Author: Redactor

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.

In my view, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize criminal behavior. Would you agree with me on that? Yet that is what’s happening.

Maybe you’ve heard how law officers get to keep some of the money they grab from drug-​trafficking suspects. No evidence or trial is required. Empowered by anti-​racketeering and other laws, they can just snag the goods at will.

But that’s not all. Social workers now have a financial incentive to kidnap children. That’s what a Massachusetts couple, Heidi and Neil Howard, found out when their first baby girl was born terminally ill. A social worker pushed her way into their home and found it in disorder. The kitchen was being remodeled, and there was a lot of tension in the air, possibly the kind of tension associated with having a terminally ill baby. Social workers told Heidi that if she didn’t sign a complaint against her husband, she could lose her two sons. Then they used that signed complaint to take her two sons.

More and more, agencies are conniving to break up families. Feminist writer Wendy McElroy says the Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed by Congress in 1997, deserves a lot of the blame. The Act awards a “finder’s fee” of up to $4,000 to agencies that adopt out a child. Of course, to adopt out a child, you first need to have a child in tow, ready to go.

Taxpayer-​funded payoffs alone won’t turn cops into robbers or child protection specialists into kidnappers. There has to be a certain lack of moral scruples also. But you know, the payoffs don’t exactly help, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Amazing. It’s happened before. But so infrequently that you want to grab the people involved by the shoulders and shout, “Hey! Good job! That’s what journalism is supposed to do: Report facts!”

I’m talking about an article in the Philadelphia Daily News that explains why it’s so hard to reform the Pennsylvania legislature: Incumbents in Pennsylvania rule the roost virtually unchallenged. The Daily News notes that only five seats out of 203 are now regarded as competitive. The culture of incumbency “breeds an isolated, insulated body eating millions of tax dollars each year, spending billions more without the scrutiny we give TV sit-​coms.” Add all the charges and convictions for drunken driving, bribery, spousal abuse and the like, and it’s not a very pretty picture.

How to shake up the status quo? Here’s where the Daily News loses a few of its laurels. The paper says that campaign money is what’s to blame for super-​high reelection rates. But Eric O’Keefe, President of Americans for Limited Terms, has studied the election, and he says, “it’s the low spenders who are most entrenched.”

O’Keefe agrees that party bosses can extort money when they have to, and throw it at the few contested races. But the question is, why are so many races uncontested to begin with? The real problem here is the power of incumbents to crimp competition and stave off reform, even without huge campaign coffers. To tackle that problem at the root, you need term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Onion pungency. Ornamental fish. Cranberry breeding. How to de-​bone salmon.  Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against food. I just don’t think the nation’s taxpayers should be spending millions of dollars on onion pungency studies and anti-​salmon-​bone technology.

Our career congressmen no doubt disagree. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, over the past year our congressmen have splurged more than $1.7 billion on federal grants for just such academic projects, earmarked for the home districts of powerful legislators. In other words: pork. Something to serve up to a particular interest group in your district to help flavor the reelection bid.

Academic pork is, in fact, 60 percent fatter than it was just a year earlier. Can we be sure it’s pork? Well, let’s think about this. Nine of ten states that got the most grant money happen to have legislators heading up the relevant congressional committees. Meanwhile, nine of ten states at the bottom of the grant heap have no committee heads in their congressional delegations. This is the kind of pattern you expect to see when career politicians are putting personal careers ahead of the common good.

For example, New Hampshire wasn’t doing very well in the academic pork area until Congressman Judd Gregg became top dog of a subcommittee overseeing the Commerce and Justice Departments. Now Dartmouth is getting an $18 million earmark to study cybercrime and the University of New Hampshire is getting $14 million for a marine lab and a pier. Sounds fishy to me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.