Category: Common Sense

Last summer, ice in the Arctic reached new levels of . . . non-existence. That is, the extent of polar ice receded.

And some of you got alarmed.

But some other folks got excited by a new Northwest Passage.

Quark Expeditions charges many thousands of dollars to tour the Arctic on the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov. Alas, a May tour from the Bering Sea across the north of Canada turned out to be no picnic. The mammoth ship got stalled. In ice.

Lots of ice.

They were stalled for seven days.

A polar bear entertained the passengers early on, but tensions rose as the days of going nowhere piled up. According to the fascinating story in Canada’s Globe and Mail, the hoped-for Northwest Passage is still very “unpredictable.”

It’s barely passage at all, after this last winter, which was brutally cold . . . nearly everywhere. Yes, new records of coldness helped re-establish northern ice.

The winter thumbed its nose at global warming, a sort of global nanny nanny boo-boo.

What can I say? Seasons go in cycles. The same seems to go for the climate in general. Hedge your bets for “unstoppable global warming,” folks. And if you are on Quark’s planned June 28 departure for a north-of-Siberia cruise this summer, hoping to view, up close, the New Siberian Islands and other, uh, hot spots of the Arctic, keep your cool.

Nature might, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The very ground beneath our feet can betray us. When that happens, good people rally together. This happened recently in China.

Amidst the wreckage, death, and misery resulting from the recent earthquake, we now witness  astonishing outpourings of aid.

I do not refer to the usual worldwide relief efforts. I refer to something far more momentous: Charity from the Chinese themselves.

The Chinese people have not been known for such activity in the past. Tragedies happen there with a sort of dull regularity. And the quiet indifference of the masses of Chinese people has been the typical response.

Not this time.

The Chinese have rallied as never before, supplying physical aid in terms of action, transportation, food and medicine, and spiritual aid in countless other ways.

The level of charity may be new for China, but it is not unprecedented.

The precedent?

America.

What is common in our country is not exactly common in the world. Oh, it does happen; Europeans, for instance, give too. But an amazing amount of Europe’s giving is “government giving.” In America, it is our people who give. Out of compassion, and privately, not just from our taxes.

What has happened in China to make the difference? Newfound wealth. Significant tastes of freedom.

It’s not magic. It may be simple economics.

But simplicity aside, it’s inspiring, and gives us renewed hope for China.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

When politicians push hard for something, ramp up your skepticism level. Democrat? Republican? Doesn’t matter much.

The recent farm bill passed and went to the president, who vetoed it. So it went back to Congress, which over-rode the veto of this $300 billion bill, 316-108 in the House, 82-13 in the Senate.

So ask yourself, why do Democrats support these subsidies?

Democrats claim to be “for the little guy,” for equality. Trouble is, the federal government’s farm subsidies basically shovel money up the income ladder, not down it.

On average, farmers are better off than the people who pay the subsidies. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation explains that most subsidies go overwhelmingly “to large commercial farms, which report an average income of $200,000 and a net worth of nearly $2 million.”

We pay $25 billion to these rich farmers. And add another $12 billion in higher food prices, which are the last thing we need now, with Congress’s idiotic ethanol subsidies already pushing prices up.

So why would any Democrat support continuing such absurdity?

Because Democrats like siphoning off our money through government and using it to buy friends and stay in power. That’s all they really believe in. Equality? Hah!

Why would Republicans support it?

Same reason.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Jared Gray is an 18-year-old high school student who works as a janitor for Southern Utah University. One day he found a bag of cash lying in the parking lot, obviously one of the school’s deposit bags.

The bag was labeled with the amount: $108,000.

Jared didn’t hesitate to return the cash, saying he was raised to be honest. To express their gratitude, SUU officials will give him a scholarship if he attends the university.

Most people would applaud Jared’s honesty. Sadly, though, not everyone. A number of people, posting to the CBS News website, called the young man a “loser” or “stupid” for not keeping the dough.

Apparently, they assume it’s reasonable to steal whenever one is unlikely to get caught. If so, wouldn’t it also be reasonable actively to pursue such opportunities — in short, to become a career criminal?

That makes we who work “suckers.”

If you’re going to live a moral life, it’s common sense to live it on principle. This means you don’t become an entirely different person, a crook, when it’s allegedly “easy” to do so. Easy, that is, for a person of poor character.

Starting life as a crook would have blighted Jared’s whole life. Instead, now he’ll always be able to recall his easy good deed with pride; and, happily, people who know him will be able to trust him . . . stuff that’s more valuable than money itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

When I was a lad, most people insisted that government was the only institution that could provide a whole, vast array of services, including water and sewage.

Times have changed. Governments all over the world are loosening up their allegedly “natural” monopolies, allowing private companies to go to work.

In Alabama, a number of private developers now see an advantage in going into the sewer business. Rates of government-run sewage systems are so high that developers can make money by setting aside acres to treat the sewage of their own developments. And save customers money, to boot.

An article in Alabama’s Birmingham News begins like this: “Homebuyers at a new Ross Bridge neighborhood in Hoover could enjoy lower, more stable sewer rates than their neighbors on Jefferson County sewer if a privately run sewer plant is approved at the site, builders and regulators say.”

The article quotes a local director of environmental protection saying that it just makes more sense to treat sewage closer to the homes. Centralized sewage is cumbersome and too expensive. “In ten years,” he said, “this will be the primary way domestic wastewater is handled in the country.”

So, when the subject of sewage comes up, don’t sputter. You know what to say: Give the efficiency of the market a chance. Don’t get soaked by government monopoly, natural or otherwise. After all, there’s no use flushing your money down the . . . drain.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Politicians often do everything they can to get out from under term limits — in Knox County, Tennessee, to the extreme. The politicians there simply ignored the limits, and went on with business as usual.

Then came a lawsuit. It went to the State Supreme Court, where the justices ruled, in effect, that of course the term limits law passed by the voters applies.

So, in January, the County Council held a meeting to replace its illegal members. That is when they showed their true colors.

Dan Barry, writing in the New York Times, charmingly describes the event: “Before an audience of hundreds, the commission staged a political version of a bedroom farce, with its members calling repeated recesses, retreating to a back room, shouting at one another and even swearing in one appointee during a break.”

The upshot? The old council filled 12 new spots, with likely suspects, including

• the son of one outgoing commissioner
• the wife of another
• the father of a sitting commissioner
• the sheriff’s top aide.

As Barry put it, “a catfish could have been appointed if properly connected.”

But this spectacle spurred a huge number of people who usually stay away from politics to get involved. A lot of new faces ran in the February primary, and persist for the coming August general election.

Yup: Term limits to the rescue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

An appeals court has shot down a lawsuit against gun makers filed by New York City.

New York is one of many cities that has sued gun manufacturers on the grounds that the gun makers knew their guns would be used in crimes and sold them anyway. Supposedly the companies failed in their responsibility by not policing retailers, vendors entitled by law to carry and sell those guns.

With equal logic one could go after knife manufacturers for selling knives. Or the manufacturers of any object heavy enough to hit somebody over the head with.

Or PC makers. Plenty of crimes have been committed using a laptop. Not to mention the various software on these machines. Or telephones. Cell phones. Have any crimes been committed using these instruments? Are all the manufacturers of these items properly liable for the conduct of costumers who use their products to break the law?

New York’s lawsuit was not about a lapse in any company’s legitimate responsibility. It was about a new way to try to impose gun control and further restrict the rights of citizens to acquire personal armaments . . . which people use not just to hunt or collect, as some presidential candidates would have it. Guns are also handy in defense against violent assault.

So, now that that this indefensible tactic has been shot down, will it stay down?

That, we’ll see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Just “being a professor” doesn’t make you smarter than your students. Or more grounded in reality. Or common sense.

Take Priya Venkatesan, a Dartmouth academic who teaches a class in something-or-other to do with science, postmodernism and higher or lower consciousness or something.

She is suing some of her former students. Why? Maybe it’s like climbing Mount Everest: You do it to see if you can. And this professor apparently thinks modern anti-discrimination laws entitle her to go after students simply for criticizing her teaching.

Roger Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing “some of you” under Title VII of what she blunderingly calls “anti-federal” discrimination laws. She obviously didn’t like her students’ class evaluations, which she ominously says she will reproduce in a book.

Don’t wait for her to find a publisher. Many of the evaluations have already found their way onto the Internet. Typical criticisms include “awful,” “nonsensical,” “worst course ever.” Sure, we can’t know the quality of her teaching for certain without trekking to Dartmouth and sitting in. But from her course description and her email’s grammar and logic I’m willing to credit the students’ insights.

More I shan’t say, as I don’t wish to be named in Professor V’s lawsuit. My lawyer is overworked already.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last November, Keith Sampson, a college student, was found guilty of “racial harassment.” He’d been caught reading a book while on break from a part-time job with the school. Uh-oh.

The book is titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. It recounts a conflict between Irish Catholics and the Klan back in the 1920s. The book is clearly anti-Klan.

Reading such history cannot amount to “racial harassment,” even if somebody complains that it does. But such a complaint was all it took to get Sampson in hot water with the hall monitors at his school, Indiana University/Purdue University (Indianapolis).

According to Sampson, the “affirmative action officer” found him guilty without ever talking to him or inspecting the book. The official accusatory letter states that “repeatedly reading the book . . . constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers.”

I’m sure Keith Sampson felt the university was being insensitive to his need to have the bogus accusation properly investigated.

Months later, the university is finally reversing itself, thanks to a lot of bad publicity and the involvement of outfits like the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). But the school admits no wrongdoing.

If you ask me, the affirmative action officer has way too much time on his hands. Maybe he could spend it reading a book?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.