Oklahoman Repeats Oligarchy Taxation Ideology

The Oklahoman continues to dish out right-wing lies and propaganda about the state’s recent taxation history.

Why does this declining, inherited monopoly incessantly and obsessively push a worldview that limits regular people’s opportunities and dreams? The newspaper does so because, as its history has shown, it supports an un-democratic, warped view of this country, one in which a small but powerful oligarchy controls the money and political arena.

On Sunday, The Oklahoman published a disingenuous editorial (“Watch out! SQ 640 foes still peddling fear,” September 14, 2008) about State Question 640, a measure which makes it difficult, some say nearly impossible, for the state legislature to raise taxes. The measured passed 16 years ago.

Here is the unverified gist of the commentary:

More than 16 years later, politicians and others are still holding a watch party for the tax-limiting measure. They're watching for signs that 640 has devastated state government or signs that the people are ready to shuck this experiment in moving tax-raising authority from the Legislature to the people.

The point here is that people concerned with the state’s major and chronic socioeconomic problems, many of which have been caused by a transfer of wealth to Oklahoma’s richest citizens, are waiting eagerly for citizens to shuck 640. But where, exactly, is this “watch party”? Who is hosting it? The editorial offers no specifics, creating in typical right-wing style a fictional, unnamed bogeyman. It later mentions how opponents of SQ 640 tried to use fear to stop its approval just like they are using fear now. But, again, who exactly are these people? Where is all the fear? Are people shaking and trembling? Where? Who?

Is the fear caused by the relatively new Oklahoma Policy Institute, which has pointed out that recent tax cuts primarily benefited the state’s richest citizens while reducing revenues that might have gone to improve education funding? Is the fear caused by the Oklahoma Education Association, which works diligently to improve our schools even though the state has the lowest per student spending rate in the region?

And, really, can you imagine a full-time newspaper writer in this state actually lauding the great SQ 640, which probably has significantly reduced state revenues, without mentioning all the state’s problems, from high poverty rates to underfunded schools to a staggering number of hungry families? You get what you pay for, and in Oklahoma, the state pays very little compared to other states for basic necessities, such as decent schools. This has always been the state’s story, and it looks like it will remain the same for years to come.

The next day, The Oklahoman published an editorial arguing that education is the key to breaking cycles of poverty, and it even mentioned some of the state’s problems, but that is only token lip service. The newspaper will never support better funding for schools at any level as long as its current principal owners, the Gaylord family, owns it.

The newspaper remains incapable of conducting a real debate about taxation and its relationship to issues, such as economic development, infrastructure, educational quality and the state’s socioeconomic problems. The newspaper’s editorial writers appear to be employed only to serve the immediate ideological whims of the publication’s owners and the corporate oligarchy here, not Oklahomans. That is just business, true, but it is business that is bad for the people of Oklahoma.

The Oklahoman, which is in a business decline, recently announced it is laying off employees. What if a different, progressive taxation system would have created more economic development here in the last two decades? Wouldn’t that have helped the newspaper on a financial level? Do the business-side people at the newspaper even consider such obvious issues?