"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

How many times have we heard that and just dismissed it without actually understanding what is really being said? This blog is my attempt to reshape the rest of my life by asking questions about what is happening around us. I hope that my questions and the responses will help us all to more clearly see where we are now, and whether we are going in the right direction.

My first comment will be what I see as a common sense way to have "transparency" in government. The states and the federal government are both in a financial mess. The president ran on a platform of "transparency", but has now signed away billions of my/our dollars in packages that no one has fully read nor understood.

To correct that problem I am suggesting that government at all levels implement the following idea: put all packages (whether 'stimulus' or budget) on the web in a spreadsheet that has each item clearly listed on lines with numbers. Let each person read and then submit their ideas for things that should be "vetoed" on a line by line basis. Count all the times each line is vetoed, and see whether it should be removed from the package. This voting could even be on-going so that all of us will have time to study and comment on these packages. If an item vetoed by a majority of responders, then it should be referred to a non-partisan panel to determine if it should be deleted.