The Pro-Life Thing to Do

Every time there's a natural disaster you get people asking questions like, "Why do people live in Twister-Prone Oklahoma?" It's kind of ironic because a lot of the people asking those questions live in places like California along the San Andreas Fault, or in the hills where mudslides and wildfires are an annual event. Or in Florida or Louisiana, which get hammered by hurricanes. Or in North Dakota, parts of which are constantly inundated by floods. Or in Wyoming, the state with the highest suicide rate. Or in Flint, or Detroit, or New Orleans, or St. Louis, the cities with the highest murder rates in the country.

The fact is, people become complacent about risks they face every day. They have to, otherwise they'd go crazy from fear. Thus, we obsess about the possibility of dying in a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or a crazed gunman, when the fact of the matter is we're much more likely to die in car accident, be shot by a husband, or even hit by lightning.

The question isn't why people live in places that are subject to natural disasters. The answer to that is easy: they have to. No, the real question is why people don't take even the simplest and logical precautions to protect themselves from those disasters.

Moore, Oklahoma, has been hit by four massive tornadoes in recent years: once in 1998, again in 2003 and twice now in 2013. Yet schools don't have underground basements or above-ground tornado shelters. The kids just huddle in the hallways, with only the bodies of their teachers to protect them. As a result seven children died at Plaza Towers elementary school.

Don't the people of Oklahoma care enough about their children to provide shelter for them? These people live in Tornado Alley, damn it. They know the risks better than anyone. But what did the Oklahoma legislature concern itself with in the year following the 2009 tornado in Moore? Forcing women to get invasive ultrasounds and suffer through a grotesque lecture before getting an abortion.

Why do lawmakers in Oklahoma care more about forcing women to gestate unwanted fetuses than protecting living, breathing, talking children whose parents love them dearly?

The sticking point, they always claim, is the money. "Where, oh where, could we possibly get the money to pay for tornado shelters for our children?"

The answer's pretty simple. In the single month of March, 2013, Oklahoma produced nearly 9 million barrels of oil. Production had been averaging around 7 million bbl a month, but it's been growing steadily. At today's price of around $93 a barrel, that's worth almost a billion dollars a month.

Oklahoma should immediately begin issuing "Tornado" bonds to finance construction of tornado shelters for schools. They should also change housing codes to require shelters for all new homes and apartments, improve construction standards to make houses withstand high winds better, and institute a program to provide low-interest loans to people who wish to build tornado shelters for existing homes (these can be had for a few thousand dollars).

To pay for those bonds they should increase their Gross Production Tax rate on natural gas and oil, which is currently 7% per barrel. In  comparison,  the tax rate on gas in Texas is 7.5%, 8% in Alabama, 8% in Kansas, 5% in North Dakota, 8% in California, etc.

Alaska has an incredibly complex tax structure, which appears to be 25 to 50% depending on the oil field, plus a surcharge when the price of oil is greater than $40/barrel, plus a conservation surcharge of 4%, plus an additional 1% if the oil spill fund contains less than $50 million.

What does Alaska use all that money for? They cut $2,000 checks to residents.

And who was the conservative Republican governor behind all that? Why, none other than Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president. She increased taxes on oil companies when the state already had a large surplus. She also demanded an extra $1,200 check be cut to every Alaskan just two months before McCain selected her.

If Sarah Palin can get away with a massive program to redistribute wealth from oil companies -- and the rest of the country -- to Alaskans, I don't think the nation or the oil companies would begrudge Oklahomans a minor increase in oil taxes to protect the lives of their children safe from deadly natural disasters.

It's the pro-life thing to do.