This is an email I got from my teabagger correspondents:
Subject: Circulate this and it can happen!
The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc
Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.
I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
Congressional Reform Act of 2011
1. Term Limits.
12 years only, one of the possible options below..
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
2. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.
The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.
THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete
You are one of my 20+. Please keep it going.
This has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat .... it has everything to do with your kids and mine!
My response is below the fold:
This is a really good idea if you like being even more controlled by corporate power brokers than you presently are. Prior to the Supreme Court's recent
"Citizens United" ruling (what a misnomer if there ever was one) it was illegal for corporations to directly spend money on political campaigns. The only way they could spend was through employees and political action committees.
Now, they can spend unlimited amounts of money to support a political candidate, and they do it through front groups that always without exception have a patriotic sounding name - without ever disclosing the identity of their corporation. That way they can lobby, advertise and vote against your and my economic interests without the risk of losing us as customers in some nasty boycott. Ain't that convenient?
They can do this because the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people - not groups of people, but individual people with individual rights just like you and I have, with respect to political donations, and the corporations have been pouring money into campaign ads at an astonishing rate. In effect people who agree with them get two opportunities to donate to everyone else's one, i.e., a corporate donation and a personal one. You and I cannot compete with that.
In Canada it is a crime to deliberately tell a lie in the media. There is no such law in the United States, which is of even further benefit to corporations, because they can - and do - tell deliberate lies in their advertisements in order to convince you to vote against your own economic interests. And, just like the advertisements that convince people to walk around talking to the air through some silly-ass telephone stuck on their ear that makes them look like a mentally ill homeless person in a suit - it works.
The real problem, of course, is you and I, because we are too damn lazy to dig out the truth ourselves. It's just too easy to get your political viewpoint from a campaign ad or a propagandizing "news" organization.
Now, back to term limits and elimination of all those financial incentives to serve. This is exactly what the corporate power brokers like the Koch Brothers (worth $44 billion) want to happen. With term limits, only the wealthy or one of their stooges can afford to be elected to office.
They don't worry about WHO they get elected, because they are interchangeable. They vote in lockstep, without an honest difference of opinion among them. If the corporate power brokers have to lose a candidate to term limits in order to get rid of one that opposes them, big deal. Corporations can replace candidates the way you replace batteries in your flashlight. Term limits do nothing but help them pack the congress with their mindless robots.
So, if you want a government even more by the corporations, of the corporations and for the corporations than you already have, by all means push those term limits.
Otherwise, quit listening to sound bites intended to use your own prejudices against you, do some research, and impose your OWN term limits with your personally informed vote.
What say you?