Thoughts on the 2014 race, part II
If you missed part I, click here.
If elected, one of the first things I’ll do is to stop congress-people from staying in office forever. They can, because the system is geared that way. The voters think that they have choices, but they are often between a rock and a hard-place. In other words, they have minimal choices and rarely what they want. But they check a box and hope for the best.
Every year or two, there is an outcry for term limits. The trouble is that passing a constitutional amendment is extremely difficult. What isn’t so difficult is to propose that congress-people will lose their pensions if they don’t voluntarily quit after four terms, 8 years, for representatives and two terms, 12 years for senators.
If congressmen and women risked losing their pensions by running for office again, they’d quit in droves. New people will replace them. They’d have fresh ideas, not be as intractable and beholding to special interests.
Congresspeople are self-deluded into thinking that they are demigods, and their rightful place is in Washington ruling the little people forever. They aren’t, and it isn’t.
I’d also force candidate’s campaign committees to give all leftover campaign money to charities so they can’t accumulate millions and millions of dollars between election cycles to fend off future challengers.
That wall of money would disintegrate so that all challengers would have a reasonable chance of success against an incumbent. At this time they don’t. If you hear otherwise, you’re being lied to.
I would also stop challengers and incumbents from loaning or giving money to their campaigns more than once, and forbid taking it back out again. A successful technique is to loan yourself a huge amount of money to scare off challengers and encourage donations, and then quietly take it back after the campaign.
Last but not least for this post, I’d get the post office to send out several no-cost mailings a few times before the primary, and general election for all federal campaigns. Each candidate would have a paragraph in a combined letter with their pitch, and website address. Why? It will give each candidate a chance to reach every voter in their district.
In the 11th congressional district, there are 400,000+ voters. Do you have any idea of the cost for sending a single mailing? It’s at least two hundred thousand dollars. That’s why voters don’t know anything about the challengers, just the current person with the big word – Incumbent against their name to nudge the voter in that direction. I’d also remove that word, Incumbent on ballots for federal positions.
If you don’t believe it, the next few times you have dinner ask your server or random people who is their congressperson and watch the blank look you’ll likely get. The same goes for your work colleagues. And even if they actually know the name, they won’t know anything about them. They are just names on the ballot that say Republican, Democrat and, for the lucky ones, Incumbent against them.
If the voters don’t know who you are or what you want to do, they will not vote for you. Those mailings will provide information they need.
When we clean house in Washington, things will change for the better. Finally.
If you got this far, here’s a final graph that will ruin your day. It’s titled cash flow but should be titled spend, spend, spend.
Click on image for larger graph
