ThisIsCommonSense.org

Suppose you believe in term limits, as I do. Should I use tax money to fund my efforts to term-​limit politicians? Not that they’d give me that money anyway. But wouldn’t it be wrong to grab your wallet to support a cause you don’t believe in? Heck, it might be wrong for me to grab your wallet anyway. Yet I read stories all the time about how government officials use our own money against us.

A few months ago New York City landlords, being taxpayers, had to help pay for protests in favor of price controls over their own property. Despite the Big Apple’s big deficit, the city council spent $75,000 to organize protestors pushing rent control. Including $28,000 to bus in protestors from Albany.

Why on earth should a landlord have to pay a nickel to fund the agitation of people who want to bop him in the nose? It’s ridiculous. And why should other taxpayers have to pay? Most importantly of all, doesn’t this destroy the political process with those in power putting a thumb on the scales?

Gene Russianoff, an attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group, says this type of thing is typical. He says, “Elected officials make a call about what they think is in the interests of their constituents.” Gifford Miller, council speaker, is blind to the travesty. Or at least pretends to be. “I think it’s an entirely appropriate use of our dollars,” he says.

I guess this means that if the politicians say it’s for my own good to hit me over the head with a baseball bat, I’ll also have to pay for the baseball bat. Now I understand.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I live in the nation’s capital, so scandals in DC sometimes get my attention faster than scandals in the rest of the country. If DC teachers union officials are lining their pockets with money siphoned from union dues, sure, I notice. But union officials are corrupt elsewhere too.

Recently the former president of a teachers union in Miami, Florida, Pat Tornillo, pled guilty for robbing the union. The amount is $650,000, money that bought luxury cruises, jewelry, clothing, and other goodies. Tornillo charged a lot of his extracurricular expenditures on the union’s credit card. An FBI agent, Hector Pesquera, says, “It is nauseating to see the amount of money Tornillo spent on exotic trips and luxuries when the school teachers were going without raises for many years.“  I guess that’s the point of stealing, to get more money than you otherwise can. To be fair, Tornillo’s annual salary was a paltry $243,000. How could Tornillo get away with it as long as he did, on such a huge scale?

In the DC scandals, accountability also seemed lax. And it’s not even as if it was hard to catch in these cases. The accountants might have noticed the missing money when they review the bank statements. Or the credit card statements. The Florida union didn’t even fire Tornillo after he got arrested they just put him on leave. Yet their own records showed that he had taken their money. Were they hoping he would be acquitted? Surely there are better standards we can exemplify for our kids.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I support ice cream and disagree that the Food and Drug Administration should prohibit all ice cream. Keep your hands away from my spoon, FDA!

Okay, the FDA doesn’t want to ban ice cream. It just wants the power to do so. It wants the power to define substances like dioxin as health threats at any level of concentration whatever. And guess what. There’s dioxin in ice cream. Steven Milloy, with the Cato Institute, reports that a few years ago FDA issued an alarmist reassessment of dioxin. Congress asked FDA to get an independent scientific assessment of its conclusions, but the agency has yet to do so. Milloy thinks it’s because they know their “finding” wouldn’t survive that evaluation. “Left to its own devices,” says Milloy, “the EPA might set a limit 1,000 times lower than [existing standards].

It’s no wonder Congress was skeptical.…” The EPA wants to say that any level of dioxin, no matter how far below the current threshold, is potentially cancerous. Milloy points out that new super-​stringent standards would give the agency “potentially unlimited regulatory authority over any source of dioxin emissions.”

Like many chemicals, dioxin exists in nature as well in human technology. And Milloy notes that just one serving of “Ben & Jerry’s ice cream [contains] about 2,000 times the amount of dioxin that the EPA claims is safe …” There’s dioxin in ice cream. Now you know. But you’ll keep eating ice cream. Why am I not surprised?

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Breaking one’s word makes a politician untrustworthy. But does it also make a politician go crazy? If not, why is Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo talking so crazy?  Tancredo won his congressional seat promising he would not go to Washington for a career. After six years, outta there. But once in office he found plenty of reasons for continuing to enjoy the perks and prestige in the Congress.

Today, his bountiful importance has rendered Tancredo prostrate with awe. The need for immigration reform makes him especially indispensable, he says. But Tancredo’s reform agenda seems to have been hijacked by scapegoating and bigotry. In a recent interview Tancredo says, “There are places right now in East LA and southern Texas that you would honestly think there is absolutely nothing that you would say makes them part of the United States of America. They are a separate country it is a separate country right now, at this moment.”

Uh … how about a desire for freedom and to build a better life, Congressman Tancredo? Isn’t that what makes these people Americans regardless of the language they speak or their race or creed? Then Tancredo adds, “Now how many people in their heart of hearts in [the Islamic Community] want to see the demise of this country? How many would cheer, not out loud maybe, but in their hearts when things like 9/​11 occur? … I’ll tell you; it’s a majority.” Cripes. I guess if you can’t prove your lineage going back to the Mayflower, you’re some kind of traitor.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

What do you think about school vouchers, allowing students to use some of the tax dollars we’re now spending to go to the school of their choice? Is that worth at least trying in your schools? Washington, DC may be getting school vouchers. It’s being debated in Congress, because as a consistent policy Congress micromanages the city.

Susan McDermott opposes school vouchers in our nation’s capital. As a member of the school board, she is actively lobbying to block the new plan. That’s her right, of course. But still it’s a little strange. She’ s not a school board member in Washington, she’s from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Why does she care so deeply about the education programs in a city a thousand miles away? Is there a problem with trying vouchers in even a few places?

Some will argue, yes, that vouchers will be bad policy. Fine. But it sure seems like their real fear is that vouchers might improve education. The policy might work, for heaven’s sake! And that would be so embarrassing. Washington Mayor Anthony Williams supports the voucher proposal. He told The Washington Post : “Democrats can still have concerns about vouchers as a national issue, but give us a break in terms of what will work here in the District. We are not trying to make national policy here, we just want to help our children.” Help the children? Consider what’s best for the students in all of this political wrangling? The mayor is full of new ideas! Oh, but don’t let that influence any of our national policy. Heavens, no.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I’m squarely against crime. Yes. If you are too, I have good news. Crime rates in the U.S. have been dropping. Not for all crimes and not everywhere. But the drops have been large enough and consistent enough to add up to a significant trend.

A trend that reporters and professors of criminology have taken note of. And would like to explain. But can’t. That’s the gist of a recent story in Christian Science Monitor . The most the experts can come up with is a “911 effect.” According to this theory, violent felons reverted to hand-​holding mode in the wake of the terrorist attacks that shocked and then united all Americans. Yet crime was already declining by then.

I’m no expert, but in my spare five minutes a day I do surf the web, and came across the blog of journalist Robert Bidinotto. Bidinotto has written about crime for Reader’s Digest, and is editor of an anthology, called Criminal Justice . He observes the obvious: crime is down because we’re locking up violent felons longer. If you’re in jail you can’t rob a liquor store and you can’t kill the clerk behind the counter. “In other words,” writes Bidinotto, “so-​called ‘get tough’ sentencing laws of recent years much maligned by ‘progressive’ criminologists and criminal apologists have been working exactly as anyone but an academic could have predicted.”

We could test Bidinotto’s theory by letting all the murderers loose. But that might not be such a good idea. And besides, the professors still wouldn’t get it.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.