Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Smile, you’re on candid camera! If you live in Tampa, Florida, anyway.

The Tampa City Council approved legislation to install cameras in a popular night-life district of the city. The technology was tested at the Super Bowl. The cameras digitize your face and transmit the image to a computer which matches your face with those of wanted criminals. It’s a cheap and easy electronic way of dragging everybody before a police lineup whether they like it or not. Tampa citizens are up in arms. And now the politicians who authorized the cameras are saying, “Huh? We had no idea this was going on. Outrageous.” Tampa is the place where career politicians just don’t quit.

Twice last year they tried to undo term limits. First they put a repeal measure on the ballot, which voters squashed. Then they mumbled something about calling a special election to try again. It was Council Member Gwen Miller who said enough is enough. Now some councilpersons are saying that the authorization for the peeping-Tom Tampa snapshot-taking was buried so deep in other legislation that they just missed it. Okay, I guess that’s possible. Our congressmen don’t bother to read all the legislation they vote for either. Meanwhile, the Tampa councilman who wrote the bill, Robert Buckhorn, says he didn’t call any hearing about the cameras beforehand because no new money had to be appropriated for them. Apparently, it didn’t occur to the buck-passing Mr. Buckhorn that treating innocent people like criminal suspects might raise a hackle or two. Or maybe it did occur to him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The story about the missing woman, Chandra Levy, and Congressman Gary Condit, is all the media rage. Some folks are comparing the wall-to-wall coverage, the denials and the infidelity to the Clinton scandals.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott called on Congressman Condit to resign, saying, “Infidelity is always unacceptable, but particularly when you have an elected official involved in a position of trust with a young girl, an intern.” Congressman Christopher Shays of New Jersey countered, “If infidelity is the test . . . a number of members of Congress should resign.” Marital infidelity, like any other act of breaking of one’s word, ought not be dismissed by a smug ‘everybody’s doing it’ rationale. Yet, someone else’s marriage and private life is their business, not mine. Once again, most of official Washington misses the point.

This young woman may be dead. Time is critical in such a missing person investigation. Condit admits to having an affair with Levy. But it took him 10 weeks before he told the police the whole story. It’s too bad if the truth was uncomfortable, but a woman’s life may have depended on his prompt cooperation with police. And that’s why Condit should resign. For years now, we’ve been treated to a steady diet of politicians doing what’s best for their political careers, instead of serving the people. Our civil standards have fallen to pathetic levels. We now debate whether someone’s character really even matters. Well, this is a life-or-death case to show that, yes, character matters. Condit should step down. We can do better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Seems career politicians have found even more problems with term limits. For instance, if you are a longtime incumbent, term limits don’t allow you to pick your successor when you leave office. How terrible. That’s what California Assemblyman Bill Leonard tells us. He should know. He’s been in power since 1978.

In 1988, when he stepped down from the Assembly to run for the Senate, he was able to hand pick his successor, a longtime aide. But last year when he was term-limited out of the California Senate and had to go slinking back to the Assembly, he couldn’t hand pick his successor. You can’t game the system nearly as much when “everyone knows” the seat will be open. So now elections are more open, fairer contests. Darn!

There are more problems. Leonard agrees with a Portland State University professor who identifies what he calls “instability” in term-limited legislatures. Leonard argues that with all the seats that come open each election and the competition that brings about, “You can have dramatic changes.” Imagine that: Instead of the people having to wait decades for powerful legislators to retire before a public desire for change can be enacted, change could happen every election.

Another terrible result of term limits, according to Leonard, is that campaign spending “is not going to be focused on as few seats.” In other words, once again there is far too much competition, too much ability for voters to make changes, too little ability for powerful politicians to stop them. So there you have it. Politicians don’t like term limits. Film at eleven . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I’m against naked power grabs. How about you? If you’re a career politician, the answer is, “I’m all in favor!”

For example, every ten years in this fair land we take a census to determine population, and we redraw political districts to take the new numbers into account. And who do you think does the redrawing? Sure, politicians. And not just any old politicians: the ones in power. Not exactly a disinterested third party. I’m thinking Florida. I’m thinking oranges, Disneyland and pitched political battles. I’m thinking Republicans on the upswing and turning as many districts as they can into soft pretzels, the better to keep themselves in power.

Bill Jones, a veteran of Florida’s redistricting wars who now lobbies for the League of Women Voters, says that redistricting is “like a card game in Alice In Wonderland where nobody knows the rules, everything seems terribly strange and everyone acts a little weird.” State Senator Steven Geller is a Democrat who sits on a redistricting panel. He says if the Republicans “don’t get too greedy, they can overrun the Democrats, providing they only run over the Democrats just somewhat.” Oh. Geller says if the Republicans are too obvious, the courts, which have to approve the redistricting, might get nervous about things. But the story is the same in almost every state. The ground rules may vary a bit, but the bottom line is the politicians themselves get to decide the shape of the fiefdoms they rule. A naked power grab. Just don’t be too obvious about it, right? Yeah, right. T

his is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Well, I just got back from California and I can report that it is a real, true fact: The career politicians there really do not like term limits. A recent battle in the California legislature was most revealing on this point. It had to do with whether banks and other financial institutions should be allowed to give away your private financial information without first getting your permission. The hearings were rigged in favor of lobbyists opposing the requirement rigged by a career politician by the name of Lou Papan.

Papan arranged things so that opponents of the bill could testify as long as they wished, and were allowed to speak first. When the vote came, the co-sponsor of the bill was absent, and the member substituting for the sponsor abstained during the vote. It was thanks to this sneaky switcheroo that the bill narrowly lost. But not before Papan’s main foe on the issue had publicly chastised him for trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug and avoid any hearings at all. Now Papan is yelping that back in the old wonderful days the days before term limits legislative members did not dare criticize each other in the press.

Papan complains that it was this public criticism which led to the San Francisco Chronicle ‘s editorializing on the privacy issue, forcing Papan to hold hearings to begin with. This sort of thing is most annoying for a career politician. Ah, for the good old days, when career politicians could just do whatever they liked without any whistle-blowing on the part of renegade colleagues who believe they’re supposed to be serving the common good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Hey, “red tape” sounds so intimidating, doesn’t it? Let’s call it blue tape, sky-blue tape. And that word “bureaucracy” scares people. How about “nice-people-eaucracy?” And if you have an outfit called “Health Care Financing Administration,” which strikes fear into the hearts of hospitals and doctors because of invariably frustrating regulations and red tape oops, I mean, sky-blue tape why not find a name that sounds sweeter and more accommodating?

The Health Care Financing Administration is the government bureau er, I mean, the nice-people place that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson says it’s hard to love a place with a clunky name like Health Care Financing Administration, so he’s holding a contest to change it. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the name isn’t the problem. They say, “Doctors and hospitals know HCFA creates too many forms to fill out, takes too long to reimburse claims . . . Last year alone, HCFA made about $12 billion in improper payments.”

Twelve billion dollars in bungled payments? Well, that sounds kind of harsh. Let’s just say “mislaid payments.” The name change will cost millions of dollars. It would mean reprinting stationery and forms and information kits. Money and energy that Citizens Against Government Waste says would be better spent reforming the agency itself, to make it more reasonable to deal with. That’s why they’ve awarded Tommy Thompson their coveted Porker of the Month Award. Hey, congratulations, Secretary Thompson. Although that word “porker” does seem a bit blunt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the farm animals overthrow the human farmer and set up a society of strict equality. Yet, no sooner is the society established than the political leaders become a special class. The slogan, “All animals are equal,” gets an amendment: “But some animals are more equal than others.” Well, welcome to the barnyard of modern-day Washington.

Our Congress has authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to protect endangered species. A good thing for the snail darter and other such critters, but lousy for people trying to earn a living in rural America. And to add insult to injury, The Washington Times reports that parts of the Endangered Species Act that are enforced throughout the nation are not enforced in the nation’s capital. Seems a massive amount of toxic sediment according to one EPA official, “the most toxic discharge I have ever seen” is being dumped into the Potomac River. A director of the National Wilderness Institute charges, “The EPA doesn’t stop the [polluting] because of political pressure brought by affluent Northwest Washington residents who don’t want to be inconvenienced by a few dump trucks rumbling through their neighborhoods.”

Meanwhile, 1,200 families in the Klamath Basin of California could lose their livelihood because the EPA wants to take all their water away. Why? The better to accommodate a few fish on the endangered list. Politicians give lip service to equality, but then allow two standards: one, for the politically-connected, and another for the rest of us. Some are more equal than others.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

If somebody arrests you and throws you in jail, does that mean you deserved to be arrested and thrown in jail? Not long ago I discussed the case of Gail Atwater, a Texas mom who was not only fined but also arrested and briefly jailed. Her crime? She and her children were not wearing their seat belts while looking for a lost toy.

The experience was a traumatic one for her, and especially for her kids. Atwater thought the treatment way out of bounds and sued, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court. But the Court ruled that although the officer’s actions were unreasonable, they were within his proper discretion. Most of us can put ourselves in the shoes of Gail Atwater. Most of us have gotten a ticket for speeding at one time or another. A ticket is bad enough. What if the police felt they had the right to arrest us too, even without reasonable cause? Most cops would never do that, but a few bad ones might.

Say if the motorist seems to be looking at them the wrong way. Most listeners took my point. But a couple said, hey, you wouldn’t need to arrest me to make me wear a seat belt! I abide by the law! In other words, the sheer fact that Atwater was arrested proves she deserved to be arrested and tough luck. All I can say is, there are countries where people get arbitrarily arrested as a matter of routine, and there is nobody, no media, no legislature, no court, to protest or stop it. These countries are called dictatorships. And that’s not a road we want to travel.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I’m confused. As in several other states with term limits, the career politicians in Michigan want to get rid of limits so they can stay in power longer.

The Chicago Tribune had a very interesting story about it by Tim Jones. What confused me was this bit about how one of the terrible effects of term limits is that it changes the balance of power so that now, quote, “skilled lobbyists . . . have far more power than ever before.” And guess who uttered that special insight? Why, none other than Al Short, term-limit critic and lobbyist for the Michigan Education Association. Wow, what a public-spirited lobbyist!

Mr. Short wants to give up all that new power he’s gotten as a result of term limits! Just like the other 80 percent-plus of lobbyists who say they oppose term limits in public opinion polls. Also confusing is that the very next paragraph of the story says that term limits create annoying “new challenges” for lobbyists. One lobbying firm even passes out flash cards to its employees with pictures of the lawmakers, so everybody can learn the new faces. Talk about puppet strings!

Then, in the paragraph after that, Jones quotes another Michigan lobbyist, Richard Cole with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and a leader of the repeal effort. Cole says the legislature has been weakened because so many of the new legislators take “four years to figure out where the men’s room is.” Why do I suspect that what Mr. Cole really means is, the new legislators aren’t jumping when he snaps his fingers? I don’t know. It is all very confusing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.