In the year since we brought things into the open with a clean breath of fresh air at City Hall we have learned about corrupt spending practices and unethical conflicts of interest that waste your money... and keep Dallas from being the great city of our dreams.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible?

If we can't have the courage to tell our constituents hey we've got to cut back then if we can point to something and say I would like to vote for more benefits for you but this balanced budget amendment or statutory spending cap or whatever the device is is preventing me from doing it.

America needs jobs smaller government less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech.

It's great that people are basically spending their two weeks of vacation to come out and be with us in some weird part of the world. And I think we owe it to them to take 'em to some cool places.

Rather than saying 'My checking account is a wreck ' change it to 'I will learn how to track my spending and balance my checkbook.'

If one's honest about it spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very very good. Spending $1 000 for a ham sandwich would feel very very bad. Spending $19 000 for a small family car would feel well more or less right. But as with physical pain fiscal pain can depend on the individual and everyone has a different threshold.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.