I think limited terms will keep delegates focused on resolving issues (or maybe even possibly being progressive, gasp!) rather than just keeping a job. If you go into it knowing your term will be limited, there's a good chance that sweeping changes will occur more frequently...

That has its ups and downs...what do you people think?

7/11/2012 11:15:25 PM

What do you mean by sweeping changes?

Sweeping changes in Congress?

Sweeping changes by Congress?

7/11/2012 11:56:20 PM

I don't see any correlation in terms of actual congressmen. You can hate on Ron Paul, but he is democracy in action. I think Bernie Sanders is a douche, but people who believe the same stuff he believes love him. Then there are people Pelosi...

Again, is there a correlation to begin with? Does the correlation come from long-termers or is it just random? Even if BOTH of these are satisfied, would limiting terms help the matter?

Big hill to climb there. Maybe we could address corruption more directly. In like a million different and better ways.

7/11/2012 11:59:52 PM

You haven't seen democracy in action.


You've seen the republic in action.



And the republic can only go as far as caucuses.


The roadblock is the electronic voting machines.


The electronic voting machine give the players that own the voting machines the power to elect whoever they want, 100% of the time.

7/12/2012 12:51:55 AM

I'm in favor of term limits. These assholes get far too comfy in DC, get detached from reality and are mostly self serving.

7/12/2012 8:28:39 AM

This^

Congress was never intended to be some cock suckers career. It was intended that Billy Bob farmer gets elected in his town to represent the interests of his district for a little while, and then go the hell home to be a farmer again. To represent your district or state is a supposed to be a fucking privledge, but most of these cock suckers feel entitled by their position. Career senators/representatives become detatched, greedy, and manipulated by party pressure and special interests because they only care about re-election. 535 god damn wanna be kings and queens

[Edited on July 12, 2012 at 8:51 AM. Reason : .]

7/12/2012 8:49:56 AM

I think people should be able to vote for whomever they want to. If some congressmen serve too long and become corrupt, that's the fault of the constituency of their respective district or state. That shouldn't mean that voters elsewhere should have their right to elect a person they like revoked just because he/she's served a long time.



[Edited on July 12, 2012 at 9:38 AM. Reason : .]

7/12/2012 9:32:31 AM

well, in any case we all know it will never fucking happen

7/12/2012 11:04:20 AM

That would be nice if there were any type of correlation with a politicians effectiveness and his popularity. Demagogues are always popular. People loved Jesse Helms, but he was a racist shithead and. People love Charles Rangle and he's hugely corrupt.

Here's what I would do.

Term limits should be mandatory. You get 1 term and then you can never serve in that same body again. Ideally I would like to see 1 term. Congress serves for 6 years, president for 10. Recall votes would be allowed after 3 or 5 years if the public is unhappy, but no re-election even if they like the guy. The person elected following a successful recall would only serve out the remainder of the original term, not another full term.

The other thing that needs to happen is doing away with protected districts and mandatory gerrymandering and actually draw districts based on something like the shortest split line method.

Under our current system you have people who almost can't get voted out and therefore have no impetus to actually do anything for the country outside of make sure that they bring home the bacon for their district, or you get people who spend half their term campaigning to protect their cushy job. If they didn't have to do these things maybe, just maybe they'd actually follow through with their campaign promises and principles.

Career politicians at the federal level can and have just done too much damage, it needs to end.

7/12/2012 11:14:08 AM

So you finally find someone you love and who's honest.

Then you kick him out after your mandatory 1 term.

GREAT THINKING!



The corruption you're seeing does not stem from career politicians. If that was true, we wouldn't have the Ron Paul Revolution.
Ron Paul has 30 years of integrity under his belt. We wouldn't have that fact to judge people's integrity if we only let them serve one term.

Anyone that advocated limiting the terms of the congress severely lacks the knowledge and understanding of the Constitution. The unlimited terms were specifically place there on purpose to combat another type of fraud. That is why we have an executive branch WITH term limits.

However, checks and Balances don't work if you have 1 small elite group that owns all three branches: Hint: The Federal Reserve.

The problem is the government isn't run by 'we the people' anymore. Voting is just a beauty contest to make it look like we're doing something.

[Edited on July 12, 2012 at 11:57 AM. Reason : .]

7/12/2012 11:55:10 AM

Quote :

"Anyone that advocated limiting the terms of the congress severely lacks the knowledge and understanding of the Constitution. The unlimited terms were specifically place there on purpose to combat another type of fraud. That is why we have an executive branch WITH term limits. "

Really?

Half of our legislature was supposed to not even have been popularly elected, mostly for fear of demagogues gaining too much power, the founders feared that every bit as much as a tyrant in the executive branch (there were no term limits for the president when the constitution was drafted). You've got to limit their ability to do harm somehow. Term limits are one pretty good solution.

Next time you want to talk about the intent of the constitution maybe you should actually give it a quick once over so you don't talk about things that you only imagine were in there from the founders and were actually amended over 100 years later.

7/13/2012 12:18:27 PM

Sorry to double post, but here's a little bit from Wikipedia to back me up.

Quote :

" In contrast to the Articles of Confederation, the federal constitution convention at Philadelphia omitted mandatory term limits from the second national frame of government, i.e. the U.S. Constitution of 1787 to the present. Nonetheless, largely because of grassroots support for the principle of rotation, rapid turnover in Congress prevailed. Also, George Washington set the precedent for a two-term limit for the Presidency—a tradition that prevailed until Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, after which the 22nd Amendment of 1951 was created which codified the two-term limit. However, when the states ratified the Constitution (1787–88), several leading statesmen regarded the lack of mandatory limits to tenure as a dangerous defect, especially, they thought, as regards the Presidency and the Senate. Richard Henry Lee viewed the absence of legal limits to tenure, together with certain other features of the Constitution, as "most highly and dangerously oligarchic."[6] Both Jefferson[7] and George Mason[8] advised limits on reelection to the Senate and to the Presidency, because said Mason, "nothing is so essential to the preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation." The historian Mercy Otis Warren, warned that "there is no provision for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well timed bribery, will probably be done...."[9]"

7/13/2012 12:24:24 PM

this is all useless without political party reform.

Even if you don't perceive an incumbency, it's still the same system. Someone is holding the keys to the nominations from our two parties, and you want to talk about cozy? Really? Nothing could be cozier than our 2-party system.

You need money, and you need organization, and you need persistence at it. That doesn't work for Billy the farmer who goes to Washington because his town is outraged with how they're running the place. He certainly doesn't do it for one or two terms where he's only one vote out of the entire congress.

If you want to allow movements and new thoughts to grow (dare I say, Democracy), you need to have an effective breading ground for new political parties. Let the dumbfucks run on the Tea Party. We'll see how good they are at making alliances with the parties that represent the rest of us.

If incumbency is the problem, you need to fire the people who hold the keys. Term limits won't address that.

7/13/2012 12:30:21 PM

Nope, you're correct, but they could certainly help. One possible fix is public financing of campaigns, but I think that's a dead issue at this point.

Honestly, as long as we have a winner take all system of election a 2 party system will always be the end result.

7/13/2012 12:34:35 PM

I vote we choose our reps by lot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Every state gets a minimum of 3 congress critters, so 2/3s of them should be chosen by lot, with the remaining being elected as normal. Random rotation keeps the balance of power shifting, and if the people really like their rep, they can slot them into the few elected positions.

At the very least, it would be more entertaining than the crap we have now.

7/14/2012 1:51:25 AM