The Oklahoman

The Oklahoman editorial page continues to use false comparisons to attack Democrats.

On Feb. 1, I published a post criticizing an editorial that absurdly compared the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans four years ago to the country’s response to the recent Haiti earthquake.

The editorial’s point was that President Barack Obama was doing as bad of a job rescuing Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, as former George Bush did trying to rescue New Orleans. The main message of the editorial was to criticize Obama when, in fact, the two events are remarkably different. The Haiti situation is much worse, New Orleans is a major American city and there is not a large group of people criticizing the country’s overall response to Haiti like what happened with the federal government's response to New Orleans.

This week, The Oklahoman editorial page, a propaganda arm of the GOP, used another false comparison (“Food Fight: Grocery tax appeal impractical, costly,” February 15, 2010) to criticize a Democrat. State Sen. Jay Paul Gumm, a Durant Democrat, earned the wrath of The Oklahoman for sponsoring a bill to end the sales tax on groceries because, well, it’s sort of like “fighting battles in the culture war.”

Here’s the gist from the editorial:

We’ve criticized Republican lawmakers who are obsessed with fighting battles in the culture war rather than attending to the people’s urgent business. Equally deserving of criticism is state Sen. Jay Paul Gumm, D-Durant, and most members of the Senate Finance Committee for voting to repeal the sales tax on groceries.

How in the world is criticizing right-wing religious legislation put forth in the past by, say, state Rep. Sally Kern, an Oklahoma City Republican, the same as criticizing taxation legislation that has bi-partisan support? The bill passed out of committee wouldn’t even take effect unless state revenues exceed 2008 levels plus 10 percent. Gumm and the committee are well aware of the impact of the tax repeal.

The Oklahoman even admits it has supported the tax repeal in the past.

Repeal of the grocery tax — something we’ve supported in the past — is a fine idea but hardly practical. It could only work by offsetting the fiscal impact through raising other taxes. Some smaller cities would effectively become wards of the state. In those cities, the sales tax is the only form of revenue and the tax on food is the main source of sales tax revenue.

Yes, the money would have to be offset somehow, as the newspaper argues, but that still doesn’t make the idea bad, and, again, the bill is not going into effect anytime soon, even if it passes and is signed into law by Gov. Brad Henry. Most people think it’s important for legislators to discuss taxation issues.

The point here is that the newspaper, again, tries to conflate the “mistakes” of Republicans with the “mistakes” of Democrats with false comparisons, and it does so only to score political points, which is exactly what the newspaper implies about Gumm. The editorial is self-reflexive; it’s about itself.

The right-wing argument that this country’s response to the devastation and suffering in Haiti is “Obama’s Katrina” is almost too absurd for a response.

But a recent editorial in The Oklahoma needs clarification. The editorial, “Katrina II: U.S. relief falling short” (January 29, 2010) refers to a Wall Street Journal article written by three doctors who are criticizing the country’s response to the disaster.

Here’s the editorial’s foundation:

And in the words of three surgeons with boots on the ground in Haiti, the U.S. has done a poor job helping victims. The doctors penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal this week. The headline suggests that Haiti is becoming Obama’s Katrina.

The editorial tries to argue that perhaps Obama deserves the same criticism received by former President George Bush for how the government handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans four years ago. But Katrina and the recent Haiti earthquake are different, and the newspaper is simply trying to score a political point.

Here are some of those differences:

(1) The devastation and suffering was and is much deeper in Haiti than it was in New Orleans. The estimate is that 150,000 people died. Thousands more have been injured. Hurricane Katrina killed 1,464 people.

(2) Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and its infrastructure already had serious problem.

(3) Haiti’s airport and its geographical location—even though only 700 miles from Miami—made it difficult for help to arrive initially. New Orleans is in a state next to one of the largest states in the nation, Texas, which has numerous military bases. Why did it take so long for help to arrive in New Orleans?

(4) New Orleans is a city in the United States in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

The idea that the U.S. is doing a bad job in Haiti is obviously arguable, and we probably won’t know the answer for weeks or months ahead about what more could have been done immediately after the earthquake struck. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been adamant, though, about how vital the U.S. has been in the relief effort. We do know the response was immediate, and there was an outpouring of financial support from the American public.

Three doctors spouting off in a Wall Street Journal article does not make this Obama’s Katrina. In fact, as the editorial mentions, the article does not specifically blame Obama

Does The Oklahoman editorial staff really care about the Haiti victims or is it more interested in some obscure GOP talking point that purports to show how the Obama administration is as inept has the Bush administration in emergencies? Let’s don’t forget the newspaper editorial page was a strong supporter of Bush during his reign of incompetence.

The GOP propaganda ministry—The Oklahoman—was in full swing over the weekend, bashing President Barack Obama with hasty generalizations and contradictions in an editorial.

But it was the obvious omission that seems the most absurd. Here is a newspaper, which has consistently supported the no-fault ideology of big corporations, criticizing a president, who has bailed out Wall Street to save the country’s banking system.

The gist of the editorial, titled “Obama policies are target of voters’ dissatisfaction” (January 24, 2010) is that the recent election of a Massachusetts Republican to the U.S. Senate shows how much everyone is angry at Obama policies. According to the editorial:

. . . Massachusetts elected Brown to be the decisive vote against health care, to help rein in government spending, to cut taxes and to stop the kind of back-room dealing Obama promised to end during his ’08 hope-and-change campaign.

Unfortunately, the pattern during Obama’s first 12 months has been him finding fault with everyone except himself, with George W. Bush the most useful scapegoat.

Some things come to mind here. Scott Brown voted in favor of universal health care in Massachusetts as a state senator. The current government has spent billions of taxpayer dollars nurturing the ideology that has given us huge, monopoly corporations. The current recession is completely the fault of the previous administration. This historic recession will always be the fault of Bush's inept leadership, no matter how much The Oklahoman and other right-wing media outlets try to distort the issue.

The editorial also doesn’t really consider how weak the Democratic candidate was in the Massachusetts election.

Yes, there is a lot of populist anger today, and, yes, Obama needs to pay more attention to it. But its main target, from both conservatives and liberals, are the big corporations, and this includes media companies, that got us into this financial mess in the first place. Americans know they’re getting a bad break, but The Oklahoman editorial page would be the last place in the world that would sympathize. It supports huge corporations and free-market fundamentalists, not regular Oklahoma families trying to make it through these hard financial times.