Oklahoma Lawmakers Find Money for Capitol Renovation but Not for Programs for Poor

by Nomad

When it comes to social programs for the needy, the Oklahoma lawmakers are all about cutting programs for the poor and lowering taxes. However, strangely, they have still managed to find enough money to refurbish and repair the ostentatious Capitol building. 

Journalist Dylan Goforth, writing for TulsaWorld, reports how lawmakers in Oklahoma are faced with a delicate situation: how to justify the renovation of the Capitol building while making deep cuts to programs for the poor. 
Already renovations to three floors on the Senate side totaled $3.3 million. That's just the beginning.

The entire project has drawn some criticism. The two sides received a total of $7 million at a time when numerous state agencies were requesting money.

Seven of two-story drapes, each costing over $2500, and shutters, costing $2000 each, totaled to more than $30,000. That's just the window treatments, mind you. Add to this two large screen television, two credenzas from which the televisions rise, a projector and a video screen. The article lists other expenses such as a full kitchen, complete with dishwasher, ice machine, refrigerator and new cabinets, cost $14,542. 
It all adds up quickly and that just the beginning. 

Lawmakers complain about the sewage that's seeping and mold that's stenching and the toilets that (someday soon) will not flush. While they all might agree that the Capitol building  is in a dreadful state, it looks pretty snazzy from the "before" photos. Not true, say staffers.

Electrical wiring in the building is so bad that there are sections where plainly visible cables are knotted together in a jumble. Some of the wiring remains from the building's early-20th-century days, staffers said.

It might lead you to think that nothing has been done since the ornate building of the pink and gray granite and white limestone was completed in 1917. 

That's not the case. 

In fact, work was done in 1998. But not renovation. In that year, the legislature funded the construction of a grandiose dome crowned with a 22-foot-tall bronze sculpture called The Guardian. The cost? $20.8 million. That dome was completed on November 16, 2002. Instead of a swanky dome, the $20 million could have easily paid for all of the cost for today's work.

Will Gov. Rick Scott's Budget Cuts Create A Perfect Storm for GOP in Tampa?

  by Nomad

W

ith the Republican National Convention in Tampa opening on August 27 , Florida governor Rick Scott has been scheduled to speak after House Speaker John Boehner on its opening night. There was, in fact, some question about whether Scott would be invited to speak since his popularity ranks at or near the bottom of governors since he took office last year.

The reasons for his unpopularity are easy to list. As one partisan source tells us:

In addition to the voter purge, Scott’s rock-bottom approval is the product of the Republicans’ unpopular and extremist initiatives. From attempting to restrict women's health care, to attempting to privatize Florida prisons for the benefit of a large political contributor, to a budget that provided zero dollars for public school construction and slashed funding for higher education, Scott and the Republicans spent their months in Tallahassee painting a perfect picture of how truly out of touch the GOP is with the concerns of Florida’s middle class families.

In some ways it is only logical that the out-of-touch Republican leadership should decide that this particular man- who is clearly so unpopular- should be offered a chance to speak at the convention. He is, after all, a proper symbol of what has gone wrong.

Not that the GOP understands that finer point. Throughout Scott's boasting at the convention, absolutely nobody in Tampa will be asking questions about the reasons for this negative opinion of Scott's character, his policies and his performance.

Rick Scott wasn't always so disliked but the honeymoon was surprisingly short.