Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

You can see it everywhere in the media these days. Every one of the local outlets has a place for you to chime in and give your opinion of what the State of Iowa can do to cut costs in this troubled economy. And since, like everyone else I have an opinion on this, I felt that I should take a few minutes and jot down my suggestions to the Gov. and help him out a little. So here are my tips for helping trim the state budget.

1. This isn’t really a trim the budget but more of an increase revenue idea. How about we have one month where the State Patrol cracks down on out of state drivers? If anyone has ever been on I-80 west to Omaha after an Iowa State-Nebraska game you’ll know what I mean. Between the cars with Illinois and Michigan plates and those crazy drunks going back to Omaha I’m sure we could generate a pot load of money.
2. Bring back those lottery touch play machines…and put them everywhere!
3. Use prisoners to clean up area roadways, dig ditches, cut down dead trees. We’ve got the work force..use it.
4. What about turning off some lights at night in state office buildings. This thought occurred to me the other night when I was driving through a small town at midnight and noticed the elementary school building all lit up as though there were classes going on.
5. Instead of buying sand to put on the roads, what about using ground up corn? Or maybe we could dredge the rivers and use the dirt that erodes from farm fields?
6. Have snow plow drivers not throw all the gravel from the side of the road into my ditch every year. Just a thought.
7. Why don’t we do away with some of the control given to state government and give it back locally? How about letting schools decide when to merge. And while we are at it..why don’t we open school lunchrooms to the public. The meals there are better than what I would fix for myself and much more better for you, than say McDonalds.
8. Let’s make worker retraining really what it should be. Take some of these houses that are foreclosed or in bad shape and put groups of people together. Use the money you would hand out to them in unemployment and pay them to fix them up while learning a trade. Then sell the houses and turn the money back over to more retraining.
9. Sell advertising on the sides of state vehicles. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the local meat inspector’s car with a big Wonderbread Hot Dog Bun advertisement?
10. Finally, why don’t we take a minute to go through the faculty rosters at our state universities and see who is actually teaching and who’s just sitting around collecting a paycheck. You can only guess what I would do in once we have that list.

See you next week. Remember, we’re all in this together.