A Republican Congresswoman who has been āmissingā for the past six months has finally been found.
Rep. Kay Granger has served as the representative for Texasās 12th Congressional District since 1997.
However, she suddenly disappeared from the public eye around July this year, when she cast her final vote against an amendment to reduce the salary of Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs to $1.
A curious reporter at the local Dallas Express newspaper did some digging on Grangerās whereabouts and has finally been able to give her constituents some answers.
[ā¦]We then received a tip from a Granger constituent who shared that the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.
The Dallas Express team visited the facility to confirm whether Granger was residing there and to inquire about how she planned to vote on the spending bill. Upon arrival, two employees confirmed that Granger is indeed living at the facility.
Iāve encountered 90 year olds that can walk, maybe even run circles around 50-60 year olds, mentally and physically.
That said, this is something we keep seeing. Feinstein was painful to see, and a clear example of what should never be allowed to happen. We need an age cap.
A policy like that is also ethically sound in that, and Iāve heard this floated before in multiple places, in that the politician will then have to sit back as an outsider and look at the impact of what they did.
As is, our politicians are free from that in being able to die in office or retire to dementia care instead of FEELING the impact of what theyāve done, or pointedly not done, while in office.
Age cap: 70. Done. You can run if youāre going to turn 70 in office, letās be generous, but once youāre over 70 you can no longer run for an office.
Enforced retirement of judges for the same reason. Hit 70, you finish or transfer the cases youāre working on and when thatās done youāre done. Who knows how much inertia is fueling a waxing/waning cusp of Dementia judge when thereās no real focus on this across the many courtrooms of the country.
But Iāll probably be accused of ageism here. Itās a nice way to solve ethics problems, infirmity problems, and add in a soft cap term limitation.
Tie it to the federal retirement age, which is currently 67.
I got accused of ageism before for saying the same that there should be mandatory retirement for public officials. However, the most convincing argument I heard for letting elders to still run for public office is that their accumulated experience, knowledge and wisdom could still be of great dispense for the public. Noam Chomsky is still doing well despite in his 90ās, for example.
But Chomsky did not get it right with his genocide denialism on Cambodia and Yugoslavia. He may have great insights, but his ego seems to have been entrenched on downplaying atrocities of other anti-Western countries simply because they are anti-America. And then there is also the time when Chomsky basically brushed aside his association with Jeffrey Epstein, by telling the interviewer to mind his business. Itās not a proof in and of itself, but itās very suspicious.
You can share your wisdom and be of great value to the public without being in public office.
At some point, though, youāve gone from useful adult into honored elder, and while Iām not suggesting we put them all on ice floes, they shouldnāt be running the country, especially since more than a few of them clearly donāt even know which country theyāre in, let alone how to run it.
If you canāt walk, are having strokes, have developed dementia, and generally just sit around staring at the wall like my cat, perhaps itās time to gracefully retire and go spend the rest of your life doing conferences and speaking engagements and whatever the hell else you want, not trying to legislate.
Thereās also a common problem of no career path for politicians after holding some of the higher offices. Itās either be reelected or elected to a higher position. I think itās more or less present in most countries.
Itās especially obvious with US presidents, none of them held any other office after being president. Even previous younger ones.
I kinda have two responses here, so uh, hereās both of them:
Well, by the time this is an issue, odds are youāve been a career politician anyway and donāt need another job. This is just old people who refuse to retire because they like the power and trappings more than they care about doing their job.
By the time they MUST retire, these ghouls have stolen sufficient money that it doesnāt matter, and sticking around is just them refusing to give up the power and feed their greed even more.
Both seem equally reasonable and applicable to the problem.
Donāt most politicians have degrees even if unrelated to politics? They could fall back to the career relating to their degrees or at least close to it. There are some, however, who donāt have college degrees or trade before becoming a politician. Bernie Sanders havenāt had a proper career and did many jobs before becoming a politician.
Although if the politician retires at ripe old age between 60-70, they could live off the pension anyway.
70 is the age of the young blood
Even better: politics should not be a career, serve one term and thatās it.