The World According to "Aaarrgh!"

After some serious searching, I finally found the Nowata blog that the other campaign told me about last night.  I always find it fascinating to read stuff about me.  Since the other blog is edited and all of my posts were deleted, I will discuss the issues about me here, on my very own blog.

There was a lot of opinion expressed that I was a moron thinking I could do the commissioner’s job part-time.  In an Oklahoma county, there are three commissioners elected by district that make up the county legislative body; there is no executive.  Thus, an Okie county functions similar to the British Parliament, but on a much smaller basis. 

In Nowata County, there are about 11000 people, so each commissioner represents around 3700 people.  In comparison, the City of Tulsa has 382,000 people and nine City Councillors, so each Councillor represents 42,000 people.  The Tulsa City Councillors are part-time, with each having an outside full-time job.  If the City Councillors are part-time, why can’t a small county commissioner?  The argument I heard is that the Commissioner needs to be supervising his people at all times.  The Tulsa city council does not supervise the city staff full-time; that is why they hire managers.  A good Commissioner, then, has good managers who are capable of carrying out the Commissioner’s wishes without having to be babysat.

If the City of Tulsa isn’t a good comparison, then how about Dallas County?  In Texas, there are four commissioners who function like the three in Oklahoma (there is also an executive, the County Judge, who sits with the other four in the County Court).  Those Commissioners also had outside jobs.  So, in Dallas, you can represent 500,000 people while working part-time but you can’t represent 3,000 in Oklahoma without being full-time?  That is a bunch of hogwash.  The rural Commissioners are getting fat off of the county taxpayers or are completely incompetent or both.

A second issue I read was that my governing approach was exactly the same when I ran in Dallas County in 2002 as it was when I ran in Nowata County in 2008.  Yes, that is right!  My basic libertarian philosophies on how government should work does not change just because I move, because it works everywhere.

A third issue had to do with my placement of political signs on the right-of-way, and how that is bad and illegal.  When I was a traffic engineer in Illinois in the early part of the 90s, I took it upon myself to diligently enforce that part of the law that prohibited the placement of signs on the right-of-way.  I ended up being thoroughly chastised and rebuked for my diligence.  Why?  Because when you look at the big picture, political signs are temporary and don’t hurt anything, and there are much more important things to worry about.  I will say when I was at Balch Springs, I got so annoyed with how political signs were placed (one on top of another on the same pole at the corners blocking the view), that one day I pulled down all the signs in the city, stacked them up neatly behind my office (making sure to separate the two different “parties” so as they wouldn’t have to contaminate each other), told the candidates where they were, and advised them that they could put them on the right-of-way as long as they stopped “totem poling” them.  As long as political signs don’t become a hazard, as a government official, I couldn’t give a whit if they are on the right-of-way.  A “who cares” issue.

Well, the results are in…and I am now oh-for-five in elections.  However, I did poll slightly over 25% of the vote, which isn’t  too bad considering that I was really an unknown quantity. 

What have I learned?  First of all, that I regret ever going back to the Democratic Party.  If you recall, back at the end of 2001 I quit the Democratic Party in disgust because of the corruption, thirst for power, “good old boy” mentality, and general ineptness of the party.  At that time, it became obvious to me that the party movers and shakers were more concerned with keeping their grip on power in the party than in actually winning elections, as they always trotted out the same old loser candidates whose only qualifications were that they were “connected”.  After leaving the only party I had ever known, I joined the Libertarians and was elected the county party secretary.  The thing about the Libertarians is that although they don’t ever stand a chance of winning, they have fun.

Unfortunately, the Libertarian party is not recognized in Oklahoma, so when I moved from Texas, I had to choose to register as a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent.  Surely the Oklahoma Democrats weren’t as inept and corrupt as the Texas Democrats were, so I chose to register as a Democrat.  I regret that decision.

What I have found after six years in Oklahoma is that the Democrats in Oklahoma are just a corrupt, inept, and “good old boy” as they were in Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas.  I think corruption goes to the core of the Democratic Party nationwide, which I think has gone rotten.  Time and time again I see the most qualified candidates (and good candidates) kneecapped by the Democratic establishment.  After all, it’s not about winning, it’s about maintaining control of the party, even if it means losing to the opposition.  It’s sad to see the pathetic state a once great party has fallen into.

Therefore, I am announcing that, effective today, I am dumping, once and for all, my Democratic Party affiliation, and will register as a card-carrying Independent, until such time as the Libertarians are recognized in Oklahoma, at which time I will rejoin my Libertarian brothers and sisters.  If this means I can never run for office again, so be it.

I want to publicly thank all of those who supported me in my quest for public office.