Author: Redactor

Categories
national politics & policies

It Could Be Worse

If your candidate or issue didn’t win on Tuesday, then, sure, Western civilization is completely finished, kaput. No doubt.

But still, let’s look at the bright side.

At least the presidential election provided a $2.5 billion stimulus to the economy, without raising anyone’s taxes (yet) or borrowing a nickel from China. And what a fabulous circus to, well, take our minds off the nasty state of our economy and our politics.

Or maybe not so much.

But consider: For all the corruption in our country’s politics, aren’t you glad you don’t live and work in Russia, where near-superman President Vladamir Putin is the Big Kahuna? Putin just sacked his defense minister. The cause for the minister’s dismissal? Corruption! So, everyone is wondering: what was the real cause for the firing?

Now, that’s a culture of corruption.

Forget politics. Just be thankful you’re not Alex Ocasio hunkered down in his New York City apartment waiting for a nor’easter to clobber his community as the too-soon second whammy following Hurricane Sandy. During Sandy, Ocasio and his neighbors stopped a group of looters after they broke down the door. “They tried to say they were rescue workers,” he told the Washington Post, “then took off.”

Now he won’t leave for higher ground, putting a sign on his door: “Have Gun. Will shoot U.”

In a crisis, I think I’d rather have Mr. Ocasio for a neighbor than FEMA for a savior.

So, what’s the political sunny side to Election 2012? Is there any?

Sure. Executive term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Where Reality Sells

A lot of people, Democratic and Republican, have been saying that yesterday’s election was “the most important in our lifetime.” It wasn’t — and wouldn’t have been had the presidential race gone the other way.

But as it is, the outcome was hardly shocking. An incumbent got re-elected. Wow.

The Senate solidified its Democratic position; the House remained solidly Republican. America after Election Day looks almost exactly the same as America before.

So, why so little change?

Blame it on “hope.”

Face it: in electoral politics, fantasy sells. Mainstream politicians love to promote The Dream. Not the American Dream, which is about hard work and honest dealing, but the Changeling Dream, about getting something for nothing. Or getting ahead at others’ expense. At present, this Dream rests upon spending more than government takes in forever and ever, believing that somehow there are no disastrous consequences to the resulting accumulation of debt.

Democratic politicians may be better able to describe their lavish dreams for all that government can do, but Republican office-holders sure seem to hang out on that same street in Dreamland.

Now they’ve just about all been re-elected to go back and hang out for another term.

What can we do? Hope they change their spots?

No. That’s too passive. “Cast your whole vote,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”

How? In 2013 and 2014, citizens can petition to put important issues on state and local ballots. We change the terms of political debate; we gain the upper hand — and put common sense back into government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Will Rogers

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

Categories
U.S. Constitution

Romney-Biden 2012?

The most interesting presidential election in U.S. history may have been the fourth, wherein Thomas Jefferson won. Sort of. How Jefferson got to be president may be relevant in this election, which is now so close that some wonder what would happen if there were an Electoral College stalemate, 269 votes for Romney and 269 for Obama. (Remember, it’s the electors who count, not the popular vote.)

In 1800, because of a constitutional glitch, Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr got the same number of electors, and the whole issue went to the House, which the Federalists still controlled, and it took a lot of negotiations and in-fighting to put Jefferson in office as the president.

The 12th Amendment settled the VP glitch, and cooked up a solution to the possibility of an Electoral College tie, as well. It’s never been used.

If, this Tuesday, the distribution of the popular vote forces the Electoral College into stalemate, the 12th Amendment would kick in, and the House would vote in a peculiar fashion (one vote per state), to select the President — Romney, considering the complexion of that body. Then the Senate would select the Vice President — Biden, considering the complexion of that body.

A wild finish, but it could get even wilder. In 1972, an elector jumped ship, voting for the Libertarian Party’s John Hospers/Tonie Nathan ticket (making Nathan the first woman to receive an electoral vote). Even against state laws forbidding it, a similar jump for Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Party’s Jill Stein — or Ron Paul — might complicate further. Or simplify.

Happy voting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Will Rogers

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Unbelievable

There they go again!

You’d think after Nebraskans voted three separate times for eight-year legislative term limits that the state’s legislators would finally accept the vote of the people they claim to serve.

But you’d be wrong.

The limits passed in ’92 and ’94 were struck down in court rulings that re-wrote the state’s initiative petition requirements. Voters responded to that judicial tyranny by booting out a supreme court justice in a retention election for the very first time in state history. A second justice resigned the day after that 1996 spanking by voters.

In 2000, citizens gathered enough signatures to put the limits back on the ballot and again they passed.

But that hasn’t stopped State Sen. Tom Carlson and his fellow legislators from placing Amendment 3 on tomorrow’s ballot. If passed, Amendment 3 would allow Carlson & Co. to stay in office 50 percent longer.

Strange, we limit the president to eight years; George Washington stepped down after two four-year terms to set that example. But somehow eight years isn’t enough time for a state senator.

In a last minute radio ad campaign by a purposely mis-named Nebraskans to Preserve Term Limits, Sen. Carlson says that he and his gang “believe in term limits.” But seconds later Carlson mentions “coaches, teachers, doctors” and suggests, “It is unlikely we would consider limiting their service to eight years.”

Well, he’s right that we don’t limit brain surgeons to eight years. But then again, being a legislator isn’t brain surgery.

As Nebraska voters will remind members of the state’s Unicameral Legislature tomorrow — for a fourth time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Will Rogers

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Categories
Thought

Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Categories
video

Video: Nebraska’s Trojan Horse

What the people fight against in Nebraska, another Trojan Horse:

Categories
folly ideological culture responsibility

Judicial Temblor

A scientist does not kill anybody by failing to predict an imminent earthquake, even if he believes and says that it is unlikely to occur just before it does occur. Non-omniscient seismologists don’t kill people; earthquakes kill people.

Nevertheless, Judge Marco Billo sentenced six Italian scientists and a government official to six years in prison for manslaughter, and also billed them for court costs and damages to the tune of $10.2 million.

Some residents of the Italian town of d’Aquila applaud the penalties.

The seven defendants were members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risk, which had convened not long before the earthquake struck d’Aquila in April 2009, killing 309 people. Commission members did not issue a warning because the kind of small tremors that had been putting townsfolk on edge were, in their experience, not often the prelude to a major earthquake.

Their crime, then, was for uttering less-than-omniscient judgments in their field.

Suppose the defendants had instead determined that there should be an evacuation, that the town were then evacuated, and that a person died on the way out of town in a way directly attributable to the evacuation — but no earthquake then ensued. Also manslaughter?

If inability to eliminate uncertainty about future hazards is a crime, then we’re all guilty. But the real crime was committed by anyone having anything to do with this miscarriage of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.