{"id":47,"date":"2005-01-19T01:22:42","date_gmt":"2005-01-19T07:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2005\/01\/19\/coming-to-term-limits\/"},"modified":"2006-02-15T01:24:21","modified_gmt":"2006-02-15T07:24:21","slug":"coming-to-term-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/coming-to-term-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming to term limits"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6><font face=\"Courier New, Courier, mono\">Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock<\/font><\/h6>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=\"4\"><b><font size=\"2\">Wednesday, January 19, 2005.<\/font><\/b><\/font><font size=\"2\"> In reading in the papers about another piece of embarrassing proposed state legislation, I realized finally, after many years of consideration, a single reason to support term limits.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=\"2\"> Overall, though, holding legislators from the community through state levels to a maximum number of terms is fundamentally un-democratic. It limits the power, however misused or underused, of the voter. It also says that those who support term limits, including voters, believe voters overall are idiots and incapable of voting rascals out of office.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=\"2\">However long rascals stay in, they must be serving a majority or they wouldn&#8217;t be there. Rascals deserve to stay in until a strong-enough opposition can defeat them in an election, otherwise the opposition won&#8217;t seem strong enough to govern. (Term limits for the single executive does make sense to prevent monarchy or worse.)<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=\"2\">But term limits do have one appeal:When out-of-staters ask about an embarrassing piece of Arkansas legislation, that they&#8217;ve read in the odd-news column or as a filler, the matter no longer is compounded by the detail that the idiot lawmaker had been re-elected by his district 22 times.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=\"2\">The doofus just got re-elected for the first time, got a committee chair and doesn&#8217;t know much better. -30-<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, January 19, 2005. In reading in the papers about another piece of embarrassing proposed state legislation, I realized finally, after many years of consideration, a single reason to support term limits. Overall, though, holding legislators from the community through state levels to a maximum number of terms is fundamentally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5514,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2016\/11\/ajar-letter\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":0},"title":"An Ajar Letter to Arkansas Electors","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"To the Honorable (Arkansas elector) Dear M-. _______, I am a native of our state, now living in Northwest Arkansas. This letter is to request you vote for any presidential candidate besides Donald J. Trump when the state's electors meet Monday, Dec. 19. This request does not come from partisanship\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News, Spin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Graphic of hand dropping ballot into slot","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/ballot-800px-295x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":146,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/confusing-the-issue\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":1},"title":"Confusing the issue","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, May 11, 2005: Morning after a local millage election. The Fayetteville Public Schools lost its request for a property tax increase of 43 mills. This is one Arkansas town that doesn't hate tax increases. What was wrong with this one? The things this one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Body, Home, Street&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/07\/three-school-monte\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":2},"title":"Three School Monte","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY -- With a maneuver some describe as canny, the Greenland School District annexed Fayetteville Public Schools, officials with both announced Wednesday morning. The new body will be called the Greater Greenland School District and will use the facilities and personnel of both. Thus,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chronicles of Crystal Britches&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chronicles of Crystal Britches","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/chronicles-of-crystal-britches\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":262,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/cast-bread-upon-the-voters\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":3},"title":"Cast bread upon the voters","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not fair to blow up a quotation of a state legislator, even adding context to show that he or she probably did mean it the way it sounded. But when remarks fall into your lap, courtesy of alert journalists, who can resist? I have written previously about opposing the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News, Spin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2875,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/06\/a-columnists-scrapbook\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":4},"title":"A Columnist&#8217;s Scrapbook","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is my president\u2019s column for the June 2011 edition of the monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. The NSNC Conference, three days out of 365, is a highlight of my year. Apparently, I mustn't have a life. Actually, I do have a grand life, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Brick Bats Reportage&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":276,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/half-a-loaf\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":5},"title":"Half a Loaf","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"OK. Maybe it is a brilliant political maneuver, new Gov. Mike Beebe's vow to cut the sales tax on groceries in Arkansas. It has given him several advantages. Meanwhile, the state is among the poorest in the Union, and reducing even an inherently unfair tax will tax what feeble services\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News, Spin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}