Oklahoma - A Taste of What It’s Like to Live in MAGA's Promised Land
The right’s ideas of paradise are on display in states where they control the various branches of government. It’s not pretty. Unless you're rich and looking to clean up your act for the end of times.
For purposes of today’s column, I’m focusing on Oklahoma, and education in particular. Because if you want to destroy democracy, ruining education is the best place to start.
And Oklahoma’s doing a bang up job. Students aren’t supposed to be learning that the looting and burning of Black Wall Street (aka the Oklahoma Race Riot) was race related. Learning the Chinese language somehow involves giving aid and comfort to our enemies. Religious charter schools are in line for state funding. And so on.
Read this and realize it’s just a taste of what the wanna be authoritarians in this country are aiming for. First, a little history.
The US incarnation of the central plains lands now known as Oklahoma properly begins with the forcible relocation of the “civilized tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, & Seminole) from their home territories to “the only available location where the Indians would not be in the way of white expansion.”
The discovery of massive oil reserves, accompanied by the usual ignoring of treaties, unethical land grabs, and the promise of homesteads led to the state of Oklahoma (1907) as it’s known today.
A century ago, the State of Oklahoma was a bastion of left wing politics. The Socialist Party (with 12,000 dues paying members in 1914) delivered large blocks of votes for Eugene Debs, who ran for president in 1910, 1908, 1912 and 1920. Additionally, the left included radical tenant farmers in the "Working Class Union” (which claimed 35,000 members), and the syndicalists of the Industrial Workers of the World, actively organizing oil field workers.
There were dozens of socialist newspapers and hundreds of socialist-leaning elected officials during this era. The Socialist Party’s popularity was attributed to its willingness to reach out to Black and American Indian voters, opposition to Jim Crow laws, and its willingness to bend from hard-core doctrine by supporting small-scale land ownership.
Following an aborted attempt at rebellion fueled by opposition to the military draft and US involvement in World War One, purges of the left began. The Knights of Liberty, credited in some quarters as the rebirth of the Klu Klux Klan, carried out campaigns of terror aimed at individuals. The federal government, empowered by the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, engaged in mass deportations, raided offices, and banned left wing publications from the mail.
Nowadays, Oklahoma is better known for extremist right wing Republicans working to remake institutions to their liking. In the 30 years since gun rights fetishist (and KKK member) Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the aspirations of his fellow extremists are defining reality in the Sooner State.
Here’s long-time Oklahoma journalist George Lang:
In states like Oklahoma, the conservative movement has run roughshod over government, nearly obliterating moderates and progressives in an 82-18 legislative majority, and Gov. Kevin Stitt is fighting a racist, neo-manifest-destiny cold war against the tribes that should rightly govern themselves.
He is a pugnacious, finger-pointing bully, and he has unleashed a toady in Ryan Walters, the anti-education Secretary of Education who is attempting to intimidate our state’s public schools into anti-LGBTQ+ actions and a school voucher program that will leave behind thousands of Oklahoma children. On the abortion front, Stitt gaslights like a one-man ONG. When he signed the anti-woman and ultimately anti-child Senate Bill 1503 last week, he tweeted, “I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country because I represent all four million Oklahomans who overwhelmingly want to protect the unborn.”
The institutions of society, and government specifically are being reshaped to become tools of an authoritarian state dedicated to carrying out the dictums of evangelical extremists motivated by the belief that the rapture (when true believers go to heaven) is neigh.
In Oklahoma, nowhere is that more evident than education.
From Right Wing Watch:
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, is waging a scorched-earth campaign against teachers and teachers unions, which he called “terrorist organizations” at a budget hearing in May; he has been accused of lying to legislators at that hearing. At a state board of education meeting, Walters played a five-minute video savaging teachers unions, a video so hostile—it included insinuations that teachers supported pedophilia—that educators feared it would incite physical attacks on public schools. His agency banned sexually explicit materials from school libraries without defining the term.
After Trump’s recent indictment, Walters put out a press release headlined, “Joe Biden Leading a Banana Republic Coup Against American Justice,” an indication of his focus on MAGA politics and promotion of Trumpish conspiracy theories.
At an evangelical church service earlier this month, Walters cranked up the fear for the faithful:
“President Joe Biden wants to destroy this country,” Walters declared. “He wants to destroy our schools. He wants to destroy your family. And he wants to destroy our Christian faith.”
“Let’s be really clear, that is his end goal,” Walters continued. “But let me tell you, not here in Oklahoma. It is absolutely not going to happen. We are going to be the tip of the spear to tell Joe Biden, ‘This isn’t communist China, this isn’t California, this is Oklahoma.’ This is where woke goes to die.”
Earlier in August, Walters shared an edited Tik Tok video that omitted the context of a Union District public school librarian’s commentary. The offending word was “woke,” and as everybody in Oklahoma should know by now, that’s a Class One no-no.
At least three bomb threats were called in to Union District elementary schools following publicizing of the video, along with threats directed at other school districts and public facilities in Oklahoma.
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The state agency has experienced pushback from larger educational districts following the inclusion of videos and materials from PragerU Kids for supplemental instruction materials.
Via Time Magazine:
PragerU has published videos questioning the scientific consensus on the extent of fossil fuels' contribution to climate change. Historian Kevin Kruse went viral on Twitter for fact-checking a PragerU video about why the South predominantly votes Republican (PragerU argued the racism that once defined the South "doesn't anymore"), accusing it of "cherry-picking" info.
Since assuming office earlier this year, Walters has overseen a mass exodus of department of education employees. Gone is the entire leadership team in the Office of Student Support, which houses much of the agency’s mental and behavioral health services.
Last week, Superintendent Walters went to Washington to testify before a House subcommittee on early childhood, elementary and secondary elementary.
He was there to spread the word about Chinese Commies infiltrating our educational system in support of legislation banning schools from accepting money from hostile governments. As is so often true with right wing righteousness, the premise for his fear mongering isn’t as advertised.
Walters has been at war with the Tulsa school district, and a teacher from that system went to Texas to participate in a professional development program that he claims is funded by the Chinese government. What was the aim of the program not in Oklahoma? Teaching kids to learn Chinese.
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While Oklahoma is ideologically purifying itself, the state’s Republicans seem unaware of its status as one of the most poverty stricken in the nation.
Gov. Stitt has called for a special session of the legislature (starting Oct 5) to put the state on a path to eliminate its income tax. Oklahoma is currently sitting on four billion dollars that they can’t figure out anything to spend on. And the tax rate paid by its richest citizens is less than half that paid by those making under $20,000.
I can think of a few things worth spending on.
The state has the nation’s eighth highest poverty rate.
One in five children lives in poverty; one in four Black people are similarly afflicted.
US News & World Report ranks Oklahoma 48th in education; 49th in pre k-12 learning.
The state ranks 48th in health care, and 42nd in public safety
Not including COVID vaccines, the state’s vaccination exemption rate for kindergarteners is among the highest in the country.
On the other hand, Oklahoma is among the top six Red states in book banning. Public librarians are afraid of pointing patrons to medical books that might contain information about abortions, lest they get sued under the state’s private citizens as vigilante abortion laws.
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One thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is the atmosphere for big dollar crime existing in these Republican wannabe utopias.
Judd Legum’s expose at Popular Information about a probable new stadium for Oklahoma City’s NBA franchise (The Thunder) is a terrific example. “No new taxes “ for a $900 million arena is the lie that the owners of the team (valued at $1.875 billion with annual income of about $130 million) are telling.
The team will contribute a paltry $50 million, and the rest will be covered by extending and repurposing one-cent per transaction sales tax. If you do the math on the city’s contribution, it works out to about $3200 per household.
It’s take it or leave it, according to the team owners, who made good on their promise to move the franchise from Seattle in the past, when that city balked at a sweetheart deal.
…the existing sales tax, known as MAPS 4, funds a variety of programs that benefit the city. Initiatives currently financed by the sales tax include:
A "permanent location for the Oklahoma County Diversion Hub," an alternative to incarceration for low-level offenders.
A Family Justice Center, "dedicated to helping survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse."
"A business support center to help accelerate growth for minority-owned small businesses."
Bus Rapid Transit for underserved communities.
A new Oklahoma City Animal Shelter.
Crisis centers for mental health, addiction, and affordable housing.
Upgrades of 105 neighborhood and community parks.
Four new youth centers with afterschool and summer programming.
Under the proposal, all of the funding currently backing these projects will be diverted to the Thunder's new arena. That means Oklahoma City will either have to stop financing these kinds of programs or raise taxes.
The bad news here is that elected officials thought this was doable. The good news (maybe) is that there will be a special election in December on the tax.
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Wednesday’s Stuff You Might Wanna Read
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‘Get involved, because the Nazis certainly are’- Talking with Amanda Moore about her time with the alt-right Via Lyz at the Men Always Yell At Me substack:
It’s important to know that there's a percentage of people in and around the Republican Party who are just blatantly Nazis. The only way that this can really be stopped is for the Republican Party to step up and either vote people out or remove people from office, whatever they have to do. To squash it in a way that we as Libertarians just never did. We just let these people come in and take over the party.
Also, extremists are running for local office. So the average person can run for office or make sure they vote. If you are not a lunatic, try to get on the school board, try to get on the city council. Just something. Get involved, because the Nazis certainly are.
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What To Do About Hunter Biden - The president's son is a huge liability. But Joe Biden has no good options Via Jill Filipovic
I struggle to wrap my mind around a man like Hunter Biden, who meets his father’s grace and generosity with such selfishness. While I can feel for anyone who fights against the disease of addiction, I also really find it difficult to feel sorry for Hunter Biden. I really wish he would grow up, take some responsibility, and get his act together. I wish he demonstrated the kind of decency, integrity, loyalty, or even just bare-bones basic concern his father has shown him. I wish he wasn’t such a bad-decision machine, for the good of his family and for the good of the American public.
I’m not sure, though, what exactly Joe Biden is supposed to do about any of it.
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How crisis pregnancy centers get millions in tax dollars to perpetuate lies - Nationwide, they outnumber actual abortion clinics three to one Via Lisa Needham at Public Notice
Over the last few decades, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) have played a significant role in the war over abortion rights. That’s starting to change — in some states at least.
At first glance, CPCs appear to provide information and assistance to pregnant people, but their real purpose is to target people seeking abortion care and try to stop them from having an abortion. Now, some blue states are taking steps to limit the reach and funding of these centers. Red states, meanwhile, continue to shovel money at these misinformation-driven organizations.
CPCs fall into two broad categories. Some offer only counseling and pregnancy tests, while others offer limited medical services like ultrasounds. No matter the offerings, CPCs are not usually medical clinics and are often completely unregulated, staffed by non-medical personnel, and unbound by confidentiality regulations such as HIPAA. Many of them are affiliated with national anti-choice organizations, and, across the country, they outnumber actual abortion clinics three to one. In several states, CPCs enjoy generous taxpayer funding. The Associated Press found that, between 2010 and 2022, 13 states gave CPCs roughly $495 million.