In case you missed it, The Federalist ran an article I authored last week, “Oklahoma Republicans Are Helping Green Energy Cronies Scam Taxpayers Out Of Billions“. Check it out. I know both the Federalist and I would love that – but so will you. You may not know exactly how much of your hard-earned dollars are being GIVEN to PRIVATE companies in Oklahoma – but then, maybe you do and you’re just glad that Governor Stitt and his hand-picked Commerce Department staff is making sure that your kids have somewhere to work in Oklahoma so they can stay here after graduating college.
But wait. Is that really a reason for Republicans who love to use the expression ‘free market’ in their campaign literature, to GIFT private companies tax dollars.
Last Friday (2.7.25), in a special ROPE Report podcast at 1pm, Oklahoma Representative Jay Steagall was with me to talk about the ‘free market’ and Oklahoma tax incentives. Below is a clip in which Rep. Steagall and I make sure that everyone watching understands the concept of FREE MARKET ECONOMICS. What is that exactly? Watch below and find out.
So, is it appropriate for the legislature to appropriate your tax dollars, give it to another business which has the ability to make dollars on their own in the free market and then tell you that they’re doing it to create jobs? NO NO NO NO NO. I think you might get the idea.
In fact, last week, I wrote another article – this time for just the website – titled, “Gov. Stitt’s Commerce Department Gives Multiple MILLIONS Of Taxpayer Dollars To Paycom And Love’s Through Quality Jobs Incentives“. I think this should be required reading for EVERY TAXPAYER IN OKLAHOMA – and not just because I wrote it – because every taxpayer should know that their taxdollars are going to prop up private companies that can pay for their own cost of doing business.
We get our property taken from us and sold at auction if we don’t pay our property taxes. If we don’t pay our income taxes, the government seizes our bank accounts, fines us, or throws us in jail until we do.
And yet, MULTI-BILLION dollar privately held companies can use our hard-earned dollars to make more money whether we like it or not.
And here’s more about the Canoo debacle that you might not know.
Wow! How do you like THEM apples? Not only did Canoo soak Oklahoma tax payers for tax dollars as incentives to help them start a business that WAS NEVER GOING TO GET OFF THE GROUND, employees that more than likely didn’t even live in Oklahoma and were hired just in time to get state and local (Oklahoma City) incentives, got paid Oklahoma unemployment. I’m imagining that Canoo never funded their portion of their employees unemployment, but I don’t know for a fact.
Rep. Steagall has a bill to reduce Income Tax this year on a trajectory to complete removal. Governor Stitt has also said that he wants to remove Income Tax. Yet here’s the headline screaming from an article in the Oklahoma Voice last week, “Oklahoma legislative leaders hesitant to cut income tax“. WHAT? WHAT? Our ‘legislative leaders’ are Republican. Whatever happened to the Republican concept of smaller government and minimal taxation as tenets of the Republican platform? What about the other tenet of the platform – FREE ENTERPRISE!??
Please, contact your Representative AND Senator. Tell them you expect them to lower the state Income Tax with a plan in place to phase it out – THIS SESSION. And you might mention that one of the things they could do to afford it, was to QUIT GIVING BILLIONAIRES AND PRIVATE GREEN ENERGY COMPANIES our tax dollars – FOR A START!
