Category: term limits

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Accountability folly ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies term limits U.S. Constitution

A Trout in the Milk

Senate Judiciary Committee , Supreme Court, hearings, term limits, Neil Gorsuch

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Talk about a silly rite. Senators repeatedly fired questions about specific legal views that no High Court nominee ever answers.

Why not? Because to answer would be to pre-​judge possible future cases.

That didn’t prevent displays of faux-outrage from committee Democrats, though. “You have been very much able to avoid any specificity,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) criticized, “like no one I have ever seen before.”

In Washington, isn’t that a compliment?

Into this kabuki theater, Republicans added their own inanity. Sen. Jeff Flake (R‑Ariz.) inquired of Gorsuch, “What’s the largest trout you’ve ever caught?”

So that is how to determine whether to confirm someone for a lifetime position.

But even a lifetime doesn’t beat Congress. Elected every two years in the House or six years in the Senate, congresspersons often rack up longer tenure than do justices appointed for life.

The longest serving justice in our history was William O. Douglas, who spent nearly 37 years on the High Court. But if Douglas had spent that epoch in Congress, he wouldn’t place first, but 80th.

In fact, three Judiciary Committee members — Senators Patrick Leahy, Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch — have already served longer than any High Court justice in American history.

Interestingly, of the 20 longest serving justices, half served before 1900. Conversely, all of the 20 longest continuously serving members of Congress served after 1900.

Careerism in Congress beats lifetime tenure.

It’s time for term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics term limits

Another Political Crook

Arkansas, Jon Woods, corruption, crime, Micah Neal, term limits

Last week, the other shoe dropped.

When last we touched upon Arkansas state legislator Micah Neal, he had pled guilty to steering hundreds of thousands of state tax dollars to a small private college in exchange for big, fat bribes.

He also implicated the state’s No. 1 term limits opponent, former State Senator Jon Woods, as chief hoodlum in the criminal scheme. Woods is best known for his dishonestly worded 2014 amendment responsible for hoodwinking voters into weakening term limits.*

And it is upon Woods that the shoe fell.

The fingered wheeling-​and-​dealing Woods, pursued by both the FBI and an angry electorate, chose not to run for re-​election in 2016. Now he’s finally been indicted on 13 felony counts of fraud and bribery. Woods helped secure $600,000 in state funds to Ecclesia College, allegedly for tens of thousands in kickbacks.

“I do know this confirms what I’ve always suspected about Jon Woods,” wrote Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times. “He never had a job. He bragged about the good life he lived off state pay, per diem, travel and the hog slopping legislators enjoy. I should mention, too, that he was the architect of the so-​called ethics amendment that provided a path to 1) longer terms in office; 2) higher pay; 3) an end-​around an end to wining and dining restrictions despite the appearance that’s what voters had done.”

Former Sen. Woods does deserve a longer term … in jail.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* State term limits activists are currently gathering the more than 100,000 signatures they need on petitions to place their original, stricter term limits on the 2018 ballot and allow Arkansans an honest vote.

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crime and punishment ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies Second Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism term limits U.S. Constitution

Perry Mason for the Court

Neil Gorsuch, Perry Mason, Supreme Court, Judge, nomination, Trump

Legend has it that a juror once ran up to attorney Neil Gorsuch, after Gorsuch won a case proving a gravel pit owner had been cheated, declaring, “You’re Perry Mason.”

These days, Gorsuch sits on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and is President Donald Trump’s nominee for the late Justice Scalia’s seat on the nation’s highest court.

And now Gorsuch is receiving testimonials worthy of the indefatigable TV lawyer.

Brad Smith, the chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, expressed his pleasure “that President Trump has nominated someone who will defend a robust First Amendment.”

Ballot access expert Richard Winger noted that Gorsuch has a “good record in cases involving independent candidates and minor parties.”

“I am hard-​pressed to think of one thing President Trump has done right in the last 11 days since his inauguration,” wrote Neal Katyal in the New York Times. “Until Tuesday,” continued the Georgetown law professor, “when he nominated an extraordinary judge and man, Neil Gorsuch, to be a justice on the Supreme Court.”

Katyal, who had served as an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, added that Gorsuch’s record of holding government officials accountable “should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the president who appointed him.”*

Even I have pertinent testimony: back in 1992, Gorsuch argued (in a co-​authored Cato Institute paper) that term limits were “constitutionally permissible” as “institutional constraints on the power of government” that “the Framers,” if alive today, would likely see as “necessary preconditions for liberty.”

No, Gorsuch is not actually Perry Mason — I never knew where Perry stood on term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* On Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Damon Root strongly agreed.

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Accountability government transparency term limits

Promises & Limits

term limits, senate, house, Congress

Last year, Americans — everywhere from Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering the nation’s capital on the east coast, to sunny Santa Clara, California, on the west coast — voted to impose term limits on their elected officials.

There were 40 separate local votes to enact term limits or, conversely, measures put up by politicians to weaken or abolish those limits. In every single case — that’s 100 percent — voters came down on the side of strong term limits. And by a whopping average vote of 74 percent.

Not. Even. Close.

Back in 2014, term limits admittedly did not fare quite as well. In that election year, a mere 97 percent of local term limits ballot measures prevailed. You can’t win them all.

Most folks I know believe we most desperately need term limits on Congress.

Even in these days of division, with our nation racked by partisan rancor and recrimination, a constitutional amendment to term-​limit Congress has better than two-​to-​one support by folks across the spectrum — favored by 77 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of independents.

President Donald Trump pledged in the campaign’s homestretch that, as his first order of business in “draining the swamp,” he would push Congress to propose an amendment limiting House members to three terms, six years, and Senators to two terms, 12 years. Those are the limits in the term limits amendment already introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Tex.) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R‑Fla.).

Speaker Paul Ryan has promised to bring it to the floor for a vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused. McConnell’s office number is (202) 224‑2541.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* His Facebook page is here.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard responsibility term limits

Politicians Bearing GIFs

Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

Yesterday, we discovered that the biggest term limits opponent in Arkansas — former state senator Jon Woods — also allegedly led an elaborate legislative fraud scheme, whereby he and a state representative traded tax dollars for cash bribes.

For now, Woods is an unindicted co-​conspirator. But last week, the representative involved pled guilty to a felony carrying a possible 20-​year prison term and directly implicated Sen. Woods.

Woods’s alleged criminality involves the GIF program — General Improvement Funds. Legislators can personally direct GIF dollars to pet projects and favored cronies, taking political credit. The process is similar to congressional earmarks. And just as corrupting.

In an article entitled, “How a 1997 Power Grab is costing Arkansas taxpayers millions on pet projects,” the grassroots group Conduit for Action explains that the GIF rules changed just before our new millennium, when term limits first cleaned out the state House (1998). The old batch of legislators gave themselves unchecked control over this vote-​buying slush fund.

And that is when even bigger corruption surfaced. “A Federal grand jury shook the Arkansas political establishment today with a long list of political corruption indictments that reaches to the apex of the state Legislature,” the New York Times reported in 1999.

Back then, Sen. Nick Wilson was Arkansas’s loudest term limits critic … until his three-​decade-​long career ended with a guilty plea to 133 counts of racketeering and other public corruption.

Interesting that top legislative enemies of term limits, both past and present, wear the Scarlet Letter “C” for corruption. Coincidence?

Term limits are no friend to corruption. And vice-versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

 

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Accountability term limits

Trump’s Trump

Term Limits, Paul Jacob, Donald Trump

President-​Elect Donald J. Trump wasn’t my choice. Yet, as with any president of these United States, I say: work with him when he’s doing right.

And Mr. Trump is doing right by pushing Congress to vote on term limits.

Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week, month and year for many decades — going as far back as public polling goes — Americans have firmly and overwhelmingly supported term limits. According to a 2016 Rasmussen poll, 74 percent favor term limits for Congress, with only 13 percent opposed.

The support unites us: 77 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of independents together want to limit Congress.

Don’t believe polls? How about election results?

Years ago, syndicated columnist George Will remarked, “To the question ‘Where most recently have term limits passed?’ the answer is: ‘Wherever most recently people were permitted to vote on them.” That remains the case.*

Still, the Washington Post’s Amber Phillips predicted in “The Fix” column that, “Trump’s term limits proposal won’t happen.” Why? Simple, she explained, “Congress doesn’t want it.”

Not to mention that sending the term limits amendment just introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R‑Fla.) to the states for ratification requires a supermajority two-​thirds vote of both the House and Senate.

Nonetheless, a clean up-​or-​down vote on a single term limits amendment puts every member of Congress on record. And Mr. Trump is certainly capable of using the bully pulpit of the presidency — and brash enough to remind voters — should their congressman vote against term limits.

It could be Trump’s trump card come 2018.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Support for term limits even brings Mr. Trump and outgoing President Obama together. “I think we want to see new voices and new ideas emerge,” Obama declared after the election. “That’s part of the reason why I think term limits are a really useful thing.”

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Term Limits, Paul Jacob, Donald Trump