what's real and what's not

[piranha]

i've been seeing this pop up in the blogosphere and on my flist, and i'd like to put a small damper of fact on it:

"A group of Republican legislators proposes to rescind the 22nd Amendment to the American Constitution." that's the amendment specifying presidential term limits.

got me righteously upset when i first saw it, but then some vague bubbles of memory came up about a prior bill on that, so i started searching http://thomas.loc.gov/ (very, very useful site). and indeed, this is a perennial bill; it seems to get presented pretty much every session of congress.

108th congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.J.RES.11.IH: and http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.J.RES.25.IH:
107th congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.J.RES.4.IH: and http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.J.RES.39.IH:
103rd congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c103:H.J.RES.107.IH:

and so forth.

it's generally sponsored by the same people, who are mostly democrats, though there are a few republicans who co-sponsor it. such as:

D Rep Hoyer, Steny H. [MD-5]
D Rep Serrano, Jose E. [NY-16]
D Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28]
D Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4]
D Rep Hastings, Alcee L. [FL-23]
R Rep Hyde, Henry J. [IL-6]
D Rep Pallone, Frank, Jr. [NJ-6]
D Rep Sabo, Martin Olav [MN-5]
R Rep Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [WI-5]
R Rep Shays, Christopher [CT-4]

at first i thought it was fearmongering like the recent "bring back the draft" bills, but considering it goes back a lot of years, i now think it's just a bunch of people who really don't like term limits.


so, best not to spend one's energy railing against the bush minions on this one. they're not actually into it.

instead they are busy cutting funding of PBS. remember when that was the urban legend of the day, 10 years ago? well, it's coming true now. if you feel like doing something about it other than blog, write to your congress persons. if you're too busy to do that, common cause has prepared a form, and you can sign a petition at move-on.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

sabo's office staff say he doesn't like term limits. i called and expressed my dismay yesterday.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Term limits are an ineffective and sometimes counterproductive solution to a real problem. What we need, rather than term limits, is a law against standing for office or campaigning while currently in office. Because we elect them to run the government for the term they're elected for, not to run their elections for the subsequent term. They need to have a political future to look forward to as an incentive to do a good job from the people's perspective, but they need to be doing the job they're elected to for the time we hired them to do it by electing them.

Of course, what we really need to do to clean up politics is to treat all campaign contributions as the bribes they are, and lock up both the people who pay them and the people who solicit them. When there's a quid in politics there's always going to be a quo.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Tip for non-Americans: whenever you hear a story about amending the Constitution, take a deep breath and ask yourself if 34 senators or 13 states would be opposed to it. Because otherwise, it isn't going to pass no matter what the hell kind of carnival they throw in the House of Representitives. I imagine that easily half of all senators dream of being President someday and enjoy a system where they only have to wait a maximum of four years to avoid running against an incumbent president (especially in a primary).

Evidently, if you're going to be scared about something, be scared about the flag-burning amendment that's coming up next week. I don't think you need to be scared about that either, although at least it would make it through the state legislature.

Re: what's real and what's not

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

actually almost the people i saw all het-up about this were americans, so your tip would seem to be more widely applicable than you thought. :)

[necturus.livejournal.com]

How much is this about PBS rather than National Public Radio, I wonder?

How important is federal funding to the operations of either organization? I suspect much of what now appears on PBS would surface on one of the cable networks if PBS went away. Indeed, there has been some speculation in broadcast industry trade publications that PBS has already lost much of its core audience to cable networks.

I'm not too worried about this. It'll make the Republicans look bad, and it probably won't have any real effect on viewer choices. There will always be a Sesame Street.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Sesame Street would lose its social value if it moved to a commercial network that mixed advertising into it. And the people who are its creative soul would rather see it die than let it be corrupted; if a show called "Sesame Street" showed up on a commercial channel, I don't think it would be the real thing.

Most US households have cable TV, but there are still millions of people who don't have cable, most because they can't afford it. The kids in those households would lose access to the children's programming if it went to cable, and they're the ones who need it the most.

Public broadcasting is about much more than Sesame Street, though. It's about having a news organization that's not subject to corporate censorship and is free to report in depth on all issues and present points of view that powerful people don't like. It's about science and nature programming that can inform the small fraction of the public that's interested rather than just selling soap flakes. It's about allowing ideas that corporate America wants to bury a tiny chance to be heard.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

word. :)