Thomas Sowell on political corruption - Parts I, II & III

Worth a second look...term limits, term limits, term limits. These career politicians - all of them - are just not doing the job:

(Originally posted February 1, 2006)

I'm just starting to get into the writings of Thomas Sowell. These recent articles spawned by the Abramoff scandal raise some very provocative questions about term limitation, compensation, and the importance of private sector experience over political prowess.

From Part I:

"...What really needs to be done is to put a limit of one term in one office and a waiting period of several years before being elected or appointed to another office in government. In other words, make political careers impossible.

Can people who are not career politicians run the government? People who were not career politicians created the government and the Constitution of the United States of America..."

From Part II:

"...If we paid every member of Congress $10 million a year, that would not increase the federal budget by one percent.

Chances are that it would reduce the federal budget considerably, when members of the Senate or the House of Representatives no longer needed campaign contributions or the personal favors of special interest groups and their lobbyists.

One term in the Senate would bring in $60 million, which most people could live on for life, without being beholden to anybody and without having to seek a job afterwards for special interests, much less having to sell their soul to continue a political career..."

From Part III:

"...Nowhere is it more important to have people who know what they are doing than in Washington. And nowhere is it more important that what they are doing is carrying out the duties of the job, not spending their time focussed on getting re-elected.

Many people fear that government has gotten so complex that only the permanent bureaucrats can cope with it, so that turnover among elected officials would make the bureaucracy the real rulers of the country.

But the "expertise" of bureaucrats, like the expertise of Congressional staffers, is largely an expertise in personal political survival..."

Thomas Sowell is right.

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