Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Got a problem? Blame term limits. At least, that’s how many critics of term limits think. Take Ohio, for example. After term limits kicked into gear there, politicians being forced out of office are often deciding to take their leave early. Why?

Well, in Ohio they don’t hold special elections to replace representatives who quit before their term is over. Instead, a temporary appointment is made. And guess who makes the appointment? By law, the party of the exiting legislator has that privilege. The Akron Beacon Journal reports that as things stand now, almost half of the 33 state senators currently serving started out as appointees. Twenty-five out of 99 House members started out as appointees. These partisan appointments impose an unfair disadvantage not only against candidates from other parties, but also against candidates of the same party who will now have a harder time pursuing their party’s nomination come the next election.

But critics of term limits like the Beacon Journal are saying that this kind of partisan end run around term limits is caused by term limits itself! Incredible, isn’t it? All these partisan appointments are indeed a problem. But the appointment law was in place long before term limits came along. And term limits are hardly to blame for the last-gasp power lust of the career politicians. Solution? Change the law to put an end to these politically motivated special appointments. Use your brain. Or do citizens have to mandate that by law as well?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We wouldn’t let the criminals decide our nation’s policies on law enforcement, would we? So why are we letting incumbent politicians in the Congress decide the campaign finance rules? Needless to say, there’s more than a little conflict of interest there.

Some in the media are applauding the Senate’s passage of McCain-Feingold, the so-called overhaul of campaign finance. But there was one clear yardstick used by the Senate in considering the various issues of their “reform”: what’s best for the continued reelection of us poor little ole career politicians? That’s why the first thing they did was to give themselves added advantages against any challengers who spend lots of their own money.

In recent years, multi-millionaire challengers have sometimes been able to defeat incumbents. Next, they went after groups that run issue ads. This legislation would ban term limits groups and others from running ads that dare to mention an incumbent’s name within 60 days of an election. Of course, incumbents don’t like being criticized; so they want to outlaw our speech. Our Congressmen are split on raising the contribution limits with some incumbents thinking it helps them and others thinking it helps challengers more. Gee, who thinks the goal of campaign finance reform should be to make it easier for incumbents to get reelected? Raise your hand.

Senator McCain says of himself and others in Congress, “We are all corrupt.” Why then should we have campaign rules written of, by, and for the corrupted?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Don’t worry. They were just talking. The House Administration Committee has been discussing just discussing, mind you a little scheme called per-diem reimbursement, which would allow congressman who live more than two blocks down the street to collect $165 a day in “expenses” whenever they show up for work. Up to $25,000 in extra tax-free cash a year.

A spokesman for the Committee, Jim Forbes, is upset that Congress has been criticized for plotting this nefarious maneuver, which would be imposed by a House rule rather than legislation. Forbes says, “It’s a pay raise but…not an expenditure to taxpayers. If [Congress] would have done it, which won’t happen now, but if they would have, it would have been at the expense of their own budget. It was also a voluntary thing . . . if it had passed [members] would not have been mandated to take it. It was on a voluntary basis.”

Did you get all that? According to Forbes, congressional budgets somehow don’t come out of taxpayer pockets. So the pay raise is not something taxpayers have to worry about. Also hey, relax it would have been completely voluntary. Have you ever turned downed a salary increase? No? Well, it’s completely voluntary, you know. I’m sure your boss would be very happy to let you work for less money, or maybe even for free. Just something they were talking about. It’s not going to happen. Not right now, anyway. Well, I have a suggestion: Stop talking about it!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. And you’re no doubt a monkey’s uncle, too. I’m talking about the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act, the excellent retirement system Congress just set up for chimpanzees. No, really, I kid you not. This is Washington.

The National Taxpayers Union calculates that we taxpayers are spending $45,000 a year per chimp. Not a bad retirement program. In fact, it certainly beats Social Security. These are chimpanzees once used in federal government research who have now entered their golden years. They do have to be cared for, of course. But $45,000 a year? Some in Congress would like us to believe that they’re saving us money because in their wildest imaginations, they dreamed of spending even more. But hello guys, earth to Congress, come in Congress yoo hoo!

Yo! this is more dough than the most prestigious universities in the country charge. Just send the chimps to Harvard! Who voted for this ridiculous waste of our tax dollars? Well, it passed both the House and Senate without a recorded vote. So virtually every congressman can say he or she didn’t vote for it . . . but of course, it passed. Isn’t it funny that chimps get a lot better retirement program than the chump taxpayer?

Well, we chumps are in the same boat with the chimps in one respect. Neither of us have control of our own retirement money. The politicians are in control. And that’s another problem.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Governor Gray Davis of California just wants California taxpayers to know what a swell guy he is. So he’s going to send them back some of their own money. But first, he has to collect it from them.

Why collect taxes just to send them back to the taxpayers? Why not simply cut the car registration fee and stop overcharging taxpayers in the first place? Well, the governor’s answer was, “People don’t appreciate the fact that they’re getting a rebate unless they see it in their hands.”

Aw shucks, the taxpayers need to be a little appreciative. As The Los Angeles Times points out, “He’ll get to send along with the checks a personal message. It won’t quite say, ‘Who loves you, baby?’ but it will be close.”

Beyond the incredibly self-serving nature of this new, lucrative incumbent advantage is the cost. To process the rebate checks, rather than simply cut the tax, costs taxpayers at least $22 million dollars a year. Some estimates, which include the interest taxpayers lose on their money, push the cost to over $40 million.

Politicians using not only their public position to campaign for reelection, but our tax dollars millions of them! Glad you don’t pay taxes in California? The same thing happens all over the country. But you’ll never hear career politicians agree to stop using our tax dollars to run their reelection campaigns. It’s government of the politicians, by the politicians, and for the politicians.

Who loves you, baby?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I think if a company is failing and losing money and the customers are dissatisfied, nobody should be allowed to compete with it and it should keep wasting money on unprofitable projects while also raising its prices again and again. I don’t think that’s such a radical philosophy. I mean, doesn’t everybody think like that? Okay, maybe not.

On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter what you and I think when it comes to government-protected monopolies like the postal service. No matter how badly run the United States Postal Service may be, it never has to answer your complaints or provide better service. Arguments don’t matter. Customer service doesn’t matter. Where else are you going to go?

The postal service has just raised the price of stamps. But that hasn’t caused all the waste and mismanagement to go away. They’re still expecting operating losses somewhere in the two or three billion dollar range this year. So now USPS is submitting a request to raise the price of stamps yet again. Will that cause the waste and mismanagement to go away? No, but that’s okay. They can always hike the price of stamps again later, and then again.

And then again. And again. And again.

We talk about the power of incumbency when it comes to career politicians feathering their nests and scaring off political competition. But there are other kinds of competition-squelching incumbencies, too. And the United States Postal Service is about as incumbent as you can get.

This is Common Sense . I’m Paul Jacob.

Ever wonder how the politicians decide what’s the best way to waste your hard-earned money on pork-barrel projects that only a few people care about? You probably think that our political leaders hide away with a pocket calculator and a complicated formula to figure it all out. Hey, would you wake up?

That is just not how these things are done. Instead, what happens is that the guy who wants the money tries to put the guy who holds the purse strings in a good mood, so that he’s more willing to cough up the dough. And how better to do that than with a nice freshly baked pie?

I just learned this myself from an article in the National Journal . It seems that shortly after he was first elected, former Representative George Hochbrueckner wanted money to dredge some inlet or other in his district, real crucial national-priority type stuff. To get the dough, he needed the backing of Representative Tom Bevill, who chaired the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee at the time. Hochbrueckner wanted to get on Bevill’s good side. He asked his wife for help. She said, honey, why don’t you give him one of my homemade strawberry-rhubarb pies. Hochbrueckner gave Bevill the pie, which was received very gladly. Next thing you know, a tasty $3.6 million to dredge an inlet was being tossed Hochbrueckner’s way courtesy of one well-fed subcommittee chairman.

And, of course, courtesy of the unsuspecting taxpayer. That sure was an expensive pie. As National Journal puts it, “Welcome to Politics 101.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What do military berets, valedictorians and consumer confidence have in common? Quite a bit. They are emblems of our stupid utopia. In our utopia, we all pretend we can be everything we want to be without all that much hard work.

Take the recent attempt to change a system where special army units, requiring higher than normal standards, wore distinctive berets. Instead, the army wanted to give every soldier the same beret (manufactured in communist China, appropriately enough). Why then work harder to achieve more?

Same thing in high schools, which are no longer naming valedictorians, the person earning the highest grade point average. Why? Because it makes people who don’t get the best grades feel bad. Some perhaps never quite recover. Give me a break. Part of learning how to succeed is learning how to accept and learn from failure. What about consumer confidence?

Some blame President Bush for talking the economy down, as if he could. All the attention paid to “consumer confidence” rests on the notion that we don’t have to be free and productive to enjoy a good economy; instead, smiling politicians can simply trick us into prosperity.

The world doesn’t work that way. Self-esteem and success cannot be mass-produced and handed out like pills. They have to be earned. Politicians have tried to repeal the laws of nature and economics little wonder our society is now repealing common sense, too.

Well, there will always be at least one place where you can find Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

Robert Young wasn’t a doctor, he just played one on TV. Politicians are also actors, in a way. Like the rest of us, they probably are pretty knowledgeable in one field or another. But they act like they know everything. And that can be dangerous.

In his book The Trust Committed To Me, citizen legislator Mark Sanford tells how easy it is to get drunk on all the attention accorded to those who achieve high public office. Once you’re elected to Congress, the media start peppering you with questions, demanding your opinion on anything and everything almost as if you’re the universal expert. Then there’s the special deference everyone gives you, the limos that pick you up and drop you off, the lobbyists and constituents who hang on your every word. “If you weren’t careful you’d start to believe your own press,” as Sanford puts it.

Congressman Sanford was able to remain just a regular guy, and step down from power after his third term just as he promised he would. But not everyone has that kind of moral fiber. It’s easy to understand what happens to folks who stick around Washington too long. Because you have power, people treat you as if you’re the man. As if you are now very, very, but very, very, very important. The guy who knows everything. The god who walks.

But politicians don’t necessarily know what’s best for you and me. They don’t know everything. And none of them is a god. They just play one on TV.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

They call New York City “The Big Apple,” and New Yorkers like to think that, as the song says, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

So it is with career politicians, too. In New York City, the city council has been a haven for entrenched career politicians spending decades in power. However in 1993, New Yorkers approved term limits with a 60 percent vote.

That didn’t settle the issue for the politicians on New York’s city council, however. In 1996, the council came back with a referendum to delay and deny term limits. The politicians who hated term limits were going to “fix” them. But voters caught on and kept term limits just as they passed them.

Then some clever council members discovered what they believed was a legal loophole: let’s just repeal the limits without the voters having any say-so! Soon-to-be termed-out council members signed on to the repeal in droves. But New Yorkers were furious, public hearings were packed, candidates gearing up to run for open seats in what promised to finally be competitive elections refused to back down. In short, council members caught hell. So they backed down. The people won, again. Even The New York Times , long an opponent of term limits, admitted that, “A large-scale change on the Council might provide a wealth of new ideas.”

Term limits have made it in New York City. And if we can make it there, we can make it anywhere.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.