In a bizarre Facebook post, dissident Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate, Warren “Spud” Douglas has taken a position on the recent teacher walkouts and protests that have occurred over the last two months in Colorado and other states. Douglas stated,
“As true Republicans, we should be no friends of government, and we don’t believe that government can do anything as well as the private sector. Our schools are the best example of that. Therefore, if we are going to be ideologically honest with ourselves and our base, the best thing we can do is to de-fund this failing program which does nothing other than squeeze the taxpayer and churn out mediocre human material. Thank God and Doug Bruce for TABOR, which limits the spending of government, including our schools. On top of that, teachers know and have always known what their profession pays, so if teachers tell me they’re poorly paid, I just tell them, ‘You’re not poorly paid, just badly married.’”
We at the Focopolitan Tribune were floored at reading this. We reached Mr. Douglas, and asked him to clarify what he said. We also reminded him that arguably the best time for American public education was in the years following the Soviet Union’s launch of the satellite Sputnik. The launching of that satellite prompted the Republican (yes, Republican!) Eisenhower-administration to pump federal money through the bi-partisan National Defense Education Act into public schools in support of science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. The result was a flourishing of American STEM over the following decade, which culminated in the 1968 moon landing. Douglas responded, “Eisenhower was a traitor to the GOP! He might as well have been our Petain and our Quisling rolled into one! I don’t care what people say happened to public education after the passage of the unconstitutional NDEA. What Ike did was treason to the Republican cause. Oh, yeah and that moon landing was a hoax. I read all about it on the internet, so that kind of nullifies whatever supposed achievement we got from the NDEA.”
Covering the teacher demonstrations at the State Capitol, Focopolitan Tribune reporter Ludwig Schnee contacted a professional educator for comment on Mr. Douglas’ declarations, and this is what Kyla Hernandez had to say, “Are you kidding me? First off, I’m not even married, so I can’t be badly married. Besides that, this idea of taking funding away from schools because they’re failing is kind of like taking cops off the street when crime becomes a problem. I’d like to see if that’s gonna happen. What in the hell are these people thinking? If that’s how people are going to keep treating this state’s educators, they’d better expect more walkouts. Goddam, I thought [Governor John] Hickenlooper was bad on education. It just goes to show: nothing is so bad that some asshole of an ideologue can’t possibly make it worse. Geeze, people! Are you really speaking for yourselves or is your politics speaking for you? Do your voters a favor: get your heads out of your ever-loving asses, and think about the people you represent! We’re taxpayers too, and we demand you do better than what you’ve done. Is that too hard to grasp?”
