BY RUSSELL TURNER
HUMOR AND POLITICS
Over the years I have watched some of the late night talk shows such as Carson and Letterman and laughed at their opening remarks, especially when the subject turns to politics. It seems to me that when it comes to politics and the desire to stay in office, our political class will use the most asinine excuses to support some particular issue. One of the main duties of any elected official is the proper spending of taxpayer monies. I have found that far more humans than we would like to admit have a problem in handling their finances. I think it was Will Rogers who said that the American people are the only people in the world that will go to the poor house in an automobile.
In the last couple of weeks of the just completed session of the State Legislature, there was a proposal to siphon off 80 MILLION dollars of taxpayer money to finance a couple of museums here in the Sooner State. The first museum is theOklahoma Museum of Music and Popular Culture (OKPOP), to be built in Tulsa. The other institution is the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum (AICCM), still under construction in Oklahoma City. The AICCM has already received commitments from the taxpayers to the tune of $112 million so far and the project is far from being completed. According to a recent audit, “the organization's extremely wasteful spending practices which have already led to the rapid liquidation of 97 million state dollars and significantly increased the state debt. Instead of rewarding bad behavior with big bucks, the state must develop and implement a plan to transfer the entity from the state rolls and into the private sector”.
The proponents of spending our money on these two boondoggles argue that they would increase tourism and generate tax revenue. While some revenue would be created, the main recipients of that money would go in large part to Tulsa and Oklahoma City. I have always had a problem with using taxpayer money on some project that benefits a very small minority of the state’s population. If our state funds are so abundant that our law makers consider blowing it on a couple of museums that most Oklahomans will probably never visit, maybe our lawmakers should look at reducing the tax burden on the taxpayers and let them decide where to spend their extra cash. Like the person going to the poor house in a new automobile, all of us including our lawmakers need to get our spending priorities straight. Do we really need to be even thinking about luxury spending on museums when we have legitimate needs throughout our state such as repairing our crumbling state capital or to providing services to our veterans who have had life changing injuries while defending our freedoms?
While talk show hosts make jokes about political antics, the joke is on those of us who actually pay the taxes in the first place.
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