Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Happy Birthday, Senator Thurmond. The Senator from South Carolina is turning 100 years old.

My goodness, a hundred years old and still serving the people in the United States Senate. That’s more than a millennium in dog years. Is this guy a career politician, or what? I gotta wonder, though has Senator Thurmond really been serving the people by serving so long? If Senator Thurmond hasn’t lost touch just a little, wouldn’t he realize he hasn’t quite been up to the job lately?

Now, I don’t for a second suggest that the good Senator hasn’t been working to serve the people these past 50 years just that he seems more concerned about getting into the Guinness Book of World Records. Career politicians say they have to keep clinging to office so their constituents can keep the clout. But no one would suggest that South Carolina’s fortunes in the Congress will be devastated because of Mr. Thurmond’s immenent departure. Thurmond had to give up his chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee because he could not physically keep up with rigors of the job.

For many years the polls have shown that South Carolinians wish Thurmond would retire, but they’ve been too nice to fire the guy. Thank goodness, Senator Thurmond chose not to run for reelection. I congratulate you, Senator, for having served so long without ever being indicted. But Senator, don’t you think you should have been term-limited quite awhile ago?

Senator? Hello? I say, Senator, can you hear me? Yoo-hoo! Oh, those career politicians never listen. . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Coach Greg Rota could have let it go. But he didn’t. He didn’t need to win that badly. What he needed was to be honorable.

Rota coaches the golf team at Westborough High School in Massachusetts. His team had just won a state championship. They had just gotten the trophy. All the kids were posing for the photographers and enjoying the moment. Meanwhile, the opposing team from Woburn High School the losing team was already on the bus back home.

Then Rota discovered something a little funny on the score card. Something to do with the action at the 18th hole. Instead of letting it slide, he decided to investigate. He learned from one of his own players that a score at that hole had indeed been incorrectly recorded. The correction meant that Woburn had won after all. Rota’s team had lost.

Woburn senior captain Rob Pruyne told reporters, “Watching them roll around with the trophy kind of got to me. But then my coach called me last night and told me we had won. . . . [W]hen I heard it was their own coach that discovered the mistake, I couldn’t believe it. . . . It takes a lot of courage to do something like that.”

Why didn’t Coach Rota keep his doubts to himself?

“You can’t go through life that way,” he says. “[Woburn] worked just as hard as we did. It belonged to them. It wasn’t ours to take.”

By being honorable, Greg Rota has given his players an example far more valuable than any trophy. Coach Rota, you are a winner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It’s informational. Even if you lose, it tells you something.

That’s what Dane Waters of the Initiative and Referendum Institute says about the initiative process. People tend to be a little conservative about change. But even if your ballot initiative loses, at least you can get a discussion going about an issue. And maybe next time around, after a little more debate, public opinion will shift in your direction.

Taxes were one major issue this past election. Several efforts to increase taxes went down to defeat. In Northern Virginia, voters killed a half-cent sales tax increase. Meanwhile, measures to limit taxation succeeded. In Washington state, voters enacted a law to limit vehicle license fees and to require the consent of the voters for any new transportation taxes. In Georgia, voters increased the tangible personal tax exemption.

One of the most sweeping tax-break measures was defeated, however. That was the initiative to eliminate the state income tax in Massachusetts also known as Taxachusetts. Only 45 percent of the voters were in favor. But it was such a radical proposal, nobody expected anywhere near that high a Yes vote. So it seems that anti-tax sentiment in Massachusetts is much more prevalent than people had thought.

And up until now, that really had no way of being channeled politically except through a citizen initiative. It’s not like the career politicians in Boston were ever going to eliminate the income tax all by themselves. Yes, even a failed initiative tells you something about the electorate. Interesting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s good news about Idaho, and there’s bad news.

First the bad news. The power grabbers pulled a dirty trick and it paid off barely. With over 400,000 votes cast, the career politicians won by just 1800 votes. At stake was Proposition Two, a referendum that would have repealed the Idaho politicians’ unilateral repeal of Idaho’s term limit law.

Although Idaho voters have affirmed term limits again and again since first enacting them in 1994, Idaho’s career politicians are desperate to keep their jobs no matter what. We don’t have exit polls to consult, but it’s likely that not all voters were fully clear on what they were voting for. A major campaign theme of the politicians was that a “yes” vote would “Stop Special Interests from Running Idaho,” the exact opposite of the truth. But an even worse obstacle for the term limits side was the unclear wording of the ballot question itself.

The ballot seemed to present two opposite interpretations of what a “yes” vote would do. Long version, one thing. Short version, another thing.

The good news is that dirty tricks are no substitute for good ideas and good policy. In other locales around the country, attempts to turn back the clock on term limits were roundly routed this election season. But activists in Idaho won’t let this setback discourage them for long. They’re selling democracy, and the voters are with them. Idaho’s career politicians will be term-limited.

Count on it. It’s not a matter of “whether,” but “when.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What an election! Close races for governor and senator. It kept me tuned in late watching the election news.

Yet, when it came to the House of Representatives, the one body our Founders said should most closely reflect the sentiments of the people, well, election day was a bore. The reelection rate was 98 percent once again. Only eight incumbents defeated. And four of those brought down by other incumbents, thanks to redistricting.

When congressional districts are re-drawn, as they are every ten years, there’s typically a tad more competition for House seats in the next election cycle. But not this year. For instance, in New Jersey only one of 13 congressional races was won with less than 60 percent of the vote.

The story is the same in other states. In California, only Gary Condit’s House seat was really up for grabs. Fact is, in House races, incumbency dominates. The solution is term limits, but one partial answer is redistricting. At present, politicians in the state legislatures draw districts with a view to reelecting all the incumbents. Districts are skewed to the Republicans or Democrats to be “safe.” Safe from voters and safe from competition, that is.

The answer is to take politicians completely out of the process. Iowa has set up a non-political commission to draw their congressional districts and has quickly become more competitive. In nearly half the states, such a change can be made over the heads of the politicians, through the citizen initiative process. Let’s roll.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What were voters trying to tell Washington in this year’s election?

Boy, there’s been a lot of debate about that. Yet, whatever message we voters were trying to send, the message our U.S. Senators received was . . . well, a little garbled.

They must have heard that it’s a good time to grab another pay raise. Just had an election; two whole years before the next one; better grab more dough while the grabbing’s good.

And can ya blame ’em? The paupers are only making $150,000 smackers a year. Over the last few years, Congress has been raising its pay steadily. Thumbing its nose at the pay raise restrictions in the 27th Amendment to the Constitution and giving themselves what they call “cost of living adjustments.”

Cost of living? With their lavish medical benefits, ample perks and phenomenal pensions, congressmen do pretty well for themselves, even aside from their pay. Which, now that they’ve raised it yet again, will be $154,700 dollars a year.

During the boom years of the 90s Congress rationalized all the self-pay-raises by reference to their wizardry in getting the economy going. Apparently, our businessmen and women are simply bystanders. But, now that the federal government is deficit spending again big time what’s the excuse now?

Well, this is not a hard case to solve. They did it because they felt like it. And because they don’t feel very vulnerable to you, the voter. Or maybe it’s a cry for help: They’re trying to let us know there’s still an awfully big swamp to drain.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I wish there were more disagreement in the world.

Or anyway, I wish there were more disagreements of the kind Larry Elder has with term limits. In a recent column Elder takes issue with Ed Crane. Crane runs the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC. Elder notes that according to Crane, “term limits, among other things, prevent career politicians from becoming entrenched establishment figures no longer responsive to their constituents. I argue that we already possess term limits elections and that, right or wrong, people deserve to vote for politicians they want.”

But then Elder wonders whether the case of Senator Joseph Lieberman supports Crane’s case or his own. Lieberman recently criticized the President for wanting to “make his tax cut permanent, which would cost $4 trillion. That’s not spending restraint,” says Lieberman. “Tax cuts are spending.”

And Elder says, “To call Lieberman’s definition of ‘tax cut’ doublespeak insults George Orwell. Let’s call it Potomac psychosis.” According to Elder, Lieberman’s thinking “reveals a strange mindset, in which our money magically becomes his. And returning that money, or not taking it in the first place, becomes a ‘cost’ to government.”

Elder asks, “Did Lieberman always think the citizens’ money belonged to government, or, as term-limits proponents believe, did Lieberman’s length of time in Washington change him from normal to Potomac-challenged?”

Good question!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

My daughter is allergic to peanuts. Yet I have no desire to stop all other kids from eating peanuts.

Why am I telling you all this? How could such a nutty possibility even come up? Well, some grade schools are banning peanuts in school because a few kids can get sick from it. Schools in at least 10 states are issuing such edicts.

I guess there’s a desire to help kids here. But if your child has this allergy, why not simply make it known to the school that he or she must avoid peanuts and peanut butter? And why not also tell your kid to avoid peanuts and peanut butter? It’s called self-responsibility.

If you’re worried that the kid might bungle it and get sick, you could also ask the school to keep the appropriate medicine on hand. At my daughter’s school, a teacher tried to make her eat candy with peanuts in it. My daughter steadfastly refused.

So I think the kids can handle this. I’m not so sure about our schools. You’d think teachers would take a kid’s word for it if the kid is refusing candy. But the mentality these days is that you have to go by the rule, come hell or high water, no matter what the rule is. If the rule is kids must have peanuts, then you cram it down their throats. Or else you make peanut-eating a crime, even if most kids have no problem with it. Never mind the long and worthy tradition of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Speaking of allergic reactions, I have a terrible allergic reaction to this kind of zero-common-sense mentality. Maybe some of the kids do, too.

There’s a new principle of jurisprudence now. Call it the “If you sue, they pay” principle. If something bad happens to you, just sue, and get a lot of money.

I hope this doesn’t become the law of the land. But we sure seem to be headed that way. If smokers can sue and win against tobacco companies, even though they knew all along that cigarette smoking could be hazardous to their health, why not sue McDonald’s because you’re fat, as someone is doing now?

He’ll never win that suit, you say? Well, maybe not. But in Manhattan, a woman who fell over a broken parking sign was awarded $21 million.

And how about this? In West Virginia, a guy named Dustin Bailey spent a night in a bar and somehow ended up under a parked truck that was delivering supplies to a restaurant. When the unwitting driver returned to his vehicle and pulled forward, the man was killed. Now Bailey’s mother is suing the driver, the owner of the truck, the owner of the restaurant, and the owner of the bar because they failed to keep her son alive. She wants a measly $350,000. Nothing in her legal filings, though, about whether her son had anything to do with drinking himself into a stupor.

We’ve got an explosion of ludicrous litigation. And all too often, if you sue, you win, whether the defendant is truly responsible or not. Great for the folks who collect the judgments, I guess. But it’s you and me who end up paying. And who do we sue for that?

Which career politician told the world, back in February of 2000, that he was “all for” term limits “right now,” but that “in ’04 when I’m term-limited I’ll probably be scraping my nails across the desk as they drag me out” . . . ? Who said that term limits, quote, “presented Ohio with a struggle between the past and the fast-approaching future”?

Yep, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, just before term limits on the previous speaker paved the way for Householder. But now he has changed his mind. Thanks to term limits, there are 45 freshman in the Ohio House now.

The problem? They’re too naive. They think the taxpayers’ hard-earned money is something to be frugal about. “I don’t understand budgets,” says one of those Gomer-Pyle-type freshmen, State Representative Jim Carmichael. Carmichael reports: “I was talking with a fellow member about an item, and he said, ‘Well, it’s only $104 million.’ . . . I thought ten bucks was a lot of money!”

Well, so do I, Mr. Carmichael. And if term limits can foster the novel insight that $100 million should not be spent lightly, that’s just fine by me. Householder disagrees. Now that he’s the Speaker, he wants to hold onto the House by hosing term limits by slapping another four years onto his tenure.

Next thing you know, Householder and his buddies will want to trash term limits altogether. We support term limits because we actually like democracy. We want that “fast-approaching future” Mr. Householder used to be eager to meet . . . more than once every couple of decades.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.