E-Newsletter No. 7
July 2014
If not us, who?_______If not now, when?

As we have noted on our Foundation’s website, our Editorial Board believes that our country’s Founders did an excellent job in preparing the “social contract” between the citizens and their government (i.e., the US Constitution). We also noted that in several of the Federalist Papers that were written prior to the ratification of the Constitution, our country’s Founders recognized the need to guard as effectually as possible against a perversion of power to the public detriment…. The means relied on… for preventing their [elected officials] degeneracy are numerous and various – the most effectual one is such a limitation on the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.

In addition to our Foundation, there are several other organizations that also support the concept of Term Limits. Please visit the US Term Limits (USTL) site at www.termlimits.org. USTL’s purpose is to support a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not a tyrannical ruling class who care more about deals to benefit themselves, rather than their constituents. We encourage you to sign the USTL Congressional Term Limits petition, and support the passage of the Term Limits Amendment put forward by US Senator Jim DeMint.

It should be noted that the counter-argument to Term Limits is that there already exists a means to limit an elected official’s time in office – – it’s called the election cycle. While there is some merit to this line of thinking, our Editorial Board rejects that argument, because we question why any group of citizens would ever want to vote out of office an elected official that their efforts helped put into that office. As we all learned in school, George Washington was adamantly opposed to the idea of an “imperial presidency” and vowed to serve at most only two terms. [His presidency was nearly 200 years prior to the ratification of the 22nd Amendment].

Although Term Limits will never be the sole solution to our country’s political problems, our Editorial Board believes that Term Limits will serve to combat many of the ills that have crept into our country’s political process – – Pork, Pork Barrel Politics, Bringing Home the Bacon, Influence Peddling, Lobbyists, Pandering, Conflicts of Interest, Patronage, Nepotism, Cronyism, Graft, Corruption, etc. We believe that Term Limits are appropriate for all Executive and Legislative positions at both the federal and state level. For legislative positions especially, it is highly unlikely that the constituents of a district would ever vote out an incumbent, as long as that person is effective in Bringing Home the Bacon.

We The People need to take back control of our governmental units from career politicians, whose power and influence only grows larger, the longer they are in office. We need to return to the original intent of the country’s Founders – a government of the people, by the people (the citizenry) rather than career politicians. Our Editorial Board agrees with the following well-known quote, which is attributed to Lord Acton (a British historian) – Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The primary benefit of Term Limits is that limiting the time someone is in office should serve to shift the focus of our elected officials away from the “expedient” and towards the greater good for the country as a whole. Our elected officials should not be focused on their next re-election and doling out money to their constituents. Term Limits would allow our elected officials the freedom to pursue policies that might be unpopular with their constituents, but which they know are vitally important to the greater good of the individuals who comprise our nation (such as eliminating deficit spending and then reducing the cumulative US debt).

US Debt Clock – – June 1st – $55,072 per citizen / July 1st – $55,149