Common Sense with Paul Jacob

The audience for this show is wise and good. In a recent episode I noted that a new federal law mandated that teachers now must have a separate college degree for each subject they teach. An absurd requirement that if consistently followed would cause lots of problems around the country. Especially in rural areas.

I said that we don’t need the feds to tell us how to teach our kids. A listener who calls himself Nerdifool, but is neither nerdy nor a fool, wrote to echo my sentiments. Mr. Nerdifool reports that under the new law his wife, a retired grade school teacher, would “have to have a degree in English, Spanish, Math, Physical Education, and History, plus her Bachelors in Education . . .” about 26 years of book larnin’ before she could return to the classroom. Nerdifool says, “What we really need is to require all Congress Men and government bureaucrats to have a Bachelors Degree in Paper Pushing, a Masters Degree in Bullpucky, and a PHD in Bureaucratic Nonsense, plus a Certificate in Red Tape in addition to a Law degree, Masters in Law and a JD. That might slow the tide of crap coming out of Washington. . . .” Not a bad suggestion.

Then there was the listener who wrote in to advise me that there is no such thing as a degree in term limits. See, I had claimed to be pretty much an expert in term limits and political shenanigans even though I possess no advanced degrees in these subjects. Oh . . . I stand corrected.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Every once in a while I come across a report that reminds me, for all the gripes I sometimes have about life in the U.S., how good we’ve always had it here.

This particular story is positive, but it still makes me shake my head. It’s about the elimination of an old law in China requiring a couple to get permission from their employers before they can marry. According to the Associated Press, as soon as the law was dropped, “thousands of couples . . . wed in what, for some, was also a celebration of the retreat of outside interference in their private lives.” Hooray for that. Obviously, under the old way, it was easy for the commie boss to make trouble for young Chinese couples. And also easy for him to make extra cash off of them, in exchange for his stamp of approval.

One new groom says, “We’re really glad that this rule was canceled because it was a real hassle. It makes getting married feel even better.” I don’t doubt it. What could be the justification for such an absurd rule? From the American perspective, none whatever. But the communist government in China has a history of acting as if everything everybody does is their business.

It used to be that all Chinese worked for the government, and the marriage law was a holdover from that time. Things are getting better. The Chinese can now also apply for passports without the permission of employers. In bits and pieces, the Chinese people are slowly gaining more freedom. Let’s hope they get to go all the way.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

In recent years Congress has done all sorts of things against the tobacco industry. And yet they’re also subsidizing the tobacco industry. I am sure that many of the same congressmen who vote to clobber tobacco also vote to give tobacco a handout. That’s the way the tangled web works in Washington. It’s deals and special interests and more deals and more special interests. It’s not the congressman’s money, after all. Just yours and mine. And we’ve got money to burn, apparently.

A few years ago there were droughts in one state and floods in another that spoiled the tobacco crop. This was bad news for the tobacco farmers of those states. So the government bailed them out by buying up the useless tobacco crop. Well, that’s one way to solve your financial problems, I guess. Just get the government to send you a check.

Honey, can you get the government on the phone? That particular bailout cost the government $661 million. It was illegal for the government to even try to find domestic buyers for the useless crop, and it couldn’t find foreign buyers either. So the tobacco has just been moldering in warehouses for four years. And now the bureaucrats have finally decided to burn it all.

The moral of the story is, government, get out of the tobacco-industry harassment business, and get out of the tobacco-industry subsidy business. And get out of the very expensive business of chronically catering to special interests at the expense of the common good. I guess that’s three morals.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Thursday, October 16, 2003

What worries me is that if you did it, government might have to shut down. Okay, so maybe that doesn’t worry me so much.

Here’s the deal. After some high-profile firms were found cooking the books Enron, Worldcom Congress cracked down. Fraud, they said, could not be tolerated. The CEOs of companies would now have to sign off on the accuracy of all the accounting in their firm, under penalty of fine or jail if the accounting turned out to be misleading.

There are a couple problems with the new law. One has to do with treating CEOs as proven fraud artists when the case against them isn’t really proven. If a CEO signs off on accounting that does turn out to include fraud, does that mean the CEO knew about the fraud at the time? Not at all. If the CEO were the accountant, he would be the accountant, not the CEO. He hires other people precisely so other people can handle details he cannot handle.

Anyway, Richard Rahn, an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, suggests that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The requirement of attesting to the “accuracy of the financial statements under penalty of fine or jail” should, he says, be “extended to government officials.” And Congress should freeze the budgets of agencies that fail to satisfy proper audits.

Given all the sloppy accounting we always hear about, from HUD to the Pentagon, if this advice is followed the government would soon have to shut down. Well . . . okay.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Parents must be constantly hounded by the government or else their kids won’t be safe. At least, that’s the theory. As a parent I’ve always wanted my kids to remain alive. And my wife and I have always done our best to keep them alive. So far so good, knock on wood.  This is, in fact, a very widespread approach to parenting, I believe. Yet I’m always reading stuff about how what worked just fine yesterday could kill your baby today.

In a recent column, Vin Suprynowicz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal points out that “do-gooders now busy themselves passing laws under which parents can be jailed for using their own best judgment,” like letting their kids ride in the front seat with them. The newsletter Accident Reconstruction argues that always stashing children in the back seat is a “simplistic band-aide solution fraught with danger.” One problem is that infants in the back seat can distract other drivers and cause accidents that way. Vin also notes the increasing danger of “forgotten-baby syndrome,” in which infants are accidentally left in the car by parents who would never have forgotten the child had it not been banned from riding up front. Babies have died from suffocation that way.

The greatest danger here is the notion that government regulators are better at parenting from a distance than the parents are themselves, right up close. Yet it’s Mom and Dad who must live with the consequences. Reminds me of the time a public official claimed to care as much for a couple’s children as they did, but had nothing to say when the father asked, “Then what are their names?

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Former Congressman Tom Coburn has a new book out all about business as usual in our nation’s Congress. You can read excerpts from the memoir, called Breach of Trust , at the web site limitedgov.org.

In a land of career politicians, Dr. Coburn was a citizen legislator. He pledged to serve only three terms in the Congress; and he never wavered from that commitment, stepping down in 2000 just as promised. The memoir is fascinating. One episode that leaps from the page relates his attempt to get his fellow congressmen to abide by spending caps passed as part of the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement.

In 1999 Coburn met with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott, urging them to step up to the plate and lead. Coburn recalls that while Dennis Hastert at least listened to him on the issue more than he had come to expect from recently-ousted Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Lott was a lot less interested. “Lott looked at me, rested his chin on his hand, and said in his Mississippi baritone drawl, ‘Well, I’ve got an election coming up in 2000. After that we can have good government.’ “It made me sick,” says Coburn. “Here was one of the most powerful men in the country brazenly admitting, in effect, ‘Yes, the government we have now is not good, but I don’t really care as long as I keep getting elected.'” Coburn’s story tells us a lot, if we’re willing to listen. Sadly, though, nothing we didn’t already know.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

They’re pros. They’re experts, They’re real experienced. Of course, they can’t get the job done. But other than that, they sure do know what they’re doing. It’s the job of passing a federal budget. Not that I’m a huge fan of the budget as such. I disagree with about 94 percent of the federal spending. You’d think I’d like budget delays, but I don’t. Because in the crazy world of Washington, delays in the budget like everything else in the end cost us more money.

The budget deadline for the 2004 fiscal year has now passed. So Congress is once again freezing operations at the previous year’s fiscal levels until it figures out spending for the next fiscal year. Congress has passed continuing budget resolutions to keep the spending going. The danger is that the new appropriations will be passed with an omnibus resolution that sandwiches all the spending into one big fat bill. That you’d need a crane to deliver to the White House.

Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union points out that “Once you get into omnibus territory, it’s usually as urgent and rushed as the final two minutes of a football game.” So lawmakers will “approve anyone’s pet project just to get the bill to the president’s desk, and that can be very fiscally dangerous.” What this means, of course, is that there is actually an incentive for the career politician not to get things done so that he can later slip in all kinds of salty pork-barrel spending under the political radar screen. There oughta be a law.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

60 Minutes is known for its hard-hitting investigative journalism. Sometimes it seems to hit harder at business than at government, but recently we’ve seen an exception to that. Mike Wallace talked to businessmen and homeowners under attack for the crime of well, owning property, I guess.

Governments around the country are trying to kick people off their property to make way for others to use the land instead. Simply because these other owners might offer a higher tax base. Their weapon is the concept of eminent domain, which says government can take over your land if it’s for public use and you’re fairly compensated. But the takings Mike Wallace reported on show how this concept is being abused. The process is corrupt on its face. One politician bluntly admitted that his government calls “blighted” any property that they want to take over, whether it’s really blighted or not.

An Ace Hardware owner claimed with a straight face that he was trying to kick out a competitor from his property merely for the common good of the city. Seems that when government acts as their go-between, some people can con themselves into believing that even the worst actions are morally acceptable.

Property owners are fighting back, though, with the help of the libertarian public interest law firm Institute for Justice, which has won some important eminent-domain cases. And in one besieged town, Lakewood, OH, residents opposed to being pushed off their land have gathered enough signatures to post a ballot initiative this November. Good for them, and good luck to them.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

There is more to an election than just the outcome. The process counts too. The dialogue between candidates and the voters. California voters did a lot more than say “Hasta La Vista” to one governor and “Hola!” to another. For one thing, there was plenty of poetic justice.

Schwarzenegger, an immigrant, was attacked for allegedly insensitive opposition to allowing illegal aliens to get drivers’ licenses. This was supposed to hurt him in the Latino community. But doggone it if exit polls didn’t show Latino voters also opposed granting the licenses. Meanwhile, Davis was flip-flopping madly and in vain to gain their support, first vetoing then signing the new law.

There was justice in the fact that Davis, well-known for campaigns where he savaged his opponent, had no opponent but himself in the recall. Still, even Gray Davis sent a great message. His concession speech was in the best tradition of American democracy, as Davis urged those who loved California to accept the verdict. It showed character. I hope the impact of this recall will be felt throughout the country.

Only 17 states have a recall process, and only 24 have some process for voter-sponsored initiatives. California’s process isn’t the perfect model, but citizens should be empowered in every state. After the election, Arnold said, “For the people to win, politics as usual must lose.” Can the people win in your state? Do you have voter recall of officials? Do you have Initiative & Referendum? Well, you should.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.