Category: Common Sense

They’re getting there. Working as hard as they can. Don’t worry. If you order stuff over the Internet, they’ll get to you eventually. Or so they hope.

Today you can still buy stuff from out of state through the Internet without paying the sales tax that people in that other state have to pay. But the states want to fix that. Taxing people outside their state is good, they think. So officials from some thirty states got together recently to talk about a way to make it easier to collect sales taxes online. They call it the Streamlined Sales Tax Project.

Streamline getting the tax from you, and getting the data about you from the vendors. Once that’s done, they can load the bazooka, take aim, and fire. Part of the plan is to bribe vendors with part of the tax take so that they’re happier about socking you with the tax.

Critics say that larger vendors, with outlets in may of the states, would make more money off this bribe than smaller vendors. Big companies would also have an easier time handling all the complexities involved. Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform, worries about privacy. He says, “Whether I’m buying prescription drugs or sex toys online, someone is going to have to keep track of what I bought so they can figure out how to tax it. How do you do this without massive violations of privacy?”

Oh, it’s a complicated project. Lot of variables. But they’re working as hard as they can. Don’t worry they’ll get to you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The journalist Steve Lopez tells a story that now I’m going to tell. Just because I like it so much.

It’s about perfection. Or rather, a healthy attitude about the goal of perfection. It’s about a teacher and sculptor Lopez knows called Armand Mednick, someone who was “adored” by all the students at the grade school attended by Lopez’s son.

When Lopez goes to see him, Armand’s wife, Anita, tells him that the great man was out in back making a pot. The next time Lopez comes, same thing. He’s out in the back making a pot. So Lopez asks the sculptor how often he spends his time making pots. “Often as I can,” Armand says.

Lopez asks, “What do you do with all the pots?” A

nd Armand says, “I just keep discarding them until I make the perfect pot.”

“And how long does it take to make the perfect pot?”

“I don’t know yet. . . . So far, it’s been 40 years.”

Now, this is a swell story not because it shows the great sculptor being “humble” but because it shows him being ambitious. Nobody can spend his whole life trying to get better and better at making just one thing, a thing he always throws away. And of course, Mr. Mednick does not make pots for a living, he teaches and sculpts.

But his pot-making is a great metaphor, a fabulous metaphor. It’s about always striving to be better at what you do, no matter what it may be. Don’t you wish the clerk at the local supermarket had that same attitude?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s a strange thing going on at airports these days. It’s called treating everybody like a criminal. And don’t try to object, either, because then you’ll be treated like even more of a criminal.

That’s what happened to Adrienne Bundy. She objected to being searched and apparently was belligerent about it. “Belligerent” is a code word for “upset,” as in “upset about having one’s constitutional rights violated.”

As you may know, over the past year women in particular have lodged many complaints about abusive searches under the new airport security regime. See, brassieres often have a little metal in them. Anyway, Ms. Bundy objected and Ms. Bundy was arrested.

Now, the worst they should have done to her was prohibit her from going on the plane. All she did was refuse to be searched, after all. Nobody claims she slapped around a security guard.

But they did give her a way out, sort of. The judge would dismiss the charge of “aggravated disorderly conduct” if Bundy would appear at the airport and wear a sign for two hours a sign saying, “I am appearing here because I refused to comply with airport security.”

At first it seemed she would agree to that ritual humiliation, to escape a possibly worse punishment. But Bundy has changed her mind, and refused to do that too. Looks like the case will go to trial. All I can say is, good for her that she refused to submit herself to such sick and obnoxious treatment. And good for the rest of us too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Another dang-fool proposal by a master-planning columnist. Seems that a guy by the name of Jack Kelly has noticed what everybody notices if you fly at all: it’s torture now. Security procedures have become incredibly ludicrous and petty. I agree. If I have to take off my shoes one more time, I swear I’m gonna stop changing my socks.

Our friendly neighborhood columnist says, “I avoid flying if at all possible, not because I’m afraid of terrorists, but because I won’t put up with the hassles. It frosts me that the hassles do little to make me more safe.”

His solution? Increase the quality of airport screening by reducing the proportion of morons. Myself I don’t think that’s quite fair. The problems have more to do with bureaucratic lunacy from above than lunacy at the ground level.

And this guy would implement his solution by . . . imposing a draft. The only way to get as many competent people as we need as fast as we need them is “to draft them,” Kelly says. “Screening responsibilities should be turned over to the Army National Guard, and there should be a draft to fill the positions. A 15-month period of conscription would provide a year of service after three months of basic training.

Draftees would be rewarded for their service with G.I. Bill benefits.” Great, less freedom. So not only would we have to endure the torture of being screened, we’d also have to impose this torture on others? How would I be able to sleep at night?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Jamie Escalante may be the most famous high school teacher in America. In the 1970s and 80s, Escalante developed a calculus program at Garfield High School in Los Angeles. The program was dramatized in a 1983 movie, Stand and Deliver .

Reason magazine reports that in 1979, Escalante taught just five students in his new calculus class even though such a small class was against the rules. Only two passed the Advanced Placement exam. By 1982, 18 students passed.

The Educational Testing Service thought that was so much success that it was suspicious, so they had the students take the test again. All those who did, passed. But such success was no guarantee that Escalante would enjoy a free hand in training other math students.

A new principal came to Garfield, one who was less sympathetic to the calculus program. Some of Escalante’s colleagues were jealous of his fame. A union at the school objected to the growing size of Escalante’s popular classes. Finally, frustrated by bureaucratic hampering, Escalante left the school in 1991. Garfield’s calculus program declined.

What happened? Part of the problem is the public school system, which is more of a bureaucracy than a market. Markets reward success. Markets are ecstatic about success. Markets pay you lots of money for success. Bureaucrats, by contrast, often regard success as too much of a boat-rocker. Makes the class sizes too large. Gives you too many customers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

In a recent column, Thomas Sowell argues that voters should not vote unless they prepare. I agree.

According to Dr. Sowell, if we’re going to pull that lever, as some of us just did, we should take the trouble to inform ourselves on the issues. Otherwise we’re “blind Samsons,” with power that we don’t apply. But Sowell and I might not agree about whether the voter always has that power in point of fact.

Sowell says he often hears from readers who feel helpless “to do anything about the negative trends in politics and society. Yet the people who make those laments have the ultimate power in the most powerful nation on earth. All they have to do is exercise that power in the voting booth.”

Um, well, yes. True as far as it goes. But the good doctor neglects to mention that in all too many cases, there is no practical alternative for voters, thanks to the stranglehold of incumbency. A few hard-fought contests for high-profile U.S. Senate seats obscure the fact that for most incumbents in the House, reelection is a cakewalk.

In a big chunk of the election so-called contests, the incumbent is unchallenged. The power of the vote fades. But I bet Dr. Sowell would concede as much if I managed to catch him after a lecture.

After all, in previous commentary he’s come out in favor of term limits himself, saying that “the last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it.” I certainly don’t dispute him there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We’ve all heard about rogue firms that loot the investments of unsuspecting stockholders. They are paying the price for their dishonesty or negligence.

But at least one such organization is not being held to account at all. You guessed it the federal government.

John Stossel did one of his “Give Me a Break” reports about the Defense Department, and how it issues credit cards to almost everybody on their payroll, including those with terrible credit histories. Are there safeguards to make sure the purchases are of actual supplies for the Defense Department? Three-ring binders or guided missiles or whatever? Are there consequences for abuses? Not really.

When employees do rack up thousands of dollars in personal purchases, they don’t get fired, they’re just told not to do it again. One employee bought $12,000 of personal goodies. She was later promoted. One viewer thinks Stossel is biased. Most federal employees are honest, this viewer says. But Stossel’s point is that the system is what’s broken here, allowing those who are dishonest to more easily rip off the rest of us.

Another viewer reports: “I work for a travel agency that handles several federal government accounts, many based in Washington, DC. They choose a luxury hotel priced over the per diem rate and don’t think twice about it.

We advise them of their allowance and they reply, ‘It’s okay. The government’s paying for it.'” Which means that the taxpayers are paying for it you and me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What would it really take to impose any kind of campaign finance regulation across the board?

Spending limits, for example. Wouldn’t you have to bind and gag the candidates at a certain point? Campaign finance laws say, for example, don’t do x .

Now, if the candidate then goes on to do x minus y , is he then violating the law, at least in spirit? I credit Mickey Kaus with making this point recently about the Coleman for Senator campaign in Minnesota. Kaus, in turn, credits the observations of one Eric Black. Kaus writes that “Norm Coleman was able to communicate publicly what it might have been illegal (under campaign finance laws) for him to communicate privately namely that he really didn’t want the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee to run negative TV ads against Mondale.”

Our political system is now one where the little guy can get stomped by the same rules the major players bypass with throat-clearing and smoke signals. Kaus, Black, and probably you too have come to realize what should have become obvious to everybody over the 25 years since the Watergate era and that first flurry of campaign finance reform.

Namely: You can’t run a free campaign in a free country if your next move must depend not on what you need to do to get your message across, but on what some regulation tells you to do.

If we’re really that afraid of money and influence, we’ve got to stop printing dollars and we’ve got to outlaw campaigns. But I don’t want to go that route.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Ted Kennedy to the rescue? You may know him as a humble and mild-mannered public servant. But to a select few in our nation’s capital, he’s none other than Perk-Man, defender of perks, paybacks, and the special-privilege way.

As soon as Perk-Man got the emergency call on the special emergency Perk-Jeopardy Hotline, he flew into action. Seems US Airways is in bankruptcy and already has been bailed out by nearly a billion dollars in loan guarantees from the taxpayers, courtesy of our Congress. So US Airways is trying to cut costs so they can return a profit and stay in business.

Problem is, they were planning to cut jobs that involved giving special VIP service to folks like Senator Ted Kennedy. This service which you and I can’t get even if we paid extra is free to many lawmakers. Not a bad place to cut, you say? But our politicians need their perks!

So Senator Kennedy got into his Perk-Man Costume. Had a little trouble fitting into the costume, but anyway, he quickly flew into action. He called the CEO of US Airways and had a little conversation. Begged to save the jobs for the two folks fluffing pillows and gophering about for lawmakers. Or maybe Perk-Man said, “Don’t mess with me, I have the power to make or break your business, buddy-boy. I’m Senator Perk-Man!”

Ah Perk-Man, you have saved your perk once again. How inspiring.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

He was “detained” for 422 days. I’m not sure what his crime was. The government didn’t accuse him of any. No evidence of any, either.

His name is Tony Oulai. He is a pilot from West Africa. He was detained September 14, 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks. While he was trying to fly home to Los Angeles, airport security found Oulai with flight manuals and a stun gun. Is it strange for a pilot to have flight manuals? And people do carry stun guns to protect themselves from attackers.

Perhaps, in the wake of the horrifying events of 9/11, such possessions were enough to justify at least a raised eyebrow. But there is no excuse whatever for what happened next. Mr. Oulai was detained our new euphemism for “imprisoned” not because of any suspected link to terrorism. But because his visa had expired. And because he told INS officials that he was in the country legally. But mostly let’s face it because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I haven’t read all ten billion laws on the books about immigration and flying and talking to INS officials. I’m sure Oulai’s visa had expired, and that under pressure he fibbed about it. But I’m also sure that this man did not deserve to be left to rot in one jail cell after another for 422 days. On the basis of zero evidence of any actual crime.

Want to deport him, deport him. But don’t take away his freedom. That’s not what America is all about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.