The Angry Young Man In Charge

Ryan Walters wraps himself in the flag, professing personal guidance from God, as he tramples on the Constitution and Bill of Rights of our country. This former classroom teacher opines the elected Attorney General of Oklahoma, Gentner Drummond, is "misguided" in his understanding of the law while Walters himself is also cocksure that the six judges on the Oklahoma Supreme Court, who already have ruled he has no standing before the court on the issue of whether public dollars can be spent in religious settings – uh, churches – or not, are equally ignorant and uninformed on the law.

By the way, and for what it is worth, they, too, are lawyers, each of whom has decades of experience on the matters at hand while Ryan takes his cue from the Amway Foundation, meaning the Betsy DeVos Family, and the Florida-based Moms for Liberty, or whatever they are called, and of course Fox News, where many of its most popular male anchors have been outed as abusers of women and haters of LGBTQ citizens.

Instead, for guidance, Ryan could consult with constitutional scholars who are knowledgeable on the doctrine of separation of church and state, but they are all dead. Those folks would be our Founding Fathers, many of whom left their homeland to avoid the tyranny of the King on this very situation. At the very least ,he might have someone read to him their reasoning and wisdom, but he's too busy scheduling appearances on talk radio and rightwing blogs and podcasts peddling his pablum of nonsense.

Meanwhile, back at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, he apparently doesn't have enough to do overseeing his own multi-billion-dollar appropriation from the Legislature, so Walters demands that the Chancellor of Higher Education submit her billion dollar budget to him, notwithstanding the fact that the FBI believes his agency mishandled the spending already of millions of federal dollars known as GEER, allocated by the Congress directly to the governors.

In this case, Gov. Kevin Stitt has done what he always does: If the situation is good news, he takes credit for it. For example, the teacher pay increase of 2018 was passed and funded before he became governor, a fact ignored or unknown by the great unwashed multitude of voters who cast ballots for both Silly Stitt and Woeful Walters. Conversely, when other scandals are of Stitt's making – for example, Swadley's ripoff of taxpayer money – Kool Kevin is off at the Paris Air Show or giving a speech in Communist California and too busy to be bothered with such trivialities of how your tax dollars are wasted, squandered or end up in the pockets of pals from college, most of whom got their state jobs because of that coincidence, not because of any qualifications they brought to the responsibility.

But I digress. Returning to the subject of this screed, Reckless Ryan. The plebiscite thought they were casting votes for an educator. What they got instead is an ignoramus about the history of our nation, the laws, precedents and regulations governing same. He is a national embarrassment and one of the key figures holding back our state because international companies, such as Panasonic, will not invest their money here, and their employees don't want to raise their families here.

These are facts, not opinions from me and others, and they contribute directly to the bleak future so many of our youngsters face as they seek opportunity and jobs elsewhere.

You don't have to believe me. Just ask them. Dallas, Kansas City, Denver and the coasts look like paradise compared to most of rural Oklahoma, where 33 of our counties lost population from 2010-20, the decade that happens to coincide with the administrations of both former Gov. Mary Fallin, a worshipper of tax cuts over investments in education, health care and infrastructure, followed by our current resident of the Governor's Mansion, who panders to the State Chamber with his plans to fully abolish the corporate income tax and eventually the entire personal income tax, which together make up over 35% of the general fund leaving only the already very high and very regressive sales tax and volatile gross production tax as major pillars of revenue going forward.

Or more accurately, backward.

The bottom-line, dear readers? Joy Hofmeister could have been your governor; she, of course, an honest, smart, hardworking and dedicated public servant of proven quality and character. You could also have benefitted from Jena Nelson, a national finalist as Teacher of the Year, as your Superintendent of Public Instruction. But no. Thanks to 700,000 Republican voters who cast straight-party ballots, both Stitt and Walters started the evening with insurmountable leads.

Elections matter and they are decided by y-o-u.

And I almost forgot. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.