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PAGE 4, DECEMBER 15, 2008, THE ISLANDER
D
C IrORJJIM
Letters to the Editor and Opinions
Publisher's Statement
THE ISLANDER (USPS 002430), A
member of the Georgia Press Association
and Glynn County’s only weekly news
paper is published 51 weeks a year for
$17 per year in Glynn County; $19 per
year in the United States outside Glynn
County; $25 per year outside the US by
Permar Publications, Inc., 3596 Darien
Hwy. Suite 6, Brunswick, GA 31525.
Periodicals postage paid at Brunswick,
GA.
Contents of The Islander, including
advertising, may not he reprinted or
reproduced in any form without written
permission of the publishers. POSTMAS
TER send address change to The Islander,
P.O. Box 20539, St. Simons Island, GA
31522.
Publication Deadline
Publication Date:
Every Monday
Deadline: Thursdays, 12 PM for
ads and news copy for the
following Monday’s edition.
Holiday Schedule
On Monday Post Office holidays,
The Islander is printed on the
Friday before.
2008 Post Office Holidays
Tuesday, January 1 - New Year's Day
Monday, January 21 - MLK Birthday
Monday, February 18 - Presidents Day
Monday, May 26 - Memorial Day
Friday, July 4 - Independence Day
Monday, September 1 - Labor Day
Monday, October 13 - Columbus Day
Tuesday, November 11 - Veterans Day
Thursday, November 27 - Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, December 25 - Christmas Day
Holiday Deadline: Wednesdays,
12 PM for ads and news copy for
the following Monday’s edition.
Mission Statement: to publish the
truth without fear or favor.
Established 1972
Matthew J. Permar - Publisher
Elise J. Permar - Publisher 1972-2003
Gertrude Bradshaw - Co-Editor 1972-1991
Managing Editor &
Advertising Manager
Pamela P. Shierling
912-265-9654
Production Manager
Sarah Banks Long
Church News
Patty Gibson - 912-638-8844
Sports
Jake Harrison
Contributors
Dave Barry, Clark Gillespie MD,
Sonny Doehring, Roland Willis,
Diane Bowen MD
Phone Numbers
912-265-9654 • Fax - 912-265-3699
entail: ssislander@bellsouth.net
Award Winning Newspaper
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2008
Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor:
First, let me thank you and your
family for such a fine publication. I find
it full of local and national news and
commentary that I usually agree with
until now.
I now must take issue with your
unfortunate run in with the laws of our
fair state. While I feel sorry for your
being ticketed and having to pay a fine
in these hard economic times, I cannot
help but feel you "earned it."
There has been a massive media
blast over the past few weeks on televi
sion, radio, billboards, newsprint and
even a portable flashing sign on the
Torras causeway stating "click it or
ticket."
Surely, you must have heard or seen
one or more of the warnings. While
I understand that men of our caliber
have a harder time with seatbelts, it
is the law.
Still having received a ticket, earned,
(carefully observe the speed limit sign
just east of Willacoochee, Ga.) from the
GSP in the past year, I know the hard
ship of a fine.
Therefore, I have started a fund to
help you pay your debt to society.
After all, what are friends for?
Sincerely, in good times and bad.
H.H. (Hal) Hart □
The Wizards of Washington
By Sheldon Richman
Remember that scene in The Wiz
ard of Oz when Toto reveals the “great
and powerful wizard” as nothing but
a homunculus operating an imposing
thunder-and-lightning machine? “Pay
no attention to that man behind the cur
tain,” he bellows, not knowing enough
to quit even when he’s exposed.
The government’s response to the
current economic turmoil reminds me
of that scene. We are assured by the
awe-inspiring U.S. Treasury and Fed
eral Reserve that if we trust them
with essential control of the American
economy, all will be set right.
Behind the curtain, however, are just
a bunch of bureaucrats who couldn’t
possibly put the economy right because
no one can know how to do that. They
would be better able to give a cowardly
lion courage, a tin man a heart, or a
scarecrow a brain.
Sloppy metaphors to the contrary,
an economy is not an engine that occa
sionally needs a mechanic to go under
the hood to time it up. An economy
is people pursuing their preferences
by engaging in endless varieties of
exchanges with others while coordinat
ing disparate plans founded on unspo
ken expectations. It’s an amazingly
orderly process — when it is allowed to
operate in peace and without govern
ment intervention.
Unfortunately, governments rarely
let it operate in peace. Government
planning is power, and with only a few
exceptions, most people attracted to top
government jobs want to wield power.
While they are incapable of fixing an
economy — if that means restoring it to
its consumer-serving function — they
are capable of skewing it to their own
purposes.
Government interference with the
economic process represents a substi
tution of political for consumer objec
tives. In a freely functioning economy
— absent government privileges and
burdens — entrepreneurs work to
arrange the productive process ulti
mately to satisfy consumers’ subjective
preferences. This idea is implicit in the
very concepts production, investment,
and labor. Their fruits must have value
in the eyes of consumers or they are not
productive.
Thus when government “creates
jobs” or saves companies by taking
money from the private sector, it is
not truly productive activity. Rather,
the government has preempted the
economic process, forbidding it to serve
consumers so that it can instead serve
the objectives of politicians and bureau
crats.
President-elect Obama’s chief of
staff-designate, Rahm Emanuel, says,
“You never want a serious crisis to
go to waste. Things that we had post
poned for too long, that were long-term,
are now immediate and must be dealt
with. This crisis provides the opportu
nity for us to do things that you could
not do before.” Emanuel here unwit
tingly affirms Robert Higgs’s thesis
in Crisis and Leviathan: government
will use a crisis (real, exaggerated, or
imagined) to expand its power. And
Emanuel clearly grasps Higgs’s corol
lary: when the crisis subsides, the new
powers will not be shed. Some will
remain in force; others will be put on
the shelf to await the next crisis.
The current financial turmoil is a
textbook illustration of Higgs’s prin
ciple. In just the last few months the
Fed and Treasury have engaged in
activities they had not dared engage in
before, such as bailing out investment
banks and insurance companies and
buying shares in banks. The precedent
has been set.
Next time, such activity will be even
easier.
None of this will fix the economy.
The federal government as of late
November had committed more than
$7 trillion to the financial system in
loan purchases and guarantees of vari
ous sorts. But Treasury borrowing only
moves money from point A to point B,
while Fed policy creates money out
of thin air. Every dollar the Treasury
borrows is a dollar the private sec
tor can’t invest in consumer-oriented
projects, and every dollar the Fed cre
ates distorts the economy by transfer
ring purchasing power from the people
to privileged interests. The resulting
economy is built on false signals and
expectations — which can’t be sus
tained without government support.
That is hardly the route to sustainable
economic growth.
When you recall that today’s eco
nomic turmoil is the direct result of
earlier distortions from government
policies — guarantees to lenders, so-
called affordable-housing policies, et
cetera — it is clear that ground is being
seeded for the next crisis.
At our peril do we pay no attention
to those men behind the curtain.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow
at The Future of Freedom Foundation
(www.fff.org) and editor of The Free
man magazine. □
A Safeguard Worth Noticing
In this country, politicians understand that the more you
know about government, the better off we all are. So, they
created public notices to be printed in the newspaper.
Georgias newspapers go one step further and also make
public notices, from all 159 counties in the state, avai able in a
free and searchable database online. It’s fast. It’s easy.
It Serves The Public’s Right To Know.
GeorgiaPublicNotice.com “ Tn '
Georgia Statewide Database of Public Notices
Click It or Ticket
Brought to you by
the Committee to spring
Matthew Permar
from his legal woes...