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Accountability Common Sense incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility term limits

Agreeable America

term limits, Congress, 74%, polls, Rasmussen Poll

Americans actually agree on a lot of things; it’s a pity that today’s media and political debates play up the discord.

Or so argues A. Barton Hinkle at The Richmond Times-​Dispatch. Sure, he admits, “[a] lot of people seem willing to tear your head off over the smallest thing.” But “on some topics, the public is of one mind, or as close to that as you can get.”

Hinkle notes that “Nine out of 10 Americans think a background check should be required for every firearm purchase.”  A few percentage points fewer wish to keep “Dreamers” in the country; a mere one point fewer disapprove of civil asset forfeiture. Medical marijuana is approved of by 83 percent of Americans.

Not on Hinkle’s list? American agreement on term limits. A year ago, a Rasmussen Poll found support for limiting congressional terms at 74 percent of likely voters, with only 13 percent opposed and 13 percent undecided. This overwhelming public support has been consistent for many decades. 

But consistently ignored by Congress. Not so surprisingly.

Can Americans put their united oomph behind their overwhelming agreement? U.S. Term Limits thinks so. 

The group isn’t depending on cajoling the Congress, either. They’re mobilizing concerned citizens to convince 34 state legislatures to call a Term Limits Convention.* The convention’s purpose is to propose a constitutional amendment for congressional term limits, which then still requires 38 states to ratify it.

Rather than brewing up a civil war over tweets and “microaggressions,” join the Term Limits Team. 

Let’s agree to agree. And make our representatives agree, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* As Article V of the U.S. Constitution states, “The Congress … on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states …”

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Accountability incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility term limits

Our Experience with Experience

exit, term limits, experience, Congress, oversight, Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker

It seems exceedingly plausible that the longer one serves as a legislator, the better legislator one would become. 

Yet voters back home have noticed something: the longer in office, the less representative their so-​called representative tends to become. 

No wonder that in those states where Americans have been permitted to vote on congressional terms limits, that vote has been a resounding, “Let’s limit ’em!”

In a Washington Post op-​ed, Greg Weiner, associate professor of political science at Assumption College, praised Senators Jeff Flake (R‑Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R‑Tenn.) as “voices for congressional power” and “defenders of congressional prerogative.” He worries their departure weakens Congress as an institution, further eroding a critical check on the president and the executive branch.

“The problem pertains far less to opposition to this president,” Weiner points out, “than to the long-​range erosion of congressional resistance to the presidency as an institution.”

This caught my attention because we desperately need Congress to function as a co-​equal branch of government and because opponents of state legislative limits* often assert a similar argument: term-​limited legislatures are less able to check the power of the governor and executive branch agencies.

“Congress has been in decline for generations,” Weiner acknowledges. What else has been happening over this time? Politicians have been loitering in Congress longer and longer, term after term after term. 

Hmmm. The correlation is between a weakened Congress and more experience, not less.

Let’s further note that Flake is only in his first Senate term and Corker his second. 

After nearly four decades in office, is, say, doddering Sen. Thad Cochran (R‑Miss.), providing better oversight?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The 15 states that have them — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota — contain 37 percent of us.

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Popular The Draft

Daughter Draft

draft, registration, conscription, women, war

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” 

For years, the Selective Service System — the friendly folks who bring us the military draft — used the above slogan to portray registering for the draft as a rite of manhood. 

If macho draft registration is now expanded to women, perhaps the slogan will change to: “Men and women have to do what they’re told — equally.” That’s where the issue is headed: to equality. Equality before the law is important, sure — but we don’t want equal servitude. Equal freedom is better.

“It appears that, for the most part, expanding registration for the draft to include women would enhance further the benefits presently associated with the Selective Service System,” stated a Pentagon report to Congress recommending the mandatory registration of women.

What benefits are those?

Spending $25 million each year on a Washington bureaucracy to keep a woefully inaccurate and incomplete list of young people between 18 and 25 years of age for a possible future military draft doesn’t hold any benefit for me. 

If a draft were conducted, many observers believe the Selective Service would throw away its coerced list of young people (gathered by threatening and punishing and imprisoning young people*) and simply purchase a list or lists on the open list market.

But there is no need for conscription. Never has been. Citizens in these United States have always stepped forward. Today, the All Volunteer Force is the best military in the world. 

Most of all, conscription is anathema to the idea of individual liberty. We can and will defend ourselves, but without registering or forcing our daughters into the military. 

Or our sons. 

Ending registration, forswearing conscription, that’s equal freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* I know, I was one of those prosecuted back in the 1980s. 

 

Additional Reading:

Common Sense: For Genderless Freedom

Common Sense: Needless List?

Townhall: Obama’s New Rite

Common Sense: Equal or Free?

Common Sense: Junk the Law

Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone

Townhall: Americans Gung-​Ho to Draft Congress

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Accountability Common Sense folly general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility term limits too much government

It’s the Stupid Spending

debt, spending, Congress, term limits

These United States are approaching a crisis. Mounting debt seems increasingly unpayable. Sovereign default and financial chaos are “in the offing” — drifting from the (future) horizon to the (present) shore.

The costs of our debt load have been accommodated as astute economists predicted, with the weakest recovery in American history.

Seven years ago I wrote:

According to increasing numbers of Americans, it’s the level of spending by government that must decrease. We must balance budgets. Soon.

One could play sloganeer and say “It’s the spending, stupid”; or, twist that, to say “It’s the stupid spending.” But however you formulate the problem, what the new Republican House must do is find a way to cut spending.

They haven’t. Is there any reason, even with super-​duper businessman Donald Trump riding herd, that they will make net cuts? 

We can expect gross spending to increase and the debt to balloon even bigger.

Why?

Well, we are trapped. 

Even the politicians themselves feel trapped. 

You see, once the government begins a program, a constituency comes to depend upon it, and resists being “betrayed.” And the media supplies a steady stream of sob stories about the brutality of “austerity.” Politicians fear the passion of voters reacting to a specific hyped human need more than the general desire for less spending. So politicians increase the stupid spending.

Well, if the politicians are trapped, release them. Free them. 

How? Term limits.

Congressional term limits would un-​trap not just the pols — it’d free the voters, too. Let’s end the pretense that sending the same politicians to Washington term after term can produce local prosperity. Oh, the power of incumbency may lavish benefits on career congressmen, but it doesn’t pay off for the rest if us. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was President Harry Truman who said that term limits would “help to cure senility and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.”

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Illustration: Gustave Doré, “Avaricious and Prodigal”

 

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Accountability local leaders media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility term limits

Sic Transit Gloria Flake

Senator Jeff Flake, Senate, term limits, conservatism, Conscience of a Conservative, Arizona

Yesterday, a major American politician gave up.

Sort of.

Senator Jeff Flake, the junior member of the upper chamber from the State of Arizona, took to the Senate floor to announce that his “service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January, 2019.”

Actually, most of the speech was an appeal to President Trump.

Or a lambasting. 

In either case, he was echoing his recent book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle, which columnist David Brooks has described as a “thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it.”

In the Age of Trump, anti-​Trumpian manifestos are … controversial in GOP ranks. And his opposition has cost him. All bets were against him winning re-election.

“I believe that there are limits to what government can and should do,” Flake wrote in a letter to supporters, going on to say “that there are some problems that government cannot solve, and that human initiative is best when left unfettered, free from government interference or coercion.”

Solid principles. Principles I share. But how principled was Flake? He began his career promising to limit his own terms, in accordance with … conservative principles. And yet the man from Snowflake, Arizona, broke that promise in 2006, holding on to his House seat for three more terms. 

For his remaining 14 months in the Senate, Flake can return to the principle he reminded himself of in yesterday’s speech: “Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office.”

There’s life after Congress. And Jeff Flake can do good things in the real world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Omission of Character

Democratic Party, gubernatorial nominee, governor, Frank Northam, Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, racism, politicians

One downside to jumping to the wrong conclusion is that the failure to even look for the correct, accurate conclusion inevitably follows. 

This sleepy odd-​year campaign for governor of Virginia has recently been riled by charges of racism. Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Frank Northam made the “mistake” of “omitting” the party’s candidate for Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, from a small printing of literature for union members about the Democrats’ statewide slate. 

Northam is white and Fairfax is black. 

“[A] slap in the face to Justin and to black voters,” is what Quentin James, who runs a PAC working to elect black candidates, called the removal of Fairfax from the literature. He added that it “reeks of subtle racism” and “sends a signal across the state, that we, as black voters, are expendable.”

Noting that black voters make up 20 percent of the state’s electorate, Think Progress dubbed Fairfax’s deletion: “mindboggling.”  

Was this a “dis” and did it really have anything to do with Fairfax being black?

Well, Fairfax labeled it a “mistake,” but his exclusion from the flyer was certainly not inadvertent. It was by clear-​eyed design. 

The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), a $600,000 donor to the coordinated state Democratic campaign, requested that Fairfax be removed from literature their members will distribute. The union is at odds with Fairfax over his opposition to two state pipeline projects the union favors. 

So, Northam didn’t throw Fairfax under the bus because Fairfax is black. No sirree. Northam threw Fairfax under the bus to placate a powerful, well-​heeled special interest group.

Northam isn’t a racist. He’s just a self-​interested, disloyal politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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