BY KENNY BELFORD

Several years ago I was preparing to change auto insurance carriers and contacted GEICO. Although I had, and still have, a blemish free driving record, the quote from GEICO was sky high. The agent then attempted to get me to commit and sign up.

I asked him, “Why would I want to pay significantly more than I need to in order to do business with your company?” He replied, “Because we’re the third largest insurance company in America.”

I thought, well, not for long if your prices are that far out of line. I made the choice to insure through AAA, and their premium was about 50% of the quote from GEICO.

Other than overcharging for coverage, today I found another reason to avoid GEICO in the future. It’s because of Lance Baxter, aka DC Douglas.

For those of you that don’t know it, Baxter performed the voice-overs when some of GEICO’s frequent TV ads. That’s now come to an end. Lance Baxter was fired. It wasn’t a non-renewal of his contract, he was actually fired.

Lance didn’t drive drunk, collect kiddie porn, rob a gas station, sponsor dog fights, or commit any other offense that society would find repulsive.

But he did do something and it got him fired for it: Lance made a phone call, and left a message when prompted. There were no vulgarities, no profanities involved, but it wasn’t a very complimentary message.

So who did Lance call?

He called the national office of Freedom Works, the creation of wingnut Dick Armey, funded by the multi-billionaire Koch brothers. They’re the puppet masters pulling the strings for the teabaggers, also created by Dick Armey and the Koch brothers. Freedom Works is the entity that provided scripts for teabaggers to use and instructions on how to disrupt Town Hall meetings last summer.

Freedom Works is the entity that furnished buses, paid for by the Koch brothers, to haul their yapping dog pack around from meeting to meeting. Freedom Works is the fake “grassroots” movement that paid for, printed and handed out the signs for the teabaggers to wave.

Apparently Freedom Works never got around to explaining to their puppets, the teabaggers, what the signs actually meant.

Freedom Works apparently didn’t like Lance’s message and took steps that resulted in him losing his voice-over gig.

I don’t know who they’ll hire to replace Lance, but I have several suggestions for GEICO I they ever want a new lizard voice. Any of these candidates would be a perfect choice.

My list would include Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn, John Sullivan, Mary Fallin, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.

All are cold-blooded, speak with a forked tongue and very unlikely to leave unflattering phone messages with Freedom Works. It’s also possible several of the group have scales and eat flies.

– Kenny Belford lives in Tulsa, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer