TABOR

The Republican Fascist Strategy

Laurence Britt, in his article “Fascism Anyone?,” argues a main feature of emerging fascism is the “Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause.”

He writes, “The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.”

Two years ago, the Republicans created hatred against gay people as an election strategy. This year, Republicans plan on generating hatred against Hispanic people to get their extreme, quasi-fascist base fired up, and the Oklahoma GOP is doing all it can to help out.

Oklahoma Republicans have advanced a bill trying to make life miserable for local illegal aliens who are people primarily from Mexico who come here to make a living. The bill is so senseless and draconian it even has some local Christian bigwigs upset.

(Doesn’t it actually seem weird Christian people would actually care about poor people in today’s immoral right-wing, religious-dominated political scene?)

The bill, sponsored State Rep. Randy Terrill (R-Moore), would require, among other things, state employees report illegal aliens, penalize business that employ them, and deny them in-state college tuition. Passed by the House, the bill is now pending in the Senate.

Undoubtedly, the bill’s main political purpose is to generate hatred against the growing Hispanic population in the state. The bulk of the illegal aliens in the state are Hispanic. Anti-Hispanic legislation, pushed by Republicans, is pending in many state legislatures this year. The racist legislation is presented under the guise of the “illegal alien” problem. But the point is to create a new scapegoat and thus add more fuel to the Republican hate machine,

Local Catholic Archbishops Eusebius J. Beltran and Edward Slattery, Episcopal Bishop Robert M. Moody and Lutheran Bishop Floyd M. Schoenhals recently came out publicly to oppose the measure. But why didn’t they speak out earlier?

The bill is immoral and would hurt vulnerable people who are trying to make better lives for themselves here in Oklahoma. Those hard-working people who are contributing to our community need an opportunity to become franchised, not disenfranchised.

If you want to stop people coming here from Mexico, then you need to deal with the border. That is a federal issue, not an Oklahoma issue. Only immoral people like Terrill and his supporters on this issue use political expediency and polarization to hurt vulnerable people who are doing nothing more than trying to feed themselves and their children.

The Oklahoma Senate needs to kill or defeat this horrible bill.

TABOR-Lite Less Filling

The strange, is-it-TABOR-is-it not bill promoted by State Rep. Ken Miller (R-Edmond) is apparently dead because the Senate will not consider the bill.

Miller’s bill would have limited the growth of the state budget to a formula to be determined later by some state board. (No, I’m not making this up.) The bill, HJR 1020, will not be considered by the Senate because it did not make a deadline cut.

However, the TABOR issue is far from over here in Oklahoma.

A lawsuit is pending against an initiative petition that would put TABOR, or the so-called Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights issue, on the November ballot in Oklahoma. Those who filed the lawsuit are some of the most powerful, richest business people in the state.

Now, the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce has come out against TABOR., saying the chamber stands for controlling state spending but not the TABOR way.

TABOR would limit the growth of state government to the inflation rate and population growth. Colorado, the only state to pass TABOR, recently had to rescind because it had devastated the state’s educational systems.

If TABOR passes here, funding for public schools and higher education will decline drastically. It will devastate the state’s economy.

Oklahomans Deserve Decent Wages

An Oklahoma organization has launched an initiative petition campaign to raise the state’s minimum wage.

RAISE OKLAHOMA would like to see the minimum wage raised one dollar the first year and then one dollar the second year. After that minimum wage raises would be indexed to the Consumer Price Index.

The current federal minimum wage is $5.15. This is not a living wage, and everyone knows it. In addition, overall wages are suppressed and stagnant in Oklahoma right now. Raising the minimum wage would benefit us in the middle-class, even those who make already make decent salaries, who have experience stagnant wages and rising health care costs under the Bush administration.

The ultra rich and Oklahoma’s business bigwigs will argue that allowing people to have livable wages is somehow bad for business here. No, livable wages would actually improve the quality of life here and would attract more business and would increase business profits.

It is about time someone started standing up and speaking for ordinary Oklahomans. Under the Republican agenda, energy, food, health, and tuition costs are skyrocketing, and our salaries cannot keep up.

The Republicans want to transfer as much wealth as possible to the richest people in the country.

If you want to get involved with the petition drive, email Lgraymurphy@aol.com or call 405-921-7080.

(Read DocHoc's latest commentary, "Say 'no' to Oklahoma theocracy" in OKC's most provocative publication, the Oklahoma Gazette.)

Library Commission Supports Religious Zealot

Local library officials can spin it how they want but their recent action to create special parenting sections for certain targeted children’s books violates the spirit of intellectual freedom.

In a stark act of anti-intellectualism, the Oklahoma County Metropolitan Library Commission voted Thursday to reshelf so-called “controversial” children’s books so, well, so children cannot find them and read them

This all started last year when State Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) threatened to pull funding to our local library system if the libraries did not reshelf children’s books with non-sexual, age-appropriate gay themes. These books are King & King, Daddy's Roommate, The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans and Heather Has Two Mommies. Supposedly the local religious zealot was acting, at least partially, on a patron’s complaint.

The commission then decided, perhaps fearing a lawsuit if they just targeted the gay-themed book, to reshelf not just those books but even more children books dealing with the realities of life, such as domestic abuse and alcoholism. These new parenting sections will be created in all of the system’s seventeen libraries. The realistic books will be placed on high shelves out of the reach of children.

Essentially, the commission wants to ensure that our children here do NOT have an understanding of the world around them. Their philosophy must be that if we keep our kids stupid and narrow-minded, they will be successful and happy. I guess we have to keep them that way if we want them to stay here.

The library formerly had more than adequate controls over allowing children access to library material. Parents could easily choose what they wanted their children to read. And, oh yeah, the Oklahoma religious freaks who want to dictate all the laws and rules in our state could also actually go to the library with their children, but, hey, that would probably be asking too much of them.

This action was not a compromise as some members of the commission tried to spin it in local news accounts. It was a direct attack on intellectualism, open-mindedness, and free thinking. It was a complete capitulation to the whims of a religious zealot on a personal crusade to generate hate against gay people.

Taking realistic, age-appropriate books away from children is immoral and anyone who somehow participated in this act without speaking up is just as responsible, just as immoral, as the religious zealot who initiated it.

Recently, longtime library director Lee Brawner passed away. A tireless champion for intellectual freedom, Brawner fought for the intellectual integrity of his libraries in a metropolitan area still held back by religious extremism and ignorance. I wonder what he would think about this decision? Who is fighting now for intellectual freedom in Oklahoma? Who at your local library cares now about intellectual freedom?

I am telling you, folks, theocracy looms here on the prairie. Do you think the fundies are going to call it “theocracy”? No, its name Thursday afternoon in Oklahoma City was “compromise.”

The Rich Person’s Stealing Bill of Rights (RIPSBOR)

“ . . . TABOR’s strict and rigid spending limits forced deep reductions to Colorado’s basic services, including public schools, colleges, roads, and health care, and kept the state from emerging from its budget crisis. TABOR’s negative effects led Coloradoans, on November 1st, 2005, to approve a statewide measure to suspend TABOR for five years.”—Alliance For Oklahoma’s Future

I am still perplexed that more state leaders have not come out against TABOR, the so-called Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights measure, which, if approved by voters, would decimate the Oklahoma economy and its educational systems.

Why it is particularly important state leaders speak up is because those who support TABOR (SQ 726) lie consistently about its impact in Colorado. Even many of those operatives who gathered signatures to place the measure on the ballot could not or would not tell the truth about TABOR. The petition drive was paid for by out-of-state money.

(I talked to one young woman who signed the petition and then later tried to withdraw it when she found out TABOR benefited rich people and would gut education. State officials told her she could NOT withdraw her signature.)

TABOR would constitutionally tie the state’s budget to a formula tied to population growth and the inflation rate. Any leftover money would have to be refunded to taxpayers. The richest among us would benefit the most, of course, and the rest of us would get underfunded schools, increased college tuition, skyrocketing health care costs, and dilapidated roads and bridges.

Colorado, the only state in the nation to adopt TABOR, had to rescind it recently because it had turned that state into, well, into a place like Oklahoma.

How can state leaders—Democrat or Republican—allow this measure to get through when Oklahoma struggles with some of the lowest educational funding rates in the entire nation?

It is disgusting that ultra-conservative, out-of-state elites have paid to get this measure on the ballot here to ensure rich people increase their wealth while the middle-class faces stagnant wages and increasing living costs.

As I have argued before, the state’s voters face huge decisions about the hypocritical, gubernatorial candidate Ernest Istook, TABOR, and religious encroachment into government through intelligent design and other bills this election year. If we “win” this soul-destroying trifecta, the state will suffer economically for years to come.

When did “family values” come to mean providing an underfunded education for children, making sure senior citizens cannot get health care, forcing college students to pay exorbitant college tuition, and making sure students do not learn established scientific methods.?

Check out the TABOR information on the Alliance For Oklahoma’s Future site.

If Oklahoma ends up adopting a TABOR amendment, the state’s public educational systems will be damaged for years to come.

Meanwhile, conservative political interests from outside the state will know for sure that a majority of Oklahoma voters are puppets ready to sell away their own financial interests and their children’s futures for hollow, right-wing ideology.

If adopted, TABOR will come to symbolize on a local level the wreckage left behind by neocons intent on transferring more and more wealth to the nation’s richest citizens while cutting government programs that save the middle-class people money and improve their quality of life.

Of course, the key word here is “if.”

Supporters of TABOR, of the so-called Taxpayers Bill Of Rights movement, recently delivered their initiative petition to the state. They claim to have more than the approximately 219,000 signatures needed to place the issue on the ballot.

TABOR would limit state government spending to a formula tied to population growth and the inflation rate. Colorado voters recently rescinded their TABOR amendment because it had severely reduced funding for education there, and it would do the same here.

Oklahoma is the wrong place at the wrong time for TABOR. We already have severe restrictions on raising state taxes in Oklahoma, and many areas of our government, such as education, are terribly underfunded when compared to national averages. By restricting revenues, the state will have no chance at all to catch up to just average national funding.

(Read more about this issue by searching under the keyword TABOR on the right sidebar of Okie Funk.)

The TABOR movement here is funded and supported primarily by outside political interests, and many petition circulators were paid two dollars for each signature they obtain. One TABOR petition circulation was even arrested when it was alleged he was not even a state resident. There are TABOR initiatives in states throughout the country.

In a recent news release about the TABOR petition drive in which he argued a statewide investigation into the petition drive was needed to protect democracy, State Senator Jeff Rabon said:

“You have to wonder why they have to use out-of-state money to buy a statewide vote on TABOR. We cannot let special interest groups from Colorado, Illinois and Washington D.C. hijack our initiative petition process. Democracy is too precious of a commodity to allow it to be sold to the highest bidder and those willing to trample on our laws to accomplish their goals,” Rabon said. “A coordinated statewide investigation is the only way to preserve this most basic right of a democratic society.”

TABOR supporters, which include the state’s right-wing power structure, waged a dishonest campaign to get the required number of signatures, and the petition should face a legal challenge.

The Oklahoma Public Employees Association, for example, has issued an alert about people who may have been misled into signing the petition:

“If you signed a petition in the last two months it may very well have been the TABOR petition. There may be a remedy. If you fill out the form that can be found at the following address you may be able to have your name removed from the petition.”

I think it is fair to suggest that some petition circulators had a certain line or sales pitch get their two dollars per name, and that many people who signed the petition did so after hearing distorted or even false information. This is what you get when you have to bring in paid lackeys to create a bogus political movement and when the local media is biased and lazy.

The right-wing power structure has been advancing an argument that those opposed to TABOR should just roll over, play dead, and allow the measure to get on the ballot. There will be time to debate the merits of TABOR then, they argue. Yeah, right, as if the corporate media and its toadies and apologists here will actually give a fair hearing to both sides of the issue.

We need to fight TABOR from the beginning to the end; we must remain diligent.

If it passes, those who opposed to TABOR can say they acted in good conscience when the public education system becomes completely dismantled in a state that already leads the nation in paying the lowest teacher salaries and is often in the bottom five or ten of per student funding in the nation.