Building a $200 million bridge to nowhere ? with your money

Manchester Union Leader ^ | February 3, 2005 | John Stossel

[geedee]

Our government, from local town committees to Washington, has turned into a Pay to Play campground and statesmen are in short supply.

Alas . . . sadly, I have to agree.

The answer? Two words . . . TERM LIMITS.

The political whores spend upwards of 70-80% of their time raising money so they can keep the good times rollin'. The money has to come from somewhere . . . like from contractors awarded a contract to build a 200 million dollar bridge no one wants or needs.

We'll never be able to take the money out of politics . . . so all we can do is make it damn, damn difficult for any company, corporation, or organization to buy "lifetime" partisanship.

Large companies and/or donors don't have to make risk/averse decisions about donating to a Teddy Kennedy or Arlen Specter or Orrin Hatch or any of the other Politicos who have gone to the Great Retirement Home of Big Government because they know they'll have influence for decades and decades. But if they were limited to 12 years of influence, ideally, and 18 years at the max . . . the whores would have to perform too many blatant and obvious acts for the company in such a short period to justify such donations AND the voters would FINALLY sit up and take notice of the under-handed deals and not return the whores to office.

So Term Limits would work two ways . . . it would limit the amount of time a whore could ply their trade for their masters PLUS it would give the voters a much clearer picture of just who the biggest whores are -- thereby maybe even limiting those most greedy to shorter terms yet.

Some argue Term Limits are unconstitutional. Okay . . . then why can the President be term limited? Why do many, many states have Term Limit Laws? I don't believe Our Forefathers meant for the term "Politician" to be a full-time, life-long job . . . certainly not in the same position. Most of them were citizen-politicians and they had lives and careers outside of government.

[sure_fine]

I could be very wrong, but what better way to grow a community than to develop and provide jobs, schools, hospitals?

The whole thing can domino into a place for a better life for all the ones who live and raise families there..(IMO)

and in growth, so come the opportunities probably not available now for the coming generations

for any libbies reading this..MORE TAXES COLLECTED also

[Cagey]

I've never been a proponent of term limits, but I will say your post caused me to pause and think I may have been wrong.

[geedee]

I've never been a proponent of term limits . . .

LOL. I never was either but a couple of FReepers just kept hammering at me on a thread a year or so ago so I took another look at it.

I just don't see how we can truly get a "Representative" government . . . one who is representing the PEOPLE again . . . under the current system. Money is just too important to the current system and there's no REAL way to legislate the money out without tromping on people's right of Free Speech.

[Paul C. Jesup]

This is a Manchester liberial complaining that money is being spend somewhere else.

A town of 14,000 is not THAT small a town.

Don Young is doing what he is suppose to do, represent those who elected him.

This is not welfare, this is building a bridge that will help a town grow and business bloom in that town. That is soft-conservatism, but still conservatism.

And John Stossel, the writer of this article, is of the opinion that unless you live in a major urban (liberial) that you don't deserve to have the taxes you are forced to pay be sent back to you in some way.