representatives

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Time to Change Term Lengths for U.S. Representatives Plus Term Limits


Our Constitution sets out the terms for both senators and representatives. But these were laid out in an era when campaign financing was insignificant and a mistrustful nation felt representatives should run every two years. But times have changed. Campaign funding, at all levels, is big business. For those who are members of the house, they get elected and almost immediately must think of getting re-elected. That is because they have to find the funds to be able to run ads for their next term and to pay for other re-election expenses. This necessarily takes away from their ability to serve their constituency as well as they could.

The solution is to change their term from 2-year to 4-year terms. This would require an Constitutional amendment but it should not be that difficult. By increasing the term to 4 years, representatives would be able to serve their constituents better.

The change would happen as a representative came up for re-election. It would take six years to cycle through every representative but in the end, you would still have elections every two years, 1/3 of the house vying for re-election, as presently happens.

Secondly, both the house and senate should be allowed to serve a total of 18 years in either the house or senate. That means someone could serve in the house for 18 years and then continue in the senate for another 18 years, 36 years total. And by not allow any present member to be grandfathered, meaning they would immediately fall under this rule, a total of 18 senators, mostly democrats, would be required to retire when their present term ends.

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What is the Future For Our Children, Our Grandchildren?


What we do right now will necessarily affect our children and our grandchildren with how we treat our planet.

Amaericans seem to have difficulty believing what our nation’s scientist tell us. Sadly, I believe it is our politicians who, for their own personal enrichment, tell us their truth when the science behind it does not line up with the actual truth. For too long it has been “us” against “them,” Democrats vs. Repulicans. It would be too easy to blame Republican’s for our present state as they have most recently poo-poo’d what scientists told us about Covid-19. In truth, Democrats are equally to blame. Republicans, notorious for resisting change, made themselves the target of Democrats but Democrats spoke as if they were well-versed in the science behind COVID-19. They were not. But what I found truly headscratching were two Replublicans, both of whom hold medical degrees, backing Trump when he declared early on that the virus would quickly go away. As public sevants, they are given the public trust to do what is best for their constituency even when it goes against what others in their party resist. The two senators, McConnell and Paul, knew the truth but backed what was politically expedient. This is abhorrent to what our Constitution demands. There are two our physicians in the senate who were largely silent, Cassidy and Barrasso. Each to an oath, “first do no harm,” for which they conveniently forgot and in turn hurt not just their constituents, but our entire nation. And our House of Representatives there are 13 physicians. Where were they during the outbreak?

And now we come to climate change. I want to first qualify by saying that I worked at MIT for a number of years where I was hand-in-hand with some of our nation’s most brilliant minds. Those people, and others at our nation’s leading research facilities, have no political agenda. Their’s is the search for the truth in science. They necessarily are pragmatist. These people frequently are pubished in journals that are revied by their peers and to misspeak brings rebuke.

For two decades now those best and brightest have been warning about the harm we are doing to our planet. But scientist can only report on their findings. They can, of themselves, bring some change, but it is up to the politicians of the world to bring about true change. And their is one thing true in all nations, most scientists act the same in their quest for the truth: they do not bend to politically motivated pressures. That was easy to see last year when Dr. Faucci cringed at so many of Donald Trump’s pronouncements. But were you to go to Russia or China, you will find that the scientists in those countries have little interest in politics.

It is absolutely necessary, right now, for all Americans to weigh the ideas of scientist much more heavily than those of politicans. Here in the United States most our our politicians are lawyers. And most lawyers seldem move from the law degree to advanced degrees in science. Even so, each time we elect one of them to the house or senate, it is in them that we are giving public trust that they will do what is best for everyone and not just for their political base.

I spent most of my working life in science but now retired I have taken to teaching our children and grandchildren. I frequent remind them that what they do right now affects what they will do in the years and decades to come. Ergo, what I polticians decide right now absolutely affects generations of Americans down the road. It is up to each one of us to pressure them to do “the next right thing” and not the next politically motivated thing. They must be pragmatists and not fold to the desires of one small portion of their constuency. They must think both locally and nationally. In the end, their decisions affect all Americans. It is on this point that I believe the members of both parties fail.

The best example of a political appointee doing what is in the best interest of our nation was when George H. W. Bush put David Souter on the US SJC. In Souter, Bush believed he was putting a good conservative on the bench. But what happened was that Souter always took the high road, putting politics aside, and being a pure pragmatists. We need our politicans to act thusly. Our children, our grandchildren are deserving of the very best we can do but sadly, right now, that is seldom the case. This being true, it is ultimately up to each one of us to think of our children and grandchildren when we elect those who represent us. We must make them show that they are fully capable of doing what is in the best interest of our nation. Time is fast running out. Save our planet, not our political ideas.

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Get Former President Obama Back in Politics!


My suggestion that former President Barack Obama return to public life might sound a bit outlandish, but it is not without precedence. Our sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829, served in what many historians describe as one of the worst presidencies ever. Adams, however, returned to the U.S. Congress from 1831 to 1848 which he served with distinction. His leading platform, the elimination of slavery. Not an easy time for abolitionist when the movement was not very popular.
Then former President William Howard Taft, 1909-1913, served as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Judicial Court from 1921 to 1930. The Republican Party of 1908 was disaffected with Theodore Roosevelt and his populist actions and turned to a reluctant Taft as its nominee. Although it is not documented anywhere, it is believed Taft was relieved when the Republican party split between him and Roosevelt in 1912 and Woodrow Wilson won the election. Although Taft served but nine years on the Supreme Court, he was elevated to the position of Chief Justice and died in office in 1930.
This brings us to Barack Obama. At 59 years of age, Obama is considerably younger than a large portion of the House and Senate. As shown by Elizabeth Dole when she moved to North Carolina to seek election there, Obama need only move to Virginia to find any number, most in fact, that are held by Republicans. Right now, he lives in Washington D.C. even though he claims his home state to be Illinois.
The point being, for 8 years, Barack Obama served the United States with distinction and honor. He was also as capable as any president this country has had in the past 50 years, maybe longer. His statesmanship as outstanding as his ability to understand complex problems.
I do not expect Mr. Obama to read this blog but I wish he did. I know for fact that there are millions upon millions of Americans who wish he were still serving. Maybe someone will pass this on. I can only hope so.

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The Truth About Political Debates


There was a time, long ago, when candidates were forced to go to open air venues to have their debates in public places so people could take their measure.  In the early 20th century, a man named James Michael Curley burst upon Massachusetts politics.  At the time, 1910, he was simply trying to become a U.S. Representative for the 10th district, a seat no Democrat in anyone’s memory had ever held, and no one expected that to change.  But the 10th district had a heavy Irish population and other new immigrant groups.  Curley was a charismatic Irishman who had grown up poor but had worked in the wards under the bosses of the day.  He was an excellent speaker, never at a loss for words.  Curley was anything but a household name but at those debates he skillfully used his opponents own words against him.  He could turn a phrase and get his audience to identify with him.

The Brahmins of Boston, the well-entrenced Republican establishment, were outraged.  In  a later election when Curley ran for mayor of Boston, he said that on his first day of office he would turn the Boston Common into a parking lot.  Of course this was only a slap at the landed gentry who still failed to recognize the trials of the working class.

But it was not until 1960 and the Kennedy – Nixon debate, sometimes referred to as “the checkers debate,” that politics embraced television, and it has been downhill ever since.  Political parties write the speeches, figure out how to portray political positions, and dictate how any given answer needs to be given.  These are not debates at all but well-scripted advertisement.

I have a pretty good sense of who Barack Obama is and who Mitt Romney is, having lived in Massachusetts during his governorship.  I also have a pretty good idea of who Scott Brown is but, sadly, I do not have much of an idea who Elizabeth Warren is.  Something that is very important to me, family, seems to have been avoided by Warren making me very suspicious of her, and pushing me, a Democrat, into the position of likely voting for her Republican opponent.

It was during their last so-called debate that I came to this decision.  I found both of them to be rather disingenuous.  Each seemed to be responding to questions with very well-scripted answers that seldom properly responded to the question on the floor.  Frequently each simply side-stepped the question and said whatever they felt was important rather than simply answer the question at hand.  But this is our present state of politics at the national level.

It is my firm belief that when these politicians speak we are not hearing what they really think but rather what their handlers, those nameless people behind the scenes, want us to hear and nothing more.  The question on every American’s mind when they hear a politician in one of these so-called debates say something that appears to exactly reflect their views, ask yourself if they are simply playing up to you and in reality have another agenda entirely.  I suspect, regardless of party affiliation, the latter is closer to the truth than the former.  We need to go back to the days when two guys would stand on a stage, say their peace without anyone prompting them as to what is proper and what is not.