Those dust mites are coming to getcha. There was a big story recently about how a chemical found in common household products is seeping into the air and clinging to dust particles.

We’re all supposed to be very concerned. But the story did not say why the amount of the chemical drifting into the air is dangerous. Finally the reporter admitted that “so far there is no evidence” humans are being harmed. Why the worry, then?

Well, because it’s a man-made chemical. And those are bad, right? Cancer-causing? Clearly the story is driven by fear and assumptions, not real evidence. We worry about cancer. In a recent article on “The ‘Cancer Epidemic’ That Never Was,” Michael Fumento concedes that “cancer is still our second-greatest killer, but only because we in the West live long enough to get it. . . . And a cancer diagnosis at age 75 seems rather preferable to contracting malaria at age five. . . .

“Cancer is quite natural,” says Fumento, “it’s curing it that’s artificial. Arsenic, asbestos, certain molds and viruses, tobacco, high exposure to radioactive minerals, sunlight all cause cancer.” He says to fight cancer, what we need to do is not try to hunt down and exterminate every last molecule of possibly cancer-causing chemicals, but to cultivate “healthier diets, less tobacco use and other lifestyle changes, and better medicines. Self-serving scare-mongering, however, never cured anything.” Amen to that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We often hear about personal liberties on the one hand and economic liberties on the other hand, as if they come in two separate jars.

Take Communist China, for instance, which has been allowing a lot more capitalist activity than it used to. At the same time, the Chinese authorities fear even the mildest expressions in favor of democracy. That’s why they clamped down on the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square 15 years ago. Hong Kong was supposed to remain a kind of “freedom zone” within the country even after the mainland took it over from the British in 1997.

One country, two systems. Freedom of speech guaranteed. It’s not quite working out that way. The people of Hong Kong have been fighting a pitched battle with their new masters. Recently a Hong Kong businessman learned just how economic the personal and political can be. He was forced to shut down his factory for producing umbrellas that had two simple words printed on them: DIRECT ELECTIONS. The businessman was taken in for questioning, then released. The umbrellas were going to be deployed in a pro-democracy march planned for July 1.

Now, true enough, this man could have produced umbrellas saying DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY and kept making a living and kept his factory open. The Chinese officials are willing to let you make umbrellas at a profit. They just don’t want your umbrellas reflecting certain dangerous ideas as well as deflecting rain. So is this Hong Kong businessman free, or not? It’s an economic question . . . but it’s also personal. Very personal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It was a public relations disaster. An ominous-looking pyramid with an all-seeing eye, and a name to send shivers down the spine of any privacy-coveting American: Total Information Awareness.

TIA was a project to develop software that could sift through all your private data, including your bank information and credit-card purchases and the like, and figure out whether you were a terrorist. There was a storm of criticism from friends of personal privacy, including William Safire. So the name was changed, the unblinking-eye logo was scuttled, and Congress deprived the TIA of funding. It seemed privacy proponents had won something of a victory. But efforts to monitor and data-mine our private lives continue through many other government agencies.

According to a recent survey by the General Accounting Office, some 52 federal departments are either using data-mining programs right now, or gearing up to do so. If current trends continue, such databases will be increasingly interconnected, and possibly linked to a national ID card. Soon after 9/11 there were many calls for such a card which would amount to a domestic passport, the “papers” that used to be the hallmark of a totalitarian state. Airport security would swipe the card and if too much money had been moved around recently between your bank accounts, or some other red flag pops up, boom you’ll have to be especially searched or detained.

And trying to ferret out terrorists isn’t and won’t be the only use for such data sifting. That’s not my America. Is it yours?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

South Carolina has a big problem. Less than half of kids who enter the 9th grade graduate, making the state dead last in the nation in graduation rates. South Carolina also ranks 49th in SAT scores, and also 49th in sending kids to college.

Not coincidentally, the state’s economy is weak, with one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates and lowest per capita incomes. Now Mark Sandford, the state’s popular governor, offers a bold new plan, called “Put Parents in Charge.”

As he sees it, the current predicament is the result of empowering politicians and bureaucrats while giving parents the shaft. The new plan reverses that equation. By creating generous tax credits for tuition costs, the law would let middle class and poor parents afford a choice that used to be limited to rich families: sending their child to the best school, public or private.

High taxes have made it impossible for many families to afford tuition. This bill solves that. And a mountain of research from places such as Harvard and Georgetown says that school choice doesn’t just expand opportunity, it also improves test scores in independent and public schools.

Administrators and unions oppose the plan. They want to simply spend more money on schools. That’s not exactly a new idea the state has dramatically raised spending in recent years to nearly $10,000 per child. But student achievement remains dismal. South Carolina has tried every sort of political solution imaginable. Maybe it’s time to “Put Parents in Charge.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

You don’t have to be a farmer to know that modern farming stinks and not because of the fertilizer. If you listen to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the farming businesses that take government funds, farming sounds impossible.

But I ask you, if it is so hard to earn a living from the soil without subsidy, why are some folks still farming privately? Many oops! quite profitably. It’s easy to catch a whiff of what’s really going on.

According to a recent Government Accounting Office report, the U.S.D.A. paid roughly $15 billion dollars a year in farm subsidies between 1999 and 2002. The report strongly criticized the agency for vague rules that allow folks only marginally involved in farming to chow down big-time on subsidies, while other equally vague regulations undermine the agency’s enforcement against fraud.

Listen to Lawrence Dyckman, co-author of the report: “We know that it’s millions of dollars. But we don’t know if we’re talking about hundreds of millions or half a billion. We really don’t know and, unfortunately, the USDA doesn’t know. . . .” But Mary Kay Thatcher with the American Farm Bureau Foundation says the rules are about as precise as possible. “The [GAO's] philosophy may be right,” she says, “but, realistically, it’s nearly impossible to implement,” she says.

So, I guess we taxpayers are supposed to keep shoveling the dough to those who farm, or are thinking about farming, or once knew someone who farmed. It’s more than dough being shoveled. And it’s the taxpayers who’re being farmed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.