Califailia.

Governor Brown’s State of the State Address brought to me recollections of the four April days I spent in the auditorium of high school over four years. Same story on stage with different characters. Seems as if the speech writers are getting inspiration from a broken turn table stuck on the words, crisis, tax, unemployment, obstacle, and deficit. Their failure to address these issues successfully is what leads to me paying a “dismissal fee” at court, to name one. A fee I’m required to pay for proving in a court of law that I was not guilty of the infraction received. A fee that could have been spent at a small business down the street to help bolster our economy.

Rapper KRS One said it best. Think of our government as a Burger King franchise. When the customer ( the people ) have an issue with an order, we bring it to the cashiers attention. If the cashier is unable to resolve our issue, the shift leader is called. The shift leader does his or her best to address our problem, offers a refund, makes promises, etc etc. If the customer is still unsatisfied, a request to see the manager is called. Over and over this process repeats, yet through all this, the head honcho is never in the picture. The franchise owner is nowhere to be seen. Just like the situation we have here. The faces keep changing, the promises keep promising, the patriotic catch phrases keep bumper stickering, and yet no results.

Fool me once, shame on me, fool me….uh…umm, ????, fool me once you can’t get fooled again! The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It’s like screaming at the TV at the top of your lungs, trying to warn the captain of the RMS Titanic to avoid the ice-berg.

By no means am I suggesting I have the solution. I just think a different approach is needed. For example, our budget cuts keep taking away from education. That’s a great idea. Let’s dumb down the curriculum, overload the classes, turn a blind eye to falling test scores and graduation rates. Let’s ensure that the upcoming generation entering the real world with more obstacles in it than the prior generations is dumber than the average bear. Recipe for success? Yea, almost as much as the Lindsay Lohan Children’s Daycare Center and Bobby and Whitney’s Marriage Counseling School.

To say the road ahead is challenging is a gargantuan understatement, but something has to be done. Gov Duekmejian took office and inherited a $1.5 billion deficit. Took him two years to turn that into a $1 billion surplus. Maybe someone should call him for a few pointers before he’s pushing up daisies.

-Jack Simitian, Marketing Director