election is tomorrow, but the book is still worth reading

[alan]

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
EDITORS: CHANGES "you" to "your" in book title, fourth paragraph
EDITORS: A LONGER VERSION, AT 1,500 WORDS, ALSO MOVES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 20, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Sanctifying the expansion of federal power


Washington journalist Jim Bovard, frequent contributor to the American
Spectator and the Wall Street Journal, is the author of "The Farm Fiasco"
(1989), "The Fair Trade Fraud" (1991), and "Lost Rights: The Destruction of
American Liberty" (1994).

Each of Mr. Bovard's books has been a welcome addition to the library of
those who harbor a lingering suspicion that -- behind all the stage-managed
"compassion" -- today's regulatory bureaucracies really function as little
more than costly protection rackets for the kind of vested interests who
can afford to pony up massive "campaign contributions" to congressmen who
know which side their toast is buttered on.

Bovard has always been good at unfurling and tacking down complex
government schemes like butterflies under glass. More importantly, one
refers the casual inquirer to Mr. Bovard's tomes in full confidence they
will find there not merely the opinionated spoutings of some free-market
theoretician, but rather the kind of rigorous scholarship which habitually
appends 70 pages of careful notes and indices to the back of each 350-page
volume.

If Bovard's early works deserved a criticism, I would have to focus on
his apparent reluctance to inject into his work much judgmental, emotional
content. That started to change in last year's "Freedom in Chains." Now,
with the pending September release of Bovard's latest book, "feeling your
pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore
Years" ($26.95 from St. Martin's Press) I believe we are finally seeing the
emergence of a mature and fully formed Jim Bovard, no longer content to
merely shine a light into the rat warren and expect his readers to reach
their own conclusions. Rather, the author now seems fully emotionally
invested in exposing and rooting out the way the fast-talkers and the
scalawags.

After eight years of Clintonism, hostility to government is now so
widespread that even census takers take their lives in their hands to
announce "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." And with good
reason, Bovard says:

"From concocting new prerogatives to confiscate private property, to
championing FBI agents' right to shoot innocent Americans, to bankrolling
the militarization of local police forces, the Clinton administration
stretched the power of government on all fronts," Bovard writes. "From the
soaring number of wiretaps, to converting cell phones into homing devices
for law enforcement, to turning bankers into spies against their customers,
free speech and privacy were undermined again and again. From dictating how
many pairs of Chinese silk panties Americans could buy, to President
Clinton's heroic efforts to require trigger locks for all handguns in crack
houses, no aspect of Americans' lives was too arcane for federal
intervention."

Although Clinton famously announced in his 1996 State of the Union
address that "the era of Big Government is over," that turned out to be
nothing but an "intellectual shell game," masking a pattern of "stealth
statism," Bovard asserts. Once the president had won re-election by again
campaigning as a moderate, he "opened the floodgates" of racial blackmail,
IRS plunder, and one assault after another on our Bill of Rights, all
justified by one cynical appeal or another to "the safety of the children."

"The Clinton administration built its 'bridge to the twenty-first
century' by filling every sinkhole along the way with taxpayer dollars,"
Bovard reports. "From AmeriCorps projects that beat the bushes to recruit
new food stamp recipients, to a flood insurance program that multiplied
flood damage, to programs to give the keys to lavish new single-family
homes to public housing residents, the Clinton administration's record
domestic spending produced record fiascoes. For Clinton, the only wasted
tax dollar was one that did not buy a vote, garner a campaign contribution,
or provide a chance to bite his lip on national television."

Yet "While the media focused primarily on the new benefits that Clinton
promised, little attention was paid to the swelling tax burden on working
Americans. Federal income tax revenue doubled between 1992 and 2000. The
total tax burden on the average family with two earners rose three times
faster than inflation. Though the IRS wrongfully seized hundreds of
thousands of Americans' paychecks and bank accounts during Clinton's reign,
almost all of the agency's powers survived unscathed."

And that's just the introduction. From there, Mr. Bovard goes on to
document every word.

Jim Bovard finally appears to be hopping mad, and I for one am glad to
see it. Though many a "tell-all" book about the unlamented Clinton years is
doubtless yet to come, I suspect "feeling your pain" (yes, it's officially
all lower-case) may well survive as the best political obituary of the
Clinton era -- earning Jim Bovard an honor he might just as soon have
forgone as our modern Cassandra, prophesying doom to an audience deafened
by the happy din of the Wall Street jackpot machine.

For if anyone believes all this makes Mr. Bovard's work a George W. Bush
campaign book -- if anyone out there still believes that merely replacing
the face at the ribbon-cuttings can change the kind of institutionalized
corruption Jim Bovard has spent the better part of the past decade
documenting -- then perhaps we should close by quoting from Mario Puzo's
hero Michael Corleone, who in "The Godfather" turned to his fiancee at his
sister Connie's wedding to ask:

"Now who's being naive?"


Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the LV RJ. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by
dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

[Jeff Thomas]

Vin reporting on work by Bovard ... what a sweet combination. alan, thank you - sounds like a book I've got to read.

Liberty will always have a chance while such men still draw breath.

Regards from AZ