You do know what the answer is to all this peanut butter like malaise that we are in don’t you? The malaise of ineffectiveness and delay in Washington and in Boston?
How about finding some new leaders?
Now this is not a piece about term limits, it is more about responsibility of everyone.
We elect people to office whose main goal is not to serve but to get re-elected. Remember that is the job of a politician. Any politician.
So we get problems. The problems never leave. We seek guidance to have the problems solved and we lean on the same old people to come up with the same old ideas. Old ideas for new problems.
Where the new talent comes from is not my guess. But, I will tell you this. If you have a politician who keeps coming up with ideas, even wild ones, is the missing breed that we once had that we have no longer.
Northampton had a man by the name of James Brooks. If memory serves he was a Ward Six City Council who was a self proclaimed “gadfly”. When he was on the city council he always had an idea. Some of them were wild. Some of them got done.
Springfield had Peter Jurzynski. When he was on the city council the city might have led the league in 8-1 council votes. He had ideas. He had opinions. He had a different look at the city. It wasn’t wrong. It was different.
The difference is the difference. Some people look at a flat surface and see just that. Others look at it and see the moon and the stars.
If your city does not have a governing body that can think ahead. Plan ahead. Find ways to do more with less, you are not being served very well.
If they can only find ways to raise taxes and then tell you you should be happy that they didn’t go higher, I am sorry.
What do you care? Look at inner cities where they had no money, because they had no tax base, because they were unsafe and that begot more crime and more despair and where it ends is anyone’s guess.
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” ( Johann Wolfgang von Gothe)
Who’s got that idea? And who can make it a reality?