Can You Handle The Truth?
What happens when the money runs out?
‘Joe’ won a huge amount of money from the lottery many years ago. Something like $100 million dollars. Since then he has filed for bankruptcy, been in jail, married and divorced two times, and is fighting drug addiction. What happened to Joe?
After he won the money he decided to go wild and buy all sorts of luxury toys. He bought several homes and paid top dollar. He went gambling all over the world. Casinos would fly him in for a weekend and put him up in lavish suites. He soon developed a large following of friends that accompanied him wherever he went. He spared no expense on them. Eventually he was convinced after many coke parties to invest large sums of money with some of his ‘new’ friends in business ventures that would bring him more millions.
He bought fancy cars, attended charity events, and spent lavishly on artwork, wines and rare manuscripts. Always willing to pay top dollar, he always had first crack at something rare and exciting.
One day the FBI and IRS came to see him. Seems some of his shaky investments had gone south, several of his cronies proved to be ex-felons and swindlers and he went to jail on tax evasion charges. He soon came to grips that he had burned through almost all of his money. He tried to sell his holdings, but since he had bought all his real estate and collections at the top of the market he had to take substantial losses. All his friends disappeared and his lavish lifestyle came to end. He even contemplated suicide.
This story is all to common of a person that has low self esteem and thinks that if he spends enough money people will like him. And as long as he spends the money, he will always have a huge following waiting for the next handout. But what happens when all the money goes away?
Fast forward to today’s California State Budget. For years politicians have been ‘buying’ friends and votes by spending money on all sorts of programs and issues that their ‘friends’ liked. As for a reward, those friends kept electing those politicians right back to office and demanding more. It became a classic co-dependency relationship. But the money has run out. Friends are demanding from their elected leader to keep spending on them and their cause. Anytime a politician hints at cutting a program, the outrage is loud and vocal.
What have we done in California? We created an entire system of rewarding spending with getting elected. Now that the money is gone, politicians are finding out they have no friends anymore and have a huge following of enemies. Like Joe, politicians are now the scum of the earth and no one wants to be their friend. The legislature now has to face the harsh reality that they will have to make huge financial cuts in every program and be hated for the first time in their political life.
Who is to blame? We can start with the politicians that spent us into oblivion. We also need to blame the groups of voters that kept putting these very same politicians in office year after year knowing full well that one day the money would run out. Anyone running for office that spoke a message of fiscal responsibility was quickly eliminated by huge negative ads and no support. Any bills that were sent to the floor for consideration that would have stopped the spending were quickly defeated.
California, its time to wake up and smell the roses! And they don’t smell like roses anymore. We are going to have to make painful choices on programs and spending. We may have to elect leaders that have the stomach to stand up in front of us and tell you the truth no matter how hard it is to hear. Can you handle someone telling you the truth for a change? The quote “You want the truth?… you can’t handle the truth” no longer applies. We have gone without the truth for far to long.
I can deal with the truth… how about you?