Thanks governor and God speed Mr. Pierce

I want to take this opportunity to thank the governor for taking a new approach to resolving the growing “economic meltdown,” as Zaldy Dan Dan puts it. Mr. Pierce has lobbied the last two governors for the economic advisory post and I have been yelling in the news for several years for an “economic task force.” We didn’t get a taskforce, but at least we finally have a starting point with Mr. Pierce – congratulations Mr. Pierce.

The governor’s decision to select Mr. Pierce is long overdue, but I won’t cry over spilled milk because it won’t change a thing. It is now time for the Legislature and all the stakeholders in our economy to pitch in and support or HELP by being a part of the solution and not the problem because we will all sink or swim together. I don’t think the governor could have made a better choice than Mr. Pierce. He KNOWS the economic game and he has the experience and knowledge about our present condition to identify what really needs to be done to improve our situation.

I have no doubt the Mr. Pierce will do a great job, if we give him a chance. But he’s not God and he won’t get much accomplished if he has to “fight with very people he is trying to help.” I say this because there will always be people against you even when you are trying to help them as we all should know this from personal experiences. I’m sure people have seen what some teachers have done to me in the news because “some people can be just like the dog that bites the hand that feeds it.” I strongly believe we will get more than our money’s worth for the $50,000 a year salary for Mr. Pierce. So I say, thank you governor and God speed Mr. Pierce before any complaints arise in hopes that we can at least be one people headed in the right direction for economic reform that will be a direct result of Mr. Pierce’s work.

On another similar issue: I’ve lobbied the last two fovernors to create the secretary of education post like we have at the national level and in most states. We still don’t have a secretary of education, which is why we can’t get “grounded” on what we are going to do about higher education and the proper governance over the Public School System. The governor and the Legislature have tried to help and apply some governance to education but with very little success, because it requires a full-time person with “exceptional” expertise in education. Autonomy does not mean “absolute power or total separation from government”—some form of governance must be applied to ALL aspects of public operations and the only way we can do this in education is to improve our “governance system over education” with a secretary of education to “govern” over all education issues—autonomy or not. One people, One direction.

Ambrose Bennette
Kagman