Posted on 12/26/2005 10:31:03 PM PST by RWR8189
Hear, hear.
You can make the case that you can hire competence. But can you hire honesty?
It really depends on the people doing the hiring.
--- campaign slogan for Texas gubernatorial candidate "Kinky" Friedman
With all due respect to Thomas Sewell, whom I like a lot, I truly do not believe that paying politicians more would get us better ones.
What drives these guys is not money, but power. Most of them are already wealthy before they get elected.
What I would be in favor of would be to have them work less - a lot less...
>>>"What I would be in favor of would be to have them work less - a lot less..."<<<
Or work very hard to make what they do = less and less
TT quote "For every new Law, 7 should have to be repealed, in 20 or 30 years we may notice a difference"
TT
How many States are Proposition States, maybe this is something to consider?
First he assumes we want worker bees instead of drones. Then he assumes they'll remain worker bees.
Do we want productive people in politics, producing what politics produces? Would high salaries be sufficient to attract them? How long before we found ourselves with the same sort of people we had before, only more expensive?
I completely disagree with Sowell here. Without sufficient time to learn the basics, you have idiots voting on military, or medical or telecommunications bills about which they know NOTHING.
Like it or not, it takes at least one term to get through the minutiae of procedure.
After that, if you find yourself on a committee, you can learn about the subject at hand.
After that, you MIGHT, and I repeat, MIGHT, be qualified for a chairmanship.
I firmly believe a 3-term position is the minimum for having qualified people in our legislative branch. Our world is too complex these days for people who don't understand stem cells, cell phone towers and military prison cells! This is NOT the Congress of the 1800s!
I don't want to have to start over at kindergarten with every freakin' member of Congress!
We already HAVE term limits. It's called a "vote."
The main premise behind the article is correct, but WHOLLY misdirected!
Instead of attracting the malfeasant and mercenary with money, how about the "salaries" of the elected are ZERO! NIL, NADA, ZILCH, NOTHING!
The elected are only allowed a small ($500K/year) budget for office and franking expenses.
Any monies they earn SPEAKING as an elected representative are returned to the treasury as part of their service.
Term limits won't be needed for those who are effective, and the ineffective will be dust in the wind.
And just how are they supposed to maintain residences in their home districts and DC? How are they supposed to support their families?
The only members of the legislative branch you will have will be Ted Kennedy and John Kerry....
You have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what it takes to be a member of Congress.
It won't work. We'll just have higher-paid crooks.
Government needs to back off its sphere of influence. We start this with the Fair Tax....there's no alternative.
You can end up with cheap politicians no matter what you pay them. Some of our worst are wealthy.
Pray, tell me, what do we have in office now?
We are blessed to have such a clear-thinking resource as we have in the gift of Thomas Sowell.
Let's press him into even more exalted imminence.
I'll take a statesman over a politican any day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.