Tag: power

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insider corruption term limits

On Glissando Skids

glissando

As corrupting as political power may be, not everyone is corrupted by it, at least not to the same grievous extent.

Yet, even if one starts out with some measure of integrity and good intentions, the longer one is entrenched in power, the more likely one is to lose one’s way. Little by little, and then in leaps and bounds, one goes along to get along, learning to appreciate the perks of power and the advantages of cooperating with party bosses, forgetting one’s desire to buck the establishment and always do the right thing.

Within just five years, formerly fiscally conservative U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, both Republicans “representing” Idaho, started swerving toward the abyss. Now they’re on glissando skids.

Bryan Smith, vice chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee, observes the dispiriting trajectory in a recent commentary.

He cites New American’s Freedom Index, which assesses how well lawmakers work for “limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and avoiding foreign entanglements.”

Risch and Crapo slid from a rating of 95% and 95% in 2012 to 80% and 80% in 2015, 50% and 50% in 2018, and 35% and 30% in 2020. Both have so far gotten a score of 90% the first half of 2021, yet both also voted Yes to the recent $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill.

Smith remembers how both men once proudly opposed runaway government spending.

This is hardly new — or confined to Idaho. As a 1994 Cato Institute analysis concluded: “members of Congress become more pro-​tax-​and-​spend the longer they serve in Washington.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Senatorial Senility

“We have the oldest Senate in American history,” Roxanne Roberts writes in The Washington Post. 

Roberts rattles off the five octogenarians — Sen. Diane Feinstein (D‑Calif.), age 88; Sen. Charles Grassley (R‑Iowa), age 87; Richard Shelby (R‑Ala.), age 87; Sen. James Inhofe (R‑Okla.), age 86; and Sen. Pat Leahy (D‑Vt.), age 81 — and tells us that “Twenty-​three members of the Senate are in their 70s,” noting that “only one is under 40.”

That fledgling 34-​year-​old whippersnapper is newly elected Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff. But being 30 years younger than the current Senate average doesn’t make him better, that’s for sure.

Age isn’t the problem. Not exactly.

My issue with octogenarian Senators Feinstein, Grassley, Shelby, Inhofe and Leahy is that they’ve been politicians in Washington for the last 28, 40, 43, 34, and 46 years, respectively.

That’s way too long. They stop being one of us, representing us. And, left, right or in-​between, we know it.

“Senior senators often stay for decades,” Roberts argues, “because voters are reluctant to give up the perks of incumbency: Seniority, committee chairmanships and all the money poured into their states.”

Ha! The idea that actual voters are unwilling to “give up the perks of incumbency” is laughable. It’s the incumbents themselves who leverage their votes in Congress to dramatically out-​fundraise their challengers. 

Voters rarely get much choice.

No wonder, then, that when people got a chance to vote to term-​limit their own congressmen — they did so enthusiastically. 

President Truman once quipped that legislative term limits would help “cure senility, and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.” He understood that the Senate’s age problem is not time on the planet. It is the time in office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another example was the late Sen. Thad Cochran, who thankfully decided to step down in 2018 — at 80 years of age after 44 years in Congress — none too soon.

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies term limits

Why Congress Can’t Read

Blind Leading the Blind, US Congress, politicians

They don’t read.

No one reads the legislation Congress passes, not the staffers and lobbyists who write “the packages” and congresspeople least of all, as again illustrated by the recent 5,593-page, $2.3 trillion pandemic-​relief-​plus-​kitchen-​sink bill just passed by Congress. 

They haven’t for decades. 

Nor do they care to.

James Bovard, expert reporter on the excesses of the modern individual-​stomping state, says the new monster-​bill “is another warning that know-​nothing, no-​fault legislating will be the death of our republic unless Americans can severely reduce Congress’s prerogative to meddle in their lives.”

Correct. Problem is, it’s Congress that must enact reform — on itself. Talk about a conflict of interest! That’s why the citizen initiative process has been so important at the state level. Without democratic checks — initiative, referendum, recall — at the federal level, what major reform is even possible? 

All big, necessary reforms hit a roadblock on that issue alone.

That goes for limiting the page-​length of bills or requiring legislation be posted online for days if not weeks before a vote. 

Same for congressional term limits, which would de-​insulate Congress from us. 

And, just so, with the late columnist Bob Novak’s proposal of smaller districts, maybe increasing the number of U.S. representative to 2,000. (It wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything more if we cut their pay.) More politicians might be better than fewer by decreasing the power of individual politicians — diminishing marginal power, you might say.

We find ourselves in a trap. These ideas amount to ways to avoid the trap once we are out of it.

But it is getting out of the trap that’s the hard part.

Any ideas? Please advise. You can be sure your good ideas will be read — not by Congress, of course, but by those of us who want a way out. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability term limits

United We Term-Limit

Most Americans appreciate the truth of Lord Acton’s venerable dictum: “Power tends to corrupt and absolutely un-​term-​limited power corrupts absolutely.” 

I’ve slightly reworded it. 

Sorry, Baron.

Anyway, instead of presuming, said John Emerich Edward Dalberg-​Acton, 1st Baron Acton, that powerful men “like Pope and King” can do no wrong, we should presume the opposite. The more power a person can freely exercise, the more likely he will abuse it. “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”

Americans tend to agree. So we see the wisdom of regularly depriving incumbents of power that increases the longer they are in office, even as they become more inclined to abuse this power.

Most incumbents hate term limits. Yet we’ve also seen strong bipartisan support for the reform from many eminent politicians — for example, U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, Republican, and former Governor Ed Rendell, Democrat, both of Pennsylvania.

“Entrenched politicians have been steering the ship of state for decades and . . . we’re about to hit a $25 trillion national debt iceberg. It’s time for a new approach,” they say in a recent op-​ed. “Our elected representatives seem afraid to do anything that would jeopardize their reelection. Term limits allow them to operate without that pressure, secure in the knowledge that they are not risking the position that could be a lifetime career.”

The two experienced elected officials, Rendell retired and Toomey retiring in 2022, also support a convention of states as the most practical constitutional method of term-​limiting Congress.

Americans are coming together, right now, over term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo of Governor Ed Rendell by Center for American Progress

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Putin (and Householder) for Life

Putin, term limits, power,

For the last 20 years, Vladimir V. Putin has served (himself) as either Russian president or prime minister, switching offices to get around the nation’s term limits. 

“In the past, Mr. Putin proceeded cautiously, seeking to preserve a veneer of legitimacy,” explains The New York Times. “Confronting term limits in 2008, Mr. Putin opted for a four-​year hiatus as prime minister while his protégé, Dmitri A. Medvedev, became the caretaker president.”

Required to step down in 2024, at the close of his second consecutive six-​year term, Putin is not leaving. 

Legislation proposed and passed this week by the Duma, if approved by Russia’s Constitutional Court and by voters in an April plebiscite, would re-​start the autocrat’s term limits clock, allowing the 67-​year-​old to stay in power until 2036 … to the ripe old age of 83. 

Putin told the Duma that someday “presidential authority in Russia will not be, as they say, so personified — not so bound up in a single person,” but that day is clearly not at hand.

“If he serves until then,” the Times informs, “Mr. Putin will have held the nation’s highest office for 32 years, longer than Stalin but still short of Peter the Great, who reigned for 43 years.”

The Times also notes that “Mr. Putin joined President Xi Jinping of China and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, authoritarian leaders who have extended their rule.”

Not mentioned? Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Larry Householder,* who calls his state’s voter-​enacted term limits “pretty oppressive,” and is pushing an initiative amendment for this November’s ballot that will do in Ohio precisely what is being done in Russia: ignore all previous years in office, allowing Householder to hold power through 2036. 

Just like Putin. Two pols in a pod.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Mr. Householder’s GOP credentials are somewhat questionable. A recent headline asks, “Will the Marriage Last Between Larry Householder and Democrats?”

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Putin, term limits, power,

Photo by Global Panorama

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

Protector Protection

cfpb, watcher, eye, consumer, bureaucracy, power,

Government organizations are here to help. How do we know this? They have names that say so!

Take the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Great name. It is all about protecting consumers, right?

Created as part of the Dodd-​Frank legislation that was pushed through Congress following the 2008 financial implosion, the CFPB is tougher than the usual run-​of-​the-​mill government agency, however. In the words of Cato scholar Ilya Shapiro, it is “the most independent of independent agencies.” It has a single director, who is almost impossible to remove, and it is empowered to make, enforce, and adjudicate its rules.

And punish violators.

The CFPB doesn’t have to answer to anybody, not even to secure funding.

If this does not raise at least a teensy sense of alarm, let me offer two words of caution: power corrupts.

We all know the ease with which regulatory agencies may abuse their power over us — and few are as insulated from the rule of law as is the CFPB; its near-​immunity from oversight makes the ‘power-​corrupts’ problem much worse.

The law firm Seila Law LLC — which helps clients deal with debt problems — has sued to challenge the constitutionality of how CFPB is structured. Although lower courts have not been sympathetic with Seila’s argument, the case has now been accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A satirist once famously asked, who will watch the watchers?

In the United States, we should ask, who will protect us from the protectors?

By the Constitution that would be the Supreme Court.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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cfpb, watcher, eye, consumer, bureaucracy, power,

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national politics & policies Popular responsibility U.S. Constitution

Congress’s King

King of Diamonds, King Donald, Donald Trump, trade, tariff, power,

Politics today reveals a troubling dialectic.

Thesis: President Trump boasts that he is going to unilaterally “do something” as if he were Emperor, not President. 

Antithesis: Then comes pushback from political opponents and the media, castigating our current commander-​in-​chief for imagining himself a lawless dictator. 

Synthesis: This is soon followed, however, by the discovery that the president does have such awesome power. 

Legally.

In our constitutional system, can a president can just wake up one day and slap tariffs on imports? Well, numbskulls in Congress passed a law handing the president that specific power.

When President Trump declared an emergency to re-​direct money, appropriated by Congress for different purposes, toward building the Wall, many argued that the president cannot usurp Congress’s undisputed power of the purse. True, but irrelevant. Congress had indeed delegated all these undefined and largely unchecked “emergency” powers to the prez.

Last week, as the trade war with China was coming to a boil, Mr. Trump tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing … your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”*

I thought, “Does Trump really think he has the legal authority to order all U.S. businesses to leave China?”

Yes … and apparently he does. It’s called The International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“One of the enduring phenomena of the Trump era,” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck told CNN, “is going to be the list of statutes that give far too much power to the President, but that many didn’t used to worry about — assuming there’d be political safeguards.”

Or that “the right person” would always be in office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Note that Mr. Trump did not order the companies to leave, but did assert his “absolute right” to do so.

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King of Diamonds, King Donald, Donald Trump, trade, tariff, power,

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too much government

Five-​Alarm Foolishness

emergency, alarm, Trump, Donald, President, power

Will President Trump declare a “national emergency”? Is he that desperate to get the funds needed to build a wall (or steel-​slate fence or barrier of some sort) on the U.S. border with Mexico?

It looks increasingly likely, but who knows … 

What I do know is how foolish and dangerous it is to provide “emergency” loopholes for politicians.

Words have very mutable meanings to politicians. “Emergency” will entail whatever the president invoking it desires. 

In fact, when Congress passed the National Emergencies Act in 1976, the legislation didn’t even bother to define the term, “emergency.” 

Every time I hear “national emergency,” it reminds me of Colorado and Oregon, where state constitutions are clear that an emergency entails a true threat to the health and safety of the public. But since those constitutions protect emergency bills from the check of a citizen referendum, legislators make use of the obvious loophole: a majority of bills in those states now carry a clause dishonestly claiming emergency status.

I guess we should not be shocked to discover that Congress has awarded the president at least 136 emergency powers, as Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice informs The Washington Post.

Ninety-​six of those “powers” allow the president to act unilaterally.

What sort of blind power giveaways are we talking about? 

Goitein explains that in a declared emergency, under current law, Congress has authorized “the president to shut down or take over radio stations and even suspend a law that prohibits government testing of chemical and biological weapons on unwitting human subjects.”

We need a wall, all right … between politicians and this foreign notion of extra-​constitutional “emergency” powers. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

emergency, alarm, Trump, Donald, President, power

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies term limits

Electing a Better Way

domino, power, election, term limits, initiatives

For the seventh time in the last 22 years, the Metro Nashville Council put a measure on the ballot to weaken or abolish their own term limits. And for the seventh time voters said no. 

Term limits were under attack elsewhere in Tennessee — along with Ranked Choice Voting. The Memphis City Council foisted three dubiously worded ballot questions on voters. The measure to weaken the council’s limits, neglected to explain that to voters. The other two misleading measures sought to repeal or block Ranked Choice Voting from going to effect.

Voters put down all three. 

Speaking of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), after several squeaker U.S. Senate races, perhaps Republicans and Democrats will reconsider the reform. 

The Arizona race is still too close to call. Republican Martha McSally leads with 49.3 percent of the vote against Democrat Kyrsten Sinema with 48.4 percent. But Angela Green, the Green Party candidate, took 2.2 percent of the vote. Sinema used to be a Green Party activist, so it’s not unreasonable to think those folks would have preferred her to the Republican.

In Montana, incumbent Democrat Jon Tester has won. He garnered 49.6 percent of the vote, while Republican challenger Matt Rosendale received 47.5 percent and Libertarian Rick Breckenridge racked up 2.9 percent, more than the margin of difference. 

Last week, the Libertarian seemingly endorsed Rosendale. “I am here today to support Matt and his candidacy,” Breckenridge told reporters. “And endorse him in his continuing effort to be the front man in the cause of liberty.”

Using RCV, voters can rank their choices and, were their first choice eliminated, their votes would go to their second choice until some candidate achieves an actual majority.

Thus ending “spoilers” — and giving voters more say-so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people Regulating Protest

Three Bad Propositions

initiative, petition, power, money, elections

Two propositions on this November’s California ballot, Propositions 8 and 11, have found an opponent.

“Both would have voters decide very narrow union-​management conflicts in two relatively small medical service sectors,” explains Dan Walters, long the dean of California columnists. Unions are sponsoring Prop 8, which “purports to limit profits in clinics that provide dialysis treatments to sufferers of kidney failure.” Ambulance companies are behind Prop 11, which would “require ambulance crews to remain on call during meal and rest breaks.”

Walters thinks it “foolish to expect November’s nine-​plus million voters to make even semi-​informed decisions about their provisions, much less understand how dialysis clinics and ambulance services operate, or should operate.”

Well, yes, but this criticism applies to government universally. Legislators don’t understand how every business or industry functions, or should function, either. Even when politicians pretend to comprehend, by what right do they micromanage other people’s businesses and labor contracts?

Freedom, not government regulation, should be the default position.

But Walters’ fix runs against this logic. He thinks that upping the required percentage of signatures for ballot placement “by half … might discourage the misuse of the system for issues that cannot be fairly and rationally decided by voters.”

Don’t bet on it.

As Walters himself admits, making it tougher and more expensive to petition a measure onto the ballot won’t block the well-​heeled: “any interest group with a few million bucks and an axe to grind can qualify a ballot measure, regardless of their merits.”

But it would disenfranchise grassroots groups.

Defeat bad measures; don’t destroy the democratic process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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