I listened to several hours of the initial meeting this week of the legislative investigative committee looking into la affaire Swadley’s. No pun intended, but it was a sizzler; at a minimum, somebody is going to financially fry or maybe even have the chance to enhance their cooking skills in one of Oklahoma’s prisons, of which we have more than even state parks.
Others more informed than I will write about this massive misuse, or even embezzlement, of public dollars clearly running into the millions.
And as future meetings will most likely reveal, incompetent managers – also known as Friends Of Stitt [FOS] – will be tossed from the frying pan into the fire by “Let’s run government like a business” Clueless Kevin. We know this because Christian Kevin has already shouted from the pews he doesn’t know bar-b-que baron Swadley although there are pictures of them together.
But he did declare he knows his OSU pal and former bankrupt oil mogul Jerry Winchester. He had to because Stitt alone chose this genius to run all of Tourism just after Winchester had finished driving oil field services company Seventy Seven Energy into the ground instead of extracting oil from it.
And then there is another Kevin Cool Cat with at least nine lives, meaning state jobs – one Gino DeMarco – who is deserving of a brief comment. Like a bad penny, wherever there’s been accusations and then proof of Stitt bungling, Gino is in the mix.
Remember, he was first PPE czar where he managed to misplace millions of dollars worth of masks and other health protecting material. His response was close to Alfred E. Neuman’s three-word retort whenever something went wrong: “What, me worry?”
Clearly Stitt didn’t care either because later DeMarco got new assignments, including within Tourism, and even now serves as a voting member on the Oklahoma Health Care Authority [OHCA] which dispenses nearly $1 of every $3 from the general fund for medical services. By the way, Stitt fired a well-qualified lady doctor to put DeMarco in such a critically important post.
Birds of a feather … got to be one to know one … where there is smoke there is fire … and where there is Stitt there is Corruption, Conflict of interest, Criminality and Complicity.
The four C’s of Kevin’s campaign.
That should be the proper motto for his entire administration, certainly not the one he claims as transparent, accountable and responsible only to the four million citizens of Oklahoma. Nope, he’s accountable only to his own billfold and his buddies almost exclusively from the oil patch, business insiders and mega donors.
Phony as a three-dollar bill? Yes. The most embarrassing, racist, bigoted governor in Oklahoma history? Perhaps not, but you would have to go back and check Alfalfa Bill Murray’s record to make sure.
