Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Sometimes it takes money to do things. Say, to collect signatures for a petition. If you want folks to be hitting the sidewalks all day inviting support for a ballot question, you might want to pay them so they can pay the rent while they’re doing this.

Critics of citizen initiative rights often complain about paying people to gather signatures — especially if they’re paid per signature. They even try to outlaw it. If workers are paid per signature, aren’t they motivated to commit fraud? Concoct fake signatures?

Let’s think this through. If the possibility of fraud justifies outlawing a paid activity, how many paid activities could then be outlawed? Well, all of them.

Outlawing fraud and outlawing a freedom that might be abused are two different things. All freedom can be abused. Suppose an envelope-stuffer’s revenue depends on envelopes stuffed per hour. Does he have an “incentive” to work too fast, never bothering to lick the envelopes?

No. It only makes sense to tie pay to productivity. And that doesn’t give you an automatic incentive to do slipshod work.

There are bad guys. But we don’t criminalize all conduct, even the good, because of the possibility of bad. Instead, we make laws against bad conduct.

That’s why the Federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals just struck down an Ohio law that banned paying people based on the number of signatures they collect. The law was declared unconstitutional because it restricts good people from effectively using their First Amendment rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Even the obvious needs defenders.

It is obvious that private property rights are vitally important. It is obvious that markets in property encourage development where development is desired. It is just as obvious that a lot of the progress that has happened in America over its two hundred year-plus history can be accounted to the very fact that we’ve had private property rights.

But, it is also obvious that one can become wealthy by theft, especially if the government is on your side. In localities all across the land, governments take land from some and give it to others. To “develop.”

And it’s not a socialistic scheme concocted by crackpot utopians. It flows right out of the eminent domain clause of the Constitution — as an abuse.

And it has its defenders. They say that, without using eminent domain to engage in big development projects, cities would die.

Nonsense. Right? Yes. And, if real-world logic can’t convince you of the obvious, consult real-world data. A study done by the Institute for Justice — a report called “Doomsday? No Way: Economic Trends and Post-Kelo Eminent Domain Reform” — shows clear evidence that development occurs rather naturally when private property rights are consistently defended. The study compared states with and without such eminent domain abuses.

And it defended the obvious. Freedom is better than theft.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Going to the hospital requires a certain . . . humility, I guess. You get dressed up in flimsy gowns, and if your situation renders you immobile, you no longer remain in charge of what you might normally think of as your bathroom functions.

Dignity is not always easy to maintain.

Now, if I were in the hospital biz, I’d be trying to figure out ways of maintaining and catering to customer — I mean, patient — dignity.

But then, if I were in the hospital biz, it would be as an entrepreneur, not as the head of a government bureau.

Sweden, on the other hand, has what Hillary and Obama other Democrats say they want here: nationalized care.

Now, so does neighboring Norway, and their system is so far in the red, and so chaotic that we should be hearing about it in the news, nightly. But we don’t.

Still, the costs associated with socialized care do leak into the American consciousness. The latest? Sweden’s decision to buy unisex boxer shorts for patients. Come summer, no longer will Swedish patients get to wear underwear designed for their precise anatomy. It saves money, you see.

Yes, they ration underwear!

I remember, years ago, hearing a prominent socialist complaining that, under capitalism, he couldn’t buy his exact size of sock. He had to buy a sock designed for feet sized 10-13.

If he suffers in more socialistic Sweden, he’ll have to place that size sock somewhere else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Don’t laugh.

Let’s try to take seriously the 21-year-old woman in Flagstaff, Arizona, who has changed her last name from “Feather” to “FishingHurts” (one word).

She wanted the name FishingHurts.com, but the judge wouldn’t go along.

Well, the PETA-built website is up and running, and you can read all about her cause. I don’t doubt that fish hurt when they are pulled out of the water by hook or net. But they taste good, and they’re good for you.

Hey, I liked Finding Nemo, but you can anthropomorphize a hundred thousand fish and thousand different stories and I’m still not likely to support animal rights . . . or even the watered-down notion that sympathy should stop me from remaining in the precise part of the food chain that I was born into.

My ancestors were fishermen. I would like to continue their tradition, if only at the eating end of the industry.

Now, Ms. FishingHurts may seem ludicrous or quixotic or merely idiotic to you. But she has a right to her cause, and a right to change her name.

I’m more upset about the judge who disallowed her dot com suffix. Why, I wonder.

As I understand it, under the Ninth Amendment we Americans have the right to call ourselves anything we want, so long as it doesn’t aid in fraud.

No one would look at Ms. FishingHurts.com and think: Why, she’s a website!

She’s a person. With rights.

To make a fool out of herself, if nothing else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.com.

I wear a seat belt when I drive. Why? A belt might save my life in a crash — call me addicted to life. Additionally, I take it as my responsibility to make certain my kids wear their safety belts. And I have the authority to make them do it, whether they want to or not.

I bring all this up because the federal government is now bribing state governments to pass new laws allowing police to stop motorists on the suspicion of not wearing a seat belt. The feds are dangling millions of dollars in aid if states do as they are told.

We already have seat belt laws, but in most states the law doesn’t get primary enforcement, only secondary; meaning, we can’t be stopped for that offense.

I have problems with these laws. Government is not our mother or father. It doesn’t have authority over us. We are supposed to have authority over it.

This latest federal government scheme points out another problem. Why are we being taxed by the politicians furthest away from us — and least vulnerable at the polls — only so they can use that money against us?

As Arkansas State Senator Jerry Taylor said, “It’s kind of like the federal government is bribing us with our own money.”

Only there’s no “kind of.” The federal government is bribing us with our own money.

This must be brought to a screeching halt. Our state officials should not take the bribe. Nor the Feds have enough of our money to offer it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I wish I coulda been there.

That was my reaction to reading about a recent Memphis, Tennessee, Charter Commission meeting. You see, term limits was the big issue.

There had been a lot of support in Memphis for limiting the terms of city politicians. And so the Charter Commission voted five-to-two to recommend the limits, and set it to a vote of the citizenry.

But one opponent broke down in tears. “Weeping and then sobbing,” according to the news report. This was after the commissioner in question charged that the issue of term limits was about nothing other than the current mayor, Willie Hernton. Oh, and “black leadership.” She charged that the whole issue was about race. And then wept more.

Another commissioner dropped his head to the table and said, in support the term limit vote, “I’ve been black longer than you because I’m older than you are.” And he then went on to say that the issue was irrelevant. They had a job to do, and letting citizens decide matters on term limits was part of their job.

What a meeting.

But surely it’s worth noting that term limits aren’t a tool for or against any particular race or constituency. They tend to open up seats for everyone. They are, in Biblical phrasing, “no respecter of persons,” merely limiting the time spent in office by any one politician.

It’s sad to hear of someone weeping over term limits. I’d prefer, well, smiles all around.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The trouble with making government the solution for our medical system’s failures is that government is without a doubt the chief cause of those failures.

Greg Blankenship, founder and president of the Illinois Policy Institute, recently made this very clear in a fascinating column. Blankenship looks at the regulations that beset planning for medical care in his state, Illinois, and gives it a name: Protectionism.

As he makes clear, protectionism isn’t just for busybody politicians in nation-states. State governments, when they heavily regulate an industry, get in on the act, too.

And, like nationwide protectionism, special interest influences come to play, with one or two businesses reaping most of the rewards. Blankenship likened the practice to fast food restaurant regulatory boards getting captured by McDonald’s. Suddenly, Burger King outlets can’t get permission to expand.

Economists have been writing on this for 50 years or more. Regulatory capture. And in Illinois it means that a hospital in Joliet hasn’t been allowed to add beds to its mental health and OB-GYN clinics for years now. Nearby hospitals in Aurora, Joliet, Bolingbrook and Morris oppose the project.

So people in Joliet suffer.

And no doubt blame insufficiencies on doctors, or nurses’ unions, or markets in general.

Yet the real blame rests solely on the state of Illinois and its Health Facilities Planning Board. A sad case, yes. And a sick system.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Are America’s politicians resigned to endless budget deficits and rising debt?

Well, Comptroller General David M. Walker isn’t. As the designated gadfly of the U.S. government’s flaky finances, he’s done a bang-up job. Or, at least, that’s what my accounting friends all say.

But now he has resigned. Effective March 12, he will no longer serve as Comptroller General, or work as the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

He still hopes to serve as gadfly, though.

You see, he’s heading up the newly founded Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which will seek to educate citizens, businesses, and maybe even that unlikeliest class of uneducated numbskulls, our political class, as to the real dangers we face with continuous deficit spending.

Pete Peterson has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the 165th richest man in America. Now he’s investing over a billion dollars in the new foundation. His first big coup is getting David Walker on board.

Walker says that the move away from government and to full-time critic of government will be for the best. He understandably felt constricted in his old role. As a member of the government, you cannot go on bad-mouthing your bosses endlessly, even if they deserve it. Especially if they deserve it.

Walker also says that he has met all the goals in office that he had set for himself. Save one: “Congress to address the nation’s large and growing fiscal and other key sustainability challenges before a crisis hits.”

Look for more from Walker and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. And more about deficits, debt, and our uncontrolled Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.