Money For Bankers, No School Buses For Oklahoma Children

(Oklahoma needs to increase public education funding to at least the regional state average. Now there is HOPE this can happen soon. Read DocHoc's commentary this week in Oklahoma City's best alternative newspaper, the Oklahoma Gazette.)

If you need more confirmation about how absurd and mean local right-wing ideology has become, just check out Friday’s The Oklahoman.

The newspaper published an editorial (“Round and round: Bus eating schools budgets,” September 26, 2008) essentially arguing that state schools should not offer or reduce bus service for students. It argues that bus service “. . . seems a bit of a luxury, not a necessity.” High gasoline prices have driven up bus service costs, according to the article, and though it would not be easy, should not parents “take on drop-off and pick-up duties”?

As we end bus service school to the state’s school children because of high fuel costs, according to The Oklahoman, we should rescue Wall Street bankers. In an editorial published on the same day as the bus service rant, the newspaper looks to U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn for guidance about saving the major financial Wall Street companies facing insolvency.

The editorial (The Deal: Risks of inaction worse than bailout,” September 26, 2008) finds the crisis is “requiring free marketeers like himself [Coburn] to concede the need for government action, that's meaningful.” The editorial agues the country should bailout Wall Street investment bankers because “. . . the risks of doing nothing are simply harder.”

So let us get our GOP ideology straight here. The parents of Oklahoma school children should just accept the fact their children cannot ride the bus to school. That’s just life. Get over it. Meanwhile, rich investment bankers should get a taxpayer bailout from these parents because, well, we have to do something, right?

Let me clearly state the newspaper’s position: School children. Buses. Bad. Wall Street. Investment bankers. Good.

The foundation of GOP philosophy—the idea that the free market is the arbitrator of all reality—has now been exposed as fraudulent because of the massive government intervention into the Wall Street crisis. Across the country, Americans are waking up to the giant GOP/Bush hangover, the lies, hypocrisy, contradictions.

But here in Oklahoma, the state’s right-wing propaganda ministry churns on relentlessly, and even school children are not safe from its wrath.