Tag: Term Limits for U.S. Congress

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local leaders term limits

Term Limits Trek

Izzy, term limits

Izzy Israel lost his job. He had been working in Nashville’s music industry, but the coronavirus pandemic upset those plans. In the induced depression of the pandemic lockdowns, he decided to try to make a wider impact. He went walkabout.

Or, more properly, trek.

He set out to walk from the Florida Keys across country to Cape Flattery in Washington State . . . for a cause.

The cause?

Term limits. “We have people in Congress that are making policies and laws for their entire lifetimes,” he argues. “I think that’s highly corruptible. Big money is guiding our policies. You can see it. I think it’s time for term limits and I wanted to be a part of that change.”

According to the account in Alabama’s Pike County newspaper, The Messenger (troymessenger.com), “He began his cross-nation odyssey on Dec. 22, 2020, and hiked up the Florida panhandle solo until he reached Tallahassee. While generating some publicity for his cause, he attracted the attention of the national organization, U.S. Term Limits.”

Specifically, my old colleague Jeff Tillman.

“Once I met this guy,” Jeff says of Izzy, “I was amazed at how dedicated he was.”

The Messenger goes on to relate how Tillman’s support has made Izzy’s long march for limits on politicians easier and more effective.

Izzy points out that Congress is “having a hard time” term-limiting “itself.” Thankfully, explains Jeff, the Constitution provides a path for 34 states (two thirds) to call a convention to propose an amendment, bypassing Congress.

Four states — Alabama, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia — have passed an application for the single-subject convention advocated by U.S. Term Limits. Another 15 states have passed calls for a multi-subject convention, which includes term limits.

Let’s . . . enact some Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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 folly incumbents meme national politics & policies term limits

Indicting Incumbency

term limits, indictments, democracy, elections, meme, Congressman Chaka Fattah, illustration

How does that old, pithy anti-term limits slogan go, again? “We already have term limits, they’re called indictments!”

Wait . . . is that it?

Must be. This election year — the year of the outsider, the year of unbridled contempt for establishment, Washington, D. C., politicians — has seen only one incumbent congressman defeated by the voters.

Just one. It came late last month in the wake of a 29-count felony indictment charging Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) with bribery, theft, bank and mail fraud, racketeering, and more.

In all the other congressional primary contests pitting incumbents against challengers across the country so far this year, a solid 100 percent were won by the incumbent — zero won by challengers.

Rep. Fattah, whose corruption trial began in federal court on Monday, has pled not guilty to all charges, proclaiming his innocence. “Chaka Fattah’s lifestyle is not on trial,” his defense attorney told jurors. “Philadelphia politics are not on trial. [Congressional] earmarks, donations, grants to nonprofits are not on trial.”

But Congressman Chaka Fattah certainly is.

The incumbent’s previous re-election had been a breeze — completely unopposed in the all-important Democratic Primary, and then garnering 88 percent of the vote against his sacrificial GOP challenger. That was in 2014, before the felony charges.

Following the indictment, the Washington Post reported that Fattah “found it difficult to raise money after the party establishment all but abandoned him.” So, even in this single instance, the FBI and the party establishment, more than voters, sent this 22-year incumbent packing.

I have a new slogan: “We don’t have term limits, and we need ’em!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits, indictments, democracy, elections, meme, Congressman Chaka Fattah, illustration

 

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Accountability Common Sense term limits

Coming to Terms with A Logical Fallacy

Neocon, Neo Conservative, Photomontage, collage, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, JGill, Jim Gill

Good people can disagree about term limits.

It’s not a moral issue, but about practical governance.

I love term limits, while my friend Lew Rockwell, the former Ron Paul aide who started the Mises Institute and runs the popular website LewRockwell.com, isn’t a fan.

In a brief post to his site, entitled “The Term Limit Hoax,” Rockwell lamented that “Term limits apply only to the institutionally weakest branch of government, the legislature, to further weaken it, and never to the presidential bureaucracy, which actually runs the government, nor to the judges. It’s why neocons, those ultimate presidential supremacists, love term limits.”

This is the classic logical fallacy of guilt by association. Neoconservatives breathe air, too. Should the rest of us turn blue?

Usually if politicians — neocon or otherwise — claim amorous feelings for limits, as the late Bob Novak warned, “They’re lying.” Yet, most regular folks — all races, genders, political parties, levels of neocon-ness, you-name-it — actually do want term limits.

Lew’s correct: Congress is weak. It was designed to be the strongest branch, holding the all-important purse strings and a law-making monopoly. Yet, career politicians have shrunk from fulfilling the First Branch’s constitutional role, consistently handing more and more power to the executive branch and the courts.

That’s not the result of term limits, but a lack thereof.

Why is there “never” a push for term limits on the “presidential bureaucracy”? Well, those bureaucrats don’t even have terms as such. And any limits would have to be legislated by Congress. Congress enacted that bureaucracy, every cubicle of it, and the longer congressmen stay in Washington, the more they champion it.

Limit judges? A term-limited Congress might help there, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Neocon, Neo Conservative, Photomontage, collage, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, JGill, Jim Gill

 

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term limits

Merry Congressional Term Limits

In the spirit of giving, good will, peace, harmony, and important institutional reform, how about giving ourselves and our posterity a generous helping of congressional term limits?

I mean a maximum lifetime tenure of “three (3) House terms and two (2) Senate terms and no longer limit,” as spelled out in the U.S. Term Limits Amendment Pledge that U.S. Term Limits invites candidates and congressmen to sign.

Alas, don’t expect a stack of 535 signed pledges.

Merry ChristmasAlso, don’t expect a constitutional term limit amendment proposed by Congress to be wrapped up in a bow under our Christmas trees this holiday season . . . or the next. That gift, which our elected representatives could give to us, is not on the list they check twice.

We the people can only secure this reform by relentless pressure and activism. This very commitment is the gift we can give ourselves right now.

I’ve been fighting for term limits for decades. (Never mind how many!) But at the moment, I’m just echoing the heartwarming sentiment posted at the TermLimitsforUSCongress Facebook page: “The greatest gift that we could give to our children would be to stand together and put an end to the corrupt career politicians in the U.S. Congress.”

Term Limits for U.S. Congress is not to be confused with the nation’s leading grassroots organization fighting for the reform, U.S. Term Limits — especially since the U. S. House term limits proposed by TLUSC is more generous than either I or USTL can sign onto.

But giving ourselves the gift of congressional term limits? On that essential question, we are merrily of one mind.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.