• Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Term limits for legislative bodies is, and always has been, a dumb idea.

    You need a constitutional amendment to impose age limits on offices.

    This is the electorate’s fault; the electorate needs to fix it.

    • brianary@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      A lot of hate for this, but it’s true.

      Incumbents aren’t to blame for voters picking the familiar, that’s a symptom of another problem.

      We’re seeing what an inexperienced government looks like now. They don’t know the limitations they’re supposed to have, and they don’t care.

      • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        They know exactly what their limits are supposed to be and they do care. They care about dismantling those limits and seizing permanent, unbridled power.

    • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      I mean, it prevents people pursuing political positions as a permanent job. Which is how corruption happens.

      It’s much easier to pay off a permanant term SC judge with a “gift” of a Bus than it is to approach a newly appointed one with the same idea.

      Term limits unquestionably help in eliminating corruption as it guarantees corruption is not only harder to accomplish the first time, but is flushed away with the end of each term.

      Corruption happens when people have their footing in politics long enough to tear at the seams. They can’t do that if they never find their footing.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        14 hours ago

        I don’t think a 300k RV is that’s much of a cost for a billionaire as to be a deterrent to buy every possible candidate 10 of them.

      • iopq@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        That’s not true. People who are politicians for life have incentives to not be corrupt since it can end their career. A term limited politician has an incentive to trade favors for an executive position after their last term.

        • SippyCup@feddit.nl
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          10 hours ago

          A: that’s not really ever been demonstrated to be true for any level of crime. Least of all corruption. The type of people willing to take bribes think they’ll get away with it or don’t consider the consequences.
          2: they have that incentive now. Without term limits. That’s a problem we currently face. Term limits won’t change that.

          We need to also bar representatives from taking those jobs when they leave office. Which means we also need to give them a pension.

        • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          People who are politicians for life have incentives to not be corrupt since it can end their career.

          No offense, this is an incredibly naive take that is easily disproven by the current US president and the decades of documented corruption he’s practiced in the open that did done nothing to falter his career. He has 34 felonies. He was going to trial for the largest breach of US intelligence in the history of our country.

          He was then elected president anyway.

          Social media has made the concept of political accountability into an impossibility. Any “career-ending” behavior can just be lied about on social media, turned into a firehouse of disinfo, then bots & supporters eat it up.

          Without term limits, people just need to be popular enough to get elected once - then they can use their position for personal gain for as long as they can lie about it in some way. (Forever with AI now).

          I could gesture in any direction in the world and end up pointing to a country this is happening to right now.

          • iopq@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            And there are politicians that for nailed for it. Heard of George Santos?

            Only one guy can become president and shrug off the charges

            • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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              26 minutes ago

              Future pardoned Republican conman George Santos? I have heard of him. Looking forward to him getting pardoned in the next 3 years now that his sentencing has been completed in April 2025.

              I’ll bet money he’s jail free by 2026, and then somehow involved in this current admin.

          • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            Term limits ensures that you always have a new incompetence congress finding their footing before being replaced by new newbies forever out of step.

            Also it can simultaneously be true that term limits increase corruption and we at present are fully incapable of reigning in corruption of any kind because we are bad immoral people on average. Your position is like arguing that cigs don’t kill you because your presently already dying of liver cancer right now.

            • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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              17 hours ago

              Your position is like arguing that cigs don’t kill you because your presently already dying of liver cancer right now.

              Nope. My position is quite literally that we should limit the amount of cigarettes we smoke so we don’t develop cancer.

              Maybe a pack a week?

              Or a single 12 year term for each Supreme Court justice?

              As proof I’ve simply pointed to how we have completely failed to limit terms in the Supreme Court and now very much have fascist cancer because of it. (Supreme Court going full MAGA and ignoring due process).

              You are making this much harder to understand than it needs to be.

              • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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                13 hours ago

                Again you confuse cause and effect term limits could have easily meant justices losing their seats during Bush and Trump bringing about the same effect or worse. If we had gotten luckier or smarter with strategic resignation we could be talking about lifetime appointments keeping the judiciary independent from the president and protecting democracy.

                If the people coming in are corrupt getting new corrupt people every term limit isn’t going to make them less corrupt. It is the fact that lawmakers are so beholden to money to get and stay in office that leads to corruption in the first place. In your alternative America a lawmaker would be expecting to need somewhere to land after they hit the limit and would be more beholden to industry not less.

                Wherein we successfully elect people who aren’t beholden to money we needn’t kick them out right after they learn the ropes if the people keep showing their confidence in them by voting them in.