Category: incumbents

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incumbents

A Dingell of a Century

Let’s celebrate longevity. But should we specifically cheer one solitary person holding a seat of power for 60 years? Or rejoice over a single family maintaining a vise grip on a political position for a whopping 81 cycles around the Sun?

And … should that federal office continue to be filled by hereditary succession via the advantages of incumbency?

For 100 years? More?

Rep. John Dingell (D‑Mich.), 87, just announced his retirement after occupying a congressional perch for 59 years, the longest in history. He won a special election back in 1955, when the seat’s previous occupant, his father, passed away.

This “master legislator,” as an always-​objective Washington Post news story called him, stated he was leaving because Congress had become “obnoxious.”

Trust me, we feel your pain, Mr. Dingell.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s David Goldston told the New York Times that the “truly distressing thing” about Dingell and several multi-​decade career politicians departing Congress “is that they’re the ones who know how to negotiate, know how to legislate, know how to get things done.”

Really? Then, why didn’t he help prevent the nation from sinking 5,600 percent deeper into debt, from $318 billion to almost $18 trillion during those last six decades?

Deadline Detroit notes that in response to praise from “fellow politicians, friends and media outlets … online commentators are having a field day ripping Dingell, his legacy, and even his wife, Debbie, who is widely expected to replace him.”

It turns out that Mrs. Dingell, occupation lobbyist, has indeed officially announced she will run for her husband’s seat, obnoxious as it no doubt is.

Can America survive a century of rule by Dingells?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
incumbents insider corruption

Incumbents2IRS: Beat Up Our Foes

You can’t get much more explicit about the desire to wield power against political opponents solely because they’re political opponents than Senator Chuck Schumer’s recent public demand, reported in The Hill (“Vulnerable Dems want IRS to step up”):

The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government. There are many things that can be done administratively by the IRS and other government agencies — we must redouble those efforts immediately.


Set aside how Schumer lumps disregard for truth with “attacking government”; set aside the insinuation that efforts of Tea Party groups seeking redress of grievances are somehow nefarious, or that only right-​leaning groups “funnel millions” into political discussion. Schumer wants government power to be exercised on behalf of politicians who are politically vulnerable precisely because of their own irresponsible policies and the consequences of those policies. He wants to squelch political debate, and not with an even-​handed tyranny. (Not that he should try for an even-​handed tyranny either.)

Politicians have long abused their power in order to get re-​elected — one of many reasons I support term limits. But they are not always so overt about it.

Congressman Dave Camp is seeking to prohibit IRS from imposing Draconian new rules to restrict the political activity of non-​profits until after the 2014 midterm elections. Good idea, except for the time frame.

The prohibition should be permanent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
incumbents media and media people

Spring Cleaning

For the fifth year in a row, the Washington Post has offered readers a two-​page spread, “Spring Cleaning: 10 Things to Toss Out,” featuring ten people on what to cleanse from our society.

Also for the fifth time, the Post’s email asking for my “thing” was obviously snagged by my spam filter. Computers!

Still, ten is a number I can easily count to — here’s the Post’s list:

  1. Ben Bernanke? The measure carries! Wait … do we get to vote?
  2. Compliments? Really? Well … good try.
  3. Retweets are not endorsements? Skip.
  4. Flip-​flops? Wrong channel.
  5. Innovation? Love it. And yet I look forward to the new, upgraded version of any computer program like a shot of the Ebola virus with a long, dirty needle.
  6. Red Lines? Foreign Policy’s Editor Susan B. Glasser tossed out red lines, noting that in Syria “The ‘red line’ has been crossed … And Obama is backed into a predictable corner.” By all means, if the Great O cannot live up to his red-​line proclamations, let’s been done with such lines. And the color red, too.
  7. The term “Working Mother”? Meaning: ALL mothers are working mothers. Heck, I can testify; I probably made the mess.
  8. College Rankings? It’s unanimous.
  9. Texas? Couldn’t we just move the Dallas Cowboys from the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference so Washington doesn’t have to play them?
  10. Automatic Tax Withholding? This was Milton Friedman’s idea to get money into the government faster during World War II. Since regretted. But not going anywhere anytime soon.

Too bad that doggone email didn’t arrive, but let me present the eleventh thing to toss out: Career politicians.

Time again to clean both House and Senate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
incumbents national politics & policies

Gravy Train Engineers

A lot of big money in the Republican Party is now actively being marshaled to make sure that Tea Party efforts come to naught.

The latest endeavor bills itself the Conservative Victory Project, and has been written up in the New York Times, which relates the group’s intent: “to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles.”

You see, campaigns to unseat staid, big-​government “conservative” Republican incumbents have not gone unnoticed amongst the Old Guard of the GOP. And these folks are worried about the quality of the gravy their gravy train returns. So they seek to shore up the “winners”:

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.”

Law is, of course, thinking of several Tea Party candidates in the last election who blew it, Big Time. You know the ones: the candidates who talked weirdly of rape.

But it’s not just Tea Party Republicans who shoot themselves in the proverbial foot, or place foot in mouth. Mainstream “conservatives” blow it, too, as Grover Norquist pointed out in the Times article. “People are imagining a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Grover.

I worry that “the real problem” Law and his cronies (such as Karl Rove) are fighting is the specter of a successful Tea Party contingent, with Rand Paul at its lead. Real change is awfully frightening to the whip hands on the gravy train.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
incumbents term limits

Chavez Shocker

Having chucked presidential term limits, Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez recently won re-​election to a third six-​year term in office. Not surprising.

What is surprising, according to Francisco Toro writing in the New Republic, is that the election was so close.

Toro, writing before election day, wasn’t surprised that the failings of Chavez’s socialistic and repressive policies have been getting harder for the public to evade. But in an “increasingly autocratic petrostate, the advantages of incumbency are so deep, [re-​election] really ought to be a walk.”

Toro saw Chavez’s own campaign as awkward and unpersuasive, the challenger’s as smart and effective. Come October 7, though, the former tramped across the finish line with 54 percent, a comfortable if smaller margin than he had enjoyed in previous elections.

Chavez’s advantages included rules for political ads permitting each candidate to advertise only three minutes a day on each broadcast outlet — even as the incumbent ran frequent “institutional” ads promoting the government’s doings that looked an awful lot like campaign ads. During the campaign, his government often claimed emergency to take over the air waves to spout campaign pitches. All this is in the context of years of efforts to increase the number of state-​owned media and browbeat private media into uncritical silence.

The more tyrannical a government becomes, the more urgently a citizenry needs term limits in self-​protection. Yet the more tyrannical a government becomes, the more easily it can get rid of such safeguards.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
incumbents political challengers

Inside Outside Upside Down

Voters in yesterday’s Indiana Republican Primary made history. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar became only the second senator in history with 36 years or more of incumbency to be defeated in his own party’s primary.

It wasn’t close, either — State Treasurer Richard Mourdock trounced Lugar, winning three of every five votes.

During the race, Sen. Lugar’s residency problem became clear: he hadn’t actually lived in Indiana since 1976. Voters tend to dislike the same person wielding power for four decades and only visiting, now and then, the people he represents.Richard Mourdock/Richard Lugar

Nor did it help being tagged “President Obama’s favorite Republican.”

But more substantial issues also mattered. Lugar voted for the TARP bailout. He opposed full Second Amendment rights. He voted to raise taxes and jack up the debt ceiling even further.

That’s what the so-​called “outside groups” like the Club for Growth told voters in their ads.

An article in the Indianapolis Star, “Outside money flows in to state’s U.S. Senate race,” informed readers that $4 million was spent by political groups not controlled by the candidates, and that 70 percent backed challenger Mourdock. But Lugar, the powerful incumbent, was still able to raise enough “inside money” to outspend Mourdock by nearly two to one — running nasty attack ads against the challenger.

Without the independent groups and PACs, Lugar’s insider funding and incumbent edge would have been a whopping four to one.

The ability of more voices to speak out helped make the challenger competitive against the incumbent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.