The Best Government Money Can Buy 4

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Great men are almost always bad men."[1]

My final suggestion for reforming our democracy is to place term limits on our elected offices. I do not believe that the Founding Fathers of this country believed that an elected office should be a lifetime career. As the quote states, power is a very corrupting influence and as our elected officials become more powerful many of their moral compasses become askew. The Founding Fathers debated term limits and considered adding them to the Constitution, but decided against it because it would limit the choices of the people. One must remember though that they would have never considered the idea that someone would want to be a lifetime politician. Why?

Times have changed since those days; entrenched incumbency has not made our government freer or more responsive. In fact it has had the opposite effect, due to the rules for elections being tilted towards incumbency political power has been retained in the hands of the few. Just look at the last two decades of Presidential politics in America: Bush, Clinton, Bush, & Clinton? The only reason we don’t have another Bush in the wings is because he married a Hispanic. Politics is not a family business to be handed down from parent to child, public service should be something we do for a limited period of time and then move on. The framers believe that politics would be a part-time job made up of citizen legislators, not the career politicians we have today.

John Adams put it well when he said: Representatives are "like bubbles on the sea of matter ... they rise, they break and to that sea return. This will teach the great political virtues of humility patience and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey."[2]

Today we have more than a 90% reelection rate for incumbents, this lack of turnover continues to stagnate our democratic process. With such a low turnover rate many politicians have become complacent and out of touch with their constituents. This in turn has led to more partisanship and entrenchment of political views of elected officials. Besides if you can’t get done what you need to get done in two terms then you’re lousy and probably need to find another job anyway; maybe EPA, FEMA, or one of those cushy jobs.

Entrenched incumbency is bad for the body politic in a number of ways. Today short of a war or a corruption scandal it is next to impossible to remove an incumbent. Incumbents have their whole term to fundraise so they come into the election cycle with usually more money that their challengers. Incumbents usually have the backing of their party leaders, so they have the whole political machinery behind them. Because incumbents are in office they are able to do redistricting when the time comes, so they can gerrymander districts to ensure their incumbency. Finally, there is the advantage of pork barrel spending that comes with incumbency; the incumbent can bring home the bacon to his/her district.

Institute a two term limit for all elected offices.

For all the reasons stated above, I believe we need to limit all office holders to two terms. Because the Congress only gets two years we should increase their terms to four years and reduce the Senate to four years. This would allow us to only have to vote every four years, except for some special initiative and would put everyone on the same election cycle.

Term limits would help prevent the career politicians from staying in office forever. In just my lifetime I can think of many politicians that lasted long past their usefulness and allowed many others that were outside of the mainstream to continue to wield power (ie. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurman, etc.). Term limits would allow citizen legislators to return to politics, instead of politicians looking for careers, they would know they had two terms to accomplish their goals maximum. Democracy’s need new fresh ideas and blood to remain vibrant and responsive, this can only happen when there is a rotational system in place. Many current incumbents have no fear of being ousted so they no longer represent the people who elected them; instead they represent those who fill their campaign coffers. This is how despite an overall majority of Americans disagreeing with a policy, that policy does not change.

Term limits would allow elected officials to vote on principle and not just to prolong their careers. Term limits will not stop some politicians from peddling their votes, but it would lessen the effect. Unlike today where there are so many votes up for sell, we couldn’t get all the clowns out in any election. Term limits would allow our representatives to be more representative of the will of the people. Term limits will also help to remove corrupt politicians from other districts. There are many politicians that have been caught red-handed and yet they continue to be re-elected, term limits will force voters in those districts to elect someone else and clean up the political system at the same time.

As I stated at the beginning none of these suggestions are cure-alls for what ails the American democracy, but they would go a long way to restoring faith and trust in a system that sorely needs it. Many of the messes we find ourselves in today could have been avoided by implementing these three simple suggestions.

"that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." – Abraham Lincoln

---

[1] Lord Acton

[2] http://www.ustl.org/Research/1999articles/990414dailymountaineagle.html

Read more!

The Best Government Money Can Buy 2

In the last article, I wrote that I had 3 opening proposals to wrest our government away from the corporations and the special interest groups that now dictate our political policies and direct our national debate. Like the tick or the octopus with its sticky tentacles, loosening the hold of corporations and special interest money will be difficult and will require the efforts of all of us. These guys rely on the apathy of the masses to continue their hijacking of our government and elected officials. Here are my proposals and I welcome comments and other suggestions on the part of fellow concerned citizens.

The three suggestions I would like to have implemented are:

1) Revoke the personhood of corporations.

2) Limit the number of lobbyists, the amount of money they are able to donate, and require a five year ban on government officials and employees from joining or lobbying for corporations in which they have worked on legislation for.

3) Institute a two term limit for all elected offices.

Revoke the personhood of corporations

This I believe is the cornerstone of any real reform of our political process. Our political system has become more and more unresponsive as corporations have been given more rights as individuals. The founding fathers of this nation were very suspicious of corporations; it was after all a corporation (East India Trading) that was used by the English crown to project their empire on the Americas. It was even debated and proposed by Thomas Jefferson to have freedom from monopolies inserted into the Bill of Rights.

We believe that corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges we willfully grant them. Granting corporations the status of legal "persons" effectively rewrites the Constitution to serve corporate interests as though they were human interests. Ultimately, the doctrine of granting constitutional rights to corporations gives a thing illegitimate privilege and power that undermines our freedom and authority as citizens. While corporations are setting the agenda on issues in our Congress and courts, We the People are not; for we can never speak as loudly with our own voices as corporations can with the unlimited amplification of money.[1]

Corporations were never meant to be endowed with the rights of humans, by their very nature they cannot be human or considered so. In a grave miscarriage of justice and bribery the Supreme Court in 1886 granted personhood to corporations and the rest as they say is history. Because many of the judges were once corporate lawyers themselves eventually the pleas of the corporations that they were in fact people won out. This decision opened the flood gates and allowed the wealthy corporation owners to remove the shackles placed on them by the states that chartered them. They now had 14^th Amendment protections from government intrusion. This amendment had been written for one purpose and that was to guarantee the rights of slaves, period.[2] This was stated in the dissenting opinion and still holds true today. Because the original decision was based on incorrect interpretation of the law and bribery on the part of greedy corporate owners, it is in the best interest of the Republic to resend the original decision.

Why is this change so important? With the current sitting Court co-signing on the side of all corporate cases that come before it, the power of the corporations is only going to get greater. We the people cannot compete with the corporations. The founding fathers of this nation knew that and warned of this impending loss of control of the government to these corporate benefactors. It is unfortunate, but they knew that the darker side of human greed for money and power would overrule what is best for the people. As long as we afford corporations 14^th Amendment protections they can continue to pump boatloads of money into the political process and continue to corrupt our system of democracy. Democracy is based on one person, one vote and equal protection for all. How can this include a non-entity?

How cruel was it to use the same law that disproved one lie (slavery; one man can own another) to create another lie (that corporations were people). Sometimes the irony of these guys just baffles me. They have the gall to use the same law that freed people and use it to enslave people. The whole purpose of corporations getting personhood was so that the same small group of owners could continue to control the country and maintain “white male privilege”. Remember when all this started “We the people” only included white males, who owned property. This only amounted to 10% of the population at the time and they were the only ones able to participate in democracy. If we are really serious about changing this clusterf**k we call democracy, we must open up democracy to all the people; not just those of privilege.

And please spare me all the corporate PR feel good messages about how corporations have been good for America through its racial policies, gender equality, and foundations. Corporations have done more to harm to the Republic than to help it and we will all be better off once they are relegated to being under the control of we the people once again.

---

[1] http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

[2] 83 U.S. 36, 81 (1873)

Read more!