Term Limits for the Federal Government

Your application of the infinite probability theorem would be correct if people were random or inherently neutral when this is not the case. When applied to human nature the possibility of corruption will far outweigh the possibility of coming out of corruption or avoiding it all together. PerksYou claim that incumbents running for office do not have any advantages over freshmen members running. This is false.Advantages include: Perks - sitting members of Congress get travel allowances and are able to travel back and forth between Washington DC and their district giving them the advantage of being able to operate in two areas at once where as a freshman will either have to pay for their travel expenses out of pocket or stick to their district alone.Time - meeting with voters, holding speeches, appearing on TV etc. are part of a politicians job description, they are working while they are campaigning making it second nature to them. It is much harder for a freshman who has to juggle a job and expenses with campaigning to compete with a politician whose job it is to campaign essentially. Visibility - due to heir job incumbents regularly appear on TV, at debates and fundraisers etc. giving them an advantage of name recognition in many homes. Organization - due to their perks and their time in office many incumbents have extensive staffs and rosters of people in their employment that they can effectively use during a campaign that most people do not have access to. Politicians are provided with staffs while in office which they use to campaign while freshman entries have to rely on small staffs or volunteers. Money - due to their time in office politicians have time to gather favors and contributions from collegues in Congress. U.S. House U.S. Senate Incumbents $772,016 $5,578,470 Challengers $207,107 $2,442,660 This table shows how incumbents manage to raise much more money than challengers in 1998. (The table is a bit off, my apologies.) [1] [2] [3]I cite three sources because these advantages are widely known and accepted. There is an advantage that makes politics unfair for challengers who wish to challenge incumbents. AccountabilityOnce again my opponent misses the point of my accountability argument as I have explained it multiple times already. You keep equating time in office as "time in a bank vault" or "a week on a tropical paradise" and I have countered time and time again with an adequet response: office is a service, a duty NOT a vacation. You cannot compare someones behavior between work and play. Serving in office is not time in a bank vault or a week in paradise, its a job and the people signing up will recognize this and act accordingly. In fact your metaphors support my argument that people recognize the perks of office and equate them with things like vacation and unlimited money. You have this idea that office is like a wild money and power grab when IT IS NOT. Your misconceptions of office is what leads you to make such arguments. Next you go on to insult the American electorate.Who are you to say that the people don't know what they want? You are using terms like "I bet" and assumptions like "they don't know". I find this argument presumptuous. Also it works to my advantage. If people really don't know what they want they don't know what they want how can they vote for their incumbents? This argument benefits term limits because if people truly don't know what they want then we should rotate their choices so they can come to a better understanding of what they are really looking for. If they aren't capable of choosing whether or not they want term limits how can they be capable of choosing elected officials? The American electorate will just choose what they're most familiar with since "they don't know what they want" adding to the incumbency advantage. Term limits would help eliminate this. In conclusion:Government should be returned to a civic duty by limiting time in office.Eliminate career politicians.Accountability would INCREASE because people would treat it as a serious civic job and not a vacation.The American electorate wants term limits. This would help increase the efficiency and the connection to the people.Thank you. [1] http://www.cusdi.org...[2] http://www.opensecrets.org...[3] http://cstl-cla.semo.edu...