Forty-eight hours until our chance to vote. Before that, read this, then decide: Are you going to be a participant in democracy or just another election day observer.
Sadly, in Oklahoma we have a lot more of the latter and too few of the former. More simply stated, not enough of us – me and you – vote. And Tuesday’s August runoff election most likely will underscore that fact.
And by the way, our state, which prides itself on something called the Oklahoma Standard, votes less as a percentage of our eligible population than any other of the 50 states and District of Columbia.
That puts us voters right down there with education, health care and too many other characteristics about our Oklahoma – and this after eight years of Gov. Kevin Stitt prattling on about Top 10 this and Top 10 that.
All that rhetoric ever meant to him, as he put it four years ago when asking for a second term, was aspirational; just so much hot air as he filled his days, weeks, months and years with other priorities such as endless lawsuits against numerous tribes; appointments of friends and incompetents to high positions; spending on private, exclusive secondary schools at the expense of our public schools; purposely cutting Medicaid while ignoring the health needs especially of our rural residents; ongoing efforts to enrich himself and favored colleagues as he mimicked the public plundering displayed by our corrupt, callous and incompetent president, Donald J. Trump.
How else to explain the state of things in our state when Stitt and supermajorities in the Legislature have complete control of what is done, or not done, in The People’s Building?
For example, business development to them apparently means chasing a polluting aluminum smelter to be plopped down next to one of Oklahoma’s most beautiful rivers; or partially paying for, with your tax dollars, a nuclear waste disposal site where the other 49 states will deposit radioactive material they create but need to rid themselves of permanently; or blow through millions chasing the bankrupt EV startup Canoo from California that never made and delivered a single vehicle for use in this state or any other; or in fact, simply serving as the endless bridesmaid in the national chase for new plants creating quality jobs ... think: Tesla to Austin instead of Tulsa or the major Japanese firm Panasonic to Kansas instead of here.
Our ruling political class of Republicans must think voters here like what they deliver because, for the most part, most incumbents are re-elected by wide margins so why not continue to do what they have always done even though it clearly qualifies as insanity.
Insanity like turning ob-gyn doctors into felons for being doctors; or forcing our “women folk” to travel out of state for care during dangerous and troubled pregnancies; or, contrary to protestations otherwise, continue to lead the world in locking up mostly nonviolent offenders while watching, without a syllable of protest, a governor intervene in a prisoner’s incarceration who happens to be married to a major donor and fundraiser.
Well, I guess Stitt can say this is his effort to control the exploding prison population.
Imagine that!
I have lived in OK for 50 of my years, made my political foundation here, worked here, and am sickened all the time for how much most OK government hates this state and wants it to remain a backward, beaten child. We know coming together will win the presidency. Do Oklahomans have the guts to stop voting in fascists who fear education because it will make them useless?