Author: Redactor

It’s the Pop-Tarts. They could be dangerous. And your toaster, too. What I have to tell you is a shocking tale of innocent trust, of leaving Pop-Tarts in a toaster to drive the kids to school, and of Pop-Tarts getting stuck in the unattended toaster and causing a fire while the person who put the Pop-Tarts in the toaster was taking the kids to school.

This is what happened to the Hurff family. And Brenda Hurff is suing The Kellogg Company, which makes Pop-Tarts. She is also suing Black and Decker, which makes the toaster. No word yet on whether she is suing herself for leaving the toaster unattended. Over the past ten years, the U.S. government has received 17 reports of fires involving toaster pastries. That’s an incredible 1.7 toaster-pastry-related fires per year. Apparently the jam in Pop-Tarts is a little more flammable then the bread in bread. Let’s calculate the risk here.

This year the Pop-Tart people reported $500 million in U.S. sales. It costs about $2 per box of Pop-Tarts. If there are six pastries to a box, 15 billion Pop-Tarts were sold this year. With tarts toasted two at a time, there were 7.5 billion opportunities this year to lose your home to Pop-Tarts. An average 1.7 reported incidents per year means that your chances of being burned by Pop-Tarts during any given toasting are about 1 in 4 billion. Yet, Pop-Tarts continue to be inserted into toasters. And people also keep putting food in frying pans on stoves hamburgers, scrambled eggs, you name it. People, listen to me: Don’t play with fire. Just buy cereal. Cold cereal. It’s safer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Are you online? In the U.S., it’s getting easier all the time to ring up the Internet. Computers get cheaper and cheaper every year, more and more accessible. Never mind all the political chatter of a “digital divide” that you supposedly need politicians and bureaucrats to bridge for you.

The fact is, by the fall of 2000, some 51 percent of all U.S. homes had a computer, and about 41 percent had access to the Internet. Chances are, if you’re not online already, getting there just isn’t very high on your “to do” list.

But suppose you do want to log onto the Internet but have to watch your pennies? Well, the people who brought you the information revolution are eager to help. One thing they’ve done is set up an organization called ConnectNet ( Conectado in Spanish), which directs callers to local libraries and other organizations that provide Internet access. ConnectNet is funded by AOL Time/Warner. They have a toll-free hotline, 1-866-583-1234.

If there’s a true digital divide to worry about, it’s to be found elsewhere on this globe. Depending on which country you live in, you might not even have a telephone, let alone a PC and a modem. But that problem is being tackled, too, as engineers and researchers develop scaled-down and more affordable versions of the PC that can at least hook folks up to the web.

A lot more political freedom in some of these countries couldn’t hurt either. If only we could solve the “Liberty Divide,” any so-called Digital Divide would be gone in no time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The fellows who brought us this grand experiment in self-government we know as America were big, I mean really BIG, on a free press. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.”

Today most of us get our news from TV; we listen to radio in our cars; fewer and fewer read the paper. There is no problem with that, per se, just that TV and radio are not as free under the First Amendment as newspapers are because the government, through the FCC, regulates TV and radio.

I bring this up because such trivial matters make a difference in the real world. A TV station in Bismarck, North Dakota has pulled a spot by the American Conservative Union critical of Senator Kent Conrad’s stance on Social Security. This was done at the fervent urging of, you guessed it, Senator Kent Conrad. Before talking to the senator, the TV station deemed the ad fit for broadcast, but afterwards, no.

Often there’s a controversy over ads portraying an officeholder’s position. But the public isn’t stupid. We can sort out bogus arguments from the truth provided all sides are free to speak. But today, powerful incumbents throw their weight around with broadcasters whom they ultimately regulate and effectively silence speech. Today, Senator Conrad’s ad is running countering the ACU ad he had removed from your TV set.

Kerri Houston of ACU says, “The senator seems to think that the First Amendment only applies to him.” The scariest thing is how right he is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Every 10 years we take a census so that new political lines can be drawn for Congress and the state legislatures. It’s the state legislatures that draw the lines, which are then ratified like any other piece of legislation.

These lines really matter. As the Center for Voting and Democracy tells us, “With increasingly sophisticated computer software, polling results and demographic data, incumbent legislators quite literally choose the voters before the voters have a chance to choose them.” The Center notes that as a result of redistricting, “most voters are locked into one-party districts where their only real choice at election time is to ratify the incumbent or heir apparent.”

I’m not shocked that state legislators tend to reward themselves, at least those in the majority, with seats that are designed to elect . . . well, them. But how do congressmen get such nice treatment? After all, the congressmen don’t draw the district lines, not directly.

Good connections help. So does a little bribery. Take California, where Michael Berman, brother of Congressman Howard Berman, is the legislature’s appointed line-drawing guru. U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez publicly admits that she and 30 of the 32 Democratic congressional incumbents have already paid Berman $20,000 each for what she calls an “incumbent-protection plan.”

“Twenty thousand is nothing to keep your seat,” says Sanchez. “I spend $2 million every election. If my colleagues are smart, they’ll pay their $20,000, and Michael will draw the district they can win in.” She adds, “Those who have refused to pay? God help them.”

God help them? God help us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

A frozen food caucus? A frozen food caucus? Oh come on. Really?

Well, apparently, yes, there is indeed a frozen food caucus now in the Congress. It’s brand-new. Representatives Cal Dooley and Butch Otter are the co-chairs. The American Frozen Food Institute is the driving force behind the caucus, and it notes that co-chairs Dooley and Otter have a “vested interest” in frozen food. You see, each congressman has a couple of frozen food processing facilities in his district. So you just know this is a burning issue for them.

Anyway, why not? For good or for ill, Congress gets involved in virtually every aspect of our lives these days. Few congressmen any longer judge legislation according to wide political principles that can be applied to, say, the food industry as a whole rather than just the frozen food industry. Or industry as a whole rather than just the food industry. Or economic life as a whole rather than just this industry or that industry.

It’s a chilling thought. Public policy these days is all about special rules and special regulations and special tax breaks and special subsidies, unique to you and your industry or sub-sector of the industry. It’s all about who you know and what you can give them in return for what they give you. You couldn’t have a Life-Liberty-and-the-Pursuit-of-Happiness Caucus. There aren’t any bills pending about that.

The Frozen Food Institute has lobbied Congress on everything from trade barriers to frozen onion standards. For them, a frozen food caucus makes sense. I just hope frozen corn and frozen Salisbury steak will be treated fairly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

This is war. And on our shores. Thousands of American citizens murdered in cold blood. But despite our pain and suffering as a people, we are still strong. Not only militarily, but also in our love of freedom and our commitment to defend it come what may.

Some have argued that America will never be the same. In a sense that’s true: we’ll certainly never forget this savage and senseless attack. And we have much work to do to make certain it doesn’t happen again. But it’s important to be careful how we go about it.

In the wake of this unprecedented brutality, two out of three Americans say they would be willing to trade some civil liberties to get more security. But this is isn’t our real choice. Nothing about increasing our security requires abridging our civil rights. We don’t have to let the terrorists win, not in any respect. For these terrorists would like nothing better than to knock America off our foundation, our principles, the things that make us truly the greatest country the world has ever known. They hate our freedom. Let’s sustain that freedom. Let’s show the whole world: we are the same America.

The same America whose rifle shot for freedom was heard ’round the world in 1776, and is still being heard today. The same America that freed Europe from the Nazis and Asia from imperial Japan. Let it be known in the face of this terror today that we are indeed the same America the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Astronomers are jumping up and down for joy. They’re ecstatic! They’ve got solid confirmation now that there is a black hole at the center of the galaxy. Hey, great.

A black hole is a stellar object that has become so dense that nothing in its path can escape its gravitational pull. Not heat, not light, not anything. That’s why they call it a black hole . . . it is just a lightless abyss. And, for that reason, very hard to detect from far away. Because of all the closely packed matter you’d expect in pretty much any galactic core, astronomers have long assumed there must be such a black hole in the middle of our own Milky Way. But now they can actually detect it. A NASA satellite observatory happened to be looking in the right direction when an intense x-ray flare erupted, the kind that would be produced when a black hole is chewing something up. As I say, the astronomers are dancing in the streets over this. Well, I’m happy for them, I guess.

But, is this really such a big deal? I mean, it’s not as if there’s never been a black hole sighting before. These guys gotta get out more. I’ve seen this phenomenon many times. Maybe not in its astronomical form but certainly in the political one. It’s called the ego of the career politician. It’s called the U.S. Capitol. It’s called Washington, D.C. What it is, is a huge and lightless void that sucks up the wallets and hopes of humble citizens, at a ravenous pace. And, there’s no hope of ever escaping. Or at least, that’s what they’d like you to think.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What’s the best way to help a man when he’s down? Kick him? That’s what some folks in Washington seem to be saying. They say that with the economy weakening a bit lately, Bush made a big mistake giving us a few of our own bucks back. They say the only way for the government to put its financial affairs in order is to grab even more of our hard-earned money. Kick us when we’re down.

But making it harder for productive citizens to pay the bills doesn’t help the economy. After all, working folks are what make the economy. If Washington really wants to help us, why not start by taking their hands out of our pockets?

Listen to David Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste. According to Williams, “It’s the spending, stupid!” There’s plenty of bloat in our multi-trillion dollar federal budget that could easily be slashed and hacked, if only our so-called leaders put their minds to it.

As the Cato Institute notes, corporate welfare alone adds up to some $87 billion in the current federal budget. All it would take to get rid of that and all the pork and all the other dubious spending is a little common sense, a lot of political willpower, and a big pair of scissors.

One of the few congressmen who gets it is Ron Paul of Texas. “There is a lot of room in a two or three trillion dollar budget to cut spending,” Paul points out. “That’s what’s best for the economy, to cut spending and taxes at the same time.”

What? Cut them both? At the same time? Now that’s a kick!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I am not a perfect man. For example, I’m behind in my reading. I’ve got a stack of books yea high on my desk, and some of those books have pages. I can’t keep up with it.

As I say, I’m not a perfect man. But at least I try not to make other people suffer as a result of my delinquency. Not so much can be said about our lords and masters in the nation’s capital. Our congressmen also have a lot of reading to do. But they never really get around to perusing all the legislation they pass before they pass it. Not all the way through. There is just too much of it, with too many clauses and sub-clauses. This is pretty mind-numbing stuff.

One result is that really nasty provisions sometimes get tucked into the bills, unconstitutional assaults on our freedom which few people know about, not even most of the congressmen, until it’s way too late. An example is a federally-mandated national database that is supposed to keep tabs of your every visit to the doctor, including what you thought was confidential conversation about your medical problems.

The mandate for this database was imposed by the 106th Congress, along with a lot of other haphazard track-and-spy provisions. What, you never heard of this database? Behind on your reading, huh? Well, I just found out about it myself. I am not a perfect man. And I don’t know everything about everything. But one thing I do know is that if our legislators can’t take the trouble to read the legislation before they vote for it, they shouldn’t vote for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Some folks are rethinking our controversial drug laws. But while polls show more than a quarter of Americans now favor decriminalizing marijuana, not one of the 535 folks who represent us in Congress agrees. At least, no one has introduced meaningful legislation or come forward to champion this cause. And while initiatives in various states are legalizing marijuana for medical purposes and moving away from incarceration, federal penalties for drug offenses continue to get more and more draconian.

I don’t mean to comment here on the merits of our nation’s drug policies, or lack thereof. All I’m saying is that, yet again, we aren’t being well represented because our political system has been monopolized by career politicians. The system is stagnant because careerists are unwilling to take political risks for what they believe in.

New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is pushing for changes in the drug laws even though he knows it is not an immediately popular stand. He tells Rolling Stone magazine that he’s living proof of the virtues of term limits: “Would I have brought this issue out if I thought I could be elected to a third term?” he asks. “I don’t know. In the first term, I talked about the failure of the Drug War and that arresting people isn’t going to work. But it wasn’t until the second term that I made a conscious decision to turn up the volume and search out some solutions.”

Quite a telling admission. And whether or not you agree with Governor Johnson on the drug issue, surely there’s something wrong when our representatives run from important issues and play it safe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.