You can’t say it often enough: This is a Times trend piece. Even an incorrigible media apologist like myself will laugh sardonically at the entitled NYT staffer who makes a few calls and drops a “trend” piece signifying only that he or she got a few people to say a thing. The Style section is the most frivolous and laughable offender here, but it’s common throughout. The people saying Pruitt has a future in the state are exactly the people who would say that. But he’s made a total laughingstock out of himself as the cherry on top of outrageous corruption, toadyism, and stupidity. We’ll see if that’s what Oklahomans want, but for the moment I’d like to hear from someone other than state party bigwigs before I’m persuaded.
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…and there we have it. You may have tried to rip off the American people with your petty ass cheapness but it is all the liberals fault for not just letting it go. You did however try to poison the air and pollute the waters and for that we welcome you back!
“It’s not like ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ necessarily,” he continued. “But I think he’s been seen as a person who tried hard, was pretty successful, and got beat up pretty bad.”
State whose Republican Party is wholly owned by Phillips Petroleum. And who apply very generous Affirmative Action Curve to grading performance of inbred white public officials.
Pruitt should worry that there may be an ambitious prosecutor in OK hoping to make a name for themselves- after all, both Giuliani and Christie started their political careers by leveraging their reputations as corruption-fighters.
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Best of luck to him. What a tough situation.
If anyone out there lives in North Carolina and can donate blood, you should be able to put the credit into his account - he’s likely to need a lot of blood products for a while and they can be very expensive (and sometimes hard to come by for all the people who need them). Consider donating platelets, too - it’s slower, but you can do it two or three times a month; just be sure to bring a book or a device to read TPM on. And make an appointment.
As far as formaldehyde possibly causing leukemia: suppressing this kind of research and data is infuriating. There are alternatives and ways to mitigate exposure for 98% of common uses, I am sure. Ways that might actually create jobs and spur innovation, if all you care about is economic impact.
It’s sort of worth commenting that “yeah he’s hilariously corrupt, but he’s hilariously corrupt for the right team” is something that anybody’s willing to say out loud.
Maybe Oklahomans are jealous of Alabama and West By-God, stealing all that attention with Roy Moore and Don Blankenship.
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Good point with the blood. I think all 4 of my kids have give at least once so I’ll pass this on to my son and tell him to tell his friends.
I used to give regularly but stopped after getting notice from Red Cross I had hep C antibodies. Kind of strange as I never did needle drugs and I’d been married 6 or 7 years to same person and hadn’t slept around in that time. I was getting my blood check for them since and recently they don’t show up. Haven’t tried donating again as at the time Red Cross said they had me on record and would never take my again.
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My thought exactly. Pruitt was very popular with certain powerful industry folks and the rightmost fringe of Evangelicals. An awful lot of Oklahomans though were really, really happy that Pruitt went off to Washington and got the hell out of their state. Of course, they just keep electing corrupt politicians anyway. Inhoffe to Pruitt does have a sort of poetic justice to it.
Democrats have been winning in unexpected places but a lot of the time it’s been in spite of, not because of, the party. They’ve got a great opportunity, though, if they can pull themselves together, especially if they hammer on the education issues, as attacks on the schools haven’t worked out all that well for Republicans there. Also note, the prior Governor of the state was a Democrat, and was reelected with a two-to-one margin.
No digging required. He was famously sue-happy and was pretty much universally seen as effectively an energy-company lobbyist. I don’t think anyone imagined he was on the up-and-up.
One thing you have to understand about Oklahoma voters though is that it is essentially a feudal economy. People work for “The Company” - which one depending on where you live. If you don’t work for it, your work is dependent on its employees doing well enough to support your line of business. When the oil industry takes a hit or a company moves certain operation to Houston, your schools lose their tax base, your house is suddenly worth half as much, lunch spots close, etc. When there’s a pick up in price per barrel or exploration or whatever, jobs materialize, people start buying cars, and so on.
So my point is, what is good for the energy sector is good for Oklahoma, and not just in an abstract sense. If some of the voter loyalty to the fortunes of the energy industry seems bit like Stockholm Syndrome, it’s also a fairly logical read of where their interests lie. Forgiving outright corruption in the powers that be is just part of the deal. As long as they see some benefits trickling down, they’ll look the other way.
The interesting thing though is that with education in particular, the GOP went too far. The tax cuts caused real harm, not just to “communities” and “the future”, but to actual people with actual children in actual classrooms. That woke something that can’t be bought off with a promise of how well deregulating this or that is going to benefit such and such drilling operation. People want better lives for themselves and what they’re seeing instead is Scott Pruitt spending their money getting driven around with a security detail looking for a particular hand lotion.
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Only one Hive member into musicals?!
I remember LA in the '60s and live there now. Yes, there is still smog, but only maybe 10% of what it was.
Thank god Eugene Houdry for the catalytic converter and consequently unleaded gas.
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