O.J. Schlueter – 10/4/09

This page was last updated on October 4, 2009.

Lots of reasons for term limits; O.J. Schlueter; Beaver County Times; October 4, 2009.

Though Mr. Schlueter has written at least 16 letters since 2006, this is only the second letter I critiqued. The first was “Vote for ‘none of the above’.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Our president is off to Denmark to sell his hometown to the Olympic committee while our fighting men and women wait for him to think about the strategy to be used in combat.

“Our federal politicians vote on bills that they have not read or even written by them, exclude themselves from the bills, have no means of funding them and create a tax without representation on future generations.

“Our state politicians cannot meet a yearly budget deadline, and when an agreement is announced, it only includes the governor and the high seniority legislators, which is another form of taxation without representation.

“Our local politicians send us a newsletter each quarter that says that we should use Friendship Ridge as our nursing home.

“Any politician who is in office for more that two terms should not be returned to office, and our president needs to be recalled.”

[RWC] I used to believe as Mr. Schlueter, but I came to believe imposing term limits was like throwing out the baby with the bath water. Sure, term limits would limit the amount of time a bad/corrupt politician could serve, but they would do the same for good/honest representatives. We already have the means to get rid of bad politicians. It’s called voting for the good guys/gals. When we continue to elect bad representatives, we have only ourselves to blame. That said, I don’t have a problem with term limits for chief executives, like presidents, governors, and mayors of “large” cities.

As for recalling President Obama, I disagree. Elections have consequences. Mr. Obama hasn’t done anything illegal as far as I can tell. I disagree with just about everything Mr. Obama does, but that in itself isn’t a reason to remove him.