Email Tax Coming

[vyo476]

I think we should all go toss our computers into Boston Harbor if this passes.

We could all dress up like Bill Gates first too.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I think we should all go toss our computers into Boston Harbor if this passes.

We could all dress up like Bill Gates first too.

No, we should toss the congress into the harbor, preferably after giving them new concrete shoes.

 

[KeepOurFreedoms]

No, we should toss the congress into the harbor, preferably after giving them new concrete shoes.

Congress and lobbyists should have been tossed years ago.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Congress and lobbyists should have been tossed years ago.

The best thing Americans could do would be a 100% change in the House and Senate. I'm sick of career politicians. While the last election resulted in a shift from a republican control to a democrat control, there was still a 96% retention rate in both houses of congress. It wasn't change at all.

 

[KeepOurFreedoms]

The best thing Americans could do would be a 100% change in the House and Senate. I'm sick of career politicians. While the last election resulted in a shift from a republican control to a democrat control, there was still a 96% retention rate in both houses of congress. It wasn't change at all.

There should absolutely be term limits in all offices. Short terms.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

There should absolutely be term limits in all offices. Short terms.

I agree. I'm pretty sure our founding fathers envisioned a nation where legislators did a few years legislating, then returned home to live under the laws they enacted.

 

[drippinhun]

I agree. I'm pretty sure our founding fathers envisioned a nation where legislators did a few years legislating, then returned home to live under the laws they enacted.

Then why didn't they put term limits in the original Constitutional mark up?

 

[vyo476]

Then why didn't they put term limits in the original Constitutional mark up?

Perhaps they couldn't agree on what the term limits ought to have been - our Founding Fathers were sticklers for detail and if they didn't agree on the most minute of details the whole issue would get thrown out the window. Or perhaps it simply didn't come up.

Point is, they realized that they hadn't legislated everything that ought to have been in the Constitution, so they created the amendment process - so future generations could write in all the necessary little tidbits they picked up over the years.

Look at the exalted office of President - we didn't have a President who was elected to more than two terms until FDR, his third electoral victory coming in 1940 - more than one hundred fifty years after the Constitutional Convention.

Once it became an issue, they looked at it and decided to ban people from being Prez more than twice. The Founding Fathers - Washington - would have approved. It was Washington, after all, who advised term limits in the first place.

 

[drippinhun]

I loved watching the debate on term limits back in the 1990s on C-Span. Newt Gingrich was presenting this as one of his elements of his Contract With America on the House floor. He wanted to make the countdown begin with the next election.

Barney Franks got up and figuratively ripped him a new ***hole. Franks said that if a legislator could only be trusted to be uncorruptable or effective for a period of x amount of years as the term limits bill stated, shouldn't this legislation be retroactive? He pointed out that both the Speaker and himself were at the limit and that he would be glad to leave if Newt would at the next election. In other words, put up or shut up. Newt withdrew the bill.