Tag: term limits

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government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Pucker Up

term limits, lipstick, pig, Michigan

“Never have so few applied so much lipstick to such a pig.”

That’s what term limits activist Kurt O’Keefe told the Michigan Board of Canvassers last week, as it considered the official title for a citizen initiative that he argues is anything but.

The Detroit attorney points out that the proposed ballot measure — sponsored by a group named Voters for Transparency and Term Limits — actually comes from “current and future politicians” and “current and future lobbyists.”

These insiders, who’ve “never been in favor” of term limits, seek to replace the 6- and 8‑year cap now in place in the House and Senate, respectively, with a 12-​year overall limit in both houses. At the hearing, proponents argued that the ballot title should declare simply that their measure reduces the current term limits — even though it would double terms in the House and up the Senate cap by 50 percent.

The initiative would also allow former Speakers and previously termed-​out legislators to return like the undead to their former capitol haunts. 

“This is a trick,” warned U.S. Term Limits National Field Director Scott Tillman. “We know it is a trick. They know it is a trick. They had to sweeten it up with transparency.”

That’s the lipstick.

Yet, the transparency fix, instead of simply enacting a financial disclosure system, orders the legislature to do so. Of course, the legislature cannot be forced to legislate, so the measure encourages endless lawsuits against the legislature. 

As if to further show just how sincere these politicians are, their “voters” front-​group has raked in $5 million from “unknown sources,” according to the Michigan Information & Research Service. 

They are transparent only in their self-​serving insincerity.

Oink oink.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Michigan Voters: Alert!

Michigan, elections, term limits, democracy

Michigan voters: Beware of a petition by the group Voters for Transparency and Term Limits, a nontransparent group working deceitfully against term limits.

Currently, Michigan state senators are limited to two four-​year terms; state representatives to three two-​year terms. The VTTL people want to bloat maximum tenure in a legislative seat to twelve years, which they call a “reduction” because the twelve years would nominally cap total service in both chambers.

A now-​familiar gambit. The old, stock propaganda against term limits just doesn’t cut it anymore: arguments about how “term limits give lobbyist ginormous power, and, uh, we already have term limits and they’re called elections” are a nonstarter these days. Term limits are too popular and have been too effective.

So enemies of term limits now pretend that they’re the best friends term limits ever had. Indeed, they wish to strengthen term limits … we’re just not supposed to notice that by “reducing” the two-​chamber overall limit by two years generally politicians will stay longer in office.

With 110 House seats and only 38 Senators, it is merely mathematics that few politicians successfully switch chambers to serve the current 14 year maximum. But, rest assured, this amendment means virtually every politician will stay in the same legislative seat for 12 years. 

Greg Schmid, author of the definitive commentary on this hoax, predicts that VTTL will pretend to conduct a petition drive for a while, then invite incumbent politicians in the Michigan legislature to refer the measure to the ballot, skipping the initiative’s expense and hard work.

If you see the petition, don’t sign. If the amendment gets to ballot, vote No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents national politics & policies term limits

The Age of Octogenarians

Senator Chuck Grassley

As someone who fervently hopes to some day reach the age of 88 — and still actively contribute — I have only heartfelt well-​wishes for Chuck Grassley, the senior U.S. Senator from Iowa.

Grassley celebrated his birthday earlier this month. Then, last week, after 59 consecutive years in elected office (six in the U.S. House, 41 years thus far in the Senate, along with 12 prior in the state legislature), the Republican incumbent announced he will be seeking re-​election to the U.S. Senate next year.

At 88, Mr. Grassley isn’t the oldest Senator — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) is three months his elder, and U.S. Rep. Don Young (R‑Alaska) owns the title of Oldest Octogenarian in Congress, born 13 days before Feinstein back in 1933. 

We all remember Sen. Strom Thurmond (R‑SC) turning 100 while supposedly still “serving” in the Senate. That wasn’t pretty. 

Grassley, on the other hand, appears in great shape, both mentally and physically — doing 22 push-​ups before cameras and a crowd at a recent event.

He would be only 95 years old when completing that full term. And he is very likely to be reelected.

“Grassley has proved to be the most reliable vote-​getter in Iowa for the entirety of his four decades in the Senate,” The Washington Post informed, concluding: “Grassley’s candidacy effectively then takes Iowa off the board as a competitive race.”

I have no problem with Sen. Grassley’s age. I do have a problem with the power of incumbency, a system that allows one man to wield power for decades and leaves our elections so much less competitive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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A Plutocrat’s Expensive Friend

Larry Householder, Ohio

An “expensive friend” — in documents obtained by federal prosecutors, that’s how former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones sized up former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder.

What made the Speaker so Big Ticket?

“Republican Larry Householder hatched a plan to cement his hold on power for an additional 16 years,” The Columbus Dispatch reported, “and Akron-​based FirstEnergy Corp. invested $2 million into the effort.”

Their scheme?

Petition a citizen initiative onto the ballot to slap lifetime term limits on legislators, rather than the current eight-​year consecutive limits, as bait to hook pro-​limits voters — emphasizing this toughening part, while hiding the fact that the eight-​year limits in each chamber would be doubled to a 16-​year limit in either.

The initiative would also set a brand-​new clock, wiping out all past service so that Householder could command the House, uninterrupted, for 16 more years. 

“He told me he’ll retire from [the House],” Jones joked with an associate, “but get a lot done in 16 more years.”

The pandemic stopped Householder’s scam. And then, last July, the FBI dropped the other shoe, arresting him for racketeering. Now awaiting trial, Householder has been pushed out as Speaker and then expelled from the House completely — the first time in over 150 years.

FirstEnergy fired CEO Jones — who, according to The Washington Post, “prosecutors continue to investigate” for his “involvement in a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by the company to win a $1 billion legislative bailout.”

Mr. Householder never liked term limits, but his corrupt attempts to thwart them serve as evidence of their importance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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