The President is appearing on “The View” tomorrow. Don’t miss it! It’s a chat television daytime show with five or six overweight and/or wilted women (and one fox who happens to be the token conservative. Don’t blame me.) The women spend about an hour talking seriously about insignificant things and gossiping about a few significant issues. I don’t knock the show. Today, I learned a couple of useful things from it while exercising at the gym. It was about weaning a toddler of his binkie.
Barack, Barak! You refuse to give ordinary press conferences but you have time to go on a gossip show? You are not a has-been minor actor trying to make it back in Hollywood. You are the elect of the people, for better and for much worse. Where is your dignity?Where is your common sense? Do you have staffers left who can think in ordinary reasonable terms and who have the fortitude to advise you? A shipwreck.
One page apart in my daily newspaper (The Santa Cruz Sentinel) on 7/27/10: a big story on plans to “modernize the state’s oldest park,” and the announcement that Governor Schwarzenegger may leave office without signing a budget bill into law. No one at this picture-sweet liberal newspaper saw a connection.
The State of California is near bankruptcy; the Governor is holding the line against politicians who want to keep spending. He demands reforms that will ensure less spending in the future of the money the state does not have. Just about a simple as this. The Governor wants the State of California to act like my family: We receive less income, we cut down on expenses. We put two more potatoes in the soup but mostly, we delay unnecessary expenditures as much as as is safe and economical. We may even cut out completely the superfluous. (I won’t tell you what we count as superfluous because some of you would condescend while others would envy us.)
Are we intelligent or what?
The state park that needs “modernization,” Big Basin, is just wonderful as it is. It boasts a visitors’ center in an old-fashioned wooden lodge it’s impossible not to love. State planners want to replace it by something or other. The people in charge of the park complain of traffic jams on some days but they want to offer less rustic accommodations than now exist there! New and different accommodations would either bring more car traffic and or they would be a waste. You chose. Reading the detailed article transports me back to the good old days of the early 2000s, when Californians thought they were rich enough not to think about expenditures.
To finance the modernization, state planners do not count on irresponsible legislators this time but on a popular initiative, Proposition 21, to be voted on in November. According to the reporter writing the article, the proposition offers the “prospect of a windfall of cash.”
Don’t look for the enemy, it is us.
Here is my advice to state planners: Don’t! We can’t afford it right now. We can always do it later if economic conditions improve.
I have advice to California voters also: Remember to vote no on Prop 21 even if you like every single feature of it. You can’t afford it.
Here is my advice to park supporters in the general public: I like parks too but I think you should stop reaching into my pocket under threat of violence (the State of California) to force me to support your hobbies. I make this request although I approve of your hobby. I think public parks are mostly virtuous endeavors.
Still talking to you, park supporters. I have a constructive suggestion: Why don’t you bypass the state government altogether? Why not organize a voluntary subscription and persuade the state to give the park in trust to a responsible voluntary organization? Then, with the money you will have collected, without any threat of coercion, you will do whatever modernization and other improvements to the park you think are useful. Everyone will approve. You can be sure I will donate a modest amount if you seem responsible and well organized
If the collection does not bring in much money, you will know for sure that you were trying to force me through Proposition 21 to do something I don’t want to do right now. I realize most of you are sweet people and that your dogs love you. Then, why not extirpate the deviously violent, tyrannical oppressor of others from your heart?
Thank you for your attention.
