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Dianne Feinstein has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#181

Post by Zxian »

yardie wrote: post #105
flagrant_taco wrote: post #75

I know the easy approach here is for people to want an age limit in Congress, but I've always been more partial to a term limit. I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.

My problem with term limits is being a politician is a job like any other. You get a performance review every few years. But by the time you get really good at the job you're forced to quit. If there are age minimums for these federal offices there should be age maximums.

I don't think it's fair to assume that votes are representative of performance. Politics are a popularity contest first and unfortunately that means image is more important than actions.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#183

Post by hedora »

bhouston wrote: post #6

She was mentally unfit to serve for the last couple years. It was a travesty many countries seem to have no mental bar required to serve or even reasonable age limits (Feinstein was 90!) Any decision "she" was made in the last couple years was made by her aids and not her. This is not how democracy is supposed to work. Details: > Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffer…

She was also incredibly right wing vs. her constituents and was extremely bought off. She did some civil rights stuff early in her career, but it’s been 100% corruption and destroying the environment for this entire century.

She wasn’t senile that entire time.

(I’ll quantify right wing: She voted with the Trump administration more than any other democrat, and voted like an average republican senator during his administration.)

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#184

Post by paradoxyl »

jliptzin wrote: post #23
bhouston wrote: post #6

She was mentally unfit to serve for the last couple years. It was a travesty many countries seem to have no mental bar required to serve or even reasonable age limits (Feinstein was 90!) Any decision "she" was made in the last couple years was made by her aids and not her. This is not how democracy is supposed to work. Details: > Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffer…

It is how it’s supposed to work. She was 85 when she got elected the last time. If voters don’t want 90 year olds in office, maybe they shouldn’t vote 85 year olds in for a 6 year term. If she can’t be beat in a primary, then we need something like ranked choice voting so people can safely vote for an alternative third party without risking spoiling the election for a candidate they definitely don’t want.

When do you think some third party is going to arise out of the broken cesspool of one-party machine politics in the state of dementia known as California? Please, fill us in.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#185

Post by kemayo »

hedora wrote: post #149
flagrant_taco wrote: post #75

I know the easy approach here is for people to want an age limit in Congress, but I've always been more partial to a term limit. I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.

Instead of term limits, I’d much rather they be paid a 99% percentile wage until death, but be banned from accepting any other income or gifts, investing in stocks or owning any sort of business or investment property (again, for life). It might be better to lower the income to 90th or 50th percentile, so only people that actually wanted the job would take it. Ideally, the restrictions would extend to the kids. It wo…

> Ideally, the restrictions would extend to the kids. It would definitely extend to the spouses.

I actually really hate this idea whenever it comes up, at least for the kids. It feels rather oppressive that you could have your largely-estranged parent decide to get into politics, and have that entirely derail your life.

The current system gives us a bunch of grifters like the Trump kids or Hunter Biden, to be sure, but I'd rather directly punish the parent who's being corrupt than their children who don't even hold office.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#186

Post by bombcar »

claytongulick wrote: post #126
thrillgore wrote: post #98

Having seen Diane bootlick for the telecoms most of my life, good riddance. Yes, you heard me. I am not even going to pause for a condolance or bite my tongue. I'm glad she's gone. She was 100% unfit for the position in the last few years of her life and nothing was done about it. This is a problem with US Politics, they are too fucking old to represent the actual population so they are pulled by SIGs and lobbyists.…

I strongly disagree with her politics, and also believe that she should have retired earlier. A mentor of mine used to remind me, "always react with class". I fail at this a lot, but try. I think it would be good for you to try too. And also to remember that she was fairly elected. She was who the people wanted. If you want to be angry, be angry at the people who continued to elect her. Maybe not so much vitrol direc…

She's now literally the only person who cannot be affected by vitriol.

Nevertheless attempts to pin the blame on her for things her constituency was obviously happy or oblivious to is misguided.

Term limits give more power to the lobbyists and other back-room powers, because they are never term limited, and they quickly learn how to be exceptionally persuasive to newbie representatives.

At least a non-limited representative has the chance to learn to resist, thought it's pretty darn rare. Term limits would snuff that out entirely.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#187

Post by dfxm12 »

njovin wrote: post #89
bwalks wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they have six year terms

This is true, but they are also re-elected at a rate of ~80% with no term limits on re-election (2022 saw a 100% re-election rate for Senators despite congress having a 75% disapproval rating at the time). Hooray for the 2-party system.

Everyone thinks their senators are working for them. It's just the other 98 that's they disapprove of :D

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#189

Post by archontes »

bhouston wrote: post #22
coldpie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tests for public participation have a real, real bad history, and for good reason. Age is a simple and objective measure.

I agree. It is just that people's facilities fall off at different rates, but as others pointed out, it is hard to make an objective test that also can not be gamed.

It's just that that's not actually really important. The test of a good system is one that admits that its members will retire and adjusts accordingly.

In the military, you're always training a replacement, and come 65 (or 68), you're retiring, regardless of your capacity.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#190

Post by noirbot »

banannaise wrote: post #95
flagrant_taco wrote: post #77

I know the easy approach here is for people to want an age limit in Congress, but I've always been more partial to a term limit. I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.

The problem with term limits is that they don't apply to lobbyists. Lobbyists basically writing most of the legislation is already a major problem, and it becomes worse when all the representatives are new to the office.

This is somewhat the difficulty of balancing the needs of governments. A short term/term limit leads to more inexperienced people doing the job. That's good in some ways - keeping new ideas coming in or keeping people from doing the job far too long. On the other hand, it means some large portion of the legislature is people who are more or less still learning. The process of writing good law that avoids unnecessary downsides, or simply understands the downsides and works to mitigate them isn't something you can just pick up over a weekend, especially when there aren't many people to learn it from.

As you say, it's easy to point to the folks who have been in office forever as being an issue, but there's also staff and lobbyists and other unelected roles that are hard to get rid of the influence of. At the end of the day, someone needs to be the expert, either on the vast array of issues that can come up in national government, or in how to actually do something about those issues.

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