaries an equal right to dissent. Here's how they do it:
"Don't be negative," they say. Having secured for themselves the liberal status quo they merely perpetuate it by admonishing others to be "not negative."
To be against evil is to favor the good. Well, isn't it? Of course it is. But in today's parlance negative doesn't sell so well as positive. Therefore we use roses (positive) and raspberries (negative) in deference to our liberal literary "landlords," i.e., those who own the idea establishment.
Roses to the minority report on the Iran-Contra congressional committee released last Wednesday. They were Reps. Cheney, Broomfield, Hyde, Courter, McCollum and DeWine and Sens. Jim McClure and Orrin Hatch. They said:
"We emphatically reject the idea that the Executive Branch subverted the law, undermined the Constitution, or threatened democracy. The president is as much of an elected representative of the people as is a member of Congress. In fact, he and the vice president are the only officials elected by the whole nation."
Raspberries for the majority of said committee made up of Democrats and three liberal Republicans whose 500-page printed book condemning the president, Oliver North and John Poindexter was mostly a Christmas present for the Democrat's 1988 presidential hopefuls. All at government expense, too. The cost should be publicly published as part of each Democrat's financial disclosure of campaign expenses for president.
Roses to committee member Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who said of the whole hearings episode: "They started out as a witch-hunt; they were conducted as a witch-hunt and they wound up as a witch-hunt."
Raspberries to the nation's nattering nabobs of negativism, i.e., the country's major media elite whose anchormen gave almost 100 percent support to the prosecutor mentality against the Reagan administration. It continued throughout the whole television extravaganza and media event.
Roses to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw who said midway during the first day of Lt. Col. Oliver North's testimony:
"Ollie North was a smash hit!" The hotshot news commentator's remark was uttered with a big smile and enthusiasm, but when the news came on that afternoon he looked as if his boss had taken him to the woodshed. Brokaw's switch in attitude was dramatic, suggesting the big liberal media was not to express any pleasure at all toward the charismatic North and his pro-Reagan, pro-American and pro-Contra testimony from there on out. Needless to say, they dutifully conformed.
Raspberries to the congressional witch hunters, several of whom had leaked secrets themselves and/or stood by while their colleagues, aides and others leaked or threatened to leak information in order to head off Reagan's foreign policy positions with which they disagreed. Then these committee members screamed in protest because North, Poindexter, Casey and others would not share all their foreign policy secrets being formulated by Reagan's National Security Council.
Roses to the Wall Street Journal editorial page writers who from the very first saw Iran-Contra for what it really was - the Democrat liberals' hamstringing an American president with an aim at the 1988 presidential campaign. Of the minority report the Journal said: "(It) tackles the difficult questions. It deals at length with the key issue of separation of powers." The arrogant and hostile committee chairman, Sen. Daniel Inoyue, did his damnedest to avoid any substantive discussion of the crucial separation argument. Of the dissenting minority's comments the paper reported:
"There was no constitutional crisis, no systematic disrespect for the 'rule of law,' no grand conspiracy and no administration-wide dishonesty or cover-up." The paper had said as much many months before.
Raspberries for President Reagan for whom I usually have considerable respect and about whom the Wall Street Journal summed up a good point: "In retrospect, it's clear that President Reagan should have vetoed the continuing resolutions that carried the Boland Amendments - not only because they are unconstitutional, but because the veto remains a potent exercise of executive power. A veto would have forced a national debate on Nicaragua years ago, which the White House could have won."
Unfortunately the paper (Wall Street Journal) neglected to note that Ollie North won Reagan's Nicaragua debate anyway, but North's name and story have been spiked by their own media cronies.
More Super-Liberal Opposition
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 29, 1987
Early in November the government TV network (PBS) ran another Bill Moyers program entitled Our Secret Government. The super-liberal TV shows host and White House aide under Democrat President Lyndon Johnson used his entire show in a massive attack against the U.S. government's having any secret operations whatsoever.
While his criticisms were against covert operations under several presidents the bulk of his show, as you might imagine, was critical of the Reagan administration's affair mainly with the CIA, the Pentagon and National Security Council. Moyers' programs are always soft on liberal to left-wing policies and persons, but hard on their conservative counterparts. This particular program, however, was in large measure a massive attack on Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North whose testimony during the recent Iran-Contra hearings produced the most spectacularly popular and revealing inside look at worldwide Communist operations we'd ever seen. North's testimony, almost all of which has been shown on nationwide TV, explained for the first time to the American public just what the Communists were up to in Nicaragua.
The bright and unusually articulate Marine explained for Americans in unmistakable language, again for the first time, just how foolish and/or stupid it was to reveal all the U.S. Intelligence operations to members of Congress. On several occasions the latter would leak these secrets to the media within a few hours after the briefings with the president or NSC staffers. For these reasons, North explained, the Congress was understandably sometimes kept in the dark concerning covert foreign operations.
So dramatic and so egregious were North's revelations as to several congressmen's irresponsibility that the whole liberal community of politicians, bureaucrats and members of the national media were brought into disrepute. For these and other reasons North was in competition with most of the whole Washington, D.C. liberal/left wing apparatus.
Thus it seems rather obvious why the government's PBS-TV hero, Moyers, was unleashed to do a prime-time attack on President Reagan's chief man-on-the-foreign-scene - Ollie North.
Since North's testimony was to a large extent a North credibility versus Congress credibility contest let's look at the Congress's record the media seems loathe to tell us much about: (1) House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) refers to the budget red ink of the 1980s as "Reagan's deficits," but since 1981 Congress has spent over $140 billion more than the White House has requested. (2)
According to the Pathfinder publication of Texas A & M University's Center for Study and Research in Free Enterprise Congress Runs through Its Own Red Light, appropriations bills exceeding the Budget Resolution spending allocations are prohibited from floor consideration. Yet these budget decrees are waived routinely - almost 500 times in 10 years in the House alone.
(3) "Last year, Congress congratulated itself for crafting a budget containing $15 billion in deficit reduction. Although the budget did seem to shrink by $15 billion, Congress quietly issued an all-time record $160 billion in subsidized loan guarantees. (4) Last year $576 billion continuing resolution was so voluminous that not a single congressman was aware (ho ho ho) that missing from the legislation it delivered to the President's desk were two of its 690 pages. This was no minor oversight: the omitted pages contained a $2.4 billion appropriation for renting and operating federal buildings.
(5) "Congress Cuts Defense Budget With the Old Check-is-in-the Mail Routine." Last year Congress claimed $3 billion in deficit reduction through old-fashioned "creative accounting." It ordered the Pentagon to send out the last military paychecks of FY 1987 on the first day of FY 1988, rather than the last of fiscal 1987 as scheduled. This gimmick, of course, will not save the taxpayers a penny."
There was more from Texas A & M's Free Enterprise Center, much more, including: "Congress has ignored more than 400 rescissions (authority to impound funds) blocking potential budget savings of over $18 billion." But this kind of under-the-table "lying" by our secret government (read, Congress) was not revealed in Bill Moyers' program on PBS-TV's Our Secret Government.
In fact, one can just feel secure that the only secret our government can keep, these days, is when that same government (read Congress) does something that makes sense.
Support Your Friendly Gas Dealer
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 6, 1987
There are two events taking place in Idaho that do not appear to be related, but they are and in a timely way, too. Both have to do with a concept as important to the well-being of the culture and the economy of the American system as the Constitution itself.
That concept is private property. It is the single, major characteristic distinguishing our system from the Soviet Union's. And we're losing it.
The two events are (1) the Associated General Contractors (AGC) are vigorously backing a statewide effort to get the various highway districts around the state to stop competing with private enterprise contractors. The former gravel and pave roads, build bridges, crush gravel and do other jobs related to county-size road districts. Some of these districts have purchased huge rock crushers and other equipment so they can build their own roads, etc., without having to let out contracts for bids from the private contractors. The road commissioners claim they have been forced, more or less, to go into this kind of business in recent years because the private contractors will not submit reasonable and competitive bids for their work.
The AGC deny this, of course, and claim they cannot and should not have to compete with government bureaus, none of whom should be in that business in the first place, because our road districts are a type of government bureau.
Elections, by the way, will be held Monday for district board members who are responsible for setting these policies.
The second event: Attorney General Jim Jones has taken a rather vigorous if cranky stand against the gasoline merchants hereabouts. They may, according to Jones, be charging too much for their retailing of gasoline. While he has not formally charged any gasoline dealers with a kind of colluding to set prices unnecessarily high for retail consumers, he has gone public in a rather vigorous way suggesting that collusion is possible or maybe even probable.
This writer has conducted a rather hasty telephone survey among gasoline merchants and members of the TV and print media. I asked if they approved of the attorney general becoming a price control czar for gas. With some trepidation I am sorry to report that most media persons I queried replied, "I'm for free enterprise, Ralph, but ..."
These media folk, I'm afraid, fairly well represent what the public thinks or feels in this case as I have also asked quite a number of civilians not associated with business or media. The response was really very similar. They agreed with Jones.
Now then, a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved, so let's see if we can state it. The question in both instances, i.e., the "unnecessarily high" bids that road district commissioners on the one hand claim they are fighting, and the "unnecessarily high" prices the attorney general, on the other hand, raises about the retail price of gasoline is really not to ask if they are priced too high. This may at first blush seem to be the question.
But a second thought comes quickly to mind if one is disposed to reflect a moment on the great American competitive system of pricing to allocate scarce goods and services. Isn't the proper question rather: "Does the government have the right to be in competition with private business?"
I think it does not, but if it does, then under what circumstances? Nobody asks. They ask only, "Is the price fair?"
To answer the latter question and be fair about it one is forced to ask first: "Is it fair under a system of socialism or under a system of capitalism?" Wow! There's the magic word my friends. Like it or not, these problems are being grappled with by decent, honest and well-meaning officials and entrepreneurs. There are exceptions, of course, but most are men of good will. Nevertheless they are reasoning from ever-so-weak, basic and poorly understood premises.
Oh, it's more fun all right to shout criticisms and impugn each other's motives, but it will do vastly more good for us to ask if our system can survive if: (1) private entrepreneurs are forced to compete with government and (2) if the American competitive pricing system can function without a commissary to set or manage prices?
Some will allege that the system is not perfectly competitive and, indeed, it is not. But it is vastly moreso than the socialist or, really, fascist one that is too often offered by aspiring and ambitious politicians wanting more and more to manage our lives. Speaking of competition, did you know that no longer in business to sell gasoline in this area are the following oil companies: Gulf, Mobil, Union, Arco, Conoco, Exxon and Husky? Why? Nobody asks!
One wonders if Attorney General Jim Jones, our state's number one muscleman of the law, will direct his next concern for fair prices to the consumer of the law. His fellow lawyers do not post their competitive price per gallon (fees)up on the billboard for all to see before the purchase is made. Why?
Nobody asks!
What You Don't Read About INF Treaty
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 13, 1987
President Reagan's administration may have become in its declining years a dirty, rotten, stinking corpse. How come?
Well, his wife Nancy, it is reported by both the massive liberal media and by their small conservative counterparts, wants the controversial INF treaty ratified by the Senate so as to assure her husband a "significantly high place in history." Thus, one assumes, assuring her a similar place alongside him.
Now that I may have your attention, my friends, let me tell you something about the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty the supporters of which claim will lessen the likelihood of nuclear war.
Idaho's U.S. Sen. Steve Symms' vigorous opposition to the Reagan-backed treaty between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. provoked a series of national interviews recently on the subject of INF. The junior Idaho senator seems fast becoming the point man of the 20 to 30 U.S. senators presently opposing what many are wont to call a path-breaking treaty between the two superpowers of the world.
If this writer's opening paragraph seemed a bit harsh, forgive me, but it was mostly to get your attention because as Symms said during our phone conversation, "There is an almost frantic love-in with this guy Gorbachev here in Washington and such euphoric confusion about the facts of INF I doubt if you can even get anybody's attention. Still, we should try." My phone call to ask Symms why he opposed the treaty revealed many items hardly discussed by the major media, but among them were the following:
(1) INF does not remove or reduce even one nuclear warhead. Only the vehicle. The warheads are easily transferable to other missiles not covered by the treaty. (2) The media keep saying INF reduces nuclear weapons in the world. If it does it at all it eliminates only our own. (3) The treaty's wording actually says warheads "may" be removed before destroying the missiles. (4) Estimates are that up to 60,000 missiles exist. No one knows for sure except perhaps the Soviets who could not be trusted in the past. Why now? (5) Since the U.S. has no intelligence (no pun) on the nuclear weapons the treaty is terribly one-sided. (6)
Cruise missiles are destroyed along with Pershing IIs in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but not France who does not like the treaty. Symms says, "with Mitterand on the left and Chirac on the right - both French leaders oppose the treaty. The only one in France who supports INF is the French Communist Party."
(7) The treaty supporters with alarming support from the national media claim that (a) INF would reduce likelihood of nuclear war when in fact it increases the likelihood of conventional war, because Pershing IIs are trajectory and lightning fast. Cruise missiles fly low, but are extremely accurate and carry conventional warheads, too. This eliminates U.S. and NATO's deterrent to war.
Not so with U.S.S.R. Their SS-20s are easily replaced with SS-24s and SS-25s. The former are on railroad cars and thus mobile. The SS-25s are mounted on trucks and are extremely mobile. Furthermore U.S. Pershing IIs are not replaceable (after the treaty) by anything. (b) Liberals argue that INF reduces the cost of military for defending NATO and Western Europe. This is false because the U.S.S.R. does not have to reduce their conventional forces which are already awesome. For NATO and the U.S. to offset these forces they will have to build up their own at a vastly increased cost. This makes the liberals a case, on cost at least, 100 percent wrong. (c) And remember, he says, INF does not reduce even one nuclear warhead.
The news media managed a bit of intrigue suggesting something of a tiff between our first lady Nancy Reagan and the Soviet's Mrs. Gorbachev. After her tour of the White House, during which she seemed to spout more knowledge than Mrs. Reagan had of the expensive pieces of art used to decorate the place, Mrs. Gorbachev opined that she wouldn't want to live there: "It looks too much like a museum."
Such is more or less true, of course. But it would have been even more true if she had said the president's house looked too much like a goldfish bowl.
Symms might then have agreed, adding: "Except that that bowl is stocked instead - with suckers."
Seeing Through 'Glasnost'
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 20, 1987
A new Russian word has been insinuated into the American vocabulary. Already almost a household word, glasnost means "openness" or, more literally translated, "transparency." Now that Gorbachev has gone home let's see how transparent or open this image he left behind really is.
Let me begin by saying that this writer hugely favors keeping open a meaningful dialogue between the two biggest world powers, even if one of them is also the biggest butcher of human beings in all of recorded history. A few surprises from some significant and sharp observers might be useful in giving us added and necessary perspective so far not very evident in the national media, especially on TV.
Mortimer Zuckerman, editor of U.S. News and World Report, after sharing two private hours with 30 publishers and journalists, said of Gorbachev, "One begins to think of him as someone who might be running in the Iowa primary.
(But) Not any more. In his meeting with us, he uncorked passions and chose to take neutral, inquiring questions as hostile. He was hardline, defiant, impatient, frustrated, angry. His voice rose with his answers - and he pounded the table."
The U.S. News editor then quotes directly from Gorbachev: "We shall not tolerate anyone's attempts to teach us lessons. We need a respectful tone for a dialogue. How dare anyone raise the issue of human rights in Russia. It is only a handful of refuseniks who make the noise. Let them shout; we shall ignore them!"
Zuckerman goes on to note the Soviet dictator's claim that Western media print "evil smelling" misinformation and never give objective information or true analysis. "And, in the same breath," says Zuckerman, "he shows how unused he is to criticism and free debate. Americans cannot easily shake hands with someone who has a clenched fist."
Of the one-hour TV interview with Gorbachev done by NBC's Tom Brokaw and shown the week before the Russian's visit to America, Rep. John Porter, R-Ill., said, "I watched and listened to an accomplished liar."
Human Events, the nation's number one conservative weekly, labeled as breathtaking Gorbachev's boast that the Soviet Union will be "celebrating the millenium of Christianity in Russia next year." This while millions of Christians and Jews throughout the Soviet empire are being persecuted for their religious beliefs.
To his credit Brokaw did ask some good questions, but little follow-up. "How about the Berlin Wall? There's no uglier symbol in the world," asked Brokaw. "Why don't you use your considerable influence with the East Germans just to have them take it down?"
"Can't do it," replied Gorbachev. He explained the Soviet Union simply wouldn't think of telling the East Germans what to do in their domestic affairs, but Brokaw didn't ask why it wasn't "domestic affairs" when the Soviets, not the East Germans, built the wall.
Human Events zeroed in on the NBC-TV/Brokaw interview, also. "What about the right of free immigration," asked Brokaw? The Soviet's political charmer blamed that, too, on the West. The whole thing, he suggested, was a plot by the West to solve its need for skilled labor. What the U.S. is "organizing," said Gorbachev, "is a brain drain. And of course we're protecting ourselves." Egad!
There is more, my friends, much more, but unfortunately the major TV networks never invite conservative Human Events' editors to participate in their programs. So we must dig for it.
Perhaps the best TV insight on news twisting comes to us via Accuracy in Media (AIM), the top-flight watchdog on news mongers: Moscow correspondent Sandy Gilmour reported that "Gorbachev concluded that the Soviet Union was moving toward a new world." "For some mysterious reason," AIM commented, "Gilmour could not bring himself to utter Gorbachev's next words: 'the world of communism,' and his pledge, to 'never turn off that road.'
Thus Gilmour spiked the commie punch line."
Lest some readers view these thoughts as too negative (and thus not helpful) let me paraphrase the first few lines in Thomas Paine's old book Common Sense and the Crisis. Its application today is almost classic.
"Perhaps the sentiments contained (above) are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom (i.e., the media generally fawning over charming politicians, especially the socialists.) But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Have a Very Berry Christmas
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 27, 1987
Roses for the late, great Will Rogers, perhaps the best loved Democrat of all time. On Oct. 18, 1928, he wrote: "The Literary Digest is taking a poll to see how many people there are in the United States who are interested in politics who can (also) write their name. Up to now there has been about a third more Republicans that can write than Democrats."
We are all indebted to Rogers the humorist for setting the tone of the day's political campaigns. Too bad we don't have him today, but we do have at least one humorist at work, so;
Roses to Idaho's U.S. Sen. Steve Symms. His unpretentious response to presidential aspirant Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan., a fortnight ago rivaled even the great cowboy philosopher whose life-size bronze statue stands today in the Capitol lobby. Dole spoke up during a recess on the floor of the Senate: "Hello Steve. What's up?" Said Symms, "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Gorbachev took off for Russia before he won the Iowa primary." The Senate members just cracked up laughing at the former apple grower's wisecrack and given the fact that that session lasted until 3 a.m., the humor tended to be both timely and welcome.
Roses, too, for the perceptive Washington Post reporter who asked Symms which party's primary he was referring to.
He replied, "That was the bad news. I'm scared to death he might have been a Republican." Symms, of course, opposed the INF treaty and was critical of what he termed a virtual "love fest" with the communist dictator. Nevertheless he (Symms) saw fit to have a little humor at his own and his colleagues' expense.
Raspberries seems to be the main bill of fare for Gary Hart whose re-entry into the Democrat presidential sweepstakes has brought forth some long overdue life and laughter into an otherwise super-lackluster list of left-wingers. The latter all want to be president of the U.S. but haven't had the Hart. (Forgive me.)
Roses for both Gary and Mrs. Hart whose new wedding plans, should they ever need them, are said to be: "This time - no Rice."
Roses for Archie Stradley whose "tenure" at Summers Office Supply has lasted now for, believe it nor not, 40 years.
There are, of course, a few others elsewhere who have stayed the course for similar periods of time, but you'll have to look hard to find anyone who gets a bigger kick out of life, tells more jokes and works harder adding big bits of joy into the lives of others less fortunate. Archie's latest wrinkle in a long list of them is his "calling" to play Santa Claus for almost any group or family, large or small, prestigious or obscure. They call him, he comes with Santa suit, bag of gifts, gift-of-gab, enthusiasm, pep and enterprise. He doesn't charge for his service of cheer although he might accept a token gift which would almost be sure to wind up helping make another youngster a happy yuletide.
He does all this all by himself, too, with no government grant (thank heaven), no service club or do-gooders anonymous. Just a good ole Archie, whose private and voluntary good cheer to others each Christmas gives him perhaps the top billing as one of the finest human beings I've ever met.
Raspberries for Caldwell and for this writer, too, in fact, for not having had an Archie Stradley Day or some such fine way to honor a real live spirit which takes place in our town not only at Christmas time, but all through the year. What a neat fellow. And how lucky our community really is.
Roses to another top gun in Caldwell. LeeAnn Simmons of KCID radio whose chairmanship, leadership, enthusiasm, persistence and just plain hard work brought about one of the best Christmas parades we've ever seen in downtown Caldwell. In a city well known for a long list of fine parades, due in no small part to the stewardship of former Mayor Al McCluskey, LeeAnn's parade success was no easy task. This writer saw that parade first-hand, so this is no cheerful Charlie pat-on-the-head tokenism. I was a captive audience since my task was ringing the Christmas bucket bell for the Salvation Army in front of Penny Wise Drug and here came that swell parade in all its glory. Hooray for Simmons and her helpers.
Roses, too, to LeeAnn's boss, KCID's Dale Peterson. Bosses too seldom get credit for the company time their staff people tend to spend on these time-consuming community projects. All of which is not to diminish LeeAnn without whose "right stuff" we would have had much less of a - Merry Christmas.
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The Pragmatic Side of Principle in Pursuit of Public Policy
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