Why term limits? Blunt left after 1 term. Ed Martin isn’t there anymore. All term limits have done to the legislature is make reps run for senate, and senators run for higher office way before they understand the way the system works, and breed lobbyists by the carload, when those people might have had a better effect working for their constituents.

I say split the difference: make 12 year term limits in any office. I’ve often thought that 8 years was a pretty short term– some of those yahoos can’t even find their way to their office and parking garage for the first two years.

Missouri is pretty good at kicking people out when they become criminal, ego-inflated or useless.

The only problem with term limits is we have to find jobs for the unemployed pols who can’ seem to get one in the private sector. There can’t be much room left down at Catholic Charities and I suspect the Nixon staff is pretty full right now. City Hall’s a dead end with no raises in years.

Liberating 60 million … man, it gives you something to smile about

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk273/PhotoBookMB/Pride.jpg

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Term limits are the wrong choice. What is needed is campaign finance reform, specifically the public funding of political campaigns.

I agree 100% we do need term limits. I would like to think that term limits would discourage the career politicians and encourage those how actually want to do good and do a public service. As others have said, we already have term limits, they are called elections. However, most voters are not smart enough to understand this, instead they see their 80 year old Senator or Congressperson and think that by their seniority they must be doing a good job. Term limits will hopefully encourage them to not only do what we elected them for, but also reduce pork spending. Finally, as for the comment about the cell phone in the deer stand, my guess is there is only one reason why he was hunting. Much like Gov Romney, he may one day need to tell voters that he is a hunter and by hunter he means he once went into the woods with a loaded rifle. They think this connects them with single issue gun rights voters.

Term limits throw out the good with the bad. I’d hate to have seen a wonderful politician like former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, D-Illinois, thrown aside because he had been in too long.

It only took Ed Martin and his former boss one year in office to become corrupt — so how would have term limits prevented that from happening?!?

Give it up Ed! I think now would be a good time to explore your new career in insurance sales!

Good call, cp. Elections *are* the best term limits. Martin’s plan, while initially intriguing, actually cuts back on voters’ freedom of choice. He implies that voters are too dumb to vote out a rascal.

http://www.grafshepherd.com

You mean the elections where the incumbent wins 95% of the time because the voters are so dumb they only recognize that name, cp?

I like this plan. I’ve often wondered why nobody introduced it sooner. Seriously-only the governor or treasurer needs term limits to keep them from getting corrupt? Surely, nobody would ever get corrupt in the other offices! Hopefully, now that we have new people at all spots, it wouldn’t make it seem like it was targeted at one individual, and would actually be accepted as a reform measure rather than a partisan move.

On another vein of the same subject: there’s actually an interesting bill regarding term limits that came before the MO House last year and will again this year. With regards to the legislature, it would keep the same rough aggregate (16 years). Right now, though, it’s 8 in the MO House and 8 in the MO Senate. That way, you wouldn’t see what one of the people addressed above, which is legislators that, by the time they have learned how things work and have went through the whole seniority process, only have about 2 years (and only 4 months of each year in session) to actually get some concrete bills passed through. And you wouldn’t have people running for Senate, just because their time was up in the House and they wanted to get some more things passed. If you felt you could do better work in the Senate, you would go there. If you felt you could do better work in the House, you would go there. And, the same end principle would be accomplished, which would be that after 16 years, if you haven’t gotten your ideas through, give it up and let someone else take the reins.