POST SCRIPTS

You know, I'm voting against this measure, mostly because it was put up with dubious intent by a couple of power-hungry democrats. However, I must say, term limits does go against the will of the voter.

We have natural term limits every time we vote. On any election day, we can choose to throw out any incumbent that we want to. Instituting term limits just helped us shirk our duty at the polls, and in my opinion, contributed to further laziness of voters.

I have formed a new opinion about term limits from this debate though, and it's this. If term limits are the "rules of the game" for elections, it's probably safe to say that legislators shouldn't be telling us how to vote on those rules. They can have their personal opinions, true, but they shouldn't be out pushing for a particular outcome. Even those who are against 93 could have their own self-serving reasons, like wanting someone in a higher office from them to term out so they can run.

Just my thoughts.

Dane you are absolutely right! Term limits does take away from the authority of the voter to keep their politician of choice in office.

Willy Brown says he is mostly responsible for term limits because we could never unseat him in a regular vote.

Maybe this is true too because Willy Brown grew so influential over his many years in Sacramento he was virtually unchallengeable.

Given our loose campaign finance laws under the guise of freedom of speech Willy amassed the largest fortune in the legislature. He used that money to beat back any challenger and to aide any faltering ally who then became beholding to Willy the Godfather.

Willy got the big bucks because he was very helpful to those who gave to him and this cozy arrangement just grew and grew until he was too powerful to be defeated.

What we basically said with term limits is the people in Willy's district were too stupid and/or corrupt to see or care about what was going on with their man.

These so-called "stupid, corrupt voters" kept the cycle of power and money growing until he was like a King in the legislature and the voters had to be stopped right along with Willy. But, it wasn't just Willy, we found that once in almost any incumbent was in there for life because of the tremendous advantages an incumbent has in re-election. They have the name, the money and the forces in place and a challenger rarely could unseat them without the incumbent doing something really stupid.

The fact is the old Soviet Politburo had a higher rate of turn over than Congress or our State Legislature.

The fear that your average voter wasn't smart enough or educated enough to figure out who was the best candidate for the office was expressed by many of our founding fathers who felt ONLY men of wealth, property and education should have the vote and that it was too dangerous to trust to the rabble. They worried that mobs of voters could be easily led by devious, unworthy men with great charisma.

Whether people will admit it or not, I'm sure that this concern is in the back of the minds of many today that strongly support term limits as a safe guard for democracy.

Still,

Just because we despised Willie Brown doesn't necessarily mean we were right to take away his district's ability to vote for him. We took away their choice, even if it was for the greater good.

Now that Brown has gone, what have we as voters gained? The legislature is now run by an unseen force of special interests which controls the democrat party. Sure, we get new democrat leaders every six years, but they do exactly the same idiotic things. One could argue that there was more order and sanity when Brown was in charge. He knew that the wheels of government had to be greased to turn. He knew that business had to profit in order for him to heavily tax them. Not so with today's democrat. They not only want to tax business to death, but they want to regulate business until it dies out and leaves the state. Of course this kills tax revenue and hurts the state's coffers, but that is never a problem for them. A budget crisis always gives them a chance to demand tax increases on whoever's left to pay the bill. There's not a golden goose they refuse to strangle to death so they can eat the feathers.

So if having term limits or not makes no difference, what does? Perhaps going back to the founders beliefs, and allowing only certain people to vote. Let's say Veterans, property owners, and tax payers. Or we could look at how much someone has produced for the country versus what they've taken back out, that way retired seniors who rent wouldn't be excluded. There are plenty of ways to work it, but letting the mindless masses, and especially college students, vote, was a bad idea.

My personal belief is if it were not for the fact once in, difficult to impossible to vote out. The reasons it is tough to get them out are all bad, people suck up to a winner and they tend put them on a pedestal, they give them more credit than due, also money and power than they have earned.

They worried that mobs of voters could be easily led by devious, unworthy men with great charisma.

The "rock star" candidates, both past and future, attest to the validity of this.

Instead of term limits maybe we should revisit the idea that legislators meet for only a few months each year. If it isn't a full time "ride" maybe they will behave differently?