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Wednesday, August 19, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Excessive tenure of
elected officials must end
By Terry Coultas
Guest Columnist
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and
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To the Editor:
The tirade against Jim Cornelius (Letters
to the Editor, The Nugget, August 5, page
2) represents the attitude of too many dem-
onstrators we have seen, i.e. <my way or the
highway.= It should make thoughtful people
take notice.
The urge to beat up Donald Trump over-
flows into condemnation of all who disagree
with their myopic viewpoint. Civility is passé,
it seems. The style now is sarcasm and spin.
Nothing new about that, but it should be
recognized as vitriol, not analysis.
Donald Harner
s
s
s
To the Editor:
I am the mother of a Black child that was
repeatedly bullied for months in the Sisters
school district. After getting nowhere with
the many phone calls, emails and face-to-
face meetings with the adults in the school
district that were supposed to be protecting
her from the other child, I chose to contact
the Oregon Department of Education. They
took the situation very seriously and came to
Sisters to interview everyone involved. When
their report came out, it said that the Sisters
school district was found to have discrimi-
nated against my child on the basis of race
and gender and allowing her to be discrimi-
nated against on the basis of race and gender
by the other child.
We had the choice of taking them to court,
where the judge would use the report and find
them guilty, or go through a conciliation pro-
cess where we would have a chance to make
changes in the school districts policies and
procedures so that no other child would have
to endure what my child did. We chose to
go through the conciliation process with the
school superintendent as well as an employee
from the Oregon Department of Education.
We are not trying to make George Floyd
a role model for our children based on any-
thing he may or may not have done during
See LETTERS on page 14
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I have been an advocate
of term limits for as long as
I can remember.
The thought sickens me
that members of Congress
are allowed to serve so
long 4 like the late Senator
Strom Thurman (R) for
48 years, Congresswoman
Nancy Pelosi, (D) 34
years, Senator Mitch
McConnell, (R) 36 years,
Lindsey Graham (R) 30
years, and we can9t forget
Congresswoman Maxine
Waters (D), 30 years. The
list goes on and on.
There is no need here or
little point in taking time
to delineate why we need
term limits; that is obvious
or should be obvious. Forty-
eight years at any job is too
long.
The lack of term lim-
its is the root cause of our
problem with our political
discourse, where the conse-
quences have led us to our
current divisiveness. The
longer a politician stays in
office the more he or she
believes in the total party
line, leaving no room for
doubt. Those politicians
firmly believe they are 100
percent right, thus leaving
the other side as 10 percent
wrong.
Common sense tells me
nothing, nothing can be 100
percent right, not even the
difference between black
and white; there is always
a shade of grey in every
argument.
The resultant effect
(unintentionally or maybe
intentionally), separates the
politician from the issues,
thereby making issues a sep-
arate matter. The politicians
are one entity and the issues
are another, consequently
making issues a secondary
matter to the politician9s all-
important reelection.
<The American People=
that politicians so care about
don9t really get a chance to
vote on issues; we get to
vote for a politician that
claims he/she will get it
done. The longer the politi-
cian9s tenure the more likely
they are to be under the
influence of the lobbyists
who control Washington.
The two leading parties9
platforms mandate it9s all or
nothing. This leaves com-
promise and common sense
totally out of the equation
when debating these issues.
Again, the root cause of
our demise is excessive ten-
ure of politicians, fueled by
partisanship.
The adding of term lim-
its requires a Constitutional
amendment. The approach
that most have taken, in
an attempt to amend the
Constitution has always
required Congressional
cooperation. That9s tanta-
mount to asking a fox to
willingly give up his seat
guarding the chicken house.
There are literally hun-
dreds of groups and orga-
nizations that propose solu-
tions to this older-than-dirt
problem; most of these are
out of control bureaucra-
cies themselves. Each one
of these depends on outside
public donations to first,
exist, and secondly to fund
their cause. The executive
boards of these varying
organizations all have paid
administrators.
These elaborate groups
are created with the sole
purpose of filling the pock-
ets of these administrators
with lucrative salaries from
money collected from you
the naive public. Hence,
these political leaches are no
more or no less than lobby-
ists themselves.
I have never been as pes-
simistic as I am today about
the future of our country.
Regardless of who wins in
November or which party
takes Congress, we are
facing the worst political
upheaval America has ever
seen.
You are a partisan if you
truly believe that Mitch
McConnell and Lindsey
Graham are not equally as
dangerous as Nancy Pelosi
and Chuck Schumer. You
are a typical American voter
when your choice is the
lesser of two evils.
These people should
have served no more than
20 years maximum, com-
bined they9ve been there
130 years.
To get this done we need
the unity of the people, not
Congress, within both par-
ties working on one issue
together 4 that issue:
excessive tenure of elected
officials must end.
We are <The People=
within a republic who
should resolve this issue.
We need a solution to this
nightmare. How can we get
this done?
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.