ThisIsCommonSense.org

Politicians have lots of experience with scandals. But they don’t usually hope for them. But, according to political science professor Jim Penning of Calvin College, Michigan career politicians should pray for a good scandal.

It’s like this. Michigan career politicians are becoming extinct because of the term limits law voters enacted back in 1992. Politicians hate the law, of course, and spend most of their waking hours plotting against it and muttering under their breath. Professor Penning observes that the plotting just isn’t going so well. “It will be very difficult,” he says. “Voters need to see the downside of term limits before they’re willing to change.” Voters aren’t seeing the downside.

Dang voters have seen only good things come of term limits. Government has not collapsed. Professor Penning reports, “We just got a budget compromise, so government looks like it’s running pretty smoothly.” Darn the bad luck! But career politicians shouldn’t lose all hope that term limits will be tarnished in the eyes of the public. “A major scandal might do it,” says Penning.

Yes, maybe, just maybe, politicians can act scandalously breaking laws and behaving immorally and the public will get so angry with the sorry state of the legislators that they’ll toss out the term limits and let politicians stay in office term after term for the rest of their lives. Now we know why this guy is a professor. He’s right about one thing. Scandal is something politicians know how to do. They’re experts.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I guess it’s tough for the career politicians. Sure, in the absence of term limits, they get to cling to office like a barnacle to a rusty hull. On the other hand, they do have to spend time campaigning, and that can be a drag. Especially if getting reelected is your top priority.

It certainly is for Congressmen Charles Stenholm and Roscoe Bartlett. To save trouble, they would change the Constitution to lengthen terms in the House from two years to four. The Founders wanted the House of Representatives to be a more popular legislative body than the Senate. So they kept the House terms shorter. But Congressman Bartlett says the Founders “would be appalled if they knew we never shut down our campaigns.” Mmm, I guess. They might shake their heads at a lot of things politicians do today. Doesn’t prove we should start handing out scepters and crowns.

Congressman Stenholm, who first gained office in 1978, says that for his first decade in power he thought the Founders were smart to provide for two-​year terms. But then he realized all the time he had to spend raising money. The possibility of stepping down doesn’t occur to him. Eric O’Keefe, author of Who Rules America , a book on term limits, says, “Whatever time they spend raising money, no one is asking them to do it. And they don’t need to. Unfortunately, most would ride to reelection without spending any time on it at all.”

What difference would four-​year terms really make? It’d give career politicians twice as long to build their bank accounts to crush any challengers.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

As I speak, the highest court in the land has been considering the constitutionality of the McCain-​Feingold campaign finance bill. All 456 pages of it.

In the aftermath of the McCain-​Feingold law incumbent congressmen are raising more money than ever, out-​raising challengers nine to one by last report. Has the law done anything about the countless shady dealings between congressmen and special interests? Ha! We can hope that McCain-​Feingold is struck down entirely by the courts as a congressional massacre of the First Amendment. But how can we find a way to make public policy without the corruption of special interests?

I do have an idea. A process where campaign spending is largely unlimited but which has again and again allowed people to overcome big spending. It’s called Initiative & Referendum. You can spend big money on initiatives, but if the public isn’t with you, ain’t gonna pass, buddy. Big spenders don’t always get big votes.

Direct democracy simply cannot be corrupted the way our representatives can be. Initiatives are written in black and white and, as conservative Grover Norquist notes, “One big difference between initiatives and elected representatives is that initiatives do not change their minds once you vote them in.” Liberal Ralph Nader calls initiatives our “ace in the hole.”

Perhaps someday we’ll discover a way to keep politicians honest. But until that miracle cure is invented, citizens must have a way to keep our government under control. That way is the citizen initiative: citizens in charge.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Lobbyists are unhappy. Why? Their strange complaint is that their power is increasing. All thanks to those darn term limits. “We must be stopped!” they say. Their complaints are aired most recently in an article in Christian Science Monitor . Everybody against term limits immediately started citing this article. “See?” they said. “We were right all along. Even the lobbyists want to give their extra power back now. They feel guilty about it.”

Lobbyists like anti-​term-​limits Common Cause are particularly adamant about how term limits have given lobbyists too much power. One of the “proofs” of how term limits let lobbyists run riot is a survey of lobbyists themselves. It seems 74 percent say legislators are “less knowledgeable” than they were before term limits. Which you would think, if true, makes their jobs harder. “Less knowledgeable” is lobbyist-​code for “less willing to accommodate me, the lobbyist.” And that seems to be true.

The article reports that lobbyists in term-​limited states aren’t really getting their way as easily as they might like. And we know this because some of the lobbyists are throwing temper tantrums or pulling publicity stunts to catch the attention of legislators, even screaming threats of retribution for opposition to a desired bill. Frankly, I prefer that kind of noise to a world of cozy, peaceful back-​room relationships that the public never hears about because everybody involved has agreed to do things on the sly. I want to hear about it.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

We wouldn’t be human if our emotions weren’t torn apart by the special reports commemorating September 11, 2001 the attack on the World Trade Towers in New York, and on the Pentagon. What I remember most from that September day and the days that followed was a spirit, a pride and a commitment to be our best when things were at their worst. New Yorkers made us all proud. They had a strength in their sorrow as well as in the resilient spirit they took to rebuilding.

The same spirit was evident from folks at the Pentagon, friends and neighbors of mine. And then there were the citizens who just happened to book a flight from Newark to San Francisco the one hijackers wanted to divert to Washington DC. The passengers, having been alerted to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, went to war with the hijackers. They must have been terrified, but they stood up to the thugs who had taken over the plane, and caused the plane to crash in a field in Shanksville, PA winning our first victory in the war on terror.

The presence of mind of these heroes as they faced their doom is awe-​inspiring. And there was something American about how they faced it, too. “Let’s roll,” a wife at the other end of a cell phone heard, after her husband bluntly told her he had to do what he had to do. The passengers made a plan and it seems they even voted on whether to attack the hijackers. They voted. Voted to be heroic. And were.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

I am so tired of how, if I want to get a raise, I have to ask the boss, and even give reasons. Hey, like, instead just give me access to a giant pool of money and let me hike my own salary as I decree fit. Actually, what I’d like to do is set an automatic so-​called “cost of living adjustment” so I don’t even have to bother going through the motions of considering whether I deserve a raise. That way I could just get thousands of dollars more per year, year in, year out, regardless of how well I do my job.

Okay, I know you’re ahead of me. It’s our beloved Congress I’m talking about. Several years ago the House put in place what they call a COLA, or cost of living adjustment. So members get a raise every year, automatically, unless they go out of their way to refuse it. Which they never do. To them. this COLA is the nectar of the gods. And who cares if they deserve it or not?

The latest “adjustment” adds $3,400 a year, giving members an annual salary of $158,103. I guess it’s a bonus for the hundreds of billions in new debt we’re plunged into. The war is one cause of that debt, but then there’s all the endless pork-​barrel spending congressmen do to sustain their something like 99.9999 percent re-​election rates.

Somebody else should handle the job of raising their salary. Maybe it can be done by national referendum. I doubt that congressional pay would be hiccupping out of control if the whole country were voting on it.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.