The "Conservatives" Who Are Bankrupting Our State

Governor's Justice Reform Panel

  Oklahomans are praising the news of Governor Fallin's newly impaneled committee on justice reform. The blue-ribbon panel includes the top lawmakers, director of our prisons & the director of the Department Of Mental Health & Substance Abuse.

Oklahoma's Incarceration
Rate Is 67% Higher 
than The U.S. Average

http://nicic.gov/statestats/?st=OK

  While the progress may go slow, it is hopeful that our laws will be reformed in a way that brings relief to suffering individuals as well as out-of-control prison budgets.

If There Is No Victim, There Is No Criminal

  Some will only see this as a 'dangerous' possibility of decriminalizing some nonviolent & victimless transgression. They will demagogue the issue in order to protect special interests and religious sects.

Oklahomans are not "Bad People". So why are we sending so many to prison?
The U.S. leads the world in incarceration.

  It is an irrational effort to discredit an issue by subjectively discrediting the personal lives of anyone who holds to the 1935 public policy of the United States. It is only the more contemporary condescension of our nanny state that sees a government role of protecting the citizen from himself.

  While there is a legitimate role for government to keep our roads safe and exploiters away from our children; those 2 directives do not justify the far-reaching inconsistencies in our severe penal code for folks who never violated either of the 2 directives.

  And no one can honestly call himself a fiscal conservative when he has bankrupted our state in order to bankroll the highest incarceration rate in the modern world.

  No one can call himself "tough on crime" when his policies have become a breeding ground for organized crime by creating the modern day equivalent of the "speak-easy" black market pot dealerships saturating our communities.  We're throwing money at a failed policy like a rabid herd of liberals trying to spend our way to good public schools!

  Reset the drug policy and quit spending our children's wealth on incarcerating folks whose back yard personal hemp plant doesn't violate anyone.

Prison Is Not A Substitute Hospital

  Another reform that will save taxpayers vast expenses is the medical intervention network for serious mental health crises. While the legislature touts the pennies saved by cutting mental health resources (They closed a 2600-bed facility in Vinita, but never replaced the resource as promised.), Jails and courts are now the # 1 medical treatment facilities for folks with nervous breakdowns.

David Van Risseghem

  Every major city and county has raised taxes drastically, to manage the new inmates who were booked on disorderly misconduct, but should have been offered a mental hospital, as a preferred alternative. The short-term treatment centers usually stabilize and release a suffering soul within days.   A medical leave usually last a couple weeks, before a person returns to work. But a disturbed person who is jailed, has no medical leave, loses his job (or disability). His kids are probably in DHS custody, and he has a far higher hill to climb in restoring his life. In all likelihood he never will.

The State of "Red People" and Team Mascots

Oklahoma Territory, prior to full statehood

  The first sanctioned inhabitants of the Oklahoma Territory were the Civilized tribes who were forcibly migrated from the east. They shared the partitioned land and collectively made the best of a demeaning status.

  Among the most adaptive tribes was the Chocktaw Nation. Their tribal history had previously been very friendly with the French inhabitants who preceded the east coast expansionists. Chief Greenwood LaFlore was, himself, half French.
  The Chocktaw language is used when we speak the official name of our state. Oklahoma is literally defined as "Red People". It was meant to unite not only the 5 civilized tribes of the eastern side of the state, but also their common citizenship with the western tribes who had a much different lifestyle & heritage.

 Is a mascot representing the American tribes a slur? No, it is as proud a statement as "Yankee" is to the folks of New England. So where does the victim class come into the public debate? And how can a self-sufficient and prosperous tribe be silenced by the contemporary activist class who claims to represent the prosperous and educated legacy of Oklahoma Indians? Native to the land and so essential to the heritage of Oklahoma?

  No, the victim-class and those making a handsome living off a claim to represent oppressed people, do not have a foothold in Oklahoma... the land of the Red People.

David Van Risseghem

Sooner Politics Unveils the 'Lawmakers Journal'

www.LawmakersJornal.com Goes Online

The latest insider news direct from the lawmaker's journal

  As Oklahoma prepares for a very active legislative season, Sooner Politics is helping to connect lawmakers directly with the voters of their districts and the entire Sooner State.

  Page A3 of our online daily newspaper is now filled with legislative correspondents who will be updating the  latest events at the capitol and news of the legislation which is working it's way through committees and floor votes.

Patrick McGuigan's Capitol Beat

 The page includes the most sought after columnists covering the legislature. Patrick McGuigan's Capitol Beat is joined by Watchdog-OK and Grace McMillan's "The House and Senate".

Lawmaker's Journal;
the new Section B of
Sooner Politics Daily News

  Along with the press office briefings of each house, a growing list of current lawmakers are posting their own raw legislative journals and blogs. They will discuss he rationale governing their recent votes, challenges remaining in the effort to reach a key compromise in solving a state problem, and even a few lighthearted stories of the less flattering side of being a citizen lawmaker.

Here are 6 recent posts from the diverse group
of lawmakers, whose posts are carried in Lawmakers Journal

A published registry of the daily progress of bills

  Finally, the Open-States section tracks all the bills from their filings, right up though their landing on the governor's desk. Each morning readers can see what has transpired on the floor of each house in the previous day's business.

David Van Risseghem

Influence Peddlers And Taskmasters

Oklahoma Chamber President, Fred Morgan with
 new Senator Jack Fry, at the Governor's Mansion

When Do Lobbyists Go Too Far?

  The Ruling Class has once again set up their figurative trade show booths in the halls and conference rooms of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Nothing new here, nothing to see. Move along... No Loitering!

  The average Oklahoman will rarely ever get a small sense of how the organized lobbying class has declared ownership of some lawmakers. Some are so fully "whipped" that they don't ever know what their position on a bill is, until they're gotten the memo from the lobbyists who've bought them and their office.

Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce uses
Governor's Mansion & Staff for part of their
Lobbying event, to peddle influence upon the new
legislators of the 2015 session. http://goo.gl/R5CIO2

   So where are the boundaries? When does a lawmaker draw a line? And where do the ethics rules and state laws come into play?

  What are the reporting rules when a politician is sent on an all-expense-paid trip to a "conference in the Caribbean (2014 National Popular Vote lobby)?
  What happens when a lawmaker lets a lobbyist use government facilities for coordinated events like the recent Oklahoma Chamber's "Evening at the Governor's Mansion"?
  As with most issues, there is the legal code of state statutes regarding criminal behavior. This would be the most egregious scenario where abuse of office and misuse of state assets is used for lobbying interests.
  Beyond that, there are ethics rules for members of the legislature. While this would not pertain to criminal offenses, it would still potentially lead to a member of the legislature being removed from office.
  And lastly, there's the "Smell Test".  While not all bad behavior is a violation of a written rule; some things are just abhorrent to the Oklahoma standards of decency for the comportment of a civic leader. The manner of rectifying these instances of misconduct is through the ballot box, protest, or a personal appeal for a leader to "get help".

  I'm proud to be an Okie, but I'm not blind to the reality that our state has a rather embarrassing history of corruption in our elected officials. While I don't blame the current crop of leaders for the past decades, I do sometimes wonder if a systemic disorder may be lingering in our state whereby we don't have sufficient safeguards in our system. Or maybe we just don't exercise the discipline to follow the safeguard rules we made after the last big corruption case.
  In any case, we somehow think that since our intentions are good, therefore our actions cannot be assailable.  I used to manage a chain of retail outlets and I knew that our staff was our most essential asset. But I always let our good people know that any of us is capable of falling, provided we are left to a sufficient enough amount of temptation. And being lax in our inspections & audits, might just provide the catalyst for corruption to take hold.

David Van Risseghem

Revenge of the Cartoonist

  The world's editorial cartoonists came out in a show of worldwide force, today.

Daryl Cagle runs a syndicate service for several good illustrators. He writes about his personal connections with the French cartoonist fraternity...

"There are cartoon festivals all over France – the best one for political cartoonists is in the small town of St Just le Martel; I’ve been attending for years, along with other cartoonists I syndicate. The townspeople pitch in to throw a festival for the editorial cartoonists every year; villagers put cartoonists up in their homes, and they award a live cow to the “Humor Vache” cartoonist of the year. One greatly respected winner of the cow was Georges Wolinski, a brilliant cartoonist with a masterful loose, swishy, wordy style, highly respected by the French. We were fellow cow winners, having a beer together last October; it is hard to imagine that he is gone.  The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are a diverse group of charming characters; they are the heart of the French cartooning community. There are not a lot of editorial cartoonists. We get to know each other; the murders are a blow that strikes close to all of us."

Here's a taste of today's work.

David Van Risseghem