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Sure, if you don't agree with Keith Olberman to begin with, he's grating. So, as someone who is grating even if you do agree with me, I will rehash the awesome easter egg he uncovered on Mary Fallin's most recent campaign mailing.
This past weekend, I received one of those lame, glossy, extra large post cards that my representative sends to my house to keep my family abreast of what she has been doing for my district. So, what is she doing? If you answered, "her security detail," wrong. Well, not actually wrong, it's just not what she chose to emphasize.
What Representative Fallin wanted me to know is that she is saving my tax money. The examples of cost savings she provided included:
- Voting against the budget (that was passed)
- Voting against Cap and Trade measures
- Government Regulation of Health Care (kudos for not calling it "ObamaCare" this time--But no kudos for failing to mention that the Congressional Budget Office projects these regulations to save money long term)
- Voting against the stimulus
All of that is well and good, and probably impresses a good portion of the people who received the flyer courtesy of the United States Postal Service. Of course, none of those things actually saved my tax dollars. The one way she does have control of how my tax dollars are spent is how she uses her personal budget. In this case she chose to spend those dollars to explain how she didn't save me money.
In the fine print of the flyer it says:
This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense.
Making matters even worse is that Mary, who is not running for re-election, obviously did not send this out as part of her duty as a United States representative. It was a transparent effort to further her gubernatorial campaign. So, not only did she not use her own campaign funds to send out this campaign mailing, she used federal taxpayer dollars for a state election.
I'd accuse her of hypocrisy on this topic, but her campaign website doesn't think campaign finance reform is even an issue worth addressing.
