Politics as Usual: Corruption and the lack of accountability.

Like most states, Oklahoma has seen its share of corruption. From long time career politicians like Gene Stipe, Carol Fisher and the more recent shenanigans of Brent Rinehart, Oklahomans all too frequently learn of corruption in our state government. In most cases it takes years to discover and weed out these people, and often the penalty of their crimes are met with soft retribution from judges and the public. It is unfortunate that we allow these people, who should be above reproach, to behave in ways that we would not allow our children.

Politicians are not the only ones on Oklahoma’s payroll that lie, cheat and steal. In 2000, numerous employees in Oklahoma’s Health Department were accused of being “ghost employees”, employees that are on the payroll but don’t do any work. In some cases the fraud was so severe that the coworkers of the ghost employees didn’t even know they worked in the same department.

In April, 2009 it was discovered that three long time state troopers assigned to protect the governor were falsifying their time logs and in some cases only working a couple of hours out of a ten hour shift. Apparently the additional security was not needed (yet paid for by Oklahoma tax payers) because according to the governor’s spokesman Paul Sund, “Security was never compromised, so there was never any concern about safety”.

Although we should expect state employees to be honest, and the vast majority is, too often they are supervised by dishonest politicians.

Corruption in our local, state and federal government should be treated with a swift and powerful hand, sending a message that above all, our leaders should lead with complete integrity. Oklahomans need to stand up!