Common Sense with Paul Jacob

I misspoke. I shouldn’t have said property owners suffer double jeopardy from eminent domain abuse, as I argued in a recent episode of Common Sense. More like triple. Even quadruple.

Until recently in New York State, for example, government officials did not even bother to inform property owners that an eminent domain action was being undertaken against them. Instead they just put a classified notice in micro-print in some newspaper. Thanks to citizen activist Bill Brody, officials must now inform owners directly of plans to rob them.

Add to such willful violation of due process the fact that you might not get a “just” compensation for the lost property either, and that’s triple jeopardy for property owners.

Now add harassment. It seems some officials are willing to actively persecute you if you want to keep your property. Wyoming rancher Harvey Robbins refused to play along with the Bureau of Land Management’s demand for his land. Bureau officials warned him things could “get ugly.” Then things got ugly. His business permit was revoked, his permit for livestock grazing was revoked. His right of
way on federal land was cancelled, a bogus criminal prosecution was launched.

Robbins sued the agency for violating his property rights, among other things. The case is now in the Supreme Court.

So. Four major ways, at least, government is willing to wantonly violate your rights if they want your property and you don’t want to give it to them. Four too many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The more we sit in front of visual display monitors, the fatter we get. And kids, who increasingly substitute more and more of their play time outdoors for time indoors with their computers and video games, are especially at risk.

It’s a real problem. But do we need a grand program to solve the problem?

In New Mexico, environmental groups are suggesting busing public school kids to under-visited state parks, forcing them to play in the great outdoors.

And since this costs money, add a “sin tax” to sales of new televisions and video games.

There’s symmetry to the idea, so it almost seems responsible. But it seems something else, too: regimenting kids into play is the kind of thing a popular German enviro-political group instituted in the 1920s and ’30s. It kind of gives me the creeps.

The natural playground for kids is nature — where I spent a huge hunk of my time, as a kid. Kids nowadays suffer from what the professionals call “Nature Deficit Disorder.” Parks provide nature and order in a neat little mix. But a freer mix would work better: letting the kids out again, to play near ponds, in creeks, culverts, and briar patches.

This is something parents should think about.

Meanwhile, a cheaper get-kids-walking program would be to park buses half a block further down from the school door. No new tax or grand scheme necessary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I talk about pork a lot not because I’m obsessed with pigs, but because I cover Congress.

I talk about pork spending not because it’s the worst spending the federal government does, but because it should be the easiest to stop.

And yet it goes on and on. Pork spending is snuck into legislation as “earmarks.” The President of the United States explained it to Congress last year:

Over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate. They are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet, they’re treated as if they have the force of law.

Actually, the prez went on to say the practice must stop. Congress applauded. But they might as well have been snorting, we’ve seen tens of thousands of earmarks since.

I have mentioned before that the President could simply sign an Executive Order telling his branch of government to ignore earmarks not actually placed in the legislation.

And so he did, on January 29th. All earmarks not voted on by Congress from now on will be as if nothing. Further, the president promised to veto any bill that did not cut the amount of earmarks actually voted on by Congress in half.

So is the stalemate over pork  . . . over? Well, with a cut in half of earmarks as the goal, we seem set to go only halfway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Good news for political bloggers and other practitioners of non-mainstream media.

The Freedom of Information Act has been expanded. Apparently, it means that uncredentialed folks will have an easier time learning what the dadblasted government has been up to.

The expansion gives agencies just 20 days to comply with information requests. If there’s foot-dragging, we’ll be able to point to this law and say, “Hey, it’s been 20 days! Where’s that info I requested, Mr. Stonewalling Bureaucrat?”

It also broadens the definition of who is a representative of the news media. The new definition is “any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.”

One reason this is important is that members of the “official” news media typically get waivers of certain fees associated with these requests. Until now, bloggers and other non-traditional journalists couldn’t get the same waiver.

How the new law plays out remains to be seen. But anything that helps put the amateur citizen journalist on the same legal footing as the New York Times sounds like good news to me. It helps us do what we’ve gotta do to change our country for the better — that is, it helps us compete with a journalistic establishment that too often plays yes-man to the political establishment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Seems every November in Washington state, Tim Eyman of the aptly named Voters Want More Choices has an initiative on the ballot that’s dramatically outspent by the powerful interests who dominate the state’s legislature.

And yet his initiative still wins.

In recent years, each January, as the legislature convenes, here come bills to “reform” the initiative process. Reform meaning kill.

This year’s bills seek to force citizens collecting petitions to register with the government and be licensed. Forget the fact that requiring a license to use one’s First Amendment rights is about as American as Joseph Stalin.

One bill makes sponsors of initiatives liable for any mistakes made by those petitioning. Better to scare away the citizen leaders. Mostly, the goal is to invalidate perfectly valid voter signatures on some technicality committed by the person circulating the measure.

The excuse for these bills, we’re told, is to fight fraud. But Washington’s Secretary of State, in response to a public records request, disclosed they “have no instances of verified forgeries or fraud in the signature gathering process for initiatives in those years (1999 through 2006).” That’s over eight million signatures with zero instances of fraud.

The real reason? The politicians and special interests that live off of our hard work won’t come out and say it, of course, but they figure that if they can’t win a vote of the people, then they’ll find a way to stop the people from voting at all.

That’s just wrong. It’s a fraud.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Do we have the right to say things only when other people can’t hear us?

Such seems to be the principle informing an attempt by the government of St. Louis. The city’s trying to force citizen activist Jim Roos to take down a sign that allegedly violates the city’s zoning laws.

It’s a special sign: painted on the side of an apartment building owned by a “housing ministry” founded by Mr. Roos. The city claims the sign is too big. It’s special in another way, too. It says: “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” Mr. Roos has been fighting such abuse by the city. And now, along with the Institute for Justice, he’s fighting for his freedom of speech.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says there’s a “tricky” constitutional issue at stake — “fighting clutter versus protecting free speech,” supposedly. As if somebody’s ability to call your communication unsightly might justify tossing out the Constitution and our individual rights.

Meanwhile the city has no problem granting exemptions for signs it has no disagreement with. It allows a gas company with downtown offices to display a sign over 1,000 square feet.

So how do we resolve this “tricky” problem?

Simple: Uphold the right of individuals to exercise their freedom of speech and property rights. End zoning laws that violate these rights. And advise persons who don’t like the sign that they are free to look in other directions entirely. Presto, problem solved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Keeping politics out of government. A good idea, no?

Well, it’s one thing to prohibit government workers from using taxpayer-paid government worktime to engage in elections and campaigning. That works.

But more elaborate schemes, like the Missouri Plan, have perverse effects on both politics and government.

The Missouri Plan is the method that a number of states use to select judges. Instead of directly electing judges by the people — as done in many western states — this scheme gives much of the work and the power to a small committee. The committee is run by the state’s ruling judge, and is made up of bar members and appointees by the governor.

In Missouri, it has usually worked in secret and has put in office some rather left-leaning judges.

It’s not that politics has been taken out of the process. It’s that the people’s political preferences have. They’ve been substituted by the prejudices of legal professionals.

Wow, what an achievement. Messy democratic politics replaced with back-room establishment maneuvering.

The issue got hot last summer, when Governor Matt Blunt faced a liberal slate of nominees pre-selected by the committee. Now, one of Missouri’s Supreme Court members has been promoted by the president, leaving a vacancy.

Meanwhile, a group funded by George Soros, “Justice At Stake,” is defending the corrupt, in-crowd system. Even anti-politics makes for strange bedfellows.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It’s almost E-Day in California. February 5. Extension Day.

”E-Day” is clunky as monikers go. But that’s appropriate, seeing as how Proposition 93 is such a clunkily devious effort.

Prop 93 would double maximum tenure of Assemblymen, increasing it from six years to twelve. And it would boost the tenure of Senators by 50 percent, from eight years to twelve. In short, Prop 93 is a flat-out, unvarnished weakening of term limits.

Indeed, provision for a so-called ”transition period” would allow many sitting legislators to serve even longer than twelve years. As Phil Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, puts it: ”It’s a naked power grab by incumbents.”

Yet it’s being promoted as a cut in maximum tenure. The California Secretary of State played along by accepting a proposed ballot summary for the measure that stresses that ”total” possible tenure in both the Senate and Assembly would be trimmed from 14 years to twelve.

Which could now be served in a single chamber.

Funny, the ballot summary doesn’t even mention that the term limit would be boosted 100 percent in the Assembly, 50 percent in the Senate. Of course, term limits are about limiting the tenure on individual offices, not some possible combination of offices.

The whole thing is a rather slithy-toved hat trick. The sordid strategy depends on voters’ never finding out what Prop 93 really does. I bet they will find out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.