OK-SAFE, Inc. Blog

May 3, 2011

Twelve Truths About Legislation

OK-SAFE, Inc. was created in late 2006 by 13 concerned Oklahomans with the express purpose of stopping the Trans-Texas Corridor coming into the state of Oklahoma.  Since then, we’ve both expanded our efforts and fine-tuned them to address specific issues such as objecting to the collection of personal biometric information, the growing surveillance society, and the continued expansion of the reach and scope of state government.

Networking with other grassroots groups, we’ve learned from the bottom up how to research an issue, how the legislative process works, how to lobby, and how to read and track legislation. We educate others on how to do the same.

Seekers of the truth, we’ve also learned how to discern political doublespeak.  We’ve come to understand that the legislative process in Oklahoma has been corrupted not only through perversion of words, but by special interests. The process is agenda-driven.  Only certain types of bills get a hearing and are allowed to advance through the legislative process.  Other bills, although sound in principle and policy, are either ignored or introduced to pacify constituents, their author knowing full well the bill will go nowhere.

Bad language, stopped one year, is slipped into a different bill later on, or held for a new, unsuspecting legislator to run.

Legislators ignore the people’s concerns and pass liberty-killing legislation anyway, pooh-poohing their research and warnings. They add “claw back provisions” as false comfort to prevent abuse of some newly created give-away scheme, directing taxpayers money to most-favored businesses.

Apparently this pattern of abuse has been noted elsewhere – listed below are Twelve Truths About Legislation from Freedom Keys.

  1. Any law the electorate sees as being open to being perverted from its original intent will be perverted in a manner that exceeds the manner of perversion seen at the time.
  2. Any law that is so difficult to pass it requires the citizens be assured it will not be a stepping stone to worse laws will in fact be a stepping stone to worse laws.
  3. Any law that requires the citizens be assured the law does not mean what the citizens fear, means exactly what the citizens fear.
  4. Any law passed in a good cause will be interpreted to apply to causes against the wishes of the people.
  5. Any law enacted to help any one group will be applied to harm people not in that group.
  6. Everything the government says will never happen will happen.
  7. What the government says it could not foresee the government planned for.
  8. When there is a budget shortfall to cover non-essential government services the citizen will be given the choice between higher taxes or the loss of essential government services.
  9. Should the citizens mount a successful effort to stop a piece of legislation, the same legislation will be passed under a different name.
  10. All deprivations of freedom and choice will be increased rather than reversed.
  11. Any government that has to build safeguards into a law so that it will not be abused is providing guidelines for abusing the law without violating it.
  12. Any legislator up for re-election will vote against a bad law if and only if there are enough other votes to pass it.

Whoever wrote this list must have been watching what happens in the Oklahoma legislature.

We can only conclude with these words – Never believe a politician.


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