roymilleraz

 You may have heard the saying that “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach him to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” It’s a nice saying but, unfortunately, there is one more required element. A man must be free to fish. If the government puts up obstacles to fishing, usually in the form of taxation and regulation, especially occupational licensing, then the man may still be poor even though he knows how to fish.

There are many starving people in places like Zimbabwe and North Korea and Cuba where people know how to fish (i.e., practice a profession) but are prevented from doing so. Under Barack Obama and the liberals in Congress the U.S. is also headed in this direction.

 I came toArizonain 1967 to fly for the Air Force at Williams Air Force Base, now called Williams Gateway. During the next five years I frequently had occasion to fly along the border withMexicoas I traveled back and forth between Williams and bases inSouthern California. It always seemed odd that the major populated areas that straddled the border had an obvious difference in appearance between the portion on the Mexican side and the portion on theUnited Statesside. The most obvious was the fact that the streets tended to be paved on theUnited Statesside and tended to be dirt or gravel on the Mexican side. The housing and commercial properties also seemed to be of poorer quality on the Mexican side.

 I often wondered why this would be so. The terrain was no different; the natural resources were no different; the people, for the most part, were no different. Why is there a clear economic division between theUnited StatesandMexico? It was not until I began reading the free market philosophers like Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman that I figured out that the reason is that we have greater freedom in theUnited Statesand freedom works. Conversely, there is greater government oppression inMexicoand systems of government oppression do not work.

 It then became clear to me how can we help the citizens ofMexicoand reduce the immigration tensions: all we need to do is to advocate and pursue more economic and political freedom for Mexicans. Then they will experience the same economic boom that citizens of theUnited Statesexperience. Mexican citizens will not have to face huge personal and legal dangers inherent in crossing our borders to experience these benefits that freedom provides.

 One might logically ask why we do not hear politicians and editorialists calling for more freedom for Mexicans. I contend that it is because it is much easier to focus on democracy rather than freedom because democracy is easier to obtain. Even though we have democracy in theUnited States, our own march toward socialism is causing us to lose more of our freedoms.

 We should not focus on democracy as the solution. We are making the same mistake in Iraq, i.e., we are more concerned about allowing the citizens of Iraq the right to vote than we are about insuring their ability to own property, to have private contracts enforced, and their individual rights protected.

 If we can’t help make these kind of changes in a country that is right on our border, the country of Mexico, what makes us think we can accomplish this in Iraq, a country 10,000 miles away that has a markedly different culture?

 I suggest that we do everything we can to insure thatMexicomoves in the direction of protecting individual liberties………and that, in order to avoid hypocrisy, we stop the erosion of individual rights in our own country.

As a lifelong Republican activist I have consistently tried to get the Republican Party to be a stronger force for individual liberty. I believe that, if the Republican Party has a future, that future depends on its adoption of libertarian views, that is, fiscal conservatism is not enough. While there are some limited government positions that both libertarians and conservatives agree on, we need a revolutionary strategy to combat the advancement of socialism under the current administration in Washington.

Few Republicans will risk their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, or even their political career, for just lower taxes, or deregulation, or reduced government spending. But, true defenders of liberty will take those risks if we will make a strong and principled stand for individual liberty.

The main obstacle for Republicans in adopting a strong position on liberty is the Right Wing, because they are placing too much emphasis on trying to put the Bible in the statue books and on policing the world. The Right Wing refuses to recognize an individual’s right to decide what substances we are allowed to put in our body (War on Drugs) or who to have sex with (laws against prostitution) or what we can do with our own money (laws against legalized gambling), etc. They also tend to favor an interventionist foreign policy which includes huge defense budgets.

Republicans need to be revolutionaries for a much smaller government. “Give me liberty or give me death” does not mean “please lower my taxes” or “please don’t over-regulate.” It means “LEAVE ME ALONE.” Republicans need to stand for this message.

There is a one word solution, albeit a partial solution, to the horrendous actions which took place at the Abu Ghraib prison. That word is honor. Follow me here for a minute. Most people will accept the tried and proven management notion which says, “Things that get watched get better.” A true leader, therefore, will carefully watch things within his or her area of responsibility. But even talented leaders can’t see everything. They depend on clear and frequent communications to keep abreast of things. That’s where honor comes in. If people at all levels have honor and speak clearly about what is happening then the leaders can make informed decisions. And the way you get people to be honorable is to set high standards and enforce them, while, at the same time, setting the proper example as a leader.

The officers who should be most expected to provide this leadership are the graduates of our military academies. They are the ones who were screened for leadership qualities before they entered the academies, and who then received rigorous full time military training (as opposed to part time like other officer training programs) for four years, and who lived under a very strict honor code for the entire four years. Why did none of these leaders prevent the atrocities at Abu Ghraib? One possibility is that there were no academy graduates in that chain of command or in close proximity (very unlikely). The other possibility is that the academies are failing at their most important function (my contention). I believe we have failed to enforce sufficiently high standards of honor at our service academies. I can only speak from experience about the U. S. Air Force Academy because that is the one I graduated from but I believe that the expectations and training are similar at the Military Academy and the Naval Academy.

Here is where I am going with this point: The focus in the Abu Ghraib investigation was directed toward finding someone in the chain of command who ordered the front line prison guards to step on a prisoner’s fingers or to put a leash around some prisoner’s neck. This will never be discovered because, quite likely, no such orders were ever given. What more likely happened was that military personnel up and down this chain of command were frequently asked about what information they were able to get from the prisoners. No one in that chain probably ever suggested a specific torture method (or inquired about exactly what was being done to the prisoners). There was probably frequent “averting of the eyes” and “winks” when suggestions were made to be “more aggressive” in getting the required information. I contend that, if military personnel at all levels had the proper sense of honor and were straightforward in their discussions, the specific knowledge of what was being done to the prisoners would have been known farther up the chain of command and abuses would have been stopped. Military academy graduates should be expected to promote such an environment.

Since I was not in the Abu Ghraib prison or even in Iraq, I will site two examples of the point I am trying to make from my own military experience: First, shortly before I retired from the Air Force Reserve I was asked to serve on a colonel promotion board. This is a fairly senior level review that involves several general officers in the evaluation. The honor issue involved here was the veiled attempt to insert consideration of sex in the evaluation. No one ever told us as board members that we had to promote females. The “ambiguous” directives on this issue came in the form of statements to the board members that we would be required to make calculations at the end of our deliberations in ways that would reveal the percentage of females we had promoted, not just with respect to merit, but also with respect to the percentage of the number of females being considered for promotion. And, in case that admonition was not sufficient, we were also read a statement from the Secretary of the Air Force which instructed us that “some females” in the past had been denied command opportunities and that we should not hold this against them. Since there was no way for us as board members to tell from the records which females had been denied command opportunities, this statement from the highest level was obviously a disguised directive to promote females, irrespective of the records we had before us. But this directive was not given in a way that anyone in the chain of command could be accused of ordering promotions based on sex.

Here is one more example: I was a recruiter for the Air Force Academy for 23 years. During that time we were continually asked to produce statistics about the numbers of minorities we were recruiting. We were not asked to lower standards for these minorities. We were not even given any quotas, per se. However, the mere fact that senior officers would continually ask for the results was motivation enough for military personnel below them to do whatever needed to be done to improve the numbers. This naturally involved giving preferences that could not be admitted to in a politically correct environment.

Like most Americans, I believe selections should be based on merit but I do understand that we live in a democracy and sometimes our elected officials put requirements on the military that we might not agree with. Our duty as leaders is to insure that we are honorable in our compliance. The honorable approach would have been to state the quotas for minorities that we needed and then openly adjust the standards to produce these numbers. Then everyone would be clear about what was being done. Instead, senior officials talked in ambiguous terms like “affirmative action.” Every honest person knows that affirmative action is just a euphemism for quotas. (Just ask yourself how long the affirmative actions must be taken—-until the quota is met.) But it was not and still is not politically correct to admit this. We would have had a much healthier climate surrounding minority recruiting if we simply had been honest about our activities.

The above two cases are examples of how a kind of climate of dishonor can be created that allows actions such as those which took place at Abu Ghraib to continue. I believe that, in both of my examples, anyone in the chain of command could have prevented the less-than-honest practices from taking place by acting honorably and speaking honestly. I suspect the same is true at Abu Ghraib, that is, these abuses would have been quickly stopped if knowledge of them were broader, an atmosphere that can be created by simple honesty.

Honor is, of course, important at all levels but I place the responsibility for this honesty more heavily on the shoulders of Academy graduates because they lived the honor code every day in an intense crucible for four years and, therefore, should have developed a greater commitment to honor. Also, they are supposed to be leaders. At Abu Ghraib they failed.

 Our military is charged with protection of our liberty. It is an awesome responsibility and one which sometimes requires the use of deadly force. The highest standards of honor must be maintained and the examples must be set at our military academies. Why else do we have them?

Most people are aware that the greatest loss of liberty occurs when one’s own government centralizes power, not from some invading force. This loss happens most frequently during war. After the war, the centralized power is reduced, but never back to the original level. This same phenomenon is now occurring with respect to disaster preparedness. Most responses are being planned by government, and at increasingly higher levels of government. If we want to retain our freedoms I believe that civilians and those not involved in law enforcement must organize and plan so that government does not completely preempt this field. My last position in the Air Force Reserve was Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer for the Air Force and I could see then (middle 90’s) that emergency response was being taken over by government entities. The pace only quickened after 9/11. Some provisions in laws like the Patriot Act reinforce this trend. We need to exercise that eternal vigilance that is the price of liberty.

Ever since community leaders successfully advocated committing nearly $3 billion for a train to run through the center of Phoenix it was only a matter of time before they would realize that there are only so many dollars that can be extracted from the taxpayers and that, because of our rapid growth, more freeway lanes are what we really need, not toy trains. Now they are trying to get more tax payer dollars for freeways. This chain of events is like the proverbial person who stands up and rocks the boat and then promises to save you from the storm……by sitting down.

 You often hear the comment that we don’t want to be likeLos Angelesbut there is not much thought given to that comment beyond the observation that LA has a lot of traffic. The main reason that LA has a lot of traffic congestion is that they did not build enough freeways. There was continual delay in siting freeways (just like we are experiencing in the South Mountain area) and then they foolishly wasted billions on trains (just like we are doing). When will we learn?

 In order to not become another Los Angeles let’s stop wasting money on methods of transportation that only 1% of the population will ever use, get the freeways built, and pursue some innovative ideas to pay for them like time of use pricing and construction of toll roads.

Defenders of Liberty Should Seek Influence, Not Power

Positions of power are always tempting but I think that “true believers” in the cause of liberty should not get sucked in to offers of positions of power. They should instead, seek “influence” rather than power. For example, when Greg Patterson was nominated to the Arizona Board of Regents I wrote him an email suggesting that he turn down the nomination and opining that, if he were confirmed, he would find it to be an “emasculating” experience.

My reasoning was that Greg was already very influential with his blog and other political activities. I suspected that his need to be less controversial in his new position would cause him to moderate his views. Since being confirmed in this new position Greg has already shut down his blog and I assume this means he will be less assertive in other ways too. I feel that we may have lost an outstanding warrior for the cause of liberty, at least for the eight years of his term.

I think that judicial activism has been unfairly denigrated. I have come to the conclusion that, because of my own experience as an activist, I need to speak up in its defense.

I engaged in quasi-judicial activism 25 years ago as a hearing officer for the Corporation Commission. I believe that my activism was beneficial because it was a contributing factor to the largest successful deregulation inArizona’s history.

TheArizonaconstitution provided for the regulation of a diverse group of corporations that were labeled as “public service corporations.” That label made them sound like they deserved to be regulated by the government. These corporations included providers of transportation, such as airlines, buses, taxis, and ambulances.

This regulatory scheme said that, if the carrier in the field (whether truck, bus, or airline) is performing adequately, then no additional carrier may be allowed, even if the Corporation Commissioners believed that competition better served the public.

Even if an existing carrier was deficient, the Corporation Commission had to allow that carrier time to improve its service. The existing carrier always seemed to be able to temporarily improve its service; at least until the threat of a new carrier being allowed was eliminated.

Because the regulatory scheme served to protect the carrier rather than the public, it was supported by the trucking lobby. Corporation Commissioner Bud Tims knew that this happy status quo for the truckers would not change unless we found a way to bring competition into the marketplace. Therefore, with Tims’ encouragement I began to find unmet “needs” and to recommend allowing more competition. Existing monopoly carriers considered my recommendations unwarranted activism.

Nevertheless, the three Corporation Commissioners usually went along with these recommendations. The trucking lobby was increasingly concerned about this potential for new competition. Their concern heightened when the Commission drafted a new law that would change the regulatory philosophy to explicitly call for more competition.

Since the proposed regulated competition seemed so reasonable and, therefore, likely to pass, the trucking lobby decided to push for a referendum authorizing complete deregulation—believing it would not pass. This strategy backfired.

They had not counted on the fact that other influential people would get involved. Governor Bruce Babbitt decided to get behind deregulation. That unleashed the research capacity of the Arizona Department of Transportation and long time free market advocate, John Semmens. Since there is much data that is easily available which is overwhelmingly persuasive regarding the benefits of increased competition, it was not difficult to support deregulation.

Senator Bill McCune organized the independent truckers, the ones who did not enjoy the monopoly protection of the Corporation Commission, but wanted the opportunity to compete. They staged some very impressive demonstrations, such as circling the Capitol with their 18 wheel rigs.

The campaign successfully influenced public opinion. The voters approved complete deregulation andArizonaconsumers are still experiencing the benefits today.

These benefits would likely not have happened without an activist stance at the Corporation Commission. Does that make it right? I would say yes. My logic is simple: Government has only one legitimate purpose and that is protecting individual liberty. Each person involved in making laws, or enforcing them, or adjudicating them, should be an activist in pursuit of individual liberty.

Is your barber dangerous??

Dick Carpenter and Lisa Knepper of the Institute for Justice recently published a study of the burdens of occupational licensing and the extent to which they prevent people (who are mostly poorer and lack college degrees) from entering professions that should be fairly easy to enter if it were not for the demands of governmental licensing. Unfortunately, our “conservative” “free enterprise” state of Arizona ranks as the worst among all 50 states……yes, the worst. A May 11^th Wall Street Journal article says that “Arizona imposes the heaviest combination of the number of licensed occupations (64) and the regulatory burdens (in time and money) required to secure them.”

This must change. In addition to Arizona being a supposedly conservative state, we hear lately (ad nauseum) about the problem that we have way too many right wing Republicans (who are usually thought to be believers in less business regulation). That description obviously does not apply in this case. As a lifelong Republican and a former lobbyist I can testify to the fact that this subject of occupational licensing is frequently raised by a small minority but has never been acted on, in spite of the plethora of these pro business legislators.

The last serious attempt to deregulate was about 30 years ago when Arizona Representative Jim Skelly held hearings on a bill that would have deregulated barbers and cosmetologists. For those who still believe that these laws really exist to protect the public (no thinking person does), you would expect to find these hearings filled with members of the public demanding to be protected from errant and dangerous barbers and cosmetologists. But (most of you will not be surprised to learn), the hearing rooms were, instead, packed to overflowing with barbers and cosmetologists demanding to be regulated. This, of course, proves the point that these occupational licenses really exist to protect the regulated professions from competition.

Can’t we end this charade in Arizona??

We need civilian emergency response to avoid loss of liberty

Most people are aware that the greatest loss of liberty occurs when one’s own government centralizes power, not from some invading force. This loss happens most frequently during war. After the war, the centralized power is reduced, but never back to the original level. This same phenomenon is now occurring with respect to disaster preparedness. Most responses are being planned by government, and at increasingly higher levels of government. If we want to retain our freedoms I believe that civilians and those not involved in law enforcement must organize and plan so that government does not completely preempt this field. My last position in the Air Force Reserve was Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer for the Air Force and I could see then (middle 90’s) that emergency response was being taken over by government entities. The pace only quickened after 9/11. Some provisions in laws like the Patriot Act reinforce this trend. We need to exercise that eternal vigilance that is the price of liberty.