Feasting At The Public Trough

BY JOHN PARKER

As the vote approaches on whether taxpayers should heartily approve a subsidy for some of Oklahoma’s wealthiest citizens, I hope voters will read Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense [and Stick You with the Bill].

The new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston outlines how supposedly free-market enterprises, such as Bass Pro and sports teams, routinely seek taxpayers’ money to enrich themselves at the expense of their nonsubsidized competitors and the common good.

The highly researched book exposes how America’s wealthy elite is phenomenally successful in getting voters, and our elected representatives, to use our tax money to make them richer.

Have no illusions: On March 4, you’ll be asked to voluntarily give up a portion of your money to support this policy.

With a penny tax that will raise an estimated $121 million, here’s what some of Oklahoma City’s richest “success” stories are proposing: Hand over one-cent for every dollar you spend for 15 months, or Oklahoma City will not get an NBA team.

Just who is trying to sell you this?

Forbes magazine pegs part team-owner Aubrey McClendon’s oil fortune at $1.5 billion. By himself, not to mention the other tycoon team owners, McClendon could devote a paltry 10% of that wealth [$150 million] to renovate Ford Center and easily arrange sweetheart profits rubber-stamped by his fellow owners and an all-too-accomodating City Hall.

Instead, Oklahoma’s “best and brightest” are taking the low and lazy road.

Many of America’s wealthy elite, as Johnston points out, can’t resist “corporate socialism” by using their money to divert the people’s taxing power for their personal gain.

The free and economically self-destructive ride they take is immoral; it doesn’t follow Adam Smith’s prescriptions for thriving capitalism; but it sure is profitable for the wealthy few who covet greed over using our taxes to help the less fortunate – the poor, ill, elderly and children who need our help.

The Sonics owners are counting on Oklahomans to be gullible this March. They do not want you to know about propaganda-weary and victimized American cities that were led down the rosy path to rip-offs of their tax money.

They don’t want you to know about the $150 million Nationwide Arena, which opened in 2000 in Columbus, Ohio – funded completely by private money [and there are more].

After voters rejected welfare for the rich in 1997, two profitable private companies stepped in – after the bluff was blown – and funded a lucrative arena to their profit.

If citizens agree to tax themselves for the rich, the Sonics owners will be at least $121 million richer because they got you to pay for overhead costs that all the other nonsubsidized businesses in Oklahoma pay for by themselves.

So, think: As a voter, you’ll end up March 4 with a blank ballot in that private space at the precinct. No one will be looking at how you vote.

You know an NBA team would be really cool for Oklahoma City. You also know people vastly richer than you want to put that team here, and they can make it happen with their own money. As owner McClendon said, in a remark that earned him a $250,000 NBA fine, their plan was to bring the team to OKC all along.

Most of all, you know those rich people aren’t offering anything near a penny of their own dollars – unless it benefits their bank account – to make your life, or that of your children, any better with this tax. They’re saying $121 million is better spent on NBA salaries and their profits than your neighborhood school.

Then think about that people you’re giving your money to: Would a quarter-of-a-million-dollar fine be a big deal to you?

If not, why are you helping people who think it’s not?

– The author is a former journalist for the Oklahoma Gazette and the Oklahoman. He and his wife live in unincorporated Fairwood, WA, near Seattle.