For the first time that I can remember the Denver Post has published a front page editorial. The Post's editorial board, in a state of high dudgeon worthy of the Chamber of Commerce of Witichita, Kansas, compares the governor of our fair, square state to Jimmy Hoffa and grimly hints at "the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor."
According to the Post's deeply concerned editorial board:
The governor on Friday unveiled his plan to drive up the cost of doing business in Colorado by forcing collective bargaining on thousands of state employees.
And:
Experts say collective bargaining can add as much as 30 percent to the cost of doing business. Tell us, how does that make sense for a state that can hardly pay its bills and plans to come to voters as soon as 2009 with its hand out? (see http://www.denverpos...)
Oddly enough, however, the editorial board's caniptions have no basis in fact as reported in the same newspaper on the same front page:
The executive order did not give state employees the powers of traditional collective bargaining--it contains a no-strike policy and specifies the new 'partnership agreements' will not result in binding arbitration. (see: http://www.denverpos...)
So the obvious conclusion is that the Denver Post's editorial board doesn't read The Denver Post.
Here's what this means for us. First, the Post's editorial board just exposed itself for what it really is: a bunch of market fundamentalists who are willing to ignore and distort even their own paper's reporting to suppress economic democracy. They are not our friends, and we should not expect them ever to have our candidates' backs. Second, Bill Ritter has done a good thing and needs our help. He needs to win this one. If he backs down, Ritter becomes Salazar, i.e., a disempowered dancing monkey for the right held in contempt by rank-and-file Dems. If he wins, we will have gone a long way toward taming the far-right extremism that's been tearing apart the state and the country for the past decade. Third, the right has just given us a big gift. They are so over the top on this one that they'll be easy to ridicule, minimize, and defeat.
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