Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Losing an election is not the same thing as getting your head chopped off. The Manchester Guardian had a headline recently: “President Puts Head on Block.” The story is about how South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun “put an electoral gun to his head” by calling for a national referendum on whether he should stay in office. Whether it’s gun or chopping block, the metaphor is oddly apt.

That’s exactly how many politicians do regard letting voters decide their fate. Certainly we saw it in the California recall, as Gray Davis desperately scrambled to cling to power. Yet here’s the South Korean president openly calling for a referendum on himself. South Koreans are stunned. They’re used to a more autocratic style from their political leaders. British headline writers are stunned. Roh may think he’s got a surefire maneuver to strengthen his power.

What he claims, however, is that he’s facing a lot of political corruption that is blockading his administration. And he points his finger at the political class. He says, “I have reached a situation in which I cannot conduct the presidency. If the ethical standards of the ruling class of our society can be rectified, then I believe this will be a greater political achievement than what I can accomplish during the remainder of my tenure.”

He seems to think the referendum will be a slap in the right direction. Maybe. In any case, it’s a lot better for a political leader to openly invite the assessment of the voters, than to just bull his way through, regardless.

Many readers have said to me, it’s great that California voters kicked Governor Gray Davis out of office. But unless the policies change, California will still end up falling into the sea. Much as I agree with my own argument that it was virtually impossible for Californians to do worse than Davis, I certainly also agree that policies must change.

Many areas deserve attention, but one of the most important is the state’s attitude toward business. Inhospitable, to say the least. It’s time to reverse the political animosity toward earning a living and helping other people make a living. In an article for the magazine Ideas on Liberty , Steven Greenhut explains why so many businessmen are seeking greener pastures across state lines. He tells how Coast Converters, a plastic-bag manufacturer, had to shut its doors and flee to Nevada, where the company will be hailed rather than harried.

At a press conference, chairman Michael Greif said he didn’t want to leave California but that “as a businessman I have no choice. If I stay in California I will be subject to more punitive taxes and fees that will eventually force me to cut jobs. Instead our workers are moving with the factory to Nevada where I will save $800,000 annually in taxes, insurance, workers compensation, and onerous regulations.” Other businesses tell the same story.

Can Governor Schwarzenegger terminate the bad policies of the past? He can if he doesn’t allow the legislature to be the last word. First thing to do, take that veto pen out of cold storage.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I never worried much about whether Americans were getting fatter. Only whether I was getting fatter. Yes, I was. Oh, don’t worry, don’t call the ambulance or anything. It was only a few pounds and then I started trimming it by eating lousy-tasting stuff instead of good-tasting stuff. Also by jogging. Well, I stopped jogging and started eating cake and cookies again, but the point is I could get thin again in a flash.

Two recent stories talk about how Americans are getting thinner, and . . . also fatter. One headline says, “Study Finds Americans Starting to Lose Weight.” The other says “Americans Getting Even Fatter.” I think the disparity has to do with how the samples are picked and over what period of time. Americans are no doubt fatter than we were back in the day certainly fatter than people in third-world countries who have trouble getting enough food. At the same time, most of us Americans get to live into our 70s. For the same reason we’re so fat: we’re so rich. Which also gives us time to exercise. You know, exercise is the best diet: if you burn more calories than you take in, you lose pounds. It all boils down to a simple scientific equation.

Is our fattiness a problem? Well, not for me I can lose the pounds in a snap. It is a problem if I have to start paying for somebody else’s fat problem. We’re turning into a nanny society, which does worry me. Heck, soon we’ll have people suing McDonald’s for allegedly making people fat. Oops . . . can’t predict that any more. It’s already happened.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Boy, they sure are experienced up there on Capitol Hill. Expert career politician Henry Hyde once denigrated the concept of term limits by claiming that the only alternative to permanently entrenched politicians was to pluck the names of representatives at random out of the phonebook. Recently we’ve had a couple congressmen real pros, not refugees from the phone book demonstrating their expertise in the game of pork.

Porkbarrel projects are projects that congressmen want for their state or district to help them politically. Senator John McCain, who presents himself as an opponent of pork, has just managed to get $14.3 million for the Luke Air Force Base added to the military appropriations bill. The money is wanted to add land to the base. But as Roll Call points out, the project was neither requested by the White House nor authorized by the Armed Services committee.

Absent these, the spending fits McCain’s own definition of a pork project. And yes, these kinds of self-serving, last-minute spending additions to appropriations bills certainly meet my own definition of pork too. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Republican Ted Stevens, doesn’t hesitate to add this prime chop to his spending agenda. Stevens has fought McCain’s attempts to kill pork projects in the past. But now he is magnanimous. Mainly, it’s so he can gloat. Says Stevens: “One man’s pork is another man’s alternate white meat. We don’t discriminate,” he says.

They’ll spend anything. That’s experience for you. Where’s that phonebook?

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

What’s going on in Russia? It’s starting to look like the Soviet Union again. In some respects it probably never changed, but this isn’t exactly a step forward. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrested a wealthy businessman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who also happened to be a political opponent of Vladimir Putin. The arrest was made in the most obnoxious manner possible, with masked Fedskies storming the businessman’s private plane. The government even seized a chunk of the stock of Khodorkovsky’s company, Yukos Oil.

The thug-like actions aren’t exactly reassuring to Russia’s stock markets. Or Russian businessmen. “Shut up or be shut down” is not a reassuring message. Or a liberalizing one. It’s possible Khodorkovsky is guilty of shady dealings. But some reports suggest that his business operation is one of the most open in Russia. What we do know is that Khodorkovsky had traded sharp words with Putin at a meeting a few months ago, complaining about corruption in the sale of an oil company to the Russian government. And Putin hasn’t done anything to allay the impression that this is a political counter-strike. Russian politicians of every ideological stripe have denounced it for being just that. This is bad stuff.

Ordinary Russians with no assets to loot should complain as best they can. Too bad they don’t also have the power to recall their president. The good news is all the public complaining already about Putin’s action. Even his own prime minister has gone on TV to question the move. Fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t have seen that kind of opposition in Russia.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

It’s the American Automobile Association to the rescue yet again. I hope. Lon Anderson, who does public relations work for AAA Mid-Atlantic, suggests that maybe speeding-ticket cameras should be getting tickets themselves. They are too fast on the draw. And they’re too often being used to bring in revenue rather than to improve safety.

An example is good old Washington, DC, near where I live. Between August of 1999 and June of this year, DC collected almost $22 million in fines as a result of citations generated by red-light cameras. Then there are the citations issued by photo-radar cameras. Which brought in another $30 million during that time. Most of the citations get sent to hapless drivers who run the red light by just fractions of a second. Sometimes the yellow light is on for only a few seconds, and then what’s the motorist supposed to do as it flips to red while he’s in the middle of an intersection? Screech to a halt?

The district is using the cameras to generate revenue, and Mayor Williams admits it. So the AAA no longer supports the district’s use of them. Anderson says, “The truth appears to be that we are not interested in just nabbing the egregious violators it’s the blink-of-an-eye violator, it’s the unintentionals, that bring in the big bucks. I think we ought to be out to catch the bona fide red-light runners who are threatening our lives.”

Let’s hope City Hall brings this program to the shop for an overhaul. Or maybe it should go straight to the scrap heap.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Now I have to tell you about the German cat. In a recent column for Townhall.com I talked about the TV licensing tyranny in Great Britain. It seems that the British people must pay an annual “licensing fee” just for turning on their tallies. Been going on for years. There are vans that go around detecting signals from people who watch TV without paying the fee. The TV licensing people send periodic letters to non-payers and do their best to search the homes of non-payers who claim they don’t watch TV. Even confirmed non-TV watchers can’t get out from under this TV regime. It’s an outlandish petty tyranny that I really wouldn’t believe if there weren’t so much documentation of it.

Readers tell me that all this is happening in Ireland, Italy, and Germany too. And who knows where else. Which doesn’t surprise me, now that I have gotten over my surprise about the situation in the UK. But I already knew about Germany, because I had seen that story about the German cat. The cat got harassed about its lack of a TV license by the German TV-ocracy. The owner says, “My cat Maxi loves animal films, but I am not paying for him to watch telly.” A representative of the German TV-ocracy says, “From time to time, cats or dogs get letters. It just happens and of course Maxi won’t have to pay.”

Sure. What do we expect, what with 13 million letters from the TV-ocracy going out to German households each year? You’re off the hook, Maxi.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

If you’re going to ask non-journalists to ask questions at the Democratic presidential debates, how should you go about it? Well, I personally being very nave think you should do it by saying, “Okay, think of a question. As long as it doesn’t violate reasonable requirements of civility, decorum, and relevance, go ahead.”

But the producers at CNN moderating a recent CNN-sponsored presidential debate called “Rock the Vote” didn’t agree with that approach. “Macs or PCs?” one student wanted to know, and everybody groaned at the vapidity of the question. But the student, Alexandra Trustman, reports that it wasn’t her question at all. Trustman says it was a CNN producer who suggested she ask the PC versus Mac thing. She was puzzled but came up with a more complicated, question about technology that she thought more relevant. But the producer told Trustman that “it wasn’t light-hearted enough and they wanted to modulate the event with various types of questions” and instructed her to ask the Mac versus PC thing instead.  A CNN spokesman says, “In an attempt to encourage a lighthearted moment in this debate, a CNN producer working with Ms. Trustman clearly went too far. CNN regrets the producer’s actions.”

Okay. I’m glad they admitted they steered the student wrong. But they’re still not ‘fessing up to the bigger problem here. Their whole spin approach as such was a blunder. There’s a difference between moderating and sit-com directing. And if you really want to know what the people want to know, you let them ask.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Howard Dean’s decision to opt out of the presidential public financing system is supposedly that system’s death-knell. If only it were true! The system is broken, but it doesn’t need fixing. It needs to be buried deep in Yucca Mountain.

They say private money is “dirty” and corrupting, while public funds are “clean” and wholesome. I have some dirty private money in my pocket and I don’t want politicians cleaning it for me. Sure, corruption in our government is rampant, but public financing of presidential campaigns certainly hasn’t done anything to change that. Moreover, public financing gives government far too much power. Power over elections and speech. And who do you think will be writing the rules for public financing? Yeah, career politicians in Congress.

Even as Dean has opted out, he insists that we need a much more robust system that provides “qualified candidates with the public funding necessary to wage meaningful and competitive campaigns . . .” Under Dean’s system, just how much tax money will it take to give everyone enough to run a “meaningful and competitive” campaign? Or will the incumbents in Congress continue to write the rules so that mainstream candidates are subsidized to a much greater degree? So that the powerful and connected get an extra push at the expense of everyone else the way it is now?

Let the people donate if they choose. And let voters judge candidates by their fundraising as well as by other issues. It’s called free elections.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.