Tag: term limits

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folly term limits

Getting to Know You

term limits, democracy, voting, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

The Fourth Estate is coming undone.

Obviously.

But little did I know the problem was term limits.

Respected journalist Tim Skubick complained last November how incredible is the strain created by “44 mostly unknown faces” coming into the Michigan Legislature, adding, “I have to get to know them.”

Courage, Mr. Skubick, courage.

Then yesterday, the Detroit Free Press announced “a growing number of criticisms, from across the political spectrum … on just how catastrophic it has been to leave legislative decision-​making, in particular, to people with little time on the job.”

“Catastrophic” to the people of Michigan, who now support term limits in greater numbers than when limits passed 23 years ago?

No, that word might better describe the Free Press’s decades of editorializing for the corrupt status quo.

By “across the political spectrum,” the editorial board really means “insiders from across the spectrum.”

The newspaper “offers five different takes on the trouble with term limits”:

  • The op-​ed editor posits that legislators need greater experience … and only legislative service, not experience elsewhere, is valuable.
  • Another writer argues that being a representative is no different, really, than being a barber or a florist.
  • Legislators sometimes make sacrifices to serve and then are sad they cannot stay in office longer. (Boo-​hoo.)
  • Two academics, who have long despised term limits, suggest weakening the limits.
  • A former congressman’s spouse claims elections in this world of social media are term limits. (No evidence offered, there being none.)

All five op-​eds oppose term limits; none supported them. This is a liberal broadsheet’s fair and diverse discussion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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meme

Term Limits and Jefferson

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“My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years rather than for life was that they might have an idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of the people and become the governed instead of the governor, which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhapsbe induced by their independenceto forget.”

—Thomas Jefferson

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Accountability Common Sense term limits

Coming to Terms with A Logical Fallacy

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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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Common Sense folly general freedom national politics & policies term limits

Long Live the … Term Limits

Kings Collage

Queen Elizabeth II, the not-​quite-​just-​a-​figurehead monarch of Great Britain, has just become her country’s longest reigning potentate.

“She passes Queen Victoria, her great-​great-​grandmother,” the AP reports, “who was on the throne for 63 years and 7 months.”

This should mean almost nothing to Americans. A curiosity at best, alongside other eccentric British institutions, like cricket and pub cuisine. Americans fought and won against King George III, and we don’t have kings any longer. Or queens.

Britain’s prime minister dutifully predicted that “millions” of Britons would celebrate the “historic moment.” One of the most irreverent (and unpopular) things I ever wrote pertained to Her Alleged Majesty, and the weird, atavistic yearnings still focusing on celebrity sovereigns.

We have enough problems with non-​sovereign celebrities in America — as well as with way-​too-​long-​serving politicians.

I’m for term limits. I approve of them on our presidents (thank you, 22nd Amendment), work to place them on our legislators, state and congressional, and have suggested placing term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices, too.

If we still had an old-​fashioned monarch — as Alexander Hamilton wanted — then I would be for term limits on monarchs as well. I wouldn’t know how to implement them — it’s not exactly a live issue for me — but perhaps L. Sprague de Camp’s imagined five-​year reign, leading to a beheading, could be considered.

Meanwhile, back in American reality, we have a lot of work to do. At least we aren’t saddled with a musty old … monarch-y.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kings Collage

 

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Common Sense general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy term limits

Conflicts Perplexing Prominent Politicians

In Disguise

When does the same old song-​and-​dance, performed by yet another self-​selected committee of the political elite, become “a unique process” that “Nobody’s ever done …”?

When the much-​liberal Denver Post reports the “much-​respected” Daniel Ritchie saying so.

Every election cycle for a decade, it seems, a cabal of big-​spending politicians and big-​receiving special interests form a “prominent” and “bipartisan” group to propose making citizen initiatives more difficult, weakening term limits, and circumventing the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (or TABOR, which limits spending and requires voter approval for tax increases).

This cycle’s iteration is “Building a Better Colorado,” now being formed for a September launch by Ritchie, the former Denver University chancellor.

Sunday’s Post provided the group of “prominent civic and business leaders [not to mention politicians]” ample coverage: “The project — developed behind the scenes for months and detailed in exclusive interviews and documents obtained by The Denver Post — is perhaps the most concerted effort in recent memory to address what organizers see as inherent conflicts in how the state is governed.”

Conflicts?

“Those conflicts, they say, are impeding Colorado’s ability to build new roads, put more money in classrooms, engage an increasingly disenchanted electorate and prepare for the future.”

“I’ve seen this game played too often in Colorado,” remarked the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara. “It’s like a Kumbaya committee. We are going to get all these people who are marginally diverse and at the end of this long process … the conclusion is to raise taxes.”

While the “new” group isn’t “advocating any specific policy outcome” and plans to engage the public at town hall meetings, the meetings’ agenda has been pre-​set … by “experts.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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In Disguise

 

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Accountability government transparency term limits

Listen to Lobbyists

Institutional Memory

With 25 of 40 council seats turning over, “term limit advocates are enthusiastic about the influx of new folks and ideas,” explains Tennessean columnist Frank Daniels III, “but many council members are worried about the loss of knowledge and institutional memory.”

More precisely, “many council members” fret that the city cannot afford the loss of their “knowledge.” Politicians so want to kill such thinking that on today’s Nashville ballot is not one, but two measures to weaken the “eight is enough” council limit. Amendment 1 weakens the limits by 50 percent — from two terms, eight years to three terms, twelve years.

Amendment 2 weakens term limits just like Amendment 1 does. But Amendment 2 also reduces the size of the metro council from 40 representatives to 27. Reducing the number of “politicians” has some popular support, but what’s needed is closer representation. Which means more representatives, not fewer.

Nevertheless, when Amendment 2’s proponent, Councilwoman Emily Evans, was asked why the reduction in the council was combined with weakening term limits, she replied, “You have to give the voters something.”

The perennial argument against term limits asserts that lobbyists, special interests and the bureaucracy will have greater “institutional memory” and, therefore, take advantage of council members.

Talk about hollow! The group pushing Amendment 2 just released their campaign finance report. Their largest donor is the Service Employees International Union, representing city workers — followed by lobbyist after lobbyist, after developer, after payday loan company CEO, and a horde of politicians.

The open secret of our age: lobbyists hate term limits, voters love ’em.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. And if you live in Nashville, don’t forget to vote today, yet again, to keep the citizen-​initiated, voter-​enacted, three times voter re-​affirmed term limits against the latest ballot schemes of politicians and their cronies

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Institutional Memory