Publisher's Notes

• RECENT EDITORS'ACTIVITIES: During the past year Robert Poole, Jr. has served on the Steering Committee which has set up AREA—the Association for Rational Environmental Alternatives, a group of people with professional, academic, or business interests in urban and environmental issues. AREA intends to focus on nongovernmental solutions to such problems and to serve as a forum for interdisciplinary study of urban and environmental issues, such as land use controls and public service delivery.

Poole has also become a founding trustee of the Phoenix Foundation, a nonprofit organization engaged in developing libertarian constitutions and seeking locations throughout the world for the establishment of freeports and/or other autonomous territories where libertarian principles can be put into practice. Other trustees of the Foundation include Nathaniel Branden, John Hospers, Mike Oliver, and Harry Schultz.

Poole will be listed in the 1975 edition of Who's Who in the West, and his article "The Wealth of the Oceans" is being reprinted by the Foundation for Economic Education in their packet of information for high school debaters for the 1975-76 school year. The debate topic for this year concerns the "development and allocation" of various world resources.

In addition to acting as chairman of the Los Angeles-based Libertarian Law Council, Manuel Klausner is working with Donald Feder and Gary Greenberg to organize a National Association of Libertarian Lawyers.

Klausner is currently active on a committee advising Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs on noncoercive methods for the city government to aid the arts. He has spoken on libertarian topics before various organizations in Southern California and will be listed in the 1975 edition of Who's Who in the West.

Lynn Kinsky is completing her first year as member of the National Executive Committee of the Libertarian Party and State Executive Committee of the Libertarian Party of California, and is chairperson of the Santa Barbara Libertarian Party. She ran for Santa Barbara School Board in March, and received almost ten percent of the vote out of 18 candidates.

Kinsky has published pieces in the Libertarian Review and the Libertarian Forum and has spoken on feminism and the libertarian movement before a number of groups, including the California Library Administrators Association Meeting in Sacramento.

Senior Editor Tibor Machan was selected as one of the National Fellows of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. His work during the year will be spent at Stanford University's Hoover facilities, where he will focus on the issue of due process and the regulatory agencies.

Machan was recently discussed in an article by Professor Eysenck in the July issue of Encounter magazine, a prominent British publication. The article dealt with B.F. Skinner and his critics. Machan's book, The Pseudo-Science of B.F. Skinner, was the only anti-Skinnerian book (briefly) touched on by Professor Eysenck.

• GOVERNMENT "PROTECTION": Robert Friedman was arrested for panhandling in front of a downtown Chicago bus terminal in April. Because he was carrying $24,000 in small bills with him, he was committed to a mental institution by a judge who said he was protecting Friedman from thugs who might be after his cash. Now Friedman, 43, has seen the government use half of his life savings to pay for hospital fees and doctors' bills ordered by the court, including $800-a-month Friedman is charged to be kept at the mental facility he fought to stay out of. The judge—who suggested that he'd have reached a different conclusion "if he only had a quarter instead of $24,000″—also ordered Friedman to pay the fees for the lawyer who argued that he be committed.

According to his attorney who is appealing the commitment order, Friedman "lived frugally his entire life and saved every penny he made" as a clerk-typist and stenographer. It's nice to know the state is interested in protecting citizens from robbers. But we'd feel better if we knew how citizens could be protected from the state.