Hold the pork

Stimulus package? Who needs pork when you can schedule an election that pumps nearly $19 million into Oklahoma’s economy? A Tulsa World analysis of 2008 election spending reveals a massive amount of cash coming from lawyers and lobbyists (some of it to fight tort reform), a nearly equal amount coming from the oil and gas industry and sizeable chunks coming from health care professional and Indian tribes. The World says the spending figure is a conservative estimate and further digging will swell the numbers. Twenty cents of every dollar contributed came from lawyers, lobbyists or the petroleum industry. Lawyers and lobbyists alone coughed up nearly $2 million. The oil and gas industry was right behind them. Do we need more elections to generate economic activity? Perish the thought! By the way, trial lawyer spending to stop tort reform was a bad investment: Republicans still took over the Legislature.

Thank you for joining our conversation on ScissorTales. We encourage your discussion but ask that you stay within the bounds of our commenting and posting policy.