All applications approved!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 16 Oct 2001 05:07:42 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 16, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
All applications approved!

Offered a 20-hour-a-week, $14,000-a-year position as an intern with the Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, university Regent Linda Howard shouldn't have bothered seeking anyone's "ethical guidance", in the first place.

Would it be OK for the head of a bank's loan committee to OK a huge loan ... to himself ... as long as he got someone to say it's OK?

The inappropriateness of an official charged with overseeing the university on behalf of the public, accepting $14,000 in new, annual payoffs from the university administrators she is supposed to supervise, is absurdly obvious on its face.

But to make things worse, when Ms. Howard sought some cover by asking the so-called state Ethics Commission for a ruling, the commissioners hemmed and hawed, asked Ms. Howard whether she believes she was offered the job specifically because she is a university regent, split a few hairs, counted a few angels dancing on the head of a pin, and finally concluded it'll all be OK so long as Ms. Howard abstains from voting on matters directly related to her own salary.

If any doubt remained whether the state Ethics Commission should be disbanded, it has now been resolved. It is not enough to merely call the so-called "Ethics Commission" a waste of whatever it spends on stationery and the light bulbs that illuminate its pathetically compromised goings-on. For in fact, it would be a far greater service to the taxpayers to take whatever the Ethics Commission spends, bundle up that amount of cash in packets of handy size, and burn them in 50-gallon drums outside the soup kitchens of Reno and Sparks on cold winter evenings, the better to warm the hobos.

At least then the state's taxpayers would be spared the revolting indignity of seeing their own funds used in rubber-stamp attempts to convince us such incestuous double-dipping is "OK."

Leave aside for a moment the fact that this "job" was never formally advertised -- that Ms. Howard faced no competition in seeking this handy little emolument, that few other students actually knew any such "job" ever existed before it was offered to her. Forget, as well, the supposed state hiring freeze instituted by Gov. Kenny Guinn after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, from which Ms. Howard will doubtless now be granted an instant exemption.

Instead, let us simply imagine for a moment the plight of poor Ms. Howard's new boss calling her in, a few weeks down the road, and beginning, "Now, Linda, we've spoken to you before about showing up for work on time, parking in the tow-away zone, and this business of responding to direct instructions from your supervisors with, 'Oh that's so cute. But I couldn't possibly do that; it would involve putting my shoes back on.'

"I'm afraid this is the last time I'm going to warn you; you're coming to the end of your probationary period here, and unless we see some improvement in ... um, wait a minute, you're not Regent Linda Howard, who's scheduled to have lunch with the university president today, and who helps decide on the budget for this entire university? Well, I can see this has all been some terrible mistake! I assure you, you can park your Ford Expedition in the yellow zone any time you want; we'll have a little talk with that unreasonable security guard who's been leaving all those notes on your windshield. And don't think a thing about that bike rack you backed over and crushed yesterday, I don't know what we were thinking when we put it there in the first place.

"Now, is there anything I can do to make your job easier? A daily foot-rub, perhaps? And I certainly hope when you see Mrs. Harter you'll mention how nicely we're treating you here. Some help carrying your books to and from class? ..."

In vain did Ethics Commissioner Jim Kosinski object, "It just seems to me that having a regent, a member of the Board of Regents, take a position in an office, a program, whatever you will, in the university system, is just not appropriate."

Regardless of such hesitant common sense, the so-called "Ethics Commission" in the end voted 3-2 that they see no problem in a member of the Board of Regents going on the university payroll.

The reek of conflict already makes little Nevada a national laughing stock. We are expected to believe that a high school gym teacher's rise to highly paid positions with ill-defined job responsibilities in the school district and later the city of Las Vegas have nothing to do with his important position on a money committee of the state Legislature; that a similar position supervising the legislative purse strings has nothing to do with another senior legislator being awarded (without the pesky bother of competitive bidding) the lucrative contract to insure all of UNLV's out-of-state students, at a commission rate far above the industry norm ...

No, that wasn't enough. They had to pour salt in our wounds by installing a so-called "Ethics Commission" to rule it's all OK ...

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591.

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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Quotes

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

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

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

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- 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