The rains came

Gov. Fallin needs help

Hypocrisy is a dish best served wet. 

“I’m asking the federal government to approve this request as quickly as possible so both state and federal aid can be used to support local recovery efforts.”

Before we begin, what’s the magic word?

Anyway, that was Gov. Mary Fallin a few weeks back wanting federal tax dollars to help us clean up after all the rain and flooding in the region, which, according to one prominent GOP radio host, was potentially caused by a government “weather weapon.” Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott made a similar request to the feds after his state was devastated by (according to a Right Wing Watch caller) an angry God fed up by all the sodomy and witchcraft going on. Thing is, Abbott, at the urging of the state’s truly unhinged, had just a week earlier called out the Texas State Guard to protect his citizens from a takeover by the four branches of the U.S. military in the state for training exercises. So, watching him go Tricorn hat in hand to the feds was great fun. Good thing our governor was never that frivolous (and moronic) in attacking the federal government.

 President Obama wants us to believe that Oklahomans owe that success to the federal government — to the Department of Energy, to the EPA, to the IRS, or maybe even to him. Mr. President, we know better. As we say in Oklahoma, that dog won’t hunt.

Oops.

Yeah. That was Fallin during the 2012 Republican National Convention, defending the honor of our forefathers and their pooches by reminding the party faithful that we in Oklahoma have always had boots with straps and never needed anyone’s help getting them on. 

They built tent cities overnight. They farmed the land and they worked hard. And, in 1897, eight years after the land run, a handful of adventurous pioneers risked their own money — not the federal government’s money — to drill Oklahoma’s first oil well, the Nellie Johnstone.

Oh, for the love of the overture to Oklahoma!— hold the icing, I’m hyperglycemic. Sure, we and our hunting dogs made it on our own, but only if you don’t factor in the Homestead Act, the railway acts, the Morrill Act, the small matter of the feds removing Native Americans from their land, and years of receiving more in federal assistance than we ever paid in taxes. Without the federal government, many of us here would be stranded, uneducated and guests of several¹¹ Native American tribes (not that there’s anything wrong with that)—and then Rodgers and Hammerstein would have had to come up with a different ending. 

“If you live in Oklahoma and have suffered storm damages, please report your losses to FEMA,” Fallin said. “Doing so will help to support the case for additional federal assistance for the many Oklahoma families and businesses in need.”

So that’s her message now to a proud, can-do state, founded on self-reliance, hard work and overcoming adversity? The more we ask for, the more help we’ll get. 

Sucking from the teets of American taxpayers and manipulating the federal purse strings, while touting our independence? Priceless.

Red State America is actually pretty accomplished at it.

Put another way, again by the American Conservative, “On the other hand, eight of the ten states with the highest non-payment rates are solidly Republican.”

Well, knock me over with a tax cut and call me Saul Alinsky. Oklahoma is part of that group that gets more than it gives (more on that in a moment), so we might want to lighten up on crowing about the elasticity and resilience of those bootstraps, especially since someone else has been buying us the boots. 

Fallin is not alone, though, in loving the federal government only when we’re underwater or hit by an F5. Here’s our illustrious snowball-throwing senior senator explaining, as only he can, why the American people can trust Oklahomans with a bailout but not those grifters in other states.  

“That [Sandy aid bill] was totally different,” Inhofe told MSNBC. “That was supposed to be in New Jersey; they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there. They were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Of course it won’t.

(There was also former Senator Tom Coburn’s insistence during the debate that before disaster relief was given to those affected by Hurricane Sandy—and later even to residents of Moore [your friends and neighbors] during 2013’s aforementioned F5—it should be offset with spending cuts to others in need. Some call his behavior consistent; I’ll go with monstrous.)

There was a wonderful moment in “The West Wing” when President Josiah Bartlett, during a debate with the GOP presidential candidate, tees off on this notion of the states flexing their muscles for the cameras.

There are times when we’re fifty states and there are times when we’re one country, and have national needs. And the way I know this is that Florida didn’t fight Germany in World War II or establish civil rights. You think states should do the governing wall-to-wall. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. But your state of Florida got $12.6 billion in federal money last year-- from Nebraskans, and Virginians, and New Yorkers … 12.6 out of a state budget of $50 billion, and I’m supposed to be using this time for a question, so here it is: Can we have it back, please?

What does this have to do with us?

Of each dollar spent by Oklahoma government during the 2011 fiscal year, more than 43 cents was provided by the federal government, Miller said in his latest Oklahoma Economic Report, released Friday. Only six states relied more on federal funds. 

Ahem.

Back in 2012, when Gov. Fallin spoke to those Republicans in Tampa, she said this about Mitt Romney:

He knows it is hard-working American families, not  federal bureaucracy, that have built our great and glorious nation.

Yeah, but sometimes your bureaucracy helps remove indigenous people (from land they found great and glorious) or carts away saturated drywall or lays railroad track or provides almost half your budget. So considering all the United States of America has done and is presently doing for Oklahoma, perhaps our governor, instead of belting out show tunes, should say Please and Thank You—or send the feds back their money when it gets here.

“Views from the Plains” appears each issue and covers Oklahoma politics and culture—the disastrous, the unseemly, the incomprehensible … you know, the day-to-day stuff. Barry Friedman is a touring stand-up comedian, author and general rabble-rouser. For more from Barry, read his stories on the troubling state of the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office and a possible ban on texting while driving.