Toward the end of the song Stairway to Heaven is the lyric, “And as we wind on down the road, our shadows longer than our souls,”. The singer is making the point that the person he is talking about is more concerned with material wealth than her spiritual health. I have been thinking a lot about this over the past few months as we have been struggling with our budget. How much can we do and how do we do it? Where does government help end and our responsibility begin? How much are we responsible for our fellow man and how much is too much? We struggle with these constantly as we try to strike a balance. It isn’t easy. Do we spend more to help people in need now or do we appropriate in order to seed future projects that will help our budget in the long term? What is truly necessary and who sets those priorities? What is material and what is spiritual?
First, let me say that spiritual is not necessarily religious, but is, to me, a human responsibility to help each other as best we can. And material is not necessarily money, but services that give us comfort. Economic times such as these give us pause and an opportunity to examine every program that we have to decide what is viable and necessary, and what is outdated and dysfunctional. While this is painful, it is necessary for the continuation of an effective government.
This isn’t easy. First, entropy keeps most programs going even if they are outdated. People hate change. I know I do. I am still disgruntled about the designated hitter rule! So we resist change, well, just because. We also resist change because each line item, each program has grown its own constituency that will fight hard to keep a program going even if it is no longer as effective as other newer programs. People are employed in those agencies and they fight hard to keep going. Who wants to lose a job?
But programs can be very much like grass growing in a driveway or on a flagstone walk in the backyard. We can see the grass growing between stone and we can cut that back, but the roots continue to grow until they threaten to split apart the masonry. Much the same, we can enact budget cuts, but the core of or programs continue to grow. And left unchecked, they threaten the stability of the budget.
This is the second time in my legislative career that we have witnessed a deep recession. The first was in the early nineties and the second is this one. There have been others, but not like these two where the effect was deep and lasting over several budgets.
While there are similarities between the two, there is one striking difference this time. People seem more concerned with their shadows that their souls. People are more likely to criticize over one issue than in the past. When I first entered office in 1987, people would disagree on an issue, but would still consider all your work or positions rather than just one. Today, there is far more vitriol that doesn’t add to the debate, but further pulls us apart.
Some of this may be that more people are getting news from the internet or from blogs where there is no fact checking and a nastiness that seems to come with anonymity. It may be the threat of job loss as our economy churns and old jobs are lost and new jobs require new skill sets. Some is admittedly self-inflicted as we have grown far better at the politics of some issues than the actual governing of those issues.
For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis (thanks to both of you!) you know that I have talked about new ways to conduct business in government. We cut programs and increase taxes, but we also need to reform government in order to do things better and more efficiently with new technologies, and we need to expand our tax base by creating opportunities for business expansion. We can’t do this by adhering to old ideologies or based on political philosophy alone, but we need creative thinking and active participation focused on problem solving rather than scoring political points. And we can’t do this alone. No one person or ideology has a corner on the truth. We need a conversation on what we expect and how we achieve that. No political rallies. No vitriolic talk show hosts, just a conversation amongst ourselves. Wouldn’t that be nice?
11 comments:
Governing is hard. Spending money is easy.
I'm glad you know the difference.
Thanks for fighting for the RMV office. It's good to hear that the Guv understands that rural areas should not be held to overly simple metrics designed for metropolitan areas.
I tell him when he is wrong and we need to tell him when he is right. He was great on this.
Dan,
There were many hard budget decisions this year and few elected officials, other than yourself, have worked at explaining the difficult choices.
I purposely post MBPC, DOR/dls, MMA and others, not only to bore people, but some actually read what's posted.
Other than contested election years, few pols avail themselves of local cable access.
Middleboro has 3 representatives and I am always distressed to hear voters admit that they have no idea what their rep's name is, what he looks like, have never heard him speak, don't know what he has done. Middleboro elected McCain-Palin, Kerry-Healey, Romney, G.W.B., Perot, and hosted George Wallace, which might explain the avoidance.
While we can fault the media, maybe we can also fault some elected officials who have made no effort to compete with the talk show hosts or even explain basic government functions. Some believe we can eliminate all state employees and get along just fine.
Count me as one of your 2 regular readers because I appreciate explanations of the impacts on your side of the state of Beacon Hill actions where there is otherwise silence and hope you'll continue to do so. Media coverage has become largely Boston-centric, ignoring all else.
Media Coverage....so true. When I started in the eighties we had two daily newspapers with all sorts of correspondents, reporters, and contributors. Today we have two bare bones newspapers that are owned by the same people and they double up on coverage. We had a vibrant locally owned radio station that had their own news department and a daily talk show on current and local events as well as a sunday ten minute show on the news concerning politics and government. Today they are based in Pittsfield and simulcast almost all of their programming. Sometimes when people come up to me to tell me I am doing a good job, I feel like asking how they know?
Again, part of this is my fault. I don't issue nearly as many press releases as I used to and I have a standing offer to write an occasional column for the local daily. We all need to do more communication.
Dan- Don't forget your local muckraking bloggers! We may not qualify as "media" in the traditional sense, but my odd little local issues blog gets a several hundred unique hits a week.
Local blogs, yes, and you do a good job, but many are anonymous and that leads to mischief. I don't go on things like Topix because it has no value with all the static from anonymous posters. These kind of personal comments add nothing to the debate and many are hateful and very misleading.
There are some good blogs, but it takes a lot of time to manage them and they get spotty at times. it is the way a lot of people are getting info these days.
Dan,
The loss of our Freedom of the Press through atrophy is one of the saddest events during this economic 'downturn,' but I have great faith that people will begin to insist on greater local access coverage, among other things.
Regrettably, it's happening all over the country with little notice.
People will also find factual information and sources to circulate.
Being a transplant from elsewhere, I never understood how town meeting didn't create great interest and habitually suffered from the failure to draw a quorum. My God! Direct democracy! It doesn't get any better than that.
Our Annual town elections experienced turnouts of 3% - 5%!
So, I started to blog, put all sorts of educational stuff on my blog, organized a Recall that coincided with the Middleboro Casino Fiasco and the last election turnout was 20%.
Mansfield laments a 36% turnout?
Is Middleboro where it should be? No! But it's a work in progress.
Recently, an abutting community's BOS took action in violation of the Open Meeting Law.
A friend sent an anonymous comment to me that appeared in a local muckraking blog that said in essence "I can't wait to see what Jessie has to say about this Open Meeting Law violation." My only thought was that Mr/Ms Anonymous didn't know what Open Meeting Law was 2 years ago, but was forced to read it, if only to criticize me.
Other town residents have read the Public Records Statute and the Ethics Statutes, spoken up, filed their own complaints and things have changed because they have become educated and empowered.
On the state level?
Any criticism was not directed at anyone personally, but rather that, as a whole, Beacon Hill is somehow "out there" working mysteriously with little local connection, so it becomes easy to "sling mud."
I would be the first to admit not understanding the intricacies of Beacon Hill. Who is to inform me, keep me up to date on the important bills, pending legislation, the implications for my town, if not my own elected officials?
The lines of communication need to work both ways and maybe there are creative ideas we need to pursue.
I agree with all of this. We all need to do a better job. Thanks for the comments.
Dan... Good job, you and JB and others have been vigilante concerning the plight of our area. I agree hole heartedly that changing is a hard nut to crack, but it can be done and in our times it is imperative that we do so. Throwing monies at a problem doesn't help unless you fix the core cause as well. People today do not have the monetary resources they use to have so it becomes a burden when they are asked by the system to the sacrificing one more time. Again Good job!
Thanks Jack. I appreciate it.
I agree with all of this..
thanks or this great link
___________________
victor
The only Satellite Television Delivers the Best Value in Entertainment
Post a Comment