The Heat Is On

Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory.[1]

There seems to be an all out effort of late to roll back the progress and to discredit the data that supports the efforts to continue that progress. First we have the Supreme Court reversing Brown, then we have the Putnam study[2] of neighborhood diversity, and now improving neighborhoods does not improve academic performance study.[3]

The findings of these studies seem to suggest that for all the “social engineering” and all the integration efforts of white liberals and moderate blacks, there is no hope for the Black community in America. Our children are unable to learn under any circumstances and nobody wants to live next to us. Is there no hope left for the Black community? Are we relegated to third class life in a first class nation; the built in impoverished quotient in capitalism? According to what I am reading and hearing there is a growing sentiment in this country including among some progressives, that we have done all we can do for the Black community. The issues we face are to systemic and intransigent to ever be overcome.

No matter what remedies have been tried the past 40 years the results have been abysmal. Many have said that the breakdown currently going on in the Black community is a direct result of many of the programs designed to foster improvement in those communities. The programs themselves have created more problems than they have solved. These programs have created an “entitlement mentality” that has robbed the black community of its initiative and self-reliance. Instead of looking to itself to solve issues like poor academic performance, crime, and single mother households we are looking for outside forces to create remedies for us.

I have recently been studying some Native American writings and I have come away with some interesting concepts. Many Native American writers believe that the cause of many of their ills today was the imposition of a foreign culture at the detriment of their own culture. They suggest that because the problem was the disturbance of their own culture by western culture, the solution cannot come from that same culture that created the problem. The solutions offered by the offending culture will only create other problems will it attempts to solve the original problems. They also suggest that the only way to overcome these problems is to remove themselves from the dominant culture and return to their own culture. That in doing so they will be able to produce their own cultural solutions to overcome the problems they feel inflicted on them by the integration of the western culture.For them the solutions will not be generated by outsiders, but by the ones familiar with the needs of their people and their cultural differences

I think for too long we in the Black community have allowed others to determine what our goals should be based on their cultural dynamics. That while these goals may be benevolent and worthy, they are destined to fail because they may have a cultural bias. In other words these may not be the goals and aspirations of the majority of Blacks. The Native Americans have come to the realization that those goals offered to them by the majority population do not correspond to their cultural ambitions and that by trying to achieve the goals of others they have lost sight not only of their culture, but of their morality. When you try to achieve the aspirations that others have defined for you, you are destined to fail even when you succeed. How many people have fulfilled the ambitions of a parent or other loved one only to be supremely unhappy with the results? While the goal may provide what is considered success, once achieved there is an emptiness in purpose. There are many unfulfilled successful people, who long for the opportunity to reach their dream, defined by them.

Are the symbols of White success applicable to the Black community? Has seeking after the manifestations of another cultures success actually harmed the success of our own culture? Do we as a culture value education, marriage, and material success or are these the expressions of a foreign culture that we have tried to emulate? That once attained we find them empty and hollow of any deeper meaning and we are left with that emptiness; is this all? Does achieving success in this culture actually alienate us from our own culture, hence the ridicule and animosity towards successful Blacks? To be truly successful in the dominant culture do Black people have to assimilate into that dominant culture and lose the bonds to their own culture in the process? Is there now a disconnect between those Blacks perceived as successful and those Blacks that are perceived as not being successful?

I guess the question I would ask is; do the majority of Blacks believe that the American dream is their dream? Not that they can’t obtain the dream, but do they want to? The Blacks that have achieved success in this culture often look at other Blacks as not “getting it” for their lack of success, but maybe it is the successful Blacks that aren’t getting it?

---

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/13/AR2007081300966.html?hpid=topnews

[2] http://www.infed.org/thinkers/putnam.htm

[3]http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:3cw-zvD9g4EJ:www.ers.princeton.edu/workingpapers/7ers.pdf+hud+study+middle+class+and+academic+improvement

Read more!

Let Them Eat Cake

For his part, Mr. Bush, in a verbal tour of the current economic scene, was eager both to calm the markets and knock down the Democratic calls for the administration to intervene, predicting that the turmoil in the housing sector would end with a “soft landing” and would not damage the larger economy.

“I believe that markets ultimately look at the fundamentals of any economy,” Mr. Bush said. “And the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Inflation is down. Real wages are increasing. The job market is a strong job market. People are working. Small businesses are flourishing.”[1]

With more and more Americans facing the real possibility of losing their homes our President decided to give some verbal comfort to those who may soon be homeless. The President wants you to know that the hedge fund crowd will not be damaged by your misfortune so keep your chin up. You won’t have to worry the Wall Streeters will not be inconvenienced by your misfortune; just keep packing there is no need for panic.

So, as this crisis continues to force people from their homes this administration has decided that the most prudent thing to do is nothing. So long as it is not affecting the big money boys, let the poor and middle-class fend for themselves. According to Mr. Bush the problem is too much loose money, we have been giving too many loans for homes to “marginal” borrowers. Of course it has nothing to do with the money made off of all that loose loan money by his hedge fund cronies. No, once again it is the poor and middle-class that don’t know how to manage their money. So, I guess when it is just a bunch of average Americans losing homes its ok, nothing to be alarmed about folks.

The real message that Mr. Bush was sending was not to the general public, it was to the bankers and large investors and the message was don’t worry we are not going to try and leverage these loses. In other words what happens when a home is foreclosed? Usually it goes up for auction at a discount, well if the majority of Americans are just making ends meet who will have the money to purchase these homes? So not only do we have the profit from the original loan, but now we have a discounted property and a new loan, everybody wins. Everybody of course, except the poor families that have lost their homes, they won’t be winning. But not to worry they will be fine, because the President says, “…real wages are up”. I don’t know where he is getting his information, but from everything I read and see they are down for the average wage earner. Oh, I’m sorry real wages are up for CEO’s, Congress, and the hedge fund managers, forgive me what was I thinking.

Sometimes I wonder how these guys can say the things they say with a straight face, but that’s why they get paid the big bucks. I couldn’t do it. How can you screw so many of your fellow citizens and have it not bother you? The “soft landing” that the President is talking about, try telling that to the family that just lost their home. Every year foreclosures continue to rise and yet this is not newsworthy, because for the most part we don’t want to know how precarious our positions really are. It’s like the woman juror who has to believe that the rape victim did something to bring about her rape, because she does not want to accept that any woman, at anytime can be the victim of such a heinous crime.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York who is chairman of the housing subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee, said that if these agencies did not act, it would lead to a collapse of the market for sound mortgages, not just the deeply troubled subprime loans that were sold to new homebuyers and people with less-than-sterling credit.

“We need to allow Fannie and Freddie to put more credit into prime lending,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is favored by most Democrats and a good number of Republicans.”

But Mr. Bush appeared to resist that idea, saying that the agencies needed to overhaul their own practices after experiencing accounting scandals before jumping into the current crisis. “Let’s get them reformed first,” he said.[2]

There is an assault on the working class people of this country and if we don’t begin to strike back this country will begin to resemble those “banana republic’s” we were so good at creating. You know the ones where you have two types of people, the very rich and the poor. The assault is to keep us so afraid of losing what little we have that we accept anything that the corporations do, because after all we are lucky to even have jobs. So long as we continue to be herded along by fear and divisiveness, the wealthy will continue to say, “Let them eat cake”.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/business/09econ.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1186670540-W5RLYmSO/E22xr4auvgxYQ

[2] Ibid.

Read more!

The Tragedy of Zimbabwe

I really hate to have to write this story, it tears at my heart. I have to admit that I have always wanted to believe that good will always triumph over evil and Blacks if given the chance will serve their people. The reason this story is so hard for me is because I am old enough to remember when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, a minority white control state in Africa. Rhodesia was just as much a part of the apartheid system as South Africa, until it gained its independence in 1980.

When Zimbabwe became independent no one was more proud than I, I had great expectations for Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Nkomo to create a new nation of unity and prosperity. Unfortunately, this has not been the case, as the following figures show Zimbabwe is on a course of self destruction and it is being led by Mr. Mugabe. Mr. Mugabe has since the beginning of independence has had the full run of the country and the government, so the situation in Zimbabwe is his responsibility. It seems that many do not realize that governance is more difficult than independence. With independence there is one goal, but with governing there are many different goals and all require simultaneous attention.

Food supply and food access are worse now than in 1992, according to a report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Yet, unlike 1992, reservoirs are full of water and there is plenty of grazing for cattle. Why are things worse? Ten years ago, a drought induced by the El Nino weather phenomenon caused the crisis.

"It was strictly a natural disaster," says Judith Lewis, regional director for the World Food Programme (WFP).

Today, a combination of bad governance, economic crisis, widespread poverty and the spread of HIV/AIDS add man-made elements to a natural disaster.

Early warning leading to action can stop a shortage from turning into a famine. In spite of many forecasts of looming crisis, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made denied it until the presidential elections were over in March.

"This food shortage is the accumulation of three years of economic mismanagement," Zimbabwean economist John Robertson told AlertNet by telephone from Harare.

One-third of jobs have been lost since 2000, says Finance Minister Simba Makoni. People's coping mechanisms are stretched to the limit. These include going to live with relatives, taking children out of school and sending them to work -- for example panning for gold or begging -- eating one meal a day instead of two, having more than one job, looking for food in the bush because you there is none to buy.

In the past decade, HIV/AIDS rates have soared to nearly 34 percent, or one in three adults, according to the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).[1]

Zimbabwe has deteriorated into another African nation led by a repressive regime bent on destroying the country in the name of saving it. There is always difficulty going from a minority ruled country to a majority ruled one. You have issues of wealthy redistribution, land reform, and health and educational opportunities that must be dealt with. In order to keep from derailing the economy these issues must be dealt with in a very delicate way. It has to be a gradual process incorporating the pressing needs of the long neglected masses with the economic stability of the past regime. President Mugabe has not been able to negotiate these dangerous waters. He has used repression, violence, and intimidation to keep his grip on power and the people of Zimbabwe have suffered considerably for it.

It is time to open up the political process and allow others to help shape the future of Zimbabwe. It is time for President Mugabe to resign. As with all despots though he will not and his people will continue to suffer. Zimbabwe had the potential to be a shining jewel in Africa, an opportunity to show that Black Africans could govern and prosper. Today this is just a dream that has passed, as it has with so many African nations.

I feel and pray for the people of Zimbabwe and for all African people who are living under oppression. It is sad that oppression today has a new face and it is not white, it is black. One day I hope that we can free Africa from the new oppressors, a day where all Africans can rise up as one with freedom and pride, no longer living in fear. I pray for a united Africa where all African people stand together against internal and external oppression, where unity replaces tribalism. The Africa that Bob Marley use to sing about, the Africa that Nelson Mandela speaks about, the Africa I have always dreamed about.

I have a dream of Africa

Where men are great, proud and dignified

An Africa of Cleopatra, Sheba, Nzinga and Nyamazana

An Africa without genocide, starvation, or disease

An Africa, without dictators!

A free Africa

Lungelo Mbatha

---

[1] http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/d2fc8ae9db883867852567cb0083a028/bc9a79935b9b94bbc1256c08002fc6cb?OpenDocument

Read more!

How Do We Fix This

Over the past few weeks there has been story after story of murder and violence in the blogosphere and in the MSM. It seems like everywhere you turn there is another story more horrendous than the last one. I can’t even do any political stories because of all the murder and mayhem going on in my community. I for one am sick and tired of it. But unlike many of my brothers and sisters, I can no longer just sit back and complain about it. For some reason we Black folks do a lot of complaining, but very little action.

Even though arrests have been made in the Newark case[1], it will only be a matter of a few days before the next atrocity grabs the headlines. This story isn’t about who is at fault, because God knows there is enough blame to go around. Playing the blame game has not resulted in one less murder, so let’s try something different. Let’s look at the problem, let’s define it in a way we can all agree on, and then let’s come up with some solutions that we all can take and implement. It is unfortunate that in order to get attention I will eventually have to post this on some white progressive blogs, but I am willing to do whatever it takes.

I will try to frame the problem as I see it and hopefully with feedback from all concerned citizens regardless of their race or gender, we can come to define the enemy. Unless we know what we are fighting, we have no chance of defeating it. The killings in Newark are not isolated incidents, but a growing pattern of lawlessness that has been brewing in our communities for years. Ask any “old school” person in the neighborhood and they will tell you that the level and the gruesomeness of the violence is at a place they have never seen before. How have we allowed things to get so bad?

The problem as I see it is we have groups of angry young blackmen who are unemployed and many who are uneducated wandering our communities with guns that have been too easy to acquire. These youngmen, many of whom are selling drugs have created an atmosphere of fear and terror. They have no hesitancy to use these guns not only on themselves, but anyone who would stand in their way. There does not appear to be any code of honor, in that everyone is a target. These youngmen appear not to value their lives or the lives of others.

Feeding this problem is a mass media that promotes violence in movies, games and videos. We are being bombarded by this prison, gangster mentality that life has no value. There is this get them before they get you attitude. There is this street code that rewards violence and punishes those who would obey the law; hence no snitchin. These gangs are hiding behind the mask of racism, that by reporting a crime you are turning another young blackman over to the white majority regardless of what he has done. You have these stars in videos and on cds promoting this gangster lifestyle of slinging dope and killing folks. Today’s youth are unable to distinguish the hype from reality.

Many of these youngmen are being raised without fathers. Many of their mothers are either too busy or too tired to supervise their behavior. I know in my city that late at night there are groups of youngmen and women roaming the streets, some no more than 12 or 13. These children do not have enough opportunities to better their lot in life and many have given up. How sad it must be to know that your life is over at 13 or 14, no wonder there is such rage. There appears to be an I don’t give a f**k attitude towards everything that is not gangster related.

Many of our youngwomen have now taken to imitating the youngmen, not only in their dress but behavior as well. I guess if as a girl the best you can hope for is to be a bitch or a hoe, it’s better to be one of the guys. Some of these youngwomen have demonstrated just as much fury and brutality as the youngmen.

Now at this point I would like to hear if anyone has anything else to add to the problem. Again, I hope we can frame the problem without playing the blame game. Let’s just define the problem first. The question is why is there so much violence in our communities? What is the cause?

---

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080900417.html?hpid=topnews

Read more!

They Call This Success?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — On the eve of his Camp David meeting with President Bush, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan painted a bleak picture of life in his country, saying that security had worsened and that the United States and its allies were no closer to catching Osama bin Laden than they were a few years ago.

“The security situation in Afghanistan over the past two years has definitely deteriorated,” Mr. Karzai said on the CNN program “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” in an interview that was taped Saturday in Kabul. It was broadcast Sunday while Mr. Karzai was en route to Camp David for a two-day meeting with President Bush.

“The Afghan people have suffered,” Mr. Karzai said. “Terrorists have killed our schoolchildren. They have burned our schools. They have killed international helpers.”[1]

Since 9/11 this administration and its apologists have held up Afghanistan as a success in the “war on terror.” While I and others have considered there definition of success dubious at best, it seems that even the President of Afghanistan can no longer continue the charade. Afghanistan has not been a success. It may have had the potential to be successfully prosecuted, but as we all know there were bigger fish to fry.

You see while Afghanistan was the base of operations for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, it really didn’t provide any strategic value. The country is rural and mountainous and other than bumper opium crops really has no industry to speak of. The majority of people are poor, uneducated and have been in the throes of war since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Their white market economy is crap and so the rural farmers harvest opium to make money on the black market.

The President of Afghanistan is actually just the mayor of Kabul, this is about how far his influence extends. The countryside is still being ruled by chieftains and war lords as it has been since the days of Genghis Khan, who have an uneasy relationship with the central government. In what has become the norm for this administration the reconstruction efforts have been underfunded and misdirected. The central government does not have the means to expand poverty services to help the average Afghani; as a result the government of Mr. Karzai is having a difficult time engaging the people in building the nation. Mr. Karzai has made numerous trips to Washington to beg for more support for the rebuilding process and each time he has been given a pat on the head and placated with photo ops.

Add to this, the continual buildup of civilian casualties not by the Taliban, but by the US military and the situation in Afghanistan can hardly be termed a success. The Taliban and Bin Laden continue to play cat and mouse on the Afghan/Pakistani border with each side claiming that he is not on their side.

If this is how the neo-cons do nation building, what hope do we have for Iraq? It is time we either concentrate on the original job at hand or expect a resurgence of the people this whole war was suppose to be about. Despite their thinking to the contrary this administration must realize that the people of the world who are struggling have little use for rhetoric and photo-ops, they need and expect real solutions to the problems they are confronting. I believe that if this administration had completed the mission in Afghanistan not only would the Taliban be just a memory, but also Al Qaeda as we knew it at the time.

Once again, Mr. Karzai is forced to come to Washington with hat in hand to beg for more support for his war ravaged people and again he will be presented with little more than lip service and a chance for the President to get more photo-ops for his “war on terror” portfolio. As with all of their misadventures the architects of neo-conservatism have failed to know or understand the history of Afghanistan and how that history plays out today. The Afghani people are fiercely independent and do not have a history of a centralized form of government. They have been a confederation of tribal leaders and war lords who through the use of the loya jirgah[2]pledged loyalty to one ruler in an amalgamation of semi-autonomous kingdoms. Their loyalty to the central government is loose at best and is dependent on that leader being able to deliver what he promises; Mr. Karzai has been long on promises and short on delivery. This lose amalgamation could unravel at anytime, leaving Afghanistan once again open to the Taliban or some other group of similar ilk.

If this is success, what does failure look like? Do we really want to know?

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/world/asia/06karzai.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya_jirga

Read more!

Prove It

Whoever said being black was hard didn’t know the half of it. Everybody talks about the side of being Black in a culture dominated by a majority race and all its attendant ramifications, but rarely do we write about the other side. There are endless volumes about slavery, racism, and marginalization from the dominant culture and while those are extremely important and relevant we are coming to another obstacle to being Black.

It seems more and more today the Black community is being splintered not by some nefarious plan of some white supremacy cabal, no unfortunately it is much more sinister than that. It is the separation of Blacks based on their “Blackness”. There have always been separation in the Black community which I feel has added to the current condition we find ourselves in today. There is a saying in Black America about the bucket of crabs, “Everytime a black person tries to escape their circumstances there are always other blacks (crabs) that try to pull them back down”. In other words, the attitude is if I don’t have anything, then neither will you. While this mentality has been present probably from the beginning of blackhood, it appears to becoming more pronounced as more and more Blacks are reaching some modicum of success.

I wish I could say that it was strictly economic in nature, but that is not altogether true. While Blacks have been split along economic lines this “blackness” thing appears to cross such lines. You have young Blacks who have received some success through various means who instead of wanting to advance the success of their people seem to only want to exploit them. We have young blackmen being slaughtered in the streets and the answer is “Stop the Snitchin”? We have these predators administering poisons to their brothers and sisters and the answer is “Stop the Snitchin”?

It’s bad enough that we have to struggle against the institutional racist obstacles placed in our path by people who are indifferent to our plight, but then after all of that we are being asked by our own people to prove our “blackness” by doing ignorant things. If you don’t follow these “street codes” you aren’t being black, you are imitating the whiteman. As if wanting safe streets, schools that educate, and children raised in a family is exclusive to any race. These are things we all should be striving to get, if not for ourselves; then for our people and our children.

Since when does being black depend on what I wear, what music I listen to, how I talk, or who I’m with? As if being black was some sort of fashion that one can buy at the mall and wear it to be cool; no being black is not about any of that nonsense. Those of us that are black are born black and will be black as long as we are in this world and no one should ever have to pass some litmus test to prove their blackness.

The problem as I see it is that we want diversity from others, but we will not allow ourselves the same diversity. Being black is not some one dimensional “Vulcan mind meld”, where if others don’t behave or think as I do then they are less black than me. Why does being black have to limit me around other blacks? We seek freedom of expression from others, yet we won’t allow that same freedom from ourselves. I’m sorry but I must have been absent when it was decided that being black was based on all of these superficial criteria and that without them your “Black card” will be confiscated, so remember, “Don’t leave home without it”.

One of the Black community’s greatest strengths has always been our diversity. We come in all different shades and different backgrounds and no one ever had to prove their “blackness”. Truth be told, who among us born in this country is truly black anyway? As much as I may not like the opinions of Blacks that believe in the conservative agenda, who am I to question their “blackness”? They believe different things to be the cause of our struggle and believe in different remedies to fix it. There are no black measuring sticks and just as this country is a melting pot of ideas and cultures, so are we a melting pot of the same. It wasn’t like we were all brought over here from the same village and the same tribe during slavery; we represent many different tribes and opinions.

No the way I prove my “blackness” is not in what I wear or how I talk, it is in who and what I am. And no matter how some people try to escape it, you never will. It is who you are, it is what you are. This is the same mentality used by the neo-cons, if you don’t completely agree with our view of the world then you are less of an American. There is plenty of room under the black tent for different ideas, different partners, and different lifestyles. We are a tapestry of many different hues and shades stitched together by our history and our circumstances, shaped by the common struggle of our ancestors.

Prove I’m black; yeah I prove it every day I get up and go to my job that a blackman isn’t supposed to have surrounded by people who hope that someday I will give up and not come to work. Prove I’m black; I do it every time I send money to my kids and provide for their education. Prove I’m black; I do every Friday when I go to feed the poor and show them a movie. Prove I’m black; I do every time I volunteer to mentor a black child from a broken home because his father had to go out and prove he was black. Prove I’m black; I do every morning when I rise up and get down on my knees thanking God for another day and another opportunity to express the love that He has given me to others. Now how are you proving it?

Read more!

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!