Document:LP News Number 21 (July-August 1974): Difference between revisions

Document:LP News Number 21 (July-August 1974) (view source)

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→‎Ford’s Policies Threaten Liberty by Bill Evers

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Bureaucrats, Administrators

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 =Ford’s Policies Threaten Liberty by [[Bill Evers]]=
-President Gerald R. Ford has a political career that stretches across more than a quarter of a century. His public record in the course of that career contains many indications of his personal philosophy and includes numerous policy stands of interest
+President Gerald R. Ford has a political career that stretches across more than a quarter of a century. His public record in the course of that career contains many indications of his personal philosophy and includes numerous policy stands of interest to libertarians. Ford has a history of opposition to the exercise of full civil liberties. Best known is Ford’s attempt in April 1970 to engineer the impeachment of semi-libertarian Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
-to libertarians. Ford has a history of opposition to the exercise of full civil liberties. Best known is Ford’s attempt in April 1970 to engineer the impeachment of semi-libertarian Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
+Among Ford's major concerns was the fact that Douglas' writings had appeared in pornographic magazines, namely Evergreen Review and Avante Garde.
+Ford opposed Lyndon Johnson's 1967 proposal to ban most governmental and private wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping. He spoke in favor of wiretapping in debate over the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the D.C. Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970.
+===Preventive Detention===
+The preventive detention provision of this D.C. Crime Act received Ford's endorsement (15 July 1970 Congressional Record). Ford was the sole sponsor of a 1971 Nixon administration bill that would have provided for pre-trial detention of so-called dangerous persons charged with certain crimes. Under the provisions of this bill, a U.S. Attorney would have been able to make a written motion to arrest someone for the purpose of holding a pre-trial detention hearing. A judge could hear the motion without the accused or his attorney being given an opportunity to respond. Then the judge could order the person arrested and transported to the place of the hearing. Once arrested, the person could be kept in jail for several days before the hearing.  Once arrested, the person could be kept in jail for several days before the hearing.  at the hearing itself, the usual rules of evidence in criminal cases would not have applied.
+On matters of freedom of speech, Ford was one of the major proponents of legislation that made it a crime to travel from state to state to incite "violence."  This was the law that was used to indict the Chicago 8 for conspiracy at the 1968 Democratic convention.
+Ford also spoke out in favor of the no-knock entry provision of the D.C. Crim Act (15 July 1970 CR).
+===Blacks' Rights===
+Interestingly enough, Ford at one point in his career took a strong and forthright stand in favor of equal political rights for blacks.  The occasion was a House Republican substitute for what became the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
+Here Ford in alliance with Midwestern Taft Republicans (Bill McCulloch and Clarence Brown of Ohio) proposed a substitute measure that was stronger than the Johnson Administration bill in the areas of securing honest elections and opposing poll taxes. In this effort, Ford and the others opposed that wing of their party that wanted to draw white supremacist Southern Democrats into the Republican party. (See House Judiciary Committee, Hearings on the Nomination of Gerald R. Ford as Vice President, p. 239; also see July 1965 CR.)
+In matters of economic liberty, Ford has favored compulsory arbitration since at least 1967 to settle labor-management disputes in the transportation industry. (See also 9 Dec. 1970 CR.)
+===Wage Controls===
+Ford went along with President Nixon's program of wage and price controls. He said of the Phase II program: "Let me emphasize that our price and wage controls are working." (2 August 1972 CR.) One of Ford's first acts as President was to apply government pressure in the form of a revived Cost of Living Council and nationally-publicized jawboning to interfere with the free movement of prices and wages.
+In addition, Ford seems to be intent on actively pushing for early passage of a socialized medicine bill through Congress. Many libertarians would be interested in Ford's attitude toward the possibility of a more isolationist foreign policy stance for America.
+Ford first entered politics with the backing of isolationist-turned-inter nationalist Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg, R-Mich. He gained his seat in the House by defeating the incumbent, isolationist Bartel
+J. Jonkman, in the Republican primary.
+On 9 Dec. 1973, Ford said: "I'm a reformed isolationist who, before World War II, was mistaken like a lot of people .... I have become, I think, a very ardent internationalist." Ford has strongly supported U.S. involvement in Indochina and in the Middle East.
+As a final matter, since the President can launch nuclear war, many libertarians are concerned with Ford's record on wartime policies that mean that violence or the threat of violence will be directed against noncombatants. Ford was in the forefront of those urging aerial bombardment of North Vietnam, including urban areas, even before such bombing became official U.S. policy.
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