If there are such limits [on corporate campaign contributions], then congressional earmarks need to count as corporate campaign contributions. Not only that, but if a member of Congress gets to identify himself with a DOE grant or USDA grant in his state or district, e.g. by putting his name on press releases about it, then that needs to count as a corporate campaign contribution as well.

That will help even the playing field between incumbents and uppity upstarts. But even with that, we still need congressional term limits.

But here are some conditions before we even think about increasing taxes. These items should help offset the damage.

• Abolish public employee unions and re-instate the Hatch Act.
• Enact term limits for members of Congress. No, they do not need to be severe limits, but they do need to result in at least a 10 percent turnover. Yes, we need a Constitutional amendment to do it. So get cracking.
• Eliminate ag subsidies. Cold turkey.

Otherwise there is little point.

The foundation that runs the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership said this week its prize would go to . . . no one.

Though not widely known, the prize, created by Sudanese-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim in 2007, is one of the more thoughtful efforts at bestowing honor on a public figure. For starters, the prize can go only to a democratically elected head of state in Africa. But here’s the kicker: The winner has to have left office in the previous three years.

Mr. Ibrahim clearly is all too aware of Africa’s history of being governed by strongmen who either don’t bother holding an election, or if they do, ensure that they win—forever.

So he’s designed his prize with the world’s biggest carrot: The winner gets $5 million spread over 10 years, plus $200,000 for life annually. We’d call this one of the more creative exercises in term limits.

URL here.

I’d be in favor of instituting an award like that for the U.S. Congress. Give away a couple dozen of them each year. If it would get rid of those who have been corrupted by the power of seniority, never mind any achievements in leadership, it would be cheap at twice the price.

Unfortunately, even though members of Congress can be greedy, the worst of them are motivated more by a lust for power than by filthy lucre. It might be that by getting rid of the greedhogs we’d only create more slots for the powerhogs.

We called Mr. Dodd’s committee office last week to ask why the bill isn’t posted, and a spokesman explained that it is still being “worked on.” Will it be ready by October? “Don’t count on it,” the staffer said. [WSJ editorial, "Health-Care Secrets: Chris Dodd keeps his Senate bill under wraps." 29 August 2009]

Similarly, you can know from the absence of any “Top Stories” about it that term limits did very well in referrendums in the last election. The ruling class doesn’t like term limits, which means Google isn’t going to do anything to call attention to the fact that the people like them. But Paul Jacobs gives us the information that the MSM doesn’t publish.

I’ll bet USA Today is hoping people won’t notice the doubletalk.

Doing away with legislative gerrymandering is a good idea, but there’s no reason why it can’t coexist with term limits. We can do both. In fact, we’re more likely to have both if we have term limits.

H/T to Don Bon Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek for leading me to the editorial, by way of Howard Rich who points out other flaws in it.

These Fair Tax people ought to think about about how this country’s first consumption tax at the federal level brought about a huge expansion of governmental power in order to enforce it, and almost brought about civil war. (I’m referring to the Whiskey Rebellion.) Introducing an excise tax on the scale that these Fair Tax people are proposing will result in huge motivations for people to use the black market to get the things they need, which will result in a huge new regulatory and enforcement mechanism.

This will be in addition to the IRS, which, contrary to what they claim, will not go away. The Fair Tax people will tell you that their tax is not regressive, because there will be rebates for those of low income. But in order to determine who has a low income, you need an organization and mechanism to do what the IRS does now.

And even with rebates, the tax will still be regressive among those who don’t qualify for the rebates, so there will be pressure to re-institute an income tax for the very, very rich. That will be extra easy to do, because a handy enforcement mechanism will already be in place, ready to resume all the rest of its old work, too.

The Fair Tax is a recipe for growing the government. But Neil Boortz opposes one reform that could actually control the size of government and perhaps cut it down to a reasonable size: term limits.

The rare exceptions seem to come about during extended periods out of power. George McGovern’s journey from leftwingism to liberalism is an example.

So what happens to one of these politician once he’s back in office? In today’s WSJ, Mary Anastasia O’Grady recounts her interview with Peru’s President Alan Garcia. After 16 years out of power, he is returning to the presidency as a free-market libertarian. Or at least he is talking like one. O’Grady and the people of Peru are waiting to see if his deeds will match his new words, but she gives evidence that “he firmly graps the principles behind the arguments he now professes to believe.”

That he can articulate his principles is a good sign. He talks in favor of “individualization of decisions” and the decentralizing of economic activity. Peru has a large underground economy. Instead of the usual proposals to crack down, Garcia wants to lower the cost of being in the formal economy. That probably means less of the usual type of government regulation designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. He says, “Price controls are my enemy.”

It is indeed a bright spot in a world that has been tending more authoritarian the last several years. But there will be enormous temptations to backslide. Perhaps we can be sure his new politics are for real when we hear that the likes of Clinton and Obama are trying to keep Peru down like they’re now doing to Colombia.

But you never get that kind of rhetoric out of Hugo Chavez or Ted Kennedy, so there has to be something to it. Words do mean something.

And perhaps even Ted Kennedy might have become more liberal if term limits had kept him out of public office for a while.