Common Sense with Paul Jacob

What if government could throw you in jail for recording what it does in public?

That may not be what America is coming to. It does seem to be what Newton, Massachusetts, is coming to.

A Newton activist hid his camera during a 2006 political protest in order to tape a police officer. He has been convicted for — get this — wiretapping. That thing you do — or the government does, with or without a warrant — to covertly record conversation that the parties have reason to believe is private.

A district court judge sentenced Peter Lowney to six months probation and imposed a $500 fine for secretly continuing to film after police had ordered him to stop. Lowney hid the still-functioning camera in his coat.

$500. The going rate, I guess, for being a reporter on the job even after somebody in authority objects to being held accountable. Lowney was also ordered to remove any video of the event from the Internet.

Could have been worse. In some societies, watchdogs suffer long imprisonment or even the firing squad for daring to collect and provide such evidence.

But what a lunatic precedent. Is this really a road we want to travel in the United States?

Do we need a formal federal law protecting the civil right of citizens to photograph, film, and otherwise record the public conduct of public officers? That’s what some commentators are advocating. It should be unnecessary. But I guess it isn’t.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

You shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down. Especially when it was wrong to knock him down at all.

But that’s what office-holders who abuse the power of eminent domain often do. First they grab somebody’s property to give to some other private party. Then the victimized former owner can’t even get “just compensation.”

You’re not in the best bargaining position when your stuff is taken by force. To government officials “just compensation” too often means “whatever lowball figure we can get away with, given how we successfully stole this guy’s property to begin with.”

Bruce MacCloud is an eminent domain victim in Long Branch, New Jersey, who is fighting back. An appellate court recently ruled that he deserves $220,000 in compensation for the 2002 destruction of his 17-room Victorian house, his home for 23 years. Destroyed to make way for a new oceanfront development.

In 2002 the city offered him $140,000. MacCloud wants $633,000. So he doesn’t think much of the court’s new modestly greater “offer” being made some five years later. He wants to know, “Where can I buy a home, anywhere, not just on the oceanfront, for $220,000 . . . ?

“I had a home that I owned. I had a roof to put over my kids’ heads, and it was taken from us.”

Bruce MacCloud vows to fight on. He’s representing himself, for now. That’s all he can afford. There aren’t exactly court-appointed attorneys for cases like this.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

“The government is trying to shut our ears and eyes.”

That’s not me saying that. I’m quoting one Thant Zin, a civil servant in Burma. This gentleman told the Associated Press that Burma’s “military regime does not want us to know the truth about our country.”

So, how does Burma shave away knowledge? By increasing taxes on satellite dishes!Most Burmese get their news from satellite TV. Since the Burmese government does not allow a free press within the country, access to the free press outside the country vexes the current junta. So the rulers decided to rocket the cost of satellite dishes upwards, beyond reach of most citizens.

The renewal fee for licensing a satellite dish is now 1 million kyat — about $800. It used to be about five bucks (I’ll let you figure the kyat amount).

According to an article in The Irrawaddy, a news source covering Burma and Southeast Asia, the crackdown doesn’t stop there. Rangoon’s mayor, Brigadier General Aung Lin, is cutting down on the number of licenses for tea shops.

Tea shops play a central role in Burmese culture. Why squelch it? I don’t buy the official explanation, that too many people are wasting time in tea shops. More important, surely, is the fact that the targeted tea shops tend to be the ones with satellite TVs!

There are many reasons to be suspicious of tax-raising and government licensing. Burma shows the biggest one: these are the tools of tyranny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Does it violate campaign finance laws to fly a blimp with somebody’s name on it, and a suggestion to Google that name?

Bradley Smith is a former member of the Federal Election Commission who thinks campaign finance regulations violate free speech. He wants to see how far the ever-longer tentacles of these regulations really reach. So he created a for-profit company called Liberty Political Advertising to solicit funds for a Ron Paul blimp.

The idea is that since LPA is for-profit, not a PAC, “customers” can give as much money as they like. Smith says if Michael Moore’s production of “Fahrenheit 911,” obviously intended to influence the 2004 election, is protected speech, his for-profit project should be too. The FEC may not agree. It may also take years to decide.

Could go either way. But suppose contributing “too much” money to this balloon gets declared a violation. Then, likewise, any political speech paid for with “too much” money might violate it. Newspapers, magazines, broadcasts the Web. Wouldn’t a background story about Ron Paul on any network newscast involve a lot more cash spent by one organization than Mr. Smith’s blimp?

What then? Repeal the First Amendment outright?

Nah. Far better to just junk the regs. Treat the Constitution as if it means that we really do have freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The Democrats took over Congress, pledging to curb the practice of earmarks.

They didn’t quite succeed. The omnibus spending bill they produced in December was filled with spending projects of a less-than-national character, most of which no congressperson but the original politician who placed it in the bill ever saw.So, just another sad story for fiscal responsibility, eh?

No. Senator Jim DeMint asked Congress’s research organization to prepare a report on the legality of these earmarks, and on the legality of the Executive Branch just ignoring them.

The verdict? Since most earmarks were placed not in the bill itself, but in subsidiary explanatory reports, their status as law falls way short of constitutionality.

So the president could easily issue an Executive Order instructing his underlings simply to ignore the earmarks. They weren’t placed in the omnibus bill as real laws, so it would be just fine to disregard them as the extra-legal finaglings they are.

This became a big issue in late December. Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, alerted his readers to the issue repeatedly; there was great Internet buzz. But the buzz didn’t yield an immediate and unequivocal response from the White House.

Though anti-pork activists hailed the idea, Democrats have described it as all-out war between the branches of government.

A war on illegal spending? I’m a hawk.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Overkill. That’s becoming the watchword of modern policework.

Take the case of Laura Elkins and John Robbins’s home-repair brouhaha four years ago. The couple had begun work on repairing their roof, raising it a bit in the process.  They had gotten the required permits. But a neighbor complained that the repairs weren’t being done according to the historic preservations laws of the section of the District of Columbia, where they lived.

So what did the District government do? Send out a building inspector?

No. The District sent about a dozen police and D.C. Consumer Regulatory Affairs inspectors, who raided the home. With a warrant and all.

The kids were sick and had stayed home from school. And the police ransacked the place, allegedly looking for evidence.

The couple sued, and in mid-December, the court declared in their favor. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, of the U.S. District for the District of Columbia, ruled that the raid was an “unreasonable search and seizure,” a violation of the family’s constitutional rights to privacy. Another hearing will determine damages.

So why the overkill in the first place? Prior to the raid, the homeowners did everything by the book. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough for one neighbor and a head bureaucrat. Or the police, whose behavior ranged from intrusive to frighteningly creepy.

Luckily, we still live in a country with due process, and boy do we need it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It may take big bucks to produce public art. But it doesn’t require vast tax funding.

The chief example of this is the Statue of Liberty, which was a gift from the French, and the restoration of which, some time back, was paid for by private  (mostly American) funds.

Even Maya Lin’s controversial design for the Vietnam Memorial Wall was mostly funded by privately collected monies.

Of course, the quality of art isn’t determined by the funding. I have friends who tell me I have just “got to see” the statue called “Portlandia” in Portland, Oregon, even though they’re pretty certain it was a taxpayer-funded project. I keep forgetting to look for it each time I visit the rainy northwest city.

Most modern public art is garbage, of course. And too much public art is paid for not by volunteer donors but by taxpayers. That’s my main criticism: public art should be supported by the public voluntarily, and politicians should stay out of art patronage.

Right now, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, faces a big budget crunch. And yet the city council awarded $2.5 million to a Massachusetts artist to build a very tall public artwork. The proposed look of the project seems science-fictional to me. It may even become an example of good public art.

What’s bad is spending other people’s money, taxpayers’ money. The people of Phoenix who wanted it should have raised the funds themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Even repressive regimes can have laws granting citizens certain political rights. What matters is the extent to which citizens are actually allowed to use those rights — you know, in real life.

Michigan taxpayers are trying to recall ten state legislators, from both parties, who voted to raise taxes $1.6 billion dollars. Michigan’s constitution provides citizens with a process for recall.

There’s also an effort by a number of elected and appointed government officials to plainly thwart the constitutional rights of these citizens.

State Representative Tim Melton says, “The fight is to keep them off the ballot.” His goal isn’t to win an election, but to prevent the voters from ever getting the opportunity to decide.

State House Democrats plan to use “blockers” against the recall petitioners. One Democrat, unnamed in media reports, says the plan is to “shadow” or “follow” those who circulate the petition and “have a debate with each potential signer in an attempt to convince them not to sign the recalls.”

In other words, a campaign of stalking and voter intimidation.

Those opposing the recalls also plan to tie the effort up in court. One Kent County judge recently felt the need to declare his disdain for the right to recall before ruling that “This [petition] language quite honestly is as clear as any that has come before us.”

You see, elections commissions in Wayne, Macomb and Muskegon counties have all rejected the exact same wording.

Citizens there have had to hire lawyers and appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

One excuse for imposing ever more controls on political fundraising and political speech is that campaign money is “corrupting.”

But you can get and spend money in a good way or a bad way. Say you steal it. Okay — bad. But suppose people give it to you voluntarily because they like your ideas and character. Also bad? Or just bad when it’s a dollar more than the legal limit?

We supposedly have “out of control” spending on, say, presidential campaigns. An Orlando Sentinel editorial explains how the endless millions yield endless obligations to special interests. Their solution? Lots more public spending on campaigns. Funding by taxpayers. Divorce financial support for campaigns from personal support.

Actually it’s the campaign finance regulation that corrupts. It boosts incumbents who know how to exploit the system, while often hobbling challengers. But let’s stipulate that privately raised money corrupts all by itself. Just get rid of it, then? In a letter to the editor, one Orlando resident suggests Congress could require campaigns to raise and spend “no more than one dollar.” Because “in that case none of the campaigns would be spending any more than a dollar — or two, if you count matching funds.”

Solves everything, right? No money, no corruption? No special interests, no horse trading, no mutual back-scratching?

Absurd you say? That’s my point.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.