(03-05-2022, 11:18 AM)Sneakers Wrote:

(03-05-2022, 10:37 AM)mikesez Wrote: How you or I feel about AOC is irrelevant to term limits.  A term limit would bite representatives we agree with and ones we disagree with.  Do you have any better reason to want term limits?  

Have you considered the downsides? In Florida the state legislators have term limits.  Yet when the speaker of the house or the President of the Senate gets to their term limit, they already know who the next one will be.  And the one after that.  The same elite lobbyists have a stranglehold on the process regardless of who the figureheads are.  Did you not notice that?  But if the elected official actually has more experience than the lobbyist, maybe they will stand up to the lobbyists.

Cortez is just an example of how an age limit doesn't fix the problem.  Power corrupts and those who get it become addicted to it.  Claiming "experience" and "influence" is just self-serving rhetoric to justify seeking more of it.  For every favor owed in Washington, one is owed in return.  I'm tired of the dealmaking.

But I'm asking you to take a clear eyed look at places with term limits, like Tallahassee or Mexico.  Does this eliminate the deal making, as you call it?  I don't think so.  Deal making is inherent to any participatory process.  People know they can't get everything they want, so they try to get as much of what they want as possible.  The problem is they're not open about what they want because a lot of what they want is self-serving and under the table.  This happens regardless of how long they've been in office.  The only reason the ones who have been in office longer seem to get more is because committee assignments are done by seniority.  We could demand that committee assignments be done without regard to seniority and it would fix the problem.  No term limits needed.

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