Some tips to improve the California economy and get it moving again:

1, California's current government is competing against business and has turned into a failed business itself. This must stop. Government was meant to regulate and facilitate business as well as civil life, not destroy it with agendas. The current government is so overwrought with corruption it cannot operate, let alone carry out its duties as a civil authority.

The state budget is a perfect example of this situation. New taxes are not the way to go. Raising taxes will only accelerate the death of the economy. Businesses and residents are already stretched to their limits. Remember you want the economy to bloom and grow, not strangle and kill it. This takes patience.

2, Those in the lending and mortgage industries incompetently created and packaged poor loans as investment instruments that would eventually fail â€- hitting our state economy especially hard, i.e. greed and incompetence.

3, Our government has a great opportunity in its hands if it will step up to the bar. It will take leadership â€- of which not much has been seen in that department. The following needs to be done:

a. Set up a reality commission to do one thing: real mortgage oversight.

b. Require each mortgage company to reassess all the mortgages it has issued during the last three years, work with the lenders and rewrite the mortgages to realistic values and interest rates. The lenders will take the losses.

4, Lower taxes on businesses, which would allow them to blossom. Economies are built on bringing in business not strangling, or chasing it out of the state. This will put people back to work. Provide business incentives. We need to rebuild a manufacturing base for our economy. This provides tax revenue.

5, As for the number of California's government-paid employees, education, etc.

a. Gradually transition government employees to the business world.

b. Reduce money for education. More than half the state budget goes to education. This is ridiculous. For the money spent, the state is not seeing any return in this area.

6, Government leaders need to start acting as representatives of the people, abiding by the laws established to protect the people and this land.

7, Special interests need to take a lower priority when it comes to the well-being of a people. Oil interests, for example, as seen during the last 18 months, need to be brought under control.

8, Real leaders need to be identified and put in place to manage this reconstruction. Incompetence is deeply rooted in the current system and needs to be pulled out of the garden and burned.

This is not an easy job, however if done right it will allow our economy to begin to blossom in the next two to five years.

Mark Mobley is a Lake Elsinore resident.