In recent years the attitude against incumbents has dramatically increased. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 63% of Americans believe most members of Congress do not deserve to be re-elected. This percentage went from 52 in 2007 to 65 in 2010.

This feeling only escalates during times of budget crises, which is exactly what we are in now. Although people elected Republicans to stand strong against spending and tax increases, their support stops when conflict begins. Common belief is both parties are just sticking to party platforms in order to prove a political point. This is not the case. They were sent there to get America back on the right track and that is exactly what they are trying to do. We all knew this wouldn’t be easy and it wouldn’t be fast.

There cannot be a compromise on the budget. Half of a bad thing is still a bad thing. This is an ideological battle. Do we want politicians who just “get along”, or do we want leaders that will represent the views of every day Americans? It is our job as voters to vote out the bad politicians, but we also need to use discernment and keep in politicians who will stand by their values.

You cannot just vote out every incumbent, every time.

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Glenn Reynolds in today’s Washington Examiner:

With the new Congress being sworn in this week, everyone is full of advice. Well, I’m no exception. The first advice comes from Han Solo in the debut “Star Wars” film: “Don’t get cocky.” Republicans won big in the last election, but, if they think that constitutes an excuse to slip back into their old ways, circa 2004 to 2006, then they are doomed — not just as individual politicians, but quite possibly as a party. The public’s patience is quite limited, and is likely to stay so for the foreseeable future.

Second, remember that fortune favors the bold. It’s true that ordinarily in politics, most progress occurs at the margins. But it’s also true that these are not ordinary times. Big money-saving and government-shrinking proposals in the House, even if they’re shot down by the Democrat-controlled Senate, will nonetheless establish a tone.

They’re trying to hide it, but the Inside-the-Beltway permanent-government political class is currently scared. Keep them that way, while showing the public at large that you’re serious.

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To paraphrase an old saying, you can learn a lot about a man by seeing how he acts when no one is paying attention. A corollary to this works for Congressmen. In any given year there are, at most, three or four “big” issues that dominate Congressional debate and culminate in dramatic floor votes that will define future reelection campaigns. For example, the current Congress can be distilled to essentially four votes; stimulus, cap and trade, Obamacare and the bank bailout. The next Congress will likely be defined by tax policy, federal spending and repeal of parts of Obamacare and the banking bill.

How a Congressman votes on these “big” issues will tell you a lot about his basic philosophy of government. But, it is an imperfect snapshot. The overwhelming majority of lawmakers will line up with their parties on the “big” votes. These few votes don’t tell you a lot about the individual lawmaker’s comprehensive philosophy nor their specific views on the powers and limitations of their office. For that, you have to look at their work on the thousands of bills that wind their way through the legislative process every year and, more importantly, their own specific legislative proposals.  In other words, we have to look at the work they do when no one else is looking.

It is on this that the bids of both Rep. Joe Barton and Rep. Fred Upton to chair the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee fail. Each has promoted specific and personal legislative proposals which are impossible to square with any belief in restrained, limited government. Worse, their initiatives betray the absence of what is perhaps the most important quality in a lawmaker, humility. Not personal humility, but rather an appreciation that there are limits to what Congress or the federal government can or should do. Both Barton and Upton seem convinced that absolutely every problem, perceived problem or general annoyance can, and should, be addressed by Congress.

This should disqualify them from the Chairman’s gavel. Should either of them be entrusted by their colleagues with the gavel, then the meaning of the midterms will be greatly diminished. The great tea party wave will have finally crashed on the rocks of the go-along-get-along DC GOP establishment.

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When it comes to defining the meaning of the Republican victory last Tuesday, Marco Rubio got it exactly right: “This is our second chance.” Just four years ago, Republicans were turned out of the majority because they had forgotten the spirit of 1994 that brought them there — succumbing to corruption scandals and accepting runaway spending and bailouts of the financial and automotive sectors. John Boehner has smartly echoed this humble tone both in his Election Night speech and post-election interviews.

The first key test of whether Republicans have learned their lesson will come in the decision on whether to weaken a crucial 1994 reform limiting the terms of Republican committee heads by waiving term limits for Rep. Joe Barton so that he can run for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The term limits rule, by the incoming Republican majority in 1994 and enshrined in the Contract with America, was designed to break down the imperial fiefdoms at all important committees built up during 40 years of Democratic rule. When Democrats retook the House, they continued to allow their committee chairmen unlimited rein. The result: unchecked power on committee chairs like Charlie Rangel.

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One thing our founding fathers could not foresee… was a nation governed by professional politicians who have a vested interest in getting reelected.  They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then looking forward to getting back to the farm.” — Ronald Reagan

The energy of 1994 led to the Contract with America, and the huge Republican victory of that year.  It was a victory for Republicans, but was it a victory for America?

The Contract with America had an inherent flaw.  It was a political party bargaining with Americans:  give us power and this is what we will do for you.  The Freshmen 50 is different:  it is Americans telling the federal government what it will do.

We are citizen-candidates united on a platform of six simple and realistic reforms for our government:

• Apply the Law Equally: All laws that apply to all citizens also apply to Congress
• Term Limits: Limit terms in Congress to no more than 12 years in the House and Senate, respectively
• Enforce Congressional Ethics: Yearly tax and expense audits, former Congressmen and their staff cannot be lobbyists, allow the ethics committee to do their job
• Read the Bill: Prior to final vote, the entire bill must be read out loud on the floor of the House; if a representative is not present for the entire reading, he cannot vote
• Tax Reform: Repeal our current tax code in favor of one that taxes only once, at one rate, and require a 2/3-majority vote for any new tax
• Balance the Budget: Amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget

We are unique.

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I don’t like life long politicians any more than the next guy, but the suggested remedy to the problem, term limits, are a bad idea.

First of all, term limits strike me as a smack in the face to the idea that we should be allowed to choose whomever we want to represent us, for as long as we want them to represent us. Much like the disgustingly offensive campaign finance “reform” where politicians decided to punish the average voter because elected officials are too greedy and corrupt to keep their hands out of the cookie jar, term limits seem equally offensive in a similar way.

Why should the voters of one state have to say goodbye to a good legislator simply because the voters of another state repeatedly elect a creep?

Voters in Colorado might not like the fact that voters in Massachusetts continually reelected a hypocritical, drunk, manslaughtering, liar to term after term after term, but that is their right. Massachusetts voters clearly have no shame, but under the constitution, they have the right to be greedy scum buckets interested only in the pork their clout can achieve. (Our apologies to anyone in Mass who had the dignity and ethics to vote against Kennedy before death finally drove him from office)

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[Ed: This excerpt is the second in a series of articles originally reported at City Hall. Go here for Part I in the series. Lead reporter on City Hall investigation was Edward-Isasc Dovere.]

The Working Families Organization, a tax-exempt 501(c)4, was legally created with a certificate of incorporation filed with the New York Department of State on July 12, 2006. Despite the similarities in the names, this paperwork established the Working Families Organization as a legally separate entity.

That certificate lists four initial directors, starting with now-White House political director Patrick Gaspard, who was then a board member of the Working Families Party. The other three were ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis, Robert Master of the Communications Workers of America and Sam Williams of the United Auto Workers. These three also were and remain the three co-chairs of the Working Families Party.

Kevin Finnegan, who is now the political director for the 1199 Service Employees International Union, but who was then an attorney at Levy Ratner PC, signed the document as the incorporator. Finnegan is also the notary on the official Party rules filed with the Board of Elections and the lawyer who set up Data and Field Services.

The incorporation forms and other documents, like the Organization’s paperwork filed with the IRS, must be made public as a condition of its tax-exempt status. However, the process takes years, meaning that the most recent forms that are completed and available are from 2007.

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From the Washington Times:

Charles Rangel (D-NY) was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970.

Sen. Jim DeMint says Washington politicians are like fruit on the vine: the longer they hang around, the more rotten they get.

The South Carolina Republican – hearkening back to the days of the party’s “Contract with America” – on Tuesday offered a fix to the corrupting influence of “permanent politicians,” introducing an amendment to the Constitution that would limit Senate members to three six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms.

“As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power,” said Mr. DeMint, who is running for a second term next year. (more…)

If you tried to buy a homeowners’ insurance policy for much more than the actual value of your home, no one would sell it to you.  The reason is that having such a policy would enable one to prosper financially were the home somehow to be destroyed.  This creates for you, what is called a “moral hazard“.   You have a significant financial incentive to do something wrong.  It is anathema for the insurance industry designed to protect against risk to enable such a risk.

So what if you were a government bureaucrat in possession of the power to help a business to prosper financially by doing something wrong?  Imagine if you had the power to wave your pen and deliver one million new clients to a purveyor of a particular product.  Some might say you have a moral hazard.   Just as insurance companies have a duty not to create that risk, so do those in charge of taxpayer funds.

In New York, some public employees concerned about side effects, and their civil liberties, are protesting because Dr. Richard Daines, New York State health commissioner has mandated that they receive the h1n1 vaccines or be fired.   Did the Governor order this?  No, an unelected bureaucrat essentially placed the order with the vaccine manufacturers.

In Missouri, prior to 2002, all mandated vaccines were voted into law by Legislators.  In that year, the appointed Director of the Department of Health added to the list of mandated vaccines, a compound against Chicken Pox.  With one stroke of the pen, a single bureaucrat created a demand for fresh orders for hundreds of thousands of doses of the vaccine, annually.  One can speculate about the profit in those orders.

In Texas, Governor Perry, usually a solid conservative got loopy over the Gardasil fervor and mandated that girls in his State receive the controversial vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease.   Girls as young as nine years old now have the State forcing upon them conversations about promiscuity and sexually transmitted disease.

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