How do You Get a Member of the US Congress to Leave Office?
Seriously, I have no idea
Once you are elected to the Senate or Congress, it's nearly impossible to remove you.
Members of Congress and the Senate, (ostensibly) will either decide not to run for office or die in office. When the voters of the United States of America have told them, “We want to limit your term in office,” laughter fills the halls.
Why do we need term limits? Elections serve as a system of checks and balances. Just vote them out, right?
Wrong.
80% of all incumbent senators already win reelection like clockwork.
With gerrymandering, over 90% of all congressional seats are expected to be static going forward.
If you have the seat, it takes some really bad behavior to lose an election.
****FROM TIME MAGAZINE, 2018*****
Voters re-elected two Republican Congressmen, Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of California, who are facing federal indictments for alleged insider trading and campaign corruption, respectively.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, whose trial on federal bribery and fraud charges resulted in a hung jury, was also reelected.
Texans reelected Attorney General Ken Paxton as their top cop, even though he is facing criminal charges for securities fraud.
And in Montana, voters reelected Rep. Greg Gianforte despite his conviction for misdemeanor assault after body-slamming a journalist.
How those turned out if you need a sense of closure:
On September 30, 2019, Collins and Hunter resigned from Congress and subsequently pleaded guilty in court.
On December 3, 2019, Hunter plead guilty to one count of misusing campaign funds. Hunter said he expected to be sentenced to prison time, but hoped the judge would not sentence his wife to incarceration. On March 17, 2020, U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan sentenced Hunter to eleven months in prison, followed by three months of supervised release
Paxton is one of, if not the biggest scumbags to be elected to any seat in the US in the last 150 years. I spent hours reading about the legal maneuvering, cronyism, manipulation, and the narrow escapes this asshole has been navigating for the last 12 years. Almost all of the accusations come from his aids and those working with him. They almost always stem from insider trading, real estate, or other financial dealings that are designed to enrich the current AG of Texas. That’s aside from ethics violations.
So unless a House member voluntarily decides to retire, there is only one thing standing between them and dying on their elected seat — us.
And we are so stupid we let this go on and on.
EXAMPLE A, 1A
Congrats to Chuck Grassley and Diane Feinstein on displaying exactly how unrecoverable America is!
Chuck (R) is 88 and recently won another term in 2020. He was born the same year as Dianne Feinstein (D).
Things that happened the year they were born, 1933:
- Construction on the Golden Gate bridge…begins.
- The Lone Ranger was first broadcast….on radio
- Hitler announces he’s Chancellor.
- And December 5th, 1933 Prohibition ended in the US.
We have two Senators overseeing regulation on Google and crypto that predated Hitler taking power, The Golden Gate Bridge and the ability to drink legally in the US.
How is that not a terrible mistake?
From Rollcall.com:
“His sweater-vest style may have inspired one of the wittier fake Twitter accounts, but Sen. Chuck Grassley is still working out the kinks when it comes to the Twitterverse. Tech blog Gizmodo just named the Iowa Republican the “Worst Twitter User in the United States of America” for his many mishaps on the site. The post says Grassley’s tweets are “possibly among the most incoherent, confounding, mind-boggling text on the Internet.””
To be fair Grassley was pretty old when that was published…..in 2011.
To continue:
“While he has made a few mistakes, like texting only “Z” last week, many of his jumbles seem to be intentional. His feed is full of tweets consisting of long strings of words, like this one:
“#99CountyTour 730am NewHampton 52Ppl issues:nuclear Bring back jobs EPAovrRegulation Why in Libya?”
He’s also fond of shorthand, which prompts unique misspellings such as “voleybal” or “pixtur.” He explained his technique in a March tweet:
“Quit complaining abt my Twitter shorthand I know how to spell But Twitter limit is 120 characters.”
Someone clued him into his mistake, and he responded.
“I found 20 more characters. Tx 4 tips Will still use shorthand 2 MAXimize space.”
So this is not an ideal situation, to put it bluntly.
Dianne is an entirely different bag of sharp objects destined to leave the USA scarred. You see, Feinstein became a senator when a female senator was a big deal. So she hasn’t just ridden talking points and charm.
From THE HILL, 2017:
During open questioning to Big Tech in regards to Russia’s role in the 2016 elections.
“I must say, I don’t think you get it,” Feinstein told representatives of Facebook, Google and Twitter.
“What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare. What we’re talking about is a major foreign power with the sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sew conflict and discontent all over this country.”
However that sharp mind is doing what sharp minds do once you turn 80, it dulls.
The Senate runs on seniority, and a lack of quick analysis resulted in her office (essentially) holding the sexual assault allegations against then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh, from the FBI’s investigation team. It needed to be more thoroughly investigated, and created both an embarrassing situation and aided in putting a moron on the Supreme Court.
This was not the only incident of the once-great intellect showing signs of age. The sharp mind of the CA state senator is a fraction of what it once was.
Honestly, that’s fine and normal. She’s 88. No one can expect her to be what she was, and 28 years as a US Senator is a service to us all. However, I’d be surprised if she can tell you what she did the day before in detail anymore.
In fairness to Grassley, his Twitter game improved greatly once he let his staff handle it.
*****Sidenote****
To my dear Republican friend “Mike”, the reason the Republican comes off like an idiot in comparison to Feinstein, is Grassley is an idiot.
Vote better…
****end side****
When you are in a position to be viewed as an “authority”, you need to bring basic competency to the table . And although Feinstein’s office probably made the mistake regarding the “Kav Report” any mistakes your people make are your mistakes and display an inability to lead and oversee people.
As a senator, you have to be able to speak on behalf of your state’s population and if you can’t keep your office on point, you may have started the “cerebral path down the hill,” so to speak.
Grassley’s current term ends this year and he is running. Feinstein has filed paperwork consistent with her racing Chuck to oldest senator ever.
The current record holder is Ralph Hall (Born in 1923). Representative Ralph Hall of Texas is the oldest person to have served in the House. Hall retired in 2015, at the age of 91.
So that record is going down next term.
Another troubling statistic is there is plenty more right behind them: Twenty-three members of the Senate are in their 70s, only one is under 40.
These are the people making decisions in the information age and they predate the television age. My grandfather was a wise man and we wouldn’t let him drive when he was 88. I can’t imagine explaining “Etherium’s Gas Fees” to him.
Below is a link by longevity for the current U.S. Senate:
A few highlights and the dates they were sworn in:
Patrick Leahy, 82 — January 3, 1975
Chuck Grassley, 89 — January 3, 1981
Mitch McConnell, 80 — January 3, 1985
Richard Shelby, 88 — January 3, 1987
Dianne Feinstein, 89 — November 4, 1992
Patty Murphy, 72 (a baby) — January 3, 1993
Jim Inhofe, 87 — November 16, 1994
Ron Wyden, 72 — February 6, 1996
Dick Durbin (77), Jack Reed (72), and Susan Collins (69) — January 3, 1997
Chuck Schumer (71), Mike Crapo (70) — January 3, 1999
That list is the longest-tenured, not the oldest.
There are 13 U.S. senators who have been in office since the last millennium. That’s 13% of the Senate votes, and they are controlled by people that by any metric our society would consider old as fuck.
I think I have established age as a problematic reality, so let’s move to another problem.
Buying an Election
***Disclaimer
If you have read my other deeper dives into the Koch Brothers and how they destroyed America, the Earth and civilized society, I won’t need to bore you with all that. I’ll put some links below, but I’ll try to fly through some of it so you don’t have to go back and read 5,000 words just to finish this.
***End
In 2012, the Koch Brothers changed campaign finance laws so that any very, very rich person could purchase an elected official. Similar to how one might pick up a new cat at a shelter, only it costs more and they don’t come with shots or coupons to get them spayed and neutered. I might be wrong on that — I’m pretty sure Ted Cruz needed to be dewormed, but I’m not 100% sure.
Anyway, the “theory” (by “theory I mean I’m 100% certain) goes, like this: If you pay for half of what it costs (off the top of my head, Gavin Newsom’s campaign for CA governor cost $50,000,000) to get your guy into office, you expect him to do as he’s told.
The aforementioned theory is not to be confused with how CNN interprets it — “have undue influence”. No, if I spend $25 million I expect you to DO AS YOU ARE FUCKING TOLD. And come to find out, billionaires agree with me on this.
This is a problem everywhere, but it’s a particularly large problem with the Senate. The Senate is the antithesis of democracy to begin with, (another piece I wrote, I’ll share a link) but of the 100 votes possible anytime the Senate has a vote, people you never heard of are really the ones dictating the vote. Or David Koch who alone (kinda) controlled over $2 billion in campaign financing money in 2020. I’ve never seen anyone who matters (I don’t matter) say the following, but it is what it is.
David Koch (by proxy) controls every GOP Senate vote when he really wants to. And recently he added Joe Manchin’s vote as well.
Ted Cruz does not rep Texas. He reps the Koch financing machine and its dark money contributors.
Every member of the GOP would miss their daughter’s wedding to fertilize David Koch’s backyard in an instant.
More than 50% of the elected GOP Senators accepted half of their campaign funds from the Koch Network either directly or through indirect relationships.
This is Ted Cruz’s Opensecrets.org page between 2017–2021. As much as anything you’ll see how fucked up the Koch-funded Citizens United Supreme Court ruling has made campaign finance.
Will term limits fix this?
“Fix”? no. But if you are a lobbyist funded by Reid Hastings (CEO Netflix) or AT&T, whoever, and you have had lunch with Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) once a month since he was inaugurated, and your firm has donated 4–7% of Crapo’s campaign money all those years, your influence won’t be the same as it was. As things stand now, when you really need something, you are getting it.
If senators were limited to two terms of four (or six, whatever) years, you really wouldn’t be that tight with any campaign finance source. Or a four-year term and a six-year second term, you would have reached your limit and unless you are running for president or some state office, you don’t need a ton of campaign financing after your second term election. And it’s possible if not likely your next gig won’t have as much value to the lobbyists.
Also, one of the few laws that elected politicians are still a little concerned could haunt them is “Misuse of Campaign Funds”. So it’s a lot trickier to funnel money to politicians if they aren’t maintaining a massive reelection fund.
Do we need senators that last longer than 10 years? Of course not.
Rank and file senators make $174k/year. They are allowed additional outside income up to 15% of their salary.
Chuck Grassley’s net worth as of 2018.
Dianne Feinstein’s Net worth as of 2018.
I did not know Dianne was an heiress, she has to be to be a senator so many years and be worth $87million, right? Actually, she married Richard Blum (investment banker) who I’m sure has never used any information the Senator mentioned over dinner to benefit his business. Ever….. cuz that would be illegal.
Any way you slice it, becoming a senator is a solid way to get rich and offers more job security than being an Applebee’s bar manager.
Ken Paxton
I hate the Senate
Koch sucks, drink Pepsi
