Two More Years of Democratic Obscurity In Oklahoma

In a piece of great news for Oklahoma Republicans this weekend, Wallace Collins was reelected chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.  Collins was first elected to the position in 2011 and Oklahoma Democrats have taken a beating ever since, even from their own chairman.

Since Collins became chairman, Democrats have lost every statewide elected office, lost seats in the state House and the Senate, Obama failed to win a single county in the presidential election and the lone Democrat-held Congressional seat is now occupied by a Republican. 

In the Oklahoma presidential primary in 2012, President Obama lost fifteen counties to two other Democrats, one a publicity-seeking antiabortionist.  After the results came in, Collins said, "Racism is alive and well in Oklahoma."  Apparently, someone forgot to remind Collins that Oklahoma has closed primaries and any 'racism' was confined to his own democratic party.

Also during the 2012 presidential election cycle Collins made remarks comparing the Tea Party to a domestic terrorist, saying if Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh were alive today he would be in the Tea Party.  When asked about the comment and given an opportunity to backtrack, he doubled down and said, "I certainly stand by my remarks, because it's widely known that McVeigh was anti-government.  I think that he was a right-winger, and I think the current tea party people, while I'm not saying that they're proposing violence, they're anti-government.  They dislike the government.  I don't know if you'd call them a government hater, but I certainly see them in a similar vein.  Maybe they're an offshoot or offspring or next generation."

Among the accomplishment Collins brags about during his two years as chairman is recruiting at gay pride parades and hanging more pictures of Obama in state party headquarters. 

To Chairman Collins I say congratulations, sir, and may you have continued success.  And please, if you're ever upset about something and you see a microphone, by all means, please rush to it and share your thoughts.  Oklahoma will definitely be better off with you in charge of the Democrats.

Governor Fallin's Misleading Tax Cut

I don't agree with much at all of what the Oklahoma Policy Institute puts out, but their information about the recent tax cut legislation passed by the Oklahoma legislature and signed into law by Governor Fallin is right on the money.  Opinions about policy can vary, but numbers don't lie.

I've looked at the new tax rates in House Bill 2032 and I've run the numbers against the tax rates in this year's form 511 - the Oklahoma individual income tax form.  What the numbers tell me is that the things being said by Governor Fallin, Speak of the House T.W. Shannon and others are highly misleading.  Do you think you're getting a tax cut?  Unless you're on the poverty level, you are, but let's see how much.

 

Below is a chart from the OK Policy Institute's post about the tax cut.  It's accurate.  As you can see, if you make between $19,500 and $36,400 your tax cut is going to be a whopping $9.  If you make between $36,400 and $58,100 your tax cut will be $30, which might be enough for half a tank of gas. And don't forget; this doesn't take effect until 2015, more than a year and a half away.

 

 

Looking at the chart you can see the higher incomes are getting the biggest cuts.  That's as it should be.  People who make more money pay more taxes and therefore, will get larger amounts when taxes are cut. I am certainly not one of the people who decry the 'rich' getting bigger tax cuts than the middle or lower income levels.  I know full well the positive effect that tax cuts have on our economy, especially when the higher income people have more of their money to invest in their businesses or other ventures.

 

What I will decry, however, is being sold a bill of goods by the Republican leadership in Oklahoma when they tout this tax cut as something it definitely is not.  For example, in her press release on May 13, Governor Fallin said, "Oklahomans have already seen their paychecks decrease, beginning in January of this year, thanks to Washington’s tax hikes. Cutting our state income tax will help to offset that loss, and help working Oklahomans keep more of their hard-earned money."

 

Speaker Shannon said, "By lowering the income tax rate, we are attracting skilled and educated workers to our state and making Oklahoma a leader in business and economic growth."  Apparently he believes $9, $30, or even $81 will bring workers to our state.  Please, someone give that man a drug test.

 

According to the Census Bureau the average household income in Oklahoma is $44,287, which means more than half the households in Oklahoma will get $30, $9 or $0 as their tax cut.  And not until 2015.  Yes, that will really help offset Washington's confiscatory tax policies.

 

If Governor Fallin isn't careful there will be many more people in Oklahoma who refer to her as a few of my Democrat coworkers do - Governor Failin'.

 

While I am not at all pleased with the way this tax cut is being handled or with the amounts, that does not mean I will be abandoning the Oklahoma Republican Party.  Having lived in Oklahoma all my life I know full well the disaster we would face if the Democrats were able to come back into power.  Governor Fallin and the Republicans have done a lot of positive things in Oklahoma and our economy is one of the leading state economies in the nation.  I'm sure the Republican leadership knows the benefits to our economy of having top wage earners keep more of their money.  The rest of us are just stuck with the crumbs.  I'll take the crumbs, but don't tell me it's cake.

 

And there's one other thing to mention.  Since 1992 when Oklahoma residents passed a Constitutional amendment preventing the legislature from raising taxes without a vote of the people, a favorite trick of the legislators has been to increase the amount for fees, licenses and permits.  Among the fee increases about to take effect is a $12 increase in renewing a drivers license.  Bye bye minuscule tax cut. 

 

 

National Day of Prayer Service at the White House

The Pentagon Wages War On Christians

The United States Department of Defense is waging another war, but not against another country.  Their target?  Christians in our own military.

Obama appointees at the Pentagon have jumped into bed with Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religions Freedom Foundation, who will be a consultant in developing new policies on religious tolerance in the military.  The new policies will include a court-martial for military chaplains who share the Gospel during spiritual counseling of American servicemen and women.

Weinstein wrote an angry column for the Huffington Post in which he said, “Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

Weinstein has also compared sharing the Gospel to rape and said, "It is a version of being spiritually raped and you are being spiritually raped by fundamentalist Christian religious predators." He told the Washington Post that proselytizing is a "national security threat."

The Pentagon would not confirm or deny that anyone has been prosecuted for sharing their faith, but did confirm that soldiers could be prosecuted under military regulations for doing so.

In his column Weinstein endorsed the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has labeled Christian groups supporting traditional marriage as "hate groups."  The SPLC is the group which supplied the training material presented to a Pennsylvania Army Reserve unit which said that Evangelical Christians are the number one extremist threat to America.  Not the Muslim Brotherhood.  Not Al Qaeda. Not Hamas. Not the Ku Klux Klan.  Evangelical Christians are at the top of their list.

Congressman Randy Forbes (R-VA) has been monitoring religious discrimination complaints in the military and he told Fox News that it's getting worse.  He said, "It's been a steady attack on faith and religious freedom that we've seen in our military like we've never seen before.  We are getting a lot of calls from soldiers saying 'we're afraid of going to church, we're afraid to be seen praying, we're afraid that would hurt our careers, our promotions.'"

Forbes asked Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel about the religious liberty issues and listed specific examples:

• Commanders barred from disclosing any programs that are tied to the Chaplaincy or any programs involving religions.
• The Air Force banned the word 'God' from an Air Force patch logo even though the reference had no religious connotation.
• A Navy directive that banned Bibles at Walter Reed Hospital.
• The Pennsylvania Army Reserve training listing Christians as the number one extremist threat.
• An Army email that listed prominent Christian ministries such as Family Research Council and American Family Association as "domestic hate groups."

Secretary Hagel said he had no idea what Forbes was talking about.
 
Forbes said, "I just can’t understand why the department is issuing orders prohibiting people in the chain of command from talking about chaplain’s programs, supporting faith, but they’re not prohibiting people in the chain of command from making anti-faith statements and doing anti-faith training.  I think there has been a huge move on the Department of Defense to respond to a very small but very vocal group of people who hate God and religion.  They have been very successful of getting the ear of the people at the Pentagon. They have done everything they have asked them to do.”

The animosity shown Christians by our own military leadership comes as no surprise to me.  With the Obama administration being openly helpful and sympathetic to Muslims and Islamic causes it follows that appointees by the administration would be hostile to Christianity and create policy which attacks it. 

Conservative historian David Barton has labeled Obama "America's most Biblically-hostile U.S. President."  Barton has compiled a list of "acts of hostility" toward people of Biblical faith.  It's an incredibly long list.  You can read that list here. 

Barton also has a list of acts of hostility just for the military.  Here are just a few examples from a very long list:

• June 2011 - The Department of Veterans Affairs forbids references to God and Jesus during burial ceremonies at Houston National Cemetery.
• February 2012 - The Army orders Catholic chaplains not to read a letter to parishioners that their archbishop asked them to read.
• May 2012 - The Obama administration opposes legislation to protect the rights of conscience for military chaplains who do not wish to perform same-sex marriages in violation of their strongly-held religious beliefs.
• June 2012 - Bibles for the American military have been printed in every conflict since the American Revolution, but the Obama Administration revokes the long-standing U. S. policy of allowing military service emblems to be placed on those military Bibles.
• April 2013 - The U.S. Army directs troops to scratch off and paint over tiny Scripture verse references that for decades had been forged into weapon scopes.

Clearly, things have changed in our military.  Open hostility to Christians runs rampant and it seems to be getting worse.  How long before Christians are just completely barred from joining the military?  Pictures like the one below may someday be relegated to the history books.

 

 

The Homosexual Assault On Business: Marginalizing Morality

Over a year ago I wrote a post about the homosexual assault on businesses who refuse to provide services when doing so would violate their moral or religious beliefs.  Lately I have been seeing many, many more instances of this.  Determined to force their lifestyle on those who don't approve of it, lawsuits and official complaints seem to be the order of the day for the homosexuals.  They can always count on judges and local officials who sit on human rights commissions to back them up in their quest to punish businesses who don't welcome their depravity.

The latest I've read about is a florist in Richland, Washington being taken to court by the State Attorney General, who is seeking $2,000 in penalties.  And what did this florist do to bring down the wrath of the state?   Based on her religious beliefs she declined to provide flowers to a same-sex marriage ceremony.

In just a few minutes I was able to find many more such instances around the nation:

In Dallas, a gay couple filed a complaint against the Dallas Morning News for refusing to publish an announcement of their gay wedding.

In New Mexico, a photographer was fined $7,000 for refusing to take pictures of a lesbian ceremony.

In Illinois, a gay couple filed a complaint against two bed and breakfast inns who refused to provide a venue for their civil union ceremony.

In Iowa, a cake maker may be facing legal action for refusing to provide a wedding cake for two lesbians.

In New Mexico, two gay men are suing a Christian preschool for accepting their three year old son, then rejecting him after finding out about the homosexual couple.

In Kentucky, a t-shirt company is under investigation by the City of Lexington Human Rights Commission after refusing to print t-shirts for a local gay rights organization.

In California, the dating site eHarmony agreed to launch a service for homosexuals after a gay man filed suit against them for not offering matchmaking for gays and lesbians.

In New York, a lesbian couple have filed a discrimination complaint with the New York Division of Human Rights after a rural farm declined to host their "wedding" on the premises.

In Vermont, a lesbian couple sued after the Wildflower Inn told them they would not host a same-sex wedding reception.  The case was settled last year and the Inn had to cough up $30,000.

In Oregon, a baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple is now the target of an investigation by the state attorney general.

In Illinois, as part of the nation-wide assault on Chick-Fil-A, a Chicago-based gay rights group filed multiple complaints against the restaurant chain with the Illinois Department of Human Rights.  They accused Chick-Fil-A of having an "intolerant corporate culture."

In New Jersey, a judged ruled that a Christian beachfront property operated by the United Methodists cannot refuse to host lesbian civil union ceremonies.

In Hawaii, the Aloha Bed and Breakfast was sued by a lesbian couple after the business chose not to provide them with a reservation.

No doubt there are many more such examples of homosexuals targeting businesses who choose to not assist or take part in their immoral lifestyle. 

The homosexual assault on morals in business goes hand in hand with the gay marriage issue and the influx of gay characters and story lines on television (reason #823 to not watch television). Mainstreaming homosexuality cannot succeed to the desired levels of the gay community without marginalizing morals and religious beliefs that hold homosexuality to be an abomination.  Lawsuits and official complaints may not change business owners opinions, but forcing them to provide services against their will or spend thousands in legal fees is a victory for the homosexuals.

Our nation's morality is being turned upside down.  It wasn't long ago that homosexuals weren't celebrated the way they are today and religion-based morality was predominant.  Fast forward to today and our society is exactly the opposite.  As our nation's morals have moved to the dark side, the immoral have been emboldened to fight even harder to silence the moral with the help of the progressives in government and the judiciary. 

People with genuine morals don't change them because our culture does, but that culture can be used by the homosexuals to beat those people into submission.  And they're becoming very good at it.  They are assaulting morality and religious beliefs on all fronts and it will continue unabated until the people with moral and religious beliefs are the ones who are in the closet.