Senator Dianne Feinstein appeared confused during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday. When asked to vote on a proposal, Feinstein began giving a lengthy speech instead of simply saying “aye” or “nay” as requested. The committee chair, Senator Patty Murray, had to repeatedly tell Feinstein “just say aye” and remind her that it was time for a vote, not speeches. After some delay, Feinstein finally cast her vote. A spokesperson said Feinstein was preoccupied and did not realize a vote had been called. The incident raises further concerns about Feinstein’s ability to serve at age 90, as she has made other recent mistakes and often relies on aides.
If 67 is the age of retirement in this country, then every single politician should be leading by example and retiring by then. I’m so sick of these geriatrics effectively ordering an entire lobster before they leave the restaurant and stick the younger folks with the bill.
I think that would just result in an even bigger push by right-wing politicians to move the retirement age even higher.
Better would be to tie it to the average life expectancy, updated with each census.
Why should we be punished if life expectancy goes up? Nobody should have to work until they’re too old to fully enjoy life.
That’s literally the opposite of what I said
That’s how I interpreted it too. Just because we’re living longer doesn’t mean our capacity for work is stretching further. My knees are already going out and I’m not near retirement age. I don’t want to be stuck working longer, hating every moment of it, knowing that all this means is now I won’t actually get to enjoy retirement
To play devil’s advocate, when Social Security was established (bringing with it the concept of a “retirement age”), the age of eligibility was deliberately set such that less than half of Americans would live long enough to draw on it. The clear expectation was that you would work until you couldn’t anymore.
That said, in an era when changes in life expectancy are starting to take on a K-shaped distribution and labor force participation has been on a long steady decline, tying governmental income support to age and employment duration is becoming distributionally regressive. I’d much rather have some sort of UBI system that everyone can benefit from.
No the retired need representation as well. You can’t right a wrong with another wrong. There needs to be a system in place for health evaluation and once you fail that without having a viable and reasonable path to improvement then you’re ineligible to be reelected. This needs multiple, separate, groups of people involved to reduce the risk of being used as a tool to oust undesirables. I can’t design such a system but I trust that people more well versed in how government works in the nitty gritty could design a suitable, acceptable system.
They need representation, they don’t need to be the whole representation. In fact, I’d say that 55+ people represent them quite well, since they are aiming to retire in the next decade anyways.
I mean, they can vote, and they are a big sector of the voting base, so even if the politicians are younger, there will be enough of them wanting to please the 67+ sector.
Let’s add some babies and teenagers while we’re at it. I don’t see them represented.
Babies and teenagers are represented by their parents…at least in theory.
Old people can just be considered represented by their adult children then.
You can easily make this argument towards teenagers as well, but they’re obviously illegible. Yet their rights and futures are being stripped away by the elderly.
There should absolutely be a hard cap and Senators should also be forced to use the services they provide (i.e. stop making millions stock trading) post retirement so it’s guaranteed to be beneficial.
I said it for Mitch McConnell and I’ll say it for Feinstein too. People of advanced age whose mental faculties are becoming unreliable should not be in positions of great power. Step down, ma’am.
What happens when that person is in mid- to late-stage dementia and can no longer even make decisions for herself? How can she step down from office given she very obviously struggles to recognize she’s in office? How can she be removed from office involuntarily? Ordinary people in her situation would have a guardian by now
The way it’s supposed to work is voters are supposed to notice and not reelect that person. But not enough voters participate in primaries and then when general elections roll around, we’re stuck electing the moderate dinosaur or the fascist. People need to stop asking Congress, a body conposed of grandparents, to outlaw grandparents (and therefore themselves) from running and start just not hiring them anymore. That way when you have an old person who still has their wits and does a good job, you can keep them around instead of it being all or nothing.
She has a caretaker who is acting as a guardian, but that care taker is Nancy Pelosi’s niece, and Pelosi want’s Feinstein to finish her term, so the seat can go to Adam Shiff, and not be filled by Governor Newsom, who has said he would appoint a Black woman to the seat, likely a progressive. Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee.
As a counterpoint, Feinstein is on the Judiciary committee, and if she were to retire mid-term, Democrats would lose that seat until the next election. So Republicans could then halt any judicial appointments.
As a counter counterpoint, Feinstein hasn’t been showing up to that committee, so it’s already happening.
Great info, thank you. Regarding your first point, I don’t think Schiff has a chance at that seat, but I guess we’ll see
People shouldn’t be continuing to vote her into office.
She’s my senator. I vote against her in the past 3 primaries… but not enough people do. I keep voting for her, not because I want her, but because the republican alternative is still somehow worse.
Also I email her office a few times a year asking her to resign and let someone take her place.
Sounds like a job for Ranked Choice Voting
I’d vote for that.
Feinstein is in a bad way. Her daughter appears to be making a play for control of her trust money her husband left her by making spurious claims that the current trustees are not doing their fiduciary duty.
Archive version: https://archive.ph/h0DXg
The trustees attorneys response seems pretty clear cut, ESPECIALLY for a lawyer.
“My clients are perplexed by today’s filing. Richard Blum’s trust has never denied any disbursement to Senator Feinstein, let alone for medical expenses,” said Klein and Scholvinck’s attorney Steven P. Braccini in an email. Braccini noted that he had not been shown any evidence that Katherine Feinstein had power of attorney for her mother.
“Katherine [has not] made it clear, either in this filing or directly to my clients, why a sitting United States senator would require someone to have power of attorney over her. While my clients are deeply concerned, we all remain hopeful that this is simply a misunderstanding that can be quickly resolved, rather than a stepdaughter engaging in some kind of misguided attempt to gain control over trust assets to which she is not entitled.”
This is why we vote. People keep voting them in and this is what happens.
The voters themselves are decrepit. Young people say voting won’t change things and bring their own prophecy true.
I know that it’s counter to statistics, but all of the most politically active people I have ever known have been the young people. Sure would be nice if my group of friends were more representative of the nation.
Sure. Young people make great activists. If only activism were counted. Old people quietly vote, consistently, many of them just dropping off an envelope at church or whatever. No big noise. No social media posts. And those votes are what gets counted.
Sometimes I think this is driven by basic stuff like the fact that young people move more often. I moved every year from age 18 to 25. That means my registration was usually behind, I didn’t always get my ballot in the mail, and I didn’t know where my polling place was necessarily. I’m old now and have been in the same residence for 10 years. My polling place is 2 doors down. I never miss a ballot. It’s really just that simple.
The GOP is dying for the left to pick up the mantle of putting age limits on serving in congress and the courts. It will help galvanize their base of older folks to vote. Don’t fall for it.
The GOP is dying for the left to:
- Protect women’s health
- Do something about health care in general
- Do something about gun violence
- Protect the working class
- Address any of the many systemic issues
It will galvanize their base. Don’t fall for it.
