It is always sad news when rich, monopoly companies announce layoffs and cutbacks in typical cutthroat, inhumane rhetoric.

Then there are the questions. Why not try different business strategies? Why not allow employees to transfer to other jobs? Why not do everything you can to offer jobs and provide at least some financial security in America’s communities, especially in these difficult economic times?

Regular, hard-working people suffer. The rich, who have seen their wealth grow astronomically in recent years, protect their rising income and put their greed before their country and local communities. It is un-American, un-democratic, but it has always worked that way.

Yet the recent announcement by The Oklahoman that it was offering early retirement to more than 100 employees and laying off another 150 employees is actually good news for the state. We Okies are watching the unraveling—year by year—of the largest propaganda machine the right-wing has in one of the reddest of red states, and that is really something to cheer about. In the end, this right-wing collapse will create more economic development and jobs here than any other singular event anyone can possibly perceive. Unfortunately, it may take some time.

One can even hope the mega-wealthy Gaylord family, which principally owns and operates the newspaper, will sell The Oklahoman soon. (That is Christy Gaylord Everest pictured to the right. She is the chief officer of the company.) I bet those Gaylords do not want to mess with any stinking business that might actually take work and ingenuity. I mean, whew, what a hassle.

David Thompson, publisher of The Oklahoman, recently announced that 102 employees will be offered early retirement and 150 more will be laid off starting in October.

In his statement, Thompson talked about how “painful” it all was for him, but it was needed to “right-size” costs. So, see, it is a downsize to right-size. Now we understand. We can only hope that Thompson and the Gaylords are doing okay as they deal with all the pain of the perfectly understandable need to right-size themselves.

Thompson, like other newspaper publishers across the country, is primarily blaming the Internet. More and more people are turning away from hard-copy newspapers and getting their information from the Internet. Ad revenues are down. Circulation is down. The cost of printing and transportation is a factor as well.

But one can’t help but wonder if The Oklahoman and other declining newspapers ever asked the simple question: How do we appeal to people who actually enjoy reading? The Oklahoman, in particular, long ago gave up on open-minded, intelligent readers who read in different forms, from the Internet to books to magazines to newspapers. Many of these people are liberals. I have argued in the past the newspaper industry is failing because, among many reasons, it is trying to appease or appeal to people—primarily population segments within the right-wing—who simply do not like to read. When you operate a business based on a read/write framework, you need to appeal to people whom like to read and write.

The Oklahoman is noted for having a notorious right-wing bias. The newspaper’s leadership knows this. Did Everest or Thompson or anyone else in the newspaper consider expanding its editorial page and news columns to include liberal commentary and information that appeals to moderates and liberals? Did they consider adding a prominent local, liberal columnist? Did they consider a “surge” of their own by hiring more reporters to do in-depth and longer pieces that would appeal to people who like to read?

It seems to me that most newspapers in this country are doing everything they can to alienate readers not attract them.

But, in the end, the decline of The Oklahoman and the rise of Newsok.com, its companion Web site, is good news for the state. Certainly, Newsok.com is a monopoly in its own right, but for now the Internet is still a place for free expression. When people view Newsok.com, they are only one click away from getting a different perspective from thousands of serious and popular news and political blogs and Web sites in the state and throughout the country. Unless right-wingers gain control of the Internet, Newsok.com will never have the political influence once held by The Oklahoman.

The Oklahoman and Newok.com will no longer be the gatekeepers for new business and new initiatives in Oklahoma. You will not have to advertise through them to get a business going here, and, perhaps in the future, you will not have to adhere to rigid, narrow-minded conservative philosophy—promoted by the newspaper—to get a position of leadership in the state. As Oklahoma becomes known throughout the country and world as more mainstream and less politically radical, business investment will increase and more people will move here.

My heart goes out to those people who will suffer because of the layoffs, but the future of Oklahoma becomes brighter each time we learn of the newspaper’s continued demise.

As the vast majority of Oklahomans struggled in recent years with stagnant wages, inadequate health care, rising prices and tuition costs, the state legislature enacted tax cuts that benefited the wealthy.

The tax cuts have hurt educational funding at all levels and left no extra money for impoverished families. Oklahoma is a state with a staggering number of hungry, poor children, according to recent reports.

This has been the modus operandi of the Republican Party over the last several years, and, in red-states like Oklahoma, this means many Democrats have also participated in one of the nation’s largest shifts of wealth in its history. The fix is in. The rich get tax cuts. The poor and middle class get low wages and higher prices.

Meanwhile, the rich increasingly become the only people who can afford to donate substantial money to politicians, who then help them obtain even more wealth through even additional tax cuts and other incentives. This is called politics when it should be called bribery.

As Oklahoma’s own Will Rogers once put it, “Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer.”

Of course, Rogers could not have even fathomed the disparity in incomes between the rich and everyone else in this country these days. The greed of a few is threatening the financial security of an entire country. What else is new, right?

So it should come as no surprise that new facts sheets show state revenues have decreased by several million dollars in recent years because of tax cuts that mainly benefited Oklahoma’s wealthiest citizens.

That is the determination of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, which recently issued fact sheets dealing with the state's recent tax cuts.

OK Policy notes that if tax revenue had been allowed to grow at its historical average, the state would have collected $429 million more in the 2008 fiscal year. Instead, the legislature cut taxes, and the wealthiest benefited the most, according to OK Policy.

According to a press statement issued by OK Policy, “…the wealthiest fifth of households receive 73 percent of the benefit from lowering the top income tax rate, totaling $423 million, with the average household in the top fifth reaping annual tax savings of $1,421. By contrast, the bottom 40 percent of households will receive only 3 percent of the benefit from cutting the top rate, totaling $17 million, with the average household in the bottom 40 percent pocketing annual savings of under $30.”

There are still some people in this state, most notably The Oklahoman editorial writers, who claim the recent tax cuts did not primarily benefit the rich. But the facts have consistently proved them wrong. The legislature squandered an opportunity to move the state forward to help out the richest people in Oklahoma. It is that simple.

The wealthiest in our state and country now own the political system, and they will manipulate it to obtain even more wealth.

"During this time of robust economic growth in our state, it is unfortunate that decisions made in recent years have squandered what could have been a real opportunity to create a better educated, healthier and more economically competitive state," said Matt Guillory, Executive Director of Oklahoma Policy Institute, in the press statement.

The national Republican Party, now under the leadership of a 72-year-old serial liar, has become a surreal, bizarre spectacle that defines the country’s broken political system.

Do we laugh? Do we throw our hands up in despair and give up? Is it really possible that some 60 million people—even if in a losing effort—will actually vote for Republican presidential nominee John McCain? What motivates these voters? Ideology? Party loyalty?

The Republican Party “brand” now reads like a Joseph Heller novel. The current GOP plot reveals its anti-logic, a cobweb of irrationality, contradictions and lies.

The corporate media serves as more than a stenography service for McCain and his new beauty pageant queen. It tries to normalize this carnival freak show. It argues that not only is the three-headed, talking snake real but it also represents what is normal and even natural.

For example, McCain’s choice of vice president is the epitome of gender tokenism and crass political calculation even as it utterly undermines months and months of supposed serious political argument. McCain, who simply cannot run on the Republican Party’s accomplishments, has based his entire campaign on the supposed inexperience of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. But then, in a breathtaking example of contradiction and illogic, he chose as his vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, the 1984 winner of the Miss Wasilla (Alaska) beauty contest. She later served as mayor of the city, population 6716.

To be fair, there is more to Palin than just physical beauty. She is, for example, under investigation for using her gubernatorial powers to try to hurt the career of her sister’s ex-husband, who happens to be an Alaska State Trooper. Meanwhile, news flash, we hear the news today that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Palin apparently proudly believes in abstinence-only sex education in schools.

Thomas Schaller, writing in Salon.com puts it this way: "What's galling is this: When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!

What will happen in the next episode of the Palin soap opera?

What we do know and what is most important is Palin, who has only served as governor for two years, obviously lacks the world experience and intellectual curiosity she would need to lead the country since she has rarely traveled outside the country. What we do know is her positions on cultural wedge issues reflect the radical rightwing in this country. What we do know is McCain would be the oldest president ever inaugurated in this country, and he has a history of cancer. The untested and radical Palin, with enough family baggage to fill an airport luggage carousel, would be his immediate successor.

As the Palin drama unfolds, Hurricane Gustav reminds us of how the federal government under Republican control now despises the very people its claims to serve. “We Are NOT In This Together, America,” could easily be the Republican National Convention’s slogan. It might not even cost the GOP a vote given the normalization and embrace of anti-logic among conservative voters and the un-American corporate media.

It is a national disgrace with worldwide reverberations that the Republican Party has to supposedly tone down its annual convention because of Gustav, which hits New Orleans as I write this. President Bush, the most unpopular president in recorded American history, has canceled his convention speech on Monday and McCain has said, well, it just is not right to party down when thousands of Americans are displaced and major destruction looms.

Of course, we all know this is a lie, this sudden GOP concern for ordinary people faced with a natural disaster. The GOP faithful are calculating how to use the Gustav’s wrath to their political advantage, nothing more, nothing less. Will it be good or bad for the GOP convention if the levees break? This is the hollow, political calculation that defines the Republican Party and their enablers in the corporate media these days. One thing the GOP will not do this week is discuss the impact of global warming on the growing intensity of recent hurricanes.

So this is the biggest storyline of the political season so far: A major political party in the United States has to cancel portions of its convention because of a weather event that might remind voters of how its bogus Laissez-faire ideology has failed and will continue to fail regular Americans.

Still, recent polls show McCain and Obama in a dead heat.

What can be more surreal than that?