ThisIsCommonSense.org

Thank goodness we live in a country where they can’t imprison you for speaking out. Too many governments just throw people in jail when they don’t like what they say. Fortunately, with new technologies like the Internet, it may be getting harder and harder to shut people up.

But governments still try. Even in communist China a lot of independent journalism has sprung up lately, helped by the advent of the Internet. But as you might expect, many of the stories make government officials uncomfortable, as freelance journalist Gao Qinrong discovered when he published a story about a fraudulent irrigation scheme. Now he’s serving a 12-​year sentence.

Same thing in Cuba, where two visitors from the Czech Republic recently found themselves cooped up in a Cuban jail for almost a month. The government feared they would spread tales of how the Czech people rebelled against tyranny. The Czechs say they were told again and again, “What happened in Central Europe will not succeed here.” Yeah, right. Something tells me that if throwing off the shackles of tyranny couldn’t possibly happen in Cuba, you wouldn’t need to lock people up to prevent it.

Thank goodness in America they don’t throw you in jail for saying the wrong thing. But there is that debate on the Senate floor on the McCain-​Feingold Campaign Finance Bill that would prevent people from mentioning the name of any congressman in any advertisement during the last 60 days before an election. Hmmmm. What’s that all about?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Experience. You know what that is. What you collect when you’re a career politician looking for ever more clever ways to spend other people’s money and complicate other people’s lives. “Oh, we need experienced legislators here!” cry the expert denizens of our state capitol buildings. “It takes decades to get up to speed, given how complicated we make the legislative process! Don’t term-​limit us! Heck, the freshmen take months just to find the bathroom. It would be chaos!” Or so says the career politician.

But let’s forget about bathrooms. Now it turns out that freshmen can’t even find the right elevator. Perhaps the problem is specific to Florida, where term limits are kicking into gear this session. It seems that no elevator in the Florida capitol building goes to every single floor, a setup that perplexes some of the new legislators.

When Florida voters passed term limits with a whopping 77 percent of the vote, they were saying that new ideas from the real world are more important than experience in the legislature, and that the courage to act on those ideas is more important than the perks of entrenched public office. And the track record in Arkansas, California, and other states shows that legislatures under term limits can greet newcomers and still get stuff done.

But maybe the Florida model offers hope for career politicians just the same. Maybe there’s a way careerists everywhere can rig the elevators, too, so that only those who have been studying the blueprints for 10 or 20 years can ever get to the right floor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

You had to know they’ve been looking for it. Well, they’ve found it. Proof that term limits don’t work.

Oh, forget all the arguments politicians made when term limits were first being debated that it would create utter chaos, that state and local governments would simply grind to a halt due to the loss of experience. Aw shucks, that didn’t happen. Or that lobbyists would take over. Well, lobbyists are still moaning and groaning about it and urging legislators to repeal the limits. Not much of a sign they are exactly “taking over.” Then it was suggested that the California energy crisis was the fault of term limits. Now, that’s a really good try. But the legislation was passed before term limits removed a single legislator from office. In other words, that was the pros doing.

But if term limits seem like a big success and you think every sign points to the politicians being all wet, not to mention hopelessly self-​serving on the issue, just you wait. Proof has been found that term limits leads to, well, numbskull politicians who are just too darn soft on taxpayers. Former State Rep. Lynn Jondahl, a 22-​year veteran of the legislature says term limits don’t “make sense.” She points to a most serious sin committed by the inexperienced term-​limited legislature: phasing out the Single Business Tax that had been on the books for 29 years and become a major source of revenue. It’s gone. A tax actually repealed.

The politicians rest their case.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

In Missouri they say, “Show me!” Maybe they should make that the motto of Minnesota, too. That’s where a citizen legislator named Jesse Ventura, former wrestler, former actor, and present-​day XFL football announcer body slammed politics as usual and snagged the governor’s seat in 1998, despite fierce competition from two career politicians.

Minnesota is one of only 12 states without mandatory term limits on the governor. But Ventura believes in term limits and is adamant that he will not serve more than two terms. Minnesota is also the home state of U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, currently serving his second term. Like Ventura, Wellstone promised to serve no more than two terms in his office. Except, guess what, he has just announced that he will indeed run for a third term as Senator.

I just hope the Senator one day finds his way back into the light. That may be sooner than he plans. A recent statewide poll shows that most Minnesotans, 55 percent, feel that Wellstone is morally obligated to step down in 2002. I guess that means Minnesotans still care about integrity, unlike Wellstone. And in a hypothetical 3‑way race between former Senator Rod Grams, Governor Ventura, and Wellstone, the poll hints that Ventura would edge out both competitors.

Ventura hasn’t said he’ll throw his hat in the ring. But we do know this. One, he’s a guy who means what he says, and will keep his term limit pledge. And two, he’s already won a three-​way political rassling match.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Politicians know well the adage, “You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours.”

Take redistricting, one reason the congressional reelection rate has been stuck at over 98 percent. Every ten years a census is taken and congressional seats are apportioned and new district lines are drawn. Our career congressmen worry about how these lines are drawn because they want to pick their voters before voters can pick them. That’s where the back-​scratching comes in.

Redistricting is the province of state legislators; one reason congressmen try to be nice to them. Usually, state legislators go out of their way to set up district boundaries to protect sitting congressional careerists. Still, career politicians are worried that in 19 states with legislative term limits, these legislators won’t have enough “experience” to guarantee safe districts for the incumbents.

Of course, what they are even more worried about is the distinct possibility that term-​limited state reps won’t care quite so much about protecting the political careers of un-​term-​limited congressmen from all manner of competition. In fact, now that term limits are taking effect in state legislatures and forcing seasoned campaigners out of office, more congressional incumbents are facing real challenges.

Three out of six incumbents who were defeated last November, were defeated by state legislators who had been pushed out by term limits. Yeah, what a tragedy if career politicians have to run for office in fairly drawn districts where real political competition might just break out all because of term limits. I’m crying in my soup here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We elect representatives to draft the laws that govern our nation, but increasingly they are becoming glorified gofers for the federal bureaucracy. Why? In a word: votes. Votes, votes, votes.

Jerry Kammer with the Arizona Republic reports that “as [congressional incumbents] plan for their next election, nothing is more important than what their staffs accomplish for constituents whose Social Security checks haven’t arrived, whose military discharge papers have been lost or who are lost in the bureaucratic alphabet soup of agencies.… When senior congressional staff members were asked a few years ago what part of their work was most important to their bosses’ political futures, 56 percent identified constituent service. Only 11 percent pointed to the legislative record.”

Marlo Lewis of the Los Angeles-​based Reason Foundation adds that constituent service is one more way that “our politics has become kind of an incumbency-​protection machine in which the rules of the game are structured for the benefit of those who hold power …”

Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker points out, “[Constituent service] lets the members be seen … as friends … who can do you a favor.” And favors mean votes. So career politicians seek to be your special connection, to do you the favor of saving you from the bureaucracy they themselves have created, and allowed to run wild. Voters are so happy to get their government-​created problem unsnarled, they forget who created it in the first place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.