Thank goodness Leon Drolet was term-limited out of his seat in the Michigan House of Representatives.

It’s not that Drolet didn’t do a great job in his six years. I’m just glad he’s out of the legislature now, thus able to play a far greater state leadership role as head of the new Michigan Taxpayers Alliance.

You see, Michigan is in trouble economically. The latest hard knock? Two big employers, Pfizer and Comerica, announced job cuts in the state. Governor Jennifer Granholm bitterly suggested these business decision were somehow unpatriotic.

But her most thoughtful response to the state’s ailing economy is a whopping tax increase. She’s dreamed up a brand new 2 percent sales tax on services.

Fortunately, Drolet and the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance are there to fight this goofy proposal. Already they’ve mobilized voters to rally outside the governor’s carefully controlled town hall meetings . . . to which the public is not invited. But according to television news reports, those inside the governor’s events can hear the citizens protesting outside .

Wayne County leader Rose Bogaert reminds folks that when Lansing politicians sought to hike taxes in 1983, there were recall efforts against several legislators. “That was a lesson Lansing took to heart for a while,” she says, suggesting that now a “refresher course” may be needed.

Michigan tax activists have whipped the powerful tax-eating lobbies before and I think they can do it again. Thanks to some surprising help from term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Give government an inch and it’ll take an acre.

Confiscation by eminent domain was written right into the Constitution, but limited to public uses. Which means building roads and laying power and sewer lines. Or that’s what it meant until governments got greedy.

Nowadays governments grab people’s property merely to flip the property to a different private owner. Why? To produce more tax revenue. For politicians to spend.

Earlier this year, I talked about an attempt by the Village of Arlington Heights, Illinois, to close a shopping center, International Plaza, likely destroying many small businesses. The politicians claim the busy center is blighted. Nonsense. It’s teeming with customers.

The businesses do have an international flavor, many owned by immigrants. But last I checked that was legal. Hey, isn’t that part and parcel of the American Dream?

In January, the center lost a critical round in court in a lawsuit filed by one of the tenants, XSport Fitness. The center’s owner, meanwhile, continues to stand her ground, but the frightening prospect of her good, hard-working tenants losing their businesses looms larger.

So let’s do something! Once this property gets taken from its rightful owners it is to be transferred to Target, the retailer, to build a Super Target.

Target’s website boasts of its commitment to making our communities better places to live. Are they serious? Find out. Their media relations department is at (612) 696-3400.

Your phone call can help. 612-696-3400.

(You can also visit this link for more ways to contact Target).

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

After watching two documentaries on global warming, I’m reminded of the wisdom of Rodney King. Can’t we all just . . . uh, do science?

The Oscar-winnning documentary about Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, was slick. The evidence, alas, was almost overshadowed by the human story. The whole thing was designed to make you feel ashamed to doubt the thesis presented.

Now comes a controversial documentary from Britain, The Great Global Warming Swindle. It, too, is slick. Edited into sound-bites, it makes the opposite argument. Its message? The greenhouse gas theory of global warming has been scientifically falsified. More important than CO2 in climate shift is solar energy, cosmic rays and water vapor. That is, clouds.

The second story covered is the political angle, featuring several tales of suppression of dissent by scientists, specialists who do not agree with the theory that civilization has caused global warming. Al Gore mentioned, in his film, that he’d witnessed such mistreatment. This film documents it. But from the other side, with a new set of bad guys.

On the Internet you’ll find both heat and some light directed towards both documentaries. And lots of charges, both ways, about honesty.

Scientists can behave badly, documentarians even worse. Be wary of experts. “We the People” must educate ourselves, with curiosity and a big dose of common sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.