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Turning the Tide? Despite Starvation Budgets and Union-Busting, Pro-Education Forces Are Winning Some Key Battles in GOP-Dominated Legislature

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Turning the Tide? Despite Starvation Budgets and Union-Busting, Pro-Education Forces Are Winning Some Key Battles in GOP-Dominated Legislature • An Independent JournAl of CommentAry • APRIL 2015 • VOLUME 47 NUMBER 4 • $2.50 Turning The Tide? Despite Starvation Budgets And Union-Busting, Pro-Education Forces Are Winning Some Key Battles In GOP-Dominated Legislature BY ARNOLD HAMILTON t was no coincidence that five days before this year’s pro- education rally, state senators voted to strip teachers of their Iright to pay union dues through payroll deduction. As Republican Sen. Ralph Short- ey put it so succinctly, it was a “poke in the eye” – an unmistak- able message that underpaid, over- worked educators are neither to be seen nor heard. With lopsided control of both houses and the governor’s office, Oklahoma’s GOP leadership cal- culated it finally had everything in place to cripple the teachers’ unions and remake schools into corporate profit centers. What they didn’t expect was that a long-splintered educational es- tablishment would reunite and a long-slumbering electorate would awaken – the two groups deploying 21st Century technology and so- cial media to organize an old-fash- ioned, grass-roots movement to save and improve public schools. Equally significant: The state’s Republican school superintendent CONTINUED ON PAGE 24 Observations www.okobserver.net Cynical VOLUME 47, NO. 4 PUBLISHER Beverly Hamilton The spirit of Donald Segretti lives at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. EDITOR Arnold Hamilton In what amounted to a Nixonian dirty trick, the so-called think tank dispatched orange-shirted minions to last month’s public school rally at FOUNDING EDITOR Frosty Troy the state Capitol to distribute decals with this message: Eliminate the ADVISORY BOARD income tax for teachers. Marvin Chiles, Andrew Hamilton, Dozens, if not hundreds, of teachers and common education support- Matthew Hamilton, Scott J. Hamilton, ers blithely stuck the decals on their shirts, becoming unwitting victims Trevor James, Ryan Kiesel, George Krumme, Robert D. Lemon, of an ideological prank – the equivalent of wearing a dunce cap, for all Gayla Machell, Bruce Prescott, to see. Robyn Lemon Sellers, Kyle Williams Let us explain: The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the progeny of the Koch Brothers and other John Birch-style radicals and the ideo- OUR MOTTO To Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the logical twins of the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], de- Comfortable. spises public education. They tirelessly promote vouchers and so-called “school choice” – indeed, almost any policy that would cripple common OUR CREDO schools as we know them. So then to all their chance, to all their shining golden opportunity. To all the Among their latest schemes is a plan to eliminate some, if not all, of right to love, to live, to work, to be the state income tax for Oklahoma’s underpaid teachers. They promote themselves, and to become whatever this as a means to “reward” teachers with higher take-home pay during thing their vision and humanity can lean budget times and encourage more to enter the profession. combine to make them. This seeker, is the promise of America. Sounds good, right? As OCPA’s president, Michael Carnuccio, wrote in - Adapted from Thomas Wolfe a recent Journal Record column, the state already has “eliminated the personal income tax for aerospace engineers, retirees, others on Social FOUNDING PUBLISHER Helen B. Troy Security, and on some capital gains.” Why not teachers? 1932-2007 Here’s the problem: According to an Oklahoma Tax Commission anal- [ISSN 0030-1795] ysis dated Mar. 19, it would cost the state treasury about $50.7 million The Oklahoma Observer [USPS 865-720] is in fiscal year 2016 if lawmakers exempted the first $40,000 in income published monthly by AHB Enterprises LLC, earned by teachers. 13912 Plymouth Crossing, P.O. Box 14275, That is money that otherwise could be spent on public education. Oklahoma City, OK 73113-0275. Periodicals postage paid at Oklahoma City, OK 73125. Money that is needed to hire teachers in the first place. CONTINUED ON PAGE 43 POSTMASTER Send address changes to The Oklahoma Observer, P.O. Box 14275, Oklahoma City, OK 73113-0275. SUBSCRIPTIONS 1-Year [12 issues] $40. Send check to The Oklahoma Observer, P.O. Box 14275, Oklahoma City, OK 73113-0275. Online: Visit www.okobserver.net to use a credit card. UPDATE ADDRESSES Yes! Please send me a one-year subscription for only $40. Please notify us at least two weeks before This special offer includes my certificate for a free book courtesy your move to ensure uninterrupted service. of Full Circle Bookstore [a $20 value]. See page 41 for details. E-mail address changes to subscriptions@ okobserver.net or mail to P.O. Box 14275, Oklahoma City, OK 73113-0275. LETTERS TO EDITOR E-mail to [email protected] or mail to P.O. Box 14275, Oklahoma City, OK 73113- 0275. 2 • APRIL 2015 Observerscope Sad fact: Oklahoma ranks 44th in per capita number of primary care physicians, meaning resi- dents in 63 of state’s 77 counties lack access to the health care they need. Dart: To Rep. Tom Newell, R- Seminole, and Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, authors of the measure to eliminate payroll de- duction as a means for teachers to pay their union dues. Remember those names come election time. Our good friend, Dr. Robin My- ers, launches his latest book, Spiritual Defiance, with an Apr. 27 signing at OKC’s Full Circle Book. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, pulled his voucher bill, blaming misinformation spread about it. Laurel: To Tulsa geologist Bob Laurel: To former House Speak- No, what got people riled up was Jackman, the first to publicly ex- er Kris Steele, R-Shawnee, a tire- the truth about SB 609. pose [October 2014 Observer] the less advocate for criminal justice pressure Big Oil exerted to silence reform. Punitive policies are de- We note the passing of longtime scientists that linked injection stroying lives and bankrupting the Observer reader Dr. O.R. Jenkins, wells to the state’s earthquake state, but lawmakers are slow to who served two decades in admin- swarms. enact changes. They fear being la- istration and another 14 as an ad- beled “soft on crime.” junct professor at Redlands Com- OKC pollster Chris Wilson has munity College. signed on as “director of research It’s shameful state leaders fail and analytics” for Republican Sen. to appreciate value in keeping and Perspective? The unfinished Ted Cruz’s quixotic presidential preserving the circa 1902 Okla- American Indian Cultural Center campaign. Better get paid up front. homa State Capital Publishing and Museum in OKC sits idle for Co. building in Guthrie. Placed a third year. It took the state 85 Dart: To the Legislature’s lock- on state’s “underutilized property years to finish the Capitol – the step Republicans, refusing to de- list” in 2012, it now is offered for dome wasn’t added until 2002. lay a .25% income tax cut despite sale or lease. a $611 million budget hole. Repeat While the carbon crowd fights after us: When you’re in a hole, The Central Oklahoma Labor renewables in Oklahoma, a new stop digging ... Federation will honor Observer Ed- report projects wind power could itor Arnold Hamilton with its 2015 support 600,000 jobs by 2050 in Oxymoron: Oklahoma Sen. Friend of Labor Award at its Apr. such industries as construction, James Lankford and Arkansas 24 Labor and Friends Banquet. transportation and manufacturing. Sen. Tom Cotton are members of The award is named for Observer – U.S. Department of Energy the Senate Select Committee on Founding Editor Frosty Troy. Intelligence. Congratulations to Sapulpa Dart: To OU Professor David Dem- High seniors Lindsey Dennison Back in public service: For- ing, still fighting the old America: and Christina French, winners of mer state Sen. Kenneth Corn is Love It or Leave It, John Birch-era 2015 Willene Wright Scholarships, Anadarko’s new city manager. wars. Deming is torqued another named for the longtime Creek Seems only yesterday, as an OU OU prof would dare label Old Glory County Democratic Party chair. student, he was state’s youngest a symbol of racism. It’s called Free elected House member. Speech. CONTINUED ON PAGE 44 THE OKLAHOMA OBSERVER • 3 Letters homa should have known better when he got the bad news. A video of his students chanting a racist song had gone viral on so- cial media. Boren should have just issued a simple statement saying freedom of speech trumps their racism. Further, he should have added that OU faculty and students have a First Amendment right to speak free of his censorship even if their speech is offensive and stupid like the segregationist Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity song. Instead, Boren panicked and organized a public rally and dem- onstrations against racism that turned a one-day story into a week-long repeating of the video on cable television news. Free speech died at OU on Mar. 10 when Boren expelled two frater- Editor, The Observer: university accepts – the OU foot- nity members who led the chant- In 1978, I presided over a meet- ball team. ing on a bus. ing of the OU Student Congress, Del Bauman A university is supposed to be a which voted [myself included] to Norman laboratory in which all ideas are grant recognition to a student or- expressed and debated. ganization, the Gay Peoples Union. Editor, The Observer: Who wants to go to an institu- This action was actively opposed People have said that they were tion like OU where mum is the by the student body, the OU Presi- not surprised by the bigotry of the word? You either have free speech dent William Banowsky, and the members of that OU fraternity.
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