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I wonder how much Trump made from Trump tower and Mar-a-Lago rent costs for state/security personnel since he's still able to profit from the Trump org.
I feel like it's more than this generous donation
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On April 04 2017 04:52 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 04:41 crms wrote:On April 04 2017 04:04 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:58 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:55 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:54 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:49 biology]major wrote:
The democrats have now reduced themselves to the level of political hacks. With their partisanship they have lost doubly, the next scotus pick from trump will be free, perhaps much more radical than gorsuch. Secondly now and hereafter for all future justices will be even more politicized for what should be an apolitical bipartisan selection. What the republicans did screwed over 1 nomination, and then after losing the election the democrats lost the chance to confirm garland yet again. This filibuster should cost the democrats political capital, but I guess the left is not concerned with a bipartisan selection of us Supreme Court justices. Everything you say applies equally to the GOP and Garland. I'm sorry "but he started it" is not a terribly mature reply, but it's the fact. Catapulting monkeyshit over a Gorsuch filibuster is hypocritical and partisan hackery. Garland would have been the next scotus if hrc won, and she didn't. Secondly, the nuclear option effects the nomination of all future justices. It is a terrible moment for the country. There is no particular reason why SCOTUS nominees should not get a hearing because an election is coming up. I mean there's a scheduled election every four years, how come the Dems don't get to say "Scalia's vacant seat will be decided by the next President and Congress"? I agree the nuclear option is a terrible idea. Maybe the GOP should try a different nominee first before they take it. If you're consistent and say that the Dems are just as legitimate filibustering Gorsuch as the GOP was for denying a vote to Garland, then ok. Or the reverse, i.e. the GOP should have let a vote on Garland happen and the Dems should not filibuster. But saying one to the exclusion of the other is partisan hackery. If gorsuch can't get through, then no republican nomination will make it. The republicans can choose to have an 8 justice court for next 4 years or use nuclear option. I would 100 percent agree with you if the republicans filibustered garland in this situation if hrc won. I don't think they would stoop this low however. You thought wrong. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/17/498328520/sen-mccain-says-republicans-will-block-all-court-nominations-if-clinton-winsWhat the GOP did to Garland is inexcusable, what GOP leadership said afterward is perhaps worse. You reap what you sow, the hyper-partisan obstructionist tactics in congress were bound to blow up eventually. We're just going to have to ride it out as a nation until enough people pay enough attention to vote these clowns out. I only hope that the other party won't just decide on being 99% as much of partisan hacks as the offending party and thinking they will get away with it. They will come to realize that Trump being "so bad" doesn't automatically make them a viable alternative.
I'd say the partisan hackery is going to get worse before it gets better. The voter base seems to like "true democrats" and "true republicans" standing their ground and shouting more than they like functioning government.
Kind of shows the naivety of your founding fathers when they build a governing system that assumes everyone wants to play nice and get along, with no recourse when they don't.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On April 04 2017 04:57 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:I wonder how much Trump made from Trump tower and Mar-a-Lago rent costs for state/security personnel since he's still able to profit from the Trump org.
I feel like it's more than this generous donation
Enough to make the presidency a worthy investment, I'll tell you that much.
Just wait four years, he's so much of a blabbermouth that he will want everyone to know how rich he is as soon as he can do so. Even if he goes to prison for it.
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On April 04 2017 04:58 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 04:52 LegalLord wrote:On April 04 2017 04:41 crms wrote:On April 04 2017 04:04 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:58 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:55 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:54 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:49 biology]major wrote:
The democrats have now reduced themselves to the level of political hacks. With their partisanship they have lost doubly, the next scotus pick from trump will be free, perhaps much more radical than gorsuch. Secondly now and hereafter for all future justices will be even more politicized for what should be an apolitical bipartisan selection. What the republicans did screwed over 1 nomination, and then after losing the election the democrats lost the chance to confirm garland yet again. This filibuster should cost the democrats political capital, but I guess the left is not concerned with a bipartisan selection of us Supreme Court justices. Everything you say applies equally to the GOP and Garland. I'm sorry "but he started it" is not a terribly mature reply, but it's the fact. Catapulting monkeyshit over a Gorsuch filibuster is hypocritical and partisan hackery. Garland would have been the next scotus if hrc won, and she didn't. Secondly, the nuclear option effects the nomination of all future justices. It is a terrible moment for the country. There is no particular reason why SCOTUS nominees should not get a hearing because an election is coming up. I mean there's a scheduled election every four years, how come the Dems don't get to say "Scalia's vacant seat will be decided by the next President and Congress"? I agree the nuclear option is a terrible idea. Maybe the GOP should try a different nominee first before they take it. If you're consistent and say that the Dems are just as legitimate filibustering Gorsuch as the GOP was for denying a vote to Garland, then ok. Or the reverse, i.e. the GOP should have let a vote on Garland happen and the Dems should not filibuster. But saying one to the exclusion of the other is partisan hackery. If gorsuch can't get through, then no republican nomination will make it. The republicans can choose to have an 8 justice court for next 4 years or use nuclear option. I would 100 percent agree with you if the republicans filibustered garland in this situation if hrc won. I don't think they would stoop this low however. You thought wrong. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/17/498328520/sen-mccain-says-republicans-will-block-all-court-nominations-if-clinton-winsWhat the GOP did to Garland is inexcusable, what GOP leadership said afterward is perhaps worse. You reap what you sow, the hyper-partisan obstructionist tactics in congress were bound to blow up eventually. We're just going to have to ride it out as a nation until enough people pay enough attention to vote these clowns out. I only hope that the other party won't just decide on being 99% as much of partisan hacks as the offending party and thinking they will get away with it. They will come to realize that Trump being "so bad" doesn't automatically make them a viable alternative. I'd say the partisan hackery is going to get worse before it gets better. The voter base seems to like "true democrats" and "true republicans" standing their ground and shouting more than they like functioning government. Kind of shows the naivety of your founding fathers when they build a governing system that assumes everyone wants to play nice and get along, with no recourse when they don't.
Except this is exactly what the system is designed for. We survived presidents like Jackson destroying the US economy so badly an entire generation was malnourished in a nation of farmers. And Nixon being Nixon. We survived the great depression too. The system isn't designed to force people to work together, but endure beyond their failures.
The founding fathers didn’t get along and knew the system they were creating was flawed. That is why they built ways to change it. They were not motivated by a will to see the nation “get along” but a fear of anarchy that come if they failed.
The only thing that fixes these problems are elections. A lot of elections.
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On April 04 2017 04:58 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 04:52 LegalLord wrote:On April 04 2017 04:41 crms wrote:On April 04 2017 04:04 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:58 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:55 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:54 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:49 biology]major wrote:
The democrats have now reduced themselves to the level of political hacks. With their partisanship they have lost doubly, the next scotus pick from trump will be free, perhaps much more radical than gorsuch. Secondly now and hereafter for all future justices will be even more politicized for what should be an apolitical bipartisan selection. What the republicans did screwed over 1 nomination, and then after losing the election the democrats lost the chance to confirm garland yet again. This filibuster should cost the democrats political capital, but I guess the left is not concerned with a bipartisan selection of us Supreme Court justices. Everything you say applies equally to the GOP and Garland. I'm sorry "but he started it" is not a terribly mature reply, but it's the fact. Catapulting monkeyshit over a Gorsuch filibuster is hypocritical and partisan hackery. Garland would have been the next scotus if hrc won, and she didn't. Secondly, the nuclear option effects the nomination of all future justices. It is a terrible moment for the country. There is no particular reason why SCOTUS nominees should not get a hearing because an election is coming up. I mean there's a scheduled election every four years, how come the Dems don't get to say "Scalia's vacant seat will be decided by the next President and Congress"? I agree the nuclear option is a terrible idea. Maybe the GOP should try a different nominee first before they take it. If you're consistent and say that the Dems are just as legitimate filibustering Gorsuch as the GOP was for denying a vote to Garland, then ok. Or the reverse, i.e. the GOP should have let a vote on Garland happen and the Dems should not filibuster. But saying one to the exclusion of the other is partisan hackery. If gorsuch can't get through, then no republican nomination will make it. The republicans can choose to have an 8 justice court for next 4 years or use nuclear option. I would 100 percent agree with you if the republicans filibustered garland in this situation if hrc won. I don't think they would stoop this low however. You thought wrong. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/17/498328520/sen-mccain-says-republicans-will-block-all-court-nominations-if-clinton-winsWhat the GOP did to Garland is inexcusable, what GOP leadership said afterward is perhaps worse. You reap what you sow, the hyper-partisan obstructionist tactics in congress were bound to blow up eventually. We're just going to have to ride it out as a nation until enough people pay enough attention to vote these clowns out. I only hope that the other party won't just decide on being 99% as much of partisan hacks as the offending party and thinking they will get away with it. They will come to realize that Trump being "so bad" doesn't automatically make them a viable alternative. I'd say the partisan hackery is going to get worse before it gets better. The voter base seems to like "true democrats" and "true republicans" standing their ground and shouting more than they like functioning government. Kind of shows the naivety of your founding fathers when they build a governing system that assumes everyone wants to play nice and get along, with no recourse when they don't.
well, they did warn against the dangers of parties quite heavily; and the knowledge about government design and sociology was much more limited back then. twas decent enough for what they had at the time.
I concur it's going to get worse before getting better. it's a dynamic that's not easy to fix, though at least it is one well known and documented on which there is considerable literature.
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On April 04 2017 04:10 Introvert wrote:
McCain runs to the right when he needs to get relected. I'd expect a well qualified dem judge to get around 70 votes, maybe something slightly less than Obama's picks. A wide range, but still easily passed.
Edit: to clarify, I think he would vote for cloture. The actual nomination, who knows.
Gorsuch is going to get confirmed, Democrats are just making theatrics of it.
Same thing would have happened with Garland if HRC got elected. The Republicans would have put on the same show, just with different actors playing the parts.
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On April 04 2017 05:06 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 04:58 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 04 2017 04:52 LegalLord wrote:On April 04 2017 04:41 crms wrote:On April 04 2017 04:04 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:58 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:55 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:54 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:49 biology]major wrote:
The democrats have now reduced themselves to the level of political hacks. With their partisanship they have lost doubly, the next scotus pick from trump will be free, perhaps much more radical than gorsuch. Secondly now and hereafter for all future justices will be even more politicized for what should be an apolitical bipartisan selection. What the republicans did screwed over 1 nomination, and then after losing the election the democrats lost the chance to confirm garland yet again. This filibuster should cost the democrats political capital, but I guess the left is not concerned with a bipartisan selection of us Supreme Court justices. Everything you say applies equally to the GOP and Garland. I'm sorry "but he started it" is not a terribly mature reply, but it's the fact. Catapulting monkeyshit over a Gorsuch filibuster is hypocritical and partisan hackery. Garland would have been the next scotus if hrc won, and she didn't. Secondly, the nuclear option effects the nomination of all future justices. It is a terrible moment for the country. There is no particular reason why SCOTUS nominees should not get a hearing because an election is coming up. I mean there's a scheduled election every four years, how come the Dems don't get to say "Scalia's vacant seat will be decided by the next President and Congress"? I agree the nuclear option is a terrible idea. Maybe the GOP should try a different nominee first before they take it. If you're consistent and say that the Dems are just as legitimate filibustering Gorsuch as the GOP was for denying a vote to Garland, then ok. Or the reverse, i.e. the GOP should have let a vote on Garland happen and the Dems should not filibuster. But saying one to the exclusion of the other is partisan hackery. If gorsuch can't get through, then no republican nomination will make it. The republicans can choose to have an 8 justice court for next 4 years or use nuclear option. I would 100 percent agree with you if the republicans filibustered garland in this situation if hrc won. I don't think they would stoop this low however. You thought wrong. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/17/498328520/sen-mccain-says-republicans-will-block-all-court-nominations-if-clinton-winsWhat the GOP did to Garland is inexcusable, what GOP leadership said afterward is perhaps worse. You reap what you sow, the hyper-partisan obstructionist tactics in congress were bound to blow up eventually. We're just going to have to ride it out as a nation until enough people pay enough attention to vote these clowns out. I only hope that the other party won't just decide on being 99% as much of partisan hacks as the offending party and thinking they will get away with it. They will come to realize that Trump being "so bad" doesn't automatically make them a viable alternative. I'd say the partisan hackery is going to get worse before it gets better. The voter base seems to like "true democrats" and "true republicans" standing their ground and shouting more than they like functioning government. Kind of shows the naivety of your founding fathers when they build a governing system that assumes everyone wants to play nice and get along, with no recourse when they don't. Except this is exactly what the system is designed for. We survived presidents like Jackson destroying the US economy so badly an entire generation was malnourished in a nation of farmers. And Nixon being Nixon. We survived the great depression too. The system isn't designed to force people to work together, but endure beyond their failures. The founding fathers didn’t get along and knew the system they were creating was flawed. That is why they built ways to change it. They were not motivated by a will to see the nation “get along” but a fear of anarchy that come if they failed. The only thing that fixes these problems are elections. A lot of elections.
I don't really see how any of these things you "survived" are due to your political structure. I mean, shockingly, every nation effected by the Great Depression survived it. And every nation has survived other economic collapses of one sort or another.
There is no system that will make people get along, but there are plenty of methods to make governments actually govern.
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On April 04 2017 04:55 Falling wrote:
A pox on both houses, I say.
So who are you voting for in your next congressional elections. Because despite turnout in elections being very low by any standard (turnout last year was what? Under 60% if I recall), nobody in Washington is discussing reforming the system...
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On April 04 2017 05:49 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 05:06 Plansix wrote:On April 04 2017 04:58 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 04 2017 04:52 LegalLord wrote:On April 04 2017 04:41 crms wrote:On April 04 2017 04:04 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:58 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:55 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:54 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:49 biology]major wrote:
The democrats have now reduced themselves to the level of political hacks. With their partisanship they have lost doubly, the next scotus pick from trump will be free, perhaps much more radical than gorsuch. Secondly now and hereafter for all future justices will be even more politicized for what should be an apolitical bipartisan selection. What the republicans did screwed over 1 nomination, and then after losing the election the democrats lost the chance to confirm garland yet again. This filibuster should cost the democrats political capital, but I guess the left is not concerned with a bipartisan selection of us Supreme Court justices. Everything you say applies equally to the GOP and Garland. I'm sorry "but he started it" is not a terribly mature reply, but it's the fact. Catapulting monkeyshit over a Gorsuch filibuster is hypocritical and partisan hackery. Garland would have been the next scotus if hrc won, and she didn't. Secondly, the nuclear option effects the nomination of all future justices. It is a terrible moment for the country. There is no particular reason why SCOTUS nominees should not get a hearing because an election is coming up. I mean there's a scheduled election every four years, how come the Dems don't get to say "Scalia's vacant seat will be decided by the next President and Congress"? I agree the nuclear option is a terrible idea. Maybe the GOP should try a different nominee first before they take it. If you're consistent and say that the Dems are just as legitimate filibustering Gorsuch as the GOP was for denying a vote to Garland, then ok. Or the reverse, i.e. the GOP should have let a vote on Garland happen and the Dems should not filibuster. But saying one to the exclusion of the other is partisan hackery. If gorsuch can't get through, then no republican nomination will make it. The republicans can choose to have an 8 justice court for next 4 years or use nuclear option. I would 100 percent agree with you if the republicans filibustered garland in this situation if hrc won. I don't think they would stoop this low however. You thought wrong. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/17/498328520/sen-mccain-says-republicans-will-block-all-court-nominations-if-clinton-winsWhat the GOP did to Garland is inexcusable, what GOP leadership said afterward is perhaps worse. You reap what you sow, the hyper-partisan obstructionist tactics in congress were bound to blow up eventually. We're just going to have to ride it out as a nation until enough people pay enough attention to vote these clowns out. I only hope that the other party won't just decide on being 99% as much of partisan hacks as the offending party and thinking they will get away with it. They will come to realize that Trump being "so bad" doesn't automatically make them a viable alternative. I'd say the partisan hackery is going to get worse before it gets better. The voter base seems to like "true democrats" and "true republicans" standing their ground and shouting more than they like functioning government. Kind of shows the naivety of your founding fathers when they build a governing system that assumes everyone wants to play nice and get along, with no recourse when they don't. Except this is exactly what the system is designed for. We survived presidents like Jackson destroying the US economy so badly an entire generation was malnourished in a nation of farmers. And Nixon being Nixon. We survived the great depression too. The system isn't designed to force people to work together, but endure beyond their failures. The founding fathers didn’t get along and knew the system they were creating was flawed. That is why they built ways to change it. They were not motivated by a will to see the nation “get along” but a fear of anarchy that come if they failed. The only thing that fixes these problems are elections. A lot of elections. I don't really see how any of these things you "survived" are due to your political structure. I mean, shockingly, every nation effected by the Great Depression survived it. And every nation has survived other economic collapses of one sort or another. There is no system that will make people get along, but there are plenty of methods to make governments actually govern.
I would say we made it out slightly better than others. Some nations got split in half for the better part of 40 years. And the next people we vote in might govern. Or the ones after that. Or maybe the entire system will break down and we will devolve into civil war. We came through that and still remained a nation of states.
This is not the worst it would be. This is tame by any measure. Mostly frustrating.
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It is indeed disappointing that we don't hear more about reform. Though there's probably some discussion of such things, it's boring so would get far less coverage than the rancor and yelling. There's often policy papers put out that the more wonkish circles take note of.
certainly i've discussed reform, but i'm not in politics (at laest not successfully, probably never will be)
of course it's also hard to do fixes when it would require/imply one side admitting something they did was wrong.
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Ted Cruz introduced a bill for term limits in Congress  .
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On April 04 2017 06:06 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 05:49 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 04 2017 05:06 Plansix wrote:On April 04 2017 04:58 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 04 2017 04:52 LegalLord wrote:On April 04 2017 04:41 crms wrote:On April 04 2017 04:04 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:58 LightSpectra wrote:On April 04 2017 03:55 biology]major wrote:On April 04 2017 03:54 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Everything you say applies equally to the GOP and Garland.
I'm sorry "but he started it" is not a terribly mature reply, but it's the fact. Catapulting monkeyshit over a Gorsuch filibuster is hypocritical and partisan hackery. Garland would have been the next scotus if hrc won, and she didn't. Secondly, the nuclear option effects the nomination of all future justices. It is a terrible moment for the country. There is no particular reason why SCOTUS nominees should not get a hearing because an election is coming up. I mean there's a scheduled election every four years, how come the Dems don't get to say "Scalia's vacant seat will be decided by the next President and Congress"? I agree the nuclear option is a terrible idea. Maybe the GOP should try a different nominee first before they take it. If you're consistent and say that the Dems are just as legitimate filibustering Gorsuch as the GOP was for denying a vote to Garland, then ok. Or the reverse, i.e. the GOP should have let a vote on Garland happen and the Dems should not filibuster. But saying one to the exclusion of the other is partisan hackery. If gorsuch can't get through, then no republican nomination will make it. The republicans can choose to have an 8 justice court for next 4 years or use nuclear option. I would 100 percent agree with you if the republicans filibustered garland in this situation if hrc won. I don't think they would stoop this low however. You thought wrong. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/17/498328520/sen-mccain-says-republicans-will-block-all-court-nominations-if-clinton-winsWhat the GOP did to Garland is inexcusable, what GOP leadership said afterward is perhaps worse. You reap what you sow, the hyper-partisan obstructionist tactics in congress were bound to blow up eventually. We're just going to have to ride it out as a nation until enough people pay enough attention to vote these clowns out. I only hope that the other party won't just decide on being 99% as much of partisan hacks as the offending party and thinking they will get away with it. They will come to realize that Trump being "so bad" doesn't automatically make them a viable alternative. I'd say the partisan hackery is going to get worse before it gets better. The voter base seems to like "true democrats" and "true republicans" standing their ground and shouting more than they like functioning government. Kind of shows the naivety of your founding fathers when they build a governing system that assumes everyone wants to play nice and get along, with no recourse when they don't. Except this is exactly what the system is designed for. We survived presidents like Jackson destroying the US economy so badly an entire generation was malnourished in a nation of farmers. And Nixon being Nixon. We survived the great depression too. The system isn't designed to force people to work together, but endure beyond their failures. The founding fathers didn’t get along and knew the system they were creating was flawed. That is why they built ways to change it. They were not motivated by a will to see the nation “get along” but a fear of anarchy that come if they failed. The only thing that fixes these problems are elections. A lot of elections. I don't really see how any of these things you "survived" are due to your political structure. I mean, shockingly, every nation effected by the Great Depression survived it. And every nation has survived other economic collapses of one sort or another. There is no system that will make people get along, but there are plenty of methods to make governments actually govern. I would say we made it out slightly better than others. Some nations got split in half for the better part of 40 years. And the next people we vote in might govern. Or the ones after that. Or maybe the entire system will break down and we will devolve into civil war. We came through that and still remained a nation of states. This is not the worst it would be. This is tame by any measure. Mostly frustrating.
Well, considering that the main solution for the Great Depression was a gigantic war that pushed industrial manufacturing to the limit for 20 years, and that the large majority of nations in the Great Depression were war ravaged after...
Yeah, so naturally the US made it out better than other nations. All the benefit of the huge industrial output with none of the problems of bombs dropping on populated cities or tanks rolling through streets. Canada, Australia, and other nations involved in the war without any home-attacks came out similarly strong.
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Term limits were things that even the founding fathers couldn’t settle on. The continental congress was wildly ineffective due to restrictive term limits on its members, which impacted the final draft of the constitution. Term limited politicians bring their own host of problems a political system. It isn’t a silver bullet. But a great crowd pleaser.
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Blackwater, Arabs, Russia and backwater channels. This is juicy. Note that the blackwater founder is Betsy De Vos' sister.
The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would likely require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Not sure about the diplomatic protocols on this. In terms of being a smoking gun, though, it sounds more like president-elect diplomacy.
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On April 04 2017 06:27 Plansix wrote:
Term limits were things that even the founding fathers couldn’t settle on. The continental congress was wildly ineffective due to restrictive term limits on its members, which impacted the final draft of the constitution. Term limited politicians bring their own host of problems a political system. It isn’t a silver bullet. But a great crowd pleaser.
Term limits are a fickle thing.
I totally support it in order to flush out the system, but then the fear is that we have a bunch of novices who don't know how anything works, and that turnover would be pretty immense.
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On April 04 2017 06:33 Mysticesper wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 06:27 Plansix wrote:
Term limits were things that even the founding fathers couldn’t settle on. The continental congress was wildly ineffective due to restrictive term limits on its members, which impacted the final draft of the constitution. Term limited politicians bring their own host of problems a political system. It isn’t a silver bullet. But a great crowd pleaser. Term limits are a fickle thing. I totally support it in order to flush out the system, but then the fear is that we have a bunch of novices who don't know how anything works, and that turnover would be pretty immense.
Yeah I feel all over the place on term limits. On the one hand you have a few senators that really come into their own over many terms and go on to do great things for their country.
On the other you give congress a nice boost by having more people in a position where fund raising is no longer beneficial to them (though it's always beneficial to their party).
Overall it makes me a bit worried though; I'm worried in a lot of cases it'd be use to replace red moderates with more extreme party members and accelerate polarization of the country. I don't trust for a moment that Ted Cruz would introduce the bill for the good of the country over having "done the math" and seen which side it hurts more. Well that or he's trying to suck up to Trump.
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Overall the results of term limits in the places they've tried them have not been promising, so imho it doesn't really add much to the system, if it adds anything at all, and sometimes it makes things worse. There's a certain mystique about it which some people like; the problem is in a democracy you often need a lot of public support to get major changes in like term limits, but most people are terribly unqualified to assess whether or not something is actually good for a system or not, so it makes it much harder to actually get in sound changes. There's often commonly held beliefs that simply don't hold up to scrutiny, which greatly degrades the accuracy of popular support as a proxy for good changes.
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On April 04 2017 06:46 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2017 06:33 Mysticesper wrote:On April 04 2017 06:27 Plansix wrote:
Term limits were things that even the founding fathers couldn’t settle on. The continental congress was wildly ineffective due to restrictive term limits on its members, which impacted the final draft of the constitution. Term limited politicians bring their own host of problems a political system. It isn’t a silver bullet. But a great crowd pleaser. Term limits are a fickle thing. I totally support it in order to flush out the system, but then the fear is that we have a bunch of novices who don't know how anything works, and that turnover would be pretty immense. Yeah I feel all over the place on term limits. On the one hand you have a few senators that really come into their own over many terms and go on to do great things for their country. On the other you give congress a nice boost by having more people in a position where fund raising is no longer beneficial to them (though it's always beneficial to their party). Overall it makes me a bit worried though; I'm worried in a lot of cases it'd be use to replace red moderates with more extreme party members and accelerate polarization of the country.
That is one of the problems created by term limits. The other problem is that life isn't governed by term limits. Some plans take decades to resolve, like infrastructure or education reform. You also lost long term civil servants who can provide guidance to new member. Many of the problem in the senate can be linked back to long term party leaders passing away. Ted Kennedy, as disliked by the right as he was, had an amazing relationship with republican senators.
And when most people talk about term limits, it in reference to congress members from other states. Term limits won't change the voters that elected the congress members we don't like.
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EPT
