Categories
individual achievement

Watch Susan Boyle

I dislike “reality” TV shows, including American Idol and others that seem to specialize in degrading people.

But I have cast my aversion aside after being urged to watch a YouTube clip of one Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old, unemployed Scot and aspiring singer.

What a performance. What a story! If you’re not on the bandwagon yet, hop on. Go to YouTube, search for “Susan Boyle,” watch the seven minute clip of her appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, the clip that snagged over 50 million hits in just a few weeks.

When Susan walked on stage, the three judges of Britain’s Got Talent — including sardonic Simon Cowell of American Idol fame — were not impressed. The audience tittered when she said she was “trying to be a professional singer.”

Susan was nervous at first, awkward, a bit silly, a bit dowdy-looking. Apparently everyone thought she’d be hooted off the stage after five seconds of song.

Nope. Within maybe three seconds, her rendition of “I Dreamed the Dream” from Les Miserables turned it all around. The audience was on its feet. Shocked. Ecstatic.

Susan Boyle was shocked too. She has been struggling for decades. For whatever reasons, her dreams had “turned to shame,” to quote from the song. But now, whether or not she wins top prize on Britain’s Got Talent, she’ll not only dream the dream, she will live it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Marginal Gains in Germany?

Germany has a goal: Introduce a million electric or plug-in hybrid cars into the transportation mix by 2020. But a recent study by the German branch of the World Wildlife Foundation projected the impact: If successful, carbon dioxide emissions would decrease 1 percent in the transportation sector, 0.1 percent in Germany, total.

That’s not much.

The trouble with switching to so many electric cars is that they rely on increasing amounts of industrially produced electricity. Which would bring additional coal-fired plants online, thereby increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

Maybe the only way for electric cars to really impact carbon emissions is to increase nuclear power production at the same time. Nuclear power is the only practical, real-world-right-now way to increase energy and reduce carbon dioxide production by an appreciable amount.

Barring such a move, switching to electric cars expending energy gained from burning coal doesn’t offset our alleged global greenhouse problems. It is true that centralized coal-burning emissions can be scrubbed for pollutants, and we might expect progress here better than progress in auto-emission scrubbers. But that helps with problem of dirty air, a very different issue.

Even big steps addressing complex ecological problems tend to produce small gains, at best. One should question how much wealth to sink for nearly infitesimally small gains.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility

They Kicked His Own Sand In His Face

John Ulizio became the CEO of U.S. Silica in 2003. That year alone, the firm got 20,000 specks of sand kicked in its face — 20,000 lawsuits insisting that the company was causing a deadly lung disease. Ulizio has been fighting back ever since.

U.S. Silica processes sand. Silica. Silicon dioxide. Grinds it so that it can be used in everything from glass to Kevlar.

Clouds of sand dust may sound like a horrifying health hazard. Maybe worse than SARS, swine flu, and psoriasis put together, judging by the spate of litigation against Ulizio’s company. But lawyers don’t necessarily need sound medical evidence to go for lawsuit gold. Sometimes they just make it up.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the harassment of U.S. Silica was even more blatant than this. After many years of costly court battles, a federal judge has concluded that that Silica was the victim of massive, unadorned fraud. Doctors involved now admit that they didn’t even see the patients allegedly suffering from the disease . . . just did what the lawyers told them. The fraud fell apart, and the frivolous lawsuits against U.S. Silica have abruptly abated.

Now vindicated, Ulizio is amazed that “finally, after all these years, somebody is seeing the truth.” Sad that we live in a world where this took so long. Lucky that it’s a world with folks like John Ulizio.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Will the Revolution Cross the Delaware?

So strong their support for Pat Toomey’s challenge, Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania have chased Senator Arlen Specter over to the Democratic Party.

Could a similar revolution happen across the Delaware River in New Jersey’s race for Governor?

PolitikerNJ.com reports that Jersey’s “GOP establishment insiders” aren’t “in panic mode” — no — just “very alert to the gubernatorial candidacy of former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan.”

An outsider, Lonegan says he’ll “deconstruct” Trenton, the capital. He gained fame by suing his own Republican governor, back in 2000, over unconstitutional state borrowing. He’s worked against eminent domain abuse and helped defeat two big spending ballot measures pushed by current Governor Jon Corzine.

Lonegan faces Chris Christie in the June 2nd primary. Christie has some reform credentials himself, having prosecuted and convicted 130 state and local Jersey politicians during his seven years as U.S. Attorney.

It’s a target-rich environment.

But Christie’s no-bid contract for a friend and unauthorized tracking of citizens via their cell phones are ugly reminders of his “insider” status. The state Republican chairman hypes Christie as “recommended by virtually all the key leaders from state government and political circles.’’

Lonegan is being massively outspent, but voters will have the final say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

Panic in the Streets

A few people get sick, and schools shut down.

We have been having and enduring flu epidemics for some time. And people have died even in minor outbreaks. The difference now is that the patterns of epidemiology have become nightly news.

Why the talk about shutting down everything — schools, businesses, government offices? To prevent a major pandemic, like the 1918 Influenza outbreak, which killed millions.

The president went out of his way to tell us to avoid panic. The vice president, on the other hand, went on one of his jags and helped foment more panic.

The media, of course, abundantly repeated the message of panic.

Last autumn, the head honchos in Washington sowed the seeds of panic by proclaiming the mortgage-based financial bubble the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Hardly before anyone had received a pink slip, the government was giving away billions of dollars.

And then, they switched rationales and plans. And then they gave away more. Rinse. Repeat. Only the panic remains.

Well, stock up on water and masks and food. And cash. Or gold. That’s fine. But be wary of stocking up on too much government. When we panic we are not thinking straight, that’s when we are likely to lose the most. With the government and the media leading the charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Guns in Their Holsters

Out in the countryside, seeing men carry around rifles and knives and such excites the nerves of no one except (maybe) some ungulates. In urban and suburban areas, though, most five-toe-per-foot folk have become used to not seeing people dressed to kill, so to speak.

That’s one reason for conceal carry laws, allowing people to carry guns legally, but concealed. Very civilized, and it makes criminals think twice.

But here’s a wrinkle: Openly carrying weapons is perfectly legal in all sorts of places. Wisconsin’s Attorney General wrote a memorandum, not long ago, saying that residents may indeed openly carry guns on Wisconsin streets.

Oddly, the state prohibits concealed carry by citizens.

Worse yet, some local police have no intention of abiding by the law. Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Harris made the news, saying, “My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether [they] have a right to carry it.”

Harris is worried about his city’s murder rate. So, he’s willing to commit crimes to prevent murder.

We all know where he’s coming from. But, I wonder. Has Harris thought this through? I bet that most murders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were committed by people illegally carrying guns, concealed, not by those openly carrying them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption porkbarrel politics

If I’m Corrupt

John Murtha, a Pennsylvania congressman going on 36 years, may be today’s uncrowned “king of pork.” Recently, he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.”

Murtha was responding to questions about the FBI, which is now looking into his “pattern of steering millions in earmarks to defense contractors who give to his campaign and hire his allies as lobbyists.”

In taking care of his district, Murtha takes care of himself, too. For instance, he has his own airport: the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport.

The airport has received over $200 million in federal tax money, most of it earmarked by Murtha. In addition to a big portrait of the congressman, the airport also has free parking and boasts “easy check-in.”

Of course, the airport hosts only three flights a day — all going to Washington, DC. A recent Washington Post report mentioned that there were seven TSA personnel screening the four passengers boarding with their six pieces of luggage.

Federal taxpayers also provided the airport an $8-million radar system back in 2004 — a system that has never been used.

In addition to Murtha’s numerous earmarks, the Murtha airport just got $800,000 in federal stimulus funds. Seems it was “shovel-ready.”

Yes, one needs a shovel for all the . . . well, you know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

A Different Drum

Kent Drum and I step to the beat of different drummers.

At Mother Jones, Mr. Drum decried California’s upcoming May 19th special election, writing, “I loathe the ballot initiative.”

Me? I love the ballot initiative.

Drum is complaining about California’s upcoming vote on Propositions 1A through 1F. For the record, these measures were placed on the ballot by legislators, not initiated by citizens.

Drum is particularly upset that he has to vote on Props 1D and 1E. These two propositions must go to a popular vote because the programs were passed by voters through the initiative process. Legislators want 70 percent of the money voters passed for early childhood development programs and 25 percent of funding for mental health programs to fill their big budget gap. But they can’t snatch those dollars until voters say so.

Says Drum, “I have no idea if [Prop 1E] is a good idea or not, and for a trivial sum like this I’m not about to spend hours poring over ballot arguments.”

The trivial sum to Mr. Drum is $200 million. Who’d get out of bed for a mere $200 million clams, eh?

I would. Of course, I like voting on the actions governments take in our names. I like the idea of citizens being in charge.

I think I’d vote No on every one of these California measures. But I’d like that power: the power to say no.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets too much government

Barney’s Bubble Babbling

To hear Congressman Barney Frank tell it, he was a lone voices of fiscal reason when the surge of ill-considered mortgage debt fueled the now-popped housing bubble.

Unfortunately for Frank, this is the age of the Internet. Bloggers have proved more than willing to collate inconvenient evidence.

Thanks to Ed Morrissey on HotAir.com, then, we have two testimonies of Frank-ish speechifying. Here’s Frank in 2009:

People haven’t fully understood. One of the causes of the terrible crisis we had over the last few years . . . it came from people being pushed into buying houses, taking out loans that they couldn’t afford. Part of that was a conservative view that rental housing was a bad thing. . . . People were pushing home ownership [for] people who shouldn’t have been there.

“People in power” pushed this, eh? Which people? The irresponsible conservatives. But here’s this same sir, Barney Frank, in a clip from 2005:

We have, I think, an excessive degree of concern right now about home ownership and its role in the economy. . . . This is not the dot-com situation. . . . [Y]ou’re not going to see the collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble. And so, those of us on our committee in particular, will continue to push for home ownership.

Oh dear. Barney, just be honest already and admit you helped destroy the economy, okay?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Unexpected Analogy

Senator Arlen Specter has been around a long time. When he changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat last week, he referenced his early public service on the Warren Commission. Mobbed by enthusiasts, he said, “I don’t think Lee Harvey Oswald had this big a crowd trailing him.”

That wasn’t a parting shot — Specter aims to stay in office. He only switched after polls showed that challenger Pat Toomey — about whose candidacy I reported the week before — would best him in the Republican primary.

Yup. Arlen Specter wants to stay in office so badly that he’s willing to carry on even after he has been effectively repudiated by his party of over 40 years.

Most of the commentary has been about how small a tent the GOP has become. Most pundits say this is bad for Republicans.

I’m not so sure. If the Democrats fail to usher in Nirvana in the next two years — if things, say, get even worse — a narrowed oppositional GOP could turn the electoral climate around pretty fast.

What most interests me, now, is that Specter’s affiliation-change shows how difficult it is to change currents in government. The old guard can flip, stay in power, and the power brokers switch chairs from friend to foe and vice versa.

If senators served under term limits, this whole issue — and the problem it reveals — would not even come up.

With term limits, a metaphorical Jack Ruby isn’t even necessary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.