Author: Redactor

I’m no military expert. But I do know bad spending habits when I sees ’em, and Congress has ’em. And a lot of what they’re spending badly has to do with the military and our national defense. If we want to have the best possible protection against foreign aggression, we need to talk not only about military reform but also about congressional reform.

President Eisenhower used to talk about a “military-industrial complex.” In a new book on Arms, Politics and the National Economy, editor Robert Higgs says that a better name for this establishment would be “military-industrial-congressional complex.”

Higgs says the U.S. is well prepared to fight conventional battles, but that we’ve been behind the curve when it comes to combating a threat like terrorism. The U.S. is the world leader in defense spending. But the problem is not really too much or too little spending as such, but how the money gets allocated. In other words, the problem is politics. Take the issue of base closings, for instance.

You’d think that if military leaders agree that this or that military base is no longer necessary, Congress would rush to close it. So the money can be better spent elsewhere. Instead, congressmen often act as if the point of the base was to provide employment to voters in their district, not to defend the country.

Even when all that was involved was just robbing poor taxpayers, deciding defense issues on the basis of personal politics was wrong. Today it is a matter of life and death. It’s been said, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” Let’s add, “Don’t pass the pork!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

This just in: According to the Los Angeles Times , there’s no more back bench in the California Assembly. Apparently they’ve hauled it away to a garage sale. “New members do not sit meekly and keep quiet while they learn,” says the Times . “Even rookies will rebel.”

Everybody remembers what the leaders pushed five years ago the so-called “deregulation” of the power companies and how it led to disaster. That energy legislation passed without a single dissenting vote. But more than merely historical memory is motivating these frisky freshmen. Little something I like to call: Term Limits.

In California, term limits went into effect in 1997. Since then, rookies have been skating right out into the center of the rink. Of course, there are always complaints that the assembly is both too fast and too slow in passing legislation. Some complain that their colleagues are dragging their feet about a new energy bill. According to Assemblyman Joe Simitian, one of the rookies, “My mom used to say, ‘Honey, if you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.'” The assemblyman goes on to say, “Don’t let our regret of the past or fear of the future rob us of the courage to take action now.”

But other newcomers have good reason to oppose this same energy bill a controversial multi-billion-dollar bailout of a California power company. In the days before term limits, rarely did rookies act so independently of leadership. Now it’s different . . . and good for them! After all, representatives are supposed to represent, not rubber-stamp.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tensions are high these days all over the world, but even in these trying times politicians can provide some much needed comic relief . . . whether that is their intention or not.

Take Jorge Luis Castaneda, the mayor of Apatzingan, a small town in Mexico. He was a little concerned with reports of possible U.S. military action against his town. The mayor even wrote a letter to President George W. Bush, saying, “Mr. President Bush, I swear by what I hold dearest, which is my political career, that Apatzingan never had any active or moral role in the bloody events at the twin towers and the Pentagon.” Well glory be, in the midst of all the trauma, here is a politician so honest that he even confesses it’s his political career that he holds most dear.

Perhaps that is the ultimate oath for a politician, to swear on his sacred political career. But anyway, what the heck is he talking about? I mean, surely there is no attack on Apatzingan. (I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly.) Is there? Of course not. And the mayor’s aides were kind enough to inform him that it was Afghanistan not Apatzingan that was a likely target for U.S. military action.

That didn’t faze the good mayor, however, who was still sure he did the right thing in writing his letter to President Bush. “Well, I did send it off,” stated Mayor Castaneda, “just in case.” Politicians say the darnedest things.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

As Americans, we are being asked to make many sacrifices. And where it doesn’t involve changing what makes America . . . well, America, our birthright to freedom, we are more than willing, we’re anxious no we’re inspired to make those sacrifices, come what may. There are some things that to me matter more than my own life: the life of my wife, my children, our freedom itself.

John Stuart Mill once said, “War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free . . .” So I have not one shred of doubt that the people of America will always make the sacrifices and give what Abraham Lincoln called their “last full measure of devotion” for freedom.

But if we are going to make sacrifices, and some that supreme sacrifice, I think our elected representatives have a responsibility, a very solemn duty, to be good and accountable servants of our cause. Slipping out of the news after these horrible terrorist attacks has been Congressman Gary Condit. You remember: the guy who couldn’t find the truth if it bit him, even when a young woman’s life was in the balance.

Well, I would gladly leave him in obscurity, but he’s back he’s just been named to the Subcommittee on Homeland Security. For my money, I only want trustworthy people on that committee. I’m Citizen Jacob saying Congressman Condit has got to go.

It was President Harry Truman — a supporter of term limits — who said that if you want a friend in Washington, buy yourself a dog. I decided to take Truman’s advice and got one.

Actually, it was my 9-year old who snookered the dog out of my wife in exchange for a consistently clean room. We didn’t really get the consistently clean room but we did get the dog: Bugsy, a golden retriever.

He was our very first dog. Bugsy made our crazy, hectic household even more crazy and hectic. He was a real burden. We couldn’t seem to make him behave and there were various carpet-related mishaps, chewed furniture, etc. Maybe the idea of a dog on top of our busy lives was just too much. My wife and I were afraid we might have to find another family for Bugsy. It began to really look dark for the mutt when he devoured some paper of mine that seemed really important at the time. Great, my dog ate it!

But the next morning I climbed on the scale and noticed I’d lost 10 pounds. Hmmm. Maybe those walks with Bugsy were making a difference.

Then, at breakfast, my 9-year-old let slip as to how she knew we would always love her no matter what if we could still love Bugsy after all the things he had destroyed.

Well, to make a long story short, we kept the dang critter. And we love him very much. The moral of the story is this: Sometimes in life when you take on burdens, they don’t weigh you down . . . they lift you up.

This is Common Sense . I’m Paul Jacob.

We keep hearing that letting you manage your Social Security account yourself would be a “risky scheme.” Markets fluctuate. The value of a stock or bond can go down as well as up. Risky. But the key here is what happens in the long run. And the fact is, in any twenty-year period, real return in the stock market averages more than 10 percent.

You don’t have to be an expert investor, either, because as manager of your own funds you can pick relatively conservative investment plans. And there is every reason to believe that an average investor can acquit himself quite nicely over the 45 years or so of a typical career, and earn a lot more than he’s now being promised under Social Security. Find out for yourself by visiting the socialsecurity.org web site. The site has a calculator that lets you compare your promised Social Security benefits with what you could have earned, if only you’d been allowed to invest your social security taxes in the market instead of in politicians.

If you were born in 1948 and now earn $20,000 a year, you can expect to get $903 a month from Social Security. But if you had been investing the same funds in bonds earning 6 percent, you could expect $1,257 a month. And with stocks earning 10 percent, what your retirement income could have been shoots up to $5,930 a month. Or, to $8,895 a month if you’re now earning $30,000 a year. But don’t take my word for it. Go to the socialsecurity.org web site and plug in your own numbers. Find out what you’re missing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

A tax by any other name is just the same. The latest method is taxation by lawsuit, and the biggest victims have been the tobacco companies.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of death by slow poison. Nor am I a big fan of the way the tobacco executives have hedged and fudged and lied about the often destructive effects of their product. But nobody forces anybody to smoke a cigarette. I hasten to add that I have nothing against smokers either. Some of my best friends and spouses are smokers. I just don’t think we should be heaping huge and devious punishment on the tobacco companies for supplying their customers with a perfectly legal product that the customers consume of their own free will. This kind of multi-billion dollar taxation-by-litigation is not only arbitrary and punitive, it’s hypocritical, too.

Remember the rationale the various state governments gave for going after big tobacco? It was to pay for disease prevention, medical costs for smokers, anti-tobacco propaganda, and so on. But, now it turns out that most of the $246 billion payoff is being spent on other “priorities.”

According to the General Accounting Office, the states are spending only about 41 percent of their share of the settlement on health-related stuff. Most of the dough is being spent willy-nilly by the politicians on all manner of new programs. The usual. I’d like to think this is the last bit of hypocritical taxation-by-litigation that we’ll see. But I doubt it. When governments find a neat new way to take our money, they tend to get addicted to it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What a relief. By the skin of their teeth, Tennessee taxpayers have escaped a state income tax for yet another year. But you know the old saying: It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings, or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes last. Career politicians are nothing if not persistent.

In Tennessee, they have what they call budget problems. The career politicians want to run almost every aspect of your life, but running every aspect of your life costs money. Lots. As one state senator says, “Once people understand the implications of having an unhealthy state government fewer people with diplomas, with health care I think things will change when [the income tax] comes up again.”

I’m optimistic that Tennessee citizens can avoid being saddled with a state income tax so long as they remain vigilant. But in that case, how could the career politicians get the necessary funding to run every aspect of their lives? It’s quite a dilemma. Maybe we could do something like this: Every time a Tennessee taxpayer earns a paycheck, he could immediately sign it over to the state government. Then the state could buy everybody’s food, pay everybody’s rent and mortgages and medical care and schooling and so forth.

Because this kind of system makes the community come together, let’s call it communism. It would be inefficient and wasteful, and nobody would have “no freedom no more.” But, at least there would not be any more battles over personal income tax. And, if it goes okay in Tennessee, they could try it elsewhere.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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.