Your Oklahoma City Tax Dollars at Work at NW 23 and Penn.

January 31st, 2012

Yesterday I needed to get a couple of items, and so instead of driving to Buy for Less at NW 23 and Penn, I decided to walk.  It was a beautiful day for a walk.

When I got to the intersection of NW 23 and Penn, I crossed the street to get to the store, on the brick crosswalks that were installed just a few years ago at that intersection, and also at the intersection of Blackwelder with NW 23rd.  The brick looks terrible. It is broken, pitted,and stained black in places with hydrocarbon residues.  If this is what it looks like when it is only 3 or 4 years old, what will it look like when it is 10?  Likely it will be in such bad shape that it will have to be replaced.

Your Oklahoma City tax dollars at work!  I understand the desire for pretty faux finishes like brick crosswalks.  But at the intersection of NW 23 and Penn?  Whose idea was that?  Did anyone stop to think about whether brick was actually a suitable surface for such a busy intersection?  Four lanes running each way, and typically four lanes filled with traffic all day long and well into the evening.

Walking back home, I paused a moment and looked at the brick crosswalks at Blackwelder and NW 23rd. Blackwelder is not as well traveled as NW 23rd, but the same problems found at the 23rd and Penn intersection were there at 23rd and Blakwelder.

I’m guessing dressing the street up a bit had something to do with the proximity of Oklahoma City University, but how impressive to new students and their parents is the faux finish of the brick crosswalks now that they are broken, pitted, and stained black?

NB: If OCU wants to do something to clean up the neighborhood, they should do something about the carpet of cigarette butts that litter the strip of grass and trees between NW 23rd and their interior parking driveway that parellels the street.

Anyway, it’s sad the way the City wastes  our money, frittering it away on these streetscape projects without actually considering the engineering issues.  A related issue is the way that some of the “Asian District” streetscape on Classen north of NW 23rd actually blocks views of traffic trying to cross the street or make left turns. Doesn’t anyone think about these kinds of issues?  Or are they stuck in some ideal design universe, where everything always stays pristine because no one ever actually drives through their designs?

The answer I guess is no, they don’t think about these issues.  They don’t think about them because they don’t have to think about them. They are the City, after all, and they know what’s best for everyone, and that often takes the form of awarding design and construction contracts to businesses that make campaign contributions to the right people. Competency?  That’s optional.

The day’s going to come, however, when we won’t be able to afford this kind of extravagant spending.  These corporate and political aristocracies are used to picking our working class pockets whenever they need a few million.  My reading is that people are getting tired of that.  It should make for some interesting times going forward.

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All Hail Mary Queen of Lynch Mobs Fallin — The most ANTI-LIFE Governor in Oklahoma History

January 28th, 2012

While out of state for the SW Liturgy Conference, news became public of the latest machination of the Republican regime in Oklahoma City.  By Order of Governor Mary Queen of Lynch Mobs Fallin herself herself, insurance companies may exclude coverage of children during the first year of life. Read about it here.  Can you believe that? Let’s just take those uninsured babies, she says, and slam them up against a wall and get them out of our hair.  Well, she doesn’t say that explicitly, but that is the effect of this shameful partisan political pandering to the worst greed merchants in the insurance marketplace.  Who, by the way, gave her and other Republicans big piles of campaign cash.

If anyone needs proof that the Republican Party of Oklahoma is an anti-life political party, they need look no further than this.

And that’s not all on the Republican agenda this year.  They are set to give a nice tax break to higher income Oklahomans by raising the taxes on the rest of us.

  • Married families with 2 children making $25,000/year would see a tax increase of $647! Two child families would not receive a tax cut until their income tops $117,000!
  • The top 1% of households — those making more than $357,000/year — would receive the most benefit from this tax shift, receiving a tax cut of $2,833.
  • Read the details at the Oklahoma Policy Institute fact sheet on the tax shift.

Two days ago I reminded the bishops of the scrutiny of God on their works. It looks to me like the Republican Party of Oklahoma needs a reminder.

For the Lord of all shows no partiality, nor does he fear greatness, because he himself made the great as well as the small, and he provides for all alike; for for those in power a rigorous scrutiny impends.

I am starting to wonder how long it will be before social unrest breaks out in Oklahoma.

 

 

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A Catholic Worker reflection on the remarks of Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C. at the Southwest Liturgical Conference Study Week, in Dallas, Texas, January 24, 2012

January 26th, 2012

On the evening of the first day of the SWLC Study Week, Cardinal Wuerl gave the keynote presentation – “The Word of God and the New Evangelization.” His presentation was urbane and literate, dogmatic and spiritual. I can’t say that there was anything that I disagreed with in his presentation.

The gist of the talk was that as Christians, we have to start all over again and re-propose the Christian Gospel to a world that is dominated by secularism, materialism, and individualism. In our pursuit of this goal, he said that our “New Evangelization” must be clear, relevant, alive, and enthusiastic. We must speak to people where they are – socially and culturally – and we must communicate in the forms of media where they participate.

So far so good. But there was, as is often the case in such presentations by Catholic bishops, an 800 pound gorilla in the room that was studiously avoided by the Cardinal.

Because of the dominant secularism, materialism, and individualism, and also because of history, if we expect anyone to listen to our proclamation, we must go to the world with great authenticity. And that is the big problem that the Catholic Church faces.

While the bishops keep wanting us to “go on” and “move past” the clerical sexual abuse crisis, that isn’t happening. It remains a big issue for the authenticity of the Catholic proclamation in the midst of today’s secular world.

While the Church has done much, and reformed much, and is no longer enabling the direct abuse of minors, very little accountability has been manifested by those who were so directly responsible for these problems, the bishops themselves. While the Vatican was quick to remove an Australian bishop who briefly raised the issue of the ordination of women, it left the bishops responsible for enabling the abuse of minors in place. It gave Cardinal Law, one of the most egregious enablers of sexual abuse, a prominent job in Rome and to this day he has kept his position on the Vatican congregations that select and form bishops.

When pressed on the question of removing the guilty bishops from office, Vatican authorities typically fell back on theological arguments – the bishop is “married” to his diocese, and you just don’t remove him. That is certainly part of the theology, but when the Vatican wants to move a bishop to a different diocese, any respect for the theology of the episcopacy goes out the window, and the Vatican moves the bishop wherever it wills. Some bishops are”serially married” to a string of dioceses. So we are left with a situation where those who were responsible for this great evil remain among us, and we are expected to trust them and look to them for spiritual direction. I am all in favor of Christian forgiveness, but I also believe in accountability for actions. There are deeds so egregious that retaining someone in high ecclesiastical office damages the authenticity of the Church’s proclamation and represents an on-going injustice to the victims.

The scandal does not end there. The US Catholic bishops are guilty of material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war. I have covered the arguments on this in detail in my Open Letter to the Papal Nuncio at http://www.justpeace.org/sambi.htm and other documents available online at http://www.justpeace.org/warresponse.htm. From the beginning of these wars, the bishops embraced an attitude of moral relativism. This lack of consistent respect for the right to life of the civilian population of Iraq and Afghanistan has gravely harmed the Church’s witness to the Gospel of Life. People do not respect our proclamation of the rights of unborn children, because they do not see any authenticity in our message.

We shouldn’t hold our breaths that anything is going to change soon with our bishops. No one, other than Catholic Workers, Pax Christi, and some in the religious orders, calls the bishops to accountability for their material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war. The mainstream Catholic media is silent on the subject. The Catholic peace movement is about as marginal as it gets in this day and age, when in addition to secularism, individualism, and materialism, we must add blood lust as one of the defining characteristics of our era. We live in a time and place which adores violence and makes money on that deal. Blood and death pervade our media. Our children play games where they rape and torture and kill other characters.

If that be the mainstream, then I am happy to be marginalized out on the edge. That’s where the action is anyway. The days of these empires of blood and power are coming to an end, as a consequence of their own internal contradictions and sins. God still is in control, and God will bring judgment upon the American Empire. As the song of Mary promises, the thrones of the proud will be cast down, and the rich will be sent away empty.

Dorothy Day said that the Church was a cross on which Christ is crucified every day. This seems to me to be a call to take up that Cross, the Cross of the Church, and to offer our prayers and our works as reparations for the many sins against life of our own bishops and clergy. If the bishops are going to pander to nationalistic violence and compromise their witness to the Gospel of Life, then we ourselves must become more authentic, more faithful, and embrace a true journey of holiness of life and action.

That is our vocation, as peacemakers in this age of secularism, individualism, materialism, and blood lust. We take as our motto the advice of Paul the Apostle to the Romans –

Do not be conquered by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And we remember these words from the book of Wisdom –

For the Lord of all shows no partiality, nor does he fear greatness, because he himself made the great as well as the small, and he provides for all alike; for for those in power a rigorous scrutiny impends.

Novena to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the US Catholic Bishops – http://www.justpeace.org/stjohnchrysostom.htm .

 

 

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My testimony before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission today.

January 3rd, 2012

My name is Bob Waldrop, and I am the founder of the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City. Each month we deliver food to low income households that don’t have transportation. In the past year we’ve made about 4500 such deliveries.

Federal, state, and local programs that help low income people are being slashed. LIHEAP, the primary program that helps with utility bills was cut  fifty percent. The state’s personal income tax exemption, sales tax credit, and the earned income credit all of which benefit low income people,  are programmed for abolition. Everyone is preaching austerity, except, it appears, at OGE headquarters.

You can’t ratchet up the pressure on poor people without reaping negative social consequences. Financial crisis is a well-known driver of family dissolution and parental abandonment, violence against women and children, alcoholism and drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, crime, and gang involvement. I see these consequences at work all the time in the lives of real people.  All of these consequences have costs – to individuals, to families, and to society. Problems with utility service often initiate a cascading series of consequences that can lead to homelessness and worse.

If you think there is enough money in the non-profit sector to help all the low income people that need assistance with their utility bills, you are wrong.  The churches and charities of Oklahoma are stretched to the limit – we do not have enough money to bridge this gap. If this rent seeking rate increase is approved, the ones who will be hurt the worst will be the children & the elderly.

Therefore, I appeal to you, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to reject this rate increase.  I appeal to OGE to withdraw your proposal – your corporation has plenty of money. You’re making 13% on your equity, which is good money in this economy. We should count the costs of the social and moral consequences of the social cruelties that will inevitably result from this rate increase.  You say it won’t be much, but low income Oklahomans have no extra money.  All of their money is already spoken for. If you ask for more, they will have to give someone else less.  Who should that be?

This is not about socialism or capitalism, it is about whether we believe what God says in the Bible about our moral duties to the poor.

The legal shield of liability granted to OGE by virtue of its incorporation means nothing before God, who holds everyone, rich and poor alike, responsible as individuals for their actions.  Those who ask for this rate increase, those who approve it, and those who profit from it will share in the personal responsibility before God and the people for the negative moral and social consequences of this rent-seeking.  The Bible clearly teaches without any ambiguity whatsoever that the rich who oppress the poor are condemned by God. Jesus said, For inasmuch as you do this unto one of these, the least of our sisters and brothers, you have done it to Me.  God said it, I believe it, and as they say,  that settles it.

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On the Fourth Day of Christmas. . .

December 28th, 2011

On this the Fourth Day of Christmas, I give you Enya and Silent Night, in Gaelic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUthEE_gR_w.

This is also the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which remembers the children slaughtered by Herod in Bethlehem and the surrounding area. This happens to be the 10th anniversary of the letter I wrote to the US Catholic bishops in 2001, that was endorsed by four Catholic Worker Houses (Romero, Columbia Missouri CWer, Divine Mercy in Lyons, Kansas, and Casa Maria in Milwaukee, regarding the morality of our war on the people of Afghanistan, which the US Bishops had endorsed as”just.”

Read it while listening to Enya. http://www.justpeace.org/holyinnocents2001.htm .

And reflect on all the innocents slaughtered in the past decade.

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The Six Hands of Community Food Security

December 20th, 2011

December is a crazy time for me.  Activity in all of my various causes seems to peak at the same time.  So I haven’t hardly have any time to write, but I have a whole stack of emails, website links, and clippings from the paper that will provide food for perhaps daily posts once January rolls around.  However, there was an interesting conversation recently on the Comfood listserv on the issue of just income for farmers and low income food security, which i commented on today.  Below is my slightly edited post that I sent in earlier today.

As the founder of a Catholic Worker community, which delivers food to low income households in Oklahoma City that don’t have transportation, and as one of the founders and the first president and general manager of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, which only sells locally produced food and non-food items, I have a constant awareness of the problems faced by enabling access of lower income people to healthy, nutritious, sustainably and humanely produced, foods while at the same time ensuring just income for farmers and other food producers..

On one hand. . . the Oklahoma Food Cooperative connects hundreds of Oklahoma families directly with farmers every month and provides them with some portion of their daily bread. We’re losing money this year and as a result had to step back from having a full time general operations manager plus part time managers for producers, op center, routes/pickup sites, and customer service, to the part-timers plus a new part-time position, delivery day manager. This is the first year of our 8 year history that we have lost money, and fortunately our cash is not down nearly so much as our P&L are, thanks to continued membership sales, capital donations, and other non-operating revenues that come in.

But as our treasurer has said. . . “It’s one thing to absorb a loss like this for one year, but two?” Which led to the change in our management, and also to a decision to look at adding some revenue streams beyond our core competency to bolster our revenues. We’re looking at several possibilities including fielding a food truck that would offer “street foods” made from mostly Oklahoma foods that we would source from our producers, adding a line of Oklahoma-made paper products which we would buy wholesale and then sell retail (unlike the rest of our items, which are sold by producers as their own brand, who set their own prices, and pay us a commission for selling through the cooperative), going to two delivery days/month, adding some kiosks in department stores and shelf space in convenience stores for artisan body care products.

On the other hand, the 373 Christmas deliveries of the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House consisted of –

  • four cans of corn,
  • 2 cans of green beans,
  • 1 can of beans,
  • 1 12 ounce jar of peanut butter,
  • 2 cans of applesauce,
  • 1 package of spaghetti,
  • a half dozen potatoes,
  • a half dozen oranges,
  • 3 candy canes,
  • one bread item (stale),
  • 1 two pound bag of frozen cooked pinto beans.

The number of food bags each household receives was based on the number of people in the household –

  • families of 1-3 received 1 bag,
  • families of 4-7 received two bags plus a 5 lb bag of potatoes,
  • families of 8-9 received 3 bags plus the extra potatoes and a turkey, and
  • households of 10-16 received 4 bags plus a turkey and the extra potatoes.
  • The ten largest also received an additional box of misc food items brought by a local church.
  • The bags of the larger households (4 to 16) had 3 additional items in them: spaghetti sauce, macaroni, 1 quart shelf stable milk.

The only local content of these deliveries during the year is a few hundred pounds of locally produced grass fed ground beef that is either donated by Oklahoma Food Coop producers or bought from farmers with money donated by Oklahoma Food Coop members. The Oscar Romero Catholic Worker house is a producer member of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and we offer a “donation product”, where members can donate money which we then use to buy food from farmers, also through the coop, to give to the poor. In practice, I save up these donations and do a big buy a couple of times a year, so that everyone we deliver to in a given month will get a pound of the hamburger. These delivery days are always followed by a number of phone calls from people we deliver to whosay, “That was the best ground beef we have ever eaten.”

On the third hand. . . a lot of the poor people we know really understand how to make very good food, very inexpensively, from very basic ingredients. I should take a tour of Slow Food members with me some time when we deliver food in low income senior citizens housing developments. Some of the best cooking smells I have ever sniffed in my life I have found in such places. There are times when I am tempted to ask for something to eat, lol. I sometimes will inquire, “What are y’all cooking in there?” And it is always something like chitlins and neck bones, or greens and neck bones (neckbones being for people who can’t afford ham hocks). Beans and neckbones. Etc. They know how to cook and that is one way they support the quality of their lives.

On the fourth hand. . . I’ve seen plenty of supermarket baskets filled with total junk food, frozen pizzas and dinners and soda pop, paid for with food stamps.

But on the fifth hand. . .my observation is that it is typically illegal for low income people to do the things they used to do to increase the quality of food in their diets. You can’t raise pigs and chickens in your back yard anymore. OK, maybe we’re seeing some small evolution in some areas on chickens, but not a lot. Nobody is keeping a milk cow in cities and selling the milk and cream to their neighbors. And everywhere, there is a war on the territory presently occupied by low income people. If the
upscale can’t get the land they want through economic gentrification, they will steal it by coercion and call it ‘”urban renewal” or some other such “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery” NewSpeak.

Oh yes, I forgot, poor people also can’t build their own housing anymore.That’s against the law too.

Which leads to the sixth hand. . . the conclusion that I haven’t a clue what to do, other than what I am doing, which is to continue to build capacities as much as possible, wherever it is possible. Complex systems, such as a food system that would provide everyone,  including low income people, with sustainably and humanely and justly produced food – while at the same time providing farmers a just income — do not just spring forth full-formed from the foreheads of activists. They grow, one step at a time. AND they grow or develop in waves of succession, just as happens in the biological world.

What we have here is a severely damaged cultural ecology. We should think about –

  • What are the pioneer species that will come in and colonize the severely damaged cultural ecologies that we inhabit? These are the species that will – like pioneer species colonizing a slashed and burned forest – accumulate nutrients, fix nitrogen, create mulch, shelter other species – and thus lay the ground work for a second generation to come.
  •  The second generation will in turn prepare a place for subsequent generations, each more complex, each species connected by many beneficial connections to each other, so that the waste of one is the food for another, and so on and so forth until some kind of mature climax ecology emerges.

For me, my take on that process is that a good place to start is what I call “six elements of community food security” –

  1. Prepare meals from basic ingredients.
  2. Grow some food.
  3. Buy some food from your local area, preferably directly from its producers.
  4. Shop wisely and frugally at the supermarket.
  5. Preserve and process food at home or in cooperation with neighbors, and keep some of the family’s savings in the form of food.
  6. Support and develop local civil society initiatives that work to support and increase household and community capacities for food security.

Sometimes people say that upscale people buying from local farmers in an elitist indulgence. Mark my words, that’s coming from someone with a vested interest in the current system. It’s important for anyone who can afford it to support local food production. The economics of production being what they are –

  • the more demand there is, the more production there will be, and
  • the more the likelihood that a diversity of pricing structures will emerge that is consistent with just income for farmers.

Those who support our local food systems right now are not elitists indulging their whims, and it is not wrong for them to buy local foods even if most low income people cannot do likewise at this particular historical moment.  Localvores are in fact  the necessary “pioneer species” that begins the process of healing the extremely damaged cultural and biological ecologies in which we live, move, and have our being. With this beginning, we have a chance of growing a humane and sustainable food system that will provide healthy and nutritious food for all people, of all economic circumstances, and at the same time, protect the land and provide just income for farmers and other food producers.

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Your Oklavore Christmas Gift Giving Guide part the first.

December 5th, 2011

I have posted the first two parts of my Bob’s Ye Olde Bon Appetitin Oklavore Christmas Gift Giving Guide –  Part I — the Stocking Stufferings .   Part II — the Extravagant Gifts . Part three — the “$6 to $25 gifts will be posted Wednesday morning.

I encourage everybody to shop locally for Christmas and to look for opportunities to support local artists, craftspeople, and makers of artisanal body care products, not forgetting our farmers and ranchers too.  If you are in Oklahoma, and are not a member, please join the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. This month 102 different Oklahoma producers are offering 4700+ products for your shopping enjoyment.  I do nearly all of my Christmas shopping from the convenience of my own office.  No driving to ugly malls, parking in a giant 80 acre parking lot, and waiting in a line of 20 people to check out. Simple, quick, convenient, and easy.

If you’re not in Oklahoma, look for something similar in your area.  Here’s our Directory of Local Food Coops in other states.

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Occupy USA — two months and counting

November 17th, 2011

As we observe today’s two month anniversary of the Occupy uprising, we are surrounded by violence.  From everywhere we are seeing and hearing reports of police action against the Occupy uprisings from the west to the east coasts and points in between. A full catalog of the violence would tire even the most committed reader, so I will only offer one poignant vignette — the destruction of the Occupy Wall Street library and its 5000+ books and other important cultural materials and art produced by the Occupy Wall Street people.  Here’s the booklist of the library.  The Mayor’s office is claiming that the books haven’t been destroyed, but no one has been able to claim them yet either.  A library is more than its books, although they are integral to its identity, a library is a place, and that place was desecrated and destroyed by police action in New York City, by which action Mayor Bloomberg himself himself ranks himself himself with other famous historical destroyers of libraries.  Authoritarian regimes hate independent libraries. They can’t abide the thought of people developing alternatives ways of thinking that depart from their politically approved norms.

The violence is of course testimony of the success of the Occupy movement thus far.  Without leaders, without agenda, without formal strategy, the Occupy movement has filled America’s one percenter political and economic leadership with fear.  The fear is magnified by the fact that the violence is not closing down the movement, it is causing the movement to grow. And the Occupy movement is giving world-wide publicity to the importance of individual action.  From moving billions of dollars out of banks and into credit unions, to people cutting up their credit cards, and on to smokers declaring their independence from the one percenter tobacco companies. . . people are taking personal and collective steps to stop feeding their wealth to the one percent.

The Occupy movement, from the beginning, has been a game changer. The commentariat is leading with its predictable whines and attacks.  Let them chatter.  Their day is almost gone, and they know it.  Nothing can truly stop an idea whose time has come, and just as was the case in 1776. 1789, and 1917, it is time to reform the “invisible structures” that enable the rent-seeking crooks, thieves, and parasites of Wall Street to flaunt their dishonestly earned wealth.

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We’re just sayin’. . . NO to the OGE rent hike! I mean rate hike. No, I mean rent hike.

November 10th, 2011

These days, the word “rent” has two meanings.  One is commonly understood as the price you pay to live or use commercially a house or building or land.  But it also has a political meaning, as in “rent seeking”. . . about which Wikipedia sayeth. . .

. . . rent-seeking is an attempt to derive economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur. . .

Comes now OGE Corporation, and they want a rent hike.  They of course don’t call it that, they say it is a “rate hike”, but rent it is, because it is not payment for value received in a free and fair market, but instead a politically calculated payment coercively levied in a market in which, by law, OGE is the monopoly provider of electrical service.  They’re asking for it even though they are making record profits and have significantly increased their dividend payment to their stockholders every year since 2008, which is to say, “every year of the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression.”  Their stock is priced significantly higher today than it was in 2007, before the economic crisis began. Their dividend yield is presently 2.91%, which is a much better deal than a bank account will pay you in interest these days, better even than a money market fund.

Tonight, 200 people (at least) gathered in the Connor Center of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, under the banner of the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, and they are just saying “NO” to the OGE rent hike. It was a diverse group — what can you say about any organization that can get Catholics and Unitarians together and working on a common cause?  Representatives of OGE were present and given an opportunity to tell their story, and the group respectfully listened.  But we also heard stories from individuals and from groups, about the impact of the already high energy prices in this present economy, and the consequences of this proposal for low income people.

One of the significant issues is that OGE continues to increase the standard charge that is levied on all customers, irrespective of how much — or how little — electricity the customer uses.  This charge began in 2002 at $2/month, it is now $13/month, and the rent increase proposal will take it to $20/month. This means that those who use the least, will pay the most per kilowatt hour, when all expenses are added in.  Furthermore, it represents a political decision to allocate costs away from those who use a lot of electricity, and to shift those costs onto those who pay the least.

Also present was a representative of the Attorney General’s office, who is charged by law with representing the rate payers, including residential customers.  The AG office apparently filed papers today asking that the state’s Corporation Commission reduce the rate increase by $30 million. That got good applause.

At the end, a representative of St. Charles Borromeo parish, who is a CPA, whose name escapes me at the moment, gave an impassioned plea for OGE to simply withdraw the rate increase.  OGE has — literally — a plenitude of money. Their net income is five times what they need to pay their bonded debt, and the industry average for that figure is between two and three.  It would not hurt them at all to be more frugal, as all of us are having to be.  Directors of OGE make out like Phat Rat.  They get $55,000 base pay, $65,000 in stock options, $1,500 for meeting attendance. . . and after they serve ten years, their pay continues for life even after they retire as directors.  Nice work if you can get it.

OGE says the bottom line impact to an “average” residential customer will be 6% on their bills.

Therein lies the problem.  Oklahoma’s poor people are already maxed out.  Word came out at the meeting, that the LIHEAP program — the primary governmental energy assistance program — will not accept any new clients this year.  There is not enough in the voluntary sector — St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, Guild of St. George, Catholic Charities, etc — to meet all the present needs, much less a 6% increase in electrical bills.  A grandmother, on a fixed Social Security income, raising five kids, can’t afford a 6% rate increase.  Since she has no extra money, what can she do?  Not take her medication? Eat less?  Feed the kids less?

The public hearings on this rate increase start December 13th.  I am going to attend and seek an opportunity to testify before the Corporation Commission.  I encourage everyone reading this who lives in the OGE service area to do the same.  I signed a sheet at the meeting that I was going to help recruit people to attend and to speak, so send me an email at bwaldrop@cox.net and as I get further information I will send it to you.  The hearings are likely to run every weekday from December 13 through December 22, so you don’t have to attend every day, but we need a good turnout.

And we all should give a hat tip to the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, which is spearheading public opposition to this rate increase.  You may not have heard about this group before, but I predict you will hear more.  Its advent in this area is a most significant event, and one of the indications of that is the furious opposition it has endured in its organizing efforts.  The OSC, instead of being composed of individuals, is an alliance of institutions — churches, schools, and community organizations.  They do community organizing based on institutions.  When you add up all the people who belong to the institutions represented there tonight, we are surely talking about tens of thousands of people right here in Oklahoma City.  And it’s a diverse group — rich and poor, black, white, Latino, Native American, men and women, all on the same page.

One reason the 1% has so much power is that they have been very successful in their rent seeking. They continually manipulate the political and economic structures of our society to take from the many to give to the 1%.  That’s what’s going on here, and it is time to push back.

We’re just sayin’. . . . NO! to the OGE rent increase.

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Sign-on letter to the bishops of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock

November 4th, 2011

To the Most Reverend Paul Stagg Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, the Most Reverend Edward James Slattery, Bishop of Tulsa, and
the Most Reverend Anthony Basil Taylor, Bishop of Little Rock, as well as the Most Reverend Eusebius J. Beltran, Archbishop Emeritus of Oklahoma City, and the Most Reverend Andrew J. McDonald, Bishop Emeritus of Little Rock +

From Occupy Archdiocese of Oklahoma City!

We the undersigned greet you with grace and peace and prayers for your ministry as bishops.

One of the great gifts of the Blessed Pope John Paul II to the Church was a renewed emphasis on the universal call to holiness, a vocation which pertains not only to individuals, but also to the Church as an institution. Thus, he sought to purify the Church of historical sins such as the persecution of non-Catholics, by identifying the problems, showing how those situations were departures from Christian norms, publicly repenting of those institutional sins, and resolving that the Church would never be involved with such things again.

Since the papacy of Leo XIII, and the promulgation of his famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, the Church has explicitly taught the duty of solidarity and the witness of the preferential option for the poor.  These teachings do not mean that God does not love those who are not poor, but that Catholics  are bound by our duty as Christians to protect the poor from the depredations of the rich.

An examination of the present situation, however, shows that in the United States, as elsewhere, wealthy elites are manipulating the structures of government in order to benefit their interests.

This comes at the cost of the prosperity of everyone else, and constitutes a grave injury to the common good. We invite you to consider these economic facts.

Unemployment
The unemployment rate remains at its highest level since the Great Depression, with 14 million adults reported as unemployed.  Yet, this figure does not tell the full story, since the government has manipulated its methodology in order to define “unemployment” so that millions of unemployed people are not counted. If calculated by historical methods, the actual unemployment rate is more than double the present reported rate – 22%! That is more than 30 million people! Civilian participation in the employment market is down to 64%. Nearly half of the unemployed have been out of a job for more than six months. The median duration of unemployment (about 25 weeks), is near an all-time high.  The government is deliberately distorting the unemployment figures, to make the situation seem better than it actually is.

The Corporations
Corporate profits are at all-time highs both in absolute numbers and as a percent of the economy. CEO pay now runs 350 times the average worker pay, that’s up from what prevailed between 1960 and 1985, when CEO pay was typically 50 times that of the workers. CEO pay has increased 300% since 1990 alone. Corporate profits doubled during that period, while worker pay increased only 4% and adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage declined. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, worker pay has not increased for the past 50 years. Wages, as a percent of the economy, are at an all-time low.

The Households
The top 1% of households now holds 23.5% of all pre-tax income. The top 1% own 42% of the financial assets in the US.  The top 5% own 70% of the nation’s financial assets.  The bottom 80% of households owns 7% of the national wealth. Social mobility in the United States is at an all-time low.

The Banks
During the financial crisis of 2008, very large banks received a major bailout from the government. Yet, bank lending declined sharply and has yet to recover. Banks made $211 billion in the first six months of 2011 by borrowing money from the government at a zero interest rate and then buying treasury notes and loaning it back to the government, which pays the banks interest on the money that it previously loaned them for free!

Oklahoma’s Situation
In Oklahoma, the bottom 60% of taxpayers pay between 9 and 10 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the top 1% pay less than 5%. In 2010,
17% of Oklahomans lived in poverty, the 14th highest rate in the nation. 7.2% of the population lives in extreme poverty (they live on less than 50% of the poverty level.) The poverty rate for children is 24.5%, an increase (in 2010) of 9% over 2009. Of working age Oklahomans living in poverty, 44% work full or part-time. The state income tax is scheduled to be cut in January 2012. The top 5% of taxpayers will receive 43% of the benefit from the cut. The next 15% will receive 30%. The remaining 80% of the population will receive only 27% of the value of the tax cut. In October of this year, the number of Oklahomans receiving food stamps reached an all-time high – for the seventh month in a row. 625,000 Oklahomans now receive food stamps – 30% of all children in the state are in the program. In 2010, 7.5% of state households reported “very low food security”, this was an increase of 60% from 2005-2007, The number of households reporting “low food security” was 16.4%, an increase of 13% from 2005-2007 (the national average for low food security is 14.6%). .

As these statistics indicate, in the tug of war between labor and capital, capital has won and those who can afford it the least are paying the greatest costs.

In light of the increasingly dire economic situation, and the toxic political response to these times from the state and federal governments, we call upon the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, together with its associated Dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock, to set aside the year 2012 as a time of special emphasis on the social teachings of the Church.  The Church has an important contribution to make to the discussion of the current events of the day, but all too often the Church’s voice is absent because the laity, whose particular competence it is to implement the social teachings, have not been catechized and formed in accordance with those teachings.

As part of that social teaching emphasis, we call upon Catholics  of this region, clergy and laity together, to engage in an examination of conscience concerning
how the Church, and its associated  institutions, incorporate our social teachings in the temporal activities of the Church. In this era, authenticity is an important concept, and given the widespread ignorance of the social teachings among both laity and the clergy, the Church should examine itself to see if it is truly practicing what it preaches.

We further call upon the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and its associated Dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock, to demonstrate their institutional solidarity with the people of this region, and to support the common good, by moving Church funds and accounts out of any large multi-state banks where the Church may be doing business, and to establish their financial accounts with locally owned  credit unions.  Credit unions invest their money in the local community. They are governed by boards that are elected by their depositors. They have maintained their commitments to local community throughout the financial crises of the past few years. Their motive is not profit, but service to their communities. The financial strength of the Church should go towards strengthening this voluntary network that contributes so greatly to the common good.

If there are parishes in areas without credit unions, we call upon the Archdiocese to start credit unions in those areas, for the benefit of the entire community.

We promise you our prayers and acts of reparation for the many sins against justice and solidarity of this era.  We offer to discuss these issues with you further and can offer additional information if needed.  We place this cause under the spiritual protection of the Venerable Stanley Rother, who gave his life in defense of the poor in Guatemala and we pray that his example of fidelity unto death to the Gospel of Life and Justice will be an example for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, and the Dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock, to guide our actions and direct our paths.

+ O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of the Venerable Stanley Rother has given us an example of fortitude in the face of injustice and political corruption, grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, life, justice, and beauty, so that we may order our lives and actions in accordance with those truths and thereby fulfill our responsibility as Christians to protect the common good. We ask these blessings through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

If you would like to sign this letter, which will be dated the First Sunday of Advent, 2011, please send an email to robert@justpeace.org with your name, parish, and city.  As an option, you can add other affiliations you may have.

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