[Summit] explanation of the city charter changes

[Dr. Mark Santow, Assistant Professor, History]

i would have to agree with John on term limits.  the only people who are
empowered by them are lobbyists and interest groups, on whom inexperienced
elected officials will increasingly rely -- for information, institutional
history, and even the writing of laws.

term limits are a gimmick, part of the larger shift toward anti-government
rhetoric which has so dominated American political discourse in the past
few decades.  likewise with similar measures, such as requiring
legislative supermajorities to pass tax increases, or tax caps like Prop
13 in California and 2.5 in Massachusetts.  'throw the bums out'
anti-Washington sloganeering, ultimately, is cheap; among other things, it
has given us the astounding governmental incompetence (at home, abroad)
that we see in DC presently.

mark santow


> On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:26:15AM -0500, R. Emory Williamson-Lundberg
> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe they shouldn't be over-commiting to begin with, and should be
>> building consensus with their fellow elected officials to build roadmaps
>> for citizens, instead of themselves?  Is it so awful that they're not
>> around to take the credit, if they're working for the people?  Shouldn't
>> their legacy be that of bettering the state and city?  Shouldn't that be
>> represenative of US rather than THEM?
>>
>> Elected positions should be represenative of the community.  The
>> communities change, and we should be putting people up there that we
>> want
>> to represent us because they have been community leaders, not the people
>> who have had the job so long that they're all dialed into the system.
>>
>> Politics shouldn't be a career.  I think you should be distrustful of
>> anyone that claims that they have grand designs for the electorate.  It
>> should come from YOU, not the people who hold these offices for over a
>> decade.
>
> Term limits are a way to keep government weak, not honest.  The way
> to make government honest is to get the money out.
>
> When lobbyists have term limits, I'll rethink my position.
>
> John
>
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Our newly released book "Social Security and the Middle-Class Squeeze Fact
and Fiction About America’s Entitlement Programs," by Drs. Mark and
Leonard Santow, can be found at
http://www.greenwood.com/books/bookdetail.asp?sku=C8881


“Skepticism, contrary to widespread error, makes
everything possible again: ethics, morality, knowledge,faith, society, and
criticism, but differently – a few sizes smaller, more tentative, more
revisable and more capable of learning and thus more curious, more open to
the unexpected.”

Ulrich Beck, Democracy Without Enemies (1998)

“Better the occasional faults of a Government
 that lives in a spirit of charity, than the consistent omissions of a
Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

Franklin Roosevelt, Speech at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field (1936)