(OKLAHOMA CITY) The Tulsa World has investigated the financial reports of several Oklahoma legislators and governor to see how much in the way of Federal farm subsidies they have received over the last several years. Some of these tax-paid legislators are professional farmers while most are engaged in the agricultural industry as a side-line to their white-collar day jobs as lawyers and doctors.
Some legislators have reported the subsidies as income as required by law, others have not. Most of the payments have been for wheat crops.
Let's look at two of the GOPers who have cried the loudest about the uselessness and waste of government spending, Rep. Leslie Osborn, Tuttle; and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin-Christensen, but who have received large amounts of Federal assistance , i.e. tax-payer dollars.
This is a laughable excuse! Does she not benefit from her husband's prosperity, yes or no?
Towards the end of this article there is a comment from Gov. Mary Fallin-Christensen's spokesperson that Gov. Fallin-Christensen is "not involved with her husband's Blue Chip Farm business." According to the Tulsa World's investigation Fallin-Christensen husband, Wade Christensen, an Oklahoma City lawyer, "has collected more than $1.96 million in federal farm subsidies since 1995."
Again I ask, does Fallin-Christensen benefit from the prosperity of her second husband, yes or no?
Both these elected women claim to be conservative, small-government advocates yet fall back on the time-honored excuse of being subservient to their private-sector husbands when the wives get caught with their hands in the Federal cookie jar--a treat they want the rest of us from enjoying.
As these two Oklahoma patrons (in the Spanish pronunciation) receive Federal payments in agriculture, both of these women are opposed to public health care for America's citizens, in other words, Medicare for all, not just those 65 years of age and older. While they enjoy the Cadillac of health care for themselves and their families, we peons are expected to get by as best we can.
As Oklahoma leaders, or mendacious mendicants if the truth were more clearly defined, Osborn and Fallin-Christensen demonstrate a shallow, crocodile-tear empathy with Oklahoma's struggling middle- and working-class families. To paraphrase a famous queen of history, "Have they no cake? Let them eat wheat."