"Dà ©jà " vu", California! After the 2003 recall and public lynching of former governor Gray Davis for allegedly "mismanaging" California's energy crisis, the citizens inherited a cadre of leaders seemingly without a plan, much less a clue what to do, to remedy the state's fiscal ills. Mind you, California is not alone. However, being a "home-grown" native, allow me to suggest a common sense strategy for "repairing, leading and reconciling with California voters, and perhaps, our Nation.
Almost everyone, especially state workers, the jobless, elderly and those with regular access to the Internet, realize legislative leaders have failed them. The state's inability to service needs, manage scarce tax dollars and exercise fiscal control by prudently planning the use of public resources, has sunk taxpayer confidence like the Titanic. California's freewheeling over promising and under delivering a form of government, plagued by the "Hand-full-of-give-me-and-mouth full of much obliged" strategies of the 1960, has handcuffed government. In effect, leaders have failed Californians""and the Nation.
Accordingly, each citizen must become a "partner" and "stakeholder" to repair a bureaucracy filled with selfish advocates, political potholes, disgruntle leaders and taxpayers fed up to their necks with "illusions' of success. We now have to ask ourselves: "What happened"? Then, "What's my role in fixing it"?
Repairing: a three-stage process
Most states across America are facing a fiscal crisis unprecedented since the great depression of 1930s. Mortgage meltdowns, cost of two wars, rising health and social service costs, trumped by dwindling tax revenues and escalating local demands, presents a daunting challenge for every American. Yet, "we will overcome", if "we tighten up, and stop ripping off each other".
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