One state can't set everything right, but here in Arizona, we can set an example for the rest of the country in how those of us in elected office conduct ourselves and interact with each other and our constituents.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
No one has to agree with everything that someone else says. But in state-to-state relations, we have to understand that we can help each other much more doing it that way. We have to be more generous.
When it's for the good of your state, you put partisan differences aside.
For you, the state is an entity with purposes of its own that the people can be required to serve. For us the word is only a label for the arrangements by which we the people delegate to some among us responsibility for things that concern us in common.
Arizonans want us to come together, put aside politics, and solve problems. You want us to do our jobs in way that reflects the best of our state. You want us to stop and listen - something that doesn't always come naturally to people in politics.
We want a state wise in its contemplation - just in its actions - and moderate in the reach of government into our lives.
We have become bound by a political straitjacket that frames every debate: Too much federal government. Yet our forefathers forged this system for us. The federal government can accomplish what the states, acting alone or even in concert, cannot.
States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing.
There are checks and balances and broad separation of powers under the Constitution. Each organ of the State, i.e. the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, must have respect for the others and not encroach into each other's domain.
The state must be the first to be organized and totally committed to serving the interests of the people.
We have to allow people in the states to make their own decisions, to get government agencies out of the way and let local people make decisions about what's best for them.