Before I continue on with the post scheduled, I would like to apologize for the volume of political posts that you have seen on this website recently. Unfortunately for those of you who dislike politics, or those of you who are fooled by the way I carefully hide my liberal leanings, this is an election year, so a good amount of our material will probably be driven by that fact. By mid-November, I would imagine that the regular media will go back to advertising which of their cast has undergone stomach stapling procedures and we can go back to riciculing them for not reporting real news. In the meantime...
Some of you may have already heard that one of our favorite targets, State Representative Randy Terrill, has made the news for possibly gaming the bankruptcy system. Even The Oklahoman, which typically requires the discovery of a drifter buried beneath the home of the politician before running a negative article on a Republican, thought this newsworthy enough to sensationalize.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't get why this is supposed to be a big deal. Sure, Terrill probably did swindle his wife's credit card companies out of a couple thousand dollars, because seriously, who leaves themself with a mere $500 after they lend their campaign $18,000? It's sleazy. It's slimy. But, by no means is this a revelation. This is the man who championed HB1804, a bill written by a white supremacist group and designed to create hostility toward anyone of hispanic decent. He refers to Mexican children with a term considered by most to be a slur. He wears a cheesy OU tie while sitting in wicker furniture for photo shoots. Okay, on closer inspection, it isn't wicker, but still, why is the questionable bankruptcy behavior something to focus on?
I kind of felt the same way when it came to the "scandal" that brought down House Speaker Lance Cargill. Yes, it is dumb to not pay your taxes, particularly when your salary is paid by said tax revenue. It reeks of hypocrisy. That being said, there was plenty to hold against Cargill. And by plenty, I really mean a complete lack of anything. Even on his own website, the only accomplishment Cargill shows from his time prior to becoming speaker is that he was the only person to hit a home run in a charity baseball game. Keep in mind, I don't blame him for this--I'd brag about a home run I hit in a fathers versus sons baseball scrimmage--but I don't think I should be one of the most powerful politicians in the state. So what made him qualified to be the youngest speaker in state history? It was the Dilbert Principle in practice, I guess. Personally, I would have thought he should have been voted out for ineffectiveness, but paying the penalty and interest on his late taxes would have been enough retribution for what actually caused his fall.
That's our problem in this state. We watch our government make stupid decisions all the time, but we keep voting in the same morons because they offer to fight a "cultural war" against a group of people simply asking for equal rights, or use a generic description of themselves hitting specific key words. The only way we vote them out is if trumped up nonsense charges get brought against them. For instance, Brent Rinehart probably would have cruised to re-election if Drew Edmondson had not caught him for campaign finance irregularities and triggered the County Commissioner to emulate 2Pac by releasing a diss cartoon book.
So anyway, the next time you watch the construction crews come along and tear up a perfectly good stretch of road to repave, then later when driving down 23rd Street your car shakes like you were cruising the streets of Kabul, think about voting some of these clowns out for their job performance even if they don't have a random crime to hold against them.
