Author: Redactor

Categories
term limits

Green Politicians and Ham

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on August 8, 2003, and has been repeated at least once. Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” is in the news again, and I thought I’d jump message and divert your attention away from inane fun-poking to the important issue of “getting used to” what’s good for us. —PJ

“Do you like green eggs and ham? . . . Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say.”

Same goes for politicians and term limits. When state legislators ever-so-reluctantly try term limits, turns out that they actually like green eggs and ham, that is, term limits, better than state legislators who aren’t term-limited.

I read an endless stream of stories about how politicians, about to be term-limited, say the limits aren’t working. News flash: Politicians have always hated term limits. But now a survey commissioned by the National Conference of State Legislatures finds something surprising: there is more support for term limits among legislators in term-limited states than there is among politicians who have no actual experience with term limits.

Think about that. When asked whether term limits “promote healthy change” or “don’t work,” legislators serving under term limits in their state were 50 percent more likely to see term limits in positive terms than their unlimited colleagues.

“Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!”

Well, I guess we shouldn’t get carried away. Even in term-limited states, legislators oppose the limits by a margin of nearly four to one. Term limits were designed to please voters, not legislators.

Still, good to know that for legislators under term limits, the idea is starting to grow on them.

Ever so slowly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Karl Kraus

When a man is treated like a beast, he says, ‘After all, I’m human.’ When he behaves like a beast, he says ‘After all, I’m only human.’

Categories
political challengers

Where’s Sarvis?

Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe each closed their arguments in last night’s Virginia gubernatorial debate with passion, gusto, and verve — but not for why voters should trust them to run state government for the next four years. Instead, each made the case why voters ought not trust the other guy.

“My opponent talks a lot about experience,” McAuliffe argued, “but his experience has been in dividing people by pursuing his own ideological agenda, introducing legislation that would outlaw most common forms of birth control. . . . Frankly, I think Virginia women have had just about enough of Ken Cuccinelli’s experience.”

Cuccinelli attacked his opponent’s business record, charging that McAuliffe had “driven jobs from the state,” adding, “Terry sold more visas to Chinese citizens as part of GreenTech than his failed company has sold [electric] cars. Terry will fight for Terry. . . .”

Those same messages are carpet-bombing across the commonwealth in 30-second spots. We’re told by each man that the other is unfit.

Both gents are on to something. And, not surprisingly, polls show more voters have a negative view of Cuccinelli than positive, with McAuliffe faring only slightly better.

Too bad Virginians are stuck with just these two unpopular choices!

Wait . . . what? Who? Well, yes, there is the Libertarian Party nominee Robert Sarvis.

I guess he didn’t have the 5 or 10 percent in the polls to be invited, but with voters so disgusted with the Elephant and Donkey Party nominees, why not give him a chance?

Wait, the latest Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll shows Sarvis with 10 percent support. Oh, maybe that’s why he wasn’t invited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Karl Kraus

I have done nothing more than show that there is a distinction between an urn and a chamber pot and that it is this distinction above all that provides culture with elbow room. The others, those who fail to make this distinction, are divided into those who use the urn as chamber pot and those who use the chamber pot as urn.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

To Dream the “Impossible” Repeal

Senator Ted Cruz’s non-filibuster filibuster, monopolizing the Senate floor for the ninth hour as I type these words, is easy to characterize — if you are Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

Easy to make fun of, especially when the senator read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his children — via C-Span.

It’s not a filibuster, since it stops no vote. It’s not even a speed-bump on the way to a vote. It’s something of a demonstration by one senator and a few of his allies to highlight the dangers of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, and the necessity to repeal it. Marshaling emails, tweets, and open letters, Cruz hopes to pressure the unmovable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow a vote on an amendment to defund Obamacare.

The point is this: Attacking Obamacare can’t help but seem quixotic. Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, we who want less government — who want to limit government — often find ourselves jousting with giants who don’t budge, or (ahem) budget.

So of course we do appear comic, now and then.

But there’s also a reason that when Broadway and then Hollywood turned Cervantes’ classic into a musical, Don Quixote became something of a hero. The dream of justice, of economy, of equality before the law, of humility before the forces of nature, and resilience before the hordes of delusional politicians, does seem impossible.

But not fighting it, whatever peaceful way we can, would be disgraceful.

Ted Cruz is heroic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Karl Kraus

A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.

Categories
crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture

Liars, Fools, Educators

There’s something very, very wrong with today’s public school culture.

I wrote that as a start for today’s excursion into the land wherein common sense has utterly fled . . . but without knowing whether I would dissect a Washington Times story about two Virginia Beach, Virginia, students suspended (perhaps for the entire year) for playing with an air soft gun in their own yards, or the Washington Post’s excellent coverage of a new test-score scandal.

The first story reflects both today’s crazed anti-gun culture and a sort of imperialism: educators seem to think that it’s their jurisdiction to judge how children behave at home, especially when it comes to toy guns, which they apparently deem inherently bad, etc., etc. Yes, Virginia educators insist on enforcing pacifism and disarmament as a settled matter, as if the Second Amendment didn’t exist.

Now, schools should not allow violence on school grounds or buses. And, if the kids who were playing with the toy guns were pointing and shooting with dangerous irresponsibility, and against city code, then maybe the school has a leg to stand on.

Nearby in Washington, D.C., in our second story, public school administrators have rigged the testing system to yield better math scores. Indeed, the district had boasted of a four-point gain. Then it was discovered that scores had actually declined, in part because of new rigorous tests. But instead of “biting the bullet” and taking a “temporary” hit, educators fiddled with the statistics and came up with phony bragging points.

Liars to the north of me; fools at another point in the compass, entirely.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment

Crazed Killers, Columnist

Following the recent Navy yard shooting . . . much talk of gun control.

But the more “clever” and “sophisticated” response is to advocate cracking down on crazy people. You know, “put away” people who are a danger to themselves and others. So argues Charles Krauthammer, the psychiatrist-turned-columnist.

Not so fast, writes Brian Doherty at Reason: “No, Arbitrarily Locking Up People Instead of Restricting Guns Isn’t a Good Option Either.”

There are all sorts of things we could do . . . to violate the rights of citizens because they are in a class that sometimes but really hardly ever goes on to commit a crime. Of course, it’s best, as Krauthammer does, to say it’s not just for our (possibly presumed) good that we do it: it’s for theirs.

Wanting a quick cure for the problem of mass shootings is not the same thing as having one.* Doherty notes that, “like most gun control solutions offered,” the idea of locking up the mentally ill is “just one more thing to say that pretends on the surface to be a solution” but that “would not necessarily have prevented the particular problem.”

Science has come a long way, but studies show, as fellow Reason writer Jacob Sullum recently put it, that even “mental health professionals are notoriously bad at predicting which of the world’s many misfits, cranks, and oddballs will become violent.”

An easy fix? Science fictional, not scientific. And we know what science fiction says about locking people up for institutional convenience.

That’s truly crazy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Wanting a quick cure for the broader problems of the mentally disturbed is also not the same thing as having one.

Categories
Thought

Karl Kraus

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

Categories
Thought

H. L. Mencken

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.