Category: Common Sense

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Common Sense

Cattle-​Car Airport “Security”

One of the biggest post‑9/​11 policy blunders was the Sovietization of airport security.

Some TSA screeners try to be civil even as they grab your almost-​empty tube of toothpaste, as if there were a security risk there. A few seem to be in a permanent bad mood, ready to snarl if you give the least evidence of expecting civility.

You can actually be arrested just for “distracting” a TSA officer. What counts as an actionable distraction? Who knows? Let’s just say that despite all the new and mysterious “security” precautions, passengers with inquisitive minds are hardly secure from the security personnel themselves.

Alas, excuses for surliness are about to multiply. The TSA wizards are promising to install some 600 “behavior detection officers” in airports by the end of the year. Their job will be to interpret your facial twitches to see if you have bad intentions. I’m not kidding. Let’s say you manifest disgust with how the screeners are treating you. Hmm. Very suspicious.

Rampant rudeness is unavoidable in such a system. The TSA screeners do monotonous  work all day long, and any “mistake” or comment that someone makes may have been perpetrated 200 times already that day. And these irritated bureaucrats have the power to make life very tough for you. And me.

Let’s face it: A cattle-​car-​like security regime is going to treat people like cattle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

An Affirmative End to Preferences

Do you support negative action programs?

I didn’t think so. But you might be more inclined to support such programs if they’re labeled “affirmative action.”

Around the country citizens have been fighting to stop government programs that grant preferences to some citizens over others on the basis of their race or sex. To me, and apparently to most voters, such preferences are simply racist and sexist. Voters in California, Washington State, and Michigan have passed constitutional amendments to prevent such unfair practices in government programs.

Others protest that ending racial preferences will end all so-​called “affirmative action.” Well, that’s only true if such programs do indeed set up racial and gender preferences.

These protesters go on to demand that those campaigning to end these preferences must use their phraseology of opposing affirmative action. That is that these civil rights campaigns should say they are anti-​good, anti-​positive, anti-​affirmative action.

But ask yourself: affirmative for whom? A general hiring policy should never favor some people over others on grounds irrelevant to job performance.

Voters in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska will have a chance to decide this issue through citizen initiatives placed on their states’ ballots this November.

I trust they’ll vote affirmatively.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Bedbugs in their Bonnets

When Congress began meddling in interstate commerce, using the most generous criteria to justify federal interference in private business and state powers, critics with common sense argued that the ultimate result would be absurdity.

If Congress wasn’t made to stick to the powers Constitutionally enumerated, then there would be nothing Congress wouldn’t do!

The proponents of big government said, in effect, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Yet the ridiculous is now the normal business of Congress. Recently, the august members of the House have been deliberating the “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008.” This legislation would direct the Commerce Department to provide grants to eligible states to assist in the inspection of hotel rooms.

Representative G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat, says that bed bugs, 50 years after being nearly eliminated, are back.

Hmmm. Since hotels depend on their reputations to make money, they have every incentive to fix this problem, without taxpayer help. Hotels should be financially responsible for their own inspections. If there is a role for local and state governments, it would be to streamline the court system to make it easier for afflicted customers to get compensation.

But Congress authorizing $50 million to solve their bed bug crisis? Butterfield insists “it’s not a joke.”

But it is. On us. Congress now defines commerce as extending to the traffic of bed bugs.

Oh, it’s nice that Congress worries about us so. But let’s kill bed bugs locally.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Jail the Liars?

Should people caught lying go to jail? Vindictive spouses would have a field day with that one, wouldn’t they?

Lying is objectionable, of course. But only certain kinds of lies — perjury, or lies used to steal from someone — should be punished by force of law.

Some people, however, are forever seeking new ways to harass other people. Especially, it seems, when it comes to perfectly legal activities that these busybodies happen to dislike. For example, petitioning to post a question on an election ballot. A process already suffering a multitude of burdensome restrictions in many states.

Arizona has just passed a law to penalize petition circulators who deliberately misrepresent the content of a petition they’re passing around. Anyone who does lie about a petition is behaving badly. But how can this law be enforced without sending intimidating “truth squads” to follow petitioners around, making their job even tougher? And how does one distinguish between “lies” and the often very sharply different understanding of issues that we always observe in political debate?

What a country this would become if all political “lies” could be punished by six months in jail. All politics would have to take place in a courtroom. And sadly, it’s not only the liars who would be rounded up. It would be those causing the most trouble for those with the most power.

There is, of course, a very easy way to be sure what a petition says. Read it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

X Prize Marks the Spot

Presidential candidate John McCain has proposed that a $300 million prize be offered to whomever develops a car battery to make electrically powered cars more feasible.

It’s not a half-​bad notion.

Like the profits that serve as “prizes” for succeeding in markets, such a huge incentive would foster innovation a lot more effectively than flinging subsidies and regulations at people. For one thing, you only pay if somebody solves the problem.

Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle suggests that if the government had simply offered a huge prize for a moon landing in the 1960s, “we might not have built an enormous standing army of development scientists who conceived the Shuttle as full employment insurance.”

But why is John McCain talking about this? We don’t need taxpayer dollars to fund exciting advances. The first prize offered by the X Prize Foundation, the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private space flight, was underwritten by an insurance company. The company didn’t think there would be a winner. So the foundation got a great deal on the premium.

Next thing you know, Burt Rutan’s team, financed by Microsoft co-​founder Paul Allen, flew 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface, twice in two weeks.

More than $100 million had been invested on new technology by the competitors. Not government money, private money. And even the non-​winners learned new things in the process.

Now that’s outta sight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

A Muse Not Amused

Blight. One of my favorite bloggers, Blue Collar Muse, refers to the continual abuse of eminent domain by government as “blight.” He“s playing off the slippery concept of blight that local governments use to condemn whole areas in order to steal homes and small businesses.

This Muse also alerted me to yet another instance of government blight: The story of Joy Ford“s light to keep her business, Country International Records, away from the bulldozers of Nashville’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency.

You see the MDHA is hooked up with a Houston, Texas, company trying to force property owners off their land to make way for a $100 million development scheme. So far, Mrs. Ford faces the wrecking ball.

It’s too bad Tennessee’s legislature didn’t pass legislation to further restrict eminent domain power after the Kelo decision. But wait … it did.

In one part, the Tennessee law forbids governments from taking property from one owner to give to another private party. But in another part, the law explicitly allows “housing authorities” and “community development agencies” to do just that. Outrageous!

Many states and localities enacted similar laws that are at best band-​aids, and at worst, blatant scams perpetrated against the public. In fact, back in 2006, when Tennessee’s law was passed, Drew Johnson of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research said it was a “joke.”

Funny, for all the jokes in government, why are we not amused?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.