Reflections
on being a pain

Forget the beauty of its phrasing. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t what galvanized Americans to end British rule. Rather, it was a 48-page pamphlet, written by someone who had moved to the colonies just two years earlier.

“Common Sense” was the name of Thomas Payne’s revolutionary pamphlet. Two and half centuries later, common sense seems to be what the country he was instrumental in founding lacks.

What common sense is there in saying that no crime other than a possible cover-up was committed by a police raid that was based on scant and flawed investigation about something that wasn’t a crime — a raid that violated a federal law against newsroom searches and was executed with abusive over-exuberance after warrants were approved without being read?

What common sense is there in licensing authorities insisting that charges against a different officer prevent them from looking into allegations, documented by special prosecutors, about other officers lying, botching investigations, and exceeding the scope of warrants?

What common sense is there in giving citizens a right to vote on judges for their county when cases are shunted off to judges from other counties?

Unfortunately, it’s not just the response to last summer’s raid that lacks common sense. It’s everything around us.

What common sense is there in the Postal Service requiring us to fold many of the papers we mail so they can be processed by machines that postal workers don’t actually use?

What common sense is there in the Postal Service wanting to end support for periodicals that people pay to receive and instead emphasize junk mail that no one wants or needs?

What common sense is there in the same Postal Service that just increased rates now demanding that it will need an extra day to deliver mail to rural areas like ours?

There was a time when common sense ruled. And you don’t have to go all the way back to Payne’s day to find it.

Remember when we used to have separate slots in the post office for local and distant mail? Now, everything goes in the same bin. If you send a birthday card to your neighbor across the street, it has to go to Kansas City and back to get there.

Back when the Postal Service trusted local employees, we had a “star route” that exchanged mail between Marion and Hillsboro. Now, a letter from Marion to Hillsboro goes first to Kansas City, then to Wichita, and finally to Hillsboro.

A lot of post offices with 668xx ZIP codes now get their mail through Marion. A star route between Hillsboro’s 67xxx ZIP codes would make even more sense, with mail from Tampa to Lincolnville stopping only in Hillsboro and Marion instead of Hillsboro, Wichita, Kansas City, then Marion.

But we need not go postal to find a lack of common sense. We see it all around us.

Common sense suggests that elected and appointed officials responsible for proposing taxes ought to live within the area being taxed so they might appreciate the burdens they recommend.

Common sense suggests that roads that began as shared driveways at the county lake could be a shared responsibility of the county and lake residents rather than being an either/or situation in which any assistance given by the county is used as evidence that it should bear sole responsibility.

Common sense suggests that if you call an ambulance, you ought to pay something for its services even if you choose to save money by being driven to a hospital by someone else.

Common sense suggests that school board members, who used to personally interview teacher applicants and approve curriculum, need more to do than merely rubber stamp what administrators and state agencies suggest.

Common sense also suggests it’s a conflict of interest for people to serve on various districts’ boards if their spouses work for the district. And it suggests that health inspections of schools before they open isn’t such an odious task that the county needs to home-rule out of it.

Payne rallied Americans to consider common sense. Without being too much of a pain, we’d like to encourage Marion Countians to do likewise and make common sense, not platitudes and slogans, the key factor in how they will vote and in whether they will speak up at public meetings.

— ERIC MEYER