I'd hoped to make this first in a series on ousting Oklahoma's infamous practitioner of doofustry a tidy compendium of relevant background information.
Unfortunately, a number of other things have required my time and attention, so it isn't nearly as comprehensive as I'd hoped.
In addition, I'm posting this first one on Sunday morning, and will post the next two around this same time.
After the beginning of the year, however, the series will shift to Sunday evenings.
For now, there's no time to waste, I figure, no time like the present to get motivated and mobilized to oust that greedy sucker. Because that's the bottom line, the entire purpose: mobilizing sentiment for ousting James Inhofe in '08.
Yes, I know, everyone says it can't be done. No, I don't care. And more important, I don't believe it. In fact, I think it's entirely possible that Inhofe can be pressured into retiring or even defeated.
So let's begin with some background info on the dastardly Inhofe ....
James Mountain Inhofe, born November 17, 1934 in Des Moines, Iowa, made his final appearance last week as chair of Senate hearings on climate change.
And, although it might appear Inhofe's lucrative career as climate skeptic and oil company errand boy emerges solely from breathtaking idiocy, au contraire. In fact, Inhofe ranks among the most money hungry of the Republican opportunists, seemingly willing to do anything for a buck.
Case in point: Mr. Ownership Society's corrupt business practices, as illustrated by the Enron-like collapse of Quaker Life:
Failure in 1986 of Jim Inhofe's Quaker Life Insurance Co. and the recent collapse of Enron both were blamed on off-the-books accounting practices. David Walters, in his challenge of Inhofe for the U. S. Senate, is circulating a white paper [...] comparing Inhofe's Quaker with Enron's transgressions.
[...]
Quaker was declared insolvent Aug. 6, 1986 in Oklahoma County District Court with $5.98 in assets and $10 million in liabilities tied to its Pine Island development on Grand Lake.
[...]
Inhofe, according to the white paper, had stacked his board of directors with family and close friends, even paying himself, his wife and a son approximately $100,000 a year in salaries. One lawsuit by investors charged that Quaker purchased airplanes that were given to Inhofe.
Quaker's problems arose, the paper says, from sales contracts being sold to other financial institutions with recourse. That meant Quaker had liabilities linked to guaranteeing the sales contracts that should have been reported to the State Insurance Commission.
Now, lest you be lulled into thinking his doofustry is restricted to matters of the pocketbook, take a look at his reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing:
The ever-so-sensitive lawmaker couldn't resist taking a shot at lazy bureaucrats, answering, "It depends on how many federal workers played hooky today."
Um, yoohoo! Fellow Okies!! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US THAT WE KEEP ELECTING THIS DIMWIT?
::breathe deeply, breathe deeply::
Inhofe is a career politician who first attained office in 1967 when he was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives. From 1978 until 1984, he served as mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, aka Oil Capital of the World until (interestingly enough) 1984 when the oil industry collapsed in Tulsa and Houston assumed the title.
Hmmm. Well, whether Inhofe was complicit in moving various facets of the industry out of Oklahoma and into Texas is almost incidental --- what isn't incidental, however, is that Inhofe's time in office certainly gave him lots of contacts in oil, gas, coal and related industries. Take a look at his campaign financing, which shows his top industrial contributors include Oil and Gas ($314,000) and Electric Utilities ($191,907).
Just as interesting is his association with and contributions from the PAC Fund for a Conservative Future.
My, my, sounds downright religious, don't it? Well, not so fast. According to Conrad Burns at BuyBlue.org, "these PACs are confederacies of corporations."
So, in essence, Inhofe is funded not just by oil, gas and related energy industries, but by corporations in general.
So, Inhofe is good for the corporations, which means he's what for his own people?
Bad perhaps? Maybe even disastrous? Oh you know it.
Next week, we'll take a closer look at Fund for a Conservative Future and some of Inhofe's other big contributors, and we'll start digging into what the real consequences of Inhofe have been for his own constituents. It's not pretty.