Common Sense with Paul Jacob

What makes America so different from the rest of the world? Our country began with the declaration that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that these rights cannot be taken away because they belong to us as a birthright not a privilege granted by government.

We’re understandably a bit perplexed by the dangers we face today. Some politicians are trotting out different schemes that in years past were shot down for good reason such as violating the Constitution. Some columnists have even proposed the use of torture against suspected terrorists.

For goodness’ sakes, that’s not exactly the American way! And President Bush now wants military tribunals for suspected terrorists, even those suspects residing in the U.S. Some of us may be tempted to think that we can both keep our freedoms and still get greater security by trampling on the freedoms of immigrants or non-citizens. But human rights belong to all human beings, not just Americans. Our recognition of that fact is this country’s reason for being. When we deny other human beings the freedoms that we ourselves claim by birthright, we necessarily undercut the basis for our own freedom. Furthermore, such moves undermine the battle to win the hearts and minds of good people throughout the world.

How we treat people really does matter. We’re the good guys. Remember? Oh, I know the pseudo-sophisticated armchair world leaders will tell us that we have to break some eggs to make omelets, but I don’t buy it. And good guys don’t finish last; we finish first.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I’ve said before that we should take care to keep the “same America” after the 9/11 attacks that we had before the attacks. Fight back, yes but without losing our liberties.

One bad idea is to impose a national ID card. This card would have your name and address and probably thumbprint and social security number, too. Maybe even a strand of your DNA eventually. Such a card would treat people as criminal suspects just for being well, in the same country as people who really are bad guys. And the card would be linked to a new national database. This database would make it even harder to protect our privacy against identity thieves or renegade bureaucrats. And it would bring us closer to the kind of society where you always have to present your identity papers.

Given all the dangers, it’s disturbing that even some people known for supporting freedom and civil liberties have floated trial balloons about things like a national ID card for innocent people, electronic surveillance of innocent people, etc. Responding blindly to fear, some have published articles saying, “Hey, maybe this surveillance without search warrants won’t be so horrible after all,” without explaining how the liberty lost will save us from terrorism.

Back in the 1980s during a cabinet-level meeting with the President somebody in the Reagan administration proposed a national ID, too. But then policy advisor Martin Anderson said, wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper just to tattoo everybody with a number? Everybody got the point. The idea died. It should die now, too. . . . Be seeing you.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Have you heard about the latest virus? It’s the most recent strain of a very old infection. The scientific name for it is Stupidus Bureaucratus OSHA.

OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It’s their job to make sure workers in steel plants don’t jump into vats of boiling steel and workers in offices don’t peer too closely at their monitors. Now they’re worried about postal employees, but not quite in the way you might think. So far, anthrax has killed two postal workers, and spores have been found at several facilities. It’s understandable that many workers want to take precautions, like wearing gloves and masks. But OSHA says whoa slow down there! What about proper training, people?

True story. The postal service has purchased millions of spore-filtering masks for its employees. But OSHA says, don’t dare wear them until you’ve had proper training. Proper training? I’d always thought it was a matter of stretching the rubber band and pulling the mask over your face. But even if there is a special mask-wearing protocol to follow, there’s obviously no reason for delay here.

Philip K. Howard is author of the book, The Death Of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America. As Howard puts it, “using [these] masks imperfectly for a while is a whole lot better than not wearing them at all.” Mr. Howard is correct. No doubt OSHA has backed down by the time you hear this. Or, at least there have been no mass arrests of untrained postal employees. But jeez, somebody inoculate those bureaucrats and fast.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Respect is a two-way street. We mustn’t disparage the rights of anyone living in this country just because he may share superficial traits with a bad guy. If a killer quotes the Declaration of Independence or the Koran as he detonates his bomb, and you also quote the Declaration or the Koran, that doesn’t make you a suspect.  By the same token, we mustn’t disparage the rights of Americans to speak out against the massacre of 9/11, and to express moral support for their fellow Americans.

Too obvious to bother stating? Maybe. But when Aaron Petitt hung a poster on his locker at a high school in Ohio, he got suspended for being “insensitive” to foreign students. The poster showed an eagle shedding a tear over the World Trade Center. You have to wonder: who could be offended? Students in favor of the attack? Thankfully, after a lot of controversy, the school suspended Aaron’s suspension. And at a university in Florida, employees got into hot water for displaying stickers saying, “Proud to Be an American.” They were told: get rid of the stickers. At San Diego State University, Arabic-speaking student Zewdalem Kebede overheard other Arabic-speaking students expressing delight in the terrorist attacks. Kebede started arguing with them. You guessed it. The school rebuked Kebede for “abusive behavior” and warned him not to do it again. Only in America, folks!

The moral of the story? Stand up for what you believe in, even if some obtuse bureaucrat doesn’t like it.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s a debate raging in Congress over whether the security personnel doing the screening and scanning at airports should be federal employees or just supervised by federal employees.

I think the folks in Congress are missing the boat. They seem to think that they can legislate a system whereby fallible human beings will always catch every terrorist. Everyone makes mistakes. What makes us think that putting the government in charge will usher in a 100 percent success rate in rooting out terrorists? Certainly not the government’s own track record. No matter who supervises whom, we cannot guarantee perfect safety. The very notion is utopian.

Just the other day, with all the heightened tension, a man accidentally carried a gun aboard a plane in his briefcase. It’ll happen again. We can’t search tens of thousands of passengers to find the needle in the haystack. To catch their flights these days, passengers have to arrive 2 or 3 hours early one big reason many are deciding not to fly at all.

Instead, airports should do better background checks of airport workers, build more secure cockpit doors, use armed sky marshals for as many flights as possible and allow armed pilots. Perhaps the biggest safety feature is free: Our new realization that as passengers we must be ready to defend ourselves. That means big trouble for any terrorist who gets past airport security.

The politicians in Washington can’t pass a law guaranteeing we’ll be safe and secure. I want real security; I’m not willing to fly Utopian Air.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Approval ratings for our elected officials have jumped to the highest point in memory. That’s not surprising, given the shock and terror of 9/11 and the wartime conditions. But while many of our officials are serving admirably, Congress doesn’t deserve the same merit badge.

First, there’s the matter of how Senator Daschle dissed the house. When deadly anthrax threatened the capitol, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Speaker Denny Hastert apparently reached an agreement to close the capitol. But then the Senators changed their minds and even attacked the House as some kind of sissies. I don’t think that kind of petty backstabbing is very statesmanlike. And Congress has chosen this time when we’re a tad preoccupied to throw money at every special interest under the sun. Gone are the triple-digit surplus and the so-called Social Security surplus they’d promised never to touch. Now we’re running $50 billion in deficit. Some emergency spending is unavoidable, but not nearly as much as we’ve seen. And to top it all off, Congress is stealing yet another pay raise! Now they’ll rake in $150,000 a year.

Even as people face the uncertainty of sons and daughters in harm’s way, soaring unemployment and tough times ahead, the politicians are flocking to feather their own nests. In the face of terror, the American people have risen to the occasion. We will remain the same America that has so often been a beacon of liberty and hope to the world. But, unfortunately, the same America has the same old Congress. One thing that sure should change.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Is personal privacy the same thing as terrorism? You’d think so, based on some of the legislation now going through Congress. Take tax havens, for instance. Tax havens are countries where you enjoy a little lower tax rate and a little more privacy.

Before the horrific events of 9/11, the Bush Administration didn’t really favor the idea of an international crackdown on international tax havens. Plenty of other officials here and around the world did favor such a crackdown, though, but not because they were trying to stop terrorism. I mean, come on. Just because you care about your privacy, that doesn’t make you a terrorist. But some lawmakers in the Congress are using the current crisis to obscure such fine doctrinal points. They are lumping so-called “money laundering” provisions in with legitimate anti-terrorist measures. These tacked-on provisions would clamp down on international tax competition and make it easier for countries so inclined to hike their taxes.

What’s it to you? After all, maybe you’re pretty sure you won’t be affected by any of the new legislation, however ill-gotten it may be. The problem is, once that door is open, it’s very hard to close. Other forms of privacy that you regard as more important may be next on the chopping block. Maybe you’re at risk already.

Our representatives shouldn’t be deviously violating our trust by tacking controversial legislation onto bills that pertain to something else altogether . . . especially when it’s life and death. And you never know, earning the public’s trust might come in handy someday.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

O, the humanity! Again and again, I’ve talked about the unfair process of congressional redistricting. Why won’t they listen?

Here’s the deal: Every ten years, using the new census numbers, brand new political boundary lines are fashioned. These new lines are used to elect representatives at the state and congressional levels. The process has been hijacked by politicians who draw lines that benefit the incumbents. This is all done very scientifically using party affiliation, voting trends, race, income, etc. Recently a congresswoman out in California admitted that the politicians there were bribing the top line-maker with $20,000 per district. But it’s never enough.

Incumbents have come up with yet another method for derailing that most evil of democratic happenings: political competition. Seems congressional lines are not only being drawn to stack the deck in favor of incumbents, they’re also being drawn to cut out likely challengers of the incumbent. In Illinois, wiggly new district lines just happen to mysteriously eliminate potential opponents of incumbents like Congressmen Phil Crane, Tim Johnson, Bobby Rush, and Luis Gutierrez. Sure, this can happen once in a while, by coincidence but this often? And in Congressman Crane’s case it was three separate challengers who got deleted by the re-mapping.

Reforms in Washington state and Arizona take redistricting out of the hands of the politicians and guide it by non-political criteria. It’s about time we did this everywhere.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I think you remember how Congress and the President pass so-called “continuing resolutions” whenever they can’t agree on a federal budget. It’s not hard. You just take the five minutes you need to conduct a roll call and you do it.

That’s why it’s so annoying that Congress says it’s been “too busy” lately to renew a ban on Internet taxes. They are using the admittedly very serious current crisis as an excuse to let the moratorium lapse. As things stand now, there’s no sales tax on your internet service account and no tax on goods you buy over the Internet that are shipped from another state. Some retail stores who don’t do mail-order complain about this, saying it’s unfair competition. But the solution to being taxed too much is to get your own taxes reduced, not try to make sure somebody else gets socked really hard, too.

Commentators say that states probably won’t rush right away to impose lots of new Internet taxes. But that could change fast. There are lots of budget crunches now around the country. And once the foot is in the door, it will be very hard to get that door closed again. “This is no time for Congress to permit a new onslaught of taxes on the consumer, or on the tech sector,” says Representative Christopher Cox, Republican of California. True, Mr. Cox. In fact, there’s never really a good time to sucker-punch the economy. The Internet is a growing, but struggling, sector. And if you want lots of exciting stuff to keep happening there, you can’t start slapping on the shackles.
So let’s tell our congressmen to renew that moratorium on taxing the net.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

These are trying times. It is during such times that we need plenty of well, common sense. And kindness . . . as antidotes to prejudice and fear.

Like you, I’ve heard the reports of Muslim Americans and those of Middle Eastern appearance who have been harassed by other Americans: People responding to the horrific events of September 11th with prejudice and fear. I was saddened by those reports. But I was also heartened to learn of the outpouring of support and concern for those targeted. Hazim Barakat is store manager of the Old Town Islamic Bookstore in Alexandria, not far from where I live. Not long after the terrorist attacks, somebody hurled a couple of bricks through the front window of his store. Attached to the missiles were crudely written racist remarks.

Barakat was stunned and angry. But then he received 15 bouquets of flowers and dozens of cards from well-wishers. A local businessman paid for a new window. Rabbis and priests dropped by to express their sympathy and support. “The people in the neighborhood were so nice you don’t believe,” Barakat told the Washington Post. “This is like another family I have. This is my big family. I want to thank everybody.” “You have to give the credit to the people who are keeping a positive, friendly attitude,” said another Muslim man. “That’s what makes America great.” Such acts of fellowship have been repeated many, many times, all over the country. It makes you think: we’re going to make it. We’ll survive the blow, and we’ll remain who we are.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.