Well I said it'd be a soft opening

I intended to get this written and posted by noon today.  Okay, technically, I intended to get this written and posted by noon last Saturday, but who's nitpicking?

I have what I'm going to call my "baseline rant" for the legislature this year.  The Idaho Legislature, in case you're thinking about some other rant-worthy governing body.  This is it:

For the past two years, in a desperate attempt to be more-conservative-than-you, the legislature has intentionally under-estimated the state budget.  They have used the very real recession to maximum political effect and cut every department and program that the state offers its citizens.  Last year was the most heinous, as they ignored the state economist (who is paid by them and at that time had 20 years of experience doing it) and his projections and created a state budget based on numbers they apparently pulled out of their hat (because this is a family-friendly blog, I didn't use the noun that occurred to me first).  That number required cuts to Medicaid, higher education, and for the first time ever a cut to K-12 education.  It was devastating to each of those areas.  AND IT WAS UNNECESSARY, as shown by the magically-appearing budget surplus this year.  It's not a surplus, people.  It's the money that the state economist said would be there in the first place.  And thousands of Idahoans were forced to suffer, losing jobs and wages, medical care and hope, because our legislature thought it knew more about the economy than the state economist.

It makes me so angry.

I'm glad that many of the people currently in office have decided to retire.  I wish more of them would (especially those whose names rhyme with Florence Penny).  That gladness is tempered by the certain knowledge that the people elected to replace the current master-economists will probably not have a better grip on reality.  Based on the direction of politics in this country, and the conservative nature of most of Idaho, the "new blood" in the legislature will probably be a transfusion from the same conservative body as before.

Which means that this time next year, I'll probably still be angry.

What's it all about?

I spent a few years as a member of the Idaho Falls Post Register Local Columnist board.  Every six weeks, I got to write a column that appeared on the Opinions page.  I was always free to choose a topic, and very little editing was involved (meaning, there wasn't much interaction between me and the page editor, other than a reminder that a column was due and a brief message from me when I sent it in).  Eventually, they decided that they needed new blood, so I was discontinued.

But I miss being able to have a forum and a reason to comment!  So I have started this blog.  I intend to publish a weekly commentary by Saturday at noon.  I don't have a specific area that I will focus on, but this blog is likely to focus on public policy, education, federal & state legislation, and the like.

I hope that there will be something here to spark thought and further discussion.