Category: Common Sense

Categories
Common Sense

Thanksgiving 2009

Paul Jacob says “Thank You”

What a difference a year makes. As I sit down to my Thanksgiving Day feast, that’s what I’m thinking.

And I certainly know I have a whole lot to be thankful for.

Let me start by thanking you. For caring about freedom and justice. For your critical support for this Common Sense program and for the Citizens in Charge Foundation — the nation’s only organization with the express purpose of defending the initiative and referendum rights of Americans.

Last year at this time, I still faced Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s politically-motivated persecution. I’ll never forget seeing the fear in the face of my then 9-year old daughter as I left for a trip to Oklahoma. That certainly wasn’t the America we know and love.

This year, as we enjoy Thanksgiving and prepare for the Christmas season, Lillie is wondering which Nintendo DS game she might score from Santa — not about her father being imprisoned 1,000 miles away from home.

As you know, the charges — that had threatened me with ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine —were dismissed many months ago. We won. The court even ordered that the indictment itself be expunged from the record.

Yet, without the good work of so many people, from across the country and across the political spectrum, folks who helped me pay for my legal defense and who roared their disapproval online, on the airwaves, in print and in person to raise public awareness to the story of the Oklahoma-3, the ugly cloud of an indictment would likely still be hanging over our heads.

Oh, sure, we would have ultimately prevailed in court. We were innocent. But with Oklahoma’s Attorney General delaying at every turn, it might have taken several more years to ever get our day in court.

What made the difference? The AG had felt the sting of public attention. Oklahomans — and Americans everywhere — successfully focused their revulsion on him, and against his attack on us and on initiative rights.

Thank you for coming to the rescue. Thanks for helping protect my rights, as well as the rights of Oklahomans — and yours.

This year saw more than freedom and vindication for the Oklahoma-3. We gained a bigger victory, too: Dramatic reform for Oklahoma’s petition process. First, the state’s residency law was struck down in federal court as a violation of the First Amendment. Then, three important bills were passed through the state legislature to open up the nation’s toughest petition process.

For the first time in decades, a legislature enacted real reforms to enable citizens to use the initiative process, instead of passing restrictions designed to cripple its use.

How did it happen?

The prosecution of the Oklahoma 3 certainly galvanized a number of activists. But had there not been aggressive efforts to organize and mobilize supporters, the energy and urgency created by such an outrageous prosecution would have dissipated.

In November of last year, Citizens in Charge Foundation helped Oklahomans for Initiative Rights put on a Saturday forum in Oklahoma City to discuss Oklahoma’s initiative process and ways to reform it. Hoping to fill a meeting room for 35 to 40 people, over 100 people overflowed the room.

We then worked with two legislators, Sen. Randy Brogdon (now running for governor) and Rep. Randy Terrill, to help them propose legislation to (a) increase the time citizens have to gather petitions, (b) reform the process so that challenges to petition language come before and not after all the signatures are collected, and (c) lower the state’s onerous petition requirement.

A number of great Oklahomans and super organizations, most notably Oklahomans for Responsible Government and Oklahomans for Initiative Rights, came together to push these bills. They lobbied day after day in the capitol as well as launching a 70-city tour of the state to mobilize grassroots support.

Not surprising, hard work leads to success. But best of all, our Citizens in Charge campaign has spread far beyond Oklahoma — it’s all across the country.

We helped pass legislation in Virginia to protect petitioners from arbitrary judicial abuse, we worked to form broad-based coalitions in 14 states that in turn were able to stop a number of anti-initiative bills and, just weeks ago, I traveled throughout California to begin organizing groups there. Across the country, we face concerted attacks against the right of citizens to be heard.

The old saying is true: All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Thank you for being a good person doing so much to help put citizens in charge. Where we get organized, when we stand up to fight, we citizens are able to battle back and win against entrenched special interests and power politics.

At Citizens in Charge Foundation, we’re re-doubling our national efforts to organize and mobilize grassroots Americans to protect initiative rights and insure that citizens are in charge. To continue to protect and defend the freedom for which we are so thankful today.

Your support — your contributions and your activism — made this year’s victories possible. On behalf of my family and myself, please accept my deepest appreciation. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,

Paul Jacob

PAUL JACOB
President, Citizens in Charge Foundation

P.S. I can’t wait until next year. Let us at ’em! Citizens in Charge Foundation has an aggressive campaign to defend the initiative process across the country and to turn the tide on the politicians and special interests in 2010. They seek to block us from checking government power. But we shall block them — through ballot initiatives and referendums and recalls.  With your continued support, we’ll take names and . . . put citizens back in charge.

Categories
Common Sense

What Would Dixon Do?

Maybe it’s just me . . . and all other normal people. But I’m more worried about policemen who abuse authority than those too “culturally insensitive” in their cheerful greetings.

Yes, that’s the latest crisis: Bobbies who say “Good evenin’ all” as they walk the beat.

Or so says a police manual published in the English county of Warwickshire. The manual claims that this greeting is culturally confusing. Even if the beloved Dixon of Dixon of Dock Green, Britain’s long-running answer to The Andy Griffith Show, always opened with just those genial words.

A police spokesman explains that “‘afternoon’ and ‘evening’ are somewhat subjective in meaning. . . . In many cultures the term evening is linked to time of day when people have their main meal of the day.”

Someone’s gotta respond to this kind of concocted quandary, and a woman named Marie Clair of a group called the Plain English Campaign has taken on the chore. She asks: “Is anyone really going to be confused by [the word] ‘evening’? And if you can’t say what a lovely afternoon it is, what are you meant to say — what a lovely 3 PM?”

Other British agencies are targeting harmless words like “child” and “youngster.”

So, crime may be raging in the sceptered isle, but at least the bureaucratic monitors of politesse are bravely battling “insensitive” clarity and good will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Robbing Words of Meaning?

Words change over time, in meaning as well as sound. Since much of this comes from misuse, ignorance, laziness, and even wordplay, the more you know and the less fun-loving you are, the more a scold about words you will likely be.

Over the long run, though, for each loss in meaning we gain another. Might as well live with it.

In any case, the history of words can be fascinating. For example, did you know that “rob” and “robe” have the same ancestor?

Rob means to steal by force; robe means a loose flowing garment. Both hail from the same Old High German word, which I won’t try to pronounce. “Robe” comes close to the original meaning, of “clothes.” The original became synonymous with “stealing by force” because, in times long past, one of the most common items to grab from another was clothing. When one was robbed, one often had to disrobe. It was your robes you were being robbed of. Clothes were that valuable.

No wonder, then, when clothing was a robber’s favored booty, to become poor meant utter destitution. The destitute often wandered around with nary a scrap on them.

Not only have words changed, times have, too.

When next I catch a word in painful transition, I’ll remind myself that it’s more like a peaceful clothing change than a robbery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

If the President Says It

Is President Barack Obama trying to echo the paranoid days of the Clintons’ famous “vast right-wing conspiracy” complaint? Obama says that those who oppose the Democrats’ medical reforms are “those who are profiting from the status quo.” Further, he says the opposition is “well-financed.”

Great story, if true.

But the president won’t name names. When asked by Washington Examiner columnist Timothy Carney, the White House declined to name any individual, any group, any organization profiting in the industry now and actively supporting the opposition. Same for Obama’s revamped campaign outfit, Organizing for America. It’s now run by the Democratic National Committee. Carney asked folks there which nefarious profiteer funds against Obama, but they wouldn’t clarify a thing.

Carney went looking in the medical care industry, looking at the companies and organizations with the deepest pockets. Which ones are now spending millions to oppose Obama’s reforms? He found zip. Nada. Bubkes.

The big pharmaceuticals are on board with the Democrats, it turns out. So are the biggest insurance companies.

The president is just blowing smoke. The opponents of his medical industry reforms are not well-financed. They are grassroots and widespread.

The big companies hope that the reforms will consolidate their market-leading positions, protect them from competition. Most big government programs do just that.

The people, on the other hand, have the most to lose from more government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Craigslist, eBay and Twitter

Could California’s budget crisis be solved by a triumvirate of Internet services, Craigslist, eBay and Twitter?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is raiding the state’s storage sheds to sell off unneeded items on eBay and Craigslist. His signature on a California fleet car adds, it is estimated, $400 to its auction value.

He got the latter idea from one of his million Twitter followers.

Wow. I have nowhere near a million Twitter followers. I’m told that I should envy the governor’s Twitter cred, but . . . I’m not the jealous type; I won’t seek any “Tweet” revenge. Still, I’d be happy if all my listeners joined, and I got some usable ideas for raising money.

Unfortunately, neither I nor my sponsor, Citizens in Charge Foundation, have a vast resource of unneeded inventory to sell off. Nor do I have the cachet of the actor-turned-governor: My signature won’t add much value to a Ford Focus.

Yep. Someone paid $1,625.01 for a state-owned Focus with over 110,000 miles on the odometer. The governor signed the visor.

That’s better than a car once owned by Jon Voight!

The only new thing here, really, is using Craigslist and eBay. This isn’t a singularity in the progress of civilization. From this no miracles follow. But it is a healthy sign of thinking slightly outside the proverbial box.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense education and schooling U.S. Constitution

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on October 3, 2005. When I read in the paper about a fifth grade class re-writing the Constitution, I immediately thought about our judiciary. Then I discovered the whole effort was part of a program mandated by Congress. We should all — freely — read the Constitution. Luckily, it is shorter than most of the bills in Congress. —PJ

James Madison, father of our U.S. Constitution, must be rolling over in his grave. You see, he forgot to put love in it. In the Constitution, that is.

By congressional edict, schools and universities across the nation were recently required to spend some time on or around September 17 teaching about the Constitution. That’s the date our nation’s founding document was ratified back in 1787.

One institution of higher learning, Irene’s Myomassology Institute in Michigan, was forced to comply because some students training to be tomorrow’s masseuses receive federal money. The Institute gave students a flier.

Marlboro College in Vermont held a parade featuring professors dressed up as constitutional articles and amendments.

Virginia’s James Madison University celebrated with a “We the People” cake and a trivia contest.

But you ask: What has love got to do with the Constitution?

Oh, yes, I almost forgot Sharon Alexander’s fifth-graders at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia. In following the federal order, they did what too many federal judges do: they re-wrote the Constitution. Actually, just the Preamble. Their new kid-friendly version states that “kids, pets and adults” are entitled to “electricity, food, water, schools and love.”

Our Constitution doesn’t talk about love. Love isn’t government’s job. That’s ours. Government is power. And our Constitution is all about limiting that power. Read it — and read it to your kids, too, if you love ’em.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense term limits

Green Politicians and Ham

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on August 8, 2003. As a big fan of Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss — having read his books to my kids — this is one of my personal favorites. Amusing, too, that with all the hand-wringing by politicians over term limits, those actually living under the limits are showing relatively more favorable toward the limits. —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
Common Sense nannyism responsibility Second Amendment rights

Unhappiness Is a Drawn Gun

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on September 20, 2007. The growing use of zero-tolerance policies — especially having anything to do with guns — is the opposite of common sense. Mass insanity may be more popular these days, but I still prefer common sense. —PJ

There’s the real world, and there are representations of it.

I draw a picture of, say, a gun. That picture is of a gun; it is not itself an actual gun. It’s just, well, a doodle.

This being the case — that doodles differ from real threats — then why was a 13-year-old boy near Mesa, Arizona, suspended from school?

He drew a gun . . . on a piece of paper. He didn’t point it at anybody. He made no hit list. He didn’t say “Bang.” No one even got a paper cut.

But school officials treated it as a threat, lectured his poor father on the shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, and suspended the lad.

The district spokesman insisted that the doodle was “absolutely considered a threat.” But somehow, knowing that this student was suspended, I’m not feeling any safer.

If our teachers and administrators can’t distinguish real threats from doodles — doodles most boys do, doodles I drew when I was a boy — then what are they teaching the kids? To overreact to everything? To not be able to distinguish small problems from big ones? To treat every symbol or representation as the real thing?

It’s elementary: The map is not the actual territory; the representation is not the thing represented.

You’d think, then, that teachers would be trying to impart (not erase) that notion from the minds of students.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense general freedom too much government

The Two Americas

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on July 4, 2007. A longer version published at Townhall.com was picked up by Rush Limbaugh and read on his radio show. —PJ

Could Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards actually be right about something? Not where to go to get a haircut, mind you, I mean about there being two Americas.

There is the vibrant America . . . and the stagnant one.

There is the America of ever-increasing wealth, innovation, creativity, new products and services. Choices galore.

And there is the politician’s America: The regulated America, the subsidized America, the earmarked America. The failing America.

In one America, it is what you produce that gets you ahead. In the other, it’s who you know.

In one America, to earmark some money means setting aside funds (into savings) for a purchase — a car, house, college.

In the other America, to earmark is to grab from taxpayers to give to cronies. It is the highest rite of career politicians: Buying their votes with other people’s money. Oh, there have been reforms, sure. But a recent bill in the House had 32,000 earmark requests.

In one America, we decide what we pay for. We choose constantly about little things and big. We call the shots. Or we walk down the street and associate with someone else. So we have some faith in those we work with.

In the other America, we vote. But we rarely get what we vote for.

Maybe that’s why the new Democratic Congress just registered the lowest approval rating in poll history.

It surely isn’t because folks love the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

A Great Country or What?

Some 233 years ago we made a clean break from the corrupt Old World of Europe. Fifty-six men risked it all to proclaim in the Declaration of Independence that:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .

That sums it up — the grand total of good government. The rest is history. Freedom prospers. Empowered citizens work a whole lot better than dictators.

But the most striking lesson of history is sadly the opposite of America’s July 4, 1776, birth. So much of the world has long lived under political oppression.

I’ve been watching and reading about the protests in Iran, knowing that people are choosing to risk beatings and death to stand up in the streets to speak out for freedom. I’m frustrated that there is so little I can do.

And then it occurs to me: the best thing I can do, as an American, is to fight to keep our country all that it should be.

That’s no easy fight. As you know.

Our governments from Washington, DC, to Hometown, USA, are out of control.

What’s the trouble? Spending. Debt. Regular attacks on our property rights.
The list runs long: Corruption. Arrogance. Nanny-statism. Those relentless assaults on any process of reform — from term limits to voter initiative, referendum and recall.

The philosophy running government for some time now directly opposes the creed of 1776: A belief in unlimited government, the idea that everything is permissible, anything is possible, and nothing is sacred.

Disaster is on the horizon; the storm clouds of several coming catastrophes are dark and visible.

Politicians cannot stop the rain.

But I have faith in you. And in Common Sense.

Our political problems are solvable. But your work and commitment to freedom is ultimately the difference maker.

And I like to think Common Sense helps. By laughing at the sad absurdities. By voicing a little righteous indignation. And by using wit . . . whenever I can find it.

But mainly Common Sense does its job by connecting the outrages of unaccountable government with the great citizens all across America who stand up to defend their rights and the rights of their neighbors from politics gone wild.

Common Sense helps bring folks together to put citizens in charge and ensure that government is accountable to the people.

On radio, online and in your email, the Common Sense program is run on a shoestring by Citizens in Charge Foundation. But even shoestrings cost money. We need to raise $52,000 to cover the program for the remainder of the year and to step up our marketing of the program on radio and online.

On July 4, 1776, they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

This July 4, 2009, I’m asking you to pledge some of your fortune to help keep Common Sense on the air, online and in your email Inbox — and to help us reach out to new audiences.

A number of readers and listeners have made a monthly pledge of $17.76. That’s a big help. Can you make the same pledge?

Or give a one-time contribution of $17.76 today? If you can, please consider donating $1,776. Or $10, $25, $100 — whatever amount works for you.

The antidote to government gone wild is simple: Common Sense. Help us keep it coming.

Happy Independence Day!