The Ash Can is shut down for new posts, so maybe this posts needs to be deleted until there is a proper subject area for it, but until the post is vaporized for any reason, in my opinion the people of CT have a tremendous opportunity with this guy.
Over ten years I watched him speak truth to power testifying as the GAO Comp Gen to congress, telling them directly to their faces our fiscal path is unsustainable no matter what their party alignment. He does his income taxes with pencil and paper to illustrate the burden of the tax code. He did resign his ten year Comp Gen position after six years to work with the Pete G Peterson Foundation - another bipartisan group looking to instill some fiscal sobriety in government and to ring the alarm bell about the US' fiscal plight.
He made a movie called I.O.U.S.A. shown in theaters comprised of a lot of the material compiled from his Fiscal Wakeup Tours he has been conducting for years. It describes dire circumstances but also contains real strategies. It was brilliant considering the subject matter
What do you want government to do? You must decide.
Where will the money come from to pay it? You must decide. New programs must take money from old programs that don't get results.
Metrics MUST be tallied to fairly assess value for money. If no value results, then the funding is reprogrammed to something that works. Budgets reflect expected results and overruns are not rewarded.
This guy seems so grounded in reality that I can't imagine a more impartial manager of the process. Review tooth-to-tail results, and fund appropriately metric based success by taking money from ineffective programs, no matter how grandly and patriotically named they are.
I, just a simple little dude in Dayton, wrote him an email after I watched him blister a group of congressmen congratulating him on his message. It blew me away that he wrote write back telling me his mantra of speaking truth to power. I suggested that if he want his message to reach 6 million young people that he try to get on The Daily Show or Colbert, and by God he got on Colbert a few weeks later and laid out the facts.
So it's pretty hard for me to determine what his personal opinion is, but he is very keen to get to programs that give us something for the tax dollar, and honesty and discipline can get us back to a sustainable path.
I don't see any guys like that in DC, and ones that are electable are even more scarce. If CT doesn't want him, I'd make a serious attempt to get him here in Ohio.
My bottom line is that this guy can work in the trenches, but never lose sight of getting the big stuff addressed with honesty and integrity. And he hopes he can set an example of changing key metrics in CT that other states could model to address their problems.
So of you're in CT and have Heard David Walker's name, see if he comes across wanting to do good things as long as they're paid with no new taxes, and the program can clearly be graded A, B, C, D or F in result.
If I've done a bad thing by endorsing a candidate, I apologize. But this is the first guy I've seen in ten years that needs a bigger job that the one he has. And given my hatred for politicians, it blows my mind he may have a goal based term that will consist of activities that don't include working full-time at getting re-elected.
Thanks.
Greg
Over ten years I watched him speak truth to power testifying as the GAO Comp Gen to congress, telling them directly to their faces our fiscal path is unsustainable no matter what their party alignment. He does his income taxes with pencil and paper to illustrate the burden of the tax code. He did resign his ten year Comp Gen position after six years to work with the Pete G Peterson Foundation - another bipartisan group looking to instill some fiscal sobriety in government and to ring the alarm bell about the US' fiscal plight.
He made a movie called I.O.U.S.A. shown in theaters comprised of a lot of the material compiled from his Fiscal Wakeup Tours he has been conducting for years. It describes dire circumstances but also contains real strategies. It was brilliant considering the subject matter
What do you want government to do? You must decide.
Where will the money come from to pay it? You must decide. New programs must take money from old programs that don't get results.
Metrics MUST be tallied to fairly assess value for money. If no value results, then the funding is reprogrammed to something that works. Budgets reflect expected results and overruns are not rewarded.
This guy seems so grounded in reality that I can't imagine a more impartial manager of the process. Review tooth-to-tail results, and fund appropriately metric based success by taking money from ineffective programs, no matter how grandly and patriotically named they are.
I, just a simple little dude in Dayton, wrote him an email after I watched him blister a group of congressmen congratulating him on his message. It blew me away that he wrote write back telling me his mantra of speaking truth to power. I suggested that if he want his message to reach 6 million young people that he try to get on The Daily Show or Colbert, and by God he got on Colbert a few weeks later and laid out the facts.
So it's pretty hard for me to determine what his personal opinion is, but he is very keen to get to programs that give us something for the tax dollar, and honesty and discipline can get us back to a sustainable path.
I don't see any guys like that in DC, and ones that are electable are even more scarce. If CT doesn't want him, I'd make a serious attempt to get him here in Ohio.
My bottom line is that this guy can work in the trenches, but never lose sight of getting the big stuff addressed with honesty and integrity. And he hopes he can set an example of changing key metrics in CT that other states could model to address their problems.
So of you're in CT and have Heard David Walker's name, see if he comes across wanting to do good things as long as they're paid with no new taxes, and the program can clearly be graded A, B, C, D or F in result.
If I've done a bad thing by endorsing a candidate, I apologize. But this is the first guy I've seen in ten years that needs a bigger job that the one he has. And given my hatred for politicians, it blows my mind he may have a goal based term that will consist of activities that don't include working full-time at getting re-elected.
Thanks.
Greg
