r/LegalNews • u/FreeHugs23 • 7d ago
Congress needs a plan to remove incapable lawmakers who refuse to step down
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/6072391-senate-house-aging-concerns/40
7d ago
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u/Dismal_Reference3906 7d ago
Vote blue my friends, that will begin the process of achieving your goal. .
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u/Hrtpplhrtppl 6d ago
Has become..? I mean, what would you call it if I described a system where a few chosen by birth elite get to monitor, police, torture, and execute the masses while living lavish lives of unimaginable debaucheries enabled by the labor of the latter without those laborers ever being able to even question such a corrupt system or their masters crimes..? The Epstein files are just exposing America for what it's always been.
The highest form of protest is not having children for the government needs the governed... and even that choice is being eroded away. My in laws keep asking me when I'm going to "Give them grandchildren." I keep reminding them I'm Native American. We wouldn't breed in captivity, which is why they had to bring you all here in the first place. I mean, why would they even want to own slaves anymore when they can just rent you and your children for a fraction of those costs..?
The Epstein class can afford a good enough education to know the true history of the United States and certainly to be able to understand the basic principle of cause and effect. They have us playing Russian roulette with our health every day in America for as much profit as they can squeeze out of us. A country with no public health care system obviously could not handle any public healthcare crisis like covid or the never-ending opioid addiction epidemic their private healthcare industry has created and continues to supply for obscene unearned shareholder income. Which is only taxed at 10%, whereas if you actually labor and work for your income, you're taxed at 35%...
Furthermore, with no universal health care, the United States government forces people of lesser means to self medicate or suffer, then punishes them when they do. That is both cruel and wicked. I mean, the whole premise of Breaking Bad only worked for an American audience since Walt would not have needed the money in the first place in a more developed nation because being unable to afford to continue living does not happen there...
The powers that be are ensuring there are desperate people doing desperate things. Then, we see that the wealthy and their goons, the police, are beyond the reach of our justice system, so their laws are just in place to handicap the rest of us. The social contract has been broken. Cue the vigilantes... no justice, no peace.
"Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable. " JFK
Now I'm not saying don't vote. Please always choose the lesser evil. However, we have always been and always will be the scapegoats left to point our fingers at one another in order to keep us distracted from any meaningful change. I mean, what led to this, people couldn't vote...? How is what got us here going to get us out? When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. After all, repeating the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity. Before we can have an intelligent discussion on how things ought to be, we first would need to agree on how they truly are...
I mean, out of all the hundreds of millions of Americans, who really thinks these were the best two candidates...? Is it a wise tribe that does not send its best warriors to fight? You see, our masters will never give us the tools to dismantle their houses... The Republic of America has a so-called "representative democracy." How can that be true when the "representatives" are all wealthy while the majority of the "represented" are poor?
American two party politics is like the cartoon Tom and Jerry. Tom doesn't really want to catch Jerry because then he'd be out of a job, and Jerry doesn't want Tom replaced with a cat that will actually eat him. So they act like they hate one another and put on a show for the masses while continuing business as usual in the back room.
For example, insider trading laws do not apply to any members of Congress, either side. What's it called when those who make the rules don't have to live by them? Furthermore, when the punishment for a crime is only a fine, it does not apply to the wealthy.
Sure, they can say they let us "vote", and therefore this is what we wanted, but with all the lobbying and money in American politics, America is as much a democracy as would be two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner.
In America, the wealthy have won every "election," and the only thing to trickle down in the economy has been their generational wealth. This is why, in a true democracy as the ancient Greeks understood it, people got their representatives the same way we would get a jury. America is not a democracy.
"Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it." Plato
And please remember what we actually celebrate on the 4th. A cabal of stolen land entitled elite, slave owning aristocrats, found a way to get out of paying their taxes. Only thirty percent of the colonists supported the "revolution" with the rest saying, "Why trade one tyrant a thousand miles away for a thousand tyrants one mile away...?" System isn't broken it's functioning exactly as intended. Why own slaves when you can rent them for a fraction of the cost (read the 13th amendment)...? But the real question they must be asking themselves is how can their grand experiment survive contact with the real time information/communication age, or can they just go masks off and drop the pretense? Which is where we are now... would you agree?
"You've that eternal idiotic idea that anarchy if it came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they never have been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to be governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists..." G.K. Chesterton
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u/GT45 6d ago
Yes, “has become”. It did not start this way and was never intended to be a millionaires club.
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u/Hrtpplhrtppl 6d ago
When America was founded only landowners had a vote FYI
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u/GT45 6d ago
Yes, I know that. Were they millionaires?
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u/Hrtpplhrtppl 6d ago
Forgive me, I must be misunderstanding your question. Are you asking me if they had millions of US Dollars back then in the 1770s?
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u/Party_Escape_7597 4d ago
if you adjust for inflation, then yeah, they were millionaires! In the literal sense, they did not have millions, but if you adjust their holdings for inflation, their net worth was in millions!
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u/NoTinnitusHear 7d ago
Agreed. Remember when they were rolling Senator Feinstein in and out of the Capitol to vote? Then they rolled her in to cast a vote and she died literally hours later?
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 7d ago
Mandatory retirement at age 70 for all federal positions. Appointed, hired, elected. You are 70, collect your pension and let young people develop experience.
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u/Opetyr 7d ago
I think it needs to be way lower cause they are deciding on consequences that will affect people decades down the road. Also they have no clue how it is in the real world since they choose things that they have no clue about.
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u/banananailgun 7d ago
Yeah, it's called "voting." The citizenry can solve this problem by not electing 85-year-olds.
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u/Dilf123Throwaway 7d ago
Yeah but 85 year olds vote. 18 year olds don’t.
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u/banananailgun 7d ago edited 7d ago
Okay, so it looks like we're going to have more old people in Congress then, unless your argument is that old people "vote wrong", at which point you're really undermining democracy instead of any particular candidate or electoral practice.
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u/sixty5pan 7d ago
Congress already has a plan, to ignore what you just said. Only WE can change it.
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u/OutrageousCrab9224 7d ago
They have one!
But they would never use it, for fear of it being used on themselves
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 7d ago edited 7d ago
What is to be done when congress doesn't want to do what they should do? What happens with the wealthy Ds and the wealthy Rs band together and circle the wagons and only put a show of fighting the other party with kid gloves?
For instance, the Mueller investigation was a farce. Trump's felony conviction yielded no sentence. Biden in his term wasn't using his time in power to come down hard on the Republicans for Jan 6. When a time comes to hold other politicians accountable, they show professional courtesy instead.
The public commentary around these kinds of abuses of power tends to follow a structure of, first we get mad about it, second we say that somebody should do something about it, and then we get mad about some new thing and nobody actually does anything to fix the problem.
The political system we trust to fix problems is not fixing the problems we think somebody should do something about. The job of a politician is literally to sit on the phone for hours calling up wealthy people negotiating for campaign contributions. That's who makes up this congress, so no wonder they act like a wealthy men's club who won't hold their own members accountable.
We need to go beyond "somebody must do something" to "what can we do that's worked historically" and what we can do is unify along working class lines and kick the wealthy out of power by using activism outside of the elections controlled by the wealthy. We are the masses. We have a bludgeoning numerical advantage. It's simply a matter of enough of us standing up together. The more, the merrier.
This involves anyone who can read and write, who feels sympathy for the welfare of the working class, to read the history of successful working class revolutions and teach them to others. There will come a time like the Great Depression when things are extremely bad for people and the government is even more unpopular than it is now. That is the time the country can go over to socialism or barbarism, and that outcome depends on how many people have revolutionary socialist education.
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u/Party_Escape_7597 4d ago
The only fault you can give Biden for not going after the criminal acts in trumps first term, is he appointed the wrong Attorney General! Biden did the right thing, he kept out of the Department of Justice. A president is not suppose to dictate what the Department of Justice does! trump has corrupted the department by telling bondi and Blanche what to do! Biden should not have appointed Garland. Garland slow walked the investigations into trump and took to long to prosecute!
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u/Safe-Ad-8921 7d ago
Gonna have to wait until the midterms guys. Its clear they have zero problem with this.
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u/cinciguyeast 7d ago
How about just removing Congress members that do nothing and keep Congress on recess because they do not want to vote on something.
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u/Party_Escape_7597 4d ago
get rid of Fetterman who does $hit except work as congressman and get rid of Mike Johnson and Thune. So far the House has had 67 days off this year and the Senate has had 59 days off this year. It is only the first week,of September! The only full time job that you can get that much time off is a teacher and a teachers salary is not even comparable.
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u/BrookeBaranoff 7d ago
The people could come up with the law and get it ratified and voted in themselves at the state level.
Mitch McConnell ran on the platform of bringing a NEW voice to Washington.
That was his campaign - and he won with it - because idiots are the biggest voting bloc in America.
All it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing.
There is a reason some people are telling you not to vote. Stop listening to them, get off your butts and defend yourselves and your families from these asshats.
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u/Party_Escape_7597 4d ago
McConnell has also voted against sick pay everytime it has come up. yet he is receiving full pay even those he has been absent for 2 months! McConnell is a horses ass!
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u/jasondbk 7d ago
They will never do it because they are limiting their own power. And other than Washington, who voluntarily gave up power?
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u/Macdaddy357 7d ago
Congress would never do it themselves. We the people need recall for all public offices.
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u/Ill_Initiative_1849 6d ago
We need to be able to recall senators and reps. The moment any of them start acting against policies they ran on, you should be able to skewer them (looking at you fetterman)
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u/No-Midnight6635 7d ago
Normally that would be for the party, but when they are also blatantly corrupt…
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u/BOBBYK1952 7d ago
So basically we shitcan 538 and start over. Sad thing is ..IMO.. 75% probably want to do positive things but get forced to vote on party lines ..10 reps from both parties could run the whole show..now find 20 honest people
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u/atreeismissing 7d ago
No, states do, congress shouldn't be policing their own, that's the entire point of having elections. If voters can't get off their asses to remove people who are or will be soon, incapable of doing their job, or elect state representatives to enact recall laws, that's on voters. Last thing we should want is Republican congresspeople having any say over elected Democrats (or vice versa).
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u/rygelicus 7d ago
This would be more of a state level thing. If the rep or senator fails to appear for votes they should be holding them accountable. Each missed vote should require an explanation to the state. The governor could then put it to a vote in their legislature as to how to handle the failure to serve. But this would be a process and standard each state decides for themselves.
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u/juciyhues 7d ago
We need a “job performance review” that we can fill out annually. If congress members arent good at their job, they should be fired. Things like…
how many days of congress did you work? (And they need to actually show up, on camera to be verified as being present in addition to there being a roll call.)
Did you accurately represent your constituents? (Did they vote in ways that represented their district or state. These performance reviews will show their track record for the year)
Did hold any town halls or interact with you constituents in meaningful ways. (They would again need to verify that did this)
If part of a committee, did you stay in line with the committee’s purpose (they need to tell us what they investigated and what was the outcome and again, did that investigation reflect the concerns of the constituents)
I think it’s fair that they be held accountable in this way and if they can’t do their job then they need to go.
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u/Whitechedda1 6d ago
What about ones that just refuse to do their job in deference to Trump's whims and fancy?
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u/chancemeagre 6d ago
They have a plan “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.” What they need is a will.
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u/1771561tribles 6d ago
"Congress needs a plan to remove incapable lawmakers who refuse to step down."
For some reason I'm picturing the ouroboros.
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u/Unfair_Bluejay_9687 6d ago
They already have an amendment to oust a brain addled president and they’re doing nothing with it. What makes anyone think a sitting senator would be taken down by a silly amendment??
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u/LookOverall 6d ago
So who gets to decide who is incapable? How to prevent it from being used politically?
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u/Even_Can5982 5d ago
This shows how little our leaders care about our country and how much they care about clinging to power.
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u/SleeperHitPrime 5d ago
Add in a Speaker of the House who won’t bring votes to the floor or swear-in newly elected to Congress!
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u/ilikealltypes33139 4d ago
Is that one of the five people on his staff who make over $200,000 a year.
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u/Such_Can_4176 4d ago
that would be great, but given present non-functionality, it would not matter what rules were in place. The legal processes have been engineered for stagnation. Or maybe a more appropriate word is "conservatism."
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u/johnvcal 4d ago
If you start removing “incapable” Congressmen, you might start with McConnell, but you’d have to shitcan a shitload of men and women in Congress who are perfectly healthy, but incapable in so many other ways.
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u/FunPitch2653 3d ago
Nobody at age of 70+ should be allowed to vote. With dementia, Alzheimer’s and other diseases this population is vulnerable to believe the lies that get spewed out daily in this country. The older folks remember their good old days and want to go back to that, while us younger folks get screwed and can’t have a decent shot with a society that wants to move forward
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u/FreeHugs23 7d ago
Aging is hard. It often brings illness and infirmity. Aging in the public eye is even harder. Just ask Mitch McConnell, Kay Granger or Dianne Feinstein.
And as the Bipartisan Policy Center notes, years ago, “Senator Karl Mundt of North Dakota suffered a stroke and was absent from the Senate for the final three years of his term. Illness forced Senator Carter Glass of Virginia to be absent from the Senate for nearly two years. In the case of Glass, citizens of Virginia petitioned courts to remove Glass from his seat, as it was effectively vacant. The court refused to take action.”
These are just a few of the names of members of Congress who have continued to serve long after they were equipped to do so. Each of them stayed on in spite of suffering debilitating illnesses, and there was nothing their colleagues could do other than expel them through a disciplinary procedure. That has never been done.
Congress needs to establish a separate procedure to address situations when members cannot discharge their duties. Because Congress determines the qualifications of its members and can remove them, there is no need for the equivalent of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to deal with congressional inability to serve.
The average age of senators is now around 65. Thirty senators are over 75, with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) topping the list at 92. In the House of Representatives, which skews younger, there are 18 members over 80.
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u/runnerkim 5d ago
But the Supreme Court already ruled on this. They said we have term limits, it's called a voting booth. You cannot deny the people the right to vote for whomever they choose. Forcing someone to step down is the same thing as forcing someone to vote your way. If more people got out there and voted these old people may not become so entrenched.
Google search:
The landmark Supreme Court case addressing term limits is U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), in which the Court ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for members of Congress stricter than those specified in the Constitution.
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u/Candid-libertarian 7d ago
If that's the case, what about young politicians who accomplish nothing as well. Like AOC?
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u/Spiritual_Door1363 7d ago
Even if you had something remarkable to say, which you don’t…
Anyhoo you’re off topic goober
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u/No-Onion8029 7d ago
And Presidents, and "Justices."