When the GOP took full control of Oklahoma government after the 2010 election, lawmakers set out to make it a model of Republican principles, with lower taxes, lighter regulation and a raft of business-friendly reforms.
Conservatives passed all of it, setting in motion a grand experiment. Now it’s time for another big election, but instead of campaigning on eight years of achievements, Republicans are confronting chaos and crisis. Agency budgets that were cut during the Great Recession have been slashed even deeper. Rural hospitals are closing, and teachers are considering a statewide strike over low wages…
…The crisis has also placed the oil and gas industry, a sacred cow in Oklahoma, in an awkward spot since it sought the huge tax cut that is one of the biggest factors in the budget mess.
Gov. Mary Fallin and GOP leaders have been unable to reverse course because of a constitutional quirk that says any tax increase needs a three-fourth’s majority vote of the Legislature…
…Since 2009, more than two dozen state agencies have seen their budgets slashed by more than 30 percent. The cuts have been especially painful in public schools, where funding has dipped since 2015, even though enrollment has climbed by about 10,000 students statewide.
I’d like to see the cite for the Dems for this part:
Despite broad GOP support for tax hikes, a small number of fiercely anti-tax Republicans have joined with the minority Democrats to derail attempts to raise revenue. Democrats complain that most of the tax plans unfairly target the poor.
My guess is that they are mostly the likes of sales taxes and other regressive taxes, but I have no actual data.
It is difficult to have any sympathy for Republican voters. They knew exactly what was going to happen. Enjoy the tax cuts in your post apocalypse wasteland chumps. Ever get the feeling you’ve been had?
They won’t get that feeling, cause Fox and the GOP will blame the liberals, welfare queens, the poor, imigrants, anyone who isn’t white and evangelical, or whoever it takes. And their voters will go wherever Fox leads them. They don’t actually know that they have been voting against their interests repeatedly, for generations.
There! Mississippi is about as unlikely to elect a Democrat Senator as, say, Alabama. But the Republican governor has to appoint someone to the ailing Thad Cochran’s seat. The governor (Bryant) decided not to appoint himself (as McConnell wanted) and instead appointed his Ag Secretary. The problem is that she used to be a Democrat. That’s not a show-stopper, but McConnell is concerned that she’ll get primaried by a guy that is anti-Mitch.
Now, there are concerns that Hyde-Smith will not be able to defeat Chris McDaniel, a hard-right state senator who also is running in the Nov. 6 special election and has been sharply critical of McConnell. White House officials have seen polling data that puts her in the back of the pack in Mississippi, Republican officials said.
You know, there’s another way we could be thinning the herd of White House advisors, one perfectly suited for the reality TV paradigm Trump seems stuck in.
The former CEO of Massey Energy, once among the nation’s largest mining companies, Blankenship spent a year in prison for flouting safety standards in the lead-up to the notorious 2010 explosion that killed 29 workers at Upper Big Branch Mine. (As Politico noted, 60% of people in West Virginia thought his sentence was too short.) Even before then, he was well known in West Virginia for shirking environmental rules, crushing unions, and pushing employees not to report workplace injuries.
Yet the multimillionaire has portrayed himself in campaign ads as a victim of the Obama Justice Department and a target of the Deep State.
And the Kicker from the State GOP:
“The common man doesn’t want another politician,” she said. “I could tell from his handshake. He’s real.”
I asked her about the deaths at Upper Big Branch, but she brushed it off.
“Most of us should be in jail for the things we do,” she said. “We just haven’t been caught. No one’s gone after us.”
There’s nothing the Democrats can do that can’t be undone later by another party. Just like there is no lock, safe or room that can be secured perfectly.
Well, I do have this habit of going a bit over the speed limit when the weather is nice and the roads are clear, but that’s a far cry from being convicted of negligence in the death of 29 employees, and then blaming it on Obama.
