The Right to Farm School Vouchers

   This column is partly tongue-in-cheek but mostly factual. The resemblance of any real characters to "cartoon" or historical characters is simply to make a point. For instance, any comparison of real-life voucher wolves to Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or corporate legislators does an injustice to voucher wolves.
   As many public school advocates know by now, a school voucher is a public funded (tax) check under-written by Oklahoma legislators, which goes to the private or corporate school of the legislators' choosing. Senator and representative voucher wolves often refer to these checks (monetary rewards for campaign support) as "school choice", implying the checks are "for the kids". Voucher wolves have been taught since they were only pups, that doing anything "for the kids", is a "sure win" as far as getting legislative bills passed into law. The only real school choice for vouchers or corporate charter schools (see Seminole) is legislator choice as to which private school our public tax dollars should go to. For example, if a state senator has received a $5000 donation from Betsy DeVos (the former executive director for the American Federation for Children... Vouchers), he may elect to send the voucher check to a corporate charter school in Turkey (see the Fethullah Gulen charter chain, AKA Dove Academies) or to the ISIS School of Terrorism (its athletic mascot-moniker is the "fightin' terrorist").
   Betsy DeVos and her clan of flying monkeys (Wizard of Oz) is not the only corporate-driven voucher schemer out there which provides $millions to state legislators. The title of this column, The Right to Farm School Vouchers, belies a subtle hint as to what additional entity is concerned with destroying our rural public schools. The "right to farm vouchers" means the right of legislators to provide public funding to any private or corporate charter school of their choosing.
   Farm Bureau (the lobbying group) has provided its opinion of our rural public schools in the brief entitled Failing Oklahoma Public Schools which it gave to Oklahoma legislators a couple months ago. Many people believe it was a lobbying attempt to convince legislators that our Oklahoma public schools are failures, and have no business receiving public funds to help educate our public school kids. Farm Bureau, like the American Federation for Vouchers, would like to see public funds acquired by private schools. In the brief, Farm Bureau illustrates the failure of Oklahoma public schools by a county map which lists the percentage of D or F grades in each county. In Garvin County, for example, 23% of all schools are failures in Farm Bureau's opinion. In Stephens County, 27% of all schools are failures, while Murray County has 29% failing and Grady County has 16% failing schools. The biggest question which comes to mind is not whether this data is accurate (which I'm sure it is accurate to report that counties had specific percentages of D and F schools) but how and why did a corporation such as Farm Bureau become such a public school expert.. The motivation behind this lobbying brief is exactly the same as it is for Betsy DeVos and her AFV - it's the money! It's all about the effort to convince legislators that our Oklahoma rural schools are failures - so teachers don't deserve raises and tax dollars should flow to private and corporate schools (because our public schools are certainly not spending our tax dollars wisely). But still, why is an insurance company interested in our rural public schools, failing or successful? I think a partial answer may be found in the link between public school voucher bills and the Right to Farm bill (SQ 777) in November of 2016.
   Since I have only advocated for our public schools, students, teachers, and education related legislation being considered each year, many close friends questioned the fact that I had an opinion concerning the Right to Farm bill, State Question 777. The Right to Farm, after all, was not related to our public schools, teachers, or students - so how did I explain that it was indeed related to voucher bills, consolidation bills, or other public school bills. The "missing link" is the Farm Bureau Lobby (FBL).
   The FBL was solidly linked to The Right to Farm, State Question 777, for years before the bill was actually presented to Oklahoma voters in November of 2016. The Right to Farm bill was a Constitution change which would have given corporate farms protection from Oklahomans passing laws which would hinder their livestock production methods. The bill would have also provided advantages for corporate farms which family farmers and ranchers would not have. Tomi Lahren, conservative host for The Blaze, says that American farmers and ranchers have been "thrown under the bus" by politicians catering to foreign corporate farms. Many public school supporters believe that the FBL, as a corporation, provided SQ 777 to state legislators across the nation at an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference prior to 2016. According to ALEC Exposed, the American Legislative Exchange Council is a corporate bill mill - where corporations hand state legislators bills which will increase corporate profits, but rarely benefit citizens back in their home states.The FBL and AFV are members in good standing with ALEC, and have both provided state legislation to Oklahoma lawmakers (along with campaign checks) for passage. State Question 777, the right to farm, and Senate Bill 560, school vouchers - were two such legislative bills. While corporate farm groups such as the Matador Cattle Company (Koch), Tyson Foods, Seaboard Hog Farms, and Shuanghui Foods (China) contributed heavily to the FBL in order to support the Right to Farm, corporate school groups such as Pearson Testing, charter schools, private schools, and virtual schools contributed to the AFV in order to support voucher and consolidation bills. Voucher bills such as SB 560 and others were first handed to state legislators in 2015 with a note which probably read "say it's for the children and it will pass". The right to farm bill (SQ 777) was also handed to state legislators a couple years ago with a note which probably read "say it's for your family farmers and ranchers and it will pass". All state legislative bills written by ALEC members benefit the bottom line (profits) for corporations only, and are often to the detriment of legislator constituents such as our Oklahoma public schools and our family farmers.
   Question: "What political philosophy espouses to the shared governance of any nation between corporations and legislative leaders as equal partners?"..
   Answer: "Fascism".. Benito Mussolini, Italy's dictator prior to and during World War II, shared his authority with corporations and actually said that fascism would be better served by calling it "a corporatocracy". By the way, Benito Mussolini was hung upside down in the town square (by his constituents) as he tried to "get the h*** out of Dodge in 1943". ALEC resembles a corporatocracy in its purest Mussolini form - shared governance between corporations and state legislators. Once again, the publication ALEC Exposed lists not only corporate members of the secret organization, but state legislator members as well.
   In summary, corporate farm bills and corporate school bills are designed to increase funding for corporations and may always be traced back to ALEC as the common denominator. Public school and family farm supporters desperately need Oklahomans to understand the motivation behind these very bad bills.