Define Progress

Define Progress is a place for you to have your say! Use the comment box below to share your ideas, frustrations, thoughts and resources with other progressives. Together we can move Louisiana into the 21st century, and out of last place in everything good and first place in everything bad.

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Miriam Davey

Single best thing Democrats (or any group) could do, both to serve the public AND get back into power, would be to champion Smart Government.

Maximum systemic and systematic transparency, public inclusiveness, and public accountability in government is a goal that IS reachable. It’s one which Republicans have promised but mostly not delivered. They’ve really not even picked all the low-hanging fruit.

The public is very distrustful of “big government” and “behemoth bureaucracies”, “arrogant bureaucrats”, and not without good reason. What we want and need —across party lines—is to be able to go to a given state department’s website, and pull up SEARCHABLE pages (PDF’s are not really searchable) which show in detail every stream of revenue, every expenditure, and the rationale for spending in those directions. Agencies all must have missions and goals which make sense to citizens, and must not succumb to “mission creep” or crony politics.

What would really be super is for someone to place the entire state government empire online in this fashion, showing every single asset, revenue stream, and expenditure. Some of the newspapers have attempted this, but it wasn’t in much detail, and as I remember, big pieces of government outside the usual revenue streams were left out.

Great room for movement in that direction—lots of potential for success for Democrats. But…it will take some big changes in Louisiana-style good ol boy politics.

Get some leaders who spell out how they’ll achieve this goal, and even better, how they have achieved it in the capacity they’ve been serving, and we’ll see some Democrats coming back into power across the state.

People are just fed up with public waste . duplication of efforts, turf wars, cronyist politics, and with local communities having to be supplicants of the state.
ann springer

Moving Louisiana forward requires healthy children poised to grow into the adults who will lead the next generation. Far too many of our children lack health care (especially dental care and mental health care) and have inadequate, inappropriate nutrition. Cutting down funding for education, day care, and special education needs will darken the future even more.
melissa

Define Progress

How can we move Louisiana forward? Progress means infrastructure for the 21st century, not just more interstates, but light rail and better public transportation. Green Development and Smart Growth need to mean something to policymakers. We need to see our colleges and universities as part of the economic development equation.

Define Progress

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From the Center for American Progress