In Texas, politicians have proven themselves no exception to the rule: give ’em a penny, they’ll take a dollar; give ’em a dollar, they’ll take your wallet.

But there is some novelty in the Lone Star State, a new way to control politicians.

The issue at hand is over-spending. A Texas group, Citizens Lowering Our Unfair Taxes — that is, CLOUT — has sued the state of Texas for unconstitutional spending. In a series of court victories, CLOUT has gotten courts to agree: taxpayers have legal standing to challenge state spending.

A motion for an injunction, preventing the state from spending $931 million while the case is in court, failed. Still, the judge is letting the case move forward to trial.

Now the suit moves to discovery, with CLOUT’s attorneys preparing to depose members of the Legislative Budget Board to explain how Texas politicians go about deciding how to spend money, some of which they are not supposed to spend.

If this works for Texas, it should be exported.

Sheila Weinberg, head of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, tells me that most governments “throughout the country” neither honestly balance their budgets nor report meaningful financial data. The actual number crunching gets done by those who have, as she puts it, “vested interests in the outcome of the budget calculations.” She adds, “This allows elected officials to use political math to circumvent the intent of budget laws.”

Government accountants must use honest numbers. If they don’t, well, we’ll sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Over two hundred pages long, the book is written in some Nordic language — don’t ask me which. Only at the end is there a short summary section in English . . . and all that really does is whet my appetite for a translation of the whole thing.

You see, the book is about a Finnish reformer who argued for free markets prior to Adam Smith, for freedom of speech and religion prior to the American revolution, and he helped draft the first open-records law in Europe.

Yes, Anders Chydenius wrote the first Freedom of Information Act . . . more than 240 years ago.

Reading the summaries, it is obvious that many of today’s Scandinavians have trouble with the expansive notion of freedom that Chydenius wished to share. Even so, they remain proud of his pioneering work establishing freedom of the press north of Europe.

Elsewhere on the website where I found this book, one author speculates that this lover of limited government would have been saddened by the ways that many groups in the West today kowtow to Chin’s bullying press policies. Why? Well, it turns out that Chydenius himself learned of free speech from China, from the information policy of Tang dynasty emperor Taizong.

Freedom has a long history. Forgotten figures are worth researching, for they remind us that freedom is a perennial philosophy. Each age has to discover liberty anew.

We wouldn’t want freedom to seem “œoutdated.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Congress passes many bills without reading them. Some are prepared so close to the vote that not even their sponsors really know what’s in them.

That’s nothing. Now Congress can push through legislation no one reads even faster, lickety-split.

It’s called “hotlining,” and it was designed to get nitpicky business-y kinds of things done quickly. But recently the business has turned serious.

Here’s what happens:

• The Senate Majority and Minority Leaders agree to pass a bill without a vote.
• They call all members of Congress on special hotlines installed in each office, giving a specified amount of time to object — sometimes as little as 15 minutes.
• If no objection is registered, the bill passes.

In a four-day period this summer, of the 153 hotline calls made, 75 were legislative measures, 61 were nominations, and 17 were post-office-naming bills. A few of these bills authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending.

In a floor speech last year, Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama noted that these bills can be as long as 500 pages. Many staffs simply ignore the calls, he said, and “the Senator is deemed to have consented to the passage of some bill” without ever been told diddly or squat.

We’re not supposed to know how sausage is made. Welcome to hotlining. Don’t say “hot dog.” Say “Yikes.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I like economics so much that I’d like to be an actor. You know, so I could play an economist on TV.

Actually be one? I believe in the division of labor, leaving that job for others.

Interestingly, the number of young people who actually want to become economists is increasing. A recent report on college enrollments shows that computer science is on the way out. Economics? On the way in.

People at Microsoft and elsewhere are worrying. Where will they get their future talent to make further progress in technology? People wonder whether there’s a major malfunction in the education market, since more kids are heading towards economics rather than computer science.

But I wonder: Mightn’t this reflect an emerging consensus? We have really cool computers. Great software. Amazing technology. Sure, I still have trouble getting my email, but other people seem to be having a grand time working with their computers.

Maybe students have come to an economic conclusion: marginal returns to further computer development will not be as high as marginal returns to investment in other disciplines by people who know how to use computers to do work. Actual work.

And if that’s the case, the last thing we need is another government program to encourage more progress in a realm that will lead to only very small improvements.

Better to let the market decide. At least, that’s what my favorite economists would say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

One newspaper calls Leon Drolet, head of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, “a bully.” State Rep. Ed Gaffney calls him a “brown-shirted, knuckle-dragging thug.” The Detroit Free Press calls him “One of the most unpopular figures in Lansing,” Michigan’s capital.

What does all this name-calling mean? It means Drolet and the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance (MTA) are having a real impact.

You see, the political establishment — from politicians to special interests — want to raise taxes. The Michigan Taxpayers Alliance does not want a tax hike. The group wants state government to make do with less, just as Michigan taxpayers are having to do during their state’s recession.

But what is really getting the capitol crowd agitated is the fact that Michigan voters are now getting agitated — because Mr. Drolet is sounding the alarm on their threatened tax increase. In fact, Drolet has been using a 12-foot long, half-ton, fiberglass pink pig named “Mr. Perks” to symbolize the waste and arrogance in Lansing. Mr. Perks has visited various swing districts and is often parked outside the capitol in full view of deal-cutting legislators.

Most of all, with leadership from MTA, voters are doing some threatening of their own: the use of recall against legislators who vote to raise taxes.

Drolet is an active citizen, playing by the rules. So, just why doesn’t the political establishment like him?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.