It's Finally Time for the Fix!

For a long time, I’ve struggled with the question of term limits and reelection questions.  For years I’ve heard conservatives (and even some liberals) saying some variation of “we need term limits – Senators and congressmen should serve no more than 2 (or 3 or 4) terms!  This will solve the problem!”  The belief seems to be that if we can limit these guys to two or three terms that we will fix the problems since, of course, that means someone else will have to take the seat of power that they have and that crony-ism will disappear.  And, to a certain extent, this is true.  However, I have come to believe that this is actually playing into the problem and doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.

 As I see it, there are several problems endemic to our current structure:

-       Politicians can get in office, do favors for big donors, shower their district with money, and ultimately use name-recognition to stay in power for decades, if they’re good at playing the game

-       Long-time office-holders have huge power based on committee membership, tenure in the office, personal favors and the like.  If you are a young, idealistic member and cross a powerful Senator or Congressman, your ability to do anything other than warm your seat is nearly zero

-       Re-election campaigns take huge amounts of time and money.  Politicians who are in office, immediately start figuring out how to stay in office.  I mean, it’s a sweet gig, if you can get it!  Decent salary, money from lobbyists, deals that can make you very wealthy and powerful, health-care, and a retirement program that is next to none.  Are our politicians really being productive if their number one objective is keeping all that stuff and their position?

-       When an office-holder leaves office, frequently there are a cadre of unelected ‘handlers’ that stay behind for the next person coming into the office to make their transition into the job easier and to make sure they know their place

Let’s see if I can find a way to express the problem in one sentence.  Let’s try this:  Running for re-election is at the core of most of the problems in politics.  Yep.  It may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.  Name just about anything that you dislike about someone in elected office, and it almost certainly is at least to some extent, impacted by the need for re-election.

My solution is very simple.  I’m advocating the complete elimination of more than one consecutive term for ANY federal elected politician.  Imagine it…  A president comes into office, works from the day he is inaugurated until the day he leaves, and doesn’t spend a single minute working on re-election since he can’t be re-elected.  Members of Congress – same thing. They have nothing to do but their jobs! 

Simplicity is the key to success, so here are the key elements I’d like to see in this reform:

1.    One and only one term in office for all federal elected offices including the Presidency

2.    A maximum of two Non-consecutive terms are allowed

3.    If you are elected to an office, you can’t be elected to any OTHER office until a minimum of two years after your last term ended

4.    Elimination of any payment or benefit (health insurance, retirement, etc) to elected officials after their term of office ends (with the possible exception of the Presidency – we’d have to talk about this one)

5.    Sitting elected officials would not be allowed to campaign for or publicly support ANYONE running for any office

6.    Anyone who has held public office cannot participate in any campaign or be a part of any government office (including as a staffer for another elected official) for the equivalent of one term of office after they leave office.

7.    Terms of office should overlap by 30 days.  This gives the outgoing official time to transition everything to the incoming official.  Generally, power would be shared during that time, but only the incoming official has the power to vote, sign legislation, submit bills, etc.  The outgoing official is in an advisement capacity only.

8.    Staffs are equally not allowed to serve beyond the term of their boss and will assist in the transition, but cannot be part of the next term.

In addition, I’d like to see these changes implemented around this concept:

1.    Reverting election of the Senate to the original intent in the constitution:  Senators would be selected by the legislatures of the many states and would serve up to a six year term.  Keep in mind that they would serve at the pleasure of their legislature and could be recalled and replaced at any time, if the state so desired.

2.    The House would serve a two year term and be elected as they are now

3.    The President would serve a four year term and be elected as happens now, via the electoral college

These changes would, of course, involve amending the constitution.  However, these changes would, in my opinion, change American politics forever for the better.  Throughout history, the professional politician has mangled and destroyed more nations, people, wealth, and prosperity than anything else.  Remember:  No war begins without a politician.  No trade or embargo happens without a politician.  No foreign policy happens without a politician. These things are crucial to a nation, and politics, especially fearing re-election repercussions, cause people to make decisions that are not always in the best interest of the nation as a whole.

I can see lots of up sides to doing this.  For example…

-       Offers of support (i.e. – money) for their next campaign would be non-existent once they are in office since they can’t run again

-       Actual representation of the states that sent them starts to actually happen

-       I bet we’d see third-party candidates start to have more influence

-       No real need for redistricting – that’s just a tool for re-elections

-       Since a sitting politician can’t support anyone running for office, there’s no need for fund-raising trips, stump speeches, rallies and other things to get in the way of their work

-       The politician can be 100% focused on their work

-       Since we are eliminating all of that time spent stumping and pumping for re-election, perhaps the Congress can once again be a part-time entity – hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

-       Since everyone would be new every few years, the ‘good-old-boys-club’ becomes almost impossible to maintain.

There are probably LOTS of other positives.  I'm sure there are some negatives as well, like maybe the loss of all of that experience would be bad.  Or that we'd wind up with a bunch of amateurs that don't know how to legislate running things.  Hmmm - I don't know why, but neither of those scare me as much as a bunch of deep insider, crony jack-asses playing with my future and the future of my children.

I like to dream, and although the chances of this ever happening seem absolutely invisible, it is fun to imagine a presidential campaign where all of the candidates were private citizens.  Imagine not having to pay for the re-election campaign of the president, who has to fly around on Air Force One or drive around on Greyhound Bus One while he or she should be dealing with a faltering economy or unemployment or wars in multiple countries.

All of this dreaming got me to thinking about other things I’d like…

In my ideal world, I’d kind of like to see these changes as well:

-       First and foremost:  Case law and foreign law should NEVER be used to evaluate the constitutionality of anything. The constitution IS our country.  It is the document that establishes the form of our Federal government, the restrictions on it, the makeup of our republic and the limits on its power as relates to the states and the people.  Any law or court case that hinges on a constitutional matter MUST be evaluated against the constitution itself and not some other person’s opinion about it.  The problem with using case law is that it assumes that the last guy or last court got it right.  That may be fine with laws that are challenged outside of constitutional grounds, but when it comes to the foundational documents that say who we are as a country, each and every challenge MUST be evaluated on its own merits against the standard.  Using case law as the comparison for constitutionality is like the old VHS video-tape problem of a copy of a copy of a copy.  The original still looks good, but the copy stinks.  It is crucial that the evaluation of anything as being constitutional or not must be in comparison to the standard itself, and not to a copy in the form of someone’s opinion.

-       Lawyers would NOT be allowed to run for any political office in the legislative branch of the government.  Let’s face it:  it’s a conflict for those writing the laws to also be in the position of using those laws in the private sector.  I refer you to wolves guarding the henhouse.  It seems to me that the possibility of writing law to benefit other lawyers is just too great.  Not to mention, if we get rid of lawyer/lawmakers, maybe we, the people who have to live under those laws, will understand the laws that are written.

-       For a period of 10 years from the time this law was passed, extendible in 5 year increments, for every law that is written, 5 laws must be eliminated.  This is SO needed.  There are so many laws on the books – so much duplication and contradiction.  To make things worse, there is a huge mass of case law surrounding this mountain of laws, and on top of all that, there is another mountain of rules made by each of the Federal departments that the law pertains to (Ever seen the Obama-care legislation?  Any idea how many times “…as deemed appropriate by the secretary” or words to that effect appear?).  This makes it impossible for the citizen to pretty much do anything in life without breaking some law, somewhere.  Turning us all into unwitting lawbreakers is NOT a good thing and not what we would expect from a free society.

What do you think?  Any of that make sense?  Hey, while we’re dreaming, I’d like to see these as well…

-       Go to a single standard of proof for civil and criminal cases.  This would prevent the silliness caused by someone being found innocent of a criminal complaint, then being sued by the victim for the crime they were found innocent of, and being found guilty.  It should not be possible to be innocent of something and then be found guilty under a different standard.  Whether you agree or disagree with the ruling on O.J. Simpson, once he was found innocent, he should NOT have been able to be sued into poverty for the crime he was found innocent of committing.  That is not justice.

-       Loser pays.  Period.  If you are accused of a crime by the state or sued by someone else, and you win, the loser, no matter who it is, pays.  This MUST apply to even criminal cases.  I would go so far as to say that if you are found guilty and later determined to be innocent, that the state or feds must repay all costs to the innocent party and recompense them for all lost wages, loss of status and for any suffering they had because of that bad ruling.  There MUST be consequences for bad decisions.  The state must be held accountable if the rest of us are going to be.  A person can be utterly ruined by a lawsuit that they win.  Example?  When I was going through concealed carry class in Missouri, at that time there was no castle doctrine.  The instructor made it clear that if you defended yourself against someone trying to kill you, even if you weren’t charged with a crime, the average person would have to pay between $80,000 and $200,000 in legal fees to fight the lawsuits that would certainly be brought by the family of the criminal.  Can you afford that?  Sure, it beats being dead, but not by much.

So, that’s my vision for America.  What do you think?

The Bigger Issue of the Beer Summit...

The real issue with President Obama’s comments about the Crowley/Gates issue goes WAY beyond race. Over the last six months, conservatives (and probably many non-conservatives) have wondered just where our President is leading us. We’ve watched as an almost never-ending flood of new programs, ideas, bills, laws and concepts literally gushed from our television sets as the media struggled to find the time to tell us even a little bit about them. So much ‘change’ has come our way that many folks have actually stopped listening to the news because they feel overwhelmed and don’t know what to think about it all.

The bigger issue, finally, is beginning to emerge: Obama is way out of his depth. Many of us have known this since before he was elected, but it’s now very clear. If Obama can’t control his tongue in a pre-arranged press conference where he almost certainly knew the questions ahead of time, what will happen when he meets with leaders of other countries? We have suspected for a long time that he was a true neophyte at diplomacy, but since we, the little people, aren’t really allowed into the inner sanctum of the meetings between heads-of-state, we have only rumors of his… uh, um… performance problems. Now, I think we can say with certainty that our president is almost certainly unfit for the office of President. Here are the key things I think this entire episode has taught me:

1. Obama is not ‘world-class’. When you are a private citizen talking to your friends or family about things in the news, you can get away with saying just about anything. As private citizens, we have freedom of speech. If you’ve ever been in the military, you know that you give up some of those freedoms when you agree to wear the uniform. The President is no different: He MUST put the country (and whether the President agrees or not, that includes us white folks) before his personal feelings. And if his personal feelings are interfering, he should step aside and let others who can do so with a clear head do the job (although I shudder to think about Biden as President…).

2. Obama is a loose cannon. This also applies to our vice-President. These guys don’t know when to keep their mouths shut. Some will find it ironic that I’m talking about this since this is one of my own failings, but, as our president said, “This isn’t about me”. It is axiomatic in virtually every relationship, whether personal, professional or political, that it is far more important what you do NOT say, than what you DO say. The President injected himself into a local issue, putting his own biases and, dare I say it – prejudices – into the discussion. This tells both our allies and our enemies a tremendous amount about the man who occupies the White House. Unfortunately, what it tells them is not good. It shows a weakness that we must not portray. We live in interesting and dangerous times, and weakness, real or perceived, can lead to tragedy and loss of life for our citizens.

3. Obama wants to change society in a fundamentally racist way. What does this mean? It means that I believe that the evidence points to a strong desire to elevate blacks over whites at any cost. I have no problem having a black President or a black boss or black friends. I have never been bothered by people of any color (including white) in positions of power unless it became obvious that they were incompetent at their jobs. In those cases, I believe we all reserve the right to consider the unfit person to be a moron who shouldn’t be in the position. I have over the years strongly supported people like Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Ken Blackwell, Condoleezza Rice and Alan Keys (still my favorite presidential candidate of all time after President Ronald Regan). What I see happening today is a radical push to ultimately change our society in an effort to ‘right’ the wrongs of the past. Reparations are just not enough and never will be to those on the left who push racial division rather than racial healing. Rather than attaining power by earning it, it seems, once again, that liberalism is out to correct racism by flipping things over so that whites are oppressed in the same way that blacks were. However, in the words of my mother, “two wrongs don’t make a right” (ok, so she didn’t come up with it – you get my point, right?). Creating racism against whites can never make up for racism against blacks. The ONLY way to ultimately end racism and make our nation truly color blind is to accept each other as we are. If America freely elects Americans who are blacks, whites, Latinos or any other skin color to lead our great nation, then God bless us all – it’s freedom at its best! Destroying our society by generating NEW racial hatred against whites does no one any good.

4. Obama is a racist. This is a direct follow-on to the previous point. I’m certainly going to get into trouble over this one, but hear me out. We live in a society where a black man can wear a T-Shirt in the mall that says “Black Power” but a white man can’t wear a T-Shirt that says “White Power”. While on temporary duty in the Military at Andrews Air Force Base a few years ago, at the Base Exchange (like an on-base Wal-Mart for the military folks), I saw T-Shirts being sold that said, “It’s a black thing. You wouldn’t understand”. I was stunned. This seemed incredibly offensive, and I immediately wondered what would have happened to a white Airman who would dare to wear a shirt that said, “It’s a white thing. You wouldn’t understand”. I can tell you with almost perfect clarity: They would have been hauled into their commander’s office and by the time all was said and done, the poor guy would have likely lost a stripe or possibly been booted out with less than an honorable discharge. He would have been branded a racist (and rightly so). But why, if that Airman was black, would not a peep be said by anyone and why would he not be thought of as a racist? On a side note, I don’t think I know ANY white people who would WANT to wear that shirt, and I’d like to think that most of the black people I know would be sensitive enough of their white brothers to not wear one either. I think that the main reason for this is that most people of any race that I’ve met in my life want to actually get along with folks who aren’t the same color as them. We all are, mostly, wanting desperately to live in a color-blind society. The problem is that, whether it’s true or not, it certainly appears that people like Mr. Obama do NOT want this. They want racial division. Otherwise, why else would these folks work so hard to hurt racial relationships. Don’t believe me? Here’s the truth about what I just wrote: If a black person had written this paragraph, it would not bother anyone other than maybe a liberal black activist; but I can just about guarantee that someone out there will be offended by what I just said and label me a racist for saying it. I’m not. My intent is not to hurt because of race – it is to salve the wound and protect it until it heals.

By the way, I want to take a moment and whack the mole that is ‘Reverse Racism’. I’ve heard this idiotic meme for years. If racism can apply to more than one race (anyone remember hearing how we Americans act in a racist way toward Muslims, Indians (American or Eastern), Asians and just about everyone else in the world we meet?), how is it possible that this word can’t be applied to actions against whites? This is just rubbish. Racism is not based on actions of a single race (whites) against another (blacks); it ultimately is the negative action of any race against any OTHER race BASED on race! The idea that black people can’t be racist is as nonsensical saying that only whites can be racists. A racist is a racist. Period. If you are black and you hate whites BECAUSE they are white, you are a racist. If you are a white who hates blacks BECAUSE they are black, you are a racist. If you act WITH INTENT to harm someone because of their color, you are a racist, and that applies to anyone. As near as I can tell, if you are a ‘reverse racist’ this MUST mean that you are as far from a racist as you can be since the reverse of a racist is a non-racist, right?????

So, where does this leave us? If Mr. Gates had been white, and everything else were the same, would we be hearing about this episode? Maybe – because Mr. Gates is a personal friend of the president. So, if Mr. Gates were a white man, and every single other ‘fact’ of this case were the same, and the president had been asked about his friend being arrested, would he have been willing to comment? Of course not. Therefore, I can only conclude that it was important to our President to pour gasoline on the race fire. This is the normal mode of operation for the black radical left. When you want to heal something, you don’t rip off the scab! You let it heal. You apply salve and you cover and protect the wound.

In the context of race, this would mean looking for ways to defuse the situation, not to take a blow-torch to that fuse. It would mean finding ways to prove that it was NOT race related and to work very hard to show how honorable the intentions of the police were. Unfortunately, I don’t think that President Obama’s performance with people like the King of Saudi Arabia or the President of Russia or the Queen and Prime Minister of England have shown us any better ability to deal with the political aspects of international relations than he has with racial relations here in the U.S. We have, unfortunately, hired a lightweight to fight our heavy-weight bout. At this point in history, that may likely prove to be the absolute worst choice we could have made.