Mary Fallin delivered the State of the State last week in front of a joint session of the Oklahoma State Legislature. If there’s one takeaway, it’s charts.

Charts are often utilized to produce a palatable presentation of convoluted and dense informational material, but Fallin’s charts seemingly took up more space than they were worth. For your viewing pleasure, they’re simplified as follows:

Tax gains = up. Less money to do stuff = bad. Tax gains + less money = curl up with my blankie and go nap-nap.

The charts were used to show the decrease in the percentage of tax receipts (collections) appropriated by government programs, down from 55 percent to 47 percent. In conclusion, for whatever reasons, our government has less money to spend despite raising more of it. Of course, she could have said that and moved on.

If the charts aren’t a turnoff, you could focus on a number of other things: proposed overhaul of the budgeting process, increased funding for the Department of Education, support for “smart on crime” policies or a number of initiatives to dethrone our state from its place at or near the top of a list of terrible health problems.

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