The theory “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is still being proven in Oklahoma.

Take state Attorney General Drew Edmondson. An opinion column in the most recent Forbes magazine scoriated the AG for his persecution of the petition signature collectors for the proposed TABOR amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution that would have limited the increase in budget expenditures to the increase in population plus inflation.

The AG is working to send three citizens to prison for seeking the collection of said signatures. The title of the Forbes column is “Did North Korea annex Oklahoma?”

If it is the goal of the AG and his cohorts in the governor’s and treasurer’s offices to discredit the state, one must concede they are attaining great success.

Then they turn around and want to use tax dollars as “bribes” to induce companies to move to the state or open branches here.

All this, but not any word of the person who actually committed perjury in that effort being brought up on far more important charges. He attested, as did all of us collecting petition signatures, that he was a resident of Oklahoma.

He then testified before the administrator conducting the preliminary hearing for the Supreme Court that he was not a citizen. One of these testimonies must be false.

Why not bring him up on those charges, Edmondson?

Perhaps, he was given immunity.

In any event, the result was to disenfranchise over 225,000 Oklahoma voters and prevent the voting public from having the chance to vote on the issue.

Not covered, yet, is the persecution by the AG of three individuals in Oklahoma County over alleged “campaign fund fraud.”

These individuals reportedly obtained an opinion from the counsel for the Election Ethics Commission, stating that the things done had met the requirements of the ethics rules.

Sounds like opinions from the IRS doesn’t it?

Perhaps, this was a set-up done deliberately, but that is doubtful, as the counsel has been much more fair and honest, at least in my experience.

Until there is a change in the officeholders in Oklahoma City, the state will not progress.

Robert W. McDowell Jr.

Tulsa