As we see so often with the radical right, this ACORN stuff really is merely these clowns ranting and raving about things they see in themselves. Here is a retelling of an experience I had some three years ago in my crazy town where absurdity is on display every day. It is worth noting since this writing, Paul Jacob and two others have been brought up on Conspiracy to Defraud The State of Oklahoma charges. I doubt anything similar will come of the ACORN "issue".
First before I present my crazy tale of a well funded radical right group who brought massive fraud to OKC to subvert Democracy, watch this short clip of my fellow Oklahoma Rabble Rouser friend Mary Francis who helped bring these hoodlums down:
It was a lovely late November afternoon when a friend of mine asked if I would accompany him to the nicely subsidized Bass Pro Shop in Bricktown (land of synthetic culture in downtown Oklahoma City). Although I had better things to do with my day off like drink my third cup of coffee while finishing reading whatever depressing thing I was reading, I decided to put it all aside and tag along.
We pulled up to the campus (as I will call it, mockingly) and approached the entry way where our progress was halted by an rowdy looking fellow with a clipboard. Note that this was right smack dab in the middle of Oklahomans in Action (quote unquote!) drive to gather approximately 219,000 signatures for the so called "Tax Payers Bill of Rights", so I had my suspicions what this was going to be all about. Of course these suspicions were validated when the guy opened his mouth. Being a kind of person who gets cabin fever after being home for about ten minutes, you can imagine this was not the first time this happened to me. I am constantly all over town, as were these lying scheming petitioner hoodlums. Therefore I decided to, in the spirit of Twisted Sister, not take it anymore as quite honestly I just no longer could.
Feeling the full effects of the aforementioned coffee, along with a real disdain for these folks who any one with half a brain could tell were up to no damn good, I burst out with a dandy knee-jerk reaction . No, I didn’t tell this foot soldier for the radical right off directly, rather I walked into the 110,000 square foot homage to catfish acquisitions and told the manager that the ugly guy was harassing me. Not just that, but harassing me for not drinking Oklahomans in Action’s kool-aid and that he also called my mother a name (which I somewhat regret, white lies are never good) which I was not too interested in repeating. From there we went about our business, and after my friend purchased the goods he was after, we left!
One thing I noticed on the way out, (aside from the sheer lunacy that is The Bass Pro Shop!) was that the guy and his clipboard were gone. I was quite sure he didn’t just leave as the rumor was (later validated as fact) that these folks make good money from each signature they gather, and quite obviously this was a fine place to gather them.
So therefore my questionable end-justifies-the-means knee-jerk shenanigans obviously did some good, right? Well perhaps, but my friend thought my actions were quite juvenile and yes looking back I agree they were. But the questions which arise from this amongst many others are why should I be held to such a higher standard than the Oklahomans in Action folks? It was later revealed that they broke Oklahoma law by using non-residents to gather petitions, and not just that utilized a bizarre propaganda campaign for their body of work. So come on, can’t I play games too?
These questions did not fully enter my mind right away, rather it took a strange series of events for them to surface. The moments of introspect were initially brought on by the following: Not long after the Bass Pro incident occurred, I decided to look into the matter that was upsetting me, and then see what I could do to fix the problem.
A Google News query led me to a piece in the Oklahoma University Daily online edition bearing the title "OU students warned about petition", which gave some good information on the matter. As I often do, I left a comment on the page about what happened outside The Bass Pro Shop, and how in a something or the other sort of way it was kind of funny. No way was I boasting or encouraging others to act likewise. Well, I think a day and a night passed, I woke up and the fun began.
I logged into my secondary email account which receives little or no spam, in fact little or no email and saw something peculiar: Inbox (17). As I clicked on the new mail link, I went in and saw all kinds of names of people I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting before. All the names reeked of a cultural diversity level rivaled only by our founding fathers, so I immediately assumed they wanted one thing. I recalled what I had recently posted on the OU Daily and that I included my email address. These people wanted one thing and one thing only: For me to get my leftist pansy sparkelbritches ass to France where I belong. And it did not take long for me to discover that I was quite right in these regards.
"Your action of slandering a man to have him pushed off of property is despicable and uncivilized….You have a way to oppose him…It is called VOTING." Was the most civilized email I received.
Another which helped me discover the reason for the onslaught of insane rantings (luckily none were local!) went like this: "In case you are not aware, it may please you to know that your little tactic has been outed on a national level by columnist Paul Jacob. There are now thousands, if not millions, who know that Steve Hunt of Oklahoma enjoys using political tactics that Adolf and Benito would both be proud of. "
I could reproduce worse, but I will spare you all.
So I did a little research, and found the piece my new cyber-pal was discussing. In an article entitled "A tiny little tidbit of totalitarianism" on townhall.com and syndicated elsewhere, Jacob wrote:
Do you want to make politics illegal? Should our opponents be blocked from democratic participation? Must those who agitate for ideas that we disagree with be silenced? Surely, most Americans are blurting out, "No! Of course not!" Yet, that’s the growing trend in today’s politics: the totalitarian impulse. Quietly, behind the scenes, it’s rearing its ugly head again, this time in Oklahoma.
Jacob goes on to write:
"OEA’s (Oklahoma Education Association) call for harassment of petitioners is having an impact. Here’s an interesting reply from Steve Hunt (thats me!!!) of Oklahoma City to an article about the spending cap initiative on the website for the OU Daily: (Jacob then reproduces my post to their site)"
He failed to mention (amongst countless other things) that the OEA’s "call for harassment of petitioners" was actually them listing places where petitioners had been getting signatures, and had written policies that such actions are not allowed. They suggested if petitioners were seen in these places, concerned citizens should contact the managers of said locations which they included. Does it take a genius to discover this is not a call for harassment?
Ok, Mr. Senior Fellow of Americans for Limited Government (one of his titles I am sure gets him the hottest pharmaceutical lobbyist broads in DC!) first off, I had heard nothing of OEA’s dealings with regards to TABOR or ANY of it’s initiatives set forth to deal with the it’s promoters and their non Oklahoma law abiding ways. Second, how the hell did you find my post so quickly on such a non mainstream source? The answer to this second is too obvious. Massive funding. Jacob no doubt has a team of "researchers" who spend all day trying to find anything and everything to support their pathetic causes while people like me actually work. But cheer up, it gets much worse with people like this. Remember only people on the left can possibly qualify as elitists.
Paul Jacob. I’ve heard a few times never to trust someone with two first names. I don’t think there is much validity to that, but I do think that you can not trust someone who is funded by the Heritage Foundation (townhall.com’s sugar daddy) to try and make state systems more efficient. I also do not appreciate nor trust someone who bad mouths individuals (especially when it is me, as it is in this instance) and flat out refuses to have a discussion with the whom he attacks. I spent quite a bit of time offering to debate him on his syndicated radio commentary, "Common Sense" (aired daily by more than 100 stations in 48 states! Gotta love that neo-regulation of Clear Channel Communication stations!) and he flat out refused.
So after a few days of dealing with this, writing a copy and paste response that I gave to all my McVeighesque attackers (read: His fans!), I decided it was time to move forward in my quest to discover what the hell all of this TABOR crap was all about, from the top down. It had to be big given the people behind it and the ways they were dealing with anyone questioning the matters. I’m not paranoid but these boobs were out to get me.
Speaking of debate, I think there can be no debating the fact that we live in probably the freest country in the history of the world with regards to what we can say, and the information we have access too. Also, there can be little debate that we are the least aware and least pro-active people in not just the industrialized world, but also in comparison to places like Columbia where they all but kill you (sometimes they do kill you) if you so much as speak out against things. At times, I can proudly say that I am the antithesis of the stereotypical "I just want to eat cheeseburgers and play the lottery" American, and I can also sadly say that when I am at my peak I receive more criticism from the people who boast about what we as a nation are, quite ironically. So off I went with a big bag of freedom, ready to tackle this strange matter at hand.
A few days after the Jacob mayhem, the delusional OIA creeps delivered the signatures to the capitol, hoping for some kind of crazy "Washington crossing the Delaware" style photo-op. It was four o’clock when I heard that they were going to do this and I had to be at work at five. Luckily, I live right down the road from the capitol so I got in my car with this 30×40 matted photo of the great black inventor Garrett Morgan which my friends and I found in the dumpster of this high rise in Miami three years beforehand. There was one camera there to record this historic event, so I stood behind the guy waving Garrett to-and-fro as he gave the talk about how wonderful and glorious a day it was, and how we would soon all be off to a heavenly future of limited Government and all of that non-sense. After his talk and my antics, the angry cameraman approached me and said "What the hell were you thinking, we can’t use this footage now!!!" and then everyone in attendance grilled me and Garrett about what the heck we were up to and who were we there representing? I basically responded to them, over and over and over "I have no people, I’m my only hope for a hero" quoting a favorite line of mine from the much disdained film Joe vs. the Volcano. They were having none of that. Surely I represented some large faceless mega-interest group like they did? Well, luckily there was one sane person in attendance who writes for a respected paper here in town, The Journal Record. We exchanged information.
So a little time passes, and after reading through pages and pages of opinion articles, facts figures and charts with regards to what all of this business was about I realized it was time for more civilized action. Myself and some friends had recently started something called the "Tuesday Night Discussion Group", and we chose TABOR as our current issue of focus. An article entitled "Outside groups pay to influence Oklahoma taxes" printed in The Daily Oklahoman proved very helpful information (insert Daily Oklahoman Columbia Journalism Review joke here!) as it provided the names of key players in the TABOR debate. Gary Jones of the OPEA was mentioned, and research from information in the article led me to Senator Randy Brogden who is a strong TABOR supporter. I then ran with this information.
An email to each party stating that we were interested in what was going on, and that perhaps having them both talk about the issue together might clear some things up. A side note to this is that I did not do the best job letting Brogden know that this might just be a debate. Well, a week later he showed up at the Unitarian Church where I rented a room for thirty bucks, alongside the Chairman of the Oklahoma GOP (the one featured in Borat visits the OK Republican headquarters), a random State Rep, and a puzzled look on his face. I received an angry letter from his aid the next day with regards to all the confusion (it was later cleared up and all was beyond well), but all that aside it was a fantastic evening. Jones and Brogden gave their opinions on the matter for a couple of hours, we served coffee, and those in attendance as well those who read about it in The Journal Record a couple days later, and the people who will soon view the video on the Internet will be able to come to their own conclusions. Free from the tyrannical ways of Oklahomans in Action or people like Paul Jacob. It was an act much more civilized than the Bass Pro deal, or the incident at the capitol which gave me a new respect for our system and the decent people on the right like Brogden who was an absolute class act. But would any of this be possible sans the earlier juvenile actions?
So my question is this with regards to the OIA is this. You (or perhaps just your monster corporate supporters) want so badly for TABOR to be enacted for the sole purpose of minimizing government to a point where certain entities must be privatized, and then the primary financial supporters investment pays off. They give you tons of cash to enact this, so what the hell do you care? How is it that my ends justify the means things like The Bass Pro Shop incident, walking behind cameras with a big photo of Garrett Morgan, and hastily organizing a debate are on par with the likes of Adolph and Mussolini (I know you didn’t say this but your like minded Jacobite did so….) , but when someone like the hero of "small government" and America’s only divorcee President Ronald Reagan utilizes the Contras to butcher tens of thousands of Nicaraguans or the mujahideen to combat the Soviets it is all good and fine? It’s merely something that just has to happen for the betterment of our nation, right? Or more personally why is completely ignoring Oklahoma law so as to bring about a "Tax payers bill of right" which ironically has nothing to do with Tax Payers rights so as to bring about an ends justify the means scenario good and fine? These are questions I imagine to which we all know the answers.
Video of when I finally caught up with Paul a couple years later, at a PR coordinated rally right after his conspiracy hearing:
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