2010 State of The State

Imagine, for a moment, if the following words were part of the introduction given by our next governor at the start of his second term - State of the State speech...2010.

"Let me remind you of the extraordinary wealth and great accomplishments of our state in just the last 4 years:
 three new nuclear power plants, the first of which will be coming online this year; we will be a net exporter of electricity in the near future.
 parents of 131,000 children (and growing) have chosen, without financial penalty, through the UETC to attend non-government K-12 schools, saving the taxpayers roughly 650 million dollars per year.
 800,000 children in leaner, less crowded, higher performing government K-12 schools and 110,000 students attending a streamlined University of Wisconsin System;
 test scores on Wisconsin students are high and climbing, especially among non-government schools. Not suprisingly, government school test scores have risen as well and clearly this is due to the competition for students and the streamlining of curriculums that has taken place.
 all government employees in this state now have a modern HSA health plan whereby they have a vested interest in their own personal health, claims are down, premiums are down, total cost of providing health care to government employees (including school district employees) is down by 30 percent.
 the state retirement system modernization plan is now fully implemented preventing abuse, and moving all recipients out of a defined benefit system and into defined contribution plans.
 and, best of all, a projected budget suplus of 1 billion that will be returned to the taxpayers as a direct result of our passing Frank Lasee's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights - a model for the rest of the nation.

Every day we get phone calls from around the country from potential relocations of businesses to Wisconsin. The demand is growing and we are becoming a magnet for new business. This is great news for our college graduates who will now not just be looking for work in their home state, but will find it in abundance.

Well, tonight I am proud to announce the news that DaimlerChrysler Motor Company has chosen Wisconsin as the site of their newest production plant. A plant that will be producing the new 42 volt, power plant electrics - cars with fully electric drive trains that perform better than any internal combusion cars on the market. DaimlerChrysler projects 2,000 employees will be hired in this plant. Our staff will have more details on this announcement soon, as will DaimlerChrysler.

We owe the magnificent turnaround of this state to a handful of visionary individuals, elected officials and regular folks who demanded government live within its means, that parents have real economic choice in education, and that we discard silly ideas in energy that cost taxpayers money and instead implement proven ideas that create wealth and energy. The state of the State of Wisconsin is strong and growing."

Folks, the motivation for this came from Frank Murkowski's (Governor of Alaska) 2006 State of the State Speech.

While we here in Wisconsin do not have the natural resources of Alaska, we can still be creative and disciplined. By developing nuclear power excess capacity, streamlining our education system by breaking the monopoly, and implement a TABOR this state can run far more efficiently and perform at a much higher level. STudent achievement can go up, while total spending on government K-12 goes down. And it will happen when parents are no longer penalized for choosing other than the government schools.

The question is, what vision for the future do you have - the statist status quo, or one shaped and molded by true free market forces???

bildanielson @ OnTheBorderLine