Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Would you say it’s a big mystery when somebody gives up fame and fortune to coach at a local high school?

Not in the case of Steve Cyphers. Cyphers, a former athlete, went on to become a big-time sportscaster for ESPN. He was popular with the viewers, pulled down a six-figure salary, reported on a lot of exciting games. Then Cyphers shocked many of his colleagues by throwing in the towel.

He took a 90 percent pay cut and took a job coaching for a school near where he lived. He wants to spend more time with his family, less time on the road. He says he had a great time working for ESPN, but just wants to do something different now. Many at ESPN were shocked, but not those who knew him best.

One colleague, anchor Dan Patrick, didn’t bat an eyelash. “If you told me Steve was going to try to find Sasquatch, or he was going to go meet with the Dalai Lama, or he was going to go run with the bulls in Pamplona, I wouldn’t be surprised by any of that,” says Patrick. “That’s the kind of person he is.”

In other words, Cyphers keeps his eye on the ball. He knows that life is short, and that you have to consider what’s the best use of this brief time. And what it takes to be happy depends on a lot of things. Not just money and fame things nobody knows more about than you.

As Steve Cyphers puts it, “Things work for me if I make everything a game. And right now, my game is on.” Slam-dunk, Steve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The government tells us what to think. About everything from what to eat to whether we should smoke to how we should have sex.

Now they want to tell us what not to think.

Some people believe astronauts never made it to the moon. NASA is worried about this and is spending at least $15,000 of our money to respond. A trivial amount when you consider all the billions the government wastes on this and that. But it’s still ridiculous.

NASA has a good article at their web site refuting common fallacies about the moon walks. And that’s fine. But you don’t have to pay a writer $15,000 to get one good article. Or if you do, I want some of that.

Look, I’ll refute this for free as many others have already. No way NASA could have paid off all the crewmen and media and amateur astronomers and so forth that would have had to participate in a conspiracy this large.

Bottom line: there is plenty of evidence men have landed on the moon, zero evidence of a vast conspiracy enlisting millions of people who later got whacked to cover it up. I’m sure that many of us need instructions and that the people in government have all the answers. But does government really need to spend our money refuting all the strange things that some people believe?

That’s a trillion-dollar-a-year expenditure if it’s a dime. The real problem is that some people are illogical and have a great longing to believe fantastic claims. Can’t cure that with tax dollars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The theory says there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.

An appendix to that theory says that once you’re dead, you still get taxed or, at least, your heirs get taxed. And now I think you’ve got to add an addendum to the appendix. Something about how they’ll still come after you about parking tickets, even if you’re dead and your car got stolen months before it was ticketed.

Death is supposed to have a certain finality to it. But nothing is final when the bureaucratic mentality is at work. A guy named Joe Bria has been trying to settle his mom’s estate. In the middle of all the millions of details he had to deal with, he got a notice from the City of Chicago that his mom had a parking ticket. But the ticket had been issued three months after the car was stolen. Maybe the thief should have to pay the ticket?

Well, that’s not so hard to believe some computer churning out an automatic notification. What’s hard to believe is that Chicago’s Department of Revenue wouldn’t just kill the ticket once the situation had been explained to them. Joe thought the combination of the police report and death certificate would take care of things. But the city told him, no, only the registered owner can protest a ticket.

Well, I’d just love to comment on all this really, I would but it’s . . . it’s too big for me. You need a true comic genius to handle this one. So I’m turning it over to Jerry Seinfeld.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Senator Trent Lott opposes term limits. I support them. Lott is in a lot of trouble. You may wonder what those troubles have to do with term limits.

Well, a lot. When I read what the Majority Leader said at Senator Thurmond’s birthday party, about how Thurmond should have won his segregationist presidential campaign in 1948 and that the country would have been a heap sight better off, I thought Lott needed to go.

Go from the office of Majority Leader of the Senate, from his Senate seat just go. Then I realized he might have been joking. I wanted to be fair. I wanted to hear him say he was just kidding, or something.

At first, Lott said nothing much. But the media swirl increased and finally Lott was forced to speak out. He apologized for, “hurtful words.” Hey, don’t blame the words.

Was Lott making a joke that he now views as less than funny? Or was he serious in supporting Thurmond’s ’48 campaign for racial segregation? Lott says no. However, he does now say that he supports affirmative action. Didn’t before. Does now.

Well, I oppose affirmative action, also known as racial preferences. Martin Luther King wanted folks to be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Looks like right now, Trent Lott favors absolutely anything he needs to favor to remain in power.

Hey, I told you I would make the connection to term limits, didn’t I?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Political comedian and provocateur Bill Maher has made some very interesting comments about his friend, the political commentator and provocateur Ann Coulter.

Now, heaven knows either one of these folks can annoy the heck out of me. On the other hand, when they’re on my side, hey, great to have ’em. Because you know they speak their minds, aren’t going waffle all over the place to appease a perceived audience.

And Maher says, “What I love about Ann Coulter is that she’s sort of a version of myself in that she absolutely never pulls a punch. Even when she’s saying something that I think is outrageous, it’s what she really believes and she doesn’t back off of it. That is what I find so refreshing and, unfortunately, so unique. I can’t name five other people who do that, who don’t calculate before they speak. If she believes that nuns should carry guns, then she’ll just say that. . . .

“She’s not afraid to get booed. You know how wonderful a quality I find that? Not afraid to get a little booing. . . . And if [people] don’t agree with you, what ‘s the worst that can happen? . . . I experienced what the worst that could happen. You get fired. So what? You go on.”

Gosh, wouldn’t it be great if all our political leaders lived by the same principles when they speak, they’re gonna just tell you what they really think? My goodness, the voters would know what their choices are. And even if you didn’t get re-elected, at least you could sleep at night.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

They’re getting there. Working as hard as they can. Don’t worry. If you order stuff over the Internet, they’ll get to you eventually. Or so they hope.

Today you can still buy stuff from out of state through the Internet without paying the sales tax that people in that other state have to pay. But the states want to fix that. Taxing people outside their state is good, they think. So officials from some thirty states got together recently to talk about a way to make it easier to collect sales taxes online. They call it the Streamlined Sales Tax Project.

Streamline getting the tax from you, and getting the data about you from the vendors. Once that’s done, they can load the bazooka, take aim, and fire. Part of the plan is to bribe vendors with part of the tax take so that they’re happier about socking you with the tax.

Critics say that larger vendors, with outlets in may of the states, would make more money off this bribe than smaller vendors. Big companies would also have an easier time handling all the complexities involved. Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform, worries about privacy. He says, “Whether I’m buying prescription drugs or sex toys online, someone is going to have to keep track of what I bought so they can figure out how to tax it. How do you do this without massive violations of privacy?”

Oh, it’s a complicated project. Lot of variables. But they’re working as hard as they can. Don’t worry they’ll get to you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The journalist Steve Lopez tells a story that now I’m going to tell. Just because I like it so much.

It’s about perfection. Or rather, a healthy attitude about the goal of perfection. It’s about a teacher and sculptor Lopez knows called Armand Mednick, someone who was “adored” by all the students at the grade school attended by Lopez’s son.

When Lopez goes to see him, Armand’s wife, Anita, tells him that the great man was out in back making a pot. The next time Lopez comes, same thing. He’s out in the back making a pot. So Lopez asks the sculptor how often he spends his time making pots. “Often as I can,” Armand says.

Lopez asks, “What do you do with all the pots?” A

nd Armand says, “I just keep discarding them until I make the perfect pot.”

“And how long does it take to make the perfect pot?”

“I don’t know yet. . . . So far, it’s been 40 years.”

Now, this is a swell story not because it shows the great sculptor being “humble” but because it shows him being ambitious. Nobody can spend his whole life trying to get better and better at making just one thing, a thing he always throws away. And of course, Mr. Mednick does not make pots for a living, he teaches and sculpts.

But his pot-making is a great metaphor, a fabulous metaphor. It’s about always striving to be better at what you do, no matter what it may be. Don’t you wish the clerk at the local supermarket had that same attitude?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s a strange thing going on at airports these days. It’s called treating everybody like a criminal. And don’t try to object, either, because then you’ll be treated like even more of a criminal.

That’s what happened to Adrienne Bundy. She objected to being searched and apparently was belligerent about it. “Belligerent” is a code word for “upset,” as in “upset about having one’s constitutional rights violated.”

As you may know, over the past year women in particular have lodged many complaints about abusive searches under the new airport security regime. See, brassieres often have a little metal in them. Anyway, Ms. Bundy objected and Ms. Bundy was arrested.

Now, the worst they should have done to her was prohibit her from going on the plane. All she did was refuse to be searched, after all. Nobody claims she slapped around a security guard.

But they did give her a way out, sort of. The judge would dismiss the charge of “aggravated disorderly conduct” if Bundy would appear at the airport and wear a sign for two hours a sign saying, “I am appearing here because I refused to comply with airport security.”

At first it seemed she would agree to that ritual humiliation, to escape a possibly worse punishment. But Bundy has changed her mind, and refused to do that too. Looks like the case will go to trial. All I can say is, good for her that she refused to submit herself to such sick and obnoxious treatment. And good for the rest of us too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Another dang-fool proposal by a master-planning columnist. Seems that a guy by the name of Jack Kelly has noticed what everybody notices if you fly at all: it’s torture now. Security procedures have become incredibly ludicrous and petty. I agree. If I have to take off my shoes one more time, I swear I’m gonna stop changing my socks.

Our friendly neighborhood columnist says, “I avoid flying if at all possible, not because I’m afraid of terrorists, but because I won’t put up with the hassles. It frosts me that the hassles do little to make me more safe.”

His solution? Increase the quality of airport screening by reducing the proportion of morons. Myself I don’t think that’s quite fair. The problems have more to do with bureaucratic lunacy from above than lunacy at the ground level.

And this guy would implement his solution by . . . imposing a draft. The only way to get as many competent people as we need as fast as we need them is “to draft them,” Kelly says. “Screening responsibilities should be turned over to the Army National Guard, and there should be a draft to fill the positions. A 15-month period of conscription would provide a year of service after three months of basic training.

Draftees would be rewarded for their service with G.I. Bill benefits.” Great, less freedom. So not only would we have to endure the torture of being screened, we’d also have to impose this torture on others? How would I be able to sleep at night?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Jamie Escalante may be the most famous high school teacher in America. In the 1970s and 80s, Escalante developed a calculus program at Garfield High School in Los Angeles. The program was dramatized in a 1983 movie, Stand and Deliver .

Reason magazine reports that in 1979, Escalante taught just five students in his new calculus class even though such a small class was against the rules. Only two passed the Advanced Placement exam. By 1982, 18 students passed.

The Educational Testing Service thought that was so much success that it was suspicious, so they had the students take the test again. All those who did, passed. But such success was no guarantee that Escalante would enjoy a free hand in training other math students.

A new principal came to Garfield, one who was less sympathetic to the calculus program. Some of Escalante’s colleagues were jealous of his fame. A union at the school objected to the growing size of Escalante’s popular classes. Finally, frustrated by bureaucratic hampering, Escalante left the school in 1991. Garfield’s calculus program declined.

What happened? Part of the problem is the public school system, which is more of a bureaucracy than a market. Markets reward success. Markets are ecstatic about success. Markets pay you lots of money for success. Bureaucrats, by contrast, often regard success as too much of a boat-rocker. Makes the class sizes too large. Gives you too many customers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.