New semester, new topics... same Oklahoma

Sorry for the delay, faithful readers!  As some of you know, this blog was kept as a project for independent study for my MPA degree.  That semester is over and I took a hiatus during holiday to think about how I wanted to proceed with my political writing.  I always intended to come back, but I didn't know in what form.

I thought that after the gubernatorial elections, there would be a dearth in topics to cover if I limited myself to Oklahoma issues and considered rebranding to become a more national focused blog.  I didn't really want to do that and compete with thousands of better liberal pundits out there and let's face it... Okies need me.  So as best as I can, I am going to stay local, like the produce I stock in my fridge (with occasional dalliances to something more exotic).  

So, I'll be posting again, hopefully with some regularity.  This is a mini-post, but I at least want to talk about the things that should matter to you right now.

First, Sen. Bill 424 was introduced by Brian Crain (R-Tulsa).  It is a bill that would allow breweries to sell their own beer instead of selling to distributors.  This is important because distribution has become damned near a cartel controlling the market and limiting what breweries can do for themselves.  Allowing them to be distributors themselves opens up the market and allows the makers of goods to dictate the flow of sale.  It is actually a very Republican concept-- it strengthens the free market.  I have a lot of hopes for this to pass based off of philosophy, but the beer distributors have a very strong lobby in the Capitol.  The legislators need to know we have their support.  I've thought about calling Crain's office, I've met him a few times and respect him, but I don't know what calling the guy who introduced the thing is going to do.  If you have any contacts, you should call them.  This is good for Oklahoma.  

----

The next thing I want to talk about is something that will take a lot longer to unpack, so I only want to mention that it has been on my mind.  There is a wing of the Oklahoma Republican Party that has such a hateful agenda against the equal rights of all Oklahomans.  There is no pretty way to say it.  I will stress that it is a very vocal wing of the party and clearly not the party itself.  It is hateful, it is vile, and it is cruel.  Gays in Oklahoma just got a win (there shouldn't be wins and losses in human rights but here we are) and the religious right will do whatever it takes to take that away from them; even if it means that they ruin marriage for themselves.  

This will be a post in itself, but it would be wrong of me not to mention it.  

Voted and lost, but still exuberant.

Looks like Mary Fallin will continue to be our governor...  

As you all know (or can infer), I didn't vote that way.  To be honest, it doesn't look like much of the way I voted didn't come to pass.  Am I bummed?  Well, I'm not dancing to The Sound of Music but I'm not upset.  

I voted.

Voting is not a decision that we make that is passive and it isn't a moment in time that ends on Wednesday.  Voting is a civic duty that should not be taken lightly.  It's a job that we citizens have that is really threefold.  First, it gives us carte blanche to bitch for the next several years because we tried dammit.  Second, it gives us a chance to pick the winners (or losers).  Third, it sends a referendum to the rest of the state about how we citizens active in the process feel.

All of the races in Oklahoma were closer than the winners would have liked.  Don't let the winners forget it.  It's time to be active and let Fallin and the others know that we have concerns and we are barely a minority.  

It's also a time to remember that democracy has spoken.  We have winners.  They are our public officials.  They are the officials that the majority wanted and it is time to make sure that they are given the respect that their offices deserve.  

It is time to start working with Mary Fallin.  It's time to let her know why she didn't win by a landslide.  It's time to remind her that she works for us... and we aren't giving her a perfect job review.  She has a lot to work on, but she is our governor.  For better or worse.  Start thinking about what needs to be done to better Oklahoma and make damn sure that her office knows about it.

Thanks for voting Oklahoma.  It's a trying, partisan time and we are getting through it.  The results are similar to the way we would have imagined but the road to it was a little harder fought.  Now we come together.  Together as Americans, together as Oklahomans.

Let's make the next years better than the last.

2016 is coming.

Why I'm endorsing Joe Dorman... and you should too.

His name isn't Mary Fallin.  Best blog post yet...

Sorry.  All kidding aside, I am endorsing Joe Dorman.  I am voting for Joe Dorman.  I couldn't be happier to be voting for him.  He is NOT my ideal politician.  He does not share my views on where America needs to go.

He is the bridge that Oklahoma needs to let the Red and Blue Oklahomans drop some misconceptions about their party of choice.  He is pro-life and pro-gun (you are welcome Oklahoma).  He's a small town Oklahoman who wears the D proudly because he is pro-Main Street as opposed to Wall Street.

I'm voting for Joe Dorman because the Democratic party is the party who cares about modern family values.  That's right, Republicans, let's talk about the elephant in the room (pun intended).  Democrats are the family party (unless your family is white, nuclear, straight, and Christian charismatic).  Modern families are so different than the 1950's ideal at this point.  We have so many issues.  Single parent families need access to health care and other social services to pull themselves out of poverty.  Women are working more than ever before and deserve to be in charge of their own reproductive rights.  Gay families need the legal support of politicians to ensure that they have the legal rights to be families.

It's not fair to say that America looks differently now than when the Republican "family value" platform arose.  It is more accurate to say that we are looking at all of America now and America is looking back demanding to be seen.

Mary Fallin is an anachronism.  She is a strong, modern woman wrapped in a regressive ideology.  She is a marker of the past that I wish was a harbinger of the future.  She hides behind political ideologies that she believes will get her a victory and keep her in power a little while longer.  She is willing to think more about state's rights than individual human rights.  She is willing to minimize young women's roles in their own rights, because she is old enough and established to be unaffected.  She wants to see Oklahoma's businesses succeed even while her people become hopeless and look elsewhere.

Mary Fallin is politics.  She is what we all hate about it.  She was for it before she was against it.  She desires to win, to play the game, to succeed even when it might hinder the progress of our great state.
Please guys, I know you feel hopeless sometimes and feel like your voice doesn't matter and sometimes you might be right.  But if you don't go vote on Tuesday and you want to come to me and bitch in the years to come, save it.  I'm tired of hearing about how bad it is.  I want to hear about how you mobilized and (hopefully not) failed.  I want to hear about how we are going to fix it next time.  I want to hear that you emailed your Congressman about what we are doing wrong today and how to save Oklahoma's tomorrow.

Go vote.  Even if you don't agree with me.  Go vote. Vote.  Please.  However, if you care about "family values," consider going for the new family values party.  Consider going with the guys who are looking after all families.  Vote Democrat on Tuesday.  

Adjective-less marriages and a hypocritical moral high-horse

This year will be looked at by future generations as a time that the tides are finally turning on the American landscape.  Americans, by and large, either have no opinion or a positive opinion on gay marriage.  It seems that only the most socially conservative (read Tea Party Patriots) want their names associated with disliking gay marriage on the basis of sodomy.

Luckily for us, they have a new tactic to protect us from the growing homosexual agenda in the liberal media: State’s rights.  If you haven’t been living under a rock, countless numbers of states (our fine state included) have been forced by activist federal judges to allow gay marriage against the will of the people.

OK guys… I can’t do this.
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I can minimize the use of the term gay marriage.  I hate that term.  As a former English major, I learned that adjectives can be friends and enemies.  In this particular case, the adjective seems unnecessary.  I want to talk about marriage.  All of it.  Straight folks have plenty of problems on this front too.

The dreaded post-debate post...

You might have noticed a small slack in long-form writing.  I've done a lot more on the Facebook page and a little less here.  Part of it has been the shear lack of separation in the candidates.  It's a lot easier to write about the differences between apples and bananas than it is golden delicious and red apples.

I thought, "wait until the debate, Michael, you'll hear so many things to write about."  It wasn't true.   Predictably, I wrote about a lot of the topics that came up in the debate.  I haven't written about medicaid expansion in great detail, so I plan to get there.

After the debate, it has put me in even less of a mood to write.  I'm a little despondent, fellow Goobers.  I need a pick-me-up.  I think that the medicine will be writing about the new marriage ruling.  I'm going to be doing that shortly (with some insight as a State worker, I hope).  Before I get there, I need to bring myself to talk about the debates and the standout moments.

First of all, I covered all of this live on the Facebook page.  I'm basically going to be going through that and making it more coherent in case you didn't watch the debates (for shame! they were an hour, go livestream it or something).

Before I get into specifics, I'd like to say that both candidates did horribly.  But, if I had to pick a winner, I would say that Dorman hit the most talking points.  I'd also give him a slight handicap as a Democrat in Oklahoma and coming against a strong incumbent but he did not flinch.

Take Shelter . . . or leave it

Tornado Alley.  Two words synonymous with Oklahoma, the central corridor in particular.  We know extreme weather.  In fact, every Okie I know says the same thing to the transplants.  "You can tell a real Okie by the direction they go in the event of a storm."  That direction being to the nearest covered porch to watch the thunderous murmurs wash over the countryside.  There is a (possibly insane) calmness to the deafening thunderclaps and rain hitting metal roofs.

Romanticism aside, when the weather here becomes bad, it becomes fatal.  Unfortunately, Oklahomans lose their lives every year to sever weather.  Sometimes those Oklahomans are children, currently under State care at their schools.

Is it the role of the State government (especially the Governor) to spearhead the charge for shelter legislation?

It seems our current governor does not think so.  Her idea to solve the issue is to allow more bonds to be taken out by municipalities to cover schools if that area feels it is appropriate.  This mirrors Republican views that government should be handled at the smallest level possible.  The shelter issue, then, can be seen as a local problem.

Joe Dorman, leader on the issue of sheltering Oklahoma's schools, disagrees.  From Dorman's perspective, the safety of our children is a right while we are keeping them in State custody.  Dorman has spearheaded a campaign to use the Oklahoma Franchise tax to raise $500 million dollars to retrofit storm shelters into every public school in the state.  Estimates vary but tend to be around the $800 million dollar mark.  The rest of the money could potentially be made up for with potential grants from FEMA.

The franchise tax would cost all of Oklahoma but would ensure that all of Oklahoma's public school kids have a place to go.  The Fallin approach is a de facto permanent property tax increase in every school district that decides to build a shelter (how else will they pay?)  Which is more fair?  Does every part of Oklahoma need storm shelters?  Should more dangerous communities pay more of a burden?  After all, most tornados happen after 4pm when kids are supposed to be home from school.

This is a difficult question to answer.  After all, it is the duty of the government to ensure the safety of its citizens and promote public good.  The franchise tax forces Oklahoma communities to look out for one another, sharing Tornado Alley's burden on the entire state.  It also guarantees that low income, rural communities will have access to the same shelters that upper income suburban districts will have.

It is also the duty of the government to spend its constituents money intelligently.  Is it a better approach to decide where shelters should go based off of research first and not potential fear mongering?

I might lay down a suggestion for a third position.  Maybe we should use a portion of the franchise tax to fund storm shelters.  However, a task force should be put together to see where it needs to be done and where the spending would be wasteful.  In this way, we will ensure the safety of the lives of Oklahoma's kids without a "bridge to nowhere" style spending problem.

The "Shelter for nothing" scandal... I can see it now.  I'm going to keep this one short, voters.  I think it is up to you to make a decision on this point if it is a sticking point for you.  I can see both sides and understand what is at stake, and I understand both ideologies at this point.  I honestly don't know which side of the fence I lay on (if looking at the plans put forth with no compromise).

Tornados are so often after school and don't affect the state equally, so I have a hard time asking for $800 million dollars spent on something like this, but I also understand the duty we have to protect our children from something that clearly does happen here.

What do you guys think?  Should we be funding shelters for Oklahoma's schools?  How about you take this back to the Facebook page, like us, and give your opinions?  I think this is an issue that is much more built for dialogue than monologue.      

We DO need that education!

I used to be a teacher.

I don’t know who felt more ineffective.  Was it me as a first year English teacher? What about the stuck-up administrators of the small charter school I was in that thought kids needed lectures (Can you imagine 30 inner city 6th graders lectured to 5 days a week)?  Was it the PASS objectives that were so long no one could actually remember what they were supposed to teach?  Was it our State government who was consistently inconsistent with their message and their expectations?  Was it the parents who showed us teachers so little respect in front of their children that the kids learned we were powerless?  Was it the children?  Had our system of privilege and funding for some and poverty and missed opportunities for others left this group of kids out of the scope of my mission for the 186 days I had them?  Was it a question I hadn’t even thought of yet because I was so frustrated with my life as an educator that I didn’t even have a concept of what or whom to blame?
I used to be a teacher.  And I’ll be damned if I vote for anyone who won’t make their jobs better, because the ones that stayed in the trenches were made of tougher stuff than me.

Neither Joe Dorman or Mary Fallin are currently in support of the Common Core initiatives, but I feel due to their recent importance in Oklahoma and the Fallin Flip-Flop Effect (a scientific term detailing the fact that we may never know what she actually wants) deems it necessary that we go over what the Common Core is, where it came from, and what it means to the country.  From there, I will look at the education platforms of both candidates and critique all of it with a mix of my usual razor sharp wit and middle school snark.