Category: Common Sense

Smile, you’re on candid camera! If you live in Tampa, Florida, anyway.

The Tampa City Council approved legislation to install cameras in a popular night-life district of the city. The technology was tested at the Super Bowl. The cameras digitize your face and transmit the image to a computer which matches your face with those of wanted criminals. It’s a cheap and easy electronic way of dragging everybody before a police lineup whether they like it or not. Tampa citizens are up in arms. And now the politicians who authorized the cameras are saying, “Huh? We had no idea this was going on. Outrageous.” Tampa is the place where career politicians just don’t quit.

Twice last year they tried to undo term limits. First they put a repeal measure on the ballot, which voters squashed. Then they mumbled something about calling a special election to try again. It was Council Member Gwen Miller who said enough is enough. Now some councilpersons are saying that the authorization for the peeping-Tom Tampa snapshot-taking was buried so deep in other legislation that they just missed it. Okay, I guess that’s possible. Our congressmen don’t bother to read all the legislation they vote for either. Meanwhile, the Tampa councilman who wrote the bill, Robert Buckhorn, says he didn’t call any hearing about the cameras beforehand because no new money had to be appropriated for them. Apparently, it didn’t occur to the buck-passing Mr. Buckhorn that treating innocent people like criminal suspects might raise a hackle or two. Or maybe it did occur to him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There they go again those manipulative career politicians! Economic commentator Bruce Bartlett says that a particularly underhanded budget strategy is now underway in the Congress a ploy that was all the rage during the Reagan years when the Demo half of the Demopublican Party dominated the Hill.

During the Reagan years, the career politicians used to stall and stall before sending their bloated appropriations bills to the President for his signature. Often, they’d wait until the very last minute of the very last day of the fiscal year before calling the U-Haul truck to lug the legislation over to the Oval Office. What that meant was that if the President at that late hour chose to veto the appropriations for being too lard-laden, the government would have to shut down, and the chief executive would have to take the political heat for it.

Of course, after the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994, when the Republicans took control of both Houses of Congress, the Republicans proved to be just as fond of bloated spending as their careerist colleagues across the aisle. Now Senate Democrats are using their newly acquired majority status to drag their legislative feet just like they did in the old days. Bartlett predicts that, once again, the congressmen will call U-Haul at the very last minute to lug the spending specs over to the White House. And without a line-item veto, George Bush will have a tough decision to make: sign off on all the pork or shut down the government. Oh, those manipulative career politicians. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This is Common Sense . I’m Paul Jacob.

You may have heard that pensions for congressmen and most other federal employees are way out of whack. If you haven’t, listen to Hastings Keith.

Former Congressman Hastings Keith of Massachusetts is lobbying Congress to stop doling out far too generous cost-of-living increases, known as COLAs to retirees like himself. Keith says, “COLAs are supposed to keep up with the cost of living, not the cost of living it up.” He should know. Not only because he’s on the receiving end himself. Mr. Keith also chairs the National Committee on Public Employee Pensions. Keith says that after 14 years in Congress, his pension paid him $1,560 in the very first month after his 1972 election defeat. And now? Now he rakes in $7,172 a month almost a thousand more than he should after adjusting for inflation.

But the COLAs are also calculated too generously on his Social Security and on his widower benefits on his wife’s pension from the federal government. Only the COLA on his military pension falls short of inflation. In all, Keith pulls in more than $134,000 a year in retirement benefits. What did he have to do to get such a lucrative pay-out from taxpayers? He estimates he contributed less than $34,000 toward all these benefits, much of that in Social Security taxes. So, each year, Mr. Keith receives four times as much as he paid in over his entire lifetime. And he’s not alone. This is an outrageous rip-off of taxpayers, to the tune of billions of dollars. And everybody knows it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Sick of hearing about Congressman Gary Condit? Just remember it can always get worse. Today’s subject is one we’d rather not talk about sexual abuse of children.

Two Maryland politicians have become embroiled in scandals involving sexual abuse. Part of the scandal is how others too often turn a blind eye. Alfred Muller had been mayor of Friendship Heights for 26 years until he was accused of molesting a 14-year-old boy in the restroom of the National Cathedral. First, seeking another term, he denied the charge. But then he plead guilty and stepped down. After babbling on about taking “full responsibility,” Muller was sentenced. How long will he serve for his crime? No jail time, just three years probation. Judge Shellie Bowers believes Muller paid for the crime with his public fall from grace, explaining, “As for the punishment aspect, I think there’s the humiliation, the disgrace, all of that.”

Or take the case of State Delegate Joan Cadden and her husband, who was convicted of the sexual abuse of his niece abuse his wife knew about but didn’t report to authorities. Seems the whole family, even the abused girl’s parents, put Delegate Cadden’s political career as first priority. State GOP Chairman Michael Steele says, “When you hear family members say they were trying to protect the delegate’s political career, that they turned a blind eye to the abuse because of political considerations, it gives you pause.” Yes, a great deal of pause . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The career politicians are gnashing their teeth in Nashville. Why? Because they were unable to impose on Tennessee what one-term governor Lowell Weicker was able to foist on Connecticut: a state income tax.

There has been plenty of mumbling in the state legislature over the last few years about imposing this new tax. And plenty of protesting by Tennesseans who think they’re taxed more than enough already, thank you. Most of the protests have been peaceful. More recently, though, taxpayers were banging on the doors of the capitol and buttonholing legislators in the hallways. Crazy, huh? Mere citizens demanding to talk to legislators? That does sound pretty dangerous. Who do they think they are . . . lobbyists?

But you can sort of forgive the impetuosity. After all, Tennessee is a state, just like Connecticut, that does not have any statewide initiative and referendum process. So, it would have been impossible for voters to overturn a bad piece of legislation at the ballot box once their so-called representatives had passed it. State Senator David Fowler was working to place a referendum on the income tax on the ballot, but who knows whether he would have succeeded. Yet, he seems to think his gesture in this direction should have been enough to send people home. “People outside are protesting, not even knowing we were trying to find a way to give them a vote,” he told the press.

But Fowler is either terribly nave or more than a tad disingenuous. Would the senator have gone even this far in recognizing the rights of the voters without all their public protests over the last three years? I don’t think so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Hey, “red tape” sounds so intimidating, doesn’t it? Let’s call it blue tape, sky-blue tape. And that word “bureaucracy” scares people. How about “nice-people-eaucracy?” And if you have an outfit called “Health Care Financing Administration,” which strikes fear into the hearts of hospitals and doctors because of invariably frustrating regulations and red tape oops, I mean, sky-blue tape why not find a name that sounds sweeter and more accommodating?

The Health Care Financing Administration is the government bureau er, I mean, the nice-people place that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson says it’s hard to love a place with a clunky name like Health Care Financing Administration, so he’s holding a contest to change it. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the name isn’t the problem. They say, “Doctors and hospitals know HCFA creates too many forms to fill out, takes too long to reimburse claims . . . Last year alone, HCFA made about $12 billion in improper payments.”

Twelve billion dollars in bungled payments? Well, that sounds kind of harsh. Let’s just say “mislaid payments.” The name change will cost millions of dollars. It would mean reprinting stationery and forms and information kits. Money and energy that Citizens Against Government Waste says would be better spent reforming the agency itself, to make it more reasonable to deal with. That’s why they’ve awarded Tommy Thompson their coveted Porker of the Month Award. Hey, congratulations, Secretary Thompson. Although that word “porker” does seem a bit blunt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Well, I just got back from California and I can report that it is a real, true fact: The career politicians there really do not like term limits. A recent battle in the California legislature was most revealing on this point. It had to do with whether banks and other financial institutions should be allowed to give away your private financial information without first getting your permission. The hearings were rigged in favor of lobbyists opposing the requirement rigged by a career politician by the name of Lou Papan.

Papan arranged things so that opponents of the bill could testify as long as they wished, and were allowed to speak first. When the vote came, the co-sponsor of the bill was absent, and the member substituting for the sponsor abstained during the vote. It was thanks to this sneaky switcheroo that the bill narrowly lost. But not before Papan’s main foe on the issue had publicly chastised him for trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug and avoid any hearings at all. Now Papan is yelping that back in the old wonderful days the days before term limits legislative members did not dare criticize each other in the press.

Papan complains that it was this public criticism which led to the San Francisco Chronicle ‘s editorializing on the privacy issue, forcing Papan to hold hearings to begin with. This sort of thing is most annoying for a career politician. Ah, for the good old days, when career politicians could just do whatever they liked without any whistle-blowing on the part of renegade colleagues who believe they’re supposed to be serving the common good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I’m against naked power grabs. How about you? If you’re a career politician, the answer is, “I’m all in favor!”

For example, every ten years in this fair land we take a census to determine population, and we redraw political districts to take the new numbers into account. And who do you think does the redrawing? Sure, politicians. And not just any old politicians: the ones in power. Not exactly a disinterested third party. I’m thinking Florida. I’m thinking oranges, Disneyland and pitched political battles. I’m thinking Republicans on the upswing and turning as many districts as they can into soft pretzels, the better to keep themselves in power.

Bill Jones, a veteran of Florida’s redistricting wars who now lobbies for the League of Women Voters, says that redistricting is “like a card game in Alice In Wonderland where nobody knows the rules, everything seems terribly strange and everyone acts a little weird.” State Senator Steven Geller is a Democrat who sits on a redistricting panel. He says if the Republicans “don’t get too greedy, they can overrun the Democrats, providing they only run over the Democrats just somewhat.” Oh. Geller says if the Republicans are too obvious, the courts, which have to approve the redistricting, might get nervous about things. But the story is the same in almost every state. The ground rules may vary a bit, but the bottom line is the politicians themselves get to decide the shape of the fiefdoms they rule. A naked power grab. Just don’t be too obvious about it, right? Yeah, right. T

his is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Seems career politicians have found even more problems with term limits. For instance, if you are a longtime incumbent, term limits don’t allow you to pick your successor when you leave office. How terrible. That’s what California Assemblyman Bill Leonard tells us. He should know. He’s been in power since 1978.

In 1988, when he stepped down from the Assembly to run for the Senate, he was able to hand pick his successor, a longtime aide. But last year when he was term-limited out of the California Senate and had to go slinking back to the Assembly, he couldn’t hand pick his successor. You can’t game the system nearly as much when “everyone knows” the seat will be open. So now elections are more open, fairer contests. Darn!

There are more problems. Leonard agrees with a Portland State University professor who identifies what he calls “instability” in term-limited legislatures. Leonard argues that with all the seats that come open each election and the competition that brings about, “You can have dramatic changes.” Imagine that: Instead of the people having to wait decades for powerful legislators to retire before a public desire for change can be enacted, change could happen every election.

Another terrible result of term limits, according to Leonard, is that campaign spending “is not going to be focused on as few seats.” In other words, once again there is far too much competition, too much ability for voters to make changes, too little ability for powerful politicians to stop them. So there you have it. Politicians don’t like term limits. Film at eleven . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The story about the missing woman, Chandra Levy, and Congressman Gary Condit, is all the media rage. Some folks are comparing the wall-to-wall coverage, the denials and the infidelity to the Clinton scandals.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott called on Congressman Condit to resign, saying, “Infidelity is always unacceptable, but particularly when you have an elected official involved in a position of trust with a young girl, an intern.” Congressman Christopher Shays of New Jersey countered, “If infidelity is the test . . . a number of members of Congress should resign.” Marital infidelity, like any other act of breaking of one’s word, ought not be dismissed by a smug ‘everybody’s doing it’ rationale. Yet, someone else’s marriage and private life is their business, not mine. Once again, most of official Washington misses the point.

This young woman may be dead. Time is critical in such a missing person investigation. Condit admits to having an affair with Levy. But it took him 10 weeks before he told the police the whole story. It’s too bad if the truth was uncomfortable, but a woman’s life may have depended on his prompt cooperation with police. And that’s why Condit should resign. For years now, we’ve been treated to a steady diet of politicians doing what’s best for their political careers, instead of serving the people. Our civil standards have fallen to pathetic levels. We now debate whether someone’s character really even matters. Well, this is a life-or-death case to show that, yes, character matters. Condit should step down. We can do better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.