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I told you so?
The Collegiate Peaks Reading Council, a regional
organization of do-gooder educators, has proclaimed that
this is TV Blitz Week.
Your grade-school children
are supposed to avoid the tube all week while they take up
more wholesome activities, such as reading comic books,
fighting with their siblings and zapping aliens in video
games.
As a dutiful parent, I'm participating in this TV boycott. I'm even encouraging my kids to read real literature. However, that makes it difficult to find out what former Gov. Dick Lamm, now a TV commentator, has to say about current affairs in Colorado.
I know what I'd say if I were Lamm, though. At every
broadcast, I'd come on and announce some of Colorado's
latest dismal news -- deteriorating and dangerous highways,
overcrowded prisons, third-rate educational system,
collapsing rural economy. Then I would guffaw loudly and
say I told you so.
Though few listened, he did tell us so, back in the 1970s when Colorado was booming.
Lamm pointed to the ruined hillsides of the Appalachian coal belt. Vast wealth came out of those areas, but now they're dirt-poor. They don't have much of a future, either -- the remaining workforce isn't educated. Even tourism won't work when your scenery is despoiled and your rivers are poisonous.
As he got to be known as Governor Gloom,
Lamm
often mentioned that Colorado could not live forever on the
proceeds of ripping rocks out of the ground. True, the
extractive industries were thriving at the time, as was
real-estate speculation. But Lamm said they wouldn't always
flourish -- the day will come when there's no more ore, or
prices will drop, or Americans will quit buying overpriced
second homes.
To prepare for that day, he urged Colorado to invest in a different future, to improve its schools and public facilities. Revenues were pouring into the state treasury -- Colorado certainly had the money then.
One is reminded of the biblical account of Joseph in the court of Pharaoh. In a dream, Joseph saw that seven fat years would be followed by seven lean years. Joseph said that surpluses should be stored during the fat years, so that Egypt would still thrive during the ensuing lean years.
The difference between a despotic, unenlightened regime like ancient Egypt and a modern, progressive state like Colorado is that Pharaoh heeded Joseph, whereas the true rulers of Colorado -- the Republicans in the legislature -- told Lamm to take a long walk off a short pier.
Instead of investing in the future by improving Colorado, they cut taxes with a vengeance, about $3 billion worth to date. For several years, it worked. But the boom years are over and the day of reckoning has arrived.
Our transportation system is dangerous and deteriorating, our educational system is an inequitable and underfunded disgrace, our prisons are overcrowded, our rivers run orange. Colorado simply isn't prepared for the present, let alone the future.
Fixing those problems will take money. But there's no money in the state treasury, which is why there are recall petitions circulating about Gov. Romer -- he says we need a tax increase. And a tax increase is tough to swallow when times are as bad as they are now.
But suppose that the $3 billion from the booming days of a decade ago were still available. Suppose that Colorado had upgraded its infrastructure, in everything from transportation to education, back when times were good. Suppose Colorado had prepared for a changing world where molybdenum, oil, coal and wheat no longer mattered all that much.
That's what Lamm wanted Colorado to do, and we'd certainly be better off now if his advice had been heeded then. Instead of a Joseph whose foresight saved an empire, he turned out to be our version of Cassandra.
Cassandra was a Trojan princess who received a two-sided gift from the Olympian deities. She could foresee the future. That was the good news. The bad news is that she was also cursed, so that no one would heed her warnings.
The stories of Joseph and Cassandra are things you have
to explain to your kids when they give up TV and take up
reading. It's a lot of work for a parent, so I'll be
relieved when this TV Blitz Week
is over. Besides, I
really would like to see Dick Lamm come on and gloat a
little as he says I told you so.
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