Category: Common Sense

Breaking one’s word makes a politician untrustworthy. But does it also make a politician go crazy? If not, why is Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo talking so crazy?  Tancredo won his congressional seat promising he would not go to Washington for a career. After six years, outta there. But once in office he found plenty of reasons for continuing to enjoy the perks and prestige in the Congress.

Today, his bountiful importance has rendered Tancredo prostrate with awe. The need for immigration reform makes him especially indispensable, he says. But Tancredo’s reform agenda seems to have been hijacked by scapegoating and bigotry. In a recent interview Tancredo says, “There are places right now in East LA and southern Texas that you would honestly think there is absolutely nothing that you would say makes them part of the United States of America. They are a separate country it is a separate country right now, at this moment.”

Uh . . . how about a desire for freedom and to build a better life, Congressman Tancredo? Isn’t that what makes these people Americans regardless of the language they speak or their race or creed? Then Tancredo adds, “Now how many people in their heart of hearts in [the Islamic Community] want to see the demise of this country? How many would cheer, not out loud maybe, but in their hearts when things like 9/11 occur? . . . I’ll tell you; it’s a majority.” Cripes. I guess if you can’t prove your lineage going back to the Mayflower, you’re some kind of traitor.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

What do you think about school vouchers, allowing students to use some of the tax dollars we’re now spending to go to the school of their choice? Is that worth at least trying in your schools? Washington, DC may be getting school vouchers. It’s being debated in Congress, because as a consistent policy Congress micromanages the city.

Susan McDermott opposes school vouchers in our nation’s capital. As a member of the school board, she is actively lobbying to block the new plan. That’s her right, of course. But still it’s a little strange. She’ s not a school board member in Washington, she’s from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Why does she care so deeply about the education programs in a city a thousand miles away? Is there a problem with trying vouchers in even a few places?

Some will argue, yes, that vouchers will be bad policy. Fine. But it sure seems like their real fear is that vouchers might improve education. The policy might work, for heaven’s sake! And that would be so embarrassing. Washington Mayor Anthony Williams supports the voucher proposal. He told The Washington Post : “Democrats can still have concerns about vouchers as a national issue, but give us a break in terms of what will work here in the District. We are not trying to make national policy here, we just want to help our children.” Help the children? Consider what’s best for the students in all of this political wrangling? The mayor is full of new ideas! Oh, but don’t let that influence any of our national policy. Heavens, no.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I’m squarely against crime. Yes. If you are too, I have good news. Crime rates in the U.S. have been dropping. Not for all crimes and not everywhere. But the drops have been large enough and consistent enough to add up to a significant trend.

A trend that reporters and professors of criminology have taken note of. And would like to explain. But can’t. That’s the gist of a recent story in Christian Science Monitor . The most the experts can come up with is a “911 effect.” According to this theory, violent felons reverted to hand-holding mode in the wake of the terrorist attacks that shocked and then united all Americans. Yet crime was already declining by then.

I’m no expert, but in my spare five minutes a day I do surf the web, and came across the blog of journalist Robert Bidinotto. Bidinotto has written about crime for Reader’s Digest, and is editor of an anthology, called Criminal Justice . He observes the obvious: crime is down because we’re locking up violent felons longer. If you’re in jail you can’t rob a liquor store and you can’t kill the clerk behind the counter. “In other words,” writes Bidinotto, “so-called ‘get tough’ sentencing laws of recent years much maligned by ‘progressive’ criminologists and criminal apologists have been working exactly as anyone but an academic could have predicted.”

We could test Bidinotto’s theory by letting all the murderers loose. But that might not be such a good idea. And besides, the professors still wouldn’t get it.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Only a few of us really work for a living. At least, according to day laborer and U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings, of South Carolina. Senator Hollings says we don’t make anything anymore. He says that, “At the end of World War II we had 40 percent of our work force in manufacturing, and now we’re down to 10 percent. We’ve got 10 percent of the country working and producing, and the other 90 percent talking and eating.” So says the senator, as he announces he won’t run again for reelection after seven six-year terms in office. You do the math. Kind of proves you don’t have to be a candidate to say things that make no sense. Never mind this guy’s contempt for non-thing-makers.

Let’s agree that manufacturing is indeed a smaller part of the economy than it used to be. Couldn’t manufacturing be getting more productive? A long time ago, 90 percent or more of American adults worked on a farm. Is it really a disaster that this percentage has shrunk? What it means is that today you can plant, gather and sell wheat a lot more productively than you could in the days when it was just one guy and a horse and a plow. B

efore we farmed the fields, humans were hunters and gatherers. We got our meals by plucking berries and killing game. Then the agricultural sector came along and put the hunter-gatherers out of business. A tragedy . . . or an advance? There’s nothing sacred about how we do things now if we can find a way that’s even better.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Bill O’Reilly of “The O’Reilly Factor” sometimes gets it wrong. On one issue, I think he’s half right and half wrong, so I’m going to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here. O’Reilly complains that people in public life, including him, often get unfairly bashed by their critics. He mentioned certain attacks on Arnold Schwarzenegger that have little to do with how Schwarzenegger might perform as governor of California. Fair enough. But then O’Reilly makes two further claims. One, that it’s largely the Internet’s fault as if public figures never got bashed before the 1990s. And two, that “too little” is being done to protect public figures from the ravages of this Wild Cyber-West.

It seems that there is a lot of very open, uninhibited discussion out there, and O’Reilly is miffed about it. He says, “the court system in this country does not protect anybody in the public arena. [W]ith the rise of the Internet . . . you could say anything you want about anybody. And it just goes unchecked. Shouldn’t there be a check and balance in this?”

But what checks and balances does O’Reilly want? There are already laws against libel and slander in this country he’s welcome to use them. But he seems to be hinting that there must be some form of prior restraint that people must be stopped from having their forums even before they open their mouths.

A lot of people would like to gag O’Reilly too, so why don’t we have a peace treaty that goes like this: we let Bill O’Reilly talk, and he lets all the rest of us talk.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

The headline reads: “Judge denies instant election runoff. Though illegal, [San Francisco] voters’ wish not granted for . . . mayoral ballot.” A wish? Maybe that was the problem the judge mistook the law for “a wish.” A common error.

Eighteen months ago, San Francisco voters changed the way they vote. They enacted that change into law. The new system is called “Instant Runoff Voting.” Designed to end the so-called “wasted vote syndrome” where your vote might be “wasted” if your favorite candidate is not likely to win.  Instant Runoff Voting also makes certain the winner has majority support. Voters rank their choices: first, second and third. Votes for the last-place candidate get re-assigned to the voters’ second-choice candidates, and this process continues until someone obtains a real majority.

Yet, after 18 months to implement the new voting system, city officials haven’t done so. Deputy City Attorney Wayne Snodgrass told the judge they just couldn’t manage the election under the new system. “We don’t want another Florida.” Suing the city to enforce the law, Steven Hill with the Center for Voting and Democracy said, “We’ve seen a lot of fumbling and bumbling going on.” No doubt. But is it just bumbling going on here?

It has been suggested that a politician with high negatives like San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown might lose, heaven forbid, under the new system. But we’ll never know, because Mayor Brown’s officials ignored the law. And the poor judge, well, he doesn’t know the difference between the law and a “wish.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

The media talks about the California recall as if voters there are the victims of a natural disaster or suffering in some war-torn province. Words like “chaos” and mayhem” are thrown around so regularly that I have to keep reminding myself I’m not watching a retrospective on the LA riots of a decade ago. In fact, I think even those riots may have gotten better reviews.

Why are the media and the political elite so anti-recall? Seems they like democracy only when the people butt out of it. Former President Clinton went to California to oppose the recall. Like everyone else, he didn’t defend Governor Gray Davis. Even the guy who can spin anything can’t spin the Davis, uh . . . performance.  Yet, the elite want Californians to simply grin and bear it. Otherwise, as the former prez warned, they risk becoming “laughingstocks.”

Are Californians laughingstocks? Should we be ashamed of a political system where voters have such awesome power that they can not only elect their leaders, but also fire them? Few countries in the world have such a crazy, chaotic system. I mean, no one was going to recall Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. The world may be laughing at us. But in America, we’ve long chosen the chaos of freedom and democracy over the calm and order of boss rule.

Thank you, California, for reminding us that even with all the problems of democracy, it is the best form of government, and that the answer to those problems is more democracy.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Big problem. They’re doing too well. Cassandra Stevenson of Connecticut has just started college. She’s 15. Her sister, Samantha, is 19 and has a master’s degree in astrophysics. “Homeschooling is more like college than a public or a private school is,” says Cassandra. “You learn what you want to learn and what you need to learn. The curriculum is fitted to you.” That’s exceptional. But your average homeschooler still does pretty well.

A National Home Education Research Institute study found that the typical homeschooler’s academic achievement easily tops that of the typical public-school student. The Institute estimates that as many as 2.2 million children now benefit from homeschooling.

See the problem? Robert Rader does. He’s the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. Call it Status Quo United for short. Rader agrees that “parents have the right to educate their children at home.” On the other hand, he worries that “children don’t always get the rigorous structure and up-to-date educational techniques, which are applied in public schools.” Uh, hello. It’s that so-called “rigorous structure” that parents and kids are escaping from!

Mr. Rader doesn’t seem to realize that he and other educators might learn from the homeschoolers if effective education is really their goal. If you want process, call Mr. Rader. He’ll process your kids for you. If you want results well, a great many families have figured out how to get those . . . at home. Mine too.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Hey, I recall those taxes. And the politicians in California will recall them too. Or at least pretend to, until the recall vote on Governor Davis has safely passed.

Okay, let me stop punning for a minute and give you the background. Recently I discussed the California recall effort. I said that even if Davis survives, Californians benefited just by putting the recall on the ballot. Politicians there have become more hesitant about increasing taxes, at least while Davis’s fate is still open. In response, a guy I’ll call Glenn wrote me. Glenn says, “You are right that the message carried by the recall vote was ‘no big tax hike to pay off YOUR screw up’ and the [politicians] heard it.

I was one of those trying to get signatures on the recall petition, and until Davis announced the triple-whammy automobile tax hike, I could hardly get anyone to more than ho-hum my pitch. The day after the announcement, I picked up ten signatures on my block, two from people who wouldn’t even open the door to me the first time around.” I appreciate Glenn’s comments, especially since he started out saying “you are right,” which I always take as a good sign. The politicians in California are now talking about dropping the new car tax, but it looks like a block-and-feint. As soon as Davis is safe, if he is, the car tax could be back on line.

In the long run, the only way Californians can keep runaway politicians at bay is to keep their feet to the fire. Thank goodness the people there have initiative and referendum. And term limits.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Politicians have lots of experience with scandals. But they don’t usually hope for them. But, according to political science professor Jim Penning of Calvin College, Michigan career politicians should pray for a good scandal.

It’s like this. Michigan career politicians are becoming extinct because of the term limits law voters enacted back in 1992. Politicians hate the law, of course, and spend most of their waking hours plotting against it and muttering under their breath. Professor Penning observes that the plotting just isn’t going so well. “It will be very difficult,” he says. “Voters need to see the downside of term limits before they’re willing to change.” Voters aren’t seeing the downside.

Dang voters have seen only good things come of term limits. Government has not collapsed. Professor Penning reports, “We just got a budget compromise, so government looks like it’s running pretty smoothly.” Darn the bad luck! But career politicians shouldn’t lose all hope that term limits will be tarnished in the eyes of the public. “A major scandal might do it,” says Penning.

Yes, maybe, just maybe, politicians can act scandalously breaking laws and behaving immorally and the public will get so angry with the sorry state of the legislators that they’ll toss out the term limits and let politicians stay in office term after term for the rest of their lives. Now we know why this guy is a professor. He’s right about one thing. Scandal is something politicians know how to do. They’re experts.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.