Voters fail to fall for vindictive union campaign

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:00 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 7, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Voters fail to fall for vindictive union campaign

The names of the biggest losers in Tuesday's Clark County Commission District B primary didn't even appear on the ballot.

Technically, incumbent Mary Kincaid's victory Tuesday came over challenger Stephanie Smith -- a music teacher who serves on the North Las Vegas City Council, as Kincaid once did. (Kincaid is now widely expected to sweep to re-election, come November, in the heavily Democratic district.)

But no one who follows Las Vegas politics was ever in much doubt about where the impetus, the direction, and the bulk of the funding for the Smith campaign originated -- even before the court-ordered release (the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously for the Review-Journal) of County Commissioner Erin Kenny's cellular phone records showed her to be Ms. Smith's leading phone pal.

Ms. Kenny's nickname among the public employees' and other unions who secretly run the county's Temple to Government over on Grand Central Parkway is "Gunga Din." If you want some water carried, there's Erin, ever ready in her Sam Jaffe loincloth.

So it came as no surprise who was chosen when the unions -- anxious to punish Wal-Mart for operating non-union -- needed someone to sponsor a new county ordinance banning new Wal-Mart "superstores" from the valley.

The proposal was absurd and unconstitutionally selective, of course. Wal-Mart already had several such stores -- which would thus be unaffected by such an ordinance -- on the drawing boards by the time the unions thought up this scheme. Then came the attempts to carefully re-draft the zoning ordinance so it would better target only Wal-Mart, and not similar large stores proposed by other outfits not in the unions' doghouse.

It was a goofy and punitive and unfair proposal -- a blatant favor for a constituency out to misuse the power of government for purposes little short of extortion. The County Commission should never have even considered it. Nonetheless, Commissioner Mary Kincaid -- a flower shop owner by trade, a Democrat in a solidly Democratic and thus pro-union district -- probably could have voted for the thing without suffering much political backlash.

But Mary Kincaid did not vote for Ms. Kenny's scurrilous proposal. She stood up to it, and called it what it was.

Well, heck hath no fury like a water-carrier scorned. Ms. Kenny let Ms. Kincaid know in no uncertain terms there would be a price to pay. And that price came in the well-funded insurgency of primary challenger Stephanie Smith, the union schoolteacher who told me she would decide issues "on a case-by-case basis" when they pitted her constituents' individual rights against the kind of concern for group sensitivities that she saw and admired on a recent visit to Red China.

The Smith campaign targeted Kincaid for her vote to delay a tax-funded children's hospital till a study could show whether it's really needed. In Smith's hands that became a mailer showing sick and burned children, implying Commissioner Kincaid voted to throw such tykes out in the street -- when in fact children's hospital wards in the valley currently have surplus beds.

But such "issues" were mere red herrings, of the "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" variety. The real issue in this race was always Ms. Kincaid's Wal-Mart vote. And that's why it's gratifying to see the voters vindicating Mary Kincaid's principled stand -- her refusal to merely calculate which vote would cause her the least trouble with the highly politicized unions -- instead standing up for principle, declaring the power of government is not available to wage such petty feuds.

Mary Kincaid was right. The courts have since ruled she was right. And Tuesday, the voters of Commission District B did the right thing, too.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (call Ned at 612-895-8757 to subscribe.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224, or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

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Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

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-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair

End the War on Freedom

Voters fail to fall for vindictive union campaign