February 17, 2011 04:09 AM UTC

It's Time to "Walk Like an Egyptian"

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• by: madmike

I opened my paper this morning to read that Governor Chickenlooper has decided to take the easy way out of our budget mess and dump it on  the backs of our kids.  Why not?  They can’t vote and they don’t have any money to make campaign contributions.  Can you imagine if Governor Tancredo or Governor Maes had made such a suggestion?  Progressives from around the state would be all over them like white on rice.  But what do we hear when Governor Chickenlooper does it?  The silence is deafening.  My hope is that the silence is only temporary and only because people are still in shock that a Democrat would propose a budget like this one.

Where was the governor’s spine in this proposal?  I grew up in a time when Democrats were fighters who stood up for the poor and the middle-class.  They worked to see that all kids could count on a strong educational system as their ticket to a better life than what their parents had.  They stood up to powerful, monied interests and expected that those who were fortunate enough to prosper in this country paid their fair share, and maybe even a little more, to help the less fortunate have a chance.

But I didn’t see that today.  And it isn’t like the Governor didn’t have any choice.  He could have paired his budget recommendations with an endorsement of the ballot measure put forth by the Colorado Center for Law and Policy for a graduated state income tax.  Their proposal would drop the rate for the bottom 72% of Colorado residents and raise them for the other 28% on a graduated basis based on their means.  Or he could have been really brave and took the opportunity that this draconian budget presented to suggest that it’s time to finally repeal the Tabor Amendment and give responsibility for spending and taxation back to the state legislature where it belongs.  But instead he took the “chicken” way out.

This guy’s only been in office a month and I already really don’t like him.  From what I’ve seen so far, he’s a rich, opportunistic Republican masquerading as a Democrat who snuck into the governor’s mansion when two right-wing wackos combined to make him look like a good choice.  Shame on me for getting suckered.  But I guarantee I won’t be suckered again.  I won’t vote for this guy again unless he reverses his course.  And I don’t see that happening.  If I’m lucky, a good progressive will step up and challenge him in the next primary.  In that case, I will even re-register as a Democrat so I can vote him out.

But until then, I  think the time is quickly approaching for the people to take to the streets.  I think it’s time for public employees, especially teachers, to start staging sit-ins, sick-ins and slow-downs.  I think its time for high school and university students to walk out of classes and take to the streets in front of our state capitol so our legislators and our governor can see, graphically and personally, just how fed up people are becoming with the greedy, me-first, screw-everybody-else attitude that has pervaded our political system for the last thirty years.  As an old, draft-dodging, former hippie I remember when taking to the streets and sitting in government offices got people’s attention and produced positive changes.  It’s time to resurrect some of those methods.   It’s time to “walk like an Egyptian.”