Germs at the Capitol

I have two knee replacements which contain titanium and plastic. The state Capitol entrances and the one I go through have metal detectors. I set them off each time I go through the detector. The TSA vigilantes never fail to vocally brace me with either a "Go back SIR!" or "Move over their Sir!" so that the Highway Patrolman who has the duty for the day can wand me. Sometimes they are polite, sometimes they treat me like the inmates that come to the Capitol building to haul trash and clean the toilets and move chairs and tables in or out of the Rotunda floors.

I made a mistake early on when I remarked to one of the women TSA staffers that "It must be the Viagra." Such a smartass, sexual comment put me in the class between potential terrorist and inmate cleaning man for about a year. Much to the joy of my fellow lobbists who got a kick out of the "rousting" I got just about every time I failed to "Step back Sir!" in a proper manner.

Those of you who come to the Capitol from time to time have the opportunity to observe the many celebrations, displays, vistors, from wigglies to oldsters, that come to the Capitol each day, set up the displays, wander about, maybe observe government in action, and get their picture taken with their Representative or Senator and the go home.

Most of these celebrations and displays and visits include food stuff. Cookies, veggies and dips, barbeque, peanut butter, all convieniently laid out on tables in the rotunda where the public is free to touch, cough on, sneeze on and fondle, then shake hands and pass germs from Altus to Afton, Idabel to Hooker and Durant to Ponca City and all points in between. The little kids are especially cute and potent because they can move faster, touch more surfaces and cough and sneeze, and in reality carry more germs, than the elderly.

Once they have deposited their germs, transmitted their germs and picked up the germs of others, they get back on their buses and into their cars and go home where they can then transmit and deposit their new germs into their homes and home towns and schools, quite possibly leaving a good batch of germs in the buses to be transmitted some more when they go to the basketball game the next day.

It is not co-incidetal that all of this takes place during the flu season either.

Now, the law enforcement folks and TSA have been trained and believe that terrorists wear turbans, explosive vests and have crazy eyes and carry other stuff in their baggy pants (thats why they wand you).

One day I asked "Do you ever wand the cookies or the veggies or the barbeque or the peanut butter?"

Well heck, You would have thought that I was the dumbest Okie around the way they looked at me. Meanwhile a group of wigglies got off the bus and came through the electonic gates. They were from Guymon, where pigs are slaughtered and hoof and mouth could be in the cookies and peanut butter, heading upstairs to meld with the kids from Idabel where chickens are slaughtered and evian flu could be in the vegies and peanuts.

Sardis Lake and the coming battle

Sardis Lake is in Southeast Oklahoma, near Wilburton, Talihina and Hartshorne. The Kiamichi mountains are to the south, the Jackfork mountains to the west and the Winding Stair mountains to the north and east. The lake was completed in 1983 at a cost of 38 million dollars and in 1984 the state part of that debt was 18 million dollars. The lake has been the subject of litigation since it's construction and the state debt is now 68 million dollars.

Sardis covers 14,360 acres and has 117 miles of shoreline and is a top bass fishing lake and beautiful to behold.

For years North Texas has been trying to buy the excess runoff of water but for years the excess runs into the Red River to the benefit of no one.

Locals are vehement about their rights to Sardis and now central Oklahoma towns and cities are vying for the opportunity to pipe water 140 miles in a five foot pipe at a cost of more than 310 million dollars their way. That is just for starters.

What promises to be a legal battle for our times is beginniong to take place. The issues: Law and the River, Water Marketing, Water Banks, Water Storage Rights, the Sardis water treatment plant, Water Disribution,States Rights and Tribal Rights.

We have everything here, Beauty, law and lawyers, politics, major construction projects, Indians and money, lots of money. Texas money, Oklahoma money, tribal money.

The most productive reading I have seen comes from http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/arroyo/101com. This is all about the Colorado River and the rights of the various southwestern states to the water and the concerns that California would end up with it all.

IN 1922, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the law of prior appropriation applied regardless of state lines. I think what this means is that if an entity owns water or water rights and doen't use them, then someone else can buy those rights and use that water.

Expect Texas to file a lawsuit soon and the Central Oklahoma bunch had better file something also. This is a lose, lose for Southeast Oklahoma legisltors because you can bet that the locals see that water, all of it, as theirs. If Texas gets the water, the Central Oklahoma bunch loses and Lake Hefner dries up. If the Central Oklahoma bunch wins you can bet that the Legislture, at some time in the future is going to be asked to foot major funding.

This issue, along with the Attorney Generals lawsuit against the poultry industry and the draught, ought to get Oklahoman's focused on our most precious asset. The waters of the state. Not only the existence of the water but the purity of it.