Introducing the First-Ever People’s Audit.
For the first time in state history, The Oklahoma State Capital presents a comprehensive, data-driven audit of the Legislature’s quiet betrayals gives the people the tools to reclaim their House.
Today, The Oklahoma State Capital’s flagship product—the People’s Audit—makes its initial debut.
As a value-add to the paying subscribers whose amazing generosity has made this endeavor possible, the release is being provided to them first, the link is at the end of this email. Next Monday, the audit will be made available to the full subscribership.
Here’s the premise.
As a new House member, I can distinctly recall a senior-ranking member justifying why he accepted lobbyist cash.
Paraphrasing: “It doesn’t matter who I take from; I’ll make the counterparty mad either way,” he explained.
In his mind, he justified taking the money because, one way or another, he was forfeiting support from the side he didn’t favor. In this case, he used the ongoing battle between the ophthalmologists and the optometrists as his example. To support one was to offend the other.
Now, this faux logic might convince those who don’t understand the great evils of big government—a government that has injected itself into nearly every area of public life.
And in so doing, any number of monied special interests, bureaucrats, and politicians are making bank—playing a big game and cashing out on the size of government, all at the expense of the taxpayers.
Time and again, as I cast votes as a state representative, I watched bad policy after bad policy sail through the Legislature with near-unanimous consent.
It was mighty frustrating being in a minority of just a handful of conscientious reps, knowing that so many of the others were betraying the people: they were lying to the people, telling them they were for small, open, transparent government, but when the people weren’t watching, time and again those reps were voting for an opaque, bigger government.
Why were these “Republican” representatives continually voting for bad bills?
The answer?
There was no counterparty. There was no incentive to do the right thing, other than values and principles, and in the Legislature, those didn’t matter much.
Time and again, the special interests, the bureaucrats, or the politicians had already planned out their schemes to the detriment of the people, and there was no one to critique, grade, or even expose the bad policy. The average legislator, when forced to choose between principle, and the forces of the capitol, will almost always choose the latter.
Individually, many of these under-the-radar votes may not have doomed the state. But cumulatively, they were the proverbial increases in the temperature of the boiling water that slowly kills the frog.
Thus, the point of the People’s Audit:
To capture those votes that perpetuate bad policy, betray the values those representatives claim to stand for, and expose them to the public in a way that empowers anyone who wants to make a difference to finally hold their representative accountable—ideally through a direct challenge.
Now, in this inaugural product—intended to become an annual tradition, a mainstay, and a foremost tool for returning the House of the People to the People—we finally have a comprehensive measurement of these votes.
I thank you for your patience in waiting on this product. I wanted not only to get it right, but to build the processes, methodologies, and logistics so this could meet its objectives: an educational tool in which votes were carefully graded through clear, understandable criteria consistently applied so as to build confidence in the reader, and one that could form the basis of subsequent educational efforts going forward, duplicated year after year in a way that will have results.
This necessitated building custom IT solutions and developing a system of categorization that will allow for a more rapid dissemination of this product in future years.
The results of this initial audit:
Eight state representatives made the cut, and they should be re-elected.
Four others landed in the middle, where a case-by-case judgment is needed.
The other 88? Sans an immediate improvement, they must be replaced.
This sixty-six-page document exposes their identities, lists their votes, and gives voters the tools needed to educate their neighbors and communicate where the betrayals occurred.
Get your copy by navigating to the following links:
