Having now seen him twice up close, he is friendly, very confident in himself and also with how 'impressive' he feels he must appear to us minions, but I have not been all that impressed with him. He is about 5'10", but wears these cowboy boots with two inch heels. He loves photo opts with women and their children, but prefers to be in pictures where he looks larger then the people around him.
His efforts right now appear to be to set himself up for a push for the presidency, so a soft sell, testing of the waters to see if a U.S. amendment to the constitution to allow foreign born citizens the opportunity to run for president, has been high on his current agenda.
The State budget looks like it will be the same old same old next year, with California deep in the red once again. All his clever promises and plans to curb the woeful state of finances has gone for naught. Since they were nearly identical to Grey Davis' ideas and plans, small wonder. The key issue of the recall looks to have been to put Republicans back in power, as nothing else much changed, except we have a much, much more charismatic governor to tell us the bad news now, and make it sound like it is exactly that for which the people voted.
He also wants to make redistricting an issue. This is not good for the future of California, unless you like the idea of one-party rule.
As it stands now, he has done nothing to warrant any more support then Grey Davis had before the recall. As I stated in an earlier posting, his hatchet women hired to clean up the Department of Finance simply fired all the top management people (they all got good posting elsewhere, but the point was made), then when the current budget looked to be no different then the previous regime's, with additional borrowing against the future (your kids will be paying for these decisions loooooong into the future), she bailed. Quit in late October to go ride her Harley with her Florida boyfriend (I am not kidding).
On the bright side, the Governor appointed a real budget manager to replace her. Tom Campbell comes in with a reputation of integrity, hard work, and a personality that connects with subordinates in a positive way. So that may work out okay, but these budget managers require more then one year to prove their ideas work. I really do not get the purpose of the prior Director's appointment, except to get rid of all the experienced budget people for the State and bring in new people with suppossedly new ideas.
Then we got the same old same old...... :rolleyes:
Oh, and WOW, its good to see you back amongst us. And I have not heard from Gaither (jw) in ages. Apparently no one else has either.
