BY SHARON MARTIN
It’s not about sound bytes or appearances; it’s about policy. When electronic images and party lines rule the day, too many people are fooled.
Gov. Fallin, your party’s A-F school scoring system doesn’t work. Your education policies aren’t good for the children or their future. Equal education opportunities for every citizen, regardless of zip code?
Let them eat charter schools.
Your refusal to see to the healthcare needs of the poor and their families portends a dismal future for the citizens who voted you into office. Healthcare for the people? Who needs it?
When this oil boom is over, we will be left with crumbling infrastructure, broken down school system, the same unhealthy people, and a Mad Max world. What then?
Chris Christie, I can see right through you. Beneath your charming pragmatism is a guy who just wants to bust the unions.
According to Quality Counts 2013 Education Rankings, New Jersey makes the top 10. Yet, you cast teachers as failures in New Jersey. When a teacher has the nerve to ask you why, you point your finger at her and bluster, “I’m sick of you people.”
Your victory lap at a charter school says it all. It isn’t about the students or the teachers; it’s between you and the unions.
Mayor Bartlett, you claim to be all about putting more policemen on the streets, despite your history. What you really want to do is replace one of the best police forces in the state with low-wage, non-union deputies.
You tipped your hand when you unnecessarily laid off 124 policemen a few years ago. When you had to hire them back, you tried to take away their seniority and jack with their pensions.
Rookies, you said. You start over. Fortunately, you were overruled by law. But you are at it again. Like Christie and Fallin, you are a minion of deep pockets who just want unions busted and public services privatized.
If the people in Oklahoma and across the nation don’t wake up, they will see what the common man in Rome saw, the decline of a great nation brought about by war, greed, and policies that benefit a chosen few. But it will be our fault because we bought the sound bites and slogans instead of thinking for ourselves.
– Sharon Martin lives in Oilton, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
OK – cheap bread & circuses in the land of underachievement
Hoodwinked and swindled by tax dodging captains of industry,
Land and water fracked beyond repair by capitalist wildcatters,
Government incapacitated by conservative notions,
Rejected seniors deprived of needed services,
Neglected children bullied at school and molested by media,
Homeless and hungry begging in the shadows of the not for profit mega churches,
Babble quoting lobby-slators justifying persecuting minorities,
Browns rejected at the borders,
Yellows restricted to ghetto-ed quarters,
Reds run off their inherited mineral-rich land,
Blacks beaten down and their prospects rapped up,
Queers bashed by thugs inspired by politicians and pastors of hate,
Muslims next in line for the full wrath of the religious righteous,
Over fed dust bowlers waddle through thriving palaces of bad math
and invest in state lotteries while test scores are 30th in the world,
Packing heat, armed and dangerous,
too many mentally unfit to make deadly force decisions,
…Guess we can give up settling differences with a game of Scrabble.
I know, blame the teachers….yes that’s it….throw the bums out !
Wow, Wayne Clark. Just wow!