What Corruption Looks Like

When you are more interested in pleasing campaign donors than you are in the needs of the people you were elected to serve, that’s corruption.

When the Supreme Court guts campaign finance laws and lets money count as free speech, that makes corruption legal.

And when your news organizations and politicians twist themselves into knots to avoid telling the truth, that, too, is corruption.

On last Friday’s OETA Oklahoma News Report, U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin and U.S. Rep. Stephanie Bice let us know where they stand.

Mullin is upset that a company who wanted to reopen the zinc mines around Oklahoma’s infamous superfund site had to confront so much red tape. Perhaps he should talk to the people who had their land and communities destroyed before he questions the motives of the EPA and the Biden Administration.

Both legislators complained about the struggles of the poor fossil fuel companies. Mullin pointed out blue state regulations and complained about a president hostile to drilling. Has he forgotten the Biden Administration’s approval of the Willow Project off the coast of Alaska, or does he believe voters are ill informed. Another possibility is that he was reminding his fossil fuel donors of his loyalty to their cause.

He’s still harboring ill feelings about the Keystone Pipeline project, clean water and native sovereignty be damned.

Bice is worried about the Biden Administration’s spending and its effect on the deficit. Funny, but she didn’t mention the tax cuts from the last administration or the fact that the deficit has declined during Biden’s first term.

Both legislators have qualms about the push for clean energy. Mullin made the point that there isn’t enough land for all the wind and solar projects required to supply the nation’s needs. Perhaps if each home had its roof-top solar panels? Would family-sized wind generators ease the grid’s load? Can heat pumps reduce the amount of fuel we use to heat and cool our homes?

Still, both straddle a line touting Oklahoma as an all-of-the-above energy state.

It’s not corruption, but one must point out the tone deafness of two legislators promoting fossil fuels as cadaver dogs are sifting through the remains of Lahaina, neighbors to the north are evacuating Yellowknife, and wildfires burn along the Mediterranean. It’s almost as if they don’t see the connection between fossil fuels, global warming, and wildfires.

Or maybe they do, but they must stay quiet to appease the fossil fuel industry.