Independent senator, 82, stresses need to improve healthcare and protect abortion rights – and condemns ‘extremist’ Netanyahu
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced on Monday that he will run for a fourth six-year term – at the age of 82.
In a video statement, Sanders thanked the people of Vermont “for giving me the opportunity to serve in the United States Senate”, which he said had been “the honor of my life.
“Today I am announcing my intention to seek another term. And let me take a few minutes to tell you why.”
In his signature clipped New York accent, Sanders did so.
12 years is plenty of time to have institutional knowledge, and legislators could always just hire past senators as advisors. This is a bad argument and I don’t know why it gets repeated. Lobbyists invest in relationships with officials and don’t want to have to start fresh, that’s why they invest money against term limits.
https://www.termlimits.com/myth-busting-101-lobbyists-love-term-limits/
So I did some digging… USTL is one of several shady, fake-grass-roots organizations operated by Howard Rich, a wealthy libertarian, and funded by his collection of wealthy libertarian friends, who clearly want to reduce the effectiveness of government, and make it more susceptible to their influence. The lobbyists investigated the lobbyists and found that they don’t support the thing they are saying you should support.
If you look deeper at the specific bills highlighted in that article, neither one is about term-limits versus no-term-limits. They’re both about restructuring existing term limits. We had a similar ballot measure where I live. It’s a fairly complicated issue, and not a good example.
Perhaps the most famous term limit in the US is the Presidential one, imposed because FDR was doing too many good things. By actually doing things to help people, he had become insanely popular, and won a fourth term - democratically, because the voting citizens approved of his actions, as it’s supposed to work. That’s when the corrupt capitalist wing of Congress decided to put a limit on democracy, and honestly, that might be one of the most significant “beginning of the downfall” moments we can point to in US history.
Another big supporter of term limits is the Heritage Foundation. If you can judge somebody by the friends they keep, how about legislation? It’s always the right pushing for this idea.
There’s a lot, and I mean a whole lot, we should be doing to reduce the influence of money on politics. Fully publicly funded elections; banning many current shady lobbying practices; improving our electoral systems to be more democratic; making it illegal for legislators to take bribes, no matter how subtle. Lots. But taking the choice away from the voters is not a good option. It’s a generally good rule of thumb: if your solution to a problem is to reduce democracy, you’ve got the wrong solution.
EDIT to add: https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-term-limits-turn-legislatures-6b2
I’ll grant the California bill wasn’t really about instituting term limits and the source is likely worthy of scrutiny. But the Arkansas bill is plainly about increasing term limits and it sure looks like there were a lot of non-individual entities giving in support of it. I can believe the National Education Association is doing it for liberal civics reasons, but I’m pretty skeptical the Arkansas Farm Bureau and Entergy Corp just really believe in disempowering lobbying.
What a wild way to describe codifying a longstanding tradition against a consolidated and calcified executive instead of relying on unwritten rules. The capitalists didn’t invent term limits to stop FDR. They existed as a de facto custom since George Washington stepped down (and he was right to do so). Most heads of state have term limits and when they’re bypassing them it’s practically always a step towards authoritarianism not because they’re just too important a leader.
Oh please. These aren’t a limited pool of uber-men with unique ideas and unique abilities we’re denying the public. For every Bernie Sanders there’s 10 absolutely corrupt train wrecks who DON’T get voted out. We’re a nation of 330 million people, we don’t need to believe our senators are precious unicorns who would be stolen away from the voters because they’ve been ruling the country for over a decade.
There are some very good arguments against term limits, namely that lame-duck terms have no accountability and encourage “what’s next” influence trading, but this idea that DEMOCRACY is being reduced if we eliminate a single option every decade is complete great-man garbage.