Okie Funk 2009 Review, Part One

Thanks to everyone who continues to read Okie Funk. I wish you all a great 2010. Here are some excerpts from posts in 2009:

http://www.okiefunk.com

State Rep. Jason Murphey, a Guthrie Republican, has introduced a bill this upcoming legislative session that would allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons in Oklahoma’s college classrooms.

A similar measure, dubbed “Carry on Campus,” didn’t make it into law last year. Let’s hope the bill fails to pass this year as well. It's unnecessary. It could actually lead to violence rather than prevent it.

Under proposed HB 1083, anyone who holds a concealed handgun permit and completes certification training given by the Council on Law Enforcement and Training (CLEET) would be allowed to carry concealed weapons at public colleges. The new bill appears to exempt faculty from the CLEET training requirement.

…

Students and faculty, with some exceptions, are not trained to respond to emergency shooting situations and could overreact or make a deadly situation worse. Bringing guns into classrooms would only increase the potential for violence. What about armed students who are distraught? What about accidental shootings? Some professors might not come to Oklahoma to teach if the law was passed.

These carry-on-campus bills are pushed by the country’s fanatical Second Amendment lobby, which advocates putting more and more weapons on the street. The ultimate goal for this lobby is to pass laws allowing most people to openly carry weapons virtually anywhere they go.

Carry On Campus Measure Back In 2009 Legislative Session, January 21, 2009

If some people still think the Oklahoma Republican Party is not owned and managed by big business, they should consider its vote Tuesday to kill legislation that would force insurance companies to cover the treatment of autistic children.

A House committee voted on party lines to kill the measure with Republicans opposing the measure and Democrats favoring it. The GOP controls the House and has a majority of votes on the House Economic and Financial Services Committee. The measure was voted down despite urgent pleas from Oklahoma families with autistic children.

Despite Republican spin, this is a clear GOP vote to protect the profits and interests of health insurance companies over the care of autistic children. It’s a cruel, anti-family vote.

The Oklahoma GOP, which is now the country’s weird museum of dead right-wing ideologies, argued the mandate could increase insurance costs by 7.8 percent, but the Democrats presented evidence that contradicted this claim. Several states require health insurance companies to cover autism treatment. It’s unlikely this one mandate would have any kind of significant impact on health insurance premiums or increasing the number of uninsured.

State GOP Puts Business Profits Before People, February 4, 2009

Is Oklahoma’s corporate power structure ever going to fight against the right-wing religious folks who consistently embarrass the state with their absurd protests against evolutionary theory and their disingenuous attempts to allow the teaching of creationism in schools?

Surely, the state’s power brokers can see how much damage these people do to the state’s image. This, in turn, hurts basic economic development.

Perhaps we should ask these questions: What is the symbiotic relationship between big corporations in Oklahoma and the religious right? Do these corporations cultivate the religious right in order to maintain the state’s conservative political culture, which then rewards them with tax breaks and less business regulations? If that’s true, then certainly there’s an eventual downside in terms of financial development and population growth. Have we reached it here in Oklahoma? Perhaps it doesn't matter to large energy companies here, but other companies and small businesses need customer growth. The state's national image is important to that growth.

These are larger questions, but what we do know is twice this legislative session conservative politicians have introduced measures attacking the theory of evolution, a theory which is as much as a fact as the theory of gravity.

Anti-Evolution Bills Create State Image Problems, March 11, 2009

When you put the profit motive into the country’s prison system and each new inmate represents increased profits, then obviously some politicians will make sure corporate interests are rewarded with higher incarceration rates.

One would be naïve not to believe this. The use of private prisons in this country is yet another method to transfer taxpayer money to big corporations, not save taxpayer money. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this scam against the American people. How have private prisons affected the number of people who end up incarcerated? We do know America leads the world in incarcerating people. (More than 1 in 100 or approximately 2.3 million people are incarcerated in this country.) What we don’t often talk about is how the private prison system is so obviously dependent on harsh sentences, tough drug laws and an increasing prison population.

Note this paragraph from CorpWatch, for example, about how low incarceration is a “drag on profits” in a 2000 article about private prisons:

To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90-95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors. Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA [Corrections Corporation of America] a few years ago but cautioned, "It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits." Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate".

But just like the housing bubble, this country and Oklahoma, in particular, face a “prison bubble” that is unsustainable. As our prisons continue to swell, judges, prosecutors and politicians need to look for ways to reduce the incarceration rate, not look for new ways to expand privatization. Obviously, this could affect the bottom line for private prisons.

All this is somewhat obscured in the recent “discussion” about closing some state prisons in Oklahoma.

State Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, according to a news report, apparently asked the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to tell him how much it would cost to close prisons in Oklahoma. The DOC then gave him a study, according to the report, on the costs on closing prisons in Granite, Stringtown and Helena, which added up to $23 million.

Profits For Punishment, April 8, 2009

The embarrassing and misguided sovereignty resolution circulating in the legislature has made national news as part of the faux GOP secession movement.

State Rep. Charles Key, pictured right, a Republican from Oklahoma City, appeared recently on the Montel Williams radio show to discuss House Concurrent Resolution 1028, a bill that asks the federal government to not go beyond its constitutional powers and claims state sovereignty. The resolution, if passed, will be sent to President Barack Obama and Congress.

A similar bill was passed earlier by the House and Senate, but then vetoed by Gov. Brad Henry, who worried the bill could result in the loss of federal money for the state. Key then brought the resolution back under a different form of resolution, which doesn’t need the governor’s approval. The Senate is expected to approve the bill.

Key’s interview with Williams shows again how the GOP continues to isolate the state. Williams, for example, tied the bill to recent comments made by Texas Gov. Rick Perry about the possibility of Texas seceding from the nation.

Oklahoma Sovereignty?, May 7, 2009

(Now is a time for calm in the OKC community as the facts of the case get sorted out. It may well be, as Ersland’s attorney Irven Box predicts, that no jury will convict him. That seems like a good bet to make in Oklahoma, but that doesn’t mean Prater should or could have ignored the law.)

It’s difficult to imagine any rational-thinking person could believe Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater was trying to make a political statement when he charged a local pharmacist with first-degree murder.

The pharmacist, Jerome Jay Ersland, 57, shot a 16-year-old boy to death May 19 during an armed robbery attempt at the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in Oklahoma City, according to media reports.

Even a cursory glance at the facts as reported by the local media shows Prater had a legal duty to respond to the case’s two most significant and current pieces of evidence, a surveillance video and a medical examiner’s autopsy report. These were pieces of evidence surely viewed by others besides Prater. He couldn’t ignore what the evidence showed or what it might mean or how it might be construed, and what’s more he shouldn’t have ignored it.

In Defense of Prater, May 31, 2009