Posted on 1/24/2006, 7:41:41 AM by NutCrackerBoy
The Jack Abramoff scandal has put political corruption front and center in Washington but this particular scandal, or even this particular kind of scandal, barely scratches the surface of corruption in government.
It is not that all members of Congress, or even most members of Congress, are taking outright bribes. Government is corrupted whenever it is diverted from its avowed purpose and directed toward some other goal, especially goals that conflict with its purpose.
This more general kind of corruption is much bigger than a few bribes and has far weightier consequences. Staggering as it is to think of the trillions of dollars in runaway spending by the federal government, that is just part of the story.
There are still more trillions of dollars being promised in Social Security pensions and Medicare payments, for which there is not enough money in the till. It is like writing checks without enough money in the bank to redeem them.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Why isn't pork barrel spending unconstitutional. I went through the earmarks in the transportation bill looking for something. There was no federal interest or interstate commerce in them.
" At the heart of much government corruption is one simple thing: Re-election. It takes big bucks to run a political campaign and all that most politicians have to sell is the power of government that they control. That is what they do sell in various ways to various special interests.
Term limits try to deal with the problem of re-election but the fatal weakness of term limits is the "s" at the end of the word "limits." So long as there are multiple terms, the first term is going to be spent trying to get re-elected to a second term -- instead of devoting that time to serving the public interest.
What really needs to be done is to put a limit of one term in one office and a waiting period of several years before being elected or appointed to another office in government. In other words, make political careers impossible.
Can people who are not career politicians run the government? People who were not career politicians created the government and the Constitution of the United States of America.
It was one of the most incredible achievements in history. Who among our career politicians today would be capable of such a feat?
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Has the author of this brilliant idea any conception of the power of the bureaucracy? Go to any government agency from the police at the local level to the Social Security administration office at the national level. Every single facet of government is run by non elected career bureaucrats. The only possible check on their power is that of elected officials. Term limits would mean that by the time an elected official had learned who actually controls the bureaucracy they would be forbidden to be in office again to do anything about it. The Dictatorship of the Bureaucracy would be in total control.
Of course most ex elected officials would just go to work in the bureaucracy to prevent future elected officials from controlling any part of the government.
How much control of a pro football team would a coach that could only coach for one year have? Now picture a team with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of players and a coach guaranteed to serve no more than two years... make that 435 new coaches every 2 years. Toss in the rules for removing a bureaucrat and you have an elite dictatorship that make the Soviet Union look like Paradise.
Dr. Sowell ping!
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I thought the Sowell article was excellent. I also thought your post was excellent. I'd like to see the two of you in a friendly dialogue. Maybe some workable ideas would emerge that we could use to deal with this problem.
for later
Anybody who thinks term limits do any good has only to look at the California legislature.
<< FDR was wrong. Buying votes with pork barrel spending is corrupt. >>
FDR was wrong, was corrupt - and was a traitor.
Bureaucrats do not create law. If 2 years is too short for a congressman/woman, then increase the term. Give new politicians time to adjust and learn. Also, I see no problem (in the single term scenario) of a former Congressman running for Senator or vice versa.
You and I agree that the only check to bureaucrat power is elected officials. But of course bureaucrats run government; that's what their appointed / hired to do. However, today's elected officials are worrying more about being re-elected more than anything else... especially keeping an eye on bureaucrats.
I can't fathom how you can make the leap of linking term limits to communism / dictatorship. You use some powerful terms: dictatorship, commusism, bureaucracy (all with capitol first letters)... the manner you with which use them seems pretty alarmist.
I'd like to know which bureaucrats you think would weld dictitorial power in the event that something like term limits come to pass. But personally, I don't think it will ever happen because Congress likes the power and the perks that comes with the job.
Finally, I'd recommend you write Doctor Sowell because he his more lucid in expressing his opinion than I am.
R
Maybe they don't write it down, but they have been known to ignore law they don't like, or turn the plain meaning of the law upside down when writing the enforcing regulations. Or, to simply expand the law until it is unrecognizable.
Or, from another angle, they don't write law, but they do write regulations. And we have far more regulations written, than we have laws.
This is the way things work. Check out the British comedy "Yes, Minister". The comedic point of the entire series was the way the permanent government blocks the action of the elected officials. It doesn't always work this way, but the kernel of truth in this comedy is rather large.
I submit. I believe your are one hundred percent correct when it comes to regulations, directives, memos, notes etc. While serving a purpose, more and more they're utilized as a hodgepodge of cover your @ss techniqes that often work to cross purposes. They protect the notorious THEY while the man (or woman) doing the job gets canned -or worse- indicted.
I'll definitely check out "Yes, Minister." In fact I'll do a search now (thanks).
Are legislators limited to a single term there?
No, two. The result is that we get a set of put-up dolls unknown to anyone except the lobbyists who sponsor them. Without electability, they care more about who has a job for them on the way out than they do about what the voters want.
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