Taking Inventory of Noteworthy Blacks
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 7, 1990
New years and New Year's resolutions sometimes bring one to sort of take inventory of the past years affairs and it was in doing so a few days ago that I hit upon an unusual and especially happy observation.
The social, cultural and, yes, even military revolutions taking place around the world are with us almost daily in the print and electronic media. Most of this is wonderful, even if it's only half true, it is wonderful. and much is being written and spoken about it, too, all of which is both fitting and proper and should continue, of course.
But things are often not all they seem to be, especially at first, so let's hope the liberals and left-wingers who dominate the media will do a better job "reporting" what appears to be the demise of socialism/communism especially in Eastern Europe.
My taking inventory as I mentioned has to do with another sort of revolution here at home - in America. It is taking place right under our very noses and in some ways it may be just as important as the apparent breakup of worldwide communism. I refer to what is going on in the black community here in America, a great and happy note, but few even notice.
In my own case, for example, I "inventoried" some of the noteworthy blacks in know personally. I was both surprised and pleased. The list includes, but is not limited to, mostly idea people such as Dr. Walter Williams, brilliant economists and columnist at George Mason University; Dr. Thomas Sowell, scholar, economist and columnist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Dr. Ann Wortham, writer, professor of sociology at Washington and Lee University. She is also a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution and, by the way, is personally responsible some years ago for my discovering blacks in an entirely newer and much broader light.
There is also Dr. Joseph Paige, dean of a university's school of religion in North Carolina who, like Wortham, is a charming and an unusually open-minded and active participant in black studies, etc. There are several others, important ones, too, that I won't mention here except to say that they all tend to be non-liberal, non-statist and individualist (as opposed to collectivist). All have been active in their movement for many years even though the media tends to ignore them with a thunderous silence.
Two bright members of the black community I had the pleasure of meeting last year, but who are not quite so easily ignored by the insufferably liberal media, are James Meredith, who recently joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. Meredith, you will remember, was the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi many years ago. You may remember, also, the big media were furious at this famous black activist joining the conservative Helms.
The other black is Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Both these gentlemen are gutsy and intelligent, but Innis testified in court in favor of the white Bernard Goetz during his trial defending against the four black teenage muggers whom he (Goetz) shot. Such a testimony was a courageous act for Innis.
One of these black friends of mine has just sent me a gift subscription to the newsletter Issues & Views (I&V), the masthead of which says "An open forum on issues affecting the black community." But don't hold your breath waiting for the very liberal government TV's McNeil/Lehrer Report via PBS's Channel 4 to quote I&V's writers. Here's why. It's from a story in their fall issue 1989:
The NAACP (National Association for Advancement of Colored People) came to rely on Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal as the "bountiful dispenser of black uplift."
The result, concludes Herald Cruse, author of Plural but Equal, was that blacks were made "economic wards of the state."
I&V's story went on to suggest that today's black critics of the welfare state such as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are right on target.
But you can bet that our own big media's attention for 1990 will not likely include them - or their story - at least not in a positive way.
No One Escapes Roses, Razzberries
By RAlph Smeed
Idaho Press Tribune
January 14, 1990
"The Idaho State Legislature is now in session. (So) let us pray."
That suggestion appeared on a huge reader-board at a main entrance to Caldwell last year, but it didn't help much. In fact, the Legislature over-penalized us with taxes to the tune of $100 million. And the doggone politicians have the audacity to call it a "surplus." Egad.
My dictionary defines surplus as "the amount that remains when use or need is satisfied." Those clowns in the statehouse are never satisfied, indeed they may be getting worse. So:
Razzberries to House Speaker Tom Boyd, R-Genesee, who knows, or should know, that the house has a privatization committee, but he dragged his political feet last year until it was too late to do anything with it. The power his office has is awesome, i.e., next to that of the governor's, but don't hold your breath until he encourages its use to protect and or promote the private sector with less government and more free markets.
*****
Roses by the dozen for state senator and gubernatorial hopeful Rachel Gilbert, R-Boise, who last year appointed a long overdue privatization committee as a sub-committee of her powerful committee on Local Government and Taxation. Unlike Boyd, Gilbert is usually an aggressive and outspoken champion for free enterprise and less government.
*****
Razzberries, then, for her thunderous silence about the sub-committee in the year since. Gilbert appointed herself and Sen. Atwell Parry, R-Melba, as privatization co-chairmen. "At," as he is affectionately called, is usually friendly to the private sector also, but has little stomach for much of a fight against government's multi-faceted onslaught into areas in which it has no damn business.
*****
Razzberries again for Idaho State GOP party Chairman Randy Ayre who has yet to tell us publicly exactly what his "progressive" (instead of liberal) label means and whose moral support for Gilbert, at least publicly, is, well, about like a poke in the side with a sharp stick. One wonders, therefore, if Ayre gives a hoot about either house's privatization efforts - however pitiful or small.
*****
Razzberries for the Idaho Apple Commission whose membership is largely made up of conservatives. Their most recent color brochure to advertise Idaho's healthful and delicious red apples features liberal Gov. Cecil Andrus on its front page in living color. It's almost as if he were the conservative John Wayne himself. On well, wasn't it Karl Marx who said the capitalists would likely bid against one another to sell the rope with which they were to be hanged the next day?
It was Andrus' crowd, remember, who staffed the liberal EPA and the knee-jerk liberal CBS's 60-Minutes who caused the apple-Alar panic in the first place. All of which is not to say Andrus enjoyed seeing an Idaho business clobbered by a political bureau. It is to say, however, that when you have a governor who plays political hardball, as this one does regularly, it's risky to glorify him as if he were Babe Ruth.
*****
Razzberries for Rod Gramer, news director for Boise's KTVB Channel 7. Formerly editorial page editor of the liberal Idaho Statesman, Gramer left to direct, or if you prefer, re-direct the TV "news." Once having told the Libertarian Party they had a lot of good ideas not heard through the other political parties and hence deserving of more public exposure, Gramer has seldom lifted a finger to help.
In fact, this winter his Channel 7 did a political segment on the controversial contractor licensing law (defeated last year) showing only one side of the hotly contested scheme generally favoring the big contractors. The latter want to keep their small competitors from competing against them, so they instruct their Associated General Contractors (AGC) to lobby for a law to accomplish same.
It's a revisit of a lousy ancient scheme practiced for centuries called the guild system whereby the government issued a work-permit without which a cobbler, carpenter, tailor, etc., could not engage in his trade to make a living.
I phoned Gramer to ask why his station told only the big contractors' side of the story and also if doing so didn't constitute mostly propaganda? After some defensive rhetoric he agreed perhaps they should have given equal time to the free market side. But there's more. Is KTVB in bed with the AGC? Can't say for sure, but I can say:
*****
Roses to me. I have since found out the contractors have hired ex-attorney general David Leroy. This year he will do the lobbying for their anti-free enterprise bill. Apparently the big boys who did their own lobbying last year intend to keep a lower profile this time.
Gorby, where are you now that we need you and your perestroika here in Idaho?
Contractors vs. Capitalism - Nyet!
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribu8ne
January 21, 1990
Well, bless Bess, the contractors are at it again. You may remember the Associated General Contractors (AGC), headquartered in Boise, shot their best big guns last year trying to force their competition out of the market using government as a tool.
Driven by State Sen. Dean Haagenson, R-Coeur d'Alene, a big contractor from up north, and Rep. Jerry Deckard, R-Eagle, another contractor closely associated with Haagenson, the AGC lost to a loosely organized little band of folks who disagreed.
The "little band" consisted mostly of a host of small builders and contractors, but included one large operator, Walter Opp of Nampa, who built almost all of Boise's Hewlett-Packard's multi-million dollar building complex. Said the then retired big contractor: "If this (proposed) licensing law had been in effect when I began back in the 1950s I would not have been able to enter the market as a small businessman." That pretty well summed it up.
Opp went on to explain that there were indeed a few builders doing shoddy work, but seldom are government bureaucrats much help preventing unfair practices. He opposed the licensing bill since it restricted competition and did more harm than good. The overwhelming majority of small builders testifying, including dozens unable to find a seat in the hearing room, also opposed the bill. It was thus defeated after a lively debate. Remember now, this was last year.
But the Haagenson-Deckard-AGC forces are back again this year, still red hot, but in a thinly veiled disguise hiding behind a "hired-gun." Lawyer and former lieutenant governor, also unsuccessful GOP candidate for governor, David Leroy is their new spokesman-lobbyist. In a press conference last week Leroy "explained" the establishment had dropped their term licensing and adopted a new word - "registration." Their new crusade is accompanied by another bill to do virtually the same thing as last year's bill.
Leroy's public claim, of course, is that "registration" is less restrictive than "licensing," hence apparently this year's opponents should relax and enjoy it. Fortunately few but the hard-core statists and special interest forces such as Haagenson-Deckard favor such nonsense.
As a matter of face, Helen Chenoweth, spokesman for the small builders opposing last year's bill and representing this year's opponents, also explains that in many ways the contractors new bill is worse than last year's which was defeated.
Unfortunately the news media, usually quick to dig up spokesmen for almost any cause, have not, as of this writing at least, "discovered" the extremely articulate and charming Chenoweth. She represented the Concerned Citizens for Consumer Protection (CCCP) which helped defeat the bill last year. But, then, the media oft-times tends to have a kind of "selective" memory where the private sector's better free market spokesmen are concerned.
In fact, KTVB-TV's Channel 7 "news" department did a rather in-depth segment on contractor licensing several weeks ago favoring the contractors' scheme for limiting competition. For some strange reason Channel 7 featured, again, only Deckard and the others opposing free entry into the establishment contractors' business - "to protect consumers" they claimed. One wonders just who's in bed with whom?
But interested readers may want to hear from no less a world-class opponent of occupational licensure than the venerable Milton Friedman, famous Nobel laureate economist who writes about the matter in his blockbuster, best-selling book Free To Choose. "The JUSTIFICATION (his emphasis) offered is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the REASON (his emphasis) is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state Legislature for the imposition or strengthening of licensure (now labeled 'registration').
"The lobbyists are invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of the customers." I say, hooray for Milton Friedman!
Oh well, with a little luck Idaho customers will eventually get it - in the end. Why? Because, as many are beginning to notice with so many of our legislators vigorously engaged in trying to play God: "The more things change, the more they remain the same."
Save Us! The Do-Gooders Are Back
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
January 28, 1990
The Legislature is in session. Hell hath no fury like a legislator who is out to "do good" - always at somebody else's expense, of course. Still there are a few exceptions. Danged few I admit, but some. So:
Razzberries for Rep. Jerry Deckard, R-Eagle, who last year championed the Associated General Contractors (AGC) lost cause to limit free entry into the building business by a restrictive scheme of licensing. This writer's column last week chronicled that story. It included Deckard's close friend and associate, state Sen. Dean Haagenson, R-Coeur d'Alene, a big contractor reportedly seeking an important position with the National AGC - if he gets their competition restricting bill enacted in Idaho. In any event, Haagenson was testy and arrogant to those who fought his bill last year. Tut tut. But:
*****
Roses for Deckard who phoned me last week to say: "I learned my lesson last year and will not be pushing it (the bill) this session." He says another organization has hired former Attorney General David Leroy to lobby for their bill this year. Leroy "explains" that this year's bill is called contractor "registration" instead of licensing. Most observers think that is a joke, however, just as the three House members I checked with thought about Deckard's not having anything further to do with this year's whole affair. Yet he did deny same. So there you have it my friends. That's what he said. But lots of mischief still goes on - behind the scenes.
*****
Razzberries for that whole crowd wanting to pass more laws to restrict competition through more and more bureaucrats and bureaucracy. The market's vigorous competition and the reputation of good contractors will "protect the consumers" far better than bureaucrats and politicians if - and big if - the laws against fraud and misrepresentation are not so complicated that ordinary citizens cannot get access to the courts without sickeningly high costs.
*****
Roses for Dr. Petr Beckmann of Boulder, Colo., who publishes a lively newsletter called "Access to Energy." A fine scientist in his own right, especially in the area of the physical sciences, he tells the "other side" of the silly environmental extremists, tree-huggers, pesky pesticide and herbicide panic pushers propagandizing their socialist agenda. They push it on innocent producers of food, fiber, shelter, energy, medicine, etc., who make our lives better, but who sometimes make money at it. These, by the way, are occasionally called capitalists.
Beckmann authored a great book called The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear, but it somehow continues to escape the attention of Phil Donahue, the government-TV (PBS) and their big media moguls who push mostly the leftists' books. Pungent, straightforward, clear, witty and acerbic are good but inadequate terms to describe this extremely bright scientist's newsletter. Here is a recent sample that is humorous but ever so helpful:
"In the underground jargon of the Stalinist era, a radish meant a posturing communist who really wasn't one; like a radish, he was red outside, white inside. But after the exhilarating events of last fall, the radish died an ignominious death.
"The radish is dead; lone live the watermelon! It stands for the sham-environmentalist - green outside, red inside. By this I do not mean that the superstition mongers and de-industrializers are outright communists. Clearly they are not - though they rarely found anything wrong with Soviet totalitarianism while spewing hatred against any regime that was even mildly authoritarian if it committed the sin of allowing some measure of economic freedom.
"No, I am not thinking of deeper similarities between the sham-environmentalist and communist churches.
"For starters, they both embrace nominal causes that have no enemies. I have never met anybody opposed to peace, social justice or brotherhood of the nations, any more than I have met anybody who wanted foul air, dirty water, reckless abandonment of toxic wastes or devastating oil spills.
"In both cases these unopposed causes are baits for deception and cover-up of a hidden agenda. In the name of peace and brotherhood, mankind's liberators installed history's most blood-thirsty power elite; in the name of the environment, the profit motive is presented as evil and entire industries are being dismantled."
There's more, but thank heaven at least for one branch of "media," i.e., Beckmann's newsletter. Here's a timely case in point:
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Roses for Idaho's two U.S. senators, Jim McClure and Steve Symms, who just got a "zero" vote of confidence last week from another of these goof-ball environmental outfits Beckmann is trying to expose.
It was the (liberal) League of Conservation Voters. They gave Idaho's liberal Congressman Richard Stalling's a "liberal" 70 percent on the same issues.
-----
Razzberries for some pretty seedy "watermelons," wouldn't you agree?
Get This: Smeed Praises Gayle Moore
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 4, 1990
Most educators seem forever to stick together. "In unity there is strength," 'tis said.
Who is it that the teachers are "sticking" together against? Well, one supposes, it's the forces of evil. The capitalists maybe?
Could be. But it isn't a consistent "evil" for everybody.
The whole education lobby, it seems, tends to have a kind of God-complex against capitalism. This includes not only the teachers and professors but the administrators, the school board members and perhaps most of all the teachers union.
The latter, of course, in our state is the Idaho Education Association (IEA), easily the most powerful labor union in the entire state. If you doubt this, just ask any Republican member or former member of the Idaho Legislature. Most are quite frank to tell you, since upwards of 90 percent of the IEA's funds and forces go to support the Democrats (the more far-out liberal the better), and fight the GOP. Given this fix, a strange thing just happened. But first a little background.
Now then, like it or not, the labor union is just like any other bureaucracy, i.e., its first mission is survival. Unfortunately in order to survive they must promote strife, conflict and, usually, misunderstanding in order to get the members to pay dues.
Let me hasten to add that these folks are not always wrong. Even professional organizations suffer much to get their members to pay dues. Further, there are public school abuses that teachers genuinely bleed for and sometimes bleed about, so they are not always misguided, perhaps, in running to their union(s) for redress. After all, their bosses have a virtual monopoly and like most monopolists they often abuse monopoly power. Sad to say, though, teachers' "customers" (students) are often held hostage in order to get their demands.
In fact, this writer wrote during the administration of former Gov. John Evans to excoriate Idaho teachers for actually demonstrating in the streets in order to get a raise. But Caldwell Superintendent of Schools Darrel Deide pointed out to be afterward: "Well, Ralph, where else can teachers go to get a raise? They cannot get one by increasing production or by individual merit as is usually the case in the free enterprise marketplace."
But there is another side to this whole veil of tears, i.e., government schools, compulsory attendance laws, monopoly status and almost unlimited and increasing demands of teachers most of whom are, wittingly or unwittingly, anti-capitalist. Consider with me now the other side:
In her weekly column Jan. 31, Press-Tribune writer Gayle Moore, former teacher and now a full-time employee of IEA, tells of a "teaching" exercise in Moscow, Russia. Her headline read: "Teaching Soviets with a Big Mac." A good headline, but I read it waiting for the other shoe to drop. I knew it was sure to follow. Something such as "... but greed and profit may not be tolerated in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as it is here." But I was wrong. She didn't drop the other shoe at all.
Much to my surprise, and I am extremely happy to relate this, the little lady even went the extra mile with: "The world's largest McDonald's opened today in Moscow ... the Soviets will probably be more astonished by the capitalism and consumerism they are about to encounter (than its huge size)."
Moore may be wrong on the "consumerism" but - depending on how she would define it, I suppose. I tend to think of consumerism as the socialist's rationale for bastardizing the viability of private property and the market economy, both of which they loathe. But then she may think of consumerism as in "free to choose." I'm just not sure. But there's more to Moore.
She goes on about McDonald's training Russian employees, "to say thank you ... to serve 1,250 people per hour ... to offer the customer a large soft drink in order to encourage more spending."
Now get this from a former teacher turned labor union person (I love it): "We take these capitalistic characteristics for granted. But they are as foreign to the Soviets as a unicycle is to us."
She even went on to briefly describe the excessive gamble companies such as McDonald's incur when doing business in Russia. The rubles they earn cannot be converted (at least directly and honestly) to dollars, so profits cannot leave the country. Egad, this from a union official? But Moore has more:
"With any luck, McDonald's will demonstrate capitalism's (notice that word, my friends) virtues to the Soviets." I can't believe it.
I hardly know Moore, but she favorably used the word capitalism three times in her unusual column last week. President Bush never uttered it once in his State of the Union address, oddly enough, on the same day, Jan. 31.
So Bush wants to be known as the "education president?" Well, he could begin by inviting Moore to the White House and give her a medal.
Can Chamber Exec 'Mush' Caldwell On?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 11, 1990
Roses for the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce. Not wanting to let any grass grow under their feet since Ron Carter, former executive director of the Chamber resigned to take a job in Florida, they have hired an attractive lady from Fairbanks, Alaska. Rumor has it she is a sled dog "musher" whose Eskimo dogs pulled her sled over Alaska's famous 1,000-mile trail race (all by herself). The contest is far too tough for most men, but maybe a "tough" lady is perfect timing for Caldwell. Wish her luck.
*****
Razzberries for Caldwell's Chamber directors who, for the past 30 years, have fallen all over themselves (Ourselves? Sorry, I did it, too) to send each new Chamber manager to the national training center in either Oklahoma or California. This writer has followed for years both the success and the fallout from these junkets and about all that happens is an expensive, if exhaustive, seminar on how to expand government in competition with the private sector. Should be the other way around.
The "problems" of our society and economy are in the big population centers which naturally tend to dominate these conventions. But the "solutions" are here at home. My suggestion is please, please, please don't send our nice new lady back there - please? That way she may never find out from the so-called private national Chamber bureaucrats what cannot be done simply with common sense here at home. Thus she just might get Caldwell on the map - and help us do it ourselves.
*****
Roses for the Caldwell Rotary Club whose banner is a delightfully clever flag about six inches wide and a foot high with a host of beautiful and artful sketches representatives of the city's impressive agri-business economy.
A splash of graphic and colorful emblems printed thereon tells of food processing, livestock markets, onions, a milk can, apples, a book and a host of others including, even, a mortarboard hat. The original art was done by the late Paul Evans of Caldwell, one of the Northwest's most famous commercial artists.
Entitled "Caldwell - Idaho's Farm Market Center" those little flags enable Rotary members who travel far and wide to trade banners with clubs all over the world (Rotary International is in more than 150 foreign countries). You can see scores of the flags on display at their club headquarters here as in most every city big enough to support a club.
Some flags are really quite attractive showing great pride in the respective Rotary groups, but none (repeat, none) are half so innovative and downright deserving of fine applause as Caldwell's. Hats off to Rotary members who thus spread the fine messages of commercialism, culture and community pride. Art like Evans' is one of our irreplaceable treasures itself.
*****
Razzberries for those Caldwellites who don't realize their city's strategic importance in the agri-business complex. Oh yes, they've given lip service over the years to "agriculture" but that's about the extent of it - lip service. Many are the occasions when the subject gets mouthed, but that about stops it. Just try to get some rights of way, easements or permission for signs, farm-to-market roads, etc. Time was when the Chamber of Commerce Ag Committee was the nerve center of activity. Not today.
George Crookham, retired chief of the world famous seed company bearing his name, used to say relative to economic development: "Caldwell should do what Caldwell can do best, and that would be to become the best darned place in the west for farmers and ranchers to trade and the ancillary shops and businesses that service them." But the snobs and go-getting boosters of "public relations" for the sake of "public relations," who produce nothing, tend to relish cluck-clucking such as in an effort to get the "Famous Potatoes" taken off Idaho cars and pickup license plates. So:
*****
Razzberries for the poor, meager little signs directing newcomers off the interstate at Bob Nicholes Oil Co. truck stop (Highway 20 exit No. 29) to the Caldwell Airport. Until Gorbachev does completely away with our need for a military budget we are not likely to get a multi-million dollar freeway interchange at Ustick and I-84 for airport access.
Until then, why not some huge, attractive, reflective and colorful road signs leading those interested vehicles south from Nicholes' service station one mile to Chicago Street, then left one mile east to the airport? Simple, inexpensive and realistic.
We can afford this - and we could have it in this century. Egad! Think positive!
Smeed Gripes About Signs - Again!
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 18, 1990
Roses for the city of Caldwell for removing many of the aging diseased giant cork, elm and popular trees after these many years of heaving up the sidewalks with their huge root systems. When these trees are not topped every few years the wind "exercises" the trunk so it gets bigger each year in order to hold up the great big limbs heavily laden with leaves. "Nature builds the body to suit the load," it is aptly said. Note trees of the same age right here in town where their being topped regularly results in much smaller diameter trunks.
*****
Razzberries, however, for that same city, whose new Mayor Jim Dakan (at last, thank heaven) holds forth at City Hall. Nothing has moved him yet to repaint those gawdawful street signs. (SCHOOL XING STOP AHEAD, etc. etc.) in six-foot high painted letters stenciled on the pavement over the top of the old letters - except the new ones are about six inches offset to the side. (1) Makes one think he has double-vision. (2) Makes one's "pride" in the City Hall's management and employees, well, real special. Hmmmm?
Oh, sigh, it's not every stenciled sign in town. Nope, only about 25 percent of them. Unfortunately, though, they are on a few of the city's most heavily trafficked streets, e.g., on 5th Avenue near Albertson's. Oh, well, if Caldwellites are as dull-witted as some Boiseans apparently indicated recently to Teri Brandt, Caldwell's city management expert, maybe Smeed is the only one who notices. Or cares?
*****
Roses for the Hartwell Insurance Agency for what appears to be a full blown remodel of the former Harrison-Frank Agency on Cleveland Boulevard and 13th Avenue. At least the outside is getting a big-big facelift. Nice, attractive addition for Caldwell thanks to Hartwell.
*****
Roses also at that same location's annex formerly occupied by Gene Betts' Caldwell Travel Agency, which will be the new Caldwell office of JUB (civil) Engineers. Sumner Johnson, co-founder and president, tells me it will only be a satellite office until they get better situated, maybe someday, he hopes, in the not-too-far-distant future.
Formerly a privatized city engineer of Nampa (sometime after the 18th century) Johnson started his hometown of Nampa on a series of innovative moves to prepare that city for future growth. One item was to have his city survey crews place a survey marker at every major (and many minor) street intersections, as time allowed, and to keep the men busy. This way no one has to pay for a surveyor to wind around six or seven blocks from a survey monument when one needs a property description by a surveyor.
Secondly, Johnson, a gung-ho commercial development-minded engineer, played a seminal, if behind the scenes, role in Nampa's industrial park areas in the early days. He is a first-class promoter and though a little goofy, when it comes to sweet-talking the government agencies and the nature-huggers, his company has become one of, if not the biggest firms of its kind in the state.
Welcome to Caldwell, Sum, even if you are a teeny bit too liberal, I'm proud to admit we really are glad to have you.
*****
Razzberries to Nelson Mandela of South Africa (I may be crucified for this). Just prior to his recent release, the South African black leader sent a handwritten letter from prison to say he still supports the nationalization of mines, banks and other major industries in South Africa.
Hey, neighbor, how's that differ from pure communism? He thus affirms the long-held policy of the (communist dominated) African National Congress (ANC). He said any change in policy "is inconceivable." This from Reuter's international wire service Jan. 25. You'll notice we don't see this in our regular media. Wonder why?
*****
Razzberries for President Bush and America's knee-jerk liberal media. The latter's simplistic orgy of celebration for the black socialist seems to have catapulted Bush's left-leaning advisors (John Sununu, where are you now that we need you?) into following the media's frenzied lead. Bush has now invited Mandela to the White House.
We remember when GOP President Gerald Ford refused to see Nobel Prize winning anti-communist Alexandir Solzhenitsyn in the White House for fear of "offending" the U.S.S.R. This tell you something about the GOP?
This Headline Might Be Misleading
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
February 25, 1990
Whatever one might say about the news media, and that can be an understatement of great proportions, they, too, have their problems. Some, in fact, are mind-boggling.
One of these is writing headlines. They tell the reader more or less what the article or column is about. Hopefully, without sounding too dull. It is hoped also that the headline won't be too misleading. But believe me, my friends, the art (it is most assuredly not a science) can indeed allow lots of mischief.
Let me give you some examples taken from some of the nation's largest newspapers. Just remember that newspaper headlines are to a large extent what sells those papers so that their advertising, which pays 80 to 90 percent of the bills, will be read.
Statistics are not usually gathered on local papers but those examples which follow tell an unmistakable revealing story.
You will enjoy them more if you note the ideological slant the paper tends to follow, but all claim, of course, merely to be "objectively" reporting the facts. Now get this:
"Economy expanding, slightly stronger." That's from the conservative Washington Times, June 23.
Here's the headline from the liberal Washington Post, same subject, same day: "GNP Figures Indicate a Slowdown."
Remember the Post always tended to be critical of Reagan and now Bush, so one can expect a predictable slant in the headline even if - and it's a big if, of course - the story is straight. Not every paper does this on every story, for sure, but let's look at some others:
Washington Post, Oct. 19: "Poverty Level Stabilizes at 31 million." Then the Washington Times same day: "Number of Poor Fell, Census Bureau Says." In New York: "Number of Nation's Poor Remains at 32 Million For a Second Year." That's from the liberal New York Times the same day.
On the same subject the New York Daily News headline, same day, same subject: "New Method to Count Poor." (Subhead reads: "Census report makes 'em disappear.") Note how some tend to overdraw opposite conclusions from the same information or wire story.
Nicaragua's communist-leaning Sandinistas and anti-communist Contras provide lots of ideological grist for our nation's capital city's two papers, one on the collectivist side - the Post, and one on the non-collectivist side - the Times. The latter headlines: "Supposedly Neutral Tribunal Stacked to Favor Sandinistas." Here's the liberal Washgton Post, on the same subject, same day: "Managua Forms Panel Containing Opposition Members." (The Post usually paints Sandinistas in a favorable light).
Of course, one's sincerest observations can and often are swayed by a particular reporter's ethnic background, education, religion, political leanings, etc., but it is interesting to note that the "sway," if indeed there be one, is almost always in the direction of that paper's ideological thrust.
Even the beautiful and charming anchorlady for NBC's nightly news, Connie Chung, participated in it. Her "headline" is a short paragraph spoken on March 11:
"U.S. officials in Moscow said today they have been unable to determine, after meetings with patients in Soviet mental hospitals, whether they are being held because of their political beliefs."
The very next morning the gargantuan New York Times (NYT) headline, same subject: "U.S. Psychiatrists Fault Soviet Units." Subhead read, "Team Finds Inmates Are Still Held For Political Reasons."
Both NBC-TV and the NYT are liberal, but the notable item this time is that so far as we know Chung and NBC never bothered to "update" their rather convenient news gap.
Well, Chung is now with the even further-to-the-left CBS-TV. Maybe the leftwing Dan Rather's $3.6 million (that's right) annual salary will inspire her to greater heights - plus a bit more integrity.
Remember Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., who admitted to having a homosexual "house guest"? The latter was operating a homosexual call-boy business from Frank's apartment. Frank, himself an admitted homosexual, is even under attack from his entrenched colleagues.
Here's a conservative Washington Times headline Aug. 31 on him: "SEX SCANDAL PERILS FRANK" (Subhead, "Back home, constituents reconsider"). On the same day, same story, the liberal Washington Post headline read: "For Now, Constituents Supporting Rep. Frank." One paper for him; one against him. Same story.
Enjoy the headlines folks. The big print gives it to you; the small print takes it away.
Come On GOP, Get Aggressive
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 4, 1990
Here's an open "letter" to the Republican Party that Democrats, both state and national, may or may not enjoy. Stay with me.
This writer has for many years been saying that between the two political parties, "there's not a dime's worth of difference." Like all generalizations, of course, there are a few exceptions. But the matter may deserve a better look. Why? Because there is at least a dime's worth of difference. Maybe even 15 cents' worth.
Still, if there is such a small difference why make so much of a fuss about it as the media folks tend to do? They try this mostly during campaigns or when the Legislature is in session. Well, they have to sell papers and, there not being much of substance to write about, they write much about nothing.
As a matter of fact, this syndrome has become almost pathological. Perhaps the most egregious case is the way the liberal media has drummed into us how "negative" was the recent Bush-Dukakis campaign for president. The campaign, of course, was not negative at all. At least it wasn't in any substantive sense of the word.
For example, Dukakis' tender and loving treatment of Willie Horton, the brutal, convicted killer was singled out by the national GOP campaign managers for extra publicity. It worked. But the media mongering collectivists jumped all over Bush for running a "negative campaign" - when the Horton holocaust turned out to be about a black man. So what? Thank heaven for both presidential candidates' effort to tell the voting public just what the differences between them were. That's about all they did. And they both are to be congratulated for it.
But that's the way our sick society works, ladies and gentlemen. The substance "well" has gone dry. So much so, in fact, that when some substance does indeed show up the media airheads go berserk with the name-calling.
So, e pluribus ignoramus illegitmus non-corborundum, that is, don't let the stupid bastards grind you down. Hang in there folks. Common sense is scarce, but not illegal - yet.
Now then, it need not be that way forever. If the Democrats won't do it the Republicans should make lemonade out of the lemons. That's what opportunity is all about. Well, isn't it?
"OK Ralph," said a high Republican official not long ago, "you are all the time giving the GOP a bad time. So what do you suggest we could do right?"
Beautiful! I thought he'd never ask. I asked him why he thought there were so few young people in the Republican party. The reason, of course, is that, with mighty few exceptions, GOpers are stuffy. And, again with a few exceptions, so are the Young Republicans. Why? Because the dull ones tend to be the only ones the senior party members can stand. Boat rockers are just not welcome.
Let me hasten to add that all of this is not intended to insult, nor even to irritate, the Grand Old Party members. Many of these have fought the good fight for more than a generation. Many of them at great personal sacrifice. But little has come of it. Far too little. Yet it need not be this way.
What could the GOP do? Reform! How? First of all, they should stop their sinful ways of following the liberal media's lead with their political nose up the media's armpit. The two entities are at political odds with each other. So, recognize that! Talk about it. Confront it in an open manner. Be up front and straightforward about it. Have some fun at the media's "expense" whenever possible. And it is possible. A few of the media, in fact, respect candor.
Even the more or less liberal-to-statist, Pam Bengson, R-Boise, chairwoman of the powerful House State Affairs Committee, remarked recently on TV that the public abortion hearing was a success: "Except, perhaps, for you newspeople who weren't able to film anybody being dragged, kicking and screaming, from the hearing room." She smiled! She's charming. But she said it. And my hat's off to her for doing it.
Let's encourage Republican State Chairman Randy Ayre (no gut wagon, he) to make substance a beginning. Sell the "pragmatics of principle." Symms and I did it in 1972. And Symms would do it again - if he had a little help from back home. My guess is he'd love it.
For starters, Ayre could invite to Idaho Roy Innis, black president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), for a big Idaho GOP function. Or, he could invite another famous celebrity, James Meredith, who is the first black man to enter the University of Mississippi. He's now assistant to the great U.S. senator, Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.
Recognizing either of these two fine black heroes would amaze the GOP-hating media, greatly motivate the substance-starved Idaho Young Republicans - and weaken the Democrats' robotic death-hold on colored minorities.
GOP's Thin Dime Gets Thinner
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 11, 1990
Last week's readers of this column were treated to some realistic suggestions (believe it or not) to the Republican Party, in general, and the Idaho branch in particular. But there's more to the story.
Now then, nobody likes advice, especially when it's critical. Still, unless there is some crisis or trauma, one probably doesn't need any advice or suggestions, but the crisis is here.
Notice then, if you will, the GOP has steadfastly gone downhill to the extent much hand-wringing is now taking place worrying whether or not somebody - anybody - will run for governor against incumbent liberal Democrat Cecil Andrus.
It isn't just Andrus the pachyderm party worries about either. If no one merges to contest Andrus he will no doubt spend most of his huge campaign war chest money to virtually "buy" enough seats (now held by the Republicans) so that the Democrats will control the state Senate. The GOP margin is already slim and, given the plethora of liberal Republican state senators, Andrus needs very little more power to visit his socialist tendencies upon the state with impunity.
Like it or not, there really is a "dime's worth of difference" between the parties, yet it looks at least likely at this point that Andrus may have clear sailing to exercise the arrogance of too much power. But for that one dime he might even be king.
Why is it that Idaho, said to be conservative state, or Republican anyway, is so fast losing to the Andrus liberal left? Well, the GOP liberals have run off most of their non-liberal, solid, bedrock conservatives. What follows is a kind of review of a few sad cases.
No doubt some of these losses are understandable, perhaps even warranted. Jim Risch, R-Boise, former Senate pro tem, was said to be almost as arrogant and high-handed as Andrus. He even openly opposed in the primary the incumbency of Sen. Ranchel Gilbert, R-Boise, a conservative whose acid tongue tended to keep him "honest." His defeat was even mildly applauded by many GOP legislators. Nonetheless, Risch gave some leadership to his party's opposition to Andrus and the latter's liberaldom.
Then there is U.S. Sen. Steve Symms, a bedrock conservative if there ever was one, but who installed his best political friend's worst enemy as a key assistant. Oriette Sinclair of Twin Falls, longtime hardrock Rockefeller Republican and longtime fierce foe of former conservative Congressman George Hansen, runs both Symms' and Jim McClure's Twin Falls offices. Hansen, for whatever the liberal media and the liberal Republicans had to say about him, played a powerful and key role in conservative Idaho politics for years. He was especially helpful in Symms' election campaigns in eastern Idaho.
Hansen, you may remember, defeated super-liberal Republican Orval Hansen for the U.S. House of Representatives and then fought long and hard in each of Symms' subsequent campaigns. Long a zealous promoter of the liberal Orval Hansen's tenure in Idaho politics, Sinclair is said by many to have used her relatively key spot in the McClure-Symms Idaho offices to wage a bitter effort to defeat conservative George Hansen. She and her liberal GOP pals succeeded.
Why? I don't know. But I do know former Speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives Tom Stivers, R-Twin Falls, and former Rep. Ralph Olmstead, R-Twin Falls, both begged Symms and his ideologically insensitive chief of staff, Phil Reberger, not to appoint liberal Republican Sinclair. But to no avail.
Jim Goller, longtime Boise moderate statist and chief aide to McClure, had recommended Sinclair to Reberger and the appointment held. Holds today.
There's more, of course, some examples of which make more sense than others. But the conservative GOP stronghold in the Twin Falls area is no longer strong. Small wonder conservative Stivers is gone from the Idaho Legislature.
Bob Forrey, R-Nampa, a real conservative stalwart, is gone. A victim of a sad lack of support from GOP leadership at both county and state level, Forrey is another case in point.
Curiously enough, conservative-to-middle-of-the-road Congressman Larry Craig recently hosted a high level medical conference in Boise. Guess who he hired to put it together? Orval Hansen! He (Orval) is now a political "consultant" in Insane City, D.C. From the standpoint of conservatives, who naturally loathe socialized medicine, Craig's medical conference was a "natural" disaster. A set-up for more government.
Yes, folks, there is a dime's worth of difference between the two political parties. But when our moderates, our liberals and even our conservatives want to suck and blow in the same breath that "dime" gets pretty thin.
So thin, in fact, the voters are beginning to see right through it.
Both Parties Push More Government
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 18, 1990
Things were going along fairly well, but something happened on the way to the office. What office? Why, public office, of course. And it ain't all peaches and cream either, i.e., in Idaho politics.
So the good news is that the Idaho Legislature is controlled by a simple majority (no pun intended). But the bad news is that this puts all the committee chairmanships under GOP control. Depending on how one's philosophy affects one's choices, this may be good news or bad, but these committee chairmanships are still very powerful.
Most powerful of all is the speaker of the House of Representatives who gets to name all the other chairmen and, for the most part, even which members serve on which committees. These people, then, tend to set the tone for the particular session, including which issues get the most attention. It is rare indeed when a committee gets up to bat at all - if the speaker doesn't want it to.
And it is here where all is not well in the Idaho Legislature, including both houses. This session may well go down in history as one of the most meddling and interfering in almost every Idahoan's life. Simply put, this means more government, more taxes and more bureaucrats on the payroll. Too bad, too.
One of the ways to avoid this growing tide of more and more government is the arena of privatization. You may have noticed, by the way, that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain is the world's champion privatizer of all time. To the non-communists and non-socialists of the world, this is good news. But lots of Idahoans seem to overlook Thatcher's successes.
At least our legislators seem to be blind when it comes to using privatization on the growing list of government services and government-owned businesses, real estate, etc.
Former Speaker of the House Tom Stivers, R-Twin Falls, saw this situation getting worse and worse over the years and, hence, made considerable effort to do something about it. for one thing he installed a new committee entitled the Privatization Committee in the House during the last two or three years before he retired. Unfortunately his successor, Tom Boyd, R-Genesee, has seen fit to give almost zero enthusiastic support to said committee. This is sad, sad, sad, especially for the Republican Party whose platforms ostensibly give big emphasis to the private sector. How phony. Small wonder, then, government gets bigger and bigger. "Pass a law, pass a law" is fast becoming both parties' theme song. East Germany, here we come.
The Idaho Senate, while not so dictatorial in the power given to its chieftains, is nonetheless given to much the same tendencies. Still, to her everlasting credit, Sen. Rachel Gilbert, R-Boise, chairman of the influential Senate Committee on Local Government and Taxation, appointed a subcommittee last year on, believe it or not, privatization.
Unfortunately, Gilbert appointed herself and colleague Sen. Atwell Parry, R-Melba, co-chairmen of that Senate committee. With responsibility thus divided, her deregulation and privatization effort this year has gone nowhere.
Still and all, the main trouble among Idaho lawmakers is lack of genuine sentiment for anything but passing more and more laws. A case with Congress may illustrate similar mental mindset from which Idaho lawmakers could learn:
"Airline passenger traffic has doubled since 1978, fueled by lower competitive prices after deregulation of fares, saving U.S. consumers at least $100 billion, but politicians have prevented (even) a single new airport from opening. A Department of Transportation study shows that fares are 26 percent lower in real terms than before deregulation. Yet Congress seems bent on re-regulating the airlines."
This important story was reported in the Wall Street Journal, Aviation Week and the Washington Times last month - according to the Daily News Digest. But the Idaho GOP leaders' intellectual constipation seems to transcend all. It keeps them from seeing much of anything, anywhere, that is good and newsworthy about the private sector.
That is, unless, of course, those GOPers can figure yet another way for their special interest pals to license it, regulate it or put a government bureau into competition against that private sector.
Who knows? What with Eastern Europe abandoning communism, perhaps Idaho Democrats will now abandon socialism (don't laugh). They might take up free enterprise in the next session of the Idaho Legislature.
It looks as if the Republicans are losing their long-held majority there.
Holiday Not Panacea for Blacks
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
March 25, 1990
In the mail a week or two ago I received a short essay from a friend, one of the state's more significant politicians, explaining his position favoring the Martin Luther King compulsory state holiday for Idaho.
During a visit prior to receiving the "explanation," I had questioned my political friend as to the wisdom of such a mandated holiday for Idaho. Inasmuch as the paid-holiday feature would cost many businesses a considerable sum of money I thought it an unwise use of state power. An unpaid holiday, I suggested, if the symbolism of King was to be seen as of vital importance, would serve just as well. My friend wasn't so sure.
But it isn't just businesses which would pay for employees' unearned one-day salaries. I'm told Canyon County, for example, has about 350 employees earning an average of about $65 per day. That's $22,750 of tax money that must come from somewhere. New taxes, if you please. There are, of course, some 44 counties in Idaho and several thousand state employees about whom folks tend to forget. These wages cost real dough.
But to put a period behind the Martin Luther King holiday essay from my friend I should say it consisted almost entirely of his vigorous denunciations against racism. He had seen such human rights indignities visited upon blacks in the South during World War II that he felt ever so strongly something should be done to denounce racism.
To such an observation I not only agree, but I have an overwhelming response, namely, "me too." Still, to use the power of the state for a compulsory paid holiday at "government" expense, well, there is probably a better way to promote peace and freedom.
Comes now J.A. Parker, editor of Lincoln Review of Washington, D.C. This very bright black man has been an activist in racial causes in and around the Insane City for a long time. His organization's publication, Issues & Views, is subtitled "An open forum on issues affecting the black community." It is also one of the few authentic, if one can use that word in today's atmosphere of the hot-headed liberal guilt-trip visited upon America, dissenting black voices. His is real moderation in the public affairs of race, believe it or not.
Since neither the TV, radio nor the print media seem willing to tell us much of the Parkers, Walter Williams, brilliant professor of economics at George Mason University, and other black experts, let's look at what these unusually keen but dissenting blacks have to say. It is to their own "colorful" (pun intended) way of solving race problems that Issues & Views is dedicated. A recent issue explains:
"How did we spend the 1980s? Why, the same way we spent the 1970s, of course - busying ourselves with protests and demonstrations, engaging in coercion and intimidation. We spent it doing our famous re-run of the 1960s - making whites take notice, move over and GIVE. And, as in those former times, we were aided and abetted by a civil rights leadership that now, more than ever, survives only by the use of racial hype and symbolic posturing in its (their) determination to keep the black masses linked to them.
"And why do we stay linked to these people? Because we still have not turned our efforts toward attaining genuine economic independence ... which our defenders promise will come to us through their efforts.
"(We) ... have always understood that what is true for all ethnic groups is true for blacks, that is, poverty will be overcome, not by mouthing catchy slogans, but by making the capitalist system work for us.
"What a precedent could have been set back then (in the days of bus boycotts and picketing restaurants, hotels, stores, etc.) by the man of the hour, who possessed the moral authority to break with the traditional routine of teaching blacks merely to make demands on others.
"How different our history might have been if the precedent had been to set, to translate every act of racism against us into a business initiative ... if those leading figures had taken the advice of so many blacks, who were exhorting us to 'Buy the damned luncheonettes and hotels!'
"But Martin Luther King was simply representative of those earlier establishment black leaders - those who, in the early 1900s, had denounced Booker T. Washington, the late, famous black, for his insistence on economic (as opposed to political) power through property ownership ... and emphasis on capital investment and development ..."
The compulsory holiday for King, then, is for most a sincere gesture. But to solve problems it is a poor substitute for capitalism which, property understood, is also color-blind.
Blackmail Works But Hurts Innocents
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 1, 1990
The state of Idaho has finally made the "front pages" of America. The so-called savants and sages of the TV anchor newsreaders, such as CBS-TV's Dan Rather and other left-wing sensationalists are indeed salivating behind their annual multi-million dollar salaries (e.g., Rather's obscene salary is a clean $3.6 million per year - believe it or not).
Abortion is what's done it. Or, rather, anti-abortion. HB 625 was passed into law last week by a handy majority in both houses of the Idaho legislature thus making 90 percent of the state's 1,500 abortions (last year) against the law. Gov. Cecil Andrus, though an extreme liberal in many ways, is hung up on the horns of a real dilemma crossing both liberal and conservative lines.
Not since the days of prohibition of booze in the 1930s have we seen such heated debate and heretofore rational people going off the deep end denouncing one or the other side of "pro-life" or "pro-choice."
So emotional has the debate become that two important male citizens of Caldwell, one supported Andrus last election and one fought him, swore to the effect that they would vote for a communist next time rather than for State Sen. "Skip" Smyser, R-Parma.
The latter, of course, is presently running for the seat in Congress to be left vacant by GOP Congressman Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and has been especially vocal in his opposition to abortion.
Smyser could be forgiven what might be called typical campaign rhetoric and exaggeration or overkill. Indeed he may even mitigate his heretofore militant stand against abortion on demand. Time will tell. But emotions are running high. Too high. Way, way, too high. Far higher than many of us who knew full well the abortion bill would be fiercely controversial even imagined.
In fact the Idaho potato itself has come into the hysterical limelight. A national boycott of our state's most famous product has been singled out for being held hostage. Or, better said, the Idaho farmer - the potato growers have been singled out for being held hostage. Egad!
That tells us something, nonetheless. Perhaps those "ragheads" in the Muslim countries who kidnapped U.S. civilians - innocent third parties - to be held hostage against America for "negotation" purposes were right? Perhaps American school teachers whose secondary boycott against schoolchildren are right. They hold students hostage, so-to-speak, during the teacher's strikes for higher pay. Students are innocent third parties too. Well, aren't they?
The labor unions in America have always been fond of trying to put the voters on a guilt trip in order to pass laws clearly prejudicial to - you guessed it - innocent, third parties. It works. We in America, including Idahoans, unwittingly perhaps, have clearly been a party to this damned hostage business. Now our political chickens have come home to roost. They've been headed this way for years.
Even Idaho's fledgling grape and wine business has come in for a dose of economic blackmail to pressure Andrus to veto the anti-abortion bill. The Symms winery, makers of the now famous Ste. Chapelle table wine, received two threats last week. Two restaurants in Seattle phoned the Symms' office to say they were taking Ste. Chapelle wine off their menu if the Idaho governor didn't veto the anti-abortion bill. Good gosh almighty.
Blackmail works, my friends. Does it hurt third parties? Of course it does. Just as America's absolutely asinine economic boycott (sanctions) against South Africa has hurt the black - innocent third parties - more than the white racists. Furthermore, not all whites in South Africa are racists. They are the hostages.
Hey, fellow Americans, our politicians have been playing fast and loose with our private lives for years, even, some say, playing God.
This writer does not mean to make light of an awfully serious and sorry subject. But passing a law merely because your "gang" (of politicians) has a 51 percent or a 61 percent or a 70 percent majority won't work. Indeed, it may not even by virtuous at all - as this column has for years been trying, not altogether successfully, to say. We simply have far, far, too much government. Note the sheer number of laws we've just passed.
For a law to succeed, its intent must first by fully acceptable or fully confusing to the overwhelming bulk of the citizenry. America's law that made murder illegal was already fully acceptable to the public - morally, before the law was passed. It was also fully understood.
If we can't sell morality from the pulpit or the home, and it seems clear we are failing, perhaps the best place we ought to look for it is in our own mirrors - not in our politics.
Hold the Applause for Gorby
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 8, 1990
One wonders, given the media's penchant for probing and pressing potentially embarrassing questions to America's anti-communist politicians, why should we hear so very little of Mikhail Gorbachev's communist/socialist side, i.e., his domestic background? We should hear and understand it, too, since our new foreign policy rests so hard on his policies. To that end let's take a little closer look.
Vladimar Bukovsky, the brilliant Russian dissident now living in America, spent 12 years in Soviet prisons and mental "hospitals" trying to get his country to soften its communist and tyrannical policies. He gives us a whole new look in his latest newsletter "Democracy Bulletin." It's published by the American Foundation for Resistance International, an outfit with first-class credentials.
Bukoveky's bulletin tells us what Gorby said on Soviet TV in 1988: "In October 1917 we parted with the Old World, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving towards a new world, the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road."
Then on Feb. 5, 1990, addressing the Central Committee of the Communist Party, he said: "Our ideal is a humane, democratic socialism, expressing the interests of the working class ... and relying on the great legacy of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the Soviet Communist Party is creatively developing socialist ideas to match present-day realities and with due account for the entire experience of the 20th century."
The man has spoken. It could not be clearer, Bukovsky explained. A Communist Party, "cleaned up" with a human face. There is only one problem. The Soviet people don't want it.
"The universal desire to 'save Gorbachev', darling of the West, Man of the Decade (cover of Time magazine, remember?) is totally irrational", Bukovsky tells us.
Writing in his own column, Bukovsky inquires: "Save (Gorbachev) from whom? From his people, who want democracy instead of a one-party state? From the enslaved nations' desire for self-determination? From the necessity to dismantle socialism instead of reforming it? For these are exactly the forces threatening gorbachev; these are what the West would in reality be saving him from."
It's an interesting aside that the American liberal TV media tells us, almost daily, that it is the "conservative" members of the party from whom Gorby really needs protecting. Lately our media moguls have even taken to labeling the bad Soviet establishment as "right-wingers." Egad! One guesses the U.s. media cannot see a "left-winger" on either side of the ocean.
"First let us realize," Bukovsky goes on, "that contrary to popular belief, Gorbachev did not himself invent the renowned policies of glasnost and perestroika. He was simply chosen to implement them. In his own admission the policies were worked out before he came to power.
"Speaking a year ago to an assembly of editors of Soviet periodicals he disclosed that at least 110 papers were submitted by different research centers and (Soviet) brain trusts on order from the Central Committee, providing a blueprint for future policies; the papers were commissioned (even submitted) before he succeeded Chernenko. Even then the Poliburo was aware of the coming crisis, aware that it must reform or die.
"We therefore do not owe Gorbachev any dbt of gratitude for his novel policies, and we should not grieve too much if he is finally removed. The party, his master, can always find another performer, perhaps even a better one.
"The promise of socialism, that the workers would enjoy the fruits of their labor, (has been) broken. Hence the now-famous joke of the Soviet worker: 'We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.' The workers did not work, black markets flourished, corruption of managers and diversion of resources became endemic. The economy was failing to serve the (Soviet) party; naturally, the party would change this."
We are deeply indebted to the bright and dedicated Bukovsky, who is also president of the above-mentioned international, newsletter for resistance to run-away governments.
But we're also indebted to a welcome if awfully tardy, gesture recently on America's national TV (Geraldo and 20/20) who are taking some potshots at our own "KGB", i.e., the IRS. There's an estimated $100 billion black market here at home, which really enrages the IRS, but they seem most arrogant toward little people.
Reminds one of Leonard Peikoff's book "Ominous Parallels" (Between post WWI Germany and the USA today). But then we all should feel safe since America's foreign aide will probably bail Gorby out if he loses Lithuania and the other little people.
Up To Our 'Wastelines' with Bush
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 15, 1990
There is a tabloid paper entitled "Government Waste Watch" which is the newsletter of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) headquartered - wouldn't you guess - in Washington, D.C. It is a by-product of the old Grace Commission.
Citizens of Treasure Valley area will remember J. Peter Grace, the industrial tycoon who spoke at the College of Idaho's Jewett Auditorium in Caldwell some years ago. It was on the evening Vice President George Bush debated Geraldine Ferarro. As each was a candidate for vice president of the U.S. and the TV debate stood to bring a big viewing audience that night, some of us sort of held our breath for fear Grace's speech would draw only a small crowd.
As luck would have it, however, the flamboyant big businessman was to have his day in court, after all, about government waste. Jewett's 950 seating capacity was almost full - to the absolute delight of the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA) under whose sponsorship Grace came to Caldwell. His message against government waste could be construed to virtually echo CSMA's major theme since 1975, i.e., showing how market alternatives (free and private ones) should be the wave of the future, yet are often poorly portrayed on most campuses.
Located on the edge of the C of I campus, although not affiliated therewith, the Center was fortunate to get Grace to bring his message here for two reasons: (1) "Mid western hills there's a college ..." and a pretty liberal one at that, and (2) because Grace and Idaho industrialist Jack Simplot were already acquainted, thus affording a good opportunity to get Simplot to introduce the famous guest - and help draw a crowd. He did, and it worked.
It is an interesting aside that Simplot is a lontime trustee and benefactor of the C of I, but about the only one with the good sense or the temerity to use the word "capitalism" in his speeches. Furthermore, sad to say, the subject seldom ever finds its way into the consciousness of most college professors who also survive on its fruits.
Comes now after all these past several years Grace's "ghost" of capitalism, if you will, namely, government waste and excessiveness. That is - too much government. This newsletter "Waste Watch," whose address is 1301 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 400, Insane City, D.C. 20036, reminds us that President George Bush is no conservative ideologue bent upon reducing government. No sir!
On board as vice president of Ronald Reagan's "conservative" bandwagon, Bush saw Grace appointed by the Great Communicator to reduce government waste, hence he (Bush) should really be "waste conscious." Consider:
Two years past schedule and $385 million over budget, the first of President Bush's two new huge Boeing 747-200 Bs will be delivered in September 1990.
"... the aircraft, (each of) which will carry 23 crew members and 70 passengers, rises six stories and has six lavatories, several conference rooms, a television system that will broadcast eight channels at once, a mini-hospital, 85 telephones ... and even refrigerators and freezers to hold enough food to feed 93 people for a week.
"The two Boeing airplanes were originally contracted to be built for $265 million, but (with) the additional $50 million for the new hangar built at Andrews Air Force Base and about $100 million for service and maintenance units, the cost is now about $800 million (note that's only $200 million under $1 billion).
"The total expenses to operate Air Force One is enough money to run the state of Idaho, whose annual budget is $790 million, for one year.
"It would take the annual income tax of 187,916 average American taxpayers to afford this $800 million aircraft ... said Tom Schatz, senior vice president of Mr. Grace's Citizens Against Government Waste. (CAGW).
"The new Air Force One, also known as the flying Taj Mahal, will cost around $6,000 an hour to keep in the air."
It is interesting, in the extreme, to note how easily politicians of both parties justify spending huge sums of money when that money is not their own.
It is also "in the extreme" when those self-same political leaders, both state and national, often justify said spending by calling it "being responsible." Egad!
Now then, nationally, I'm told, it costs $5,000 to $15,000 to adopt a baby. Since this, too, is more or less "managed" by the government, one wonders if abortion won't soon be getting to be even more popular.
Still, the suspicion lingers, since so much government is born of a kind of "rape" (or is it incest?), perhaps it should be legal to abort it.
But, then, methinks Idaho's governor would be a cinch to veto that, too.
Our Earth Is Not Going to Hell
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 22, 1990
What is so memorable about April 22? Why, that is to be Earth Day, the day of the "tree huggers" and the "Earth huggers" who will be celebrating - among other apocalyptic concerns for busy-bodies - gloom, glum and glory. The Earth, they tell us, is going to hell.
Well now, one could very well make something of a case for such an observation, particularly if one thinks about it for a bit.
Education comes to mind. We spend more and more on it each year while getting back less and less. Even big businessmen who are known to fire whole departments in their own companies for nowhere near such poor performances seek the public limelight pleading the case for higher and higher taxes to pay for lower and lower national test scores in government schools. Why?
Aside from education's seemingly fanatic preoccupation with the term ecology, one guesses it thrives at the expense of the three R's. In any event, the left-wing media in America is right in there "educating" at least 90 percent of the time. Nonetheless, it is about the other 10 percent that I want to tell you. It's really quite noteworthy.
In Seattle last week on business I picked up a copy of the Seattle Times. Chiefly, I suspect, to renew my hatred for the almost totally anti-capitalist newspaper industry, but low and behold I was wrong. There on page A-16 was a full page devoted entirely to telling the other side of the environmental extremists' crusade. I couldn't believe it, but there it was - a full page.
Oh sure, the rest of the Seattle paper was more or less full of the regular stuff worshiping Earth Day doomsayers (you hear it all year long) but here was at least a warm and friendly handshake for some balance. The sub-headline read "A new twist on (the) old gloom/doom theory.
"Environmentalists long ago learned what every auto mechanic and Bible-belt rabble rouser and real estate panic artist has always known: Bad news is profitable news. As a sales device, the apocalypse is an endlessly renewable resource."
Adapted from a Reason magazine article, an editorial writer for Scripps-Howard News Service, Andrew Ferguson, thereby paid a high compliment to the nation's biggest and in many ways the best popular libertarian publication for intelligent laymen.
The author explained that Michael Clark, chief of "Friends of the Earth," told the New York Times last year: "We are driven by the fact that we don't have much time left to act, maybe 10 years.
"His language evokes the gloom-and-doom prediction that surrounded the first Earth Day in 1970. The event received miles of footage on the evening (TV) news and managed to induce a kind of coast-to-coast, day-long hysteria in which normally sane Americans did things they would never have dreamed of doing for a (college) fraternity hazing.
"Life magazine told us that by 1980 city dwellers would need gas masks. And NBC's Edwin Newman, his sunken eyes darkening ... warned his viewers that by 1980 the mighty rivers of this great nation would have reached the boiling point."
These left-leaning types remind one of the late, great C.S. Lewis who noted the double-standard by which our intellectuals and idea folk judge today's events:
"If our age goes down in history for anything special it is apt to be for its 'selective indignation.'"
And, if memory serves, I saw an old New York Times full page article written in the days when the street cars, milk wagons, vegetable carts and vendors of all kinds were drawn by horses. That day's doomsayers viewed with alarm:
"We have calculated that the streets of New York City will soon be a foot deep in horse manure." One could guess they did not at that time "calculate" the huge quantities of horse-manure destined in later years to come from this country's hordes of bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C.
Let us hasten to note that not all of today's foolishness and fad chasing comes from the schools. Much foolishness and gloom saying does indeed come from the media, both print and electronic, but there are those still, small voices in newsy walks of life who do try to give a little balance. Call it "unequal" time.
One more of these came from the Boston Globe. It's another small glimmer of hope saying. "... (last month) a documented NASA research project doused the fires of ecology-for-fun-and-profit with ... a spoilsport government report casting additional doubt on the theory of global warming and the greenhouse effect."
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Balance in life may be impossible - everybody exaggerates!"
But, sad to report, Emerson studies are fast becoming one of those "endangered" species itself.
Gorby, Glasnost and the U.S. Media
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
April 29, 1990
The story I am about to relate right here, ladies and gentlemen, should be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States. Maybe it will. Let me explain, because it's no joke.
U.S. Sen. Steve Symms, R-Idaho, is calling for President George Bush to pull back off his subdued, if well-intentioned, saber-rattling directed at the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev on Lithuania's "right to life."
As everybody knows, Gorbachev wants the Lithuanians apparently mean business and don't care much whether Gorbachev and Mother Russia like it or not - approve of it or not. One gets the impression they don't like or don't trust Gorby and his rather numerous promises to be a reformed good guy dictator.
The national news media and some others have been noisily insisting that Bush put more pressure on Gorbachev to give Lithuania its just desserts, namely, its freedom and independence which they are in one helluva hurry to get back.
Perhaps they remember past opportunities lost when other small countries had only a brief time to save themselves. "Strike hard while the iron is hot." That's what it's called out West. Freedom counts. The Lithuanians want it and they want it now.
Still, it isn't exactly clear just what the media wants Bush to do. What form, that is, that said pressure should take. We remember when the Chinese dictators realized the thousands of students in Tiananmen Square were serious about their demands for freedom. The Oriental butchers turned the army's machine guns loose. Then the children-demonstrators were run over by tanks while in their tents in which many were sleeping, camped there in the huge, huge public square. Translated, Tiananmen means "gate of heavenly peace." Egad.
Urged at that time to impose economic sanctions against China, Bush merely replied, "We don't want to be too hasty. We might hurt the people we want to help." He meant the civilians, of course. Never mind Bush has been quite willing to leave the U.S. sanctions in force against the South African blacks who still suffer therefrom. It's a lousy double-standard.
But the president's choices in the Lithuanian independence crisis are not all that many, so he is doing his dead level best in the tradition of America's Madison Avenue-type foreign relations contest. So what else can he do but make public gestures "demanding" Gorby behave better?
So, what does Gorby do? He tells everybody to go to hell. He knows what to do, and he's doing it. He is shutting off the oil and gas from the Lithuanians and there's more to come - maybe. So, what to do?
Comes now Sen. Symms, the famous, gutsy and outspoken anti-communist from Idaho, said by some of his liberal critics to be a kind of warmonger. Why? Because he votes for almost all the war budget items for defense. But this time Symms is calling for a "peace attack." The flamboyant conservative says Bush should call immediately for a pullback of his well-meaning interference with the Gorbachev vs. Lithuania game of Russian roulette. We could even be unnecessarily risking a war though, of course, no one really wants one.
"For the reason," explains Symms, "we should instead be demanding a worldwide television debate, between Lithuania and its leaders vs. Gorbachev and his Soviet leaders." Call it "honest glasnost," for Gorby's credibility.
Such a worldwide debate via satellite on worldwide television might even rival the world Olympic games sports spectacular. Whether Gorby agreed or not wouldn't matter a bit. He'd be on the world-TV spot.
Symms has already placed a phone call to TV tycoon and leftist organizer of CNN-TV, Ted Turner, to ask his enthusiastic support for such a TV spectacular as the world has never seen. He is also placing a call to the left-leaning (my label, not Symms')
League of Women Voters to help with, if not perhaps even moderate, the potentially mind-boggling TV exchange. "With this kind of war of words," Symms claims, "when open, plain-spoken, frank and forthright without the centuries old game of liars poker we could be launching a brand new era of peace mongering. I don't know how the liberal media could possibly screw it up.
"Just think," said Symms, "the Lithuanians vs. Gorby show just might put NBC-TV's Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey down alongside of ABC-TV's Larry Chase and Dan Smede (Nampa, Channel 6) where they belong.
"All kidding aside," said the controversial former apple growing senator, "I'm dead serious in this worldwide TV debate thing - we should have been demanding it long before now."
But don't hold your breath waiting to see Symms' fantastically clever and innovative plan as an interview in the left-leaning national news media.
Still, if you agree with him, get off your own butt and send him a telegram. He will need your moral support, believe it or not. So don't delay - the republic may hang by a thread.
Let's Revive Courtesy, Manners
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 6, 1990
It is sometimes thought to be dull to write seriously about courtesy. Perhaps it is partly because the traditional way of teaching courtesy has been to recommend it as a duty and/or a kind of mild-mannered sacrifice. Too bad.
Let's look at it another way, just for kicks. Who knows? You may see it in a new light, if not a better one. I am suggesting that maybe - just maybe - courtesy, when extended to others, could be in our own best "selfish" interest. Here's why:
Folks tend to think if they are courteous that somehow they are being subservient to the other person or persons. In truth, however, it just may be the other way around. If one thinks about it the least bit carefully, an act of courtesy will mark the person extending it as a real lady or gentleman (includes children, too, especially when coupled with a genuine respect for adults).
Again, an act of courtesy is in every good sense of the word an excellent way of saying "I Care." Does that sound a bit too comy or candy-fanny? Maybe. But consider what the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s have sold us on. "Nobody cares." Courtesy means caring.
This isn't to suggest we look to the hippies or the hippie communes for cultural leadership. It is only to say they made their mark, especially on campus U.S.A., and many of those self-same young people are now in our media and other positions of leadership - like it or not. I digress a bit, but only to help make my point which quite possibly is, indeed, a little obscure since courtesy, good taste and manners have tended to lay dormant for so many years. We should revive them.
Courtesy, if we could but look at it, without our goodie-goodie two shoes mind-set, is, or would be, a big asset if we could bring ourselves to use it for our own best (forgive me) selfish interest. Call it enlightened self-interest. It sounds a little smoother put that way.
I'm dead serious, my friends. I hope to be understood, but stay with me now and I'll try to show it yet another way. Maybe it will come through clearer, i.e., this "selfish" bit.
Properly considered in the light of what I'm trying to suggest, courtesy could and does, often without our even being aware of it, take the place of a whole lot of legislation. To the growing number of people who think we have too many laws already - take heart. Supporting courtesy in whatever aggressive and effective way you can, for selfish reasons, will work. Or, to put it another way, for survival and sanity it's also great. Schools, churches, homes, boy and girl scouts come to mind, but opportunities abound. The only thing needed is peer-group pressure of the right kind and - you guessed it - enlightened self-interest. The traffic problem would improve too.
State Rep. Dolores Crow, R-Nampa, tells me the last legislative session considered 1,305 pieces of legislation; 806 bills made it to one or another committee with 443 finding their way into law; 84 memorials, resolutions or proclamation were considered almost half of which become "law." Egad!
I do hope the reader will consider this radical, unusual and perhaps even strange slant I'm putting on the subject of courtesy because it's a delicate little plant that can, if encouraged, grow up into a giant tree under which we can enjoy real responsibility and security. Laws, on the other hand, rarely succeed anyhow, outside a dictatorship, unless they are already overwhelmingly understood and accepted among the citizenry. Remember the 1920s prohibition of booze. Bad stuff? Sure! But some folks are awfully bent to go to hell in their own way. It is a victimless crime, anyway, until and unless the boozer hurts somebody. Hard to legislate morals.
But there is a great statement in the King James Bible, first book of Peter 3:8, which tells us to: "Have compassion for one another, love our brethren, be pitiful and courteous." (The term "pitiful" could well be used to describe the mess we are getting ourselves into via such an asinine load of laws, more and more each and every year. Just think, also, how much more it will cost to merchandise groceries in Albertsons, M & W and Pennywise stores when they have to put glass over their merchandise to prevent stealing). It all begins with courtesy and its moral and spiritual antecedents. It's selfish too. And it works.
Albert Jay Nock, the late, great individualist, literary genius author and social commentator said, "The difference between civilized man and barbarians is after all, good taste and manners."
Now, that's mostly what courtesy is all about. So let's just hope the politicians don't try to legislate courtesy too.
When Love Motivates, We Volunteer
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 13, 1990
It is perhaps the height of sadness to forget or neglect to say something nice to your mother, especially when your good intentions were just blanked out by your "never having got around to it."
Sound familiar? Of course it does. At least it does to most of us ordinary souls for whom this famous slogan was writ: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." And well it must be paved, indeed, for it has to be an exceptionally well-traveled road.
So today is Mother's Day, a fine, justifiable and pleasant occasion for almost everybody in the world. One wonders, however, if we should say too much about it being a great day to celebrate. Why? The government might well try to make it compulsory.
Every time the government sees something "good," it either wants to prohibit it or make it compulsory. There is also a cliche about that. Unfortunately the jest has almost become a fact. It goes: "The government, politicians and bureaucrats are becoming so omniscient that soon everything which isn't prohibited will be mandatory."
For that reason we can be thankful Mother's Day is completely voluntary. After all, isn't it those things, people and events that we celebrate - just because we want to - that make us feel good and thus makes the person, mother in this case, feel good too? I mean we celebrate her day just because we want to. It wouldn't mean nearly as much if we were compelled to celebrate "her day."
Come to think of it, Mother's Day is about as important a day as any there is. Maybe Christmas, whereupon we, i.e., most of us anyway, celebrate the Lord's day is a bigger deal, so to speak, inasmuch as He brought all of us into the world while Mom only brought a few of us. But Mother's Day nonetheless is a big deal. A really big deal.
In fact, one could actually make a big deal of what this writer sees as a fact, namely, Mother's Day would soon fade into something completely meaningless if it were made compulsory. By that I mean a national holiday "celebrated" by a law mandating that all employees be paid a full salary for that day off.
Some say what is a holiday worth if we can't take the day off to celebrate it? If it's a national or legal holiday then that is what is asked for. You know - it's called paid holidays.
As I sat musing, wondering what I could say about Mother's Day that wouldn't sound superficial, trite or hackneyed it occurred to me that this "voluntary" bit was, in fact, not a "bit" at all. It is a very big deal. And tank heaven it's that way.
In fact, again, I wondered about the recent flap concerning the controversial Martin Luther King holiday. The argument at that time, remember, was whether or not to make King's day a compulsory celebration, i.e., a paid, government-designated and forced state holiday.
It was a little sad, too, I thought, when the zealots pushing for the government-mandated recognition of the black reverend civil rights leader (certainly almost no one disputed his leadership position in a good cause) were so quick to shout "racist" at those who disagreed. Dirty-pool tactics in a growing quagmire of political chicanery, I'd call it.
Of course, not all of King's supporters engaged in such bad tactics. But for good reason or bad, perhaps the saddest facet of the whole King holiday flap was the government's having made an otherwise good holiday - compulsory.
Goodness knows we are making lots and lots of other things, too many, compulsory these days, i.e., legal and illegal, prohibited and mandatory. Methinks the King holiday folks missed a great point, one that makes Mother's Day more meaningful, namely, that it is 100 percent voluntary.
I think the above it a great point to talk about on Mother's Day, always the second Sunday in May. And no day off on the following Monday, by the way. But for those who might favor a bit more specific item than voluntarism, for that best lady in the world, here is a little I had the presence of mind to give my own "best lady" when I was a young man.
It was in a dime store frame, but Mom loved it and it hung in a place of honor on her bedroom wall the rest of her life. I loved it too, still do, in fact. Hope you enjoy it (The author is unknown).
Friends and memories come and go/Upon life's restless sea/But one I know will changeless be/My Mother, Heaven's gift to me.
Now, go celebrate a happy Mother's Day. If it's a voluntary one it's a cinch to be meaningful, too - as well as happy.
Mormons: Ok, I've Said It
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 20, 1990
The primary election coming up has all the characteristics of elections past; some silly, some superficial and some few, perhaps, even profound - but darned few of the latter.
One I'd like to pursue is the role that religious affiliation seems to be playing, mostly under the table I'm sad to relate.
Forgive me in advance for what I'm about to say is ever so risky, but oh so pregnant with potential.
This year, perhaps more than in past years, though I'm not absolutely sure, I've been asked about a candidate: "Is he (or she) a Mormon?"
Now then, I notice that never to my knowledge has a Mormon asked me this. It is always a non-Mormon. Why? Well, one supposes that it is because some fear exists that their church members, as a body, just might get too much political power. Too much for what? Blank out!
No wait! It isn't always a blank. In fact, some folks are quite frank and forthright about telling me when I ask. "I don't want the Mormons telling me when I can and can't go to church. Why, who knows? They might pass a law and make us all tithe 10 percent of our income to or for their church. Why, they say the Mormons have all sorts of weird religious ideas they mean to visit upon the rest of us after they get in power." The respondent means political power, of course.
Let me hasten to add right here, ladies and gentlemen, that I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the Mormons, many of whom are among my very dear friends. But given the growing, almost worshipful status of present-day politics and militant bureaucratic interventions one can easily understand some healthy skepticism. If not a downright "fear" of a monolithic and aggressive church membership with a majority-rule mandate, then perhaps a theocracy of days of old comes understandably to the minds of many. I don't buy this, mind you, but some do.
Why does all this come to mind? Well, there are facts and fictions. There are myths, mysteries and tendencies. But most of all, perhaps, is that people tend to fear that which they don't understand. They resist, too, understandably or not given the fact, as I know it myself to be a fact (at least a good generality), that there are lots of Mormon candidates running for office this election.
Some, though not all, are known to me to be quite competent and for whom I intend to vote. But the Mormons do tend to stick together. Note the yard signs of Mormon candidates tend to be displayed joyously and naturally, of course, in the yards of other LDS folks.
Nothing wrong with this, but signs of this kind of "sticking" together tends to arouse uneasy feelings which run up the backs of many non-Mormons. What happens when they get enough brothers and sisters into power? The rest of us may get fired because we don't belong to the "club." It happens, too, but nobody wants to say it out loud.
That, my friends, is exactly why I decided to get this little essay's message out on the table where we can talk about it as adult, rational, caring and intelligent human beings. Hopefully, tolerant ones.
Don't laugh, my friends. "Perception is truth" as my crony and formerly aggressive, conservative/libertarian activist C.L. "Butch" Otter, now lieutenant governor, used to love to say. As the state's No. 2 political leader next term (in all probability), he himself may be a victim of the so-called perceived truth that his initials (C.L.) do indeed stand for "Cecil's lackey" as oft-times charged.
Like it or not, we need to get the Mormon "perception" out on top of the table. I hear it and others hear it. But a sort of guilty conscience tends to insinuate itself as the religious jokes, ethnic jokes, winks and yes, downright bigotry, come into play.
I don't say it isn't folks' right to be wrong, especially to be skeptical or even bigoted. So, please don't misunderstand me. One of my dearest friends, the late Pete Hackworth, 17 years editor of the Caldwell paper (now the Press-Trib), was a red-hot Mormon.
We had many deep and fine discussions about his church's controversial and energetic if not aggressive public policy stances. But that's missing today.
Other churches play a significant part in these matters, too, of course. But how long is it since anyone has asked you which candidate is a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Methodist, or an atheist? And how long is it since anyone but a Mormon has been elected in eastern Idaho's 2nd District?
So, during the next several months invite some Mormons over to your church. Just for fun. Get acquainted. They aren't all that bad, nor all that weird either.
And relax. If you lose the no doubt pleasant "debate" about religion, or even fail to get it up onto the table, you will at least have some needed new friends. Why needed? Because if present political trends continue, my Mormon friends just might soon own the Legislature.
New York City, D.C. and the Greeks
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
May 27, 1990
Having just returned from both New York City and Insane City, D.C., I want to give a report heard in each of the respective cities.
From my sources in the Big Apple comes the on-target news that President Bush is now growing a mustache. Why? So we can't "read his lips." In other words, get your feet braced. Bush's pledge of no new taxes is on the way down the tube just like most campaign promises. From both parties.
Democrats who have a generations long and successful history of promising Disneyland-types of utopian dreams, all at government expense, are enraged. Convinced that Bush's promise of no new taxes helped him get elected (they seem to think that that was the only reason) all the big Democrats are hell-bent to stall the governmental processes until they can nail the popular president to the cross of what they call "accountability." Egad!
I use quotes around the word because accountability has virtually nothing to do with the problem. The Democrat leaders are adamantly opposed to less government, hence the real solutions of reducing spending and reducing waste fall on deaf ears.
In fact, there are a number of "deaf ears" in the Republican Party too, who are smart enough to see that spending huge, no, enormous sums of somebody else's tax money - works. They get elected too, don't they? It's called "me-too Repuglicanism." So look for it, my friends. In one form or another, you'll be getting the message in the end.
And my message from Insane City, D.C., comes from one of the insiders in the Republican National Committee. He notes that the GOP's national, if not international, target is to "lose slowly." And they are succeeding - in spades. Oh sure, they won the presidency. But by any objective, long-term criteria the prospects of fiscal sanity (not to mention integrity) are all but lost.
There are admittedly some good, solid optimistic exceptions one need not enumerate here, but even a casual drive around Washington "drives" the point home. In one's intellectual stomach the gut feeling leaps to the fore - government itself is the growth industry. Huge construction cranes are to be seen everywhere, some busy, some idle, but portend new buildings, newly designed to house more bureaucrats and more paperwork. And, you guessed it, more taxes.
Even so, taxes, taxes and spending, spending won't cut it. The budget will not be balanced. Indeed, the national debt will be compounded and added to amidst a bit of cluck-clucking by the typical "aginners" such as U.S. Sens. Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm, Steve Symms and a few long-suffering others.
But without a super-liberal and ideologically committed news media all this taxing and spending could not be pulled off. Not on your one-spot. So bizarre is the whole damn mess that J. Peter Grace, outspoken and colorful chairman of the President's Committee Against Government Waste, calls the Congress a bunch of "damn clowns."
But his very considerable, expensive and decade-long efforts to save-us-into-sanity fall on the deaf ears of the media who tend to worship government. Yet even Grace won't attack the media, his No. 1 enemy in the minds of a growing number of observers. Maybe he is simply blind. I wonder.
Another casual drive around New York reminds one of what the late, great philosopher Eric Hoffer said: "One can always tell when a country is on the way down. Just take a look at the state of maintenance of its buildings, bridges and basic structures." Not a perfect quote, but close. Close, too, is the Empire State's No. 1 city as to looking like a rustbelt movie documentary of the old Greek city-state described by Kierkegaard in 1843. If one juxtaposes Washington, D.C., alongside New York City the great man may be seen as a veritable prophet. Said he:
"Our age reminds one vividly of the dissolution of the Greek city-state: Everything goes on as usual, and yet there is no longer anyone who believes in it. The invisible spiritual bond which gives it validity no longer exists, and so the whole age is at once comic and tragic - tragic because it is perishing, comic because it goes on. For it is always the imperishable which sustains the perishable, the spiritual which sustains the corporal (physical)."
So, who knows? Maybe to "lose slowly" is all the GOP has left. Or are they right? Or can they tell the difference? We couldn't tell from their performance in last Tuesday's primary - could we?
How Liberal Is Idaho's Liberal Media?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 3, 1990
A short while back during a 10- or 12-member coffee break, a friend of mine spoke up: "I think you have akind of perverted hatred for the news media, Ralph." Everybody laughed while my friend grinned with a bit of smug satisfaction. Why?
Well, this friend, a former chain story tycoon and later high official in local government, used to keep a baseball bat standing at the ready in the corner of his office for the special purpose of threatening certain members of the media. Members of the latter had distorted, disfigured and "selected" so-called news for publication in such a manner as to enrage the official. The bat had its effect, particularly during its display when the publicity surrounding its threatened use hit the news media. Many laughed, but its cathartic effect found its mark. It's called part of the power struggle.
Members of the media, some more than others of course, carry with them considerable power as most everyone knows.
Unfortunately, few casual observers tend to understand or even notice the subtleties such a power can and frequently does take on. Certainly the former official's grin at my temporary discomfort can now be appreciated, i.e., when the coffee group's laughter erupted. But the puzzle remains, in large part because what goes on in media circles is still sort of devious.
After the famous unsuccessful Goldwater campaign in 1964, this writer embarked on a pilgrimage to the East Coast in search of some answers and some solutions. One of these was the rather obvious (to me) drubbing our hero, Barry, took in the election of Lyndon Baines Johnson, perhaps the most conniving politician in modern times.
Now then, nobody's all bad. And LBJ, too, has some good qualities. But on a school teacher's salary followed by a full-time senate and short-time presidential politician's moderate (in those days) salary, he amassed a civilian empire of $22 million. Yet it seldom seemed very newsworthy. Nor was Goldwater's man-on-a-white-charger leadership qualities and his libertarian ideas newsworthy. Why?
I didn't know for sure, then, but the media had to play a huge role in all this and I set out to discover both why and how. After all these decades why and how does the major, and much of the minor, media continue to get away with political, philosophical and often murderous manipulation of the news - especially political news?
Certainly America's almost universally liberal college and university journalism departments must bear a huge share of the blame. But of more short-term interest are the techniques involved, both wittingly and unwittingly. We'll come back to the why at a later date, but first a neat case in point is the Idaho media's handling, last month, of candidate for lieutenant governor, Bob Forrey, a conservative Republican. He is ever so slightly, even libertarian. He's also fearless, forthright and hated by most of the media. why? I should have added - he's also religious.
Consider these not untypical newspaper quotes about the former legislator cum-home-school-champion's campaign: Aberteen Times May 2, "A number of mossback conservatives ... candidates of the ilk of Rachel Gilbert and Bob Forrey ... Forrey is making a ridiculous attempt to displace (Otter) ... public education bashing and locked-fist spending."
It gets more vitriolic and bitter, but I reprint it here because these are the purveyors of the "people's-right-to-know" media. Small wonder the "Demopublicans" and "Republicrats" dominate the Idaho Legislature.
Now get this one in the liberal (are there any others?) Aberteen Times:
" ... when hardcore right wing philosophy dominated ... it might be fitting to let (Gilbert) carry this tired old anti-liberal stance against Andrus ... But the logical thing is to vote for more progressive thinkers ... just to show Rachel (that) hard core conservatism is a political dinosaur in Idaho." I complain only because their zeal is always on one side - left.
The Lewiston Tribune, a devoted and zealous supporter of any liberal running against any conservative, wrote: "... Forrey - a two-term conservative lawmaker who was defeated in a 1986 primary ..." But they cleverly omit the circumstances wherein the leftist teacher's union crossed over (for shame) to vote in the GOP primary to defeat conservative Forrey. Further, when Andrus and other liberals are referred to, the term "liberal" is seldom used and more importantly it is never preceded by an adjective. e.g., ultra, extreme, etc., etc.
A Press-Tribune AP story May 5 follows the same theme after the election: "... Otter trouncing conservative former Rep. Robert Forrey ..." Nowhere else in the entire AP story referring to nine other candidates did they use the label liberal or conservative to describe them. Only Forrey merited a label. Interesting.
Is the Idaho liberal media really liberal? Not exactly. They are merely anti-conservative with a semantic, if slightly concealed and vengeful, one-sidedness.
Ideological? Yeah - that too - and an elitist's itch for power.
Is U.S. Experiencing Decline?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 10, 1990
Caldwell Chief of Police Bob Sobba and the chairman of our fair city's crime commission, Bob Jarboe, spoke recently to Caldwell's Rotary Club about our rather serious crime statistics.
"So serious are these problems," said the two crime specialists, "that we must involve the whole city in order to cope with it." No sooner had five days elapsed than a popular, talented and attractive lady music teacher was murdered in her own home in Nampa by an unknown assailant.
One wonders, as one reflects about the status of small communities, if what has come to be known as the "cheerful Charlie" Chamber of Commerce syndrome of "be positive" or "be cheerful" or "take pride in Caldwell" etc., etc., will cut much ice any more.
By way of a bit of background, it was the great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville who came to study the then new American miracle of success in the 1800s. Thought by many to have been one of France's literary geniuses of that day, he studied our land in great depth and detail. It all came into writing as a two-volume set of books called Democracy in America. It is a path-breaking and world-famous work.
One statement of his came to mind as I reflected on our two cities' situation last week. Tocqueville said "America is great because America is good. If that nation ever ceases to be good it will (surely) cease to be great."
I wonder if America has decided, wittingly or unwittingly, not to be good. I wonder if we are beginning to run out of slogans. Certainly our eagerness to be great is to some degree being replaced by a sort of guilt-trip. We seem unsure of ourselves as to just what is right and what is wrong. We seem hell-bent on passing more laws as if there were no other vehicle to bring about individual responsibility. We strain to hire more bureaucrats, more politicians, more experts and, of course, pay them more money.
Always more money we seem to bleat, daily, weekly, monthly and, most assuredly, each year that the Legislature meets. The Congress even votes itself bigger and bigger salaries, albeit it must feel a little guilty about it, because it gimmicks the "vote" so the law goes into effect when and if it doesn't vote the law down. Egad!
One has to be revived in hopefulness, a little bit, however, when U.S. Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos, speaking right here in our community recently, said that we have increased the amount of money spent on education each year for the past two or three decades but without measurable increased success. Therefore "money didn't seem to be our problem."
Wow! There he said it. And he's no right-wing nut. Now, what will we do? Our establishment has long demanded that we solve every problem, foreign and domestic, by throwing a truckload, no, a trainload of money at it. One almost fears his or her own peer group may abandon ship without an unlimited government budget for "all things great and small." Schools, too, so we are told, are hung up on statistics - grades.
But Caldwell's and Nampa's crime problems are not mere statistics. One can cite current cases of juveniles (or so it seemed) spray painting automobiles on Idaho Avenue in Caldwell and elsewhere to throwing chicken eggs on same all the way around to burglarizing and robbery. There was even a rape of a 74-year-old lady senior citizen recently. Moreover, there were two newspaper delivery persons shot in cold blood right on the edge of Nampa less than two years ago. Why? And what sort of sentences ensued? And what kind of sentences are meted out by our judges in our courts? And is our establishment's justice swift?
Until recently we were seldom treated to public scrutiny of judges and the sentencing job they do to repeated offenders of crimes of violence. Why?
I drove by Caldwell's newly-painted water tank a week or two ago and it is indeed a delight to note its new clean sky-blue color. The top is white, but the huge dark blue letters C-A-L-D-W-E-L-L can be seen above the slogan: "Gateway to Idaho." Not a great slogan, but not all bad, I suppose. Still, what the heck does it tell us? Not much. Nor is it a particularly good statement of substance. It's a slogan.
Bob Nicholes, first class entrepreneur, city father, senior citizen in the best sense of that word and long-time city benefactor, had a much better statement of substance at the above-mentioned Rotary Club meeting.
To the understandable handwringing and agonizing about too many youthful drug users he wisecracked: "Why don't you raise the minimum wage law again? Maybe the kids wouldn't have to steal to support their habit." Some of the more dull-witted Rotary members may have cringed.
Yet while his was no simple-minded slogan, Nicholes' insightful remark might well suggest much of merit to our lawmakers and policemen toward our penchant for passing laws.
Caldwell's Water a Reason to Brag
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 17, 1990
Few citizens seem to have noticed the bright new blue paint job on the city's domestic water tank high atop Canyon Hill. A beautiful sky blue color, I'd call it, and it brings to mind praiseworthy thoughts of some note, some nostalgia, some humor and some applause.
In no particular order of importance the first of these is the fact that Caldwell's drinking water which, by the way, is used for watering lawns, putting out fires, washing the streets and a host of more commercial enterprises, is just about the best drinking water in the whole country.
Our city should brag more about such a rare and fine advantage enjoyed, if not exactly appreciated, by homemakers as well as profit-makers (and some, of course, who don't make a profit).
Certainly the lack of chlorine is not the only good and worthwhile feature of our water; the sheer taste of its great quality also should be high on the list of Chamber of Commerce hype for advertising. The 11 deep wells hooked into the city system for an average pressure of 50 to 60 pounds tend to lull us into taking the whole good thing for granted.
So, "We never miss the water 'till the well runs dry" should be fair warning. But the way we oft-times waste such good water let's hope that the federal government doesn't fund another study and screw it up completely.
The slogan on said water tower says something like "C-A-L-D-W-E-L-L Gateway to Idaho." But one wonders whether our city's being a "gateway," whatever that means, would be as helpful from an advertising standpoint as the wonderfully tasteful water inside the big blue water reservoir.
And speaking of appreciating our water, and doing so right there in that very tank, none can gainsay Caldwell's former mayor and retired department chain CEO, Robert Pasley. As a student of Caldwell High School young Pasley climbed to the top of the abovementioned water tower and slid through the manhole in its roof for - you guessed it - a cool swim in the drinking water of that summer day.
Estimates vary, but somewhere between 60 and 65 years ago is guessed by the coffee clutch comrades of the former mayor where the surreptitious swim was recently disclosed. Amid loud and raucous laughter could be heard Russ Arbon, manager of the Edward D. Jones & Co. stock brokerage firm, denying any responsibility whatsoever for the then young Pasley's errant swimming behavior.
Many know, but for those who do not, the brokerage firm allows some friends and customers to use its meeting room for a "coffee" each morning where Caldwell's respected former chief executive disclosed his secret (until now) dip in the city's aqua pura.
The coffee group of which Pasley is sort of "kingfish" is called the "Underground Investors," a title which stems from a former meeting place in the dimly lit and low-ceiling basement of the Edward D. Jones & Co. office when it was located in the downtown Western Building many years ago. The coffee club has a somewhat colorful past especially in the persons of some of its senior and sometimes not so senior citizen members, including, believe it or not, the editor of the Press-Tribune.
Not the least of these members is the incumbent mayor, Hizzoner James "X" Dakan, the friendly undertaker ("X" marks the spot on Canyon Hill), whose fine leadership of Caldwell includes his "looking the other way" as the club members gamble each day - no kidding - to see who pays for the coffee.
Even so, better law enforcement in Caldwell is on the rise, thanks in part to Hizzoner and the chief of police. For some current evidence of Mayor Dakan's stewardship consider his long overdue cleaning of the city's asinine "double-vision" traffic warning signs unintelligibly painted on the pavement under a prior mayor.
Congratulations, Mayor Jim, for a job well-begun.
Hooray for Rotary! It Keeps 'Profit'
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
June 24, 1990
Sometime last year readers of this column were treated to great rhetoric about Rotary International's slogan: "He profits most who serves the best." And a great slogan it was, too. But the story said Rotary had abandoned its word "profit." Sad day for capitalism, too.
Well, hooray for Rotary. It turns out that the story isn't true after all.
Rotary is found in 163 different countries around the world and it seems the word profit is offensive to some of them. These few apparently requested that Rotary International drop the word from their long-held slogan, but the request was turned down. So, again, hooray for the Rotarians.
The error arose from a speech given to the Caldwell club last year by the then district governor who is the highest ranking officer in the club's region. At that time he told the club the Rotary International group had "dropped the word profit" because some countries had found it "offensive."
Happily the district governor later explained that he was either in error, or misspoke or something. In any event, all parties regret the error - except, of course, or one can assume anyway, those few countries that asked that the word be dropped in the first place. Still, I'm told, if the term is deemed "offensive" any foreign club may drop it.
So, all's well that ends well. The slogan stands and this member at least is still proud of its meaning, although I admit to being a bit saddened at the defensive posture many evince in discussing the word profit. Even Rotarians tend to go out of their way to explain, if not to apologize, that by profit they don't mean it as in profit and loss. Why not?
Rick Coffman, himself a Rotarian, as Press-Tribune editor recently put it: "There wouldn't be one thin dime of contribution by those loyal Rotarians anywhere in the world unless they made a profit ..."
Even Coffman, the single editor of the one of 12 or 13 Idaho daily papers which might be said to be on the non-liberal side of Idaho politics, notes with keen perception a bit of defensiveness for Rotarians' rhetoric: "... We're not sure what Rotary had in mind when (long years ago) it came up with 'He profits most who serves the best' but we doubt it was with monetary profit in mind. No, it was the personal and collective profit from doing good somewhere."
Yet, do-gooderism aside, and we all cheer some parts of it, the ideas and concepts surrounding money, profit, capitalism, individualism, private property, free market and really limited government are risky for polite discussion. Too risky. For most folks anyway.
Again I ask, why? Well, the abovementioned Rotary district governor did try to assuage my enthusiastic concerns recently with a little humor. He related two stories told by some Australian Rotary Club members visiting here recently. One bright-eyed young fellow explained our two countries were "divided (he meant also confused) by a common language." Their British sounding accent was the subject of much fun and merriment, but another story told by one of the Aussies furnished an example of how some words have quite different meanings in different languages.
One Rotarian from Australia offered one of his Idaho hosts a warm and friendly gesture: "How would you like to have a fag, my friend?" The Idahoan was amazed and taken aback for a moment until he noticed the Aussie pulling from his shirt pocket a pack of cigarettes. Only then did he laugh and realized the Australian word "fag" is a nickname for cigarette. But in the U.S. "fag" usually means homosexual.
The district governor tried retrieving this writer's concern for the somewhat defensive posture about the word profit with: "It's a good word with me, Ralph. After all's said and done we're all capitalists too, aren't we?"
To which I replied, "Perhaps. But I challenge you to find for me a college curriculum catalog where even one of its courses is favorably described as a course in capitalism. Remember, Rotarians went to these same schools."
Still, wouldn't it even be more fun if the Rotary slogan read: "He profits most who serves himself and others best under market-capitalism and can peddle it to other Rotarians - without apology."
One Can Hardly Tell 'Em Apart
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 1, 1990
A member of the Idaho Legislature was interviewed on a call-in talk radio program last week and did a rather remarkable thing. This person is a long-time Republican and in response to a caller wanting to know just what a Republican is, said it was "too complicated to explain."
This writer gagged, retched, gasped, flinched and sighed because the GOPer is, generally speaking, intelligent, caring and I think as reasonably principled as one usually regards a partisan politician.
Further pursuit of some way to tell a Republican from a Democrat, however, led the legislator to a final solution. At least it ended the dialogue: "Well, the people (voters) will decide just who is a Republican." Talk about passing the buck. Egad.
I am intentionally avoiding the name of the particular lawmaker because I want to focus attention onto the sorry state of basic thought patterns our society has come to. Perhaps "thought patterns" give our political dilemma too high a status in the scheme of things, but let's take a look at this foolishness which starts right here at home and goes even into the highest world circles in public affairs.
Maybe a clearer diagnosis of the disease will help us change or cure these inane, namby-pamby, duplicious and even cancerous political contests that we are all coming to deplore. Smaller and smaller voter turnouts are only one sign of people's apathy and antipathy toward public affairs. But the more things change the more they remain the same. Consider:
A nationally known and very bright fellow whom I know slightly tells the following little story about his visit with a small crowd of Russian citizens on the edge of Red Square in Moscow. With some glee they gave their separate comments:
"Our new leader is so different than those we have known before." "He has given creative people new freedoms." "He is changing our economic system." "He wants a nuclear moratorium." "He wants to rid the world of nuclear weapons." "He has told us the truth about Stalin and what Stalin did." "We always knew it, but we could never say it before and now we can." "We have new freedoms." "He has given us access to books that we have never been able to read before." "He has released political prisoners and has taken them out of exile." "He is truly bringing about a new era of democratization."
The exchange was related in a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan not long ago by Bruce Herschensohn, author and TV newscaster on KABC-TV. He closed the above comments of his Russian citizen-friends in the big Red Square with:
"It was an experience I will never forget, that day in Red Square with these Soviet citizens who were so proud of their new leader. It was in 1960, and they were speaking of - Nikita Khruschev (30 years ago).
"They had good grounds for optimism. Amazing reforms appeared to be taking place. But one year later the Berlin Wall was erected. Two years later came the Cuban missile crisis. Eight years later we saw the invasion of Czechoslovakia and 19 years later the invasion of Afghanistan.
"During all of the Khruschev-Breshnev years, the Soviet Union indulged in the greatest military build-up and the largest expansion of any single nation's conquests in the history of the world." (interesting parallel; USSR's war powers are bigger today than ever.)
In that same period many Democrats called for a "peace dividend." GOP President Reagan called for "peace-through-strength." Is that too complicated to explain?
Of course, there is also Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the great anti-communist Russian Nobel laureate who came to the U.S. because the AFL-CIO invited him. But he was snubbed by then President Ford, a Republican. Sorry if this sounds complicated too!
Recently President Bush just barely received the new prime minister of Lithuania into the White House and then only after some asinine diplomatic put-downs so her visit wouldn't irritate the Soviets. At least one supposes.
Comes now South Africa's anti-apartheid but pro-communist Nelson Mandela who not only rides a red carpet into Bush's White House, but gets to address the whole U.S. Congress, no less.
Complicated? Yeah, I guess the Idaho GOP lady-legislator had a point after all. Still, she shouldn't hide behind the term "too complicated."
There is, after all, only-a-dime's-worth-of-difference between the two parties. Complicated? No. Confused? Yes!
We Can Limit Congress' Terms
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 8, 1990
The American media, both news and academic, has pretty well convinced the public that anyone wanting less government is to be known as "negative." In fact, they may very well be sincere in this.
But what makes this writer skeptical about their sincerity, or perhaps their thoughtfulness, is the flip side of that "coin", i.e., they also tell us that anyone wanting more government is to be seen as "positive."
Now then, I see nothing particularly sinister in all this except that (1) it tends to perpetuate the same big government politicians right back into power after each election. And (2) it tends to bastardize the meaning of words, thus forcing the dialogue about public affairs into a virtual "tower of Babel." This being the case, a kind of hatred stems therefrom with folks becoming frustrated trying, and failing, to communicate with one another.
Comes now four congressmen calling themselves the Committee on Limiting Terms Lobby, with a plan to change all this foolishness. At least they claim the ability to change the part that excessively long terms of incumbency tends to aggravate.
These congressmen ask: Just what is wrong with Congress? The answer, they claim, is simple:
"Over the last decade over 95% of all congressmen who ran for re-election were automatically re-elected. I know it's hard to believe," says Congressman Bill Mccollum who signed the unusually candid letter currently being circulated by the four-member committee-lobby, "but almost no incumbent members of Congress are ever defeated.
"Congressmen today know they have a better chance of dying in office or being put in jail than being defeated on Election Day.
"Many Congressmen no longer pay attention to the voters because they feel they don't have to.
"For many, serving in Congress is a job for life. As President Reagan pointed out shortly before leaving office, congressmen have more job security than the members of the Soviet Politburo.
"Congress has become a federal bureaucracy eager to 'feather its own nest' and regulate your own life. But unlike the worst federal bureaucracy, it has become intoxicated by its own power."
Well, McCollum and pals are wrong as hell on this one - in spades. The federal bureaucrats are every bit as intoxicated with their own power. Some are even more arrogant with it. But the point of power is still valid and, drunk with it or not, they are still frightening.
McCollum claims we can limit the terms of congressmen and senators, just as we limit the terms of our president and many of our governors and mayors. "We can," he insists, "reclaim our Representative democracy.
"By limiting terms of members of Congress, we will be returning to our founding fathers' original idea of 'citizen representatives. Citizens will come forth, spend a few years in Congress representing their neighbors (instead of the special interests) and then return home."
The congressman's letter, of course, asks for us to send money explaining that he is a realist and that no matter how we try, the individual congressmen will not reduce their terms voluntarily. So he urges, "sign the enclosed petitions and include $20, $25 or even $50." I say he's right on, too. Consider:
"When was the last time you were proud of your Congress(?)" McCollum asked. "Furthermore we are running out of time.
"We've had only one balanced budget since President Eisenhower. Ethics violations are rampant ... Numerous members have been indicted on (serious) criminal charges ... the 'bipartisan spirit' has all but died. Issues are fought on the most bitter partisan level..."
I admit it's not perfect, my friends, but it is the first "really positive" idea I've seen in decades. The address is P.O. Box 44433, Washington, D.C. 20026. Let's help the congressman promote a little political market feed-back. Whaddaya say?
Oh yes, I answered McCollum's request and included the following devastating note: "... but when will you guys ever challenge the education lobby's public school system which tends to teach that government is a kind of 'church' at which everyone should genuflect, even worship?
"Why do I ask? Because seldom in recorded history has a 'congregation' so thoroughly indoctrinated as ours ever voted to limit the terms of its 'high priests.'"
Presbyterian Minority Fights Back
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 15, 1990
The venerable Paul Harvey of radio, newspaper and platform speaker fame says, "You and I are sick of seeing these products today that are all glitter and no guts." But he went on to say his customer, Royal Vacuum Cleaners, was "different."
True or not, the famous commentator is sticking his or his customer's neck out when they brag so vigorously on their own quality that way. Why? Because customers can check it out for themselves. If not true it's dynamite.
Well, the Presbyterian Church has traditionally bragged on their "product," too, for lo' these many years, but with little success. This isn't at all difficult to ascertain when one looks at what has happened to the membership numbers for the past several years. These numbers have dropped dramatically, even precipitously.
Why? Could it be that the Presbyterian Church's "customers" have kicked the tires, so to speak, or checked out for themselves as to the quality of the "product" and found it wanting? Apparently so.
Or, as Harvey notes, too many American products, including religion, are being produced that are "all glitter and no guts." Thus maybe some U.S. churches are, wittingly or unwittingly, tending in the same direction.
For example, the Presbyterian Church is a big, big multi-million dollar operation when considered t the national level and for all practical purposes exerts the lion's share of its many public policy efforts and its vast foreign policy influences in a far-left-of-center direction.
It has done so for decades and pretty well follows even today the leftward pathway set forth by the late Eugene Carson Blakes super-liberal World Council of Churches (WCC) and its national rubber-stamp counterpart, the very, very liberal National Council of Churches (NCC). Believe it or not, this does not square well with much of the membership as evidenced by the mass exodus of members.
But most church-goers tend to be passive since they get their religion like most politically interested folks tend to get their partisan party affiliation, i.e., they inherit it. Some exceptions, but it's a safe generalization.
Some individual churches donate only minimal dues and assessments, but few members and even fewer individual preachers have guts enough to effectively protest the NNC-WCC's liberal leadership even if they (the locals) happen to be a bit conservative, politically, which darn few seem to be.
Comes now a conservative group operating nationally within the Presbyterian Church to protest said leftward thrust in their denomination. Headquartered in Springfield, Pa., it's called the Presbyterian Lay Committee and their tabloid newspaper issue of May/June has the following front page headline:
"Presbyterian Church (USA) Workers Campaigned for Daniel Ortega." Ortega, you will recall, suffered a stunning and overwhelming election defeat of his Nicaraguan communist party last fall. The sub-headline on the above front page story read: "Church Staffers in Nicaragua Pledge to Continue Support of the Sandinista Revolution In Spite of Election Results." Egad. Shades of Erwin Schwiebert.
As you might imagine the Presbyterian "mother church" hierarchy is furious about The Layman as the conservative tabloid is called, but the interesting thing about the former's behavior is the vehemence and virtual hatred evoked toward the thoughtful, soft-spoken and low-key conservative group. All in the name of truth, love, righteousness and tolerance - wouldn't you know!
Also on the front page of said May/June issue of The Layman is yet another even better headline: "Capitalism and Socialism For Beginners" subtitled: "A book by CEPAD (a Nicaraguan Protestant outfit) ... supported by grants from the Presbyterian Church (USA) ... includes the following test:
"We must therefore see socialism as the system which comes closest to the Gospel ideal, whereas capitalism is incompatible with Christianity because it is based on egoism, implacable competition and the exploitation of man by man. As to Marxism, one can be a Christian and a Marxist, and in fact there are very many Christian Marxists ..."
And further on in the CEPAD book (remember now, the Presbyterians still put money into this crap) it gets worse: "Instead of leaving the factories and other means of production in the hands of capitalists Marx says that these must be IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE." Meaning, of course, government ownership.
And so it goes: President Bush and his American churches move left while President Gorby and his Soviet atheists go right.
Good grief! Is everybody nuts? Or just us flagwavers?
Is Capitalism 'Offbeat' at College?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
July 22, 1990
There was a rather remarkable and revealing editorial in the May 30 issue of the College of Idaho Coyote. As you may know the Coyote is the campus student newspaper published occasionally by the students of that oldest college in the state.
Space prohibits reprinting the editorial completely, but it is no smart-aleck, wrongheaded polemic as was the last editorial printed therein concerning this writer. In fact we're indebted to editor Mike Nachtigall for what in my opinion are some mistaken, but sincere, assumptions and revealing conclusions about academic bias.
His remarks should be considered in light of a question asked by others, both on-campus and off-campus, over the past decades, namely: Does an anti-capitalistic mentality tend to hold sway at the C of I? Here are most of the salient parts of the editorial:
"I'm sure it's common knowledge by now that Joe and Kay Albertson have given $13.5 million to the school (for) a sports complex ($10 million) and a new business school ($3 million). This gracious act has received praise from just about every corner of the state. Thanks ... to President Hendren for devoting much of his time (to it).
"However, the other day as I was heading toward Boise, I read the reader board at the stop sign on the intersection of N. 21st Avenue and Highway 20-26 near Interstate 84. The sign has advertisements on it for Farm City and has a wide variety of witty sayings ... I'm sure we've all seen it at least once. Anyway, it too gave praise to the Albertsons for their generosity, but the last line said something which struck me as rather offbeat. It went something like this:
"HOORAY FOR JOE & KAY ALBERTSON. BLESS THEIR HEARTS FOR DONATING $13.5 MILLION TO THE COLLEGE. (SO) HOORAY FOR CAPITALISM. BUT WILL THE COLLEGE TEACH CAPITALISM?"
"Upon further inquiry I learned that Mr. Ralph Smeed, a columnist for the (Idaho Press-Tribune), owns the reader board and is responsible for the messages. I would like to ask Mr. Smeed if he feels that the primary function of a private liberal arts college is to teach capitalism."
As an aside, my own opinion is I do not think it is the "primary" function, but it certainly should be a proper one. Now back to editor Mike:
"If this is the case, then I am sure there are quite a few students, past and present, that have failed at what a liberal arts education is all about. I reality, it is Mr. Smeed who has missed the point. The students who are primarily business majors and who are interested in that sort of a career also leave this school with a liberal arts background. As far as 'teaching capitalism' goes, I think that we are basically raised in such an economic system."
Student editor Mike is right-on there, just as we are raised in a basically religious system, a basically English-speaking system and a basically peace-loving system. Still, being "basically raised" in these arenas hardly precludes our "teaching" these same subjects - unless, of course, the high priests of education don't particularly appreciate or understand the subject(s). Editor Nachtigall winds up the relevant part of his defense of the liberal educational status quo with:
"No, this is not a slam on capitalism or capitalists. It does, however, leave me questioning the values of some of the capitalists of our nation. It is a sickening feeling to learn the thoughts of a person (presumably Smeed) who believes that a liberal arts college ought to preach (his word) capitalism in the classrooms rather than humanitarian values."
Well now, the C of I's young Nachtigall ended the capitalism commentary part of his editorial on a sort of unkind note, i.e., "sickening to learn ..." Too bad, too.
Yet he can possibly be forgiven for his professors must have neglected to tell ("teach"?) him about capitalism vis-a-vis Adam Smith's other book, Theory of Moral Sentiments. Of course, Karl Marx who is better studied, hence better understood on most campuses, would not agree.
But Nachtigall cannot be forgiven for his assumption that anyone other than himself suggests "preaching" (his word) capitalism, first of all, and secondly, where do you support Mike got the idea about "preaching" capitalism? Some built-in bias, of course, from someplace. One supposes a left-wing subject need only have a teacher, not a preacher.
Somewhere, somehow, somebody tells these kids capitalism and humanitarianism cannot honestly be advocated in the same breath. Must be the same professors who taught our politicians that to balance the budget and keep their hands in their own pockets could only be done by televangelist preachers.
Incredible, Free-Market Bargain Dies
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 5, 1990
Some folks are turned on by a bit of nostalgia and perhaps some fewer turned off by it. But citizens of Caldwell just might be helped to remember when something important happened to their fair city by way of a little nostalgia.
I refer, believe it or not, to the recent closing of Bob Nicholes Oil Co.'s Fleetway service station at the corner of Chicago Street and North 10th Avenue.
It was opened by the two partners, Nicholes and Al Voyles of Nampa, way back in 1967 to fill a market the two petroleum merchants felt would be a successful cut-rate filling station. It was. One reason it was successful and perhaps the main reason this writer will miss the station and its enthusiastic attendants was Fleetway's automatic car wash. It was easy to take for granted.
Over the ensuing 23 years it was to become a most popular place to get a quickie and remarkably efficient - for the money - wash job. "50› CAR WASH" the huge sign read. And what a great bargain it continued to be even though a few years later the price was raised to 75 cents where it stayed until its demise this spring.
You remember 1967? That was the year after Don Samuelson was elected governor of Idaho. Don was to be the first victim of the environmental crazies and was not only the last Republican governor but the last conservative crusader to offer such directional leadership for important state office. Most folks will remember Samuelson's defense of the famous White Clouds mining controversy, though many will not appreciate the historic role mining had always played in our Gem state.
The number of car washes the Fleetway-Nicholes operation was to stack up over those 23 years would add up to many tens of thousands of autos and pickups for drivers from miles around after they had their vehicles serviced at the adjoining gas pumps. They sold various and sundry grocery items, windshield wipers and the customary light mechanical aids found in these types of operations. Oh yes, the vacuum cleaner, too, where for 10 cents you could always get a quickie cleanup of your dirty car's floor mat to go with that "Mr. Clean" feeling made possible for 50 cents or 75 cents.
Egad! What a bargain those service station fellows and their "greedy, robber-baron" oil company suppliers furnished us all for lo' these many years. Remember? And for long, long years they ripped us off at 19.5 cents a gallon without charge for road maps, restrooms, information, friendly advice about where to eat, where to sleep, etc., etc., ad infinitum. And oft-times all night long. Can you believe it? And at an incredibly reliable free market bargain.
And speaking of the free market, Nicholes explains, "I guess you could say that that is why we are closing up, i.e., market forces at work." Oh sure there's a lot more to it than simple market-economics as spoken of in the antiseptic classroom of the economics teachers and professors. I mean the Environmental Protection Agency and their underground storage tank hazards, both real and imagined, the sewer and water regulations and requirements and their increasing costs, many of which are skyrocketing. These are not to mention liability insurance and catastrophe insurance which sometimes are not even obtainable.
And on and on and far into the night.
"It's tough to do business these days," explains the popular Nicholes, who started his petroleum empire as an Idaho Gas Co. station called The Town Pump in 1948 on Arthur Street between 6th and 7th avenues, "especially when it's so fiercely competitive and so many folks seem to think the oil merchants are charging far too much."
Many more nostalgic stories could be told, of course, about competition, consumerism, capitalism, business enterprise and freedom in general, all of which Nicholes believes in and supports. But me-thinks that America's small entrepreneurs, such as Nicholes and his petroleum compatriots, have been serving us consumers all these years in a much better fashion perhaps than we deserve - and probably at a much cheaper price.
Still this native Caldwellite-businessman-oilman asks no special favors from government. In fact, he is a principal trustee-board member of Caldwell's Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA) formerly located on the College of Idaho campus and only last week moved into new headquarters at the Home Federal Savings and Loan building on South Kimball.
Oddly enough, CSMA's main purpose is to advocate and articulate even more competition and capitalism, especially in education. One could add, I suppose, that it's a little bit sad that Nicholes, who is indeed a world-class salesman, has been unable to "sell" enthusiastic support for CSMA to so few Caldwell businessmen.
Could it be possible we are taking that other bargain product of his (CSMA) too much for granted?
Egad! They Want More Government
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 12, 1990
While the Middle East crisis is by far the biggest item in the news it is by no means the only "big deal" on peoples' minds. There is, of course, the savings and loan bailout, so-called, which is easily the most expensive boondoggle the U.S. government has ever perpetrated in history. Believe it or not, we are still asking for more.
Then there is the increasing price of petroleum products, gasoline and diesel oil at the pumps caused, or at least precipitated by, the oil crisis in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Alaska.
The pablum, propaganda and paranoia fed to you by the American fascist-leaning oil companies and the socialist-leaning news media so obscure the atmosphere as to make the Los Angeles smog appear clear as a bell. Let's take three examples and, from a slightly different point of view, look underneath.
In the Mideast Iraq's rag-head dictator Saddam Hussein's army of fanatics are pouring trouble on oily waters.
It is popular opinion that my official staff of poll takers tell me that people say, "It's about time we go over there and teach those damn Arabs a thing or two." While I don't agree, I do concede that it is indeed "any of our business," since it is our own Christian "Bible thumpers" who said after World War Ii we should rip off the Arabs so the Jews could get back the territory they lost more than 1,000 years ago. This we did. The U.S. with the U.N. did it.
"So the Jews could have a homeland," they said. Well, they got one, such as it is, undefendable borders and all. But we shouldn't expect the Arabs to love and respect us for it.
I included Alaska in the oil crisis territories listed above because the news media fails to tell us there is estimated to be almost as much oil in northern Alaska and the ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) tundra as there is under Saudi Arabia.
But the environmental "green priests" have virtually stopped Alaskan oil drilling there. Why? Well, there is little else existing in the ANWR but shallow mud puddles for a million miles in every direction. Still the "green priests" hold worship services there year-round, hence allow no one to visit except snail darters, spotted owls, endangered bureaucrats and honest politicians.
All of which may be sick, but the Arabs know this, too, so they are cashing in on our silliness. Can you blame them? I said they are fanatic, not stupid.
The savings and loan "bailout" is not that at all. It is the S&Ls' customers who are being bailed out. The congressmen, 98 percent of whom are reinstated each election, get that accomplished by rushing out and saying, "Don't you worry folks. We will take all the risk. We will guarantee your money. You just eat, drink and be merry. Have a nice high-interest day. And, oh yes, vote for us." All this at taxpayers' expense.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what the news media neglects to tell you. Why? Well, read their lips. They lie just as Bush did.
And last but not least, almost everyone that my poll takers polled damned the oil companies for raising their prices. "Price gouging" they call it. They're mad as hell and they're "not gonna take it any longer." Still, it's the oil merchants' private property. They own it. We can't have it both ways.
You know, it's called private ownership but educators danged seldom ever teach its supreme virtues. Remember, it's the major and the real difference between America's good system and Soviet Russian's bad system.
Considering that our government "governs" the oil business, i.e., imports, tariffs, drilling, etc., and that same government guarantees the S&L risk-takers; and that same government sure as heck runs the schools; - how did they (Congress) ever manage to balance the budget once in the last 40 years? Not a very "saintly" performance from a bunch of unmitigated sinners.
And 91 percent of you jackasses want that same government to save our souls again. Egad!
Worshipping at a 'Green Church'
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 19, 1990
"Dumb parasites, in both nature and society, kill their victims and thus their own sustenance; the smart ones let their victims live so that they can keep on reaping. Among dumb parasites are government that tax their revenue base to death and the eco-freaks who kill energy sources running their (printing) presses, automobiles and their livelihood.
"Among the smart ones are the poverty industry, with legions of social workers and activists keeping bums and winos in the streets as 'homeless,' and the Green Church, whose priests prey on the fears of their flock by scaring them silly with the menaces they have themselves manufactured.
"In nature, parasites do not create the victims they live on; this is a point where the activists and politicians differ from tapeworms."
So begins Dr. Peter Beckman's excellent newsletter, "Access to Energy," published in Boulder, Colo. It is a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise monthly newsletter which every newspaper editor in the nation's nearly 2,000 dailies should be forced to memorize.
Why? Because this scientist to whom Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, former governor of Washington, refers to as having a "first class scientific mind" has a tough time getting any attention at all from the liberal American media. Ray, you may remember, was for several years head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission some years ago and is an unusual and rare advocate of capitalism. One supposes this is why that same left-wing media so seldom interviews her on the nuclear energy controversy.
Perhaps another reason Beckman's scientific information is so unique is the ascerbic analogies and his pungent style, i.e., this fellow is a first class communicator, even better in his field than that "great communicator," Ronald Reagan. Consider some ever so timely examples:
"The real gold mine is (the Green Church's) valiant defense against concocted threats to the environment. The Green Bishops bring in bogus science and flood the media with (their) learned buzzwords to scream their doomsday prophesies until it is unthinkable heresy to stay off the Green bandwagon.
"There is an easy test for the sincerity of an advocate of any cause, and that is his reaction to approaching his alleged goal. There is nothing but joy and gratification for a physician who has conquered a disease or for an engineer who has staved off disaster. But if you have a remedy for the greenhouse, overpopulation, air pollution, ozone depletion or any other threat dear to the Green priests' hearts, they will call you a liar and curse you with eternal damnation - for you are a blasphemer who spits at the most sacred charm of their witchcraft: the deadly and (allegedly) incurable terrors that keep them in business.
"But it is not nuclear energy in particular, it is energy in general that the Green imposters hate: Nuclear is merely more suited for their scary-tales.
"The Green cardinals went into a fit, for the greenhouse hell is one of their Church's most sacred visions. 'We are not iron-poor, we are pollution rich,' chanted Bishop Daniel Becker of the Sierra Club archdiocese.
"Meanwhile the White House staff is piously toying with a 'Carbon Tax' on coal and gasoline to show its religious devotion.
"However, Bush assures everyone that more research is needed before any action on global warming is taken, so we can confidently assume that he will propose no rash steps. Read his lips."
Unfortunately, Dr. Beckman, clearly one of the nation's few truly great scientific polemicists, forgot to remind us that Bush is said to be growing a mustache these days, precisely so we cannot - read his lips.
My New Friend, A Russian Dissident
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
August 26, 1990
Many of you will remember and perhaps followed in the media the Goodwill Games held recently in Seattle. Those athletic contests were promoted largely by big business tycoon Ted Turner who is also commander-in-chief of television's Cable News Network (CNN).
What the conservatives will indeed remember is Turner's famous statement made a few years ago when he first got into the TV broadcasting business: "If the three major TV networks were owned by America's bitterest and worst enemies they could not possibly have done a better job of tearing this country down."
But something happened on the way to the office. Turner went to the U.S.S.R. and came back denouncing America and claiming our country was the bad guy and the Soviets the good guy. Nobody quite knows exactly why or what happened, but Turner had turned into a left-winger. Later came Gorbachev with his perestroika and glasnost.
Since then Eastern Europe and the whole Soviet socialist empire seems to be admitting failure and shifting toward capitalism. At least that's what the media keeps telling us. Turner, himself, seems to be an exception having some aversion to the term capitalism. Maybe it has something to do with his new girlfriend, Jane Fonda. She too is, of course, a very famous or infamous, anti-capitalistic left-winger.
Comes now a group in Seattle called the Andrei Sakharov Memorial Human Rights Conference especially to coincide with the Goodwill Games, but only over the objection of Turner, Fonda and the Soviet government. Why?
No one knows for sure, but one reason no doubt was that the Human Rights Conference insisted Soviet dissident Lev Timofeyev be invited. The Russians said no deal.
So, the conference got U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., and a congressman from that state to call the Soviet Embassy threatening to boycott the Goodwill Games if Timofeyev was not allowed to attend.
Well, it worked! Hooray for Gorton and his pals. Timofeyev was allowed to come to Seattle. He and I were both house guests of a close personal friend of mine, thus affording me an opportunity for several interesting, private bull sessions which added a great deal to the official conference sessions many of which, by the way, I was privileged to attend.
Before I tell you briefly why Timofeyev is so important, let me explain that unless you were in Seattle you doubtless never even heard of the conference. The Seattle daily papers carried some stories about it, and even two or three about my new-found Russian friend, but the national networks virtually boycotted the tremendously interesting and important story. Anti-communists are used to such media treatment but it still galls, especially when they prattle so much about "the people's right to know." Egad!
Lev Timofeyev, 54, is an economist graduated from the Institute of Foreign Trade, Moscow, and is editor of the Russian magazine Referendum. He is a columnist, poet and author of several books, the first of which led to his imprisonment in 1985, about 10 days after Gorbachev came to power.
The book, Technology of the Black Market, was not published in Russia but got him thrown in jail anyway. His second book, The Last Hope for Survival, also analyzed the Communist system. Fortunately his 11-year prison sentence was reduced to two years thus releasing Timofeyev in 1987 to found "Press Club Glasnost." He soon founded the Moscow affiliate of the International Helsinki Federation and co-chaired a human rights conference in Moscow.
He was awarded the "Vladimir Dal Award" in Paris receiving an invite from France's President Mitterrand also in 1988. His latest book, Me, the Severely Dangerous Criminal, will be published this year.
Libertarians in the U.S.A. will be thrilled to know he and his "comrades" are soon to republish Nobel Laureate Frederick Hayek's book, Road to Serfdom, in Russian, of course, when paper is available.
There's more, much more about the super-bright, gentle and committed dissident Timofeyev who was the only former political prisoner to participate in the Seattle conference. But no doubt his main overriding message to questions about the recent Russian "revolution" allegedly toward capitalism sums it up best: "How can we have capitalism without private property?" They cannot, of course. And neither can we.
Small wonder our American TV networks boycotted the story.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Kow ...
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 2, 1990
Several people have been asking recently just what the differences are between liberals and conservatives. A lot is written about these two groups, but inasmuch as the media is so dominated by liberals the confusion seems to increase rather than decrease.
If we realize in the beginning that most political mindsets are flint-hard, and will thus reject almost anything that doesn't reinforce their ideology, we might have some fun defining liberal and conservative right here. Heaven knows we could surely use some helpful word-meanings toward reducing our modern "Tower of Babel."
First of all we should realize we must generalize if we are to make many meaningful observations. So there will certainly be exceptions to my general commentary. Just remember, generalization is the key.
Conservative means (1) traditional, in the sense that what works shouldn't be changed except in light of an overwhelming likelihood of success and (2) it means a huge skepticism that no matter what the problem of the day happens to be, a bureaucrat of politician will almost surely make it worse.
A liberal, on the other hand, almost always favors more government and more change. Change is even seen by many liberals as a reaction against tradition which they tend to loathe as a kind of "religious" type doctrine, i.e., change just for the sake of change itself.
Conservatives, by the same token, are said to be against doing anything at all for the first time. A joke? Yes. But there's a truth in a jest.
There are exceptions, as I said, but in this regard it will be helpful to divide public affairs into two somewhat oversimplified categories. These are the major places where liberals and conservatives tend to fight most of their political battles. They are (1) civil liberties and (2) economic liberties, or said another way: civil rights and economic rights.
Most liberals believe that the government should regulate the economy and stay out of civil liberties. Most conservatives, however, think the government should stay out of economic liberties, for the most part, but they want the government to run the morals. Egad!
It is interesting to note that the Idaho Legislature, for example, is divided about equally between conservatives and liberals from both parties, but they only succeed in passing a law where a coalition forms for more government. Otherwise, a rare bill suggesting less government is almost always defeated since it's a kind of contradiction in terms. Thus the ratchet-like growth of government.
Money matters, especially in today's atmosphere of one-man, one-vote politics, are almost always seen in a light of impersonal economics, but they should rather be seen in the light of peoples' freedoms. That's what money is all about, you know. Freedom. Freedom to buy food, clothing, shelter. Freedom to buy medicine and recreation.
Investing money is precisely where jobs come from. They dang sure do not come from government. Even when government prints paper money it gets its purchasing power by diluting the peoples' other money already in circulation. Freedom to buy gasoline, at whatever price, is freedom for people to "vote" with their feet. Even money itself is a kind of freedom.
If money is seen in its human rights (civil liberties) sense of the word, then the whole public dialogue is changed to a higher, more important level. Just think, if you will, what an utter and devastatingly irresponsible job Congress did, and still does, managing middle and lower class peoples' freedom to keep their own property, i.e., money.
A $3 trillion debt and growing exponentially. Gosh, methinks a more realistic figure is probably $9 trillion, but given our big bunch of professional liars, not to mention political fools - who knows?
So let's sign off for now with a note on intellectual dishonesty, so often seen among both today's Democrats and professing "moderate" GOPers who are usually left-liberals in disguise.
It was published in 1956 by the sage William F. Buckley Jr. in his National Review: "The greatest difference," said Leonard Hall last year at San Francisco, "between the Democratic convention and this convention is that the Democrats nominated a loser. We're here to nominate a winner."
To which Buckley added: "Mr. Hall's statement is horribly accurate. The greatest difference between the two parties lies in the fact that they back different people, not different ideas, for office."
Furthermore, today's liberals, who tend to be mostly Democrat, and conservatives, who tend to be mostly Republican, argue altogether about just what the government will (repeat, will) do. Not much about what it won't.
Boone's Latch Key Kids Win Round
By Ralph Wmeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 9, 1990
Roses are red, violets are blue. But it's the razzberries that most people say they like best. Yet, the flowers this week are for a new twist to what has for decades been a knee-jerk liberal church's major public thrust. Here's why:
Roses for Caldwell's Boone Memorial Presbyterian Church whose facilities at 14th Avenue and Cleveland Boulevard have not only enhanced the congregation's children for a long time, but the community as well.
To Boone Church's everlasting credit their Westminster center has for years housed youth activities such as Boy Scout Troop No. 222, various kindergarten groups, Head Start, preschool and some teenage groups. All really quite successful, in fact.
Recently the Presbyterians decided to expand their youth services to include a kind of day-care center and latch-key operation. This is to serve the community's growing number of families whose working mothers do not get home from work at the same time that their children get home from schools, kindergartens and so on.
The church school chiefs were told, however, that this modest broadening service which, by the way, was eagerly anticipated by their "customers," would require a city permit. The planning and zoning committee likes to oversee and control these non-profit volunteer operations. They do this in various ways, often by using what is called "special use" permits or "variances" to the city's grand plan of great wisdom. This time they said it would entertain a special permit.
The Boone Church authorities said, "Nothing doing. We shouldn't need a permit. We want a hearing." Or words to that effect anyway. They got it. So, by a squeaking 3 to 2 vote of the committee the Presbyterians prevailed. Hooray for what's left of a so-called free country - the "latch key" kids (and some adults, too) won the round. Let's hope it's the final round.
*****
Roses, too, for the more than 100 persons attending the packed house hearing in the City Hall's council chamber during the sort of an appeal held for the Presbyterian's school. Too often such kinds of hearings are attended by only a pitiful few concerned persons directly affected.
Let us just hope, however, that in the future the Boone Church Presbyterians, whose national organization has tended for decades to favor more rather than less of this type of government over-regulation, will turn out in big numbers to go to bat for other Caldwellites similarly threatened. Sad to say, such support seldom takes place.
*****
Razzberries for the abovementioned planning and zoning committee chairman who, so I'm told, when some spontaneous applause arose from the audience favoring the church, admonished the clappers to stop. He explained that such displays of enthusiasm would not favorably influence his august body planning other people's lives. And, "By gum," one supposes, "we must have some respect around this here People's Great Hall of Justice and Mercy and, no doubt, Authority."
I jest, of course, as the chairman probably works without very much pay and, too, he could have had a hard day, all day, at the office. Still, a little sense of humor would seem to help us, especially when we are exercising dominion over others.
*****
Roses for the majority of the Caldwell planning and zoning group (3 to 2 majority vote, remember?) who, after all, came down on the side of truth, righteousness, religious freedom and justice and all that. Egad, are we to assume that peristroika and glasnost - and even private property rights - are rearing their ugly heads over here, too?
****8
Roses, in advance, to Caldwell Mayor Jim Dakan. Now that his city's beautiful new powder-blue paint job on the water tower atop Canyon Hill must be repainted (the paint manufacturer is paying the bill due to a bad batch of paint) he will consider a new city slogan on the tank. Thank heaven!
The present, and many think dull-witted slogan, thereupon as of today says, "CALDWELL - Gateway to Idaho." Methinks it's a bit dumb. Much greater wisdom suggests: "CALDWELL - Best Water in the U.S.A."
Call Dakan! He's a former undertaker, remember? So tell him not to "let us down" - even if he has to appoint a new slogan committee.
Teachers Send Message to Bosses
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 16, 1990
The decision of the Caldwell School District teachers to strike or not to strike in order to get their demands agreed to, raises some interesting questions. Unfortunately, few of these seem or much interest to the news media. The TV is the most superficial of all.
Even so, there are some items to consider if we but look a little beyond the surface of the fuss between the teachers and their bosses.
First of all, I was told by competent authorities on the administration side that what the pending strike was mostly about was (1) identity. One can hardly blame a teacher for having a little ego-satisfaction so I thought that wasn't so bad, but the second reason was more serious.
Power (or control) was said to be second in line for the teachers' union demands. I suppose that, too, is understandable, yet one wonders how one can run a huge "ship" (school) with hundreds of sailors deciding from time to time just how the captain and his officers should navigate and steer, who should be promoted, who should decide what to haul and how much to load into which hold and how much they should charge to do all this.
The late great Dale Carnegie said people have two reasons for what they do. First, is a real reason and second is one that sounds good. So let's keep that "gem" in mind as we look further into my informant's "real" reasons for the threatened teachers' strike.
Third, I'm told is not only money or wages in particular, but to have a reason for the teachers to belong to the union. Makes sense. Why pay dues to the Idaho Education Association (IEA) or its affiliate if they don't appear to be raising some ruckus in your behalf from time to time? And, on occasion, it needs to be rather visible and audible, too. Eighty percent of the school budget goes for teachers' salaries now, and if that's the case any added expenditures must come out of the remaining 20 percent. But budgets seldom impress unions very much.
Now then, the teacher-pickets parading in front of the school superintendent's office last Thursday told a little different story. About 150 teachers (including half a dozen small children. Egad!) picketed the school office carrying placards with a variety of messages. One supposes they couldn't get "through" to the school's negotiating team in any other way. But it's certainly liberaldom in action.
Here's some of the "messages" (I used quotes on the word, messages, since many of them are in serious dispute - as one might guess): "We touch the future." "Don't cheat our kids." "Teachers have class." "Give our kids what's right now what's left." "The law says 20." The teachers claim the Idaho Legislature voted money to reduce class size. They claim Superintendent Darrel Deide is refusing to spend these funds, thus no reduction in students per class.
Deide's office denies this but let's look at some more of the school teachers' picket signs as they demonstrate in front of the administration headquarters at 11th Avenue and Cleveland Boulevard:
"We care about children." (Doesn't everybody? Maybe even Deide and Co.? The taxpayers?) But there's more and some are just fabulous: "Big classes cheat kids." "Working together we all succeed." "Let's do what's fair." "Negotiate now - settle now." "We dare because we care."
Wally Gerhauser, a former principal in the Caldwell district, was in midstream with his placard which read, "I walk the line." Presumably he thought such a euphemism wouldn't infuriate either side. Such caring!
But the picketer's sign this writer found more curious was carried by a lady teacher with a most matter of fact look on her face: "Please treat me like a professional." I wondered if Channel 7's TV photographers, who drove over from Boise for the affair, would see the humor in it and give it a proper place among all the protesting marchers. They didn't. It probably went clear over their heads.
There was one real doozie: "Support us - the Legislature did." One needs note the IEA is by far the most powerful labor union in the state, thus is frequently able to intimidate many legislators to do their bidding. Others lobbyists do this too, sad to say, but it hardly follows that coerced political decisions are thus judicious or profound. Tut, tut.
Perhaps the most damning (if true) placard alluded to Deide's almost $59,000 annual salary. It read: "Sup't. gets 14% raise, Teachers - 7%." By far the most tender sign of all those picketing was: "For the love of children." Hmmm. No greed or self-interest here, thank Heaven.
Saddest of all, however, and apparently of least interest to the media and both union and management is their adamant refusal to look upon the students as customers instead of wards.
Doctors Blind to Medical Fuss
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 23, 1990
It is fun to be able to share some good news, especially when it's about a kindred soulmate of philosophy. Here's what happened.
Some years ago I wrote regarding 100 medical doctors in our tri-city area whose waiting room literature I had someone survey to determine how much of it was likely to oppose socialized medicine. Result? Almost zero. It is a sickening message, but true, nonetheless.
Well, a friend in Colorado read of my survey only recently and promptly sent it off to a practicing surgeon in North Carolina. I received the good doctor's response in my mail last week. Some of you medical doctors may well find it fascinating - and gutsy. Here it is:
"(Our mutual friend) shared your article with me and I appreciate it. I enjoyed both of them but especially the one on doctors ignoring one of their best public relations assets (i.e. waiting room literature).
"I have always used my office waiting room as a method to reach the general public on pertinent free market ideas and conservative principles. I print my own newsletters and keep several conservative publications in the waiting area. I supply such publications as (William F. Buckley's) National Review, Insight, American Spectator, The Freeman, and occasional reprints from ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute).
"Patients come into the examining room reading them. And they ask questions and comment on articles. Some even will ask for a copy. (Some I'm sure steal them). I also write a lot of letters-to-the-editor for a large number of newspapers, I have enclosed a choice few. I receive a lot of compliments, some anonymous." Now, it gets hotter:
"But what is most interesting is the response of my colleagues. You would think that they would appreciate the fact that one of their brothers would take the time and face the heat of battle, to defend their right to practice private medicine. But they don't.
"Over the years I have fought PSRO, HMO, Utilization Review, Medicare-Medicaid police tactics, and a host of other important battles which all of my colleagues agreed were important battles. But the greatest resistance I received was not from the liberal-left enemy but, from those whom I was defending - my colleagues.
"It was an experience that I shall never forget. I was told that my defense of private practice was causing the government to come down harder on them. That I should back off and just go along. That if I would stop resisting, the bureaucrats would go easy on us.
"Soon I was seen as the problem. If they could just shut me up. Soon I found that I was all alone. Sure, a few gave me secret encouragement. But most were furious that I dared speak out against the abuses of government.
"I remember well warning a large audience at the country medical society meeting that if we did not stand and fight now the bureaucratic forces of socialist engineering would soon own us all. I was booed, hissed at, and insulted by prominent members of the society. (Most of whom have since retired).
"One prominent member told me that if I would just go along with the government programs we could adjust to a few restraints. But if I persisted the government would destroy us all.
"I reminded the gentlemen of what Von Mises and Hayek had taught me - that socialist bureaucrats are never satisfied with a LITTLE power, their quest for power and control was insatiable.
"I informed them that history teaches us that only by resisting the forces of evil can we retain our principles. And that should we acquiesce, soon we would be whimpering hand maidens of the socialist planners.
"Of course all these arguments were foreign to him. He was steeped in socialism and interventionism (as) were most of the audience.
"I fought these bastards for five years. But they were determined appeasement (was safest) and that I must be silenced. I found myself disinvited to parties and consults fell.
"Now, 10 years later, all of what I have said has come true. And I never hesitate to tell them. - 'I told you so.'
"Occasionally he has asked to defend a colleague against some bureaucratic abuse: 'No,' I tell them, 'I asked you to stand by me and fight this when we had a chance. But you refused. You humiliated me ... So now live it.'
"I continue to fight for (non-government) medicine, but only as a loner and through my editorials, newsletters and "propaganda.' I place in my waiting room. We (doctors) are our own wors(t) enemy." It was signed of course. (Name on special request).
Meantime, Idaho doctors likewise maintain their silence - while our medical mess goes into orbit.
Only the Names Have Been Changed
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
September 30, 1990
This past Monday I received a noteworthy three-page letter from the Idaho State Republican Party headquarters in Boise. It was, as you might imagine, a fund-raising letter and was signed by my great and good friend, Pete Cenarrusa, secretary of state.
So far so good. But under the leadership of State GOP Chairman Randy Ayre, an upper echelon lawyer for Boise Cascade, that party's guts, if indeed modern politicians are supposed to have any guts, have been further reduced even unto the size of the proverbial mustard seed.
It is one thing to squawk about one's chosen political party's principals, strategy and tactics, but it is quite something else to do anything about it. We must "be positive," they say, or the media will scold us. Balderdash, I say. Let's stand for something or we'll fall for anything. Let's stand up and be counted. George Washington ever so wisely said, "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair." Great! But what standard?
Comes now Cenarrusa's letter to the GOP "troops," so to speak. One could easily assume Pete just lent his name to the letter but he should know better. He is, of course, Mr. "Nice Guy" Republican and while not particularly a boat-rocker, his conservative heart is in the right place.
Still the Republican Party is going down the tube. Everybody except the pachyderms can see it. But as a Boise precinct lady Mary (her last name escapes me) told me last week: "... bashing Republicans is bad news and you should not do it." Or words to that effect. Her plethora of GOP buttons, ribbons, slogans, etc., pinned to her lapel suggested the old patriotism slogan: "My country - right or wrong."
Sincerity itself doth not a case maketh, especially when your side is losing its fanny and all the fixtures. In fact many predict the GOP could easily lose their small majority in the Senate next November. With the liberal media's help, of course.
So let's take a closer look at what the grand old party's recent letter over Cenarrusa's signature said:
Its three pages used the word Republican 21 times while not "saying" anything at all. Oh yes, it said they need money. All parties need money, but not one word, mind you, as to what the differences were compared to the other parties' candidates, principles and goals. In fact, the Cenarrusa letter's 21 references to the term "Republican" could well have been used by the Democrats in a like-minded letter. All that would have been necessary was to have erased the word Republican and inserted the word Democrat. Two peas in a pod.
"Well, that's the way the game is played, Ralph," said a GOP official to whom I complained about the letter. "We'll have another one bye and bye. Perhaps it will have more appeal. So keep your shirt on." He was nice, but it was typically SOS. Shallow at best.
But the next letter will, in effect, be the same old Constructive Republican Alternative Proposal (CRAP). It has been going on for years. The federal budget got worse by the year. Then by the month. And now by the day. If you don't believe it ask someone with at least half a brain. He or she will probably tell you he did not vote last year, maybe the last two, four or six years ago either.
Many say it doesn't do any good to vote. The establishment, i.e., the press, the banks, big business, big unions, big government in general all have it pretty well worked out as it is. So why should they let you vote for a change? The Soviet Union's politburo has a higher turnover of "politicians" than our U.S. House of Representatives. Vote for change? Ho ho ho.
As an interesting example, U.S. Sen. Steve Symms recently complained (no doubt rightly so) that even several of his colleagues, presumably GOPers, thought his proposal for a debate on worldwide TV between the U.S.S.R. and Lithuania was frivolous. Of course this was prior to the Kuwaiti-Iraq oil war crisis but Lithuania was at that time big news. Symms suggested such a debate would be a world class exposure favoring independence for Lithuania. Much better than saber-rattling. But the media wouldn't touch the Symms proposal as newsworthy.
Notwithstanding that Symms' single press release on the matter was poorly written he also gave three speeches on the Senate floor proposing the debate. But the intellectually constipated Republicans thought his worldwide debate scheme "frivolous." Egad!
"Of course they'd think your idea frivolous," I explained to Symms. "Your colleagues think balancing the federal budget is frivolous."
Judging from the fund-raising GOP letter sent out under Cenarrusa's name the Idaho Republican Party thinks any gutsy or meaningful statements, at all, about ideas, would be frivolous.
Stand for Something, or Perish
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 7, 1990
Last week this column carried what some Republicans thought were some rather lively, if terribly justified, criticisms of their party, in general, and a current version of their fund-raising letter in particular.
Given the steady decline of their party's majority in the Legislature over the past several years, such "non-positive" observations, while timely and true, often draw disappointed looks if not downright dastardly reactions from GOP stalwarts. One of the latter challenged me to name some specific recommendations, "if you're so smart," which the Grand Ole Party could and should install to the betterment of good government.
I hereby accept the challenge, cheerfully, and without fear of contradiction. Let us hope the shortage of space herein will not suggest to readers who care (that rules out about half, I'd say) that what follows are the only, not to mention the best, things the Republicans should do. But they would spark up, improve the image, the principles, strategy and tactics of their party and favor the public good in all 44 counties.
The GOP party regulars are with a few exceptions made up of mostly mossbacks, or at least older folks who have things pretty well "lined out" to preserve the status quo.
True enough, young people today are hard to interest in political public affairs. That is why the party should launch an all-out campaign to enlist young people as activists - offer them something high-minded and practical.
There is some risk in this, of course. Young people want to see things change dramatically. The Democrats, with the undying, ever-present help of the overwhelmingly liberal media, have usurped the "ideology" of change. I use quotes on the word because change has in recent years come to mean an end in itself. This is thanks to the government's school system whose teachers are 90 percent liberal Democrats, since these teachers tend to be mostly graduates of the even more extreme liberal colleges and universities. Believe me, folks, if you think extreme liberal higher education is an overstatement you are mistaken.
Oddly enough, most Republicans understand that such liberal bias exists in both schools and colleges, both public and private. Still they try their ding dangdest to buy their friendship even though, to the liberal school teachers and left-leaning professors credit, most of them are not for sale.
Nonetheless, the GOP legislators have raised the ante, so to speak, each year the Democrat governors offer a specific lesser amount for the school budget from the Legislature. Each year, mind you, they do this trying to buy the teachers' union votes with other people's money. Do you think for a moment those politicians would spend their own money this way?
Certainly now. Just ask several of these "compassionate" souls of the pee-pull's solace to donate some of their own private funds to a non-government and worthwhile project of yours. You'll soon see a liberal tendency turned into a tight-wad conservative one.
As I noted, there is risk for the GOP establishment to enlist very many young folks except, of course, the juniors who are content to do nothing but lick stamps (if not boots), stuff envelopes, run errands and appear alongside the so-called big wigs, i.e., be seen and not heard.
Even so, some significant youthful ideology or philosophical hardlining would serve well the few party regulars who want no special interest, favors or raw power from government. But, much like the Democrats in office today, the establishments do not like too many youngsters asking too many questions. Tends to embarrass the deck-stacking that goes on in both parties. Behind the scenes, of course.
Why do both the Idaho Senate and House have a Committee On Privatization, each dominated by Republicans? Both are merely gathering dust. Ask your reps. Why? And then demand an intelligent answer.
If Idaho educators would find out about (1) privatization, (2) private property, (3) limited government and (4) the free market (most teachers are ideologically fiercely opposed) then teach it to them - the young people would doubtless demand all four.
An uneasy if not frightful possibility, however, just may be lurking under all this, i.e., the Idaho Democrats might "discover" privatization first. (England's Maggie Thatcher did it and became the undisputed leader of the non-socialist world. Remember?)
So let's hope Idaho Secretary of State Pete Cenarrusa, who signed the abovementioned superficial Republican letter, wakes up his party to "discover capitalism." If not - goodbye GOP.
Smeed's Political Roses, Razzberries
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 14, 1990
The political "look-alikes" season is on. Election day is Nov. 6. But if one judges by the rhetoric put out by the various candidates one might guess they see it as judgment day itself.
So, speaking of judgment, let's pass out a few roses and razzberries for that purpose and help make a "clean air bill" for the interested voters.
Roses for Steve Symms, Idaho's soon-to-be senior U.S. senator, who called this writer out of a sound sleep one morning last week. He said it was only to brighten my day. Why? Well, I have explained to him ever since he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 the conservatives should stop trying to make government efficient. Instead, our runaway government should be trimmed back with a meat axe.
Each year he's been back there it's gotten worse. "Well," Symms said, midst a hearty laugh, "we have just about got it shut down." (By "it" he meant big government and the possibility of closing down certain government offices because of the budget mess.) "Maybe there is some hope yet." Obviously his was somewhat of a joke. But there is truth in his jest.
*****
Roses, too, for Congressman Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., with whom Symms voted to hold President Bush's budget feet to the fire on "no new taxes." I sent Steve a telegram a while back to say I heard Bush was growing an enormous mustache so we could not read his lips.
*****
Razzberries from Democrat Ron Twilegar, candidate for U.S. Senate, against GOP candidate Larry Craig.
So lackluster has Twilegar's complaint-campaign against the popular Craig become that the latter's attendance record in the House is the most Twilegar can find to holler about.
A Twilegar TV ad ostensibly trounced Craig's 91 percent attendance - not how he has voted, mind you, just how many times. Egad. Maybe the conservative congressman is an even better man than I thought he was.
*****
Razzberries for Robert "Bob" LeBow, the Nampa medical tourist-type whose many bicycling trips around various foreign countries studying public health seems to have expanded his penchant for one-man, one-vote to alarming proportions.
LeBow, a liberal Democrat of sincere and McGovern-like dimensions, seeks the Idaho legislative post now held by Caldwell's Ron Crane. Not unlike Twilegar's dilemma, LeBow's problem is to find something - anything - to complain about. It must be loud and ambiguous enough for voters to view with alarm. Like Twilegar he has chosen to attack his opponent's attendance record. Wow! Such powerful puffery.
That, too, should tell us something. Like: "Vote for me, folks, I won't miss even a few vote-opportunities to ask for more government." That's what liberals do, you know, i.e. vote for more government - almost without exception.
*****
Razzberries for the editor of the Idaho Press-Tribune who is, so far as my informal poll-taking can ascertain, the only non-left winger who has bought into LeBow's anti-Ron Crane crusade.
Editor Rick Coffman is usually hung up on pro-choice for abortion (Crane is pro-life) and most liberal Democrats such as LeBow are pro-choice but, of course, there may be other reasons the editor scolded Crane for his poor attendance recently. Interestingly, one of his editorial complaints claimed Crane's moderate attendance made each of his votes cost "$47 per vote." This brings to my mind a suggestion:
One guesses, given the past several legislative session's inclination to meddle in everyone's affairs on everything imaginable, maybe we should instead give Crane a bonus. At $47 per vote for all the legislators who agree to stay home, or take a walk as Coffman put it, and not vote, the taxpayers would still save loads of money. Pretty soon the voters might get the message; namely, that we don't need all the government we are paying for.
*****
Razzberries for politically eager Marilyn Bauman, Democrat candidate running against conservative incumbent GOP state Rep. Dolores Crow of Nampa.
Bauman, wife of a popular medical doctor in Caldwell, is one of the area's super-liberal lovers of governmental solutions for all problems.
Just don't try to discover her Democrat Party affiliation in her rather extensive advertising and yard sign campaign. It ain't there. But she's chosen the same big spending party as Ted Kennedy, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Jim Wright and the other look-alikes.
*****
Roses to Mrs. Bauman for one early bit of political acumen however: She apparently knows what to cover up.
Get Government Out - Privatize!
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 21, 1990
Sad to say there is more heat than light being shed on the savings and loan mess. Happy to say that my friend Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University, is, instead, shedding a whole lot more light. It's both pungent and profound.
Many of us know the whole S&L crisis ought to teach Americans a good lesson about our Big Brother view of government - but it won't. At least it is not likely to, given the media's penchant for finding a conspiracy under every private sector "bed," together with the liberal intellectuals who see the world privatize as being greed and nothing more.
The latter seem to hate anything that sounds like it might mean less government, hence the S&L holocaust stands a real a chance of slowing if not ruining the whole emerging free market, private property idea.
As an interesting aside, it is ironic to note Eastern Europe moving toward capitalism while America, especially on many of our big campuses, is moving even further toward communalism.
Williams, who spoke as a guest lecturer of Caldwell's Center for Market Alternatives a few years ago, explains the S&L muck in terms anyone can understand but seldom gets to hear from a nationally syndicated columnist. Just don't expect to hear him interviewed on any of the big TV state franchised monopolies such as CBS, NBC or ABC. Why? 'Cause here's what he says in simple, easy to understand words:
"Deposits insured by the federal government" is at best a misleading and possibly fraudulent usage of the term "insured."
Writing in a bright, new, rather lively national news magazine, New Dimensions, published in Grants Pass, Ore., of all places, Williams tells us his own car and home are insured: "Should there be a loss by fire or accident, my insurance company doesn't tax you to meet its obligations. It, like yours, maintains reserves against expected losses and simply sends me a check.
"When a bank pledges: 'Deposits insured' ... it is not talking about insurance at all. If it was, Congress and the White House wouldn't be talking about taxing each of us thousands of dollars to make sure depositors get their money."
Williams fear the Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank may just print up a bunch of money to pay you and me back for the huge tax bill. If they do, just watch gold prices skyrocket.
Williams continues: "The S&L $500-billion misunderstanding is bad, but wait until you see some trillion-collar misunderstandings when city governments like Philadelphia, Chicago and New York are unable to meet the unfundable liabilities of their public employee retirement programs. ...
"Congressmen are not rocket scientists, but even a hyena would understand our $500-billion S&L misunderstanding ... Government auditors had little incentive to do a thorough job. Even when they gave a bank grief about portfolio hanky-panky, (the bank's) president might ask a congressman to whom he gave political contribution, to call off the wolves.
"On top of this (S&L) depositors had little incentive to find out if they were putting money into a rotten S&L; after all, the money was 'insured.'"
What does Williams suggest? Privatize bank and S&L insurance! Get the government out - before they muck up something else - even worse.
The lesson, explained this brilliant, if rare, libertarian economist, is that congressmen have no resources of their own at risk.
"There is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy ... Honesty requires banks to change their pledge: 'Your deposits are guaranteed by the ability of Congress to take other people's money.'"
I think that such a pledge might be more apt to happen in post-perestroika Poland than in the U.S.
Craig Takes Bush to Task for Betrayal
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
October 28, 1990
Folks are always wanting newspapers to "print more good news," but the papers tend to insisted that bad news is what sells. In any event, with Roses and Razzberries you can often have it both ways. For example:
*****
Roses for Congressman Larry Craig who was riding on the airplane recently seated next to President Bush. "There is an awfully vigorous sense of outrage out there Mr. President," said Craig. "People feel betrayed at your caving in on your pledge: 'Read my lips - no, new, taxes.'"
Bush responded, "Betrayed is a pretty strong word isn't it, Larry?" To which Craig replied, "No, Mr. President. I don't think it is."
*****
Razzberries for the national news media who follow the politicians around with baited breath, especially when the president is nearby, just waiting for a "news bite."
But don't hold your breath waiting for some newsman, most of whom are knee-jerk liberal, to quote conservative Craig scolding moderate Bush on reading the latter's loose lips.
*****
Roses, however, for Democrat challenger Ron Twilegar who also aspires to the same U.S. Senate seat Craig pursues. In an apparent effort to seize upon the present popular outrage against Congress' recent self-awarded 30 percent wage raise Twilegar's TV ad claims: "I will not vote for a new pay raise until the budget is balanced."
Admittedly he is focusing on the budget mess, and to his credit. But his opponent Craig has been a national leader on the balanced budget amendment for some years. Too, one suspects such a promise entails little risk or sacrifice for Twilegar inasmuch as the soon to be $120,800 salary is so "ample."
Also, Craig already returns his recent raise to the federal treasury, having voted against said raise in the first place. Still, Twilegar's budget move was a little plus.
*****
Razzberries for journalist Dan Popkey, Boise's main political reporter, for his Oct. 12 front page story. It was headlined: "Smyser/LaRocco go at it in debate." In the 36 column-inch story 20 inches were more or less neutral, but 12 inches favored liberal Democrat Larry LaRocco while only four inches favored conservative GOPer Skip Smyser in their race for Congress. A bit slanted? Perhaps.
Oct. 18 in the same liberal Boise paper a headline on the same race read: "Campaign gunk' sidelines LaRocco." Of that short story's six column-inches, five favored LaRocco while less than one inch favored Smyser.
Comes now Republican conservative vice president of the U.S. You guessed it! Dan Quayle came to Boise to campaign for Smyser. Popkey's story in the same paper, same day, headlined: "Vice president stumps for Smyser, but they're at odds over tax hike." In the 22 column-inch story 12 inches were about neither candidate. But six inches favored LaRocco. Sort of evened up the odds when the "little guy" liberal had to face conservative big guy Smyser backed up by his world-famous vice president of America.
Admittedly, such is probably reporter Popkey's privilege, as the game is played, but start counting for yourself the column-inches in your local paper's reportage on controversial politicians. You'll soon learn who the paper or the reporters favor. All of which is OK, but wouldn't it be nice if the campaign financial disclosure statements demanded the dollar value of the media's "free" advertising for their pals?
*****
Roses for MediaWatch's compilation of the latest outrageous, and sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. This feature of the non-liberal Media Research Center has a wonderful quote. It's a recent exchange between the ultra-ascerbic ABC-TV journalist Sam Donaldson and U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C. It was clearly headlined, "Touch‚, Mr. Toupee." Here's the way their little tit for tat joust went:
Sam Donaldson: "Senator, you're from the great textile-producing state of South Carolina. Is it true you have a Korean tailor?"
Sen. Ernest Hollings: "Well, I tell you the truth, I think I got that suit, this is not the one, but the same place right down the street where - if you want to personalize this thing - where you got that wig, Sam."
It all took place on David Brinkley's show Sept. 16, and I guess I just wish the Republicans had half the media guts as Democrat Hollings. Bless his heart.
Give the World Your Best
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 4, 1990
What follows is intended as my political recommendation(s), "endorsement" if you like, for election day. It is appallingly unorthodox, so the liberals should like it. But they won't. Furthermore, said recommendations contain some traditional values, so the conservatives should love them. But they won't.
Then why do it, you ask? (1) Because the country is in deep, deep trouble and (2) I don't agree give a damn whether they like it or not because I love them both, a little, the libs and conservatives (even a few Democrats, believe it or not), yet our friends in power and those seeking it are letting us down - mostly under the banner of a kind of misguided "sincere."
Last Tuesday night at the Canyon County Courthouse in Caldwell there was assembled a large audience, mostly Republicans, before whom spoke U.S. Sens. James McClure and Steve Symms, Congressman Larry Craig and several others aspiring to public office, not the least of which were Skip Smyser and Roger Fairchild seeking the posts of congressman and governor respectively.
As I listened to the "Oh woe is us" wailings of each politician I remembered I have been listening to the same story, more or less, I guess, for 25 or 30 years. One occasion in particular was at the Odd Fellows Hall in Caldwell way back when the late, great U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen was stumping for the GOP: "We need more Republicans. We're in big trouble. We're spending and regulating far too much. Dang the Democrats." And the GOP has declined ever since.
Well, McClure, Symms and Craig were saying pretty much the same old stuff last week only spending is now at runaway, break-neck, warp-speed. The Democrats blame the GOP. And vise versa, of course, the latter under the leadership of President George Bush whose campaign promised to stop this brainless spending saying, "Read my lips." We wondered. But we hoped. And he was indeed elected.
To Craig's credit he told Bush to his face he later "betrayed" the people with his "lips service" by caving in to the Democrats' budget-blackmail. But Craig "waffled" on abortion saying he'd let his wife be free to choose. Still, I think he's sincere, at least.
To his credit, McClure as much as told the Caldwell audience the so-called budget compromise, i.e., some tax increase, some spending cuts, is a lie. "The president knows I disagree," he said. Well, bless Bess! Gee whiz! By golly! And by gum! What a blow for freedom and less government?
Just why McClure didn't call a national press conference saying: "If George Bush signs this dishonest piece of Democrat blackmail I will immediately resign in protest from the United States Senate: - I don't know. But he's a personal pal of Bush's.
Perhaps it was the same reason McClure didn't squirrel away $30,000 or $40,000 of his $200,000 campaign war chest, accumulated over the years, to GOP gubernatorial candidate Roger Fairchild, a conservative virtually abandoned by his and McClure's own party. I'm sure McClure is sincerely concerned. But where's the newsworthy, manifested outrage so necessary to communicate it?
And Symms? He went to Insane City, D.C., in 1972 to "take a bite out of government." Remember? "The trouble with guys like you and me, Ralph, is that people say we are too far out - too impractical," says Symms. So he lets his chief aide, Phil Reberger, "moderate" him.
Here's my what-to-do advice for election day. It's the answer for all us unsuccessful voters, candidates and puzzled politicians:
(1) People are unconscionable, illogical, self-centered. Love them anyway.
(2) If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
(3) If you are successful you will win false friends and true enemies. Try to be successful anyway.
(4) The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do it anyway.
(5) Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
(6) People favor underdogs, but I notice they follow top dogs. Fight for some underdogs anyway.
(7) What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
(8) People really need help, but they attack you if you help them. Try to help people anyway.
(9) Give the world the best you have, and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
McClure, Symms, Craig are, I'm sure, all sincere and doing some good. But I'm not so sure they're "giving the world the best they have." But if they don't, an American dictator may soon rise out of the ashes and kick us all in the teeth.
Are We Marching Down Rome's Path?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 11, 1990
What follows, ladies and gentlemen, is a sort of "launching pad" for people of good will on both sides of the political fence who are much disappointed with the recent elections.
It is the marks of ancient Rome, not the Democrats, that scare me. History repeats itself. And the only thing Americans learn from history is that they don't learn anything from history.
Both the Demopublicans and the Republicrats see our country's degeneracy, decadence and depravity (note the fed's actual subsidy of the arts paying for a photo of a beaker of the artist's own urine with a crucifix of Christ immersed in it - for public display, mind you) as a love of violence for violence's sake. The situation is plain. If we look, we can see.
But we notice that there is another result of modern man's loss of meaning and values which is more ominous, and which many people do not see. This is that an elite will exist. Society cannot stand chaos. Some group or some person will fill the vacuum. A leader whether elected, appointed or otherwise will offer us arbitrary absolutes and many stand today in public promising, promising, promising.
The late, great Swiss theologian Frances Schaeffer (one of the few religionists I can stand) puts it thusly: "Will the Silent Majority help? (They) are divided into a minority and a majority. The minority are either Christians who have a real basis for values or those who at least have a memory of the days when the values were real. The majority are left with only their two poor values of personal peace and affluence." This, of course, is why both the electors and the elected will not change Congress. A cry does exist to limit terms, but should be to limit power.
Schaeffer, one of the world's few real clear thinkers, explained in 1976 about America's very own situation today:
"With such values, will men stand (up) for their liberties? Will they not give up their liberties step by step, inch by inch, as long as their own personal peace and prosperity is sustained (Congress' $130,000 salaries) and not challenged and as long as the goods are delivered?
"There are tensions between the young and old generations, long hair and short, drugs and non-drugs, whatever is currently popular. But they support each other sociologically," says this fascinating religious man, "for both embrace the values of personal peace and affluence." (Note what much of that $3 trillion national debt is being spent on.)
"Much of the church is no help here either," says the great preacher, "because for so long a large section of the church has only been teaching a relativistic humanism using religious terminology.
"I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old, will sustain the loss of liberty without raising their voices as long as their lifestyles are not threatened. And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things.
"Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals - increasingly (we) are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth - but of supplying a constituency with a (cake) frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them."
The great Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) told us (but we hate history) in his epoch-making Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that these five signals marked Rome at its end: (1) "A mounting love of show and (affluence); (2) a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor; (3) an obsession with sex; (4) freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originally and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; (5) an increased desire to live off the state."
It all sounds so familiar, doesn't it? Well, last Tuesday's elections were much in the pathway of Rome all right, but let us not sleep too soundly thinking it's just those rascal Democrats and their tendency to sound much like the non-violent communalists. And let's not go to sleep while the Republicans say "me too" and "Read my lips, no new taxes." So, what to do?
Here's an idea whose time has come: They should form a Libertarian Caucus within the GOP. All the Libertarians are likely to do is continue to labor in vain for vote totals large enough to convince the academics, the clergy and the media that more government equals bad news. It won't work.
Small vote totals, for all their Herculean effort and sincerity with freedom ideas and individual responsibility, only disenchant the pleasure-seeking majority. Some of the GOP leadership is interested in libertarianism believe it or not. So ideas do have consequences.
Heaven knows the Republicans could certainly use some libertarian-type, Jeffersonian ideas, some spine and a market oriented, non-statist sense of humor.
Is It Orwell's 1984 Revisited?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
November 18, 1990
Last week (Nov. 11) this writer called for the Idaho State Republican Party to form a libertarian caucus within the formal organization itself.
Why? Well, one could drum up several viable reasons, not the least of which is that the recent election disaster for the GOP could be seen as symptomatic of the "me-too" loser-phase of liberal Republicanism. Once seen as the solid conservative center of rockribbed Republican states, Idaho seems to have given up control, in the state senate at least, to the left-wing leadership of the Democrat Party.
The Senate is now equally divided between the two parties (21 to 21), but for Lt. Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's historic right to cast the deciding vote in case of a Senate tie. Otter, by the way, hasn't otherwise helped much for four years.
Comes now Conley Ward, Jr., state chairman of the Democrats with an innovative plan to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse, so to speak. His innovative plan is to admit the GOP lieutenant governor's historic right to break the tie votes in the senate. "But," cries the gutsy left of center party chairman, "the right to break a tie vote on a particular piece of legislation is not the same as the right to break a tie vote on just who will control the powerful committee chairmanships in that Senate. We want cochairmanships."
He is now demanding, believe it or not, that Otter be denied the right to cast a tie-breaking vote to organize the Senate, i.e., to decide which party controls and appoints the various committee chairmanships in the next session. Indeed, Ward intends to take his innovative "legal" concept to the state Supreme Court. (All the members of that court, by the way, have been appointed by Democrat Gov. Cecil Andrus.)
I have to take my hat off to the Democrat Party chief whose gut-wagon runneth over now that his heretofore minority party has had a taste of political blood. Compared to Republican Party Chief Randy Ayre, Ward is a quiet but hungry tiger straining at the leash. Unfortunately said "leash" is held in check, or is supposed to be, by that Republican chairman. But Ayre, one of the liberal Boise Cascade Corp. chief lawyers, seems to think patience and soft-spoken political ambiguities will somehow bring a new GOP creationism out of the ooze.
Asked at a recent Rotary Club meeting in Caldwell just what was the difference between the two parties (Democrat and Republican) Ayre replied, "That's a tough question. One thing is, Republicans tend to believe in a strong national defense ... In the final analysis, I think the voters should (read, will) decide." Egad!
Well, on election day, the voters did decide. The Republicans lost their fanny and, Ward to the rescue, unlike Ayre, does know the difference between the parties. For one thing, leadership against the Republicans. He proposes co-chairmanships for the Senate's powerful committees. If Ayre opposes this asinine scheme with any vigor or enthusiasm I will miss my guess. About all that Ayre's leadership can be said to have created for the Idaho GOP is a Gem State version of the George Bush budget "compromise." (e.g. It includes $19 million for the study of cattle farting as possibly harmful to the atmosphere. You can believe it or not, it's silly, but it's in there.)
Again Conley Ward not only thinks there's a big difference between the two parties, he has done his homework. He has read the great George Orwell's famous book warning about big brother government. Orwell's 1984 talks about "double-speak, new-speak" and "double-think," and Ward uses it, in the best self interest of his own party leadership.
Asked what he thought happened to the GOP on election day, Ward replied: "I think the Republicans have been taken over by the right wing."
Any political observer worth his salt can easily see the pachyderms have been taken over by the left-wing, not the right. Just the opposite of what Ward suggests. Orwell's "double-speak" has spoken volumes to Ward and he is using it beautifully. That's politics. Sad, but true.
For those of you who have forgotten 1984's official language, new-speak went this way: "Freedom means slavery; weakness means strength, etc., etc." The Soviet Russians made beautiful use of the term "peace," during the Cold War, e.g., whatever they were for was peace, whereas if we disagreed we were for war. Peace meant war.
John Corlett, the left-wing political columnist for the Idaho Statesman used the term "right-wing" for decades to describe almost everything bad and every non-liberal with whom he disagreed. Interestingly enough, he steadfastly refused to define exactly what he meant. A sophisticated version of name-calling, new-speak, but it still works.
One of the state's top GOP politicians told me recently: "(George) Bush has just destroyed almost everything you and I have worked for for 15 years." He meant, specifically, the budget fiasco. The GOP Libertarian caucus could still help sort it all out.
Egad! Use
Just One Definition!
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho
Press-Tribune
November 25, 1990
There was a dinner held in Boise last week for a committee whose stated purpose is to study and discuss foreign affairs. It was attended by a variety of well-educated business, professional, academic and retired persons. But not all the benefits of such a gathering arise from the speaker of the evening whose expert remarks on foreign affairs are usually the principle attraction.
At my table was a nice lady economist. A Ph.D. in fact. Not only was she nice, but obviously intelligent, author of at least one good book on the subject of economics and, I'm told, also a good teacher.
So it was that one of my dinner companions asked the economist: "We have been discussing the subject of economics in general, just now, and inflation in particular. Could you favor us with the proper definition of inflation?"
Quick as a wink the doctor of economics replied with a pleasant smile: "Surely. Inflation is a rise in the general price level."
Well now, I just could not let that "definition" go unchallenged. Why? Because right there, my friends, believe it or not, is much if not most of the guts and gusto of the giant mass of confusion, blood, sweat and tears of the economic muddle facing our country and its unlucky future generations. Maybe even its very survival as a free and responsible society is at stake.
Semantic confusion is not new. In fact, 400 or 500 years before Christ the great Confucius was asked what was the first thing he would do if he were to be emperor. "Why I would set about clearing up the meaning of words." So you see it is not at all a trivial matter, this defining the words we use. But the word inflation just may well be the super "atom bomb" in today's war of words.
No doubt in my mind our nice lady economist knows what happens when the government "inflates" the supply of money; other things being equal, prices go up. But that is not what she said. She could have said something like, "There are two definitions of the word inflation. The Keynesian economists say that it means a rise in the general price level. The Austrian economic school of thought insists that inflation is an increase in the supply of money. This may account for much of the public's confusion over the general mismanagement of the government's fiscal holocaust."
But she didn't see fit to say that. She used the very same "definition" the insufferably liberal news media uses to push more government. Too bad, too. Why is this?
Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary, Funk and Wagnall's and Random House's big library editions all define the word inflation as "an increase in the supply of money, usually followed by a rise in the general price level."
A good definition, but that is a bit like defining rain as a lot of little drops of water, usually followed by wet sidewalks. Silly. Of course, these phenomena follow the initial action, but the proper defining of rain does not mean wet sidewalks. The latter is merely an after effect.
So what's the difference? A billion miles, that's all. Here's what happens. If one defines inflation as high prices, then the public tends to conclude, justifiably so, that high prices are the "fault" of the entrepreneur or the provider of goods and services. Makes sense. Those damn capitalists did it again, i.e., they are the ones who put on the high price tags. Aren't they?
However, if one defines inflation as an increase in the supply or quantity of money, thus causing high prices, then it is the fault of the government, since only it can increase the quantity of money. (If you and I do it it is called counterfeiting and we get thrown in jail.)
So, to the extent that high prices are seen by the public as "bad" then defining inflation as high prices makes the businessman the bad guy. This alone may account for much of America's anti-capitalistic mentality, particularly on campus.
But if one defines inflation as an increase in the money supply (thus causing high prices, remember?) as the big authentic dictionaries tell us, then those "bad" high prices are exactly the fault of the government. The government lovers, by the way, all hate this definition.
Too bad doctors in economics cannot use the same dictionary everyone else does. A common sense solution might well be to start using the hyphenated terms: "money-inflation" and "price-inflation." This would identify and separate cause from effect.
Papers Take Sides, Why Not the GOP?
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 2, 1990
The dozen or so daily papers in this state are insufferably liberal. Most are aggressive, make points and slant their "news" accordingly. Said another way - they take sides.
Then why, for heaven's sake, doesn't the Republican Party do that? Much is being made today faulting GOP State Chairman Randy Ayre and his socialite indifference to just what his party stands for. It is said the Boise Cascade lawyer's studied metooism in terms of party leadership automatically tended to make the Democrat candidates look good. Indeed, Ayre was quoted after the Nov. 6 election debacle as saying the Democrats just had better candidates. Egad!
Well, for whatever truth there is in all that, the GOP's troubles are only partly due to Ayre's Boise-type liberal leadership. He most certainly made it worse, but he by no means started it.
But Ayre, whose political flabbiness has been upbraided frequently in this column, is not the only GOP leader unwilling to lead. C.L. "Butch" Otter, four years into his first term as Republican lieutenant governor, is thought by many party regulars as actually very much into a vocal and perhaps supportive role for liberal Democrat Cecil Andrus.
Leadership? To be sure, but where to?
At least one politico close to Otter's mentor and father-in-law, J.R. Simplot, says he doubts Butch could get elected dog-catcher were a GOP primary election to be held this year. But it is nonetheless an open secret Otter intends to run for governor when Andrus steps down at end of his term in 1994.
Notwithstanding Otter's bizarre behavior and non-leadership in the GOP the fact remains Judge David Souter, the most recent appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, got his job mostly by keeping his mouth shut and not taking sides during his Senate confirmation. In light of the left-liberal's super-negative hate campaign visited upon the super-competitive Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork, maybe Otter does know what he's doing.
Of course, four years away lots can change. But it will be only two years until Idaho's then senior senator, Steve Symms, will be up for re-election. Assuming he will try for one more term his then 20-year tenure will be up for grabs and it is no secret the outspoken Symms is not philosophically flabby. At least by today's standards he is not. And after the recent shellacking the GOP took, the Democrats smell blood - Steve Symms' blood.
And who can blame them? The ex-apple grower went to Insane City, D.C., 18 years ago to "take a bite out of government," and ever since he's been stuck in the Democrats' communal craw. Stuck? Yes, indeed! Symms is easily the most dedicated, enthusiastic, popular and consistent private sector oriented - as opposed to statism - bit-time politician in the state's history.
He's also been fairly aggressive and if he had had even half of Idaho's news media, even half of the time, on "his" side, that so-called aggressiveness would by now have emerged as statesmanship.
All of which adds up to at least four major messes for the GOP to cure: (1) The poor stewardship of Idaho's own statist educators, e.g., Boise State University's economics department used to be dominated by libertarians, but is today left-leaning; (2) many Idaho corporations have taken up hard-core political prostitution; (3) the state GOPers have virtually abandoned anything philosophic or ideological except perhaps "broadening the party" by kissing everybody's bottom; and (4) if they continue to stoop to promising nirvana via such as name-familiarity, TV personality-cults, yard signs and me-tooism, Steve Symms won't even have a prayer in 1991:
If indeed Phil Batt agrees to take on the Idaho GOP party chairmanship, and I hope he does, he'd best soften the moth-eaten moderate milieu of "debating the issues" and instead inspire voters with how Symms' 1972 ideas differ from the collectivist ones still held by most Democrats.
Avenue of Flags Stirs One's Spirits
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 9, 1990
There is a medical doctor in Nampa, Idaho, by the name of James McCabe for whom we reserve today's bouquet of:
Roses for this specialist in pulmonary diseases: (1) because he cares for people's lungs and (2) unlike most medical doctors, he cares, and says so publicly, about organizations with whom he associates. This organization, as you might guess, is the American Lung Association (ALA). In an Idaho Press-Tribune guest opinion, Dec. 3, Dr. McCabe alleges the Capital Research Center (CRC) of Washington, D.C., which criticized "his" Lung Association is associated with the American Tobacco Association, thus discrediting the center's commentary.
The latter says ALA would have the public think their funds are used primarily for research on lung problems, but " 'tain't so." According to CRC's researcher Dr. James Bennett, the ALA raised $103,600,000 between 1980 and 1987.
Less than 5 percent of that sum was used for lung research. The balance went for salaries, transportation, education, benefits and fund raising. Tut, tut, methinks, but certainly no savings and loan scandal. Still, misleading. Then in order to water down CRC's research, McCabe alleges they are "associated" with those dastardly doers of dope (tobacco) assembled as the American Tobacco Association.
Therefore:
Razzberries for McCabe's rebuttal-response. Why? The CRC is not (repeat, not) "associated" (his word) with the tobacco purveyors at all. Like the Nampa Medical Center's pulmonary specialist, this writer also supports his friends publicly. So, I hereby challenge McCabe to a wager. I'll bet him two cases of Coors Lite beer or two cases of soda pop (winner's choice) that my friends the CRC and Jim Bennett are above reproach in McCabe's allegation of Dec. 3 regarding the tobacco association. He can nominate two judges residing in Canyon County and I'll pick one of them to decide which of us wins after examining each of our cases.
Roses for Capital Research Center whose main point is not that the ALA is not doing some good. It is more to say the latter's advertising is misleading to the effect that their lobbying Congress (et al) to get government more deeply involved in medical research is wrongheaded. Sincere, maybe, but the ALA serves to enlarge the federal bureaucracies to the probable detriment of the public, medical science and the private property order so touted by Thomas Jefferson.
Roses again for CRC whose book Patterns in Corporate Philanthropy, now in its fourth and much expanded edition, exposed the 250 largest U.S. corporations as giving 70 percent of their donations to left-of-center organizations, i.e., of Forbes magazine's 250 largest corporations the 25 biggest thus "reward" left-wing, anti-capitalist outfits who hate business enterprise. Egad. No wonder we lose.
Roses for Caldwell's Mayor Jim Dakan who is the major subject of the giant and popular readerboard's message at the extreme north end of North 21st Avenue in our city. But first a little background:
Bob Nicholes Oil Co.'s service station located a couple hundred yards further north has for years boasted an eye-filling American flag flying 24 hours a day over the big truck stop. Their "Old Glory" is also giant in size measuring 18 feet high by 24 feet long on a big tall pole. A beautiful sight to us flag wavers.
A neighbor called Perkins Cafe has opened a brand new restaurant just across Highway 20-26 from Nicholes. The nice new eating establishment is the centerpiece of a Comfort Inn Motel complex. Perkins has gone the flag-waving Nicholes one better having installed an even bigger stars and stripes measuring 20 feet by 30 feet. It too, is a flag-waver's delight and on a 50-foot pole.
Comes now Mayor Dakan. With the aid of an anonymous financial backer he has installed a big long row of 20-foot high telephone poles along North 21st Avenue, each boasting a gorgeous 3-foot by 5-foot American flag. There's one every 250 feet for a whole mile right through the middle of Farm City all the way to the College of Idaho. They really stir one's spirits. And so:
Roses for Dakan's abovementioned big readerboard message about all those red, white and blue flags in his fair city. (The billboard, too, is big. It's 15 feet up to the bottom, then 10 feet higher by 24 feet wide). Its five-line message explains why the "roses" for the mayor:
"Welcome to Caldwell's
Avenue of Flags
A few jackasses burn theirs
Mayor Dakan says
Let's fly ours."
Lack of a Philosophy Hurting GOP
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 16, 1990
"America's foreign policy is so pathologically irrational that many people believe there must be something intelligent hidden in it." Thus it is, in an interestingly parallel way, with the Idaho Republican Party.
It has been almost two decades now since I had the above quote printed on some notepads for my own personal use. It comes from one of the world's great, modern philosophers and tends, with a few exceptions, to get truer every year.
And in the matter of the Idaho GOP the results of said parallel are getting easier to see.
A case in point is a statement made last month by Larry Eastland, a Republican pollster, consultant and fund-raiser. He was active before and during the last campaign in which the GOP was devastatingly defeated and, worse yet, demoralized.
I have no particular reason to single out Eastland as a bad guy but more because the abovementioned statement is at once so bad and so good, relatively speaking, so philosophically flabby, contradictory and yet kind of intelligent and sincere I want to use it to demonstrate something - namely, how the GOP's political analysis "finger" keeps wobbling right back to the fire, i.e., they try to suck and blow in the same breath.
Eastland admits the November election was bad. But like always, always, always they (Boiseans) tell us the reason is "strategy, not philosophy." (Heaven forbid if one were to admit the term philosophy or ideology.) Then he leaps to explain that the "principles" of the Republicans which, by the way, one could not even pry out of Idaho State GOP Chairman Randy Ayre during "his" last campaign, are much as Abe Lincoln said they were. Admittedly a flabby example, but one assumes "Honest" Abe was on Eastland's mind. A bit odd, though, since the Democrats, too, are honest. At least neither the GOP platform nor the state headquarters told us the Demos were not honest.
To his credit, however, the big GOPer did tell us what Ayre would not, i.e., "Let the Democrats propose higher taxes, more government and greater intrusion. They're good at it."
As if the Republicans, at least the "me-tooers," were also good at it. That's just got to be what State Senator Herb Carlson (R-Boise) meant when he said last week to the effect that with so many new moderates in the legislature: "I expect that we will have a real productive session." In politics a liberal GOPer uses "productive" to mean passing a lot of new legislation. Hold your nose, it gets worse...
Now Eastland merely called for more efficiency in the university system, thus that would "... create integration for teaching excellence (undefined, of course) and allocate resources more efficiently." Egad! The whole Eastern Europe and communist bloc now says a market economy is the best way to allocate resources. Why can't we hear this from the Republicans?
I hate to do this to Eastland, but his analysis is so dreadfully contradictory: "We are the party of ideas and ideas are what get people excited." (Presumably philosophy, the very gut-wrenching base of an idea, cannot be trusted to a politician or party leader.) He goes on: "... new Idahoans ... are educated and informed. They demand real answers not platitudes." True. They dang sure didn't get that kind of answers from the 1990 GOP. That's exactly the why of their intellectual and hence political bankruptcy. So why is a fine philosophy not good strategy? Blankout!
Still, methinks the big Republican fund-raiser is quite sincere. Indeed, his "analysis" is not only more upfront but even more logical than those trying to survive today at the state GOP headquarters. But logic has no solid home in either party. The name of the game is get elected. Now, however, even that flounders. Is it against today's educated ideological trend? May be.
But the philosopher mentioned earlier tells us: "The disgraceful and terrifying answer is: There is no ideological trend today. There is no ideology. There are no political principles, theories, ideals or philosophy. There is no goal, no direction, no compass, no vision of the future, no intellectual element of leadership. Are there any emotional elements dominating today's culture? Yes, one. Fear.
"A country without a political philosophy is like a ship drifting at random in mid-ocean at the mercy of any chance wind, wave or current ... and whose passengers ... huddle and cry: 'Don't rock the boat!' "
It is obvious that a boat which cannot stand rocking is doomed already and that it had better be rocked hard if it is to regain its course. But such would require a principled and enthusiastically articulated policy view by the party's political leaders. Unlikely?
Anything less will no doubt assure the defeat, should he run in 1992, of U.S. Sen. Steve Symms. Judging from Ayre's recent appointment of yet another study committee, (STRIDE) that might be what the liberal Boise crowd wants. Said STRIDE committee should have been called STRADDLE. That might be what the Boise crowd wants.
Christmas Roses Brighten Season
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 23, 1990
The weather is pretty cold for either roses of raspberries. But the time is ripe especially for "razzberries." And the Christmas season calls for today's scent of roses.
Roses for Caldwell's Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA). Some years ago when the free market center was located in Boise it hosted what was then a very rare type of college professor, an economist and speaker from George Mason University.
Perhaps Dr. Walter Williams' least important, if not the most interesting, characteristic is that he is black. But the list of his rare qualities merely begins with his color, then it gets really daring, dashing and, for an academic, even brash.
Then why the roses? Well, this brilliant author and teacher of the way the world works is not only a libertarian, but he has come way up in that world since Boise and CSMA. Last week he was interviewed on the government TV's McNeil-Lehrer Report on the current controversy about reserving government funds only for minority students. William says it bodes ill for minorities and explained why.
He was interviewed later that same week by ABC's Barbara Walters on 20/20 about the homeless controversy. And we must applaud Walters for having this iconoclastic and articulate spokesman on her program because his credentials were unusually and devastatingly appropriate for her subject. He was raised in a black ghetto, and from a broken home. Even Walters, an extreme liberal, had to grin at Williams' witty analysis and his forthright and compelling reasons about how it was government policies themselves which were destroying low cost housing, not only for the homeless, but also for the poor.
*****
Roses, too, for McNeil-Lehrer who seem to have overlooked most libertarian type scholars for lo' these many years. This writer vigorously and, if I may be forgiven, convincingly explained in person to Jim Lehrer some years ago just why the government's PBS News Hour should be using libertarian spokespersons.
Let me hasten to add that was several years ago and after at least two nicely handwritten notes to me from Lehrer himself assuring me of his intention to use some of the libertarians as I recommended.
*****
Roses for Caldwell's Monte Munn, late of Simplot's computer programmer department, recently retired. Munn has long been a big shot in Idaho's Boy Scout leadership efforts. His expertise in general scouting includes that group's American flag protocol of reverence, respect and ritual. Behind the scenes and without any thought of even a pat-on-the-back for himself, it was he who did the ethical research behind Caldwell's new "Avenue of Flags." For those who have yet to see them, there is a whole mile of simply beautiful new American flags, each atop its own telephone pole, stretching from Interstate 84 south along the full length of North 21st Avenue clear to the College of Idaho.
Caldwell's Mayor Jim Dakan says a few jackasses in America may burn their flags but we'd rather fly ours. Without Munn's researching the efficacy and, by the way, the legality of flying the "Old Glorys(ies)" without individual lighting, the project might well never have been launched. This consistent moral support, methinks, should remind us: "There's no limit to the good a man can do if he doesn't care who gets the credit."
*****
Roses to a neat, if unusual, young man, Josh Rusev. Formerly a resident of Caldwell, this fine fellow is now a first-year student at the University of Arizona studying for - well, he's not yet quite sure. That's partly why he wrote me a note last week. After his letter's modest bit about ideas, his search for a future and good grades in his current final exams, Josh signed off with: "Happy holidays, Ralph. Don't forget the reason for the season."
Death of a Friend Prompts Tribute
By Ralph Smeed
Idaho Press-Tribune
December 30, 1990
A very remarkable Caldwell man passed to his reward recently, one about whom much should be said and remembered.
Dr. George V. Wolfe was a political science professor and chaired that department at the College of Idaho from 1946 until 1970 when he retired. But since it was his own request that little note be made of his passing, other than that required by law, there was only a small notice in the paper that his 86 years had ended Dec. 15.
This distinguished professor's modesty notwithstanding, his love of teaching, his intelligence, dedication and thus his educating influence is something of which the C of I can, and should, be justly proud. However, much is said these days touting the benefits of higher education that is disgusting to some and disappointing to others, since about all they advertise, i.e., stand for, is "excellence, independence and tax deductibility." Horsefeathers! But it is much the same on campuses all over America. A sad commentary, too, yet one that accounts for much of the superficiality that dominates today's American politics. But not so with the late Dr. Wolfe's political science. He thought everything mattered, and did his best to say why.
I should hasten to add that my admiration for the gentleman did not arise out of any agreement on politics, economics, philosophy or religion as is usually the case with professorial adulation. In fact, we were great political adversaries.
George was a great admirer, supporter and advocate of the late liberal Democrat U.S. Sen. Frank Church, to whose Washington, D.C., office Wolfe sent a long procession of his top poli-sci students for internships.
He held little brief for inheritance or private property, for example, which both conservatives and libertarians believe to be the cornerstones of family, the private property order and the market economy. It's what we like to call the freedom philosophy in general.
All of which, one supposes, adds up to Wolfe's being a flaming liberal. But he did have at least some conservative leanings, too, into which I won't go here. Suffice it to say that my intellectual life has been much enriched by this kind, gentle, intelligent and caring teacher, not because we were ideological soulmates, as I said, but precisely because we were not. Our friendship, which I'm sure was mutual in the best sense of the word, grew out of two mutual friends' efforts to get us together and, also, Wolfe's penchant for ideological controversy.
C of I alums Vance Peckham and Pauli Crooke had made much of what they thought was a "great potential" for their own two friends and "political opposites," Wolfe and Smeed, to reinstate Idaho's Great Debates or some such educational monkey business. But while we had some laughs and nice visits, and I am indeed indebted to both Crooke and Peckham for their good offices, I never really got Wolfe's personal attention until a few years later.
I was visiting in Eastern Europe in 1968. One day the Berlin University students fell out en masse to protest Axel Springer's "capitalist mono-poly" (their term) of the news media and what they claimed was his manipulation and resultant demise of their student hero, Red Rudy. Berlin U. was an absolutely gigantic school and its scores of thousands of students' mere swarming in the streets of downtown Berlin literally brought the city to a screeching halt.
Truckloads of police, dozens of horse-mounted officers, water cannons and the whole bit - were all staged right in front of my vantage point high-a-top the AMZOO Hotel on the edge of Berlin's downtown square. A real big deal!
I immediately thought of the C of I's George Wolfe for three or four reasons: (1) college students and controversy; (2) Wolfe and Smeed's favorite confrontational subjects of capitalism versus socialism; and (3) three red-hot sidewalk debates surrounding (believe it or not) and focusing on yours truly, Ralph Smeed, defending capitalism against some 18 or 20 good-natured and some not so good, students.
The whole high-tensioned affair was the biggest demonstration I'd ever seen or heard of and our rather lively student exchanges were frequently busted up by the Berlin police, whereupon we elbowed our way 20 or 30 yards down the street and began again. It was exciting as all get out.
Well, propaganda leaflets, newspapers, etc., were knee-deep to a tall Indian, so I gathered up an arm load of it to mail back to Caldwell to Dr. George Wolfe, Poli-Sci Department, College of Idaho, U.S.A.
On my desk, upon my return to Idaho, was my first invitation to lecture from an honest-to-gosh, left-leaning, liberal professor. A fine man. A real friend. And this is only a scratch on the surface of a real educator's story. So, stay tuned for the rest of the story.
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