I saw this quote over at firedoglake.com. It appears to be a quote from Christy Hardin Smith (aka The redhead). I've seen parts of it before but never put together in quite this way. Anyway, here's the quote we'll be riffing on.
Politics is the art of making the impossible possible, of bringing to life theories and finding a pragmatic way to implement them to sustain a particular view of the world. In short, it is about priorities
I think the business about priorities is important...especially in local government. In some local government settings, it's hard to tell what their priorities really are as they seem to pander to damned near every interest and they can't seem to say "no" to anybody or any interest.
Just recently, I was at a meeting where an alderman complained about having to mow ditches because the city had done an asphalt street with ditching as opposed to concrete curb and gutter. A staff memeber jumped to the opportunity to chastise the common council for not either borrowing enough money or raising taxes high enough to provide the more expensive curb and gutter. I couldn't contain myself.....
I jumped in and suggested that it wasn't a matter of borrowing more or taxing more but PRIORITIZING the funds that you do have.
There are choices to be made.
Do you want a "build-it-and-they-will-come (maybe) $2.5MM industrial park or more curb and gutter streets?
Do you want $500K worth of bike and walking trails or do you want more curb and gutter streets?
The choices go on and on but the "free ride" days for public officials are over. The days when you could say "yes" to everybody, raise taxes to cover it, and nobody would notice because everybody was rolling in money because of the great economic conditions, well...those days are over.
We have to decide what's important and what's not. We have to decide what the "absolute ability to pay" really is and deal with it honestly.
We need political leadership to establish priorities and stick with them.
t
