The Gadfly On The Wall

Author Gean B. Atkinson

Caught Up: Esteemed colleague Gean B. Atkinson, former House member, author and longtime OKC advertising agency owner, and I had lunch at Ray's Cafe the other day for the first time in eons. We spent most of our time recalling the fun days of years gone by. Gean officed adjacent to those of us with Cogman & Associates in the late 1970s and early 1980s in northwest Oklahoma City. Gean had one of the first computers I ever saw, one of those Radio Shack word processors. Some of those we discussed: Our late friends Jack Edens, Herb Johnson and Butch Choate; Rick and Susan Neal, Rick Shelby, Marshall Snipes, Mickey Edwards, Ralph Thompson, Neva Hill, Marc Nuttle, Joe Allbaugh, Don Cogman, Freckles LIttle, Paul Thornbrugh, Jim Inhofe...all Republican warhorses back in the days when the Oklahoma Republican Party was just beginning to stir and all of us could have a statewide GOP meeting sitting at a table in the Split-T restaurant.

The Gadfly On The Wall
By Mike McCarville

So Far, So Good: The freshman class of Congress, including Oklahoma City's James Lankford, is sticking to its guns on reducing the federal budget. The House passed a budget that's way leaner than President Obama's budget; now we'll see what the Senate does.

Toast: The Board of Education, as it has been constituted for years, is about to have its wings clipped. Sentiment in the Legislature remains to strip the board of its power to run the department and ignore the elected superintendent and her electoral mandate for change in our public schools. The board's blatant political attack on Republican Superintendent Janet Barresi made the change an easy one to sell.

Not The End Of The Story: We've not heard the last about those missing Department of Education emails...the ones from and to former Superintendent Sandy Garrett. A worker says Garrett ordered her official emails erased before she left office; she says it isn't so. Whatever the case, they can't be found and a lot of inquiring minds now want to know why that is.

Facebook Us: We're now all into Facebook and you can follow our stories via that network by using the click-on-this link in the NetworkedBlogs widget on the bottom of the right column.

Wait(er) A Minute: Jason at Charleston's gets a fat tip from me. Young man a few months back recognized my voice (and I've not done a radio talk show for five years!) and laid a few plaudits on me, for which I am grateful. At my age, I need all the encouragement I can get.

Number 49: Ann and I mark 49 years together on Tuesday. Our family is intact and healthy (well, most of us), "retirement" continues to be a marvelous experience and the Social Security checks continue to arrive as scheduled. Life is good.

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