Posted by
Flatlanders on Thursday, November 06, 2008 3:27:51 PM
Forget the "October Surprise", it's been replaced by the
October Handout (starting late September with the Bank Bailout). Pretty soon there was a constant parade -- Bail me out for this, bail me out for that to the tune of almost 1 TRILLION dollars. In the future, look for requests for October Handouts to get more and more outlandish.
There are a couple obvious solutions to this
- Require the legislature to finish it's business for the year before they can start campaigning. The problem here is one is just likely to move the October Handout to earlier in the year when legislature is in session.
- "You can't run for office while you hold office".
- This would include setting up any sort of funding or organization for such a run while in office.
- Force legislators and executives to do their job -- run the country, not run for re-election.
- Unlike term limits, this would allow multiple terms -- they just couldn't be consecutive.
Is such a reform likely to happen? Probably not. However, the cost of continuing to the October Handouts the way they were done this year is going to be in the trillions over the next couple election cycles. Ideally, someday the taxpayers will wake up and figure this isn't the proper way to run a fiscally responsible country. It likely to end up costing every single taxpayer thousands and thousands of dollars for every election cycle with the only visible result being a lot of the same old same old face in office.