Friday, October 7th, 2016
Stephan: If you read me regularly you know I pay close attention to what is going on at the state level across the country because I see the states as laboratories for various social policies. When you think on the basis of facts, the social outcomes of these policies in the various states provides a measuring instrument. If you do this what happens? The data cuts through all the ideological and theological partisanship and gives the factual answer.
Oklahoma is one of the states I follow particularly closely. It is a Theocratic Rightist Red value state with a governor, Mary Fallin, a Republican of course, who doesn't even seem to know the three branches of government. But she does know how to serve her corporate masters.
As a result in Oklahoma the interests of the petroleum sector trumps social wellbeing. Proof? As a result of fracking waste water earthquakes Oklahoma is now the U.S. earthquake capital, and the damage and stress that has resulted from this increase in quakes has had a radical effect on the state's citizens wellbeing.
Smart leadership would be positioning the state as a supplier of wind and solar power, and exploring organic mixed species organic agriculture. Not Oklahoma.
The governor has declared an "Oilfield Prayer Day." Really. Here's the story. And let me be clear, collective intentioned focused awareness, of which prayer is one expression, is very powerful. It is the use to which it is being put that is the the dispositive datapoint
Let me be perfectly clear: what you are about to read is not satire. It’s entirely real and it’s all happening in Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s Trump lovin’ Governor Mary Fallin is has proclaimed October 13 as Oilfield Prayer Day:
“We’re asking churches all over Oklahoma to open their doors, put on a pot of coffee and pray for the oil field, and not only for the oil field but the state, because the economy of our state is so connected to the oil field.”
Jeff Hubbard, with Oilfield Christian Fellowship- Oklahoma City, agreed.
“We have a saying: The oil field trickles down to everyone,” he said
The “oil field trickles down to everyone.” Well, Oklahoma’s wealthiest person is Harold Hamm, an oil billionaire with a nearly $15 billion fortune, most of it from shale oil fracking. Yes, the same oil extraction method responsible for at least 90% of the earthquakes in Oklahoma. Maybe Oklahoma could raise his taxes and encourage him to trickle a little bit more down to the oil field workers? Or how about George Kaiser? Forbes Magazine pegs his net worth at nearly $10 billion. The
Are you kidding me??? I am praying for the earth! also, for people like you to go to through a black hole!
Margarett44 —
I am very glad to learn you are praying for the wellbeing of Earth; I join you in that. And I wish that was what the governor was asking of the people of Oklahoma. But that is not what she is asking people to do. She is asking people to pray for the continuance of a technology largely responsible for destabilizing Earth’s great meta-systems to the peril of all.