Reckless [With Your Money] Ryan

Smaller government. Fiscal conservatism. Frugal with every penny of your tax dollars.

That's what many Republicans say, but it isn't what they do. The most recent example of such outlandish hypocrisy is our Education Czar Ryan Walters.

While he recently submitted an education budget for next year that is slightly smaller than this year's, even though there are several thousand more students now enrolled in public schools than 12 months ago, on a personal level – meaning spending tax dollars on himself – an entirely different record emerges.

Notwithstanding Gov. Kevin Stitt's foolish ban on out-of-state travel by state employees – not to save money but in response to a personal slight from California – “Reckless with your money Ryan” has traveled coast to coast for a couple of important “policy” meetings, but your tax dollars mostly bought airline tickets, hotel rooms, meals, etc. for himself and his Chief of Staff Jenna Thomas.

And, of course, wherever there was a TV camera, radio wave or print journalist Walters was an “avail” to peddle his pablum as a “Woke Warrior” ready to battle the evils of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Not overcrowded classrooms, or hungry kids coming to school, or the lack of certified teachers in their career fields or any of another hundred policies or programs that cry out for fixin'. He could even distribute money on time to schools; explain how he wasted $14 million of GEER cash two years ago; respond to legislators civilly; treat his own employees as the adults they are; and, perhaps most importantly, knock off the name-calling reminiscent of long-ago red-baiting United States Senator Joe McCarthy, R-WI.

All this chaos, mayhem, nonsense and nuttiness doesn't raise a test score of one child even one point. It's more than a distraction. It's the purposeful and petty destruction of a public school system that at one time Ryan Walters contributed to as a thoughtful and effective educator.

Today, sadly, he is nothing more than Oklahoma's most glaring example of what Lord Acton warned about more than 100 years ago when he intoned "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The British Lord was absolutely correct then and about 744,000 Oklahoma school age children are absolutely suffering today thanks to a majority of voters who select candidates based on party identification rather than what's between their ears.

In Ryan's case ... apparently not very much.