Interesting....

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009

link

http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2009/d...oliticians-2009

Yet another good series of arguements for term limits and campaign finance reform.

+1

A biased piece . Full of half truths and innuendo.

Here's another list in case anyone thought the first list was fair and balanced

http://www.republicanoffenders.com/

In case you were fooled into thinkiong Judicial Watch is unbiased:

This from Wicapedia

Founded by conservative attorney Larry Klayman in 1994[4], Judicial Watch came to public attention after filing 18 lawsuits against the administration of Democratic U.S. President Bill Clinton and figures in the Clinton administration. The organization received considerable financial support from prominent Clinton critics, including $7.74 million from conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.[5] This led Clinton administration officials to accuse Judicial Watch of "abusing the judicial system for partisan ends."[6]

However, in July, 2003 Judicial Watch joined the environmental organization the Sierra Club in suing the George W. Bush administration for access to minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force.[7] After several years of legal wrangling, in May, 2005 an appeals court permitted the Energy Task Force's records to remain secret.[8][9]

In September 2003, Klayman left the organization to run for the United States Senate from Florida.[10] In 2006 Klayman sued Judicial Watch and its president Tom Fitton. The lawsuit charged Fitton misrepresented his academic and professional credentials upon hiring, and upon assuming his position engaged in false and misleading fund raising, misuse of donor money, failure to appoint an attorney as Chairman, failure to comply with a promised severance package to Klayman, and other actions which damaged Judicial Watch, the donors and Klayman. The lawsuit is ongoing.[11][12]

In 2006 Judicial Watch sued the Secret Service to force the release of logs detailing convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's visits to the White House. This resulted in the release of a number of documents.[13][14]

In 2007 former donor Peter F. Paul sued Judicial Watch, accusing it of using his name to raise more than $15 million to support his lawsuit against Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton while doing little to advance his case.[15][16][17]

Arrogance and entitlement know no party. Just more arguements for term limits and campaign finance reform.

Regardless of the trading of equally partisan "watchdog" links, I do agree with one thing here.

Term limits.

You get that, and publicly funded campaigns, and now we're gettin' somewhere.

We already HAVE term limits... they're called elections. If the person isn't doing his/her job... you don't re-elect them.

Publicly financed elections and a complete overhaul of lobbying are the only real way to end corruption, IMO.

Disagree with you there 4Salt...

First, incumbents -- like it or not -- have lots and lots of intrinsic advantages over challengers. Some are clearly fund raising related (and publicly funded elections could help, and I support). But they also have media coverage + "informational" pieces they send on our $$$'s during their tenure which builds name recognition. For many people who aren't policy wonks, name recognition is important. Second, it makes "cozy" relationships with politicians far more difficult to establish as new blood necessarily sweeps out the old relationships. And perhaps most of all, term limits would change the focus of the job -- from a career to a public service done for a more limited timeframe. I think that is a very VERY positive thing overall. If only because it would make these positions more attractive to the sorts of people who would never consider a candidacy in the pool of career politicians we have running the show now.

I hear what you're sayin' Brian.

But here's the thing, if we had publicly funded elections and a severe curtailment of lobbying, we wouldn't need to worry about how much media coverage they paid for or those 'cozy' relationships with corporate campaign donors. Candidates could once again focus on doing the job they were elected to do instead of spending all of their time campaigning and raising money.

My problem with term limits is that it can potentially eliminate good people who have built up a long-term trust with their constituents. Plus, it takes time to learn the in's and out's of Washington DC and the true art of politics and compromise.

Like I said, if someone... like Arlen Specter for instance who was just defeated in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary by progressive candidate and former Navy Admiral Joe Sestak... isn't doing the will of their constituency, you vote them out like the good people of PA just did.

Term Limits are UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

It's one thing Conservatards can't understand because they've never bothered to read the fuggin' thing.

When it's one of them in office it's 'Four More Years!'

One it's one of the other team it's "Fvck the constitution, it was written by hippies!"

To make those generalized insults is just stupid.
It demeans you and unravels any credibility you may have had.
Regardless of how much I disagree with the leftist hippies or the religious right, I'd never generalize all of them with broad brushed statements like that.
I think I have intelligent political adversaries of all beliefs.

I believe we also have term limits for President.

We all know that the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch are different, right?

Using Judicial Watch to start a conversation about term limits and/or publicly funded elections, two things I'd like to see, is a good thing...using Judicial Watch as an actual resource to prove any of their accusations is one step above using Glen Beck as a primary resource...a small step.

Publicly funded elections is where it's at...if a politician isn't beholden to his biggest corporate donors, then he or she might actually try to get some work done to benefit his or her constituents.

Fish on...

Todd

You don't really understand the concept of publicly funded elections... do ya Hank?

The scenario I'm envisioning removes ALL private donations to candidates, whether they be from corporations, unions or private citizens. Each candidate receives an equal amount of taxpayer money from the city, state or federal govt. What they then do with it is up to them.

It would VASTLY shorten the "election season" and would allow incumbent candidates to remain "on the job" instead of continually fund raising.

You are correct in the fact that we will probably never see such a system implemented in this country. There's just too much at risk to the corporate oligarchy that runs this country NOT to have their candidate bought and paid for.

Hey, I'm over 50, Age of Aquarius and all, where money isn't speech and corporations aren't persons. The Revolution was co-opted. By, . . . guess what? Money and corporations.

Sg

I've thought some about the "free speech" arguments re: campaign arguments and while I'm *far* from a constitutional scholar, I'd offer the following ideas:

* We regulate various types of advertising (e.g. liquor, formerly prescription drugs) why not privately funded political advertising w/in 90 days of an election?

* The freedom to speak your mind is not in my view equivalent to the freedom to buy media amplification (or even human amplification, e.g. paid canvassers) of that message. Especially when the amplification inserts that message into intentionally UNRELATED content (e.g. I'm watching Caddyshack, here comes a political ad which I have no interest in seeing)

* Drive political ads off the air entirely by providing an alternate "PolitcalTube" site, where FREE HIGH QUALITY video and audio messages of a political nature will be hosted for free for any 90 day period. Feel free to use this to get your message out.... Hardly squelching free speech, we're making it easy to get scale and control your message... Maybe we'll even provide a "Political advertising channel/time" on public access cable/PBS. You want to watch political ads, go there...

My point is we can provide venues for small/unpopular voices to be heard. That doesn't mean they must be heard everywhere, does it? I'm asking here, again I'm no constitutional scholar.

It wouldn't matter if you were a Costitutional scholar, IR. You'd just be giving your opinion in either case. The Constitution is vague in many circumstances, so we have the SC "interpret" it for us. Hell, anyone can read the damn language, why would a "scholar's" opinion of what it's saying be any more significant than yours?

But that's the way it is, and right now the SC seems to be granting MORE freedom to corporations to buy political influence, not less.

I think your ideas are spot-on.

I see that Hank.

Didn't you see where I included unions too?

The ONLY way to completely remove special interest influence is to do it the way I described.

It won't ever happen, but I can dream...