Tag: term limits

Categories
Accountability folly incumbents national politics & policies term limits

Authority and Accountability

Congress, war, powers, branches, checks and balances, Syria, Trump, accountability

Roll, Founding Fathers, roll over. The situation with Congress is grave.

You designed three branches of government, each to check the others’ power. The first branch, and the most essential, is Congress. It not only controls the purse strings, but also the power to declare war.

But today’s Congress cannot even muster the courage to regulate the use of military force through legislation such as the War Powers Act or by passing an AUMF — an Authorization for the Use of Military Force.*

Yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd raised the issue of whether a new AUMF was necessary after the attack on Syria, especially for any further action. And would Congress dare to debate a new AUMF? 

“I don’t think anybody wants a vote on this,” remarked Danielle Pletka, a defense and foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute. She pointed out that any action would put Congress in line for blame should problems arise. “Look, the problem for Congress is . . . There’s no percentage for them.”

“If Congress doesn’t exert its authority here,” Todd offered, “then they’re ceding it.”

“Yes,” agreed National Review Editor Rich Lowry. “This is something the founders never counted on, that you’d have one branch of government that didn’t want to protect its prerogatives because too much accountability would be involved.”

Must the very foundation of our Republic always take a backseat to the personal political interests of professional politicians? Career congressmen disdain leadership, preferring to lead the cheers when things go well and criticize when they don’t.

Another important reason for term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

*The AUMF passed after 9/11 gave the president authority to go after Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. It has become a catch-all authorization due to congressional fear of being held accountable for authorizing — or not — any new use of military force. Instead, Congress has simply pretended that President Obama’s regime-change military intervention in Libya and the military actions against the Islamic State fit under the post-9/11 AUMF. 

Printable PDF

 

Illustration includes photo by Petras Gagilas on Flickr

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

 

Categories
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.”

Printable PDF

Term Limits, Paul Jacob, Donald Trump

 

Categories
Accountability moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers too much government U.S. Constitution

Term Limits Trump

Donald Trump, term limits, president, first, illustration

Entering his campaign’s homestretch, underdog Donald J. Trump gave an important speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He emphasized his support for term limits in what he called his “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.”

“[R]estoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington” is the top item on Trump’s agenda, along with a pledge to begin the drive for “a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress” on his very first day in the Oval Office.

Public disgust with the corrupt status quo in Washington — and the hope that he will shake things up — drove Trump’s victory.

Yet, today, the Elections Committee of Michigan’s House of Representatives hears testimony on several bills to weaken or repeal term limits. Have the limits lost public support? Not on your life.

Politicians simply want to stay ensconced in power, reaping the many benefits they’ve bestowed upon themselves. They want to stay in power longer.

Just look to California. Back in 2012, a dishonest ballot explanation tricked voters into thinking they were tightening their term limits law. But what they were actually doing was voting to weaken it.

Now, Golden State legislators can stay in the same seat for a dozen years. And special interests have noticed. They’re “investing” more heavily than ever before.

The Los Angeles Times summarized the result in its headline: “Longer terms for California’s Legislature mean a flood of cash from interest groups . . .”

Here’s for enacting real term limits at every level of government. And if the politicians and special interests don’t like it — good!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Donald Trump, term limits, president, first, illustration

 

Categories
Accountability general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Big Phony

term limits, Illinois, Bill Rauner, illustration

In 2014, Bruce Rauner won the top job in Illinois politics leading a term limits ballot initiative. The initiative garnered 600,000 voter signatures, more than enough to go to voters.

But House Speaker Michael Madigan, the one man running Illinois (into the ground), recruited a henchman to file suit. After an appellate court struck the issue from the ballot, a cowardly state supreme court refused to even hear the case.

That didn’t stop Rauner. As governor, he tried to force a compromise that would get legislators to put term limits on the ballot for voters. But legislators are not going to budge until they, including Mr. Madigan, feel threatened by voters.

So, what’s Mr. Rauner on to now? He’s working with Turnaround Illinois to blanket the state with television spots about term limits. The ad buy is already over $1 million, much of which may be coming from Rauner, says Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller.

Miller complains that the legislature won’t ever pass term limits and that, even if legislators did miraculously propose a vote, the limits don’t kick in until “House Speaker Madigan will be 86 years old, and he could still run for a state Senate seat.”

True. Madigan, already the longest serving speaker in state history, would get to serve the newly enacted limit, which is prospective, not retroactive. Still, that’s hardly an argument against term limits.

Writing in Joliet’s Herald-News, Miller dubbed the effort “pretty much solely political and more than a bit phony.”

Political? Sure. What part of politics isn’t?

Phony? Come on. It’s not Gov. Rauner holding legislators accountable that’s phony — it’s our so-called representatives who crookedly ignore the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

term limits, Illinois, Bill Rauner, illustration

 

Categories
Accountability political challengers responsibility term limits too much government

Who’s the Boss?

Paul Jacob, Gary Johnson, FreedomFest, 2016, Nevada, illustration

This week, Republicans have chosen Donald Trump to be their standard-bearer. Next week, Democrats will nominate Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate.

But the only candidate on your ballot to take the U.S. Term Limits pledge is Gary Johnson, the Libertarian. Last week, I rubbed elbows with the former two-term governor of New Mexico on a panel about term limits at FreedomFest in Las Vegas.

“I believe that if term limits were in effect that politicians would do the right thing as opposed to whatever it takes to get re-elected,” Johnson told the capacity crowd.

The U.S. Term Limits pledge is straightforward, a commitment to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to help push Congress and the states to propose and ratify the congressional term limits Americans have been voting for and demanding for quite some time.

U.S. Term Limits Executive Director Nick Tomboulides asked me what it says about our democracy that even with overwhelming public support for many decades, Congress has blocked this reform.

Noting that Congress is thoroughly despised by the public, I pointed out that only one incumbent congressman has been defeated for re-election so far this year. And that incumbent, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.), was under 23 felony indictments, including racketeering, for which he was later convicted.

I argued that term limitation “is a critical issue at the very core of governance. Are we the boss or are the politicians the boss? Today, I think we all have to be honest and admit the politicians are the boss.”

Adding, “And we have to do something about that.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Printable PDF

Paul Jacob, Gary Johnson, FreedomFest, 2016, Nevada, illustration

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

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

 

Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar  (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.

Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!