Here’s a boneless bit of tid to help warm your heart on Pennsylvania’s primary day.
The number one reason leaders in the Pennsylvania legislature leave office is retirement. This fact is unremarkable enough, but becomes more interesting if one looks at the number two, three, and four reasons: number two is death; number three is resignation after legal problems; and number four–and last–is defeat at the polls.
that’s pretty psthetic.
We have ” term Limits” for the state legislature in Michigan. Translated this equates to pubescent Republican males for three terms, when they start to shave they leave the state legislature and run for Congress. All I’m saying is “pick your poison.”
Well, if DeVos wins the guvnrship, look for those term limits to be rethunk. Now, if they could just figure out a way to term limit all of the Detroit lege cohort. . . now thatwould warm the cockles of the icy Repub’s hearts.
Or maybe they could cede Detroit to , I don’t know, how about Panama?
Naw, it’s due to become part of “Greater Windsor” except we hold on to “our casinos”.
You are so right. The poison is always in the pudding. I don’t tend to favor term limits for non executive positions, though I’m certainly wishy washy on that depending on the lighting in the room.
The thing that makes me a little ill, however, is when the party and its organs work to protect entrenched interests, regardless of whether those interests work for the betterment or the detriment of the community they claim to serve. In Pennsylvania, most counties are controlled by a machine which claims the mantra of one of the two major parties regardless of actual ideology.
My city, Philadelphia, is controlled by a Democratic machine which works in its own self interest, rather than the interest of the community as a whole. It is corrupt and inbred in ways that I don’t even care to describe. Good leaders do emerge out of the stinking awful mess, but that’s by chance and ambition rather than by design. The party is not about excellence. The party protects its own.
The only real elections we ever have in Philadelphia occur in the primaries. That’s because no other party exists, in any meaningful way, within the city limits. Were things as they should be, Philadelphia could serve as the vanguard of progressive vision in action. That is so far from the truth it ought make sane men and women vomit. Reform minded Democratic primary challengers are crushed under foot. The truth does not out.
The very same happens in neighboring Delaware county, though the machine there is controlled by Republicans, though I doubt they would be recognized as such in many of the red states.
Whatever. It all works to keep the incumbent in office, regardless of whether or not the incumbent actually belongs there. That’s where the patronage is, and nothing else matters. Nothing.
Yes. My husband is from Philly, and we live in Detroit. Very very similar. The party here is corrupted by a general attitude of “it’s our turn, baby!”, or expressions of entitlement. We don’t even have wards for council members, so there is no representative who acts responsible for any part of the city. It is extremely frustrating, and it feeds the great racial divide in the state.