Category: Common Sense

The mayor is dead-set against it. The local paper says it may cause “a wound that never heals.” Wow, scary stuff. Until you realize they’re talking about simple democracy, in the form of a citizen initiative.

Mayor Victor Ashe, the News-Sentinel, and the town council want to build a $10 million dollar state-of-the-art hotel in downtown Knoxville. Why? To bring in new business for the publicly-funded convention center already costing taxpayers there an arm and a leg. Yet politicians are looking to raise property taxes to cover an existing $10 million deficit. The voter initiative they’re so afraid of would forbid the city from using taxpayer dollars to build the hotel. It’s true, as the mayor charges, that owners of the hotels currently in downtown Knoxville are underwriting the cost of the petition drive.

Well, no big sin if folks don’t want their own tax dollars used to put them out of business. But it is a sin to ignore the taxpayers the ones who’ll have to cough up their hard-earned dough. A recent poll shows 80 percent of Knoxville voters opposed to a new city-funded hotel. The citizen initiative is a building block of a free society. It’s one way citizens have of keeping elected officials from getting out of control. Here we have a special deal being awarded to the few at everyone’s expense.

It’s cases like this that are why we must have the citizen initiative process. Special interest schemers will never want their schemes put to a popular vote, but so what? The people do.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

All the usual suspects came out against the California recall campaign. Not only political partisans. But also folks who distrust the democratic process as such especially when it has teeth.

I’m going to leave the topic of the California recall real soon, promise. But let me just get in one point here about the old question of whether we’re a “republic” properly speaking or a “democracy.” Every now and then a reader tells me we’re a republic, not a democracy, so stop using the word democracy. But I think that’s a false alternative, one captured in a recent article by Professor John Lewis.

Lewis claims that the recall is an instance of pure democracy citizens ruling directly rather than through their representatives even though all Californians did is replace one ruler with another ruler. According to the professor, it’s an ad hoc “whim” to get rid of a destructive governor unless that governor is also guilty of “manifest illegality.” But the issue isn’t unfettered democracy or mob rule.

The issue is whether there is a benefit to having democratic checks on our rulers, including the obvious check of being able to fire a guy who gets way out of hand. And the issue isn’t so much the name we give our system as its features. It makes no sense to trust the “representatives of the people” if we can’t trust the people themselves. We don’t want unfettered “mob rule,” but we don’t want unfettered “politician rule” either. Count me in favor of a constitutional democratic republic.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

It may not loom very large in the grand scheme of things. But it shows the outsized career politician ego. It’s all about, “Hey, I brought you a bag of taxpayer-funded goodies, so I’m a hero, just in the mold of, say, frontiersman Daniel Boone. In fact, why don’t you go ahead and take down his name and put up my name.” Maybe that’s not what happened. Maybe the congressman wasn’t in on the deal that the highway cutting through the Eastern Kentucky mountains should lose the name of Daniel Boone and gain the name of the congressman.

All we know is that Governor Paul Patton asked the state’s transportation secretary to replace Boone’s name with the congressman’s name. And the transportation secretary played along. But the congressman sure as heck could have said, “No! Don’t do this! You’re a better man than I am, Daniel Boone!” The congressman Republican Hal Rodgers of Somerset has represented his district for over 20 years. He helped funnel federal funding to Kentucky so that the state could eliminate tolls at that Daniel Boone highway.

Great, now all of America gets to pay for that road instead of just the people who drive on it. So the decision was made to reward the porkbarreler who got the subsidy by dropping the name of the man whose life and legend have filled countless volumes. And installing the name of the congressman. “It’s a tremendous honor to have this parkway named after me,” Rogers said. “I am humbled.” Not humble enough.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I guess this is as good a time as any to hawk the virtues of Instant Runoff Voting. If things had gone a bit different in California, IRV would have really come in handy.

Out a field of 135 candidates, Arnold Schwarzenegger won the right to succeed the ousted governor with a fat plurality that was almost a majority: 49 percent of the total. There won’t be any haggling over pregnant chads. The fixers in California may actually have padded Arnold’s margin with all their last-minute Arnold-sliming. That may say more about the voters’ opinions of Davis than of Arnold, since Arnold admitted that there was some truth to the charges of sexual misconduct. But the vote totals could have gone a lot differently. Anybody who filled out the paperwork was free to run.

This was good, in that folks who might not have survived a typical primary process had a chance to make their case to voters. On the other hand, if there had been more than three or four realistic contenders in the race, the ballots could easily have been split in such a way that no clear favorite emerged. Maybe one guy with 18 percent, the runner-up with 17 percent, etc. Nobody would have been ecstatic about that outcome.

Instant Runoff Voting solves the problem by giving value to voters’ second-ranked and third-ranked choices. In each round of the voting, votes for the last-place candidate get re-assigned to the voters’ second-choice candidates. The process continues until someone gains an actual majority. Think of it as a way of terminating electoral confusion.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Should Senator Bob Graham go into dairy farming? He’s good at milking things.

A recent story about what Bob Graham is going to do now is udderly revealing. He’s dropping out of the race for president. But will he drop out of the Senate too? Unthinkable, say some. Including long-time supporter Steve Uhlfelder, a Tallahassee lawyer. “What’s he going to do, become a dairy farmer?” asked Uhlfelder “I can’t imagine the man walking away from public life in his mid 60s.” Such cynicism is lamentable. But par for the course in today’s political environment.

Meanwhile, potential candidates for Graham’s seat are waiting in the wings in a “holding pattern,” as one report puts it awaiting Graham’s next move. None of them are sitting senatorial incumbents with all the advantages of incumbency to draw upon. Graham laments those advantages furiously. He once said, “It offends me when taxpayer money is spent on things that are designed to re-elect politicians rather than a serious need of the country.”

Yet he doesn’t mind pork when it’s for Florida. And his anti-pork stand certainly didn’t stop him from proposing a lot more porcine spending and taxing as he ran for president. Including billions to fund technology and broadband research as if private industry has no interest in funding these on its own. He also pushed a 40 percent tax bracket for the most productive Americans. (You know. The ones who fund broadband development.) Senator Graham, please choose cows to milk for a living. Fast. While we still have some money left in our wallets.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

One of my listeners wrote back to say, Hey, enough with the stuff about California! Get back to the national scene! I can understand that. After all, if you’re in Michigan or Ohio, why would you want to hear about California all the time? I do try to vary the subject matter. But the recall is an emergency form of term limits. What happened in California is so dramatic that it can only embolden champions of citizen control of government elsewhere. In other words, this is a national event. It’s not like dropping a pebble in the middle of the pond. It’s dropping a boulder.

Then a reader of my Townhall column, which appears on Sunday at Townhall.com, wrote in to say that I was right on in my defense of the California recall. Did I mention that column was at Townhall.com? Yeah, Townhall.com. This reader wanted to know, “Hasn’t anyone ever heard of ‘the consent of the governed’?” She went on to opine that “Not since the days of mad King George has there been such imperialistic nonsense. Even Chris Matthews, hardly a member of the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ . . . pointed out that the recall is an escape clause. And as for those who argue that Arnold can’t be a good governor because he’s Only An Actor . . . just look at the utterly rotten job Gray Davis, the pro, did.

A cat couldn’t do a worse job. Because at least a cat wouldn’t raise taxes.” Close quote like a bear trap snapping shut! Gosh, that’s a bit tough on Davis. But you know, I hate to argue with any of my readers.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

The audience for this show is wise and good. In a recent episode I noted that a new federal law mandated that teachers now must have a separate college degree for each subject they teach. An absurd requirement that if consistently followed would cause lots of problems around the country. Especially in rural areas.

I said that we don’t need the feds to tell us how to teach our kids. A listener who calls himself Nerdifool, but is neither nerdy nor a fool, wrote to echo my sentiments. Mr. Nerdifool reports that under the new law his wife, a retired grade school teacher, would “have to have a degree in English, Spanish, Math, Physical Education, and History, plus her Bachelors in Education . . .” about 26 years of book larnin’ before she could return to the classroom. Nerdifool says, “What we really need is to require all Congress Men and government bureaucrats to have a Bachelors Degree in Paper Pushing, a Masters Degree in Bullpucky, and a PHD in Bureaucratic Nonsense, plus a Certificate in Red Tape in addition to a Law degree, Masters in Law and a JD. That might slow the tide of crap coming out of Washington. . . .” Not a bad suggestion.

Then there was the listener who wrote in to advise me that there is no such thing as a degree in term limits. See, I had claimed to be pretty much an expert in term limits and political shenanigans even though I possess no advanced degrees in these subjects. Oh . . . I stand corrected.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Every once in a while I come across a report that reminds me, for all the gripes I sometimes have about life in the U.S., how good we’ve always had it here.

This particular story is positive, but it still makes me shake my head. It’s about the elimination of an old law in China requiring a couple to get permission from their employers before they can marry. According to the Associated Press, as soon as the law was dropped, “thousands of couples . . . wed in what, for some, was also a celebration of the retreat of outside interference in their private lives.” Hooray for that. Obviously, under the old way, it was easy for the commie boss to make trouble for young Chinese couples. And also easy for him to make extra cash off of them, in exchange for his stamp of approval.

One new groom says, “We’re really glad that this rule was canceled because it was a real hassle. It makes getting married feel even better.” I don’t doubt it. What could be the justification for such an absurd rule? From the American perspective, none whatever. But the communist government in China has a history of acting as if everything everybody does is their business.

It used to be that all Chinese worked for the government, and the marriage law was a holdover from that time. Things are getting better. The Chinese can now also apply for passports without the permission of employers. In bits and pieces, the Chinese people are slowly gaining more freedom. Let’s hope they get to go all the way.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

In recent years Congress has done all sorts of things against the tobacco industry. And yet they’re also subsidizing the tobacco industry. I am sure that many of the same congressmen who vote to clobber tobacco also vote to give tobacco a handout. That’s the way the tangled web works in Washington. It’s deals and special interests and more deals and more special interests. It’s not the congressman’s money, after all. Just yours and mine. And we’ve got money to burn, apparently.

A few years ago there were droughts in one state and floods in another that spoiled the tobacco crop. This was bad news for the tobacco farmers of those states. So the government bailed them out by buying up the useless tobacco crop. Well, that’s one way to solve your financial problems, I guess. Just get the government to send you a check.

Honey, can you get the government on the phone? That particular bailout cost the government $661 million. It was illegal for the government to even try to find domestic buyers for the useless crop, and it couldn’t find foreign buyers either. So the tobacco has just been moldering in warehouses for four years. And now the bureaucrats have finally decided to burn it all.

The moral of the story is, government, get out of the tobacco-industry harassment business, and get out of the tobacco-industry subsidy business. And get out of the very expensive business of chronically catering to special interests at the expense of the common good. I guess that’s three morals.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Thursday, October 16, 2003

What worries me is that if you did it, government might have to shut down. Okay, so maybe that doesn’t worry me so much.

Here’s the deal. After some high-profile firms were found cooking the books Enron, Worldcom Congress cracked down. Fraud, they said, could not be tolerated. The CEOs of companies would now have to sign off on the accuracy of all the accounting in their firm, under penalty of fine or jail if the accounting turned out to be misleading.

There are a couple problems with the new law. One has to do with treating CEOs as proven fraud artists when the case against them isn’t really proven. If a CEO signs off on accounting that does turn out to include fraud, does that mean the CEO knew about the fraud at the time? Not at all. If the CEO were the accountant, he would be the accountant, not the CEO. He hires other people precisely so other people can handle details he cannot handle.

Anyway, Richard Rahn, an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, suggests that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The requirement of attesting to the “accuracy of the financial statements under penalty of fine or jail” should, he says, be “extended to government officials.” And Congress should freeze the budgets of agencies that fail to satisfy proper audits.

Given all the sloppy accounting we always hear about, from HUD to the Pentagon, if this advice is followed the government would soon have to shut down. Well . . . okay.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.