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April 2023

ROPE’s New Podcast “The ROPE Report” Debuted This Week (4.26.23) With Maria Seidler Discussing ROPE’s Lawsuit Against Stillwater Public Schools

Broadcast live to ROPE’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, from 9am to 10am Wednesdays and Fridays every week (and uploaded to our Rumble channel), the ROPE Report aims, not only to discuss current education issues being decided in the legislature and the State School Board, but issues in education that can help parents make better choices about the educations they wish to provide their children.

Tuning into the live broadcast can allow you to ask questions of the guests, or comment, but if you miss the live feed, you can find the recordings available on all the social media outlets mentioned above.

Please watch Maria talk about our lawsuit with Stillwater Public Schools. It’s quite eye-opening! Especially about the part where SPS sues us for attorney fees and generates more court costs after our ONLY request in the lawsuit was AN APOLOGY. SPS literally spent nearly 60 thousand taxpayer dollars NOT to apologize to our friend Brice Chaffin for using a police officer to escort him from the podium before his 3 minute comment time was through and after reading scripture. This particular issue is an absolutely shining example of how out of control many public schools are and how much they dislike simply doing the right thing for parents and the community that support them with their tax dollars.

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When Is A Tax Credit A Voucher? When Governor Stitt and The Oklahoma Legislature Rename It That To Empower Parents To Steal Money From Other Parents To Put Their Children In Private School At Taxpayer Expense.

I’ve written numerous articles about the “school choice” issue, but I’m going to make this short (relatively) and sweet by giving several reasons why Governor Stitt and the Oklahoma legislature needs to wave off on the ‘tax credit’ fighter before it misses the landing pad and goes into the drink (my dad was in the Navy, give me a break).

  1. Nobody can receive a credit for something they didn’t buy/spend/pay for. If taxes weren’t taken by the government in the first place, they can’t just benevolently ‘credit’ you with tax dollars, no matter the semantic hoops that have been created to describe a tax ‘credit’. That’s the first thing.
  2. Many legislators are apparently being told, “Homeschoolers have been on board with a tax credit” as a way to strong arm votes for the Governor’s education package, and because – other than lefties who will never be able to answer how much money the public school system actually needs yet stand there screaming about being underfunded with their hands out every year – homeschoolers have been the biggest, loudest voice against vouchers in the state. Why? We KNOW that the more government gives, the more it regulates and the more it regulates, the less freedom we have. Those who Constitutionally educate their children “by other means” in Oklahoma, do NOT want to tangle with the government. That’s why we removed our kids from the public system. If Governor Stitt had offered to let us keep the taxes the state takes from us to fund the public system we never used, that seems fair (same thing for others who don’t use the public system by the way – FUND PUBLIC ED WITH A USE TAX AND WATCH HOW FAST IT CLEANS UP ITS ACT!), but that was never the offer, so NO, we’re not “okay” with a tax credit.
  3. In 2022, “President” Joe Biden announced that he would use taxpayer dollars to pay back some of the college loan debt racked up by students in the US. Guess what? “Student Loan Debt ‘Your Own Fault’: Conservatives Blast Biden Forgiveness Proposals” was the headline for a Newsweek article not long on the heels of the announcement. So student debt is – as any conservative worth their salt would say – the student’s fault, but because I don’t have the money to put my kid into private school, Governor Stitt and the legislature should GIFT me with another family’s money to put my kid into private school? How disingenuous is that? How OBVIOUSLY antithetical to the “student loan debt is the fault of the student” idea is that? What happened to, “scrimp and save” to give your kid/s a great education? Homeschoolers do that. Private schoolers do that. If you can’t do that, change something in your life to make it happen for you, but don’t pretend to be Oliver Twist and put your hand out meekly begging, “Please sir, I want some more“. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CONSERVATIVE CREED OF NOT RELYING ON THE GOVERNMENT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE?
  4. Oh no, do not hit me with, “But my tax dollars go to fund crappy public schools and I want my money back”. So what? Show up at the capitol and demand that the legislature, your State Superintendent of Public Instruction and your Governor MAKE PUBLIC SCHOOLS MIND, but don’t think it’s somehow conservative, Republican, or even sensical to tell the legislature to spend even more of our money to fix a problem of their own making! Tuesday night, Julia and I visited the Canadian County chapter of Mom’s For Liberty where State Superintendent Ryan Walters was speaking. He talked about how he and the Board of Education had instituted a new rule that could be used to take the accreditation of schools who won’t follow state law. Well if that’s the case, how many state laws do we have on the books (Title 70 – Oklahoma school law – is 1,488 pages) that schools don’t even know about let alone follow? Why in the absolute he## are our elected leaders NOT making schools follow the law? They could remove their funding. They could remove their accreditation. They could even remove their sports programs should they so choose, until schools began to focus on ACADEMICS and not politics and the newest, latest, horrible education fad. So, I cry BS on that! Don’t take my tax dollars to put your kid/s in a private school when me and my family have scrimped and saved to educate our kids OUTSIDE the public system on our own dime!

So there you have it. I didn’t even have to get to #5 to make the point. Don’t – especially if you’re a conservative – speak against socialism or rail about how Biden’s student loan debt giveaway is wrong – but then stand on the idea that it’s somehow ok – let alone conservative – to have the government gift each child in each family who wants it (until we’ve spent 200 million taxpayer dollars) $5000 taxpayer dollars to go to a private school. Period.

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Dystopia Reached: Oklahoma Republicans Continue Their March Toward Socialism By Redistributing Wealth Through EDUCATION

Not that Oklahoma – and Governor Stitt in particular – haven’t begun to truly love giving our tax dollars away and calling it an “investment“, but here’s yet another. A BIG one!

An “HISTORIC” 700 MILLION dollar “investment” in Oklahoma education. Here are some lines from the Senate press release praising this “historic” vote:

Here’s what’s in HB1935. To see the other “historic” “investments”, click on the link to the press release. There’s plenty there to read:

The Oklahoma State Senate today gave passage to its historic $700 million education package. 

Senators voted overwhelmingly on both measures 40 – to – 7 on House Bill 1935 and 46 – to – 2 on House Bill 2775, approving the single largest appropriations increase to education in state history, sending it back to the House of Representatives. 

Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, said the Senate did its job and delivered for teachers, children and parents. 

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/OKSENATE/bulletins/35206ac

Here’s what the press release says about HB1935:

HB 1935 will give parents additional options and control over their children’s education by providing a $100 million investment in school choice. This bill provides a $7,500 tax credit per eligible student each tax year if the eligible student attends a private school and the family has an income of less than $250,000. The bill also provides for a $1,000 tax credit per family, for certain qualified expenditures, each tax year if one or more eligible students is homeschooled. Valid receipts must be provided to OTC to receive the $1,000 tax credit.

NOT ONE OKLAHOMA REPUBLICAN SENATOR STOOD UP TO THIS. Not one.

Please, make sure you stop everything you’re doing and kiss your backside good-bye. Oklahoma is now a socialist state – and proud to be one. We just decided to take money from businesses and private citizens to educate the children of people making less than 250k at a private school.

Our family makes less than 250k. My husband and I both have Master’s degrees. We chose that I would stay home and educate our kids. We have never bought new cars, for years we couldn’t afford vacations, and we NEVER SPENT $7500 a year A PIECE on ANY of their educations – for FOUR kids.

Now, I get to be happy that, though we scrimped and sacrificed to provide our children with an education outside that provided by the government, others in our tax bracket can educate their kids at a private school ON MY DIME without that messy inconvenience of having to scrimp and sacrifice.

So let’s break down some issues with this “historic” investment :

1. The Oklahoma state government will take my property if I refuse to pay my property taxes and/or put me in jail if I don’t pay my income taxes and if I don’t pay my business taxes, they will divest me of the business I run which allows them to take my taxes.

2. The government cannot “invest” my tax dollars. They can’t take funds and apply ANY market ‘risk’ to the funds they steal from us by force. So the idea of an “historic” INVESTMENT is a complete crock.

2. The property taxes my husband and I pay for our schools are less than 2000. A tax credit – ideally – would be me not having to spend the money that comes out of my household that supports the public schools I DON’T USE. Can you imagine how fast the ‘public’ school would clean up when it became funded by a USE tax? If you can’t imagine, I’ll tell you: FAST, because THAT would be market competition – not this BS the legislature is selling calling it SCHOOL CHOICE.

3. Who pays the 750 million dollar price tag? Oklahoma citizens.

4. What happens if there isn’t a surplus, or we have a downturn in the economy? Where does the money come from then? If the ‘credit’ can’t be funded, where do all the kids go from private school who can’t afford it anymore? How much more will the legislature decide to ratchet up fees (they can’t call them taxes or a majority of the legislature has to agree which is why we haven’t had a tax increase in a long time – they learned they can tax us and call it a “fee” the legislature doesn’t have to agree to) when Oklahomans who have been hooked on the teat of FREE MONEY for PRIVATE SCHOOL have an absolute fit and demand ‘their’ money to finish educating their kids in private school? This ‘historic investment’ will become MEDICAIRE!!!

5. How many private schools are there to take all these new kids? Are there enough now? No, actually.

6. Does it make sense that enterprising Oklahoma legislators would go into the business of building private schools so they could make money on tuition?

7. What happens when a Satanist private school is built and accepts kids? The Supreme Court ruled recently that tax dollars can go to religious schools. What happens when my tax dollars fund a Satanist school? Wasn’t that one of the arguments against abortion? People were sick of their tax dollars funding abortions? Well I don’t want my tax dollars funding Satanic schools.

8. How many legislators/people complained it was socialism for Biden to pay for the student loans of flailing college students? ISN’T GIVING PARENTS 7500/KID TO GO TO PRIVATE SCHOOL THE SAME THING? What happens to those of us who schooled our kids on our own WITHOUT government help? Oh, that’s right. Tough luck – just like with business tax credits – the government will pick winners and losers and those of us with personal responsibility are the big losers.

9. The funding of public education is in Oklahoma’s constitution. The Oklahoma legislature is tasked with running these schools – hell, they make countless laws to make public schools kowtow to every year! IT’S THE LEGISLATURES JOB TO FIX OKLAHOMA PUBLIC SCHOOLS THAT AREN’T EDUCATING KIDS.

The legislature’s job isn’t to SHIRK their job and put that job off on parents and call it PARENTAL EMPOWERMENT.

10. How empowering is it to parents to have their taxes go up year after year to pay for public schools that don’t work and countless government programs so that they don’t have the money to educate their own children?

11. And the bottom line: how is it the GOVERNMENTS JOB TO PRIVATELY EDUCATE KIDS? The more government grows, the more our liberty shrinks, the more our liberty shrinks, the more socialist we become.

For God sakes! I feel so sorry for the people who have emigrated to Oklahoma from the left coast thinking they were going to get ‘freedom’ here. Here’s the bottom line, as Reagan said many times, “We’re only one generation away” from losing America.

Sadly, the subsequent generations from that quote were educated in government schools that took away their history, dumbed down their math, botched their reading so the majority of kids can’t read at grade level and hooked them on porn. AND WE HAD THE PLEASURE OF PAYING FOR THAT. Government is now king – personal responsibility is done for. Bye-bye America. Bye-bye Oklahoma. RIP.

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