Ciao!

I agree, getting of the Michigan senate would only have consequnces for those associated with the Michgian senate. The taxpayers would recieve immediate relief from the added cost of having more legislators than the state of California (California has three times the population of Michigan).

I agree the MI senate is probably unnecessary, however it has been around for 170+ years, so to just discard it is not wise. It might be better to look at how or what it is doing, through some sort of state constitutional convention, and see which of its powers are irrelevant, duplicated, or unnecessary.

Simply getting rid of it for budget reasons is not really much of an argument, since in any government the amount of money spent on operations and salary for the representative bodies is such a small portion of the government. Further, any savings by sacking the senate might be eliminated if the house has to hire additional staff to handle their increased workloads or if the civil service needs to be expanded for the same reason.

But I always support efficient government, so this issue definitely sounds like one to consider.

However, I do disagree on term limits. It has always been my position that no one should make their entire career and entire life based on a political position. It is much more helpful to have “real” people in office for brief stints, around 10-15 years. This period of time is more than enough to become fully acquainted with the office and to accomplish a great deal. However, after such a period of time it is important for the values of honesty, efficiency, and transparency in government to bring in new blood every so often. Having people basically serving lifetime “elected” or even appointed terms of office does nothing to further democracy and represent the voters.

In fact, term limits should be expanded into the area of an age of mandatory retirement, for instance all persons must retire from any government position when they reach the age of 75 or 80. Not only is the age high enough that it would only effect very few—it would ensure that those who had other careers in their life had an opportunity to give many years back to the public sector before they had to step down. It would also give some more stability to the process of appointed positions, such as the US Supreme Court, where everyone would know that in 2-3 years a particular justice would have to retire—instead of the current elitist system of people who are obviously unable to do their job literally dying in office. (this would also apply to the US Senate-where Thurmond spent his last 2 years in the hospital and Kennedy will probably die in office as well)

I'm also somewhat ambivalent about simply eliminating the state senate. Only because it's not all that expensive (I agree the cost is probably a drop in the bucket), but I also can see that a unicameral legislature is just as good a check on the executive as a bicameral one.

But I disagree about term limits. We already have term limits: voters. If politicians are doing a bad job, it's the voters' responsibility to "turn the rascals out" in contested elections. But removing good public office holders after some pre-set time limit can have negative consequences. For one, we lose expertise. We also hand over greater power to staff & bureaucrats, who gain longer seniority & expertise.

I do, however, like the idea of a maximum age limit. We have US senators who're too senile to really be of service to anyone. We hvae a minimum age limit; I see no reason for not having a maximum age limit.

There's two problems I see with an informal "term limit" imposed by voters, apathy and gerrymandering.

GERRYMANDERING
In the 2006, congressional elections out of 435 seats only about 30 are truly competitive seats, the vast majority are locks for either party, and many seats are either literally unopposed or practically unopposed (that is no major party candidate to compete with).

Many of the districts have been drawn so well by computer modeling that the chances of a surprise outcome, or a party shift are highly unlikely. One political analyst said in 2002, that Congress is elected every 10 years when the US Census is done and districts are redrawn--not every 2 years as written in the Constitution.

To my mind, having term limits would force the parties to put new blood in there--instead of just protecting incumbents until they totter out of office. It might not directly help gerrymandering, but having new blood in there--even if its the same party over and over agan, might stir things up enough to pass some other reforms.

APATHY
Also, voter apathy is pretty high. Unless the politican is accused of some pretty severe things, they usually get re-elected simply because of the district--especially if they still have the backing of the party.

EXPERTISE
I think you're right here, but again having either an age of mandatory retirement or a fixed number of years someone can work in government, such as 20, might eliminate this problem of civil servants working the elected official. If they all have to leave after 20 years--then that might equal the playing field for both sides of government, elected and civil service.

The problem now is the government has become so large and full of people who stay there for decades, that reform is almost impossible. Its the height of elitism to think that a particular person is the only possible person for the job--a democracy is based on citizens coming forward to serve for a little while and then going back to their lives. What I believe we have now is an oligarchy where the same groups just seem to rotate in and out of power. (this point may be especially true if Hillary is elected in 2008--the presidency will have then gone Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton and I'm sure some of the same characters will pop back up again)

Patrick:

I see you point on gerrymandering. And that's a whole other thorny issue. But even in "safe" districts, incumbents can be defeated in primaries. Or if disatisfaction is high enough, a candidate from another party could win if he/she moved closer to the median voter.

I also see your point about democracy v. oligarchy. But we live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. As such, I don't think that "just anyone" is qualified for any post. Some might require special skills, skills that are probably best acquired through experience. A lot of political policy decisions are technical skills.

Fundamentally, though, term limits run up against another democratic impulse. Say 90% of the people are consistently happy w/ the job their representative is doing, why is their vote denied and forced to choose between any other candidates?

If voters don't vote out incumbents out of apathy, it's the responsibility of voters. I don't like taking shortcuts to eliminate the voters' need to take responsibility for their own political choices. Term limits remove the burden AND responsibility from the voter.

A 1964 supreme court decision required all legislative chambers for all states to base their representation only on population. In doing that, Michigan's senate and house became redundant chambers in that their duties and responsibilities, as defined by the constitution are identical. They are clones of one another. Why should taxpayers pay for redundancy? With the 40% pay raise the legislators gave themselves, it made them the second highest paid legislators in the nation all for a part time job.

One blogger says that we've had a two house system for 174 years so why change? We should not accept failure just because its a tradition. Its time for a change. And in reality, the Articles of Confederation were actuall based on a unicameral system.

Getting back to the statement of keeping the Michigan senate because of the 170 year tradition, had Henry Ford kept that mindset,think of where the state of manufacturing would be. We cannot continue to do business as usual just because that is the way its always been done. That is a non-sensical argument. www.fire-the-senate.com