BY SHARON MARTIN
Gov. Mary Fallin wants tax breaks for job creators.
Sen. Jim Inhofe criticizes the president on spending in one sentence then demands increased military spending in the next. Just don’t ask him to spend money to advance science or insure access to healthcare.
We, the people, are the real job creators, governor. We buy and rent houses, creating jobs for real estate agents, contractors, home improvement retailers. We eat, providing jobs for farmers, cooks, restaurant owners and dishwashers, dairymen, ranchers, food processors, and container makers. We fill up our tanks, wear clothes, and seek to be entertained. We turn on the lights.
Almost everything we do creates jobs for someone.
We pay taxes. We are promised a voice in what those taxes fund, Sen. Inhofe.
I asked my Facebook friends what they considered to be essential uses of their tax dollars. About 10% of them responded. A lot of folks don’t vote, either.
Those who spoke were clear: education and social services, especially healthcare and aid to the poor, topped the list.
“In a democracy,” one wrote, “education is the prime mover.”
“Students shouldn’t have to graduate college tens of thousands of dollars in debt,” another said.
A former student asked for “a functioning Department of Human Services.”
Another explained how her family wouldn’t have eaten, despite her mother’s salaried [no overtime] job without school lunches and Food Stamps.
A teacher asked for “healthy school lunches and breakfasts, for some [kids] the only place they eat at all.”
Several listed care for the disabled and elderly. “As it stands,” a caregiver wrote, “you must give up everything to have facility care.
Infrastructure and public safety – police and fire protection, safe highways, postal service, and the power grid – made several lists. So did care for veterans.
Only one person, a cousin who calls himself very conservative, put military spending as a top priority, but even he wanted help for the poor.
On the other end, a friend wrote, “Not War!” She suggested funding for the arts and the sciences. Another wanted a WPA program for the unemployed.
Rehabilitation for addicts and first-time criminal offenders, childcare, and help for the mentally ill made multiple lists.
My niece wrote, “I love the trains in the Northeast. [It] would be great to have them all over. The train system doesn’t discriminate against people who want to work and don’t have a car.”
“Taxes are my contribution toward purchasing things needed by the population as a whole,” a working musician said. “Legislators make decisions. If you don’t like their decisions, vote them out.”
The governor and the senator want your votes. How do their visions for the role of government align with yours? If you see the flaws in their plans, it is your moral imperative to go to the polling booth and let them know that you’ve had enough of their nonsense. When your votes are counted write letters to the winners and let them know how you want them to legislate and govern.
We, the job creators, have been silent too long.
– Sharon Martin lives in Oilton, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
