The State Budget Circus: Whose fault Is It?

   Many Oklahomans blame the state budget fiasco on our elected senators and representatives at the capitol, while many others place the blame of the budget debacle on only a specific political party. The true responsibility for this unprecedented Oklahoma disaster should not be pinned on the legislature or even specific lawmakers, as I believe all voting age adults are responsible. Those voters who supported the sex offenders, thieves, and those lawmakers who can't balance the budget, voters who did not support them, and voters who didn't bother to vote, are all equally responsible for the present budget calamity. I would be among the "voters who did not support them" but must share equally in the responsibility for allowing them to be elected.
   Obviously, those that voted for the charlatans at the capitol must shoulder the lion's share of the blame, as they directly placed Oklahoma in harm's way. Those Oklahomans who did not bother to vote are not as responsible for the budget horror (I'm running out of descriptive adjectives), but nonetheless have no right to complain, as they allowed it. Those Oklahomans who did not support the charlatans are still partially responsible, abeit less so than the true supporters and the apathetic voters. I believe we (Oklahomans who knew of their big spending behavior and questionable ethics) are partially guilty of allowing them a free pass by not speaking up concerning their budgeting ineptness and previous unethical behavior. I am guilty of not speaking up loudly enough..
   One person who considered himself guilty of not speaking up was Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister who spent 7 years imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp before and during World War II. Niemoller expressed, after he was freed by the allies, that what he regretted most of all during his internment was the fact that he did not speak up - as his neighbors were hauled away to certain execution or torture. In his post-internment poem, Then They Came For Me, Niemoller laments about not speaking up as he writes:
               "... Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
                       Because I was not a Jew.
              "Then they came for me-
                      and there was no one left to speak for me.
His point was that "Germans...had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people." (Clarence G. Oliver, Jr.,Ed.D., Leading With Integrity, 2015). His poem may be seen on YouTube.
   I believe the tenet of ethical behavior that Niemoller suggests is: to be ethical, I must speak out when unethical or immoral behavior is observed being directed at others, even though it may not affect me personally.Those of us (me and others) who did not speak out loudly enough concerning certain lawmakers' inabilities, therefore, share some responsibility for allowing them to be seated.
   The responsibility for our state budget disaster (I'm still not out of descriptors) falls on the shoulders of all Oklahomans, not just state senators and representatives. This "responsibility" belief may also be heard in the pop song by Al Wilson, The Snake (Oklahoma City, 1974), which may be seen on YouTube. Al Wilson describes a woman who finds a half-frozen poisonous snake, revives it by warming it up, and is finally bitten by the snake - in return for her kindness. The snake tells her that "You knew I was a poisonous snake when you took me in - don't blame me for your misfortune... it's what I do". So, don't blame the state budget crisis on our state lawmakers... we knew what they were capable of, when we elected them...