Seeded with tax cuts, another red state sliding into developing world status

[RandomGuy]

The list of conservative policy failures gets longer by the day.

"cut taxes, reduce government spending and everything will be magical"

Republican policy experiment about to come crashing down in a slow moving catastrophe with children as the primary victims.

You want a hole, look to neighboring Oklahoma.

Poverty, police abuse, record prison rates and education cuts that mean a four-day school week. Why are public services failing Oklahomans?

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A teacher panhandles on a roadside to buy supplies for her third-grade classroom. Entire school districts resort to four-day school weeks. Nearly one in four children struggle with hunger.

A city overpass crumbles and swarms of earthquakes shake the region – the underground disposal of oil and gas industry wastes have caused the tremors. Wildfires burn out of control: cuts to state forestry services mean that out-of-state firefighting crews must be called in.

A paralyzed and mentally ill veteran is left on the floor of a county jail. Guards watch for days until the prisoner dies. A death row inmate violently convulses on the gurney as prison officials experiment with an untested tail for execution.

Do these snapshots of Oklahoma show a failing state?

Added up, the facts evoke a social breakdown across the board. Not only does Oklahoma lead the country in cuts to education, it’s also number one in rates of female incarceration, places second in male incarceration, and also leads in school expulsion rates. One in 12 Oklahomans have a felony conviction.

Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center wrote in an essay that states begin to fail when the contract between citizens and public ins utions breaks down. States “lose control over the means of violence, and cannot create peace or stability for their populations or control their territories. They cannot ensure economic growth or any reasonable distribution of social goods.”

It may be hard to believe, but entry-level employees with a high school diploma at the popular convenience store QuikTrip make more than teachers in Oklahoma.

For four years running, the state has led the nation in tax cuts to education, outpacing second-place Alabama by double digits. Years of tax cuts and budget shortfalls mean that Oklahoma has fallen to 49th in teacher pay. Spending per pupil has dropped by 26.9% since 2008.

Things have become so bad that the Cherokee nation, a tribe systematically cheated out of its land allotments in the creation of the modern state of Oklahoma, recently donated $5m to the state’s education fund.

Lisa Newman, a high school teacher from El Reno, for instance, recounts a history of cutbacks, increases in class sizes, and her stagnant salary. She takes in less than $1,000 a month after all her bills are paid.

Newman, who recently moved back into her parents’ house at age 39, contemplates a declining standard of living while she raises two boys and works about 50 hours a week.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ool-weeks-poor

[RandomGuy]

Among other fun facts, we learn that Oklahoma pays its teachers less than “entry-level employees with a high school diploma” at the QuikTrip convenience store chain. And that the state’s Teacher of the Year for 2016 up and left for Texas, because, as he said, “Teaching in Oklahoma is a dysfunctional relationship.”

As NPR notes, rightwing fiscal responsibility types have made it nearly impossible to restore lost revenue after taxes get cut: Thanks to a ballot initiative passed in the 1990s, any revenue increase has to be passed by a three-quarters super-SUPER-majority in the Legislature. Impressive — tax hikes in Oklahoma require a bigger majority than the US Cons ution demands to remove a president by impeachment.

Read more at https://wonkette.com/629704/after-ye...LgezwvCGye4.99

[RandomGuy]

Budget Cuts Likely After Failure of Oklahoma Revenue Bill
Oklahoma legislative leaders indicated Tuesday they have no plans to pursue new revenue-raising proposals following the failure of a bill that included a $5,000 teacher pay raise and that another round of budget cuts is likely.
Feb. 13, 2018, at 4:45 p.m.

Corrections department initiates hiring freeze as Oklahoma's budget struggle continues

http://ktul.com/news/local/correctio...ggle-continues

Questions Raised About Oklahoma Agency Budget Issues
The former chief financial officer of the Oklahoma State Department of Health alleges another state agency knew of and tried to hide the Health Department's multimillion dollar budget woes.

The department also is planning to lay off more than 150 employees next month because of its budget. Recent data obtained by the newspaper show that 43 registered nurses are scheduled to lose their jobs at local health departments. Twenty-eight patient care assistants, 16 licensed practical nurses and 50 office workers are also expected to be laid off, according to the data.