Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Computers are only human . . . er, computers are only finite beings — that’s better — and can only do as much at any given time as their microprocessors, random-access memory, storage space, network connections, and software allow.

On a Wednesday in March, the computer database that takes earmark requests from Congress failed. In the words of Roll Call, “an overload of pork requests clogged the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site” and forced “an extension to the request deadline to next week.”

So our representatives are still at it. Let it not be said that they aren’t busy. They are so busy that they clog up computers with too many requests for data entry.

I could commiserate. I have had computer troubles too. I sometimes even resent the way my life is being run by the demands of technology. I don’t always feel liberated.

But for once I’m sympathizing with the poor, dumb machines. Too many requests for too much pork! It’s not their fault. They can only do what they do.

We should take our hats off and honor these computers. They’ve suffered much to accommodate Congress. Let’s thank them. In fact, thank goodness they’ve suffered failure before they completely tanked our economy.

Yes, we may have to pay the price for all the requests, and for all the computers . . . but we wouldn’t need upgrades if Congress could just keep its “generosity” with our money under control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Years ago, Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley voted against Oregon’s charter school legislation. He lost.

Later, he and his wife applied to send two of their kids to a newly forming charter school. The school was late in starting up, so he lost again as the application wasn’t acted on.

But now that Willamette Weekly leaked the application, it’s getting lots of attention.

Merkley first denied the report. Then, when the actual applications were produced, well, he stopped denying.

It’s funny how politicians who vote lockstep with teachers’ unions and the establishment monopoly school system keep on undermining their own publicly espoused positions. They keep voting with their dollars and good sense in their private lives . . . against the bad sense of their official loyalties.

It’s a revelation of attitude: Merkley and other such politicians believe that choice is only for the few. Them.

Steve Buckstein, a founder of Oregon’s Cascade Policy Institute, puts the story in  perspective. He quotes a famous Supreme Court judgment from 1922, about an Oregon law to outlaw all private schools. The justices said No Way. And insisted that “the child is not the mere creature of the state.”

Too many politicians agree with this only when it comes to their own children. We could use their help making education better for all children. Schooling should be made to fit kids, not schools to fit . . . politicians’ re-elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Two years ago in Oklahoma, Riccardo Gino Ferrante was arrested for aiming a camera up a 16-year-old girl’s skirt while in a Target store. He was arrested and convicted of a felony.

Unfortunately, in mid-March four-fifths of Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals voted that no felony occurred.

Why?

Because “the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Now, being in a public place does remove or decrease one’s expectation of privacy. But ought that extend even to the private space WITHIN one’s clothing?

The court answered in the affirmative. As Judge Gary Lumpkin wrote in his dissent, “It is open season for peeping Toms in public places who want to look under a woman’s dress.”

This is judicial common sense in the age of Britney Spears? At least there’s still the knuckle-sandwich penalty someone might get.

If our court system can’t get this one right, everyone should agree that something’s wrong.

The judiciary must be independent. But it must be independent of the other branches of government, not detached from common sense, or all semblance of sanity.

Oklahoma legislators now seek to outlaw currently court-protected invasive and gutter photography. Should they also consider random intelligence testing for the judiciary? They have more than probable cause.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If you’ve never seen Hitchcock’s The Birds, you’ve probably seen a few chilling out-takes. People running. Birds swooping. People screaming. Glass shattering.

Could the scenario be even scarier? Well, yes: if, say, it were illegal for the victims to defend themselves.

This is not a movie remake. That’s what the beleaguered citizens of Bartow are currently facing. This is a small town outside of Orlando — a quiet community says the Orlando Sentinel. Well, except for the screaming.

Migrating turkey vultures have turned into quite a nuisance there. They rip shingles off roofs. They chew rubber from car windows. First pecking a little. Then a lot.

And the people? Screams. Of frustration.

They’re not allowed to do much about this. They may blow a shrill whistle to try to scare off the vultures, or tactically position stuffed toys that resemble dead vultures. But the beleaguered residents may not kill or even capture the birds.

The birds are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Apparently we’ve signed an agreement with the birds which makes it a criminal offense for anybody to ruffle their feathers. Too bad such well-meaning edicts don’t also make it illegal for birds to harass innocent villagers.

Once again we see the tyranny of well-meaning politics, un-tethered by even the tiniest amount of thought about the consequences.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I don’t live in Milwaukee County, so I’m not gasping right now. But, gasping or not, Milwaukee County residents have something the rest of us don’t. They have GASP.

GASP is the snappy acronym for CRG Network’s new Government Accountability in Spending Project. It’s an online database of information of Milwaukee County government’s finances. In the future, more local governments will go on the system. Right now, we can root around in the finances of this one county only. The search engine works like a breeze, and you can export the results of each search to a spreadsheet with an easy Export function.

CRG Network calls this “the ultimate in openness and transparency.” At crgnetwork.com it’s explained that “Scott Walker and the Milwaukee County stepped forward to be the first unit of Wisconsin government to commit” to this citizens’ resource. The project had funding help from the Sam Adams Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, and Citizens in Charge.

Hey, I’m affiliated with two of these outfits! So I guess I’m patting myself on the back.

But not really. The hard work was done by the county’s Information Management Services Division, Controller’s Office, and Department of Administration, with a lot of help from professional volunteers of the CRG Network.

If you want to see how a local government spends its billions, you can hardly do better than putting Milwaukee County onto your research agenda. Thanks to GASP.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Do we need another czar?

Ask Senator John McCain. In a year he could be president and appointing “czars.”

Scary thought. His McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law squelched too many freedoms for me to rush into rah-rah mode.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, agrees with me, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “McCain- Feingold has really left a bad taste in many people’s mouths, not just conservatives . . .”

But when Cooper asked Perkins what steps McCain could take to win support from conservatives, Perkins said McCain could “announce a family czar in the White House to focus on strengthening America’s families.”

You know, I’ve never liked that term, czar. Russian czars were dictators, the name taken from Caesar, the Roman emperor. We Americans are just generally down on all-powerful tyrants. So, why name our government officials “czars”?

Of course, Perkins’s idea isn’t for this Family Czar to tyrannize the countryside. He simply wants to bolster families.

But, ask yourself, which is more likely to come from some powerful new office in Washington: tyranny or stronger families?

And if you bet McCain would pick a swell person to be Family Czar, how would you like Hillary Clinton’s pick? Or Barack Obama’s? If you’re a Democrat, flip the examples around.

I wouldn’t want my own mother to pick someone for such a position. And she’s super swell.

Let’s make this our slogan: No new czars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.