Doing the right thing at the right time

"With slightly over three weeks to go, we can change the trajectory of this state. We can smash the status quo. We can hire people who will ask, 'Am I doing the right things at the right time?'"

One of the managers I worked for in my career had a wood carved sign hung in his office. It was not fancy, and had a very simple message on it. "Am I doing the right thing at the right time?" One day when he and I were chatting about something in his office, I asked about that sign. "It keeps me centered." he said. "I look at that sign many times during the day and ask myself that question." He went on to say that in business, many dollars and hours are wasted by people doing the right thing at the wrong time, or the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I  have thought about that many times during this campaign season. In government, be it local, state, or federal, I dare say we have precious few people who ask that question on a daily basis. Like hardly any. I have said this for many years - we elect people who get into government service, and then run it like day one in Junior Achievement. Unlike the business world where inept performance is met with a pink slip, in government service there are just excuses for misdeeds, and then tomorrow is another day.

This year we have a whole team of people who want to come in and really fix our state government. By the way, in case you have missed it during the past few years, our state government is a mess. Constantly doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Jeff Johnson has said for years we have to pay attention to the small stuff as well as the big stuff to make things better. In other words, to keep to his promise to run a more efficient state government for less money, inefficient, outdated, redundant, or useless programs need to be eliminated. This has been a vexing issue for many past administrations. It will not be for a Jeff Johnson Administration.

Doug Wardlow is the same way. The Attorney General's office is a partisan mess. It needs to be cleaned, top to bottom. Doug said he would do that and now the press is screaming bloody murder. Why? They (the media) are the guardians of the status quo. Guess what? We have tried the status quo for years, and all it has gotten us is a #1 rating in being tax unfriendly. That we received from Kiplinger (as well as others). We are not only an expensive state, many of our "government programs" work as well as three cylinder engine in need of a tune up.

I could go on and on. Pam Myhra for State Auditor. You mean to have an auditor who (gasp!) knows how to audit for a change? Pam will shake that office up, clean out the cobwebs, and have it once again working for the people of Minnesota.

Our Secretary of State's office has been as mess since George Soros funded the "SOS Project" in 2006 and we got Mark Ritchie as our SOS. All of a sudden, we had razor thin elections that mysteriously went the way of the Blue Team. A Senate race and then a Governor race. Gone. Even though voter fraud has been alleged (and proven) by a well know writer for the WSJ (John Fund) as well as many local folks, the DFL controlled SOS continues to stick his head in the sand with voter irregularities. 

If I bought a Ford truck and had nothing but problems for ten years, why would I buy another Ford? That would be foolish. My first Ford cost me a whole lot of repair money and performed poorly. Ford would not have deserved my return business. That is where we are in our state right now. Buying another Ford would be buying in to the status quo. And in Minnesota right now, our status quo sucks.

With slightly over three weeks to go before the election, we can change the trajectory of this state. We can smash the status quo. We can hire people who will ask, "Am I doing the right things at the right time?" Or we can stick with the same old, same old. What is that? The wrong thing, all the time. The choice is ours.