Stan Geiger

Askins' Problem

Jari Askins, Democrat for governor, has a major problem. A poll is out showing her trailing Republican Mary Fallin 57 percent to 36 percent. Trailing in the polls doesn't put Askins in unfamiliar territory. One late poll prior to the primary showed her trailing Drew Edmonson by 49 percent to 33 percent. She won a narrow victory, nonetheless.

In the pre-primary poll, 18 percent of voters declared themselves undecided. That's a pretty big tater hangin' out there. And it appears that tater, almost in total, went to Akins.

I put forth a possible reason for the undecideds going to Askins in a previous piece. Edmonson pledged to work for more money for schoolteachers. Askins didn't.

Meanwhile, in the current poll, Askins is behind by 21 percentage points. But only 5 percent declare themselves undecided. Askins, in the general election, won't be able to win by garnering undecided voters at the last minute. She will have to convince people that have already decided to vote for Fallin to switch sides. That is a much greater challenge.

Bell, Califonia II

CBS News did a follow-up on the Bell, California story. I loved every second of the video of citizens cussing the City Council up one side and down the other. The sons/daughters-of-bitches earned every little bit of it.

CBS reported the top dog in the mix, the city manager, will get a pension of $880,000 a year---for starters. That's a hundred grand more than he was getting paid while he was "working." The CBS report said, if the fellow in question lives to be 80, he will draw $30 million in pension pay.

I have been arguing for an end to public pensions for some time. My imagination couldn't devise a better case than the real world has just provided.

An Historic Battle

The stage in the governor's race is set. It's the wannabe MILF versus the fat chick. Is this a race for governor of a state or a race for student council president? Dude.

The media is touting this as an historic moment for Oklahoma. Two women are matched in the governor's race, and that naturally means we will have a female governor for the first time. I would dispute that claim, however.

We've had a female governor for the last several years. His name is Brad Henry. We elected a woman as governor way back in the '70s. His name is David Boren.

Don't get your panties too awfully wadded up, folks. A man's gotta have a little fun from time to time.

A Little Relief in Sight

Ahhhh, it's primary day; some relief from political ads is in sight. There is no panacea at hand, mind you. November is still 3 months away. But at least the field will narrow after today.

You might have noticed I have a bit of a problem with campaign ads on TV. They don't tell anybody anything.

Hey, I'm a "conservative," vote for me! In Oklahoma, that's a very popular message in TV ads. The NRA thinks I'm cool, vote for me! That's another popular message in Oklahoma ads. I have a wife and kids, vote for me! Every dude running seems to think having a wife and kids constitutes a qualification for high office. Women, on the other hand, don't seem to think having a husband and kids rates even a mention. That's interesting.

A lot of folks shoot lip about getting money out of politics. Hell, that will never happen. It won't happen as long as we have whores running for office, at least. But if you really want to try to get money out of politics, banning TV ads would be a good start. A person can't be considered a "viable" candidate these days unless that person is putting his or her face on TV every 5 minutes. Politicians run ads like they're trying to sell Big Macs. Paying for TV time is the biggest eater of campaign money.

Without question, the biggest winners in a campaign cycle are TV stations.

At any rate, I'd say Mary Fallin has the best shot at becoming our next governor. I hope she can learn to pronounce the word "government" between now and November. Some folks might be a little confused when her ads refer to an "overreaching federal gurment."

Bell, California

Let's all pause for a moment to give a big round of applause for the citizens of Bell, California.

I don't know if you've heard, so I'll briefly draft the story for you. Bell had a city manager. He was getting paid nearly $800,000 a year. The manager had an assistant. She was getting paid nearly $400,000 a year. Bell had a police chief. He was getting paid nearly half a million dollars a year. According to CBS, they have all resigned. They have resigned because the citizenry found out about their ridiculous salaries and stormed City Hall with pitchforks and torches in hand.

The city manager apparently took the job initially for a salary of $72,000 a year. That's not too wild and crazy pay for a job in the LA area. But he also apparently had a contract that called for automatic pay increases of 12 percent per year. That is wild and crazy---for anywhere.

I hear there is a movement at hand to kill the mayor's job in Tulsa and replace it with a city manager's job. I'd say that would be a bad move.

The Bell police chief was overseeing a police force of 33 officers. Bell barely had a police force. Nonetheless, the chief was getting paid nearly half a million bucks a year.

There is much caution in this tale. What is the greatest threat to the continuing existence of this nation? Well, I'd have to say gubment employees.

A CBS anchor, reporting on the resignations of the trio of thieves this morning, noted they will all be drawing huge public pensions until they die. That was an excellent point to make. And that point makes for an excellent reason to do away with public pensions, period.

No word on the fate of the part-time city councilors, that are reportedly paying themselves $100,000 per year.

We have a sitting councilor, Jack Henderson, that recently wanted to triple the pay of Tulsa's part-time councilors to over $50,000 per year. I've heard it said that one can take a Tulsa salary and double it in order to live at the same level in a California metro area. Henderson, then, was arguing for a $100,000 salary in California dollars.

Henderson was shouted down. We recently ran off a police chief and replaced him with one that gets paid 60 grand a year less. Those are positive things. But Tulsa isn't in the clear completely.

Terry Simonson, assistant to the mayor, is reportedly making $150,000 per year. That's about 50 grand more than his boss makes. And, in California terms, that's about $300,000 per year.

Does that sound a bit silly to you?

School Super Ads

I've seen ads from a couple of candidates for state school superintendent. They are NBP ads. NBP stands for nuttin' but platitudes.

Both of them speak of routing more education money directly into classrooms. I don't really know what that means.

Excluding the students, there are two components to a classroom: a teacher and the various tools.

Are the candidates for school super calling for more teacher pay without actually saying it? If so, I'm in complete disagreement with them.

A punk that just graduated from a university with a teaching degree can take a job as a classroom teacher and be paid more than the state average wage from the get. That new teacher will also get free health insurance, courtesy of the state. And that teacher will become a part of the Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement System, which offers a very generous defined-benefit pension plan. Meanwhile, that teacher will have a 6-hour workday and be required to show up for work only half the days in a calendar year.

Teachers are more than amply compensated for what they do.

Are the candidates claiming a need for more educational tools in the classroom? Every time I see a news story on education, complete with video of kidlets playing with Crayons, I see a classroom so full of stuff you couldn't get anything else in it without the aid of a shoehorn. The only thing in the classrooms that seems to be in short supply is students.

If the candidates are saying too much money is being spent outside the classroom, I'm in complete agreement. But that money should be pruned from the system and given back to taxpayers. There is no need for it anywhere else.

I saw a report just the other day that mentioned the results from a recent study of 30 industrialized nations. U.S. students ranked 21st in science and 25th in math. We spend more money on education than any nation on the planet, yet we rank in the bottom third in science and math.

Statistics say anywhere from a fourth to a third of students entering a public high school won't be around come graduation day.

For three decades, we have given educators everything they said they needed. We have hired more teachers to reduce class sizes, we have hired more non-teachers, we have increased pay for everybody in education, we have built fancier facilities with fancier equipment. What we have to show for that massive public investment is something just short of spit.

Still, the educators sing the same tired song. They just don't have enough money.

There is a thing in economics known as the law of diminishing returns. Basically, that law says you can gain by throwing money at a problem up to a point. After that, you're just wasting money. I think we hit the point of diminishing returns a long time ago when it comes to funding education.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Einstein that defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Have we, as a nation, gone insane?

Askins Ads

I give Jari Askins, Democrat for governor, some credit relative to her ads. She has avoided kissing up to the education lobby. For a Democrat, in particular, to do so is admirable.

Her current ads seem to focus on ethics in government. That is admirable as well. However, Askins has been in government for years. She is currently lieutenant governor. Corruption in government is certainly nothing new. Why the great concern, all of the sudden?

My biggest bitch with an Askins ad has to do with one I haven't seen in a while. I'm left to wonder if she pulled it.

The ad in question was clearly aimed at garnering female votes. It claimed women in Oklahoma make 76 cents on the dollar relative to men. The ad claims that is illegal, and Askins pledges to fight that evil if elected governor.

I don't dispute the number. I'm sure, if Askins is making the claim, there is a statistic out there, somewhere, that says women in Oklahoma make less than men. That isn't necessarily illegal, however. It is perfectly legal for different jobs to pay different salaries. Therein lies the rub.

Give me two schoolteachers, a man and a woman. They have the same number of years on the job, they have the same level of education and they work for the same district. Do they not draw the same pay? I think they do.

You could make that same argument for, say, cops.

How about legislators? Do women state senators make 76 percent of what male senators get paid? No. They get paid the same.

Let's go private sector. Does a female store manager at Quik Trip make 76 percent of what a male counterpart gets paid, all influencing factors being equal? Again, the answer is no.

Women, on the whole, might make 76 percent of what men get paid in the state. The perfectly rational explanation for that lies in the fact that men, on the whole, occupy tougher jobs than women. Ergo, it is perfectly fine that women, on the whole, get paid less.

Edmonson Ads

My last piece brought a comment from a reader. The reader scoffed at a Drew Edmonson, Democrat for governor, ad. Edmonson's ad touts his forcing Southwestern Bell to give $30 million to public schools for computers. My reader says Edmonson is full of bull. He says Southwestern Bell overcharged customers and, when it got busted, the payback money went into public schools instead of going back to ratepayers.

Given a choice between believing a political ad or my reader, hmmm, I think I'll side with my reader.

Edmonson was already on my list. So I'll make a couple of my own points.

One of Edmonson's ads touts the fact that he went to Vietnam---40 years ago. The ad says nothing beyond that; it says nothing about what he did in Vietnam. For all I know, Edmonson did a year sitting behind a desk. Big whoop. Does that make him a hero?

The thing about Edmonson's ads that really grabs my nose, however, is his pledge to work for higher teacher pay. I was pretty close to posting about not seeing any political ads pushing for more goodies for schoolteachers. Then came Drew Edmonson.

Let's see, we've got a state general fund that has backed up by about a billion dollars of late. State agencies are taking cuts across-the-board. Hell, even public school districts are taking budget cuts. We still face a massive infrastructure backlog, totalling billions. We have a wholly inadequate prison system. DHS is reportedly a gigantic cluster-eff. And this boob wants to increase pay for a bunch of part-time state employees that are already vastly overpaid. Super.

If he needed any help getting there, Edmonson's pledge to raise pay for schoolteachers pushed him to the very bottom of my list of choices for the office of governor.

Boren Ads

You know, I might well be in favor of a law that would ban all TV ads put forth by candidates for office. They are nothing more than Madison Avenue advertising. They are, as a rule, just plain stupid.

Let's start with Dan Boren, Democrat for the U.S. House.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody named Boren is a douche. Dan makes for the third generation of Oklahoma Borens that have grown fat sucking the public teet. His daddy, Dave, has made sucking the public teet an art form.

Dave is getting close, I'm sure, to retiring from his job as president of the University of Oklahoma. He's lived like a king while holding the job. When he retires, he will begin drawing an educator pension that I figure will be of massive proportions. He's been drawing a public pension for his "servitude" in the U.S. Senate since he left office. Basically, that means he's been drawing a senator's salary for years even though he hasn't been a senator for years. He had a cup of coffee in the State Legislature and did a term as governor, so I'm sure he draws a pension for that, too. Dude, this cat might well be pulling down half a million a year in public pension money in a couple of years.

But I digress.

Dan Boren's political ads seem to say we should vote for him for two reasons. One, he owns a gun. Two, he has a wife and kids.

Yepper, that does it for me! This guy must be some kind of freakin' genius!

Boren's wife, in the wife-and-kids ad, says Dan is such a great family man he comes home every weekend when Congress is in session. She may not realize it, but that's the last thing I want to hear. I mean she identifies her husband as a guy that burns borrowed federal dollars traveling back and forth from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C. on a weekly basis. Marvelous.

I have more to say about stupid, useless, campaign ads. I just figured I'd start with the biggest douche I could find. Stay tuned.

Mayor v. Council

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett and the City Council have seemingly been at odds since the Bartlett administration began. There is currently a battle going on as to whether or not the city should spend available money or sit on it. The Council says spend it; the mayor says sit on it, Ralph.

Me thinks I side with the Council on this one. If the money is there, it has already been collected, spend it on things people should get for their tax dollars. Mow the grass, turn on the lights, buy salt and sand for the coming winter and put the copper choppers back in the air.

The mayor claims he is being a good conservative leader. He says he doesn't want to spend any new money until he is sure such expenditures are sustainable. If I thought he was telling the truth, I might applaud his stance. Unfortunately, I think he's full of bull.

The mayor wants to keep the screws tightened so he can gain support for what he calls "revenue enhancements." By any other name, what he advocates is tax increases. No politician wants to use the word "tax" anymore. So we get into semantics. From where I sit, any money the gubment takes out of your pocket is a tax. You may call it whatever you like. You may call it tuition, you may call it a toll, you may call it a fee, you may call it a fine. Whatever. It's a tax.

Not long ago, I saw a report published by KOTV. That report said the mayor wanted to make "revenue enhancement" the "hallmark of his administration." That's a far cry from what his campaign ads said. In those ads, Bartlett, Republican and self-proclaimed conservative, said he would improve city services without any tax increases.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we have no conservative party in this land. Vote Democrat or vote Republican. Government grows no matter which party is in control.

The City of Tulsa has a very simple problem: It has too many people on the payroll, it pays people, at least in some instances, ridiculous amounts for the jobs they occupy, and benefit costs are a runaway train.

Find me a politician that is willing to address the real problem. Maybe then I will sign on to support.