“The stongest Economic forces in America”

Part 1

 I’ve never been one to be short on opinions. Just ask anyone that knows me. I make a genuine relentless effort to try and keep on top of the news. I even try to gather news about the same event or person from several news sources in order to gain a better perspective on what the facts actually are. I read as much news as I spend time watching it on TV. I am lucky enough to work at a job where I can even listen to people as they give their unsolicited opinions on various matters that affect their everyday lives. Since I began writing for bartcop.com I get e-mail from people expressing their opinions on various topics that I haven’t written about yet. (Which by the way, I love to read e-mail from everyone!) People have sent lots of ideas for articles about things they consider to be important and that affect their daily lives. I have even begun to get hate mail and like bartcop now regularly receive e-mail from the Republican National Committee telling me how important I am to their efforts. It’s that last one that really gets to me. Lately I’ve considered starting my own political party. I’m going to call it the “Nunya’s”. Short for “None of your damn business” or during election time “none of the above”! I personally think it would be funny as hell if there was a spot on the ballot where the voters could say that no one that is running is acceptable, please try again. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people that share this opinion because I can’t count the number of times someone has said they were being forced to choose the lesser of two evils when casting their vote.

As consumers one of the most important things we do is vote. The policies of our elected officials have more of a direct effect on our pocketbooks than anything else we have any type of control over. In fact, I believe that the vote is probably one of the single strongest influences on the market place in today’s economy. Let’s face facts. The stock market didn’t start its downward turn until President Gorged Mush started warning us that we might be headed for a recession. Well guess what happened within 24 hours of that stupid remark? Wham, the stock market drops. When placed in that light it would be pretty easy to see that anyone that voted for the now infamous pretzel boy is at least in some small part responsible for the downturn of the stock market that day.(The fact that our APPOINTED President wasn’t smart enough to keep his mouth shut about such things we’ll save for another time.) Voting becomes pretty strong stuff when you look at it in that light. Of course there’s still a strong debate on loosing an election and still getting the job but we’ll save the electoral college debate for later as well.

In southeastern Oklahoma politics have always been dirty business. As a youth I was very active in our local church. I was raised as a Methodist. Something I’ve become more and more appreciative of as the years pass. While the Methodist church does have a few rules I like their philosophy the best. They’ll tell you “here’s the bible, you read it and decide what YOU think it means”. Unlike some other religions that go as far as to say “We know you’re going to sin, give us money, confess to your priest/minister/rabbi etc and then we’ll ask god if it’s OK for you to go to heaven”. I notice that there are even differences between churches of the same religion. One Sunday I had to listen to a minister of a Baptist church tell the congregation that if you are a widow then you should give this church every penny you have then “we’ll take care of you for the rest of your life”. That one really stuck in my gut for a long time and needless to say I’ve not returned to that church since.

In many ways a lot of public personalities and elected officials sooner or later become just like some of our churches (give us all your money for whatever reason.) When I was 17 our church sponsored a statewide seminar for youth about state government. This seminar was held at the state capital in Oklahoma City. Presumably so we could see our lawmakers in action. Two things happened that weekend that caused my eyes to really be opened as to the ways of the world.

The first eye opening revelation was when the editor of a prominent statewide newspaper spoke to us one evening. A couple of months prior to the seminar his paper had done a real hatchet job on the community where I was growing up. One of their stories even stated that “The offspring of old west outlaws still hide in the tall grass and hills surrounding the community” and “things are so bad that preachers carry guns”. All of this supposedly written by a gentleman name Frosty Troy, at least the article had his name published as the author. Well low and behold Mr. Troy addressed our group of church kids one evening and when he was finished speaking he opened the floor for questions. I jumped at the chance to quiz him.

Mr. Troy, I’m from southeastern Oklahoma, a little town called Wilburton” I stated. “Ah, yes, a very lovely part of Oklahoma son. You’re lucky to be growing up in such an area” he told the group.

“Well sir apparently you didn’t think that a few months ago because you wrote a pretty derogatory article in your paper. My question is how much of that article did you personally research before you put your name to it?” I replied.

“Well, actually I didn’t do any research on the article. I just put my name to it when it was finished, NEXT QUESTION!” he responded and immediately brushed me off.

To say the least my jaw must have hit the floor. I did feel some sort of vindication because this scumbag of a reporter/editor had admitted to a group of church youth that he was a liar and the rest of his evening was not filled with friendly type questions. In fact Mr. Troy chose to cut his visit with our little group of aspiring Christians short and he left the building within a few minutes. Needless to say I was somewhat of a hero with many of the group that evening because I had caught this “big city” reporter in a lie and the whole group knew it. The next day things got even better. We went to the state capital and sat in the gallery above the state senate floor.

Southeastern Oklahoma has a state senator that has been elected and re-elected for years by the name of Gene Stipe. This “gentleman” has been the subject of numerous FBI and other law enforcement agency investigations and each time he has managed to slither his way out of trouble by miracle after miracle. Ol’ Gene is pretty slick. On the day of our church groups visit Gene knew we were in the gallery watching our state government in action. I guess he didn’t figure we were smart enough to understand what was going on. Apparently the fact that someday someone would remember his words never crossed his mind either. He was on the floor of the Oklahoma state Senate arguing over whether they needed to increase welfare funding for utility bills for the poor.

“I just got off the phone with a very poor old lady in southeastern Oklahoma. It’s snowing down there RIGHT NOW and she’s afraid she’s going to freeze to death” he stated. “She’s worried that if she turns on her furnace to warm her home while it’s snowing then she won’t have enough money to buy food this month. Gentleman, it is imperative that this body pass my bill with an emergency amendment attached so she can pay her gas bill this month!”

Upon hearing this I panicked. I had driven my dads new car for the 4-hour trip from my home in southeastern Oklahoma to Oklahoma City and the last thing I wanted to do was drive home on the snow and ice and take a chance on wrecking my fathers new car. It was the first time I had been trusted to leave town with this new vehicle. Snow and Ice were serious stuff at 17 years old. I decided I had better excuse myself from the group and make plans to head home immediately. After all a state senator had just told the senate it was snowing in my hometown. I had already made arrangements to be driven back to where our group was staying (and where dads new car was parked) when I stopped at a pay phone on the ground floor of the state capital to call home and let them know I was coming back immediately.

“Mom, I just heard it is snowing there from our State Senator on the floor of the Senate and I’m heading home immediately” I told my mother as soon as she accepted my collect call. “Uh, Cliff it’s over 60 degrees outside right now. What’s all this about snow?” She asked. I immediately knew someone had been lying.

Now don’t get me wrong. (I know I’ll get e-mail on this) I am not against helping people stay warm during the winter. I am strongly opposed to ANYBODY lying to get what they want. In fact I don’t know an honest person anywhere that would say anyone is justified in lying for any reason. IN FACT I seem to remember a president or two that got in some pretty serious trouble for a lot less than what “Mean Gene” had done.

If we can’t, won’t or don’t demand complete honesty from our politicians, business leaders and news reporters then why are people surprised when the stock market and our economy are such a confused mess? Why are we surprised when business as usual means trying to screw everyone you can out of every dollar they have? Maybe ridiculously high prices, recessions, depressions and inflation are our reward for not demanding truth and integrity. Maybe the fact that the highest rated news programs are the ones that report the most dirt, destruction and greed are merely symptoms of the disease that that seems to be festering in our economy. Maybe school shootings and terrorist attacks are our “just deserts” for refusing to demand higher standards of the people that influence our children. And maybe, someday, somewhere, somehow someone will figure out that all we have to do is demand a little honesty and integrity in our everyday lives and high prices, high taxes and a lot of other problems may well take care of themselves.

Get the idea this leads to another discussion. Maybe honestly and integrity are the strongest economic forces on earth!

E-mail to downingc@swbell.net