I’m starting to think that there should be a clause within law that any holder of public office should be penalized in a much more severe manner for any breach of the law.
I’m talking “death penalty as a minimum sentence for corruption” levels of “not fucking around.”
Really make it clear that you do not misbehave if you are an elected official.
The issue is, we already see how the IRS was abused by the POTUS to hurt enemies of the establishment, there’s a real risk of it just becoming an excuse to purge the government of opposition.
Still doesn’t stop me from mulling it over.
Or, a limit on public office. Of any kind and have it be cumulative. You were mayor of a small town for 6 years but now you want to run for president? Well, if you get it, you only have enough time on your ticket for one term.
At the end of that 10 years, you’re barred from any public office.
Alternatively, to run for president or congress, you must never have held a previous office. And the term limit is 4 years.
Term limits on all Federal Elected Officials should have been a thing -yesterday-.
Yeah, how about no retirement benefits for public officials? Or a reverse pension plan for military officers? Retire at twenty years gets half your pay for life, taxable, hit forty years and fuck you you’re dick deep in the military-industrial complex; if you don’t have a retirement plan by then take a one bullet retirement. Or just no retirement for officers. Fuck them.
Preferably after I make a batshit run for office to bullshit around for two years then retire to live out that sweet federal pension.
I fail to understand why we give public officials pensions anyway. It’s the civic duty of a public official to perform their job for the state, not be a burden unto it.
Not going to comment on .mil since it’s out of my area of expertise; though I have heard VERY sound arguments for semi-compulsory service, both from a “no longer warmongering” side and from a “improve national unity” side.
I’ll straight up tell you that compulsory service is straight bullshit. Military wise, you don’t want a bunch of people who don’t want to be there, or are only doing time as part of the combat or support chain.
From a Starship Troopers– yes really, actually read the book and pay attention- style of “must serve the government/state… uh we mean society”- type of “federal service”, you end up with a bloated bureaucracy filled with makework positions that never get cleaned up/purged like the parasitic bullshit they are. Combine this with a need for some remuneration, and you just make government bloating worse.
My main reason for singling out officers is the fact that it’s a middle class welfare system combined with a revolving door to the military-industrial complex. You want a retirement? You’re forty-two, you’ve been paid competitively with the private sector, with college covered, why the fuck haven’t you been saving? If you’re so stupid and irresponsible that you haven’t planned for leaving the military, you shouldn’t be in control of 16-1000 young men and women’s lives.
That is definitely a negative; you’d see a drop in quality over a dedicated voluntary force; something I definitely would be worried about. But I’d argue we DID win WWII with a draft; and giving the nation a common experience to prevent division would likely have a knock-on positive effect.
There’d be a transitional period where we’d see none of the benefits and all of the worst of the negatives, though; that’s a sure danger.
I’m still unsure how I feel about it for that and a variety of other reasons.
Given a mass mobilization of the country for a “righteous crusade against evil”, mass nationalization of industry and labor, rationing, internment camps for ethnic undesirables, etc etc etc, we did in fact win WW2. I’m not saying that the end state wasn’t good, but, consider the second and third order consequences of that statement. Create an evil to have a righteous crusade against, have the righteous crusade, marginalize, detain, punish and lynch anyone who disagrees.
Wartime economy and mindset are fantastic for nationalism and bringing a country together, but it will trample roughshod over so much. Kas, please don’t become that guy.
Oh yeah, don’t even get me started on the clusterfuck of the way that the UCMJ works. If the Fat Leonard scandal investigation doesn’t end with flag officers crucified in the central courtyard of the Pentagon, I won’t be satisfied.
Oh trust me, I’m not in the camp that’s pro-war. At all. There are VERY few arguments in mind mind that justify any war of offense.
I know where the nationalist zeal that warmongering can build ends up going; and the last thing I’d like to do is fuel the MIC.
I’m just so tired of my fellow countrymen being so painfully and needlessly divided in every possible which way, and I’ll be frank, it’s hard to keep those beefs when you are living and working and relying on eachother.
It’s exhausting to see people engage in literal open conflict in the streets over shit like this, and I honestly can’t think of a solution to turn us away from an inevitable civil war that doesn’t require things that go entirely against my morals.
I mean, I get the reasoning, but the method is straight garbage, especially if you actually think it through.
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