Cut with the soul-crushing rhetoric
Idaho's State of the State rehashes tired soundbites rather than providing the leadership and inspiration Idaho needs and Idaho's landscape provides.
Our governor wants to free us from the “soul-crushing tyranny of entitlement.”
Give me a break.
Soul-crushing? He should know. Gov. Otter got his first check as an legislative officeholder from taxpayers back in 1973, before some of our taxpaying staff were born. His career has included quite a few government checks.
The audience knows entitlement, too. The governor’s State of the State address was given to the Idaho State Legislature. For their part-time work they get full-time health care paid by you and me.
Maybe our soul-crushed public servants should chill on the rhetoric just a bit. It’s time for leadership not tired rhetoric.
Bashing the federal government is a great applause line for the Legislature, but with a $340 million deficit we could actually use some vision. I find government bashing from the mouths of career politicians tiresome at best, and actually irresponsible in this case.
Wallace Stegner called the West the “native home of hope.” Our fellow citizens struggling to make ends meet would like hear a little something along those lines.
From settlement to this very day, our history is about people having the courage to pick up roots and plant them here. Sometimes they do this for the chance to start over, sometimes for the opportunities Idaho provides, and sometimes because the air is clean and there is nothing like a wild steelhead on the end of a fly line.
From the day Lewis and Clark first looked into Idaho, our landscape has defined us. In good times and bad, the call of the coyote, a star-filled night in the desert, scent of the ponderosas, or rush of our rivers has inspired us.
It’s time for Idaho leaders to speak of what’s great about Idaho, of what unites us and creates this “native home of hope.” That is unless their soul is too crushed.
(the photo? I'm crushing my stress-reducing potato)
Where's the blog?
I see a disambiguous collection of sentences trying to be a statement and ending up in a dead end.
It would be obvious that Governor Otter had been drawing longer than some of your staff had been alive!
38 years? What is abnormal about 38 years?
At least he's been EMPLOYED for most of the last 40 years! That should warrant some recognition.
Just about ANY organization would have people younger than 38 and that qualifies your statement as vague and mundane.
Before you try to attack RHETORIC please consult Rhet or Ric.
Just Another Foreign Oregonian, a DEMOCRAT too!