Friday, November 10, 2006

Term Limits

OK, is it just me? Or does our recent experience with GWB, WJC, the defunct "republicats" and now the new and improved "dhimmocrats" situation the US is going through, not point out the wisdom of somehow evolving [note use of 'code' word] our form of government into one that uniformly enforces national term limits?

Isn't one term enough for ANY citizen politician? And wouldn't that pretty well rule out or nullify most activities of professional [spit, spit] politicians?

While we're looking at the federal government, why do we still need two houses? Lets combine them all into one house, elect them to a single four year term, half elected during presidential election years and the others two years later. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Go back to the idea of a concerned citizen contributing her/his efforts for one term to the process of representing one's neighbors in the nation's capitol. It would no longer be one's lifeswork. Worthwhile to do well, yes, and great on the resume, but not a long-term career thing. Think of the pork-barrel money this could save!

As an added relief to the federal budget the single term idea could be used for congressional (and presidential) entitlement reform. Pay them a good wage, sure, but nothing close to the regal structure we currently have in place. Give them a good retirement benefit, pay all reasonable living expenses, but put the onus on them to go back to honest work afterwards and reenter the private sector if they wanted to improve their eventual retirement nest eggs.

No, it won't work. Too many oxen would be gored. And it could place the burden on voters to actually be responsible for tough decisions at election-time. No, that won't do. We would rather drink our kool-aid, roll over and go back to sleep. Too bad. Snooze, snooze, snooze.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always appreciate it when people think outside of the box. It would certainly reduce abuses of the system if politicians had no prospect of reelection.

49erDweet said...

Thanks, stephen. When we relied on the horse and buggy to bring our representatives to DC our bi-cameral system made sense. Now, it's just three hours or so coast-to-coast. Shouldn't we somehow evolve?