Hype and Chains

The apple does not fall far from the tree.  Barack Obama’s “Hype and Chains” looks like the Old Oklahoma Single Party System on steroids.  The Democrats controlled the OK legislature for almost a century and it looks a lot like Obamanation, just not so boldly socialist.  Consider these comparisons.

            Obama, who decried the deficit under the Republican Congress, began to spend like a—no, I won’t use the term ‘drunken sailor’ because he knows exactly what he is doing.  We will approach the 2012 election with $16 trillion of federal debt and nearing a debt crisis.  In OK the Democrat Governor spent like that too.  In 2011 the Republican legislature had to clean up a $600 million shortfall, 10% of the $6 billion budget.  Got ‘r done.  Obama hypes class warfare and constantly wants to raise taxes on the rich.  OK Dems did as well.  It still wasn’t enough.  We had 7.25% income taxes and still the rich didn’t pay their fair share. So the R’s lowered taxes to 5.25% and managed to make the economy grow at double the prior decade’s rate.  90 years of  single party rule blessed OK with so many loopholes, that the OK Tax Commission issued a report begging the legislature to simply void 90% of the tax dodges which could lower the income tax to about 3%.  This week the legislature votes on this proposal which ultimately could lead to no income tax whatsoever. So is “zero for everyone” fair?

            Obama hyped the chains of Obamacare and all our local leftists loved it.  The previous Gov accepted a $54million grant to immediately set up an Obamacare Exchange.  New Republican Governor Mary Fallin sent the money back since it would encumber the state to nearly double Medicaid recipients and start dictating health insurance policies.  Then our state joined in suing the Feds for 10^th Amendment violation. Likewise Obama won’t advance a proposal to fix Social Security or Medicare, and even cooks the books by double counting Medicare funding. Yeah, we have seen stuff like this. OK had a $16 billion unfunded teacher’s pension plan.  Evidently the previous guys either didn’t really care about the teachers or planned to soak the taxpayers when the bills came due.  New Republicans in the legislature are on the way to fixing that gap having shrunk $6 billion of the non-funding in the first year.  Fire fighters and police were also put on a permanent, reliable, maintained funding of pensions.

            Obama blames the lack of jobs on Bush even though the recession of 07 was over by June 09 and we have had an unprecedented jobless recovery for 3 years. One out of five people who want a job have none.  Bureau of Labor Statistics: 2009, 134.5 million employed;  2012, 131.6 million employed.  90% of college grads got jobs in the year Obama got elected and now it is 56%. We’ve seen it. In the 90’s Oklahoma had a recession despite the boom in the rest of America.  Kay County had 13% unemployment at one point, highest in the nation.  Oil bust, high taxes, poor farming, and everyone was leaving the state.  But beginning about 2005, the R’s promoted our natural gas resources, lowered taxes, led a spirited defense for agriculture and passed the Quality Jobs Act.  6.7% unemployment.  That ain’t no hype. 

            And then there are the chains of regulation.  Obama keeps trying to re-introduce gun control issues.  Fast and Furious was a blunder designed to hoodwink the voters into this.  In OK old gun control laws are crazy—the sort of thing you would see designed by people who want to skirt a distasteful issue, like eating your lutefisk.  You can defend yourself in a car with a gun.  You just can’t carry a gun in a car.  You can defend your property with a gun.  You just can’t carry a gun for that purpose.  “Hey, just shootin’ gophers when that guy attacked me.”  The R’s are getting this changed as well.  And just like Fast and Furious, Solyndra, et. al., and the GSA in Wonderland plus countless other federal idiocies, OK Dems owned the Education Dept. for 90 years and staffed it with highly paid educrats.  Hmm.  Audits now uncover a secret liquor-buying bank account.  Charges should soon be filed.

            Union buddies like SEIU have been noted having joint rallies with the American Communist Party.  The UAW got bailed out and indeed were made owners of two auto companies, against all known contract laws.   Here in OK the Dems are in bed with the teacher’s union and thus the state budget is 70% education.  That is, the entire rest of the state functions on just 30% of its budget.  (We have had 1600 bridges condemned out of 6800 total for over a decade.  The R fixed 900 of 'em last year alone.)  We have small town superintendents who make about as much as our US Senators at $250,000 a year.  Yet we rank roughly 30^th in ACT scores.  But that was before Janet Baressi, new Republican State Superintendent.  Now schools are given letter grades and an explanation of various areas needing improvement.  That has caused the educrats to scramble to make improvements. She got OK exempted from No Child Left Behind to the applause of both teachers and parents.

            Obama won’t drill.  He won’t even mine coal. Energy must be scarce and expensive. The EPA and Labor Dept. conduct a war on farmers trying to make family helpers illegal and treating spilled milk like an oil spill.  Regulation philosophy: "Crucify the first 5 people you see."  How’s that Hype and Chains working out for you? When OK filed an atmospheric haze abatement program with the feds they disregarded it.  Our Attorney General sued their kiester for violating their own haze regulations.

             Over and over we see the Obama /OK left at work.  War on Christianity, especially Catholics and Lutherans and evangelicals has been declared. Why who would listen to those bitter clingers?  But the OK conservatives passed a Personhood for the Unborn resolution last week with broad support, 73-14.  Oh, we must be racists who just wanted Trayvon “hunted down like an animal”.  Don’t tell that to incoming Republican  Speaker of the House,T.W. Shannon, who has African ancestry.  Pelosi’s Congress set student loan rates to double in July 2012 so they could demagogue it in an election year.  Oklahoma Republicans passed a measure to pilot a University Center in Ponca City.  Cheap. Rural access to over a dozen universities online but with tutorial help.  So you don’t need Obama’s loans.  No border fence with Mexico.  We just got voter ID here.  Occupy movement raising hell all over.  Hey, we got the Tea Party movement around here. Oh, did I mention that the head of the State Democrat Party accused the Grand Old Party of the Adults of the OKC bombing and venomously said that “Timothy McVeigh would be a Tea Partier if he were alive today.”

            Hype and chains.  Here, let me give you a Republican hacksaw to work on those chains.