Michigan voters: Beware of a petition by the group Voters for Transparency and Term Limits, a nontransparent group working deceitfully against term limits.
Currently, Michigan state senators are limited to two four-year terms; state representatives to three two-year terms. The VTTL people want to bloat maximum tenure in a legislative seat to twelve years, which they call a “reduction” because the twelve years would nominally cap total service in both chambers.
A now-familiar gambit. The old, stock propaganda against term limits just doesn’t cut it anymore: arguments about how “term limits give lobbyist ginormous power, and, uh, we already have term limits and they’re called elections” are a nonstarter these days. Term limits are too popular and have been too effective.
So enemies of term limits now pretend that they’re the best friends term limits ever had. Indeed, they wish to strengthen term limits . . . we’re just not supposed to notice that by “reducing” the two-chamber overall limit by two years generally politicians will stay longer in office.
With 110 House seats and only 38 Senators, it is merely mathematics that few politicians successfully switch chambers to serve the current 14 year maximum. But, rest assured, this amendment means virtually every politician will stay in the same legislative seat for 12 years.
Greg Schmid, author of the definitive commentary on this hoax, predicts that VTTL will pretend to conduct a petition drive for a while, then invite incumbent politicians in the Michigan legislature to refer the measure to the ballot, skipping the initiative’s expense and hard work.
If you see the petition, don’t sign. If the amendment gets to ballot, vote No.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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1 reply on “Michigan Voters: Alert!”
“Term limits are too popular and have been too effective.”
Effective at what? You toss one bozo out and get a new one. Both made lavish promises while campaigning, which they promptly forget once in office; neither can be sued for lying. I’m not against term limits, but I think they address at most a microscopic fraction of the problems of governments today.