Posted on 05/17/2015 6:35:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last week, the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission abruptly canceled its planned public meeting.
On the OCMC’s agenda was to have been the proposed weakening of legislative term limits, from the current eight-year maximum to 12 years, which the august Legislative Branch and Executive Branch Committee had advanced, 8-1, to the full commission.
Perhaps the cancelation came from concern that supporters of term limits were riding to the capitol for a news conference to coincide with that now-scuttled meeting of the commission, announcing a campaign to confront this latest gambit against citizen-imposed limits.
Goodness, a meeting of this elite tribunal and the troubled electorate it supposedly serves might upset the careful balance of democratic pretense those conniving against term limits had hoped to conjure up.
“One of the things you always hear is it [the weakening of term limits] is for good government,” said former GOP state representative Matt Lynch. “Well, it’s elitist government.”
Let’s shoot straight. First, the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission doesn’t have anything to do with “modernizing” the constitution of the Great State of Ohio. Term limits are the law for 15 state legislatures — all were passed in very modern times, beginning in 1990. Ohio’s eight-year consecutive limit was enacted in 1992. Term limits are hardly outdated . . . except in the maniacal minds of career politicians.
Ray Warren, chairman of the Warren County Republican Party and the leader of the newly formed Eight is Enough Ohio, asked, “What’s modern about doing things to further pamper elected officials?”
Second, do you wonder why the OCMC is so overwhelmingly against term limits? After all, a recent poll by Ohioans for Good Government found a whopping 78 percent of Ohio voters like term limits and oppose changing them. One might think such a commission would be more reflective of that consensus public viewpoint.
Well, though it may seem the commission is designed specifically to elicit ideas from people of all walks of life, it’s actually designed to represent the interests of the legislature. The OCMC was created by the legislature. By law, 38 percent of its membership must consist of currently serving legislators . . . and even those comprising the commission’s other 62 percent are handpicked by legislative leaders.
Many also happen to be former legislators.
Yet, the Columbus Dispatch reports that, “Lawmakers are waiting to see if the Constitutional Modernization Commission recommends expanding legislative term limits to 12 years from the current eight years,” as if the OCMC’s approval would be some kind of independent public voice inspiring legislators to act. What a crock!
The phoniness of this process is insulting. A commission pretends to represent the people, but represents only a small subset of the people, mainly the politicians they are and those they represent.
Term limits are a common-sense, consensus reform to prevent politicians from becoming too powerful, too comfortable and privileged outside the restraints of citizen control. Politicians, along with their insider buddies, respond by ignoring what the public wants and pursue elaborate schemes against us.
And, in so doing, prove exactly the point that term limits advocates advance. Their very resistance to term limits itself proves the great need for term limits.
But the battle is joined. The contra-OCMC news conference not only scuttled the anti-term limits panel, the term limits message hit the news.
Referencing the advantages of “gerrymandering and campaign-finance regulations” for incumbents, Maurice Thompson, executive director of Ohio’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, said at the conference that “the only legitimate method of dethroning incumbents these days . . . is really term limits.”
“The idea of going from eight to 12,” explained Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, “only benefits incumbent legislators who want to stay in town longer. . . .”
Blumel didn’t take a breath before adding a crucial kicker: “and special interests who have invested in relationships with those legislators.”
If, as in the current paradigm, 'government' is a clique annointed to rule over 'others' then weakening term limits is indeed good for government. But it's hell on the rest of us.
Another thought, though. Term limits in an age of rule by administrative fiat is not so good unless the administrators are also term-limited. Otherwise, you have government capture by bureaucrats. Cf. Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister for a dated but humorous look at that problem.
Bureaucrats are just as much a problem.
How do we get them out??
Just after the completion and signing of the Constitution, in reply to a woman's inquiry as to the type of government the Founders had created, Benjamin Franklin said, "A Republic, if you can keep it."
A Republic is representative government ruled by law (the United States Constitution). A Democracy is government ruled by the majority (mob rule). A Republic recognizes the unalienable rights of individuals while Democracies are only concerned with group wants or needs for the good of the public, or in other words social justice.
Lawmaking is a slow, deliberate process in our Constitutional Republic requiring approval from the three branches of government, the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches for checks and balance. Lawmaking in Democracy occurs rapidly requiring approval from the majority by polls and/or voter referendums, which in turn is mob rule 50% plus 1 vote takes away anything from the minority. Here is one example; if 51% of the people don’t pay taxes they can vote a tax increase on the 49% that do, which is mob rule.
Democracies always self-destruct when the non-productive majority realizes that it can vote itself handouts from the productive minority by electing the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury. To maintain their power, these candidates must adopt an ever-increasing tax and spend policy to satisfy the ever-increasing desires of the majority. As taxes increase, incentive to produce decreases, causing many of the once productive to drop out and join the non-productive. When there are no longer enough producers to fund the legitimate functions of government and the socialist programs, the democracy will collapse, always to be followed by a Dictatorship.
Even though nearly every politician, teacher, journalist and citizen believes that our Founders created a democracy, it is absolutely not true. The Founders knew full well the differences between a Republic and a Democracy and they repeatedly said that they had founded a republic in numerous quotes, and documents.
Article IV Section 4, of the Constitution "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion", the word Democracy is not mentioned in the Constitution at all. Madison warned us of the dangers of democracies with this quote, along with more warnings from others.
"Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths... A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 10 (1787).
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" Ben Franklin
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams
“But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.” Henry David Thoreau
Our military training manuals use to contain the correct definitions of Democracy and Republic. The following comes from Training Manual No. 2000-25 published by the War Department, November 30, 1928.
Below is what the Manual No. 2000-25 says in Section IX Lesson 9.
DEMOCRACY:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic--negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
REPUBLIC:
Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.
Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.
Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.
The manuals containing these definitions were ordered destroyed without explanation about the same time that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made private ownership of our lawful money (US Minted Gold Coins) illegal. Shortly after the people turned in their $20 gold coins, the price was increased from $20 per ounce to $35 per ounce. Almost overnight F.D.R., the most popular president this century (elected 4 times) looted almost half of this nation's wealth, while convincing the people that it was for their own good. His right hand man, Harry Lloyd Hopkins, the New Deal architect, who suggested many of F.D.R.’s policies said.
"We shall Tax and Tax, Spend and Spend, Elect and Elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference". Harry Hopkins
Benjamin Franklin never said that, even though it's been reported that way all over the Internet. That quote is from Ambrose Bierce.
Well take it up with the liked source.BTTT
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