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You may hate the messenger, but some of these are worth getting behind: - Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congres

You may hate the messenger, but some of these are worth getting behind: - Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congress. - A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. If he were to get these passed and get nothing else done as president, he would go down as one of the most important presidents in recent history.

creativityland 10y ago
Great points. There are many things to get behind on that list, others not so much. We will just have to wait and see.
sealthedeal 10y ago
100% agree. This is fiiiirreeeeeeeeeee
astrodust 10y ago
Term limits remove good politicians as much as they remove bad ones. Plus, as many have pointed out before, you need experienced leadership. If everyone, by definition, has less than eight years of experience in their role it'd be even more chaotic than it already is. The problem is not that politicians can get elected for decades, the problem is that incumbents have an unfair advantage. Fix that problem and term limits become a non-factor. Plus, to look at how ineffective rules like that are, Putin is president of Russia again despite their being term limits intended to prevent that.
- ewzimm 10y ago
  Much of the experience comes from teams of people who can move on to work for others. I'd be interested to see examples of important progress made by people who had been in power for decades which could not have been reasonably achieved by people with less time in office.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    A first term senator is often viewed as highly inexperienced, and they get six years to get their shit together. If congress was limited to eight years like the president they'd barely be getting the hang of it when you turf them out. What about term limits for CEOs? Mayors? Football players? It's absurd. Remove barriers to competition and keep the best by having a robust, democratic process to weed out those who are bad. A badly thought out term limit implementation would see people flip from the house to the senate and back again, perhaps working in tandem to fend off any competition. What point does that useless exercise serve?
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Sam Rayburn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Rayburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Rayburn
- Donzo 10y ago
  Congress should have never put term limits on the President, a response to the immense popularity of FDR and their conflicts with him. It was not an action that served the interests or will of the American people. It's also hilarious that people have even an inkling of hope that a majority of Congress would impose limits on their own power such as the type that is being discussed. Would you vote in favor of removing yourself from your position? Even if YOU would, do you think a majority of your coworkers would?
- flatfilefan 10y ago
  The Russian constitution explicitly allows a return to power after a term away like what Putin managed. So not exactly sure how that last statement of yours is an argument (pro or contra). In Germany, on the other hand, the Chancellor is not elected via a direct people vote, its terms are not limited. And just because of the segmentation of the partisan landscape Merkel could stay in power much longer than its party has even a third of the people votes. While not criticizing Merkel here for anything I just want to point out that a definition of a democracy must be a very flexible one to accommodate this constellation.
  - adsche 10y ago
    Chancellor term limit is 4x4 years in Germany.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  Since absence of term limits is not quite working (we get career politicians) and challengers are at a disadvantage compared to incumbents, I think it's worth trying term limits. It gets us a bit closer to "demo + cracy". If we can get new non-entrenched people in power maybe we'd see better governance --otherwise why not create a ruling class, if career politicians execute better? Note, I would not advocate for a ruling class but people seem to be saying people who know governance and politics govern better (presuming experience means they can get things done for their constituency).
  - astrodust 10y ago
    "I think it's worth trying term limits." You don't just try random shit at the national level and see how it works out. If you really think this is a great idea, try it at the state level, see how it plays out over decades and then get back to us. I agree that non-entrenched people are better for governance, but let's pin the blame on the real problem here: Corporate sponsorship of politicians. They do not care if they have to sponsor some new politician every eight years. It might even save them some money since these perennially new politicians would have less clout. It costs a lot more to buy a House Majority leader who's got 30 years of experience than Rep. Nobody who's a first-timer. You need to think these things through to their inevitable conclusion. One way you might even the playing field for opponents is to pay back a portion of the campaign costs on a per-vote received basis but only to non-incumbent candidates. It seems absurd to have to use public money to foster democracy, but there are far worse things to spend it on. Any ideas on how to de-corporatize the system? I don't think term limits help, in fact they make it worse.
    - pizzetta 10y ago
      Any contributions go to a common pot allotted by a caucus vote system. I don't think a crackpot going up for election should get the same (monetary/election) support as people who actually have tenable platforms, so I would not advocate for equal redistribution.
      - astrodust 10y ago
maxerickson 10y ago
I'm pretty sure term limits are counterproductive. They have the effect of booting out good servants and replacing their institutional knowledge with the institutional knowledge of lobbyists and party operations (that pick the new candidates). I mean, that is generally why someone gets reelected, because they are popular with the people that vote for them. Representatives that don't serve their constituents aren't all that successful at getting reelected. So in my world view, term limits hand more power to parties. Bad.
- GiorgioG 10y ago
  I would venture to guess you've never lived in NY State. Between Sheldon Silver & Joseph Bruno you had two corrupt individuals controlling the state legislature for almost 20 years. If term limits are good enough for the President, they're good enough for Congress.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    > If term limits are good enough for the President, they're good enough for Congress. Term limits were added for the President because Congress got grumpy that FDR kept winning. It was pure partisan politics. Without them, we might've wound up with a third Obama term instead of Trump.
    - aaron-lebo 10y ago
      He also tried to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s. He had an inordinate amount of power that we are very lucky he used mostly benignly. The two term only precedent was a defacto rule that only became written because it was broken. It was enacted at the height of FDR's popularity, too.
      - ceejayoz 10y ago
        > He also tried to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s. Which failed, and could easily be attempted by a one-term president too. I'm not sure what that has to do with term limits. > It was enacted at the height of FDR's popularity, too. It was enacted by a Republican-controlled congress after FDR's death.
_andromeda_ 10y ago
Terms limits are magic. I first heard Ken Langone talk about it so vehemently and the more I looked into it the more I realized that it would be a good thing. Having a larger pool of public officials to choose from over time allows for experimentation to see what(read who) works and what doesn't. It's going to be an interesting 4 years ahead. May be even 8.
- dougmany 10y ago
  >see what(read who) works and what doesn't. And then throw both out and start again.
  - thatswrong0 10y ago
    Congress has an incredibly low approval rating. I can't imagine we could do much to make it worse.. why not try experimenting in order to make it better?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Congress has a low approval rating because people mkstly disapprove of the choices made by people electing the 532 members that they don't get to vote. Individual members in their own district (for the House) or state (for the Senate) tend to have very good approval ratings. The one way you could make Congress worse is to make it so that people didn't get the members they want in the elections they do vote in because their choices are even more restricted than they are now, while still hating the choices everyone else makes. Term limits for Congress would be one way of achieving that.
  - _andromeda_ 10y ago
    I'm not a big fan of some of the positions that Bill gates has taken on political issues lately(such as increased taxes) but there's something he said about why America beat Japan in the computing industry that I can draw parallels on. Apparently, Japan's take was that there was only one way to pursue the PC industry. One strategy, one platform. America on the other hand allowed for a multi-pronged approach trying out different hardware and software combinations to see what works and letting the market determine the final outcome. America won, Japan lost. If we must have public officials (and I don't think we should have quite as many but that's a topic for another day), then it would be better to have a way to quickly isolate the ones who don't deliver and remove them for good before more damage is done. If something they did works, we can pick other officials who promise to build on what the previous officials had done.
Floegipoky 10y ago
I agree, if he spends more time working to improve the country and less time sitting on the toilet tweeting mean things he may actually win the popular vote in 2020. Please consider signing this petition to eliminate gerrymandering by using an open source algorithm to draw congressional districts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453662
- maxerickson 10y ago
  A big problem with that petition is that "fair" is a big, fat loaded word that is essentially meaningless. One definition of fair: minimize geographic size of each district. Another: maximize demographic uniformity of each district. Another: maximize demographic diversity of each district.
  - Floegipoky 10y ago
    Completely true, which is why I'm hoping that lawyers from organizations like the ACLU and NAACP will be included in the team. Hopefully they would be able to come up with a reasonable working definition of 'fair and representative' that can be optimized using publicly available information.
orcdork 10y ago
I propose we reduce the burden of raising children. (by forcing people to sell their kids as food). Disregarding the hyperbole (not to mention that the idea has been presented before, with mixed results), Trump's promises are suspect at best, and i would caution anyone thinking of "getting behind them".
- ythn 10y ago
  > i would caution anyone ... This always comes across as condescending to me. You can caution me all you want. I can caution you about your political views too. Does cautioning people do anything?
  - orcdork 10y ago
    Yes it does. I can caution a friend that's been spending his unemployment sitting around watching tv, or caution a stranger on the internet for trusting the promises of a populist politician. I'm not being condescending to either, but i am worried for both.
jpalomaki 10y ago
No idea how these people are elected, but maybe one option would be to make getting re-elected gradually more difficult. So a person aiming to serve for 3rd term would need more votes than person aiming for the 1st.
samfisher83 10y ago
The guy is president, but his kids are running his company. This seems like a massive conflict of interest. The guy has so many conflict of interests I don't know how he can justify others from not profiting off their political careers. It just seems super hypocritical.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "This seems like a massive conflict of interest." It is. It's huge. The problem is ... his portfolio is not 'stocks and bonds' that he can easily liquidate, or put in a blind trust. He has tons of huge properties - to put them up on the chopping block would mean a huge fire sale - and totally unfair. I also saw a lawyer indicate that the buyers of such properties - because they'd be getting a bargain - could be perceived as getting massive 'favour' from the sitting president - and that in and of itself would be a major conflict of interest. So in his defence - it's complicated. That said - there should be a way of putting up a much bigger firewall between him and Trump Co. As it stands, it's already bad ... foreign delegations - without pressuring - may feel incented to use 'Trump Hotels' etc. etc.. I think it's going to be a drag on him, because there'll be tons of people invariably using Trump-owned facilities - and every time it happens - it will be in the press, and it will look bad irrespective of if there was any wrongdoing. It's a mess, I don't see any clean way out of it.
  - thomnottom 10y ago
    It almost sounds like this is something that should have been dealt with as soon as he won the nomination instead of waiting until after the election.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Honestly, it's the kind of thing that should have been addressed shortly after he decided he might seek the office.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    It is a challenging and complicated issue, I will give Trump that much. That being said, he has appeared to be entirely uninterested in doing much to resolve it. "Oh, my family will look after it. Hey, family, come visit dignitaries with me." "Oh, they'll run it from New York. I'll spend a few nights a week in New York at my office there. We won't talk about anything business related, promise."
vkou 10y ago
At the congressional level, all that term limits do is increase the power of unelected officials - specifically, lobbyists, executive appointees, and party thought-leaders who haven't held office in a decade, but end up running for President every single time. It would be like a company firing all their engineers every 4 years, but keeping the management around. How good a product do you think that is likely to produce? At the presidential level, term limits have the sole upside of preventing cults of personality from forming.
waterphone 10y ago
Term limits on Congress are one of those things that sound like a great idea—and aspects of them are—but when implemented they turn out to cause even more corruption. California did this for their state legislature. The result was that there were no more long term legislators that knew the ropes and could guide new legislators and teach them how to do everything, and so the most experienced people around ended up being the lobbyists, who would come in and say "Oh, don't worry about it, we'll help you!" and then would go off and write the bills for people, etc.
- DrScump 10y ago
  there were no more long term legislators that knew the ropes The term limits are specific to each house. There has been a tremendous amount of seat-trading (termed-out incumbent Senator running for Assembly seat, and vice-versa). There is little of "teach them how to do everything"; it's more about (experienced leadership) telling them what to do regardless of tenure. Have you ever watched committee meetings? Understand the concept of "is this an 'A' vote or a 'B' vote", with members of whatever tenure marching in lock-step? Many need Remedial Parliamentary Procedure 1A, and lots can't read legislation worth crap... including long-tenured ones. Otherwise, it's do-as-your-told-or-you-don't-get-campaign-money. The problem isn't term limits; it's one-party rule.
stephancoral 10y ago
LOL never gonna happen. Congress hates trump and loves themselves. you honestly need to be living in a dream world to even THINK that Congress would pass a law restricting their income flow. These people made an exception to insider trading laws for themselves for christ's sake. These are clearly impossible goals that are put on there so people can be like "See, Trump's not all that bad! He's gonna the drain the swamp!". But let's be real, it was never a priority and will never happen.
colanderman 10y ago
Both of these sound designed to increase the influence of corporate lobbyists. Less experienced congresscritters? → More willing to let lobbyists do the footwork, less likely to see their game. Fewer congresscritters becoming lobbyists? → Less competition for corporate lobbyists from those who may give a hoot about their former constituents.
- reddytowns 10y ago
  It also means that someone in congress can't be rewarded after their term with a cushy job as a lobbyist. And a congressman that let lobbyists control them, wouldn't be able to receive funds as payment, election term after election term. If this really was good for the lobbyists, it would have been done before.
markbnj 10y ago
But of course none of those things are going to happen, because Congress doesn't want them and the President doesn't pass laws. Congress also doesn't want a moratorium on federal hires, tariffs to shore up American manufacturers, etc. That's the thing about populist demagogues: they may tick all the hot button issues for an angry and dissatisfied demographic, but they can't really get anything done because they have no governing coalition. This is especially true when the election results in no real mandate in terms of majority support. The last thing I would mention, and it's important to understand when looking at the U.S. political system, is that we all claim to be unhappy with government, and especially Congress, and we're all big supporters of ideas like term limits, except when it comes to our own representative, who we send back pretty much year after year as long as the pork continues to flow our way. The problem, in short, is not the "elites" in Washington; it's us.
- GiorgioG 10y ago
  > But of course none of those things are going to happen Well, everyone said Trump could never become the GOP nominee. Then everyone said he could never become President. I hope people keep saying that he can't do these things.
  - stephancoral 10y ago
    Trump literally CANNOT make Congress do anything. It's up to them to limit their power. And it's not like Trump has a popular mandate to use to his advantage. Mitch McConnell himself said infrastructure and term limits were absolutely not a priority of this congress. This is completely out of Trump's little hands. But go ahead, keep living in your made up dream world where Trump can wave his scepter and make all those nice little promises he made come true.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      When you use the word literally where no one would be confused that you are speaking figuratively and resort to name calling it weakens your argument.
  - 10y ago
1024core 10y ago
I was at a dinner once, where the couple sitting next to me was from Sacramento. The woman (a nice, elderly lady of around 60) worked for a lobbyist in Sacramento as his secretary/"typist". She described how the committee (of representatives) kept changing while her boss stayed the same; as a result, one of the first things an incoming committee chair did was to ask her boss to help him out with the maze of rules and regulations. Oh, and often the committee chair would have her come over for meetings to take notes (as apparently they didn't have any position in the budget), which she dutifully shared with her boss. I used to be pro term limits, but my conversation with her was very eye opening.
- mercer 10y ago
  I recall that in one of my first lectures in my 'public administration' course the teacher explained how a number of high level public servants, practically speaking, have a lot of power, perhaps more even than the politicians they work for, because they hold the institutional knowledge and have the ear of the politicians who (generally) trust their expertise, across administrations. It was something I'd never thought about before and it also made me think about term limits and how things are not as simple as they seem.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    The British TV series, "Yes Minister" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister) and "Yes Prime Minister" was a satirical series based around exactly that premise - a clueless politician who felt he was making all the decisions, and the actual power-behind-the-scenes bureaucrat who did. Although aging, it is still scarily accurate, if not more so.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> - Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congress. Term limits for elected officials just shift the balance of knowledge and experience to lobbyists. Not something to get behind. (Reforming the electoral system so that there is meaningful, non-binary choice, deals with the negative aspects of incumbency without the problems term limits has. But term limits are a favorite proposal because they benefit the already powerful lobbies.) > A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. So the pool of people willing to take such positions is limited to those who can't get a secure job relating to public policy so that the ban from work that isn't dependent on the term of office of an elected official doesn't actually lose them anything. Again, another thing that tips the balance of knowledge and skill in favor of lobbies and out of the public sector. They are the kind of reforms that sound good if you haven't thought the effects through.
dandersh 10y ago
No, both are bad ideas that don't solve the problem and actually make it worse. Term limits: Does nothing to stop poor/corrupt lawmakers from holding office while also limiting the amount of domain knowledge present in Congress. Lobbying ban: A shorter one already exists that is routinely ignored or skirted by claiming a different title/role while still being a lobbyist. Extending the ban is just asking for more people to flaunt it. The real solution is to aggressively enforce the ban or better yet, try and reduce the role of money in politics as much as possible. I doubt the latter is likely given the bank accounts of the cabinet appointees.
sytelus 10y ago
For people who oppose term limits, would you be on board for term limit of say, 30 years? How about 20? or 10? I think question isn't much about if there should be term limit but by how much. My theory is that term limits should be inversely proportional to amount of power. So 2 terms for presidents and may be 3 or 4 for others. No one in politics should be allowed to have power indefinitely. Its just not because people with decades in office have unfair advantage but new ideas should be given chance over old at some point.

creativityland 10y ago

Great points. There are many things to get behind on that list, others not so much. We will just have to wait and see.

sealthedeal 10y ago

100% agree. This is fiiiirreeeeeeeeeee

astrodust 10y ago

Term limits remove good politicians as much as they remove bad ones. Plus, as many have pointed out before, you need experienced leadership. If everyone, by definition, has less than eight years of experience in their role it'd be even more chaotic than it already is. The problem is not that politicians can get elected for decades, the problem is that incumbents have an unfair advantage. Fix that problem and term limits become a non-factor. Plus, to look at how ineffective rules like that are, Putin is president of Russia again despite their being term limits intended to prevent that.

ewzimm 10y ago
Much of the experience comes from teams of people who can move on to work for others. I'd be interested to see examples of important progress made by people who had been in power for decades which could not have been reasonably achieved by people with less time in office.
- astrodust 10y ago
  A first term senator is often viewed as highly inexperienced, and they get six years to get their shit together. If congress was limited to eight years like the president they'd barely be getting the hang of it when you turf them out. What about term limits for CEOs? Mayors? Football players? It's absurd. Remove barriers to competition and keep the best by having a robust, democratic process to weed out those who are bad. A badly thought out term limit implementation would see people flip from the house to the senate and back again, perhaps working in tandem to fend off any competition. What point does that useless exercise serve?
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Sam Rayburn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Rayburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Rayburn
Donzo 10y ago
Congress should have never put term limits on the President, a response to the immense popularity of FDR and their conflicts with him. It was not an action that served the interests or will of the American people. It's also hilarious that people have even an inkling of hope that a majority of Congress would impose limits on their own power such as the type that is being discussed. Would you vote in favor of removing yourself from your position? Even if YOU would, do you think a majority of your coworkers would?
flatfilefan 10y ago
The Russian constitution explicitly allows a return to power after a term away like what Putin managed. So not exactly sure how that last statement of yours is an argument (pro or contra). In Germany, on the other hand, the Chancellor is not elected via a direct people vote, its terms are not limited. And just because of the segmentation of the partisan landscape Merkel could stay in power much longer than its party has even a third of the people votes. While not criticizing Merkel here for anything I just want to point out that a definition of a democracy must be a very flexible one to accommodate this constellation.
- adsche 10y ago
  Chancellor term limit is 4x4 years in Germany.
pizzetta 10y ago
Since absence of term limits is not quite working (we get career politicians) and challengers are at a disadvantage compared to incumbents, I think it's worth trying term limits. It gets us a bit closer to "demo + cracy". If we can get new non-entrenched people in power maybe we'd see better governance --otherwise why not create a ruling class, if career politicians execute better? Note, I would not advocate for a ruling class but people seem to be saying people who know governance and politics govern better (presuming experience means they can get things done for their constituency).
- astrodust 10y ago
  "I think it's worth trying term limits." You don't just try random shit at the national level and see how it works out. If you really think this is a great idea, try it at the state level, see how it plays out over decades and then get back to us. I agree that non-entrenched people are better for governance, but let's pin the blame on the real problem here: Corporate sponsorship of politicians. They do not care if they have to sponsor some new politician every eight years. It might even save them some money since these perennially new politicians would have less clout. It costs a lot more to buy a House Majority leader who's got 30 years of experience than Rep. Nobody who's a first-timer. You need to think these things through to their inevitable conclusion. One way you might even the playing field for opponents is to pay back a portion of the campaign costs on a per-vote received basis but only to non-incumbent candidates. It seems absurd to have to use public money to foster democracy, but there are far worse things to spend it on. Any ideas on how to de-corporatize the system? I don't think term limits help, in fact they make it worse.
  - pizzetta 10y ago
    Any contributions go to a common pot allotted by a caucus vote system. I don't think a crackpot going up for election should get the same (monetary/election) support as people who actually have tenable platforms, so I would not advocate for equal redistribution.
    - astrodust 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

I'm pretty sure term limits are counterproductive. They have the effect of booting out good servants and replacing their institutional knowledge with the institutional knowledge of lobbyists and party operations (that pick the new candidates). I mean, that is generally why someone gets reelected, because they are popular with the people that vote for them. Representatives that don't serve their constituents aren't all that successful at getting reelected. So in my world view, term limits hand more power to parties. Bad.

GiorgioG 10y ago
I would venture to guess you've never lived in NY State. Between Sheldon Silver & Joseph Bruno you had two corrupt individuals controlling the state legislature for almost 20 years. If term limits are good enough for the President, they're good enough for Congress.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  > If term limits are good enough for the President, they're good enough for Congress. Term limits were added for the President because Congress got grumpy that FDR kept winning. It was pure partisan politics. Without them, we might've wound up with a third Obama term instead of Trump.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    He also tried to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s. He had an inordinate amount of power that we are very lucky he used mostly benignly. The two term only precedent was a defacto rule that only became written because it was broken. It was enacted at the height of FDR's popularity, too.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      > He also tried to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s. Which failed, and could easily be attempted by a one-term president too. I'm not sure what that has to do with term limits. > It was enacted at the height of FDR's popularity, too. It was enacted by a Republican-controlled congress after FDR's death.

_andromeda_ 10y ago

Terms limits are magic. I first heard Ken Langone talk about it so vehemently and the more I looked into it the more I realized that it would be a good thing. Having a larger pool of public officials to choose from over time allows for experimentation to see what(read who) works and what doesn't. It's going to be an interesting 4 years ahead. May be even 8.

dougmany 10y ago
>see what(read who) works and what doesn't. And then throw both out and start again.
- thatswrong0 10y ago
  Congress has an incredibly low approval rating. I can't imagine we could do much to make it worse.. why not try experimenting in order to make it better?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Congress has a low approval rating because people mkstly disapprove of the choices made by people electing the 532 members that they don't get to vote. Individual members in their own district (for the House) or state (for the Senate) tend to have very good approval ratings. The one way you could make Congress worse is to make it so that people didn't get the members they want in the elections they do vote in because their choices are even more restricted than they are now, while still hating the choices everyone else makes. Term limits for Congress would be one way of achieving that.
- _andromeda_ 10y ago
  I'm not a big fan of some of the positions that Bill gates has taken on political issues lately(such as increased taxes) but there's something he said about why America beat Japan in the computing industry that I can draw parallels on. Apparently, Japan's take was that there was only one way to pursue the PC industry. One strategy, one platform. America on the other hand allowed for a multi-pronged approach trying out different hardware and software combinations to see what works and letting the market determine the final outcome. America won, Japan lost. If we must have public officials (and I don't think we should have quite as many but that's a topic for another day), then it would be better to have a way to quickly isolate the ones who don't deliver and remove them for good before more damage is done. If something they did works, we can pick other officials who promise to build on what the previous officials had done.

Floegipoky 10y ago

I agree, if he spends more time working to improve the country and less time sitting on the toilet tweeting mean things he may actually win the popular vote in 2020. Please consider signing this petition to eliminate gerrymandering by using an open source algorithm to draw congressional districts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453662

maxerickson 10y ago
A big problem with that petition is that "fair" is a big, fat loaded word that is essentially meaningless. One definition of fair: minimize geographic size of each district. Another: maximize demographic uniformity of each district. Another: maximize demographic diversity of each district.
- Floegipoky 10y ago
  Completely true, which is why I'm hoping that lawyers from organizations like the ACLU and NAACP will be included in the team. Hopefully they would be able to come up with a reasonable working definition of 'fair and representative' that can be optimized using publicly available information.

orcdork 10y ago

I propose we reduce the burden of raising children. (by forcing people to sell their kids as food). Disregarding the hyperbole (not to mention that the idea has been presented before, with mixed results), Trump's promises are suspect at best, and i would caution anyone thinking of "getting behind them".

ythn 10y ago
> i would caution anyone ... This always comes across as condescending to me. You can caution me all you want. I can caution you about your political views too. Does cautioning people do anything?
- orcdork 10y ago
  Yes it does. I can caution a friend that's been spending his unemployment sitting around watching tv, or caution a stranger on the internet for trusting the promises of a populist politician. I'm not being condescending to either, but i am worried for both.

jpalomaki 10y ago

No idea how these people are elected, but maybe one option would be to make getting re-elected gradually more difficult. So a person aiming to serve for 3rd term would need more votes than person aiming for the 1st.

samfisher83 10y ago

The guy is president, but his kids are running his company. This seems like a massive conflict of interest. The guy has so many conflict of interests I don't know how he can justify others from not profiting off their political careers. It just seems super hypocritical.

edblarney 10y ago
"This seems like a massive conflict of interest." It is. It's huge. The problem is ... his portfolio is not 'stocks and bonds' that he can easily liquidate, or put in a blind trust. He has tons of huge properties - to put them up on the chopping block would mean a huge fire sale - and totally unfair. I also saw a lawyer indicate that the buyers of such properties - because they'd be getting a bargain - could be perceived as getting massive 'favour' from the sitting president - and that in and of itself would be a major conflict of interest. So in his defence - it's complicated. That said - there should be a way of putting up a much bigger firewall between him and Trump Co. As it stands, it's already bad ... foreign delegations - without pressuring - may feel incented to use 'Trump Hotels' etc. etc.. I think it's going to be a drag on him, because there'll be tons of people invariably using Trump-owned facilities - and every time it happens - it will be in the press, and it will look bad irrespective of if there was any wrongdoing. It's a mess, I don't see any clean way out of it.
- thomnottom 10y ago
  It almost sounds like this is something that should have been dealt with as soon as he won the nomination instead of waiting until after the election.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Honestly, it's the kind of thing that should have been addressed shortly after he decided he might seek the office.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  It is a challenging and complicated issue, I will give Trump that much. That being said, he has appeared to be entirely uninterested in doing much to resolve it. "Oh, my family will look after it. Hey, family, come visit dignitaries with me." "Oh, they'll run it from New York. I'll spend a few nights a week in New York at my office there. We won't talk about anything business related, promise."

vkou 10y ago

At the congressional level, all that term limits do is increase the power of unelected officials - specifically, lobbyists, executive appointees, and party thought-leaders who haven't held office in a decade, but end up running for President every single time. It would be like a company firing all their engineers every 4 years, but keeping the management around. How good a product do you think that is likely to produce? At the presidential level, term limits have the sole upside of preventing cults of personality from forming.

waterphone 10y ago

Term limits on Congress are one of those things that sound like a great idea—and aspects of them are—but when implemented they turn out to cause even more corruption. California did this for their state legislature. The result was that there were no more long term legislators that knew the ropes and could guide new legislators and teach them how to do everything, and so the most experienced people around ended up being the lobbyists, who would come in and say "Oh, don't worry about it, we'll help you!" and then would go off and write the bills for people, etc.

DrScump 10y ago
there were no more long term legislators that knew the ropes The term limits are specific to each house. There has been a tremendous amount of seat-trading (termed-out incumbent Senator running for Assembly seat, and vice-versa). There is little of "teach them how to do everything"; it's more about (experienced leadership) telling them what to do regardless of tenure. Have you ever watched committee meetings? Understand the concept of "is this an 'A' vote or a 'B' vote", with members of whatever tenure marching in lock-step? Many need Remedial Parliamentary Procedure 1A, and lots can't read legislation worth crap... including long-tenured ones. Otherwise, it's do-as-your-told-or-you-don't-get-campaign-money. The problem isn't term limits; it's one-party rule.

stephancoral 10y ago

LOL never gonna happen. Congress hates trump and loves themselves. you honestly need to be living in a dream world to even THINK that Congress would pass a law restricting their income flow. These people made an exception to insider trading laws for themselves for christ's sake. These are clearly impossible goals that are put on there so people can be like "See, Trump's not all that bad! He's gonna the drain the swamp!". But let's be real, it was never a priority and will never happen.

colanderman 10y ago

Both of these sound designed to increase the influence of corporate lobbyists. Less experienced congresscritters? → More willing to let lobbyists do the footwork, less likely to see their game. Fewer congresscritters becoming lobbyists? → Less competition for corporate lobbyists from those who may give a hoot about their former constituents.

reddytowns 10y ago
It also means that someone in congress can't be rewarded after their term with a cushy job as a lobbyist. And a congressman that let lobbyists control them, wouldn't be able to receive funds as payment, election term after election term. If this really was good for the lobbyists, it would have been done before.

markbnj 10y ago

But of course none of those things are going to happen, because Congress doesn't want them and the President doesn't pass laws. Congress also doesn't want a moratorium on federal hires, tariffs to shore up American manufacturers, etc. That's the thing about populist demagogues: they may tick all the hot button issues for an angry and dissatisfied demographic, but they can't really get anything done because they have no governing coalition. This is especially true when the election results in no real mandate in terms of majority support. The last thing I would mention, and it's important to understand when looking at the U.S. political system, is that we all claim to be unhappy with government, and especially Congress, and we're all big supporters of ideas like term limits, except when it comes to our own representative, who we send back pretty much year after year as long as the pork continues to flow our way. The problem, in short, is not the "elites" in Washington; it's us.

GiorgioG 10y ago
> But of course none of those things are going to happen Well, everyone said Trump could never become the GOP nominee. Then everyone said he could never become President. I hope people keep saying that he can't do these things.
- stephancoral 10y ago
  Trump literally CANNOT make Congress do anything. It's up to them to limit their power. And it's not like Trump has a popular mandate to use to his advantage. Mitch McConnell himself said infrastructure and term limits were absolutely not a priority of this congress. This is completely out of Trump's little hands. But go ahead, keep living in your made up dream world where Trump can wave his scepter and make all those nice little promises he made come true.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    When you use the word literally where no one would be confused that you are speaking figuratively and resort to name calling it weakens your argument.
- 10y ago

1024core 10y ago

I was at a dinner once, where the couple sitting next to me was from Sacramento. The woman (a nice, elderly lady of around 60) worked for a lobbyist in Sacramento as his secretary/"typist". She described how the committee (of representatives) kept changing while her boss stayed the same; as a result, one of the first things an incoming committee chair did was to ask her boss to help him out with the maze of rules and regulations. Oh, and often the committee chair would have her come over for meetings to take notes (as apparently they didn't have any position in the budget), which she dutifully shared with her boss. I used to be pro term limits, but my conversation with her was very eye opening.

mercer 10y ago
I recall that in one of my first lectures in my 'public administration' course the teacher explained how a number of high level public servants, practically speaking, have a lot of power, perhaps more even than the politicians they work for, because they hold the institutional knowledge and have the ear of the politicians who (generally) trust their expertise, across administrations. It was something I'd never thought about before and it also made me think about term limits and how things are not as simple as they seem.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  The British TV series, "Yes Minister" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister) and "Yes Prime Minister" was a satirical series based around exactly that premise - a clueless politician who felt he was making all the decisions, and the actual power-behind-the-scenes bureaucrat who did. Although aging, it is still scarily accurate, if not more so.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> - Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congress. Term limits for elected officials just shift the balance of knowledge and experience to lobbyists. Not something to get behind. (Reforming the electoral system so that there is meaningful, non-binary choice, deals with the negative aspects of incumbency without the problems term limits has. But term limits are a favorite proposal because they benefit the already powerful lobbies.) > A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. So the pool of people willing to take such positions is limited to those who can't get a secure job relating to public policy so that the ban from work that isn't dependent on the term of office of an elected official doesn't actually lose them anything. Again, another thing that tips the balance of knowledge and skill in favor of lobbies and out of the public sector. They are the kind of reforms that sound good if you haven't thought the effects through.

dandersh 10y ago

No, both are bad ideas that don't solve the problem and actually make it worse. Term limits: Does nothing to stop poor/corrupt lawmakers from holding office while also limiting the amount of domain knowledge present in Congress. Lobbying ban: A shorter one already exists that is routinely ignored or skirted by claiming a different title/role while still being a lobbyist. Extending the ban is just asking for more people to flaunt it. The real solution is to aggressively enforce the ban or better yet, try and reduce the role of money in politics as much as possible. I doubt the latter is likely given the bank accounts of the cabinet appointees.

sytelus 10y ago

For people who oppose term limits, would you be on board for term limit of say, 30 years? How about 20? or 10? I think question isn't much about if there should be term limit but by how much. My theory is that term limits should be inversely proportional to amount of power. So 2 terms for presidents and may be 3 or 4 for others. No one in politics should be allowed to have power indefinitely. Its just not because people with decades in office have unfair advantage but new ideas should be given chance over old at some point.