BY RUSSELL TURNER
A TIME OF TROUBLE
I can remember talking to an old man in my community about the trends he saw coming in our nation several years ago when I was just a boy growing up west of Stilwell. Fortunately I had enough maturity to be willing to listen to someone who had the life’s experiences that I did not yet have. I can vividly remember him saying that when our nation gets to the point where it has over 50% of its people depending on the government for their living, our country would be in big trouble. As I watched the news about our legislature voting in the biggest tax increase in the history of Oklahoma, it brought back the words that were spoken so many years ago.
The bill was crammed down the throats of the citizens of Oklahoma. When a bill is put on the floor with no time to review or to contact the taxpayers throughout the state, and to suspend the rules to speed the process up further is not representing the state as a whole. I disagree with the philosophy of the democrats, but at least they are honest about their beliefs. The republicans, on the other hand, claim to be the champion of conservatism with lower taxes and smaller government; sadly these hypocrites showed their true colors. I saw no mention of any attempts to become more efficient or to spend less of the hard working taxpayer monies before just increasing taxes.
Getting back to the numbers, I do not know what the ratio is between the people making their living in the private sector and the people who depend upon the government for their living. But I do know that the biggest employer in the state of Oklahoma is the state itself, and when you look at the numbers of people on programs such as Sooner Care, you can see that there are a lot of people developing an unhealthy reliance on government. Sooner Care pays for over 60% of the cost of the babies born in our state, and the number of people enrolled in the food stamp program continues to climb. I have heard small business people, blue collar people, complain about the lack of representation we seem to have. Whether or not the dependent voters are a majority at this time, one thing they do is to get out and vote. They are voting for their pocket books. I guess it is just human nature to engage in self preservation, but it is about time that the taxpayers take a more aggressive stance on who we allow to sit in the offices in the state capitol. I have seen too many in the working class who don’t go to the polls make the excuse that they had too much to do to take the time to get involved. That not getting involved just enabled a bunch of self-serving politicians to pass the largest tax increase in state history.
We could possibly have some good government if it weren’t for politics. All of these guys and gals hire high priced consultants who do the research and determine who is voting; that is the reason they listen to the rabble rousers in the halls of the state capitol and ignore the hard working people who don’t have the time to go lobby for themselves. This kind of nonsense has been going on for thousands of years; the Roman Empire fell because they taxed the working class out of business. In my opinion it is the natural evolution for government to plunder the productive to give to the unaccountable. Yes, our nation and our state are in trouble, and I fear that there are not enough people with understanding to see the trend.
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