Friends, Californians,
countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury the California dream, not to praise it
The nasty debts and obligations that the
state incurred funding the dream of a better opportunity for the next
generation persists long after the money is spent,
The good done, by say, a good public
education is interred with the loser who got the education,
So let it be with the dream … The noble
Brown
Hath told you the old dream was too ambitious for these times;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath the dream answered it
Here, under leave of Brown and the wise men of California,
(For Brown’s budget is honest;
So are its provisions all; all honest and realistic)
Come I to speak at the funeral for the dream
A well-funded California was a friend to our ancestors, and seemed like a
promise to my generation,
With low-cost, accessible higher
education for all building a middle class and a dynamic economy,
But Brown and the wise men say the dream is too ambitious for this new
generation of Californians,
And they are honorable men.
Over the past 30 years, the legions of 13
and 98 centralized power and built a new governing system in which left and
right locked their own spending mandates and tax limits onto our dream, all of
these barnacles strangling spending on the broad programs and infrastructure
that fed the dream.
But Brown and the wise men say 13 and 98
must not be touched
And Brown is an honorable man with an
honest budget
The dream hath brought many to
California, the 20th century’s Rome,
Whose taxes, at rates as high or higher than today’s, did the general coffers
fill:
Did this in the dream seem too ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, the dream wept — and offered opportunity
through health care and education:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brown says the dream is too costly for today’s realities;
And he is an honorable man.
You all did see that it was suggested that the dream might be brought back to
life
With systemic reform, tax reform that
broadens the base, perhaps a constitutional convention
But Brown and the wise men of Sacramento
say that this is all too ambitious
Too confusing, and not testing well in
the polls
Unlike their five-year temporary tax
increases, which will balance the budget,
even after they expire.
And they are honorable men.
I speak not to disprove what Brown and the wise men spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love the dream once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for the dream?
But yesterday talk of the California
dream might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there.
And none so poor to do him reverence.
Brown, the legislative Democrats, the
Republicans all say:
We must cut today and make our dreams
more realistic
Just because we must
And they are honorable men.
O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brown wrong, and the wise men wrong, and the legislators wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men who want an honest budget:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead dream, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men and their honest budget.