March, 2021
Lincoln – High school and college basketball tournaments are in full swing. But one team isn't what it used to be and needs to put its star player on the bench for some rest and recovery, because that player hasn't been performing of late.
That team is the State of Nebraska and its star player has been The Good Life. Good Life was once the best around. No more.
Good Life became a star when Jim Exon was the Nebraska coach. Assistant coach Stan Matzke, Jr., first put Good Life in a game and the rest is history. Good Life was a scorer but also a team player. Democrats and Republicans alike wanted to be on the team. Jim Exon recruited both and made Nebraska proud.
But for some reason, Nebraska voters started to choose only Republicans for the team. They did not play well with Democrats and Good Life, a team player, was not as effective. Nebraska soon began losing, often.
It's time to face up to the losses. Nothing brings them home more than the disclosure by a former state worker, Kate High, about how the state procurement process is broken and desperately needs changes. Pay-to-play, as she describes it so well, is downright corrupt, like fixing basketball games.
Procurement is not the only problem: Multiple departments have simultaneous disasters on their hands, from foster care, to corrections, to billions in state accounting exceptions, to unspeakable environmental contamination, to needless and unconscionable Covid-19 suffering (Nebraska ranks 11th in the country in per capita cases).
It's an embarrassment, an insult. Enough! Put Good Life on the bench to recover, and start to find better coaches and players soon, for the overall good of the State of Nebraska.
"The Good Life" was more than a 1970's state motto. It was a way of thinking that transcended slogans that come and go. It hasn't been the official motto for many years. For shame that Nebraskans' standards for state government have fallen so low that it is now becoming a distant memory.
