It’s Assemblyman Todd Spitzer who’s a liberal, not the O.C. Register

California Assemblyman Todd Spitzer recently spoke before the Republican Women Federated. As reported in the group’s newsletter:

Todd spoke about how the Orange County Register has become too critical of law enforcement and has a more liberal bent.

The comment was quoted in Orange Punch.

A lady from the group, Patrica Lochrie, replied on the same site:

The quote in your column was from my President’s Message of the FRWF newsletter and were my words and opinion of the O. C. Register leanings, not Todd Spitzer’s words. This President’s Message is one of the avenues I use to communicate with the FRWF members.

It is my belief that Assemblyman Spitzer has used his experience in law enforcement for the betterment of the communities which he serves.

Spitzer himself wrote the Register’s Steven Greenhut, who described the email in the above link:

So how does one describe the assemblyman? He told me in an email that his speech did not focus on the Register’s supposed liberalism, but did not elaborate. But it’s clear that Spitzer and his allies consider those of us who care about police abuse, wrongful convictions, and excessive spending on police and fire unions as “liberals.”

“Didn’t focus” could mean it was mentioned in passing.

I left the Register a year ago Nov. 30, and though I’ve criticized the running of the paper, they’re obviously still libertarian, not liberal — the same as they were the 19 years I was there, and since. R.C. Hoiles bought the paper in 1935.

Actually, it’s Todd who’s a liberal. Why? Liberals favor Big Government, including the police state. It’s libertarians — and real conservatives — who oppose Big Government, including the police state. A reflexive support for the police — part of Big Government — is a sign of liberalism. Some examples:

* Big Government liberal Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was elected and re-elected with the massive support of cop unions. Among other things, Davis boosted state cops’ pensions and signed the law, passed by the Democratic Legislature, that gave cops virtual immunity from investigations into police brutality. He promised that no one would ever “out-cop” him in an election.

* In 1993, Big Government liberal Democratic Gov. Bill Clinton incinerated 70 Branch Davidians in their church in Waco, Texas, and let the perpetrators — federal cops — off without any prosecution.

By contrast, in the mid-1990s, reform of California’s “asset forfeiture” — seizure — laws was spearheaded by the late Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, a real conservative Republican. Gil was an old Marine colonel who fought in WW II, Korea, and Nam, and who who didn’t fear anybody. The reform prohibited cops from seizing people’s property without due process of law. One of the abuses I well remember that sparked the reform was an Orange County police chief who seized someone’s Mercedes and was tooling around the county in it until someone noticed and he was forced to stop doing it. (Unfortunately, the federal seizure law has not been reformed and still can be used to seize property without due process.)

Let’s look a little further. California now is a state run by liberal Democrats, including Gov. Arnold. Every year they pass about 1,000 laws, almost all of them absurd abuses of liberty. For example, the Legislature just passed a law banning smoking in your car if kids are in it, and Fuehrer Arnold signed it into law. This is a seizure of parental authority without parallel. Even the Soviets never passed such a law. It puts Stalin to shame.

Todd Spitzer didn’t vote on that one, SB 7, for whatever reason.

But he supports the immense powers police now have to harass citizens on this and the hundreds and thousands of bills passed over the years by the liberal Democratic Legislature and signed our Kennedy-clone governor and his predecessors

Real conservatives want to cut government, cut taxes, cut laws — cut it all to pieces, then run it through a shredder.

I rest my case.

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The end of The Orange County Register?

Remember what happened to Maytag a few years ago? Historian and economist Gary North tells the story.

The old Maytag TV ads featured one of my favorite character actors, Jesse White. He portrayed the Maytag repairman, who was “the loneliest man in town” because nobody called him. Maytag washing machines were so good, they didn’t need to be repaired. In marketing terms, that was their USP: unique selling proposition. As North notes, they really were that good.

He also notes that, if your USP is quality, you can charge more than competitors. He adds that, during recessions, that last thing you should do is cut quality, because then you lose your USP.

A few years ago, after 100 years of quality, Maytag’s management got greedy and cut corners. Their machines started falling apart. In the Internet age, dissatisfied customers trashed the machines in customer forums. Maytag’s stock crashed and the company was bought by rival Whirlpool.

The same thing may be going on at the Orange County Register. Curiously, one of the firms that tried to buy Maytag, but failed, was the Blackstone Group, which now owns much of the Register’s debt.

On todays’ OC Weekly blog, Gustavo Arellano reports:

Yesterday, the Orange County Press Club hosted a panel featuring the newest kids on the Orange County media block: Orange County Register publisher Terry Horne, KDOC-TV Channel 56 news director (and former Register reporter) Jeff Rowe, and our own editor Ted Kissell. Each gave their impressions of the Orange County market to an audience of about 50 at Memphis’ Santa Ana location. But the real revelations came during the question-and-answer session, and it was courtesy of current and former Register reporters grilling their new boss.

First up was longtime Reg staffer John Gittleson, who asked Horne where was he going to find all the cheaply paid reporters to create the type of hyper-localized product Horne wants the Reg to become. Gittleson was referring the Register’s notorious habit of hiring kids straight out of college to cover serious issues while buying out longtimers. Horne didn’t really answer the question: instead, he raved about the college interns who filed stuff for the online edition of Arizona Republic, noting in particular that one of the Republic’s most-read articles in the past couple of years was a couple of paragraphs about a chicken catching on fire.

Next was former Register reporter (and current Irvine Company spokeshole-but-nevertheless-good-guy) Bill Rams. Rams’ query was simple: would there be more buyouts at the Register? Again, Horne didn’t answer. Instead, he babbled about having to deal with a deficit in the millions and trying to figure out how to reduce spending without further demoralizing the paper’s reporters. In other words: HELL YES. “Sometimes, I wish I was still in sunny Phoenix,” Horne lamely cracked. No one laughed. As one onlooker noted, “Look at the faces of the [Register] reporters.” The faces were mad.

Now, what’s the Register’s USP? That they offer in-depth local reporting from experienced journalists. Put a bunch of interns in there and their USP is gone.

The story about the burning chicken is ridiculous. Sure, people will click on an odd story. But will they come back? Hardly. They might as well turn to some other blog to get their kicks. And if they want laughs, they can watch the Comedy Channel.

What people want in newspapers is insightful journalism. The Register used to know that. One of its slogans about a decade ago was, “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll know.” In grammar classes, they teach you that, in English, the last thing mentioned is the most important. In that case, it’s “You’ll know.” The implication is clear: The Register has the news; read it and “You’ll know.”

It’s too bad the Register management doesn’t realize what a strong brand name “The Orange County Register” is, as strong in its way as the old Maytag brand name. A few years ago then-publisher Chris Anderson created FOCI — Freedom Orange County Information. I never could figure out what that was. FOCI? Plural of FOCUS? Were they trying to teach us Latin?

They gave us new business cards with the FOCI name on it instead of the Register’s name, and some of the FOCI publications listed on the back. It was hard to write notes there to the person to whom I handed my card. People knew me as a Register editorial writer, not one for FOCI.

FOCI recently was de-focused. What a waste.

The Arizona Republic also isn’t the best template for the Register’s future. For the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007, the Republic’s circulation crashed 3.75%, compared to a decline of 3.03% for the Register (Monday-Friday).

Sunday declines were: the Republic, 4.64%; the Register, 3.6%.

Of course, that’s the printed paper. Maybe the Republic’s online flaming chicken stories are making it the next Google.

Well, I better end these ramblings. It’s past 10 p.m. and I just finished slurping my second White Russian, which is enough.

The OC Weekly’s story, for me, confirms what I’ve been saying: That the Register is being prepared for sale. They’re cutting expenses to the bone — cutting even the good, experienced reporters essential for real journalism.

At some point, though, as with Maytag, customers will just flee. Then there won’t be anything left.

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I win theliberaloc.com’s Stupid Idea of the Week Award!

I’m honored that this blog has won another award.

theliberaloc.com writes, “John Seiler gets the Stupid Idea Of The Week Award for his suggestion below,” that the O.C. Sheriffs be privatized.

The reason for the august coronation:

Sometimes you’ve just gotta wonder how otherwise seemingly inteligent people can be so stupid….

His concept brings to mind images of Blackwater running around shooting people in San Clemente because they’re latino and therefore gang members. But what Sieler does not understand is that peace officers are NOT rent-a-cops. They undergo years of training and are sworn to protect, serve, and enforce the laws. Private security services, by law, can do none of that, and they never should be able to.

So please enjoy reading Seiler’s drivel. But whatever you do, Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid.

Actually, my proposal would be to hire a retired Barney Fife, armed with a service revolver — with one bullet, kept in his shirt pocket.

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Privatize Orange County sheriffs

With Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona embroiled in a corruption
scandal, now is a good time to talk about privatizing the the entire O.C. Sheriff’s Department. Turn them all into rent-a-cops. And privatize the jail they run.

There already are private prisons around the country, so a private O.C. jail isn’t difficult to achieve.

As to the rest of what the sheriffs do, they already are contracted to perform police services in many cities in Orange County, such as San Clemente, Lake Forest, and Lagnua Hills. These cities, if they wished, could contract with other police services, or start their own police departments, or potentially use private police.

Well, why not do that with everything the sheriffs do — privatize them, that is?

Many people already live in “gated communities” with private guards. Why not do that with an entire community — just without the gates? Hire private guards to protect the people and uphold the law.

Orange County still is one of the most “conservative” and “libertarian” areas in the country, especially for populous areas. So why not put that political philosophy directly into action?

Then, when a scandal like this erupts, the political factor is reduced. The local rent-a-cops simply are replaced, when their contract runs out, with a different company.

The Carona scandal is big only because he’s an elected official. If he were the local captain of a private police force, it would be no more scandalous than when the head of a private company gets into trouble.

As Ronald Reagan asked: If not us, who? If not now, when?

It’s time to act, Orange County.

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“America’s Sheriff” indicted

I never like it when the federal government involves itself in local affairs, including corruption investigations. If they want to investigate something, how about looking into how Bush lied America into the unconstitutional Iraq war? Or the missing billions of U.S. tax money that disappeared in Iraq?

But the Feds just indicted Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona. They should have left the investigation and indictment to state authorities.

Carona sometimes is called “America’s Sheriff” because of his resolution of several high-profile cases and talk that Republicans would nominate him for lieutenant governor.

The case, whatever happens in it, also shows why we simply cannot be reflexive supporters of “law enforcement.” They’re just as apt to become corrupt as any government officials. Yet police, sheriffs, the FBI, etc., have guns and the discretion to use them against us, even when they ought not.

Let’s just consider one local case. Last year, poor Ashley MacDonald, a beautiful but troubled young girl, had 17 bullets shot into her by two Huntington Beach police who claimed their lives were threatened because she held a pocket knife.

It was Carona’s Sheriff’s Department that “investigated” her killing and exonerated the two cops. So the District Attorney didn’t file charges against the cops. And a state law prevents citizens — who pay the bills and supposedly are “protected” — from looking at the findings of the investigation.

As Steven Greenhut wrote last January:

It’s very rare for a DA to file charges against police officers for poor judgment during an on-the-job action. DAs are afraid to take on police agencies, whom they depend upon for other cases. And prosecutors tend to share the same us vs. them mindset as police agencies. The law also tilts far in the direction of the government, making it very difficult to have grounds to pursue a case against cops, even bad ones. This case reinforces my point that the current system of checks and balances is too skewed in favor of the government. There’s little oversight, no chance of holding officers accountable for unnecessarily taking away a young and promising life when other alternatives existed and total secrecy with regard to records concerning the disciplining of rogue officers. The only semblance of justice will take place in the civil courts.

This reminds us of the need for civilian oversight boards, the overturning of the Copley decision [preventing citizen review of reports on police actions] and other reforms.

Reform is just what’s needed — across the board. The first step should be Carona’s replacement by someone decent and dedicated to openness, beginning with the openness of police investigations of police.

The second reform should be separating the sheriff’s office from the corner’s position the sheriff also holds, absurdly. These are two different functions.

Carona, ironically, was expected to be a breeze of fresh air after the long, thuggish, favor-laden tenure of his predecessor, Brad Gates.

When is Orange County going to get it right?

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Cut O.C. firemen’s pay to free more funds for equipment and new firemen

Here’s a simple way to find more money to hire more firemen and buy more fire-fighting equipment in Orange County: Cut O.C. firemen’s extravagant pay and benefits from $175,000 a year on average to $150,000. (Some even made as much as $268,000 a year.)

At $150,000, they still would be making double the average family income for a resident in Orange County.

Cutting their pay $25,000 would be a reduction of 1/7th. That would mean their forces could be augmented by that amount — or a little less, if some of the saved money is used for buying new equipment. That would be a substantial increase in any government department, especially one as critical as this one.

Alternatively, why not privatize the fire department?

Newspapers’ decline: Will the Orange County Register and its parent company be sold?

Walter: We’ve been in worse jams than this, haven’t we, Hildy?

Hildy: Nope.

— Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday.”

Newspapers are crashing almost as fast as Bush’s poll numbers. Which make me wonder if the Orange County Register, where I was an editorial writer for 19 years, and its parent company, Freedom Communications, will be sold by the Hoiles family that has owned the paper since 1935.

Four years ago, when Freedom Comm was embroiled in a battle that ended up with around 40% of the Hoiles family members being bought out, the company was estimated to be worth about $2 billion. Commendably, the remaining Hoiles family members chose to keep control of Freedom Communications, the parent company, and therefore of the Register.

They brought in the Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners to finance the buyout of their disgruntled cousins. Blackstone/Providence hold loans worth something like 40% of the company’s value in 2004.

Things have been moving fast since then, with the Internet rebounding from the early 2000s high-tech bust to dominate the news business, with blogging taking off. (That’s why you’re reading this, and I’m writing it.)

Freedom Comm is not a publicly held company. But for comparison, we can look at the stock prices of two similar companies. These two companies own a mix of newspapers and other media, with none dominant. (In other words, they are not Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is built on a global cable network and Internet properties such as MySpace). Here are the two:

Since 2004, the New York Times Company’s stock has crashed by more than half, to a market cap of just $2.6 billion this morning.

Since 2004, Gannet Co., Inc.’s stock has crashed by about half, to a market cap of just $9.8 billion.

By contrast, the S&P 500, in the same period, has risen about 30%.

And let’s look at today’s market caps of some new media companies:

Microsoft: $292 billion.

Google: $200 billion.

Apple: $151 billion.

It’s clear that the new media not only are the future, but the present, of the news business.

If Freedom Comm has suffered a similar fate to that of the NY Times and Gannett, as seems likely, that means it’s now worth only about $1 billion. And it means Blackstone and Providence own 80% of Freedom. That number may be less if Freedom has paid back some of what it owes.

On the other hand, if Freedom’s value keeps falling, there might not be much left for the Hoiles family to own, depending on how the deal was structured. Those vacations to New Zealand could be replaced by an afternoon at the Santa Ana Zoo.

The reason these money firms loan money to struggling companies is to make money. They get their profits, no matter what. The only exception is a company falls off a cliff and goes bankrupt, which is the risk factor for Blackstone/Providence. Sometimes that happens.

Meanwhile, in June the O.C. Business Journal reported:

The credit rating of Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc., parent of the Orange County Register, has been downgraded amid the newspaper slump and on the prospect of possible borrowing to buy out investors.Standard & Poor’s Rating Services cut Freedom from “stable” to “negative,” citing weak results at the company’s big daily newspapers.

The cut also “reflects the potential for additional borrowings in May 2009 associated with the company’s contractual obligation to fund a repurchase of the equity interests held by its minority shareholders,” S&P credit analyst Peggy Hebard said in a statement.

To continue our analogy with the NY Times, the Gray Lady has her own big problems. ABC News columnist Michael S. Malone wrote:

Boom! And down goes the biggest newspaper name of all.

As you may have read, yesterday [Oct. 17] brokerage giant Morgan Stanley dumped its entire stake — $183 million worth — in the New York Times, in which it was the second largest shareholder. Not surprisingly, Times stock immediately slumped, bottoming at a nearly 3 percent drop to $18.28 — the lowest it has been in a decade.

The actual damage is probably even larger than that.

His entire column is worth reading for what it says about the whole news industry. But I’ll pick a few phrases that apply (mostly) to The Register as well:

On the surface, this appears to be a battle about power. The Sulzbergers have run the Times for several generations — long enough to be synonymous with the enterprise. But, despite having the family scion, Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. running the business, time (and the need for capital) have reduced the family’s control — and allowed in less sympathetic investors like Elmasry and Morgan.

But speaking as a technologist and a veteran journalist (and someone who once wrote for the Times), I think there are even deeper levels to this story — those dealing with the often foolish choices entrenched companies make in the face of technological revolutions.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a number of newspapers find themselves in deep financial distress as they’ve failed to deal effectively with the challenge posed by Cable News and the Internet, and particularly (on the editorial side) the blogosphere and (on the business side) Craigslist, Google, and eBay. Here in Silicon Valley, the two major newspapers, the San Jose Mercury-News and the San Francisco Chronicle, are shadows of their former selves, the former even been dumped in a humiliating fire sale….

Increased editorial influence on its reporting, an on-going effort to enforce a business model on a market that didn’t want it — the Times wasn’t alone in making these mistakes; indeed, they characterized almost every newspaper in America. Which is why they are all in trouble….

Frankly, investors in the Times would be fools not to question the business judgment of the company — and major shareholders, like Morgan, would be criminally irresponsible to their clients if they didn’t start challenging the decisions of Times management.

A few years ago somebody pointed out that the transition of news from newspapers to the Internet would be like the transition of passenger transport from trains to plane: the old companies wouldn’t make it and new companies, not wedded to the old ideas and methods, would take over. Looks like that’s happening now to newspapers, which just aren’t making the transition.

Newspapers will be remembered nostalgically when people watch such movies as “His Girl Friday” — one of my favorites, providing the quotes at the top, with that great Ben Hecht dialog and Howard Hawks’ direction.

I suspect that the Hoiles family sees this going on and will want to cash out while they can get more from the company than a box of used staplers.

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Vandals improve Crystal Cathedral

Of course, I oppose vandalism. It violates the property rights of a building’s owner.

But vandals who recently painted the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove actually improved it artistically. Because almost anything would improve that “modernist” monstrosity.

So-called “modernism” in architecture isn’t modern anymore, but almost a century old. It’s used in all those ugly steel-and-glass buildings we see everywhere. Hideous.

The only thing worse is so-called “post-modernism,” which throws together multiple styles — a kind of structural multi-culturalism — typified by that ugly Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, in L.A. Nothing so ugly ever has been erected before.

Even “post-modernism” now is more than 40 years old, so it, too, is passe. Can we move on to something else, such as a return to the true, the good, and the beautiful?

At least the Disney is a secular building, not a church. As Michael S. Rose explains in “Ugly as Sin,” his critique of recent church architecture, a church or cathedral is supposed to be “a gospel in stone.”

A hideous “modernist” or “post-modernist” church, therefore, is the negation of the gospel. It’s the equivalent of such once hip, now old, beliefs as Protestant Harvey Cox‘s “The Secular City,” or Hans Kueng‘s multi-cultural theology, which was condemned by Pope John Paul II.

It’s all now a lot of 1960s nonsense, as passe as bell-bottoms and granny glasses.

As to real architecture, how about one of my favorites, Bramante’s Tempietto? Isn’t that beautiful? That’s what a real church looks like.

By the way: Why does the Rev. Schuller have a Crystal “Cathedral.” A cathedral is the seat of a bishop, which he is not; and his denomination, the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America, doesn’t even have bishops. It’s Calvinist, and its “Book of Church Order” (.pdf) doesn’t mention either bishops or cathedrals.

Maybe it’s a theological variation of modernism, or post-modernism, that Kueng can explain for us.

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Assemblyman Tod Spitzer disproves himself

Todd Spitzer is a California state assemblyman with high ambitions and a thin skin. A week ago he was criticized by Steven Greenhut, the columnist for the Orange County Register. Sunday Spitzer responded.

Greenhut charged:

Spitzer’s speech earlier this month on the floor of the Assembly was a stem-winder. There’s demagoguery, a fierce attack on a straw man and the setting up of false choices. It includes invective and taunting. It is pompous, deceptive and totally for show, given that no one is persuaded to change their mind by such banter. Spitzer’s talk reflects an unthinking trust in government power and a stunning lack of concern about common government abuses, excesses and mistakes. Spitzer acts mainly as the spokesman for an interest group (the law-enforcement unions) rather than as a defender of the Constitution or the people.

Spitzer responded with a letter-to-the-editor that not once mentioned personal liberty or the importance of protecting the rights of defendants, who after all are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Thus, Spitzer proved Greenhut’s contention that Spitzer is interested in expanding government powers with nary a concern for our constitutional rights.

For example, Spitzer opposes a bill, AB609, which would require that jailhouse snitches’ testimony — which often is manufactured so the snitch can get reduced time or go free — must be independently corroborated.

And he opposed SB511, which would require video recordings for serious murder and felony cases. He wrote, “But what happens when a child is buried in the ground somewhere and time is of the essence before he/she runs out of air? Can the detectives interview the suspect at the crime scene? The bill opens the doors for huge technical violations that will benefit defendants despite their guilt and create more technical grounds for appeal.”

But what happens, Tod, when the police beat a confession out of a suspect — often an innocent one who tells police not the truth, but what they want to hear — because there’s no camera there? Not only are the person’s rights violated, but if the suspect is innocent, police will stop looking for the true perpetrator.

This is what I call the “Jack Bauer Syndrome,” based on the horrible TV show, “24,” in which Bauer stops terrorists from nuking a U.S. city by torturing someone.

The Jack Bauer Syndrome, including the way Spitzer advances it, are opposed to the American belief that a police state must be avoided at all costs. That means sometimes criminals might go free, and that it’s possible, yes, someone might nuke an American city.

That American belief has worked well until recently, when far too many Americans have forgotten our roots in liberty. As old Ben Franklin said at the beginning of our country:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

If you set up a police state, what you find is that the police themselves become the criminals, and terrorize the citizens far more than criminals do.

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The real problem with fluoridation

With fluoridation of the water being advanced in Orange County, the Register ran a pro and con. Pro was from columnist Gordon Dillow, who brings up and attacks the old theory that it’s a communist conspiracy and says fluoride is safe. Con was an op-ed on the opinion page by Robert Schechter, pointing out potential health hazards.

But the real problem is that this is another government takeover of our lives. Government controls the water supply because, it insists, only it can do so. There has to be a monopoly which it controls.

Then, instead of just giving us cheap, healthy water, it embarks on a public-health campaign to make our teeth harder. But our teeth are our business. And children’s teeth are their parents’ business.

If people want fluoride, they can put it in their own water and buy toothpaste that contains it.

I have tried to avoid fluoride for years, using non-fluoridate toothpaste and buying bottled water instead of the government stuff.

Another good anti-fluoridation article was penned by the late libertarian economist Murray Rothbard 13 years ago:

First: the generalized case for and against fluoridation of water. The case for is almost incredibly thin, boiling down to the alleged fact of substantial reductions in dental cavities in kids aged 5 to 9. Period. There are no claimed benefits for anyone older than nine! For this the entire adult population of a fluoridated area must be subjected to mass medication!

The case against, even apart from the specific evils of fluoride, is powerful and overwhelming.

(1) Compulsory mass medication is medically evil, as well as socialistic. It is starkly clear that one key to any medication is control of the dose; different people, at different stages of risk, need individual dosages tailored to their needs. And yet with water compulsorily fluoridated, the dose applies to everyone, and is necessarily proportionate to the amount of water one drinks.

What is the medical justification for a guy who drinks ten glasses of water a day receiving ten times the fluorine dose of a guy who drinks only one glass? The whole process is monstrous as well as idiotic.

(2) Adults, in fact children over nine, get no benefits from their compulsory medication, yet they imbibe fluorides proportionately to their water intake.

(3) Studies have shown that while kids 5 to 9 may have their cavities reduced by fluoridation, said kids ages 9 to 12 have more cavities, so that after 12 the cavity benefits disappear. So that, at best, the question boils down to: are we to subject ourselves to the possible dangers of fluoridation solely to save dentists the irritation of dealing with squirming kids aged 5 to 9?

(4) Any parents who want to give their kids the dubious benefits of fluoridation can do so individually: by giving their kids fluoride pills, with doses regulated instead of haphazardly proportionate to the kids’ thirst; and/or, as we all know, they can brush their teeth with fluoride-added toothpaste. How about freedom of individual choice?

(5) Let us not omit the long-suffering taxpayer, who has to pay for the hundreds of thousands of tons of fluorides poured into the nation’s socialized water supply every year. The days of private water companies, once flourishing in the U.S., are long gone, although the market, in recent years, has popped up in the form of increasingly popular private bottled water even though far more expensive than socialized free water.

Nothing loony or kooky about any of these arguments, is there? So much for the general case pro and con fluoridation. When we get to the specific ills of fluoridation, the case against becomes even more overpowering, as well as grisly.

You can click on the link to read the rest. But he makes a convincing argument against fluoridation. But government won’t listen. They want to run our lives, and our health is only an excuse for them to do so.

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