(Will Oklahoma progressives get shut out of the political debate this legislative session? What type of progressive political agenda, if any, could be successful? In posts this week, DocHoc is giving his preview of the 2012 Oklahoma Legislature.)
Let me start with the caveat that the record is clear that I do NOT support any cut to the state income tax right now because such a cut, even if it's relatively small, could lower education and social-program funding.
With recent state budget cuts, that's the last thing that needs to happen in Oklahoma right now.
I've expressed my opinion about the issue here, in the Oklahoma Gazette and elsewhere.
(Will Oklahoma progressives get shut out of the political debate this upcoming legislative session? What type of progressive political agenda, if any, could be successful? In posts this week, DocHoc is giving his preview of the 2012 Oklahoma Legislature.)
A few years ago, one of my politically active conservative friends and I were having a heated political discussion that ended with him assuring me that the state would retain a large extremely conservative majority of voters for at least our lifetimes.
A bill that could abolish tenure and threaten academic freedom at state college campuses has been introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature.
State Rep. Corey Holland, a Republican from Marlow, has introduced House Bill 2598, an approximately four-page measure that, if approved, would put professors and administrative staff on an annual contract system. The bill states that " . . . on or after July 1, 2013, no administrative or instructional personnel may be awarded tenure, a multiyear contract, or a continuing contract . . ." College presidents would be exempted from the measure.
At the end of William Faulkner's brilliant 1936 novel Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin Compson is asked why he hates the South, which leads to one of the most famous last paragraphs in American literature:
"I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I don't hate it," he said. I don't hate it, he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!
Of course, as readers we know it's quite clear Quentin's repeated protests leave open the interpretation that he does, in fact, hate the South.
I've been trying to respond to each of The Oklahoman editorials, published on NewsOK.com, that criticize that Occupy Wall Street movement to highlight the sheer inanity and cluelessness of perhaps the most conservative newspaper in the country.
The newspaper, which is now owned by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, doesn't "get" the Occupy movement, and it has undoubtedly spent thousands of words proving it. But what the newspaper lacks in basic cultural understanding it makes up for in ad hominem, demeaning attacks on people who basically want a decent economic future for themselves.
By Nathaniel Batchelder
Director, Peace House Oklahoma City
Pray cooler heads will guide America in the dialogue and decision-making over Iran's position in the world. Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and there is no certain evidence that such a program is under way. Certainly Iran has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and the interests of world peace demand that these issues be resolved without military action that could launch a catastrophic war.
Another war would destroy America's painful recovery from the indebtedness of two wars and the 2008 economic crash. Gasoline prices would probably go up another dollar per gallon. The Iraq and Afghanistan war's final costs will exceed $2 trillion. Some estimates say $4 trillion, or even $6 trillion, including lifelong care for veterans physically or emotionally disabled.
It's not often that members of Oklahoma's ultra-conservative Congressional delegation, including U.S. Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and I agree on an issue, but the growing opposition to the SOPA and PIPA bills has created an interesting coalition of disparate proportions.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), pending in the U.S. Senate, are terrible bills that obviously threaten free speech in this country. Oklahoma's Congressional delegation is waking up to that point, and we should support them on this extremely important issue.
A qualified decision by the President Barack Obama administration to deny, at least for now, a permit to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, which would originate in Canadian tar sands and go through Oklahoma, was met with incredulous, political hyperbole by Gov. Mary Fallin.
Her reaction ignores any potential environmental impact caused by the pipeline's construction, the possibility of a catastrophic spill here in Oklahoma and the country's overwhelming need to reduce its dependence on foreign fossil fuels and develop clean and renewable energy sources.
The GOP push to grant personhood to human embryos, which can be viewed as an attack against contraceptive methods, is yet another absurd side show to needlessly incite a segment of the Oklahoma Republican voting base this year, but such an extremist law would surely face a major lawsuit and would never be enacted.
Even Mississippi voters-yes, MISSISSIPPI--voted down a similar measure last year. That's one of the places Oklahoma often competes with in the race to create the nation's first official Christian state theocracy.
I always enjoy listening to the Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, given on Aug. 23, 1963, when we celebrate his life each year.
I wonder what our world would be like without King's achievements? This year, I wonder, too, what King would think about our corporate-controlled political world and the burgeoning protests against it. It's going to be an interesting spring and summer in this nation as protesters hit the streets.
The annual Oklahoma City parade honoring King's life will begin at 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 16. It begins at NW 7th Street and Broadway Ave. and then proceeds down Broadway to Sheridan. Here's a listing of some events. There will be special tributes this year to local civil rights activist Clara Luper, who died last June. I wrote about Luper's life here.
State Rep. Mike Reynolds' legislative proposal that could prevent gay people from serving in the Oklahoma National Guard and state Rep. Sally Kern's obsession with supposedly protecting Oklahomans from Sharia Law when they go to court are really just bigoted, freaky sideshows to the main GOP play this year: Cutting taxes for rich people and cutting state government.
Progressives, of course, should always raise their voices against intolerance and hate, but both Reynolds' and Kern's legislative proposals are unlikely to get much traction this year and would obviously face court battles if passed. The two Republican Oklahoma City legislators might want to motivate the GOP base by assuring it discrimination against gay people and Muslims still remains a priority for the party this election year, but, at this juncture, it seems the general, faux anti-Obama hysteria-some of which is also based on bigotry-will be more than enough to assure a large voter turnout.
A recent editorial in The Oklahoman that argues the state "top income tax rate is too high" is an indication that Republicans and the corporate power structure here have cemented a plan to reduce the income tax again this coming legislative session.
It's highly unlikely the plan can be stopped. The activists who oppose the upcoming cut do so with the best intentions but specific efforts and the money spent to try to stop it might be better used developing and implementing long-range initiatives to bring more political balance to state government.
Two recent public announcements here illustrate the state GOP's health-care philosophy, which is to protect the profits of insurance companies at whatever cost to patients.
First, it was announced that Republican Gov. Mary Fallin, at the request of Republican Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak, signed a new rule that eliminates birth as a qualifying event for health insurance, which means some parents could conceivably be faced with huge hospital costs if their newborn baby has severe medical problems. The reason given for the rule is that it would encourage more insurance companies to offer policies in Oklahoma. This, so goes the doublespeak, could actually mean more children overall would be covered. Thus, some children won't be covered so other children will be covered only to ensure insurance companies' profits.
Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon.com, has published a thorough piece about the vapid and nauseating political season we're now enduring as reported by an establishment media system that has immeasurably lowered public discourse in recent decades.
The breathless, horserace type of media reporting we now endure is more focused on Newt Gingrich's tears for his mother or Mitt Romney's dog than the reality of our eroding civil liberties or the increasing wealth disparity between the rich and everyone else, whether under the government control of Republicans or Democrats.
Republicans are poised to pass another reduction in the state income tax this coming legislative session, and it's probably wishful thinking that somehow they can be stopped from further decimating government programs and educational systems in their quest to transfer more wealth to the super rich.
The fix is in. How can anyone refuse the Republicans' incredulous offer to lower taxes with no or limited immediate repercussions? Those who oppose a further reduction in the income tax at this point-like myself-can argue that more cuts in state government, which means less services, will hurt the most vulnerable: the poor, the elderly and school children. But that argument hasn't resonated among Oklahoma voters, a solid majority of whom have bought into the conservative worldview of so-called limited government and trickle-down economics.
(This week, I'm posting excerpts from 2011 Okie Funk and Blue Oklahoma blogs. Click on the headline to read the entire post. Thanks for reading Okie Funk and Blue Oklahoma. -Kurt Hochenauer)
I have long been a critic of The Oklahoman in this space and elsewhere primarily for the extreme right-wing views on its editorial page.
I have also consistently pointed out right-wing biases in its news coverage, from the GOP, public-relations style of reporting that emanates from the newspaper's Washington bureau to the way it frames the local news to what it even determines is news.
My posts and articles about the newspaper over the last ten years or so could easily fill a book.
Along the way, I have been critical of the newspaper's principal ownership, the Gaylord family, for being a major player in a corporate power structure here in the Oklahoma City area that seems more interested in reaping its own financial rewards than working for a common good.
Whether you follow the debate about student debt or not, one thing is clear: financial aid for higher education is an investment in our collective future. It is in our best interest to regulate how that investment is stewarded to ensure that our hopes aren't wasted on beer and hot new cars.
Those of us who've been to college know the stories. Your dorm-mate who vanished with the Pell Grant that was meant for his Dad. The suddenly flush, then tragically broke friend who just had to live off campus. And then there was that guy who never showed up to class after the first week and found out the hard way that the Fed's weren't kidding when they said that money was for school and school alone.
We've all had those experiences, and we all understand the consequences through their sometimes comical instruction. But what happens when it's big business that's wasting away the investment we've made in the future of these students, and our economy?
Why, we pat them on the backs and toast their $186 million success, of course no matter what shady tricks they pulled to get there.
(This week, I'm posting excerpts from 2011 Okie Funk blogs. All these posts also ran on Blue Oklahoma. Click on the headline to read the entire post. Thanks for reading Okie Funk and Blue Oklahoma. -Kurt Hochenauer)
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe-and by extension the fossil fuel industry in Oklahoma-has been remarkably quiet about a new scientific report showing the acceleration of arctic ice melting.
Inhofe is infamous throughout the world for denying the link between global warming, which leads to melting ice, and manmade produced carbon emissions. He once called the threat of global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," and he has obsessively attacked but failed to refute the scientific evidence about climate change. But so far he's remained mum on the most recent information. Maybe he's had an epiphany. (Just kidding.)
Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma has recently been hammering home her pet issue: eliminating the state income tax that makes up 32.1% of Oklahoma's total budget. After the last three years of deep cuts to the state budget that included a 48.6% cut to the Department of Transportation, a 43.7% cut to the Civil Emergency Management Administration, a complete defunding of the Oklahoma State Department, and an average cut of 22.1% to each State Agency, now is certainly not the time to consider giving away almost 1/3 of all state revenues, because you know, things like roads, police, emergency response, and our only tool for effective interstate communication and collaboration we can just live without.
During a time that every state agency in Oklahoma is feeling the pinch, should we really be considering slashing our revenue streams? What costs will be associated with such a drastic reduction? Where are we expected to establish revenue streams that will comparatively fund local government to even the present anemic extent?
When OCCC elected to grant a contract to HigherOne to handle its financial aid payments, it did a disservice to its students.
HigherOne is known for the kind of predatory banking practices that make the worst banks such onerous institutions. Fees that range from $29 to $38 for insufficient funds, a $50 lack of documentation fee, a $19 per month account inactivity fee after 9 months of no activity in a supposedly free account, an outgoing domestic wire transfer fee of $25, an outgoing international wire transfer fee of $50!
This is a community blog operated since 2006 by people dedicated to promoting and restoring progressive values in Oklahoma. A courageous band of patriots, we fight right-wing tyranny in one of the reddest of red states. Do you want to help by posting here? Do you want traffic back to your blog or site? We welcome posts written by liberals and centrist to conservative Democrats and Independents. Register above and start posting. Crossposting is allowed. Questions? Contact kurt.hochenauer@gmail.com.
Be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter.
Subscribe in a reader
