Fallin

It seems like for now Oklahoma Republicans are rejecting the disaster-cost ideology recently presented by a national GOP leader, but what about next year?

In a response to Hurricane Irene, which hit the East Coast about a week ago, U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, made the argument that federal money used in disaster response and relief should be offset by cuts in other parts of the federal budget. Cantor told Fox News:

There’s a federal role; yes we’re going to find the money, we’re just going to need to make sure that there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so.

His comments drew praise from former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, but U.S. Rep. David Price, a Democrat from North Carolina and a member of a Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, called the comments “abhorrent.”

Meanwhile, Oklahoma faced its own weather-related disaster last week in the form of wildfires that destroyed a lot of property and disrupted many lives here. In contrast to Cantor’s position, Gov. Mary Fallin, a fellow Republican, made it clear that money wasn’t going to become the focus of the disaster-response operation.

According to NewsOK, Fallin said:

I want to make it perfectly clear that there is no holding back, of using National Guard personnel, helicopters based upon the financial cost. We will do whatever we have to do. We're not going to hold back on protecting families, on protecting homes and putting out the fires based upon costs.

Is Fallin, then, dismissing Cantor’s position?

As I wrote last February, Oklahoma ranks unusually high in FEMA disaster declarations. Without federal help in ensuring Oklahoma recovers from its annual litany of tornadoes, blizzards, ice storms and wildfires, would the state still even exist? That’s not hyperbole. Oklahoma has long been considered a receiver state that pays less in federal taxes than it receives back in federal money. The federal government, despite all the anti-government, Tea-Party rhetoric here, ensures Oklahoma’s viability and it always will.

Of course, Cantor’s comments were just typical political posturing, but they do expose a looming problem. As climate change produces more extreme weather events like hurricanes and wildfires, as scientists predict, how will government pay for disaster response and relief? His comments also provide a de facto litmus test for the new Republican Party. Will fellow Republicans, such as Fallin, have to cave in to extreme ideology that actually threatens the safety and welfare of citizens, in order to remain politically viable?

Fallin was right on the money with her comments, but will she retain her pragmatic position on disaster response? We’ve already seen her embrace right-wing extremism by refusing to accept federal money to help the state set up a health insurance exchange. That was a clear case of political gamesmanship. Will the state’s extreme weather become politicized as well?

Gov. Mary Fallin’s request for drought-relief prayers for Oklahoma was featured in a recent Salon.com article that noted a trend among Republican governors to leave it up to a higher power when it comes to weather disasters, including drought.

Here’s Fallin’s official statement:

I encourage Oklahomans of all faiths to join me this Sunday in offering their prayers for rain. For the safety of our firefighters and our communities and the well-being of our crops and livestock, this state needs the current drought to come to an end. The power of prayer is a wonderful thing, and I would ask every Oklahoman to look to a greater power this weekend and ask for rain.

Fallin’s statement follows a similar prayer request by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a prayer request that, well, according to the Salon.com article, just didn’t work.

But let’s hope Fallin is also praying the federal government doesn’t shut down because of GOP recalcitrance over raising the federal debt ceiling. As I’ve written before, Oklahoma ranks third, just behind Texas and California, in the number of declared disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Without federal intervention, Oklahoma would probably be a desolate wasteland right now because of extreme weather, which includes the current potential for wildfires. What happens to FEMA funding in a government shutdown?

Let’s also hope Fallin is praying that Oklahoma’s U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, the nation’s leading political opponent of climate-change science, finds some higher guidance and drops his campaign against scientists who warn about the effects of global warming. No one weather event can be tied to global warming, true, but is this incessant summer heat part of a pattern? It deserves scientific scrutiny. Dr. Bruce Prescott, who blogs at Mainstream Baptist, has an interesting take on this issue from a religious perspective.

Fallin’s request is basically harmless, of course, but “the power of prayer” can’t make up for glaring political contradictions and pandering to big energy companies at the expense of the environment.

Amen.

A recent editorial in The Oklahoman supposedly criticizing the state’s decision to reject a $54.6 million federal grant to create a health exchange system here is so filled with rhetorical subterfuge and misplaced anger it’s hard to discern the message.

The editorial (“Oklahoma decision on insurance exchange funds is puzzling,” April 19, 2011) is yet another example of why the newspaper cannot be trusted to present straightforward arguments when it comes to local, right-wing politics.

Take the editorial’s headline, for example. The decision by Gov. Mary Fallin and other Republican leaders to reject the money is absolutely not “puzzling” at all. Fallin and the other leaders did it because of the local right-wing’s detest for all things Obama, including the president’s signature health-care legislation it labels deridingly as Obamacare.

The state, which is required under the Affordable Care Act to create a health exchange that would help some Oklahomans obtain less expensive insurance, rejected the money because of right-wing politics, not because it made pragmatic sense on any level. The state will still be required to create the exchange system by the federal government.

The editorial begins with a series of cutesy clichés, makes a point about ideology, and then makes a claim that the decision means that . . . “Ideology trumped common sense, as it so often does in the progressive world.” Note the reference to the “progressive world.” What’s the point here? Is it that since supposedly progressives embrace ideology over pragmatics it’s understandable right-wingers do it, too? That’s fine as far as clichéd arguments go, but in the context of an editorial about a terrible decision by Fallin and other leaders, it dilutes and tries to shift blame. The logic, advanced by the editorial, goes something like this: Fallin made a bad decision. It was based on ideology. But progressives make decisions based on ideology. That’s the real problem.

Then there’s this “logic” about Fallin’s decision:

. . . Liberals who opposed the Bush-era tax cuts nevertheless benefitted from them through lower withholding. On principle, they could have sent the money back to Washington, but that wouldn't have made any difference. The tax cuts will continue indefinitely; liberals will continue to benefit.

But the small tax cuts for the middle-class, in most cases, didn’t even begin to make a dent in rising health-care and insurance costs.

Then we finally get to the crux of the editorial, which, remember, is ostensibly about the Republican decision here to reject the federal government money:

Rejection of the grant was a no-brainer — as in mindless pandering to an ideological base. That's something President Obama is very good at.

So is the editorial about the decision to reject the money or is it really just another attack on progressives and Obama? Surely, whoever wrote the editorial knows rhetorical attacks against Obama and progressives in the state’s largest newspaper would just make it even more difficult for Fallin and crew to accept federal money tied to health-care reform. In other words, the newspaper, through this editorial and countless others, helps create the political atmosphere for such irresponsible, right-wing ideological decisions. The Oklahoman doesn’t have the smart take on the issue; it is the issue.

None of this would matter on some level if Oklahoma didn’t face a $500 million budget shortfall for next fiscal year or if it had an outstanding health-care system. But we do face major budget problems, and medical outcomes in Oklahoma have consistently been some of the worst in the nation. Thousands upon thousands of state residents have no health insurance. Oklahoma, just as it does year after year with weather emergency declarations, needs the help of the federal government. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Fallin stayed consistent to her campaign rhetoric when she eventually rejected the money. (She initially expressed her intent to accept the money and then she flipped.) She actively campaigned against the right-wing Obama caricature. She supports the state’s lawsuit against the ACA. She now says state and private money will fund the exchange if the law isn’t repealed, but it’s difficult to believe Fallin or anyone else really believes the state can maverick its way to a system that substantially improves health care here.

Unfortunately, Fallin’s decision also suggests she’s moving away from what appeared to be more centrist political views she expressed indirectly and directly after she was elected. The Oklahoman, with its obvious methodical manipulation of new apologists, will make sure Fallin never strays too far from the anti-Obama message no matter what the cost to Oklahomans suffering from health problems for which they can’t afford treatment.