I agree with a timid proposal to increase term limits

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.

I was shocked — shocked I tell you — when I learned recently that the State Legislature I despise so much actually came up with an idea I support wholeheartedly. It was a timid gesture, but some lawmakers admitted to thinking about asking voters to change the term limits law to allow state representatives and state senators to serve a maximum of 16 years.

My point is similar to Donald Trump’s in November 2008 when asked by Fox News how he felt about Obama being elected president — “He can’t do any worse than Bush (his predecessor).” As much as I despise these bozos in Lansing for creating instead of solving problems to satisfy the wants of a rich few, lengthening their terms might make them more accountable or susceptible to the working stiffs who elected them.

Michigan has the most onerous term limits law in the nation, limiting state representatives to three, two-year terms and state senators to two, four-year terms. The governor operates under the same constraints, with two four-year terms.

The law was approved by 59 percent of voters statewide in 1992 and it went into effect in 1994, thereby kicking out longtime thoughtful respected public servants such as Paul Hillegonds and Lynn Jondahl. Replacing them have been the worst legislators I have seen in my lifetime. Even worse, it gradually has become of a game of asking voters, “How low can you go?”

State legislators serving Hopkins, Martin, Wayland, Dorr, Moline and surrounding townships since them have included Patty Birrkholz, Fulton Sheen, Bob Genetski. Ken Yonker, Cindy Gamrat and Mary Whiteford. To paraphrase an old political observer from nearly a century ago, they haven’t been “worth a warm bucket of spit” in helping us plain folks in Allegan County.

Now comes Steve Johnson, the latest in a long line of bozos who will spend an inordinate amount of time saving little girls from transgender people in bathrooms and attacking, but not eliminating abortion rights. Johnson, an unemployed 25-year-old living in his parents’ basement until he hit the jackpot last August with 30% of the vote in the primary, is on track to do no better than the dishonor roll of his predecessors.

One of the biggest reasons for the really awful record of the Republican-dominated Michigan Legislature, particularly in the last six years, is indeed term limits, hands hands over power of legislators to lobbyists and special interests who have set up permanent camp in Lansing while lawmakers are on that merry-go-round coming and going without knowing or understanding what they do.

We voters are just as guilty. We keep electing these cookie cutter candidates who walk alike, talk alike and legislate alike. They’re about as good at making laws that solve problems as the Detroit Lions are at winning championships.

Gov. Rick Snyder just recently was selected by Forbes Magazine as the worst leader on the planet. It doesn’t matter. If he and his cronies were on the ballot again, they’d win anyway. Even worse, I hear tell a proposal to increase term limits to 16 years would be defeated as soundly as the Detroit Lions in 2008, that fateful year they went a record 0-16.

We keep electing ’em again and again, but look at their record over the last six years:

• Emergency Manager Law — short-circuits democracy, ignores the will of voters and gets results like the Flint water disaster, for which Snyder should be impeached, recklessly endangering the lives of children to save money.
• An obnoxious fireworks law — disturbs the public peace, frightens dogs and veterans to promote sales and boorish, childish noisy behavior.
• The GOP majority had twiddled its collective thumbs on the deplorable condition of our roads for the past six years and just this week we’ve absorbed a 30-cent increase per gallon in paying at the pump.
• Motorcycle helmet law — How can children take us seriously about use of seat belts when we let bikers not wear helmets for safety? And in 2015, Michigan saw a 30% increase in motorcycle fatalities. Thanks, lawmakers.
• Medical marijuana implementation — The law was passed in 2008 by 63% of voters statewide, but the Leggie insisted each municipality pay for attorneys to craft their own ordinances.
• Eliminating straight party voting, though rejected twice by voters statewide, making voting more cumbersome and time consuming, an attempt to discourage the unwashed masses, the riff-raff, working people, from voting. The courts struck the law down.
• The coverup of the scandal involving Tea Party lawmakers Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat while permitting the two unfairly to fire whistleblowing staff members. Who paid them when they justly won their lawsuit?

With a track record like this, any employee would be fired. But we voters elect ‘m again and again and then replace them with robots just like them.

“But nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.” — George Carlin