Monday, January 11, 2016

The worst govenor in America lives here!

Well today completes the last of the construction projects for awhile.  The electrician has been here all day installing a new vented heater w/light in our main bathroom.  Had no idea it was such a complicated project.  He had to get in the attic to vent it etc.  Almost done!

I read yesterday where Oklahoma's governor has been rated the worst governor in America.  Now doesn't that just make a person proud?  And to think my state didn't elect her once they elected her twice!  We already have the lowest paid teachers in the country and she is gutting the education budget again.  The state has a nearly billion dollar deficit in the budget partly due to the oil revenue being down and also because of her refusal to expand Medicaid in the state.  

Here are a few highlights of her time in office:
   She signed a bill that bans cities in Oklahoma from individually raising the minimum wage to a livable level, and from requiring businesses to provide time off and sick leave to employees.
 
• Education spending in Oklahoma is down 23% per student from 2008, the largest reduction to education spending of any state in America - despite an increase of 40,000 students.

• Because of increased oil drilling, Oklahoma is seeing a high level of revenue - but the state has so many tax breaks for the rich and special interest earmarks, it's currently dealing with a major budget crisis.

• Despite that budget crisis and related deficit problems, Fallin actually wants to CUT the income tax level by one-quarter percent. In 2012, she released a plan that would eliminate income taxes entirely (there are no credible economists who consider a plan like this feasible).

 • Oklahoma botched the execution of an inmate earlier this month, resulting in him being tortured to death due to experimental lethal injection chemicals. Fallin pushed for this execution despite ethics questions raised by lawyers and human rights' groups, and when asked about the execution, she replied that there was "no blood on [her] hands".

 • Oklahoma is also second only to Texas, in the total number of executions per year - despite the fact that an overwhelming number of criminologists do not believe that the death penalty is an effective deterrent of crime.

• Not only did Fallin refuse to expand access to health care through Medicaid (despite the fact that the Affordable Care Act covers 100% of a state's expenses for Medicaid expansion, and the fact that the expansion would provide health care to more than 155,000 Oklahomans) - she's also pushed for cuts to Medicaid.

• Because she was politically bribed by the oil, coal, and natural gas industries, Fallin signed a bill that actually taxes Oklahomans who install their own solar panels and wind generators (because they compete with those fossil fuels). 

• Fracking for natural gas in Oklahoma has seen a huge increase under Fallin, and science is indicating that this fracking could be the cause behind the fact that the rate of earthquakes has increased by 50% since October 2013.

• And finally: as a last-ditch, desperate attempt to prevent homosexual equality and gay marriage from coming to Oklahoma, Fallin's legislature is considered a ban on not just gay marriage, but on all forms of state-recognized marriage entirely.

What's scary is that it would be remarkably simple to keep this list going until it's two or three times as long, by including other items like Fallin's war on women's reproductive rights, her cuts to welfare and food stamps, and the high crime rate and gang activity of certain parts of Oklahoma.  My fear is that people haven't learned anything and they will just elect someone as bad or God forbid, worse the next time.

4 comments:

Florence said...

I live in Texas and I think that our Governor, Greg Abbott, should at least tie for worst governor. I can't even write about him without raising my blood pressure.....

Olga said...

That is such a shame, Awful.

Betty said...

Well, all I can say is that the voters put her in office - twice, so they have only themselves to blame. It's too bad you have to suffer right along with them, but many states have the same problem. Arkansas is headed down that slippery slope,now, and who knows what will happen? I have no solutions to offer.

Deb said...


Unbelievable - for years I wished I could come back to Duncan where I spent the happiest years of my childhood, where my deepest roots are. No more. You couldn't pay me to live in the US anymore. Governors like Fallin are simply employees of the wealthiest corporations in the world, paid to embezzle the treasury of the nation and place it in the hands of the super wealthy.

I read the other day that *80* people own over 50% of the earth's wealth and resources. EIGHTY PEOPLE - HALF OF THE EARTH.