This may look like a political posting, but it is not. It is about the sandwich generation's sense of betrayal.
Ever have an older parent or grandparent who desperately needed something fixed in or around their home? So you fix it or hire someone to do it and find that Grandpa has cancelled it or undone what has been done? Well welcome to Oklahoma politics and its main delima.
So we have this EPA Superfund site in Pichar, Oklahoma that is contaminated beyond belief by unregulated lead and zinc mining for decades. The Feds have been buying out residents and helping them move. Most are gone, and all will be gone by Fall. But the few remaining contaminated homes need to be torn down and carted off, some buildings need to be moved, graves moved, and their needs to be help and oversight over all these things and etc. etc., as the town finally ceases to exist.
Along comes Grandpa and says ah hell kids we don't need to pay to have this done, just let it die. Don't spend any more money to "bury" it. So he just gets it stopped.
Dang it Grandpa why didn't you ask us about what we were doing first? Then the Grandkids say, the hell with it, we're not helping anymore.
Inhofe places hold on federal stimulus funds for housing in Superfund site
By Associated Press
6:39 AM CDT, July 9, 2009
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma says he has placed a hold on federal stimulus funds directed toward a housing authority in Picher, a fading mining town located in a Superfund area.State and federal buyouts of Picher residents in recent years have dwindled its population. The town is part of a 40-square-mile area that the federal Environmental Protection Agency put on its Superfund list in 1983, years after lead and zinc mining companies pulled out.About $135,000 in stimulus funds were awarded to the Picher Housing Authority. Inhofe says it makes no sense to send money to a place that is closing.Inhofe spokesman Ryan Jackson says the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has verbally agreed to honor the Republican senator's hold on the money.
___Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com/
My oldest son has left Oklahoma because of shit like this. My daughter won't come back either, and my youngest boy is looking to leave. There are good people here, but damn there are just too many like ole Grandpa.
When an animal shits where it eats, well that's bad.
Oh Grandpa, not again!
9 comments:
Apparently the Senator's policy is based on scripture . Dunno, though, can't find zinc, lead or heavy metal toxicity in
Ecclisiastes....
And today I wrote a story that my city has received $1 million in stimulus funds for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Three-quarters of that will be for rehabbing and renting foreclosed and abandoned homes to low- to moderate-income families (as defined by HUD). The other quarter is for demolition of substandard housing -- tearing down homes of no value to free up the lots for inbuilding new homes.
I think Inhofe forgot to remember that demolition is a part of this program and Picher needs it in a big way. They probably could clean up the whole contaminated area and demolish the houses that have to go with that $135,000, if you figure about $5,000 per house to bulldoze.
Yes, Senator, when a town dies, there has to be a burial. The funeral part is optional.
I still think Gramps is six brain cells short of a dozen. He do shoot from the hip a bunch, damn he useds buckshot and a shotgun.
Now it seems our own Dr. Gramps is shown to be part of not so Christian Religious elite in D.C.and up to his nose in the current GOP sin scandles as a cohort with the sinners. Oh, boy we do pick em don't we.
Yee-haw!
Off topic, but I have wanted to ask a question of you, Oklahoma-wise, drlobojo, former cartographer and expert on more things Oklahoma than most people I've met (on the internet; from Oklahoma; anyway . . .).
The company I work for buys a product from a company based in . . .
Monkey Island, OK.
I kid you not.
If you could give a none Sooner-State resident a general idea of its location, etc., I would be pleased. That's my second-favorite Oklahoma place name, right after Slapout.
Monkey Island . . .
Yee Haw, indeed.
Monkey Island? I went looking for this one myself several years ago. My wife is a Teddy Bear collector of some total degree of madness. She bought the Texaco Bears each year. They were labeled as being produced by Monkey Island (made in China though) in Oklahoma.
Monkey Island is an unincorporated self named island & community in the Grand Lake O' The Cherokees.
Grand Lake is a really really big artificial reservoir in N.E. Oklahoma. If you looked up the ZIP code Monkey Islanders use as their own(74331) you will find that it belongs to the city of Afton, Oklahoma where "their post office" is actually located.
Before the place was Monkey Island it was Monkey Mountain. No it was not a real mountain (not much of a hill I suspect either) and was not on any standard geographic place name register. It was just a local name for the place. Maybe cause their squirrels there had the mange and lost the hair on their tails and thus looked like monkeys or maybe because the Cherokee owners named sounded like monkey to the Anglo ear. Chose one or tale or the other or make up your own.
That's why I couldn't find it!
Thank you, sir. You know, every state has weirdness and wonderfulness combined. Illinois has exactly one town west of the Mississippi River (Kaskaskia, way down south of St. Louis), and Missouri owns some land on the eastern banks of the Mississippi without any incorporated townships in them.
Western NY has a couple Spanish-named towns, Madrid, pronounced MAA-drid, with the first syllable sounding like a goat-call, and Cuba, pronounced in the Spanish style, KOO-ba. There is the small village near where I went to college, Almond, pronounced ALL-min, with the "d" silent at the end. Finally, I have felt for much of my adult life that my home state slighted the major financier of the American War for Independence by naming a very small town, Governour, for him. It is the county seat of our northern-most county, but is dwarfed by Watertown, Syracuse, and Utica (once you get north of those small cities, the map of NY looks like medieval, and you expect a handwritten "Here There Be Monsters" on it somewhere).
BTW, thank you for mentioning the Texaco Bears! I had forgotten about those.
And, yes, the products my company purchases are manufactured in China, and distributed domestically by this company whose name I can't recall, based in Monkey Island.
If you like place names, try Bug Tussle, Oklahoma.
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