Category: Common Sense

My daughter is allergic to peanuts. Yet I have no desire to stop all other kids from eating peanuts.

Why am I telling you all this? How could such a nutty possibility even come up? Well, some grade schools are banning peanuts in school because a few kids can get sick from it. Schools in at least 10 states are issuing such edicts.

I guess there’s a desire to help kids here. But if your child has this allergy, why not simply make it known to the school that he or she must avoid peanuts and peanut butter? And why not also tell your kid to avoid peanuts and peanut butter? It’s called self-responsibility.

If you’re worried that the kid might bungle it and get sick, you could also ask the school to keep the appropriate medicine on hand. At my daughter’s school, a teacher tried to make her eat candy with peanuts in it. My daughter steadfastly refused.

So I think the kids can handle this. I’m not so sure about our schools. You’d think teachers would take a kid’s word for it if the kid is refusing candy. But the mentality these days is that you have to go by the rule, come hell or high water, no matter what the rule is. If the rule is kids must have peanuts, then you cram it down their throats. Or else you make peanut-eating a crime, even if most kids have no problem with it. Never mind the long and worthy tradition of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Speaking of allergic reactions, I have a terrible allergic reaction to this kind of zero-common-sense mentality. Maybe some of the kids do, too.

There’s a new principle of jurisprudence now. Call it the “If you sue, they pay” principle. If something bad happens to you, just sue, and get a lot of money.

I hope this doesn’t become the law of the land. But we sure seem to be headed that way. If smokers can sue and win against tobacco companies, even though they knew all along that cigarette smoking could be hazardous to their health, why not sue McDonald’s because you’re fat, as someone is doing now?

He’ll never win that suit, you say? Well, maybe not. But in Manhattan, a woman who fell over a broken parking sign was awarded $21 million.

And how about this? In West Virginia, a guy named Dustin Bailey spent a night in a bar and somehow ended up under a parked truck that was delivering supplies to a restaurant. When the unwitting driver returned to his vehicle and pulled forward, the man was killed. Now Bailey’s mother is suing the driver, the owner of the truck, the owner of the restaurant, and the owner of the bar because they failed to keep her son alive. She wants a measly $350,000. Nothing in her legal filings, though, about whether her son had anything to do with drinking himself into a stupor.

We’ve got an explosion of ludicrous litigation. And all too often, if you sue, you win, whether the defendant is truly responsible or not. Great for the folks who collect the judgments, I guess. But it’s you and me who end up paying. And who do we sue for that?

Which career politician told the world, back in February of 2000, that he was “all for” term limits “right now,” but that “in ’04 when I’m term-limited I’ll probably be scraping my nails across the desk as they drag me out” . . . ? Who said that term limits, quote, “presented Ohio with a struggle between the past and the fast-approaching future”?

Yep, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, just before term limits on the previous speaker paved the way for Householder. But now he has changed his mind. Thanks to term limits, there are 45 freshman in the Ohio House now.

The problem? They’re too naive. They think the taxpayers’ hard-earned money is something to be frugal about. “I don’t understand budgets,” says one of those Gomer-Pyle-type freshmen, State Representative Jim Carmichael. Carmichael reports: “I was talking with a fellow member about an item, and he said, ‘Well, it’s only $104 million.’ . . . I thought ten bucks was a lot of money!”

Well, so do I, Mr. Carmichael. And if term limits can foster the novel insight that $100 million should not be spent lightly, that’s just fine by me. Householder disagrees. Now that he’s the Speaker, he wants to hold onto the House by hosing term limits by slapping another four years onto his tenure.

Next thing you know, Householder and his buddies will want to trash term limits altogether. We support term limits because we actually like democracy. We want that “fast-approaching future” Mr. Householder used to be eager to meet . . . more than once every couple of decades.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Today, Common Sense comes to you courtesy of a fellow American, who wrote the following letter to The Washington Post : “American citizens are willing to sacrifice civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, but which Americans are doing the sacrificing?

“Since Sept. 11 the FBI has interviewed me at work and at home because my name is similar, not to that of one of the hijackers, but to an individual arrested with suspected links to the terrorists. The FBI has contacted my broker, my neighbors and my friends to learn more about me. I was purchasing an apartment, but . . . at closing I was informed [that] my bank accounts were frozen. Only an angry settlement attorney was able to unfreeze the funds.

“A month passed . . . Then I found out again that I did not have access to transfer funds from my accounts without government approval. “I am a federal employee. I have not been charged with a crime. I do not support terrorism, and I was willing to help the law enforcement agencies. . . . But as time goes by and I have to get ‘clearance’ every time I want to make a bank transfer, I feel victimized. Every time I travel and receive the extra security checks because of my name it makes me trust my government less. What scares me even more is that I am an American citizen, and that is why I am not in jail. If I were not a citizen, I could be one of the hundreds of detainees . . . only because . . . my name is Ali Ayub and not Joe Smith.”

Something to think about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It’s the latest lobbying technique. No matter what the program may be, be sure to insist how crucial it is to the war on terrorism.

Some arguments are more plausible than others. The Postal Service wants new funding for new machines that will irradiate the mail and kill any deadly spores. And anthrax was sent through the mail. On the other hand, the post office was adrift in red ink long before September 11.

And then there’s the Centers for Disease Control and prevention. Surgeon General David Satcher wants Congress to hand over even more dough than it’s already getting. Threat of bio-terrorism, you see. One of Satcher’s complaints is that the CDC’s laboratories are in lousy shape.

Thanks to lobbying help from an array of corporate supporters, the agency already fetches a whopping $4 billion a year from the government. But Satcher makes it sound as if CDC gets such a skimpy budget that it couldn’t possibly keep its labs in good repair. This crumbling infrastructure is “the fault of the nation, not the CDC,” Satcher says.

In fact, though, the agency has been frittering budget dollars on anti-smoking propaganda, campaigns against TV violence, teaching kindergartners about birth control and so forth. Programs geared more to behavior control than disease control. Talk about mission creep.

A recent audit doesn’t help Satcher’s case. The General Accounting Office says that the Centers’ fiscal managers are mostly incompetent and inexperienced, resulting in case after case of misdirected or lost funds . . . a situation that probably cannot be blamed on terrorists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What’s the greater danger: a cancer patient in California or a member of al-Queda in Jersey City or the Middle East?

We all know the answer to that one. But though the war on terrorism is so much more urgent, the U.S. government keeps throwing billions of tax dollars at the war on drugs. We’re already crippling much of the al-Queda terrorist network.

But as long as there is demand for illegal substances, we’ll never make a dent on drug traffic with the so-called war on drugs. All we’ll do is help fund real threats to life and limb: the terrorists and other bad guys. Students of America’s Prohibition era know that the ban on alcohol created a very profitable enterprise for Tommy-gun-toting thugs like Al Capone.

The criminality of the enterprise added to the profit margin. And those easy profits helped fund other crime. Violent crime.

Until a few months ago, another criminal gang, the totalitarian Taliban, also got lots of help from Afghanistan’s traffic in illegal drugs. Of course, it also got money from Uncle Sam to help it fight the drug war.

A few years ago, Californians passed a measure permitting the use of marijuana for medical purposes. A few weeks ago, the Drug Enforcement Agency raided the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center.

Why? To stop the nefarious relief the Center was giving to AIDS patients and cancer patients in pain.

Let’s stop fighting a failing war that drains our resources, punishes the sick, and bankrolls our enemies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There are only so many days left until Christmas.

Ann Coulter thinks maybe that’s why her jewelry was confiscated by airport security. The jewelry was a silver charm in the shape of a bullet that had a lot of sentimental value. But she reports that when she eventually tried to recover the charm, “it was missing from the Olympic security box of confiscated loot. It’s probably already wrapped.”

As Coulter points out, the charm could have been in the shape of the anthrax virus and remained just as harmless. This particular item had survived a dozen previous post-911 airport security checks. But silver is silver.

Coulter doubts whether there should even be personal inspections at all. As she points out, “We can’t keep weapons out of prisons; we certainly can’t keep them off airplanes not even by turning airports into the pleasant and welcoming environment of a federal penitentiary.”

When Coulter asked the security supervisor what his name was, the supervisor called airport police. Apparently it’s dangerous to expect airport security to accept accountability for their actions.

To borrow a line from Lord Acton, I think what we have here is a tale of power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

It’s not just people in politics who can be corrupted by power not just cops or security personnel. It’s anybody in a position to push people around with impunity, without having to worry about a person’s rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s been lots of bad news lately. But our country is strong and our economy is strong. We’ll pull through.

I’m not so sure about certain parts of the economy, though. In particular, I’m not so sure about a certain giant socialistic company called Amtrak. The reason is the red ink that Amtrak spills year after fiscal year.

Congress keeps threatening to pull the plug on subsidies to Amtrak, saying it better balance the books or else. But then, the very next time Amtrak admits it is losing money and needs more of our tax dollars, Congress bails them out anyway.

Amtrak has scooped up over $25 billion in subsidies over the 30 years of its existence. And now things are getting really ridiculous. Some lawmakers in Washington now want to pour $3.2 billion into Amtrak’s coffers even though Congress has “instructed” the company to whip itself into shape by 2002.

Of course, Congress won’t allow Amtrak to cut any of the unprofitable routes. To top it all off, some legislators are selling this $3.2 billion as “emergency money.”

Huh?

The airlines got emergency bailouts because they lost riders in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Amtrak has gained riders. Get it?

Whereas up until now Amtrak was burdened with too little business, now it’s suffering from too much. Whatever.

But if an enterprise can’t survive with customers, maybe it’s time to let others try this job without the subsidies. People do ride trains, and pay for tickets.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Oh, sure, he’s a jolly old elf most of the time. But just ask Mrs. Claus, he’s got a temper.

Not long ago, I compared Congress to Santa Claus, because both hand out lots of goodies. Well, Santa was not amused.

“How in the name of the North Pole can you compare me with the politicians in Congress?” Santa wanted to know. “My elves and I produce our presents ourselves and we make a list so they go to the nice people. The Congress takes from others and often gives the loot to folks who are naughty.”

He’s got a point. And who wants to argue with Santa, especially this time of year? Then came the flap in Kensington, Maryland, where the long tradition of Santa lighting the town Christmas tree was ended this year because a few families who don’t celebrate Christmas complained.

It seemed another case of political correctness run amok. Santa called and I was ready for an earful but Santa wasn’t mad at the families who complained or the town officials. “Christmas is my holiday,” Santa said calmly, “and I’ll not let anyone turn it into something that’s forced on people. I don’t want anyone forced to pay taxes against their will to celebrate Christmas. That’s not my style. And that’s what’s been going on in this little town taxpayer funded Christmas cheer.

“I don’t need any government mandates, after all, hundreds of people in Santa suits brought their own holiday cheer to the Kensington tree lighting this year. The spirit of Christmas is something you give, not something you take. Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Years ago there was a cartoon about Soviet society in which a reporter is interviewing a Russian citizen about life under Communism.

He asks the woman about Soviet transportation and she seems to have no problem with it.

“Eh, I can’t complain,” she says, shrugging.

Bread lines? “I can’t complain,” she says indifferently.

Housing? “I can’t complain,” she says.

Finally, the exasperated interviewer asks, “Well, ma’am, is there anything about living in Russia you don’t like?” And the woman shrieks: “I CAN’T COMPLAIN!!”

Which is what freedom of speech is all about. Any totalitarian government will let you talk as much as you want, so long as you agree with them. Agreement is not the issue. It’s the dissent, the complaints, that bother the people in power.

America is, of course, a country in which you and I can complain. I believe we will always enjoy that freedom. Still, it is disturbing to hear the U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, say that critics of the administration’s anti-terrorism proposals are providing, quote-unquote, “ammunition to America’s enemies.”

He told Congress that those who “scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty . . . only aid terrorists.”

A pretty sweeping generalization. Now, some of the criticisms may be valid, some not. And the motives of the critics are probably all over the map too. But geez, this is a country where we have the right to talk things over, openly, isn’t it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.