Today's Shorts: Term Limits, Remembering John & Javalinas in Sedona
The recent manufactured chaos in the Congress points to the need for change. Campaign finance reform would fix dysfunction without term limits.
Congress Is Broken. Change Is Necessary.
After more than three weeks without a Speaker of the US House of Representatives, the “Freedom” Caucus’ Tyranny of the Minority ended on October 25, 2023 with the election of Trump loyalist Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker.
Many Americans … including me … were wringing their hands over the lack of a fully functioning government in the US for 22 days, while the world was flying apart with multiple wars involving our allies; climate change causing extreme weather and population migration; domestic terrorists shooting innocent Americans in bowling allies, bars, schools, churches, grocery stores, sporting events and homes every day — AND no federal budget.
Given all of this, the Republicans’ election of an ultraconservative fringe candidate to Speaker of the House shows a shocking disregard for the seriousness of the issues facing our nation and the world.
Why elect a Congressional newbie, whose ideas are out-of-step with the majority of Americans and who has no management experience or background relevant to a position that is third in line for the Presidency? It makes you wonder who will really be in charge. Who will be writing the script … and thus, controlling the narrative?
When Ronald Reagan was president, many of us on the left believed that he was “the talent,” and “they” — a mysterious force pulling the strings in the background — wrote the scripts for the puppet to read. We didn’t know exactly who “they” were, but we didn’t believe this has-been actor was a brilliant — or even mediocre — political and economic theorist. Who was in charge during the Reagan Era? Was it the “deep state” or the “military industrial complex” or ALEC?1 Reagan used his folksy cowboy charm to sell trickledown economics, union-busting, energy crisis denial, military adventurism, cuts in public assistance to “Welfare Queens,” cuts to school lunches, a naïve “Just Say No” approach to drug addiction for suburban teenagers and mandatory sentencing for people of color.
Decades later, our country is still suffering from Reagan’s bad policies because Republicans are still peddling these socially backward and often racist and discriminatory ideas.
Who will be writing Johnson’s script?
Johnson looks like a mild-mannered, highly scripted nobody with good hair and a perplexed Charlie Brown nonsmile. In his recent America America Substack article entitled A Sad Day for Democracy, author Steven Beschloss enlightens us as to how extreme Johnson is. Johnson is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) without the Ohioan’s rabid dog demeanor. Both had former President Donald Trump’s endorsement for Speaker. Johnson is a Congressional newcomer who was elected in 2016, a MAGA acolyte, an election-denier, and a climate change denier from oil country in Louisiana (no $surprises$ there). He’s also an Evangelical Christian who believes he was divinely chosen for the job of Speaker and who opposes LGBTQ rights and abortion rights. I see more culture wars ahead. Johnson has been in office only a few days and is already railing about “wokeness.” Good grief. What about real issues like the budget deadline on November 17, 2023
Electing a Speaker, who is out-of-touch with the majority of Americans, on a party line vote with the slimmest of majorities, is what happens when a political party and the money behind it care more about retaining power than governing in an equitable and just manner.
Now that their guy has been installed as Speaker, will the Freedom Caucus shut down the government in a few weeks? Maybe. Republican brinksmanship has shut down the US government in the past.
How did we get here? What can we do about it?
When stupidly stubborn politicians cause unnecessary chaos in government, disgruntled voters often get a “throw the bums out” attitude at election time. In just one month, Republicans made history by firing the Speaker of the House, stalled the budget process, paralyzed the government for 22 days, and elected a Trump loyalist for Speaker on a party line vote. If they fail to negotiate a budget quickly and choose to shut down the government instead, voters — of any persuasion — won’t be happy with their performance or the financial fallout from the self-inflected budget crisis.
Beyond voting, there have been rumblings about other strategies to change Congress — most notably term limits.
Thanks to name recognition, incumbent financial advantages, gerrymandering, too many safe seats for one party or the other, and unlimited Big Money donations, some people have served for decades in Congress — like the late Senators Dianne Feinstein (90, died in office), John McCain (81, died in office), Robert Byrd (92 at retirement), Strom Thurmond (100, died in office) and many more long-term electeds who are still in Congress like Senators Charles Grassley (90), Mitch McConnell (81), Bernie Sanders (82) and more. (The US House also has people who have served for decades. Check out the ages of the people in the 118th Congress.)
I don’t mean to pick on the older members2 of Congress because intransigence and lack of progress on key issues isn’t solely their fault, but being mostly rich, white cis gender men, they are out of touch with large swaths of the American public.
Money controls Congress — not the voters or even the politicians themselves. That is why term limits won’t solve our problems in Congress. With term limits, members will come and go quickly. The power and institutional memory will be held by the special interest groups, corporations and wealthy individuals, who have the cash to hire armies of lobbyists to schmooze a revolving door of fresh-faced elected officials.
Money controls Congress — not the voters.
With term limits, elected representatives will come and go.
The power and institutional memory will be held by the monied interests
who hire armies of lobbyists.
Back when I was a soccer mom, I voted for term limits in Arizona government. It seemed as if there were some really horrible people in the Legislature and because of gerrymandering, term limits was the only way to get rid of them, or so I thought. Due to loopholes in Arizona’s term limits law, Legislators can and do serve for longer than the term limits of eight years in each house.
When I was in the Legislature, I learned first hand the dark side of term limits. Being a Legislator or a Congressional representative is a high-pressure, fast-paced job. We depend upon multiple high-quality staff people to coordinate meetings, provide information, offer background, follow up on leads, write laws and a lot more. It can easily make a new Legislator’s head spin when you have a dozen 15-minute meetings in an afternoon, you still have to prep for committee in the morning and there’s a political soiree in the evening.
When you’re running at that pace, dependable people who can answer your questions … like immediately … have a lot of power over the process. Smart lobbyists are always at the ready to answer questions and offer fact sheets, background information, cocktail party invitations and awards to Legislators. The fact sheets and background are usually excellently produced, but Legislators must remember that lobbyists are not neutral.
On the floor of the House one day in early 2017, I leaned over to another newly elected Democrat, Rep. Isela Blanc, and said, “The smartest people here are the staff and the lobbyists. They know everything because they’ve been around forever.” She did her squinty snake eye stare as she looked off in contemplation … and nodded her head.
I agree that people shouldn’t be entrenched in safe offices for decades. Gerrymandering, unlimited dirty money, voter suppression and entrenched politicians have kept this broken system in place.
Multiple SCOTUS decisions against campaign finance reform have quashed efforts to change the system since the post-Watergate era. Corporations, special interest groups and rich people shouldn’t be able to completely bankroll candidates. Look at the case of billionaire Peter Thiel backing Blake Masters for US Senate in Arizona through a dark money super PAC. Masters’ extreme ideas would have gotten no traction without millions from Thiel.
Billionaires have too much control over our government.
Congress Has Been a Hot Mess Since the Tea Party Revolution
Congress has been a hot mess since the Tea Party Revolution election of 2010. That election, described as a “shellacking” by the president, led to a Republican majority in the House and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker of the House. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was already Minority Leader in the Senate.
McConnell had vowed to make President Barack Obama a one-term president. Boehner and McConnell became the dynamic duo of deadlock — fighting healthcare reform, immigration reform and other Obama policies. McConnell and the Republican minority in the Senate weaponized the filibuster and used it to block much meaningful legislation, including the budget. They also blocked Obama appointees, particularly his judicial appointees, most notably to the Supreme Court.
In Super Committee’s Failure Adds to Congress’ 9% Approval Rating, I describe the November 2011 budget battle and Republican brinksmanship. It sounds a lot like 2023. They didn’t remove the Speaker of the House in 2011, but they did blow past the extended budget deadline, which resulted in automated budget cuts. Hopefully, in 2023, there are enough adults in Congress to pass the budget within the 45-day timeline.
Congress has been deadlocked by hyper-partisanship and dysfunction since the Supreme Court blew the doors off campaign finance reform with the 2010 Citizens United v Federal Election Commission decision.
Citizens United overturned “century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections,” writes Tim Lau for the Brennan Center for Justice. This is the case that gave us “corporations are people” and “money is speech.”
It’s been all downhill for the democratic process in the US, thanks to a flood of money unleased by SCOTUS after the Citizens United decision. Political campaigns are more expensive every year. Political action committees (PACs) use nontransparent dirty money to pump out advertising against opponents and for candidates that doesn’t even have to be factual, thanks to SCOTUS. Worldwide, the rise of misinformation and hate speech on social media have exacerbated the problem. I fear the introduction of inaccurate information and fake images generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make everything significantly worse and increase voter mistrust.
Billions of dollars are spent across the country on campaigns to sway voters. This is crazy, dysfunctional and inequitable. Other countries don’t do this. Every cycle there’s more hate and more hype in the campaigns, and people get weary.
To clean up our government and make it more responsive to voters and less dependent upon Big Money politics:
End Citizens United and state in law that: “corporations are NOT people” and “money is NOT speech”;
End partisan gerrymandering controlled by politicians and institute a nationwide equitable, nonpartisan voting map system;
End the current campaign finance system that gives the wealthy to much control over elections and create a nationwide clean elections system that everyone has to use (to level the playing field);
End favoritism based upon party affiliation or state of residence and create a voting system in which independent (no party affiliation) voters have the same voting rights as voters registered with a party;
End state-based voter suppression and guarantee the right to vote nationwide.
By taking money and gerrymandering out of politics, candidates would have to compete on ideas and not rely on money, false advertising, special interest groups, machine politics or party affiliation, as they do now. Clean elections systems allow different types of candidates to run for office because candidacy and success are not reliant upon influencing elite donors. The current money-based system of choosing party candidates limits who can get in the game [of running for office] and who can stay in the game. Why should money, crazy voting maps and party loyalty be the initial deciding factors when choosing candidates? What about ideas?
Guaranteeing the right to vote and eliminating barriers to voting for independent voters also would help to level the playing field because so many more voters overall and more diverse voters would be eligible to vote. BallotPedia shows that in the 33 states that ask voters to declare a political party, non-affiliated voters (independents) outnumber one or both major parties in nine of those states. Non-affiliated voters make up more than 50% of the registered voters in Arkansas (87.94%), Massachusetts (60.17%) and Alaska (58.08%). Why are we even talking about a two-party system?
If we got Big Money out of politics, ended gerrymandering and ensured the right to vote nationwide, we wouldn’t be talking about term limits and delicately dancing around ageism to clean up Congress and end gridlock and political posturing.
We have the power and the obligation to change the system, if we want to save our country and our democracy.
These reforms: getting Big Money out of politics, ending gerrymandering and ensuring the right to vote would give us more responsible government.
Rest in Power, John C. Scott …
I was an avid listener of the John C. Scott Show on AM radio long before we ever met. I didn’t always agree with him and his guests, but I enjoyed the variety, the lively banter and the often interesting and maybe a bit wacky callers. As his son Mark Ulm pointed out at the memorial service, he and his father always tried to get both sides of an issue to mix things up and keep the shows engaging. They succeeded.
In the 1980s, when I was a freelance writer and photographer, I was often bopping around town doing location shoots, meeting with clients or chauffeuring my two small children when John was on the radio. I called in a few times — particularly if someone like Bruce Ash, former Arizona representative to the Republican National Committee (RNC) or one of the mini-dorm developers was on. I remember pulling my car over to call the show and ask a question.
As managing editor of the American Journal of Medicine, I spent a good deal of time working in the corporate database and sending out emails to authors, editors, reviewers and the publisher. I had a pleasant office at Cambric Center with a large window facing the Catalina Mountains and a landscaped rock embankment with flowers and big lizards. It was 2004. Streaming was minimalist, and my office CD collection got repetitive. The JOLT 1330-AM was one of the few radio stations I could receive down in my rock bowl.
When I wasn’t writing — which requires concentration and silence or soft music without words — I listened to the JOLT. My boombox radio, CD, cassette player had to be precisely placed, near the picture window, on the other side of my desk to receive the JOLT. It was too much of a hassle to get up, walk around the desk and search for another signal. Consequently, I listened to the entire week day line-up: Ed Schultz, the one-hour local programs, right wing radio psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger,3 and John C. Scott.
John often had Legislators and other politicians on his show. My other go-to entertainment, when doing mundane office tasks, was watching rousing debates between people like Ruben Gallego, Chad Campbell, John Kavanaugh (who is still there!!!) and Eddie Farnsworth in the Arizona Legislature on my auxiliary monitor.
I was a political junkie consuming a lot of news everyday — long before social media or my first campaign for office. I started blogging about politics in 2006 and sometimes wrote about John’s interviews with provocative guests or followed up on stories that he covered.
As a political blogger on the Tucson Citizen site, I was often on former Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal’s All Things Political Show on the JOLT. For quite a while, A.B. Morales (Three Sonorans on TC and now Substack), Jim Hannley and I were regulars on Leal’s lively one-hour lunchtime show. We often waved at John, who at the manager’s desk, when we were coming and going.
Having been a state senator in the 1970s, John knew the Legislature makes news every day, and most of it is never reported. John often invited Southern Arizona Legislators on his show to talk about what was happening in Phoenix. I became friends with John when I ran for office in 2015. He and his engineer helped me record my original radio ads.
John gave me a voice when the rest of Tucson media ignored me because I ran against a favorite son and beat him in the primary in 2016. Once in office, John followed my legislative update videos religiously on Facebook and would call me in Phoenix and say, "I saw your video. Let's talk about that this afternoon on the show."
Before the pandemic, I was on his show every week when the Legislature was in session. He and his staff got to be good friends with my assistant Emily, who knew how to track me down. I did interviews from my office, from my parked car, outside meeting rooms, wherever. It was a blast. The Republicans were nuts, and John loved hearing the backstories behind the bills. We had a great time on the radio together.
It was a wonderful memorial. Many current and former politicians were there.
Thank you so much for the support, John. I will never forget you. You were a loyal friend and a dedicated newsman. You made a great contribution to politics in Arizona. Rest in power, my friend.
Javalinas Enjoy Sedona Golf Course … Of Course!
This week Javalinas in Sedona made news around the world when they decided to get rowdy and root around in the lush green grass of a swanking golf course. The photos in The Guardian show a thick, green carpet of grass — completely unnatural to the high desert around Sedona — with a large swath of muddy patches that have been dug up. From the looks of the “oversized divots,” the javalinas had a great time with the manicured grass and rich soil. It’s a stark contrast to the javalinas’ natural habitat (above).
“Until the pack’s arrival, Seven Canyons, situated in a canyon in the Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness area of central Arizona, was a picture-perfect example of a golf resort, its scenic panorama described by its general manager, Dave Bisbee, as ‘the Imax of golf,’” writes Richard Luscombe in The Guardian.
Perhaps the “scruffy porcine invaders” were trying to tell “The Imax of Golf” that they’re messing up the vortex with all that grass and the irrigation to keep it green. The golfers are the invaders.
Knowing what we do now about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), they probably had a hand in the policymaking back then.
I have been working on a separate Substack article about the greying of Congress and the role of age in politics. BTW, President Joe Biden will turn 81 on November 20, 2023 and Trump turned 77 on June 14, 2023.
Don’t judge me on listening to Dr. Laura. Her show was fascinating in an odd, voyeuristic sort of way. OMG. It made me realize that some people’s lives were way more messed up and dramatic than mine!