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Featured Listener Comments Section: Contents List |
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Listener: Gary W.
Category: Lubbock City Politics
Date: 06 Nov 2009
Time: 14:13:00 -0700
Remote Name: 69.149.122.255
Pratt,
There is so much wrong with this business of LP&L taking over Xcel's operations in Lubbock that it is hard to know where to start.
From a purely pragmatic viewpoint it is odd that at a time of worldwide financial and economic crisis when prudent individuals and organizations are trying to de-leverage and clean up their balance sheets, our local politicians decide to burden taxpayers with $87 million more of debt.
Beyond that the whole thing was done without the consent of those same taxpayers. Whatever the narrow legal requirements or loopholes, you can argue that there was an ethical requirement to submit this sort of transaction to a referendum of those who will be burdened with the debt. If the citizens got to vote on spending a few hundred thousand on splash pools, surely they should have the same chance on this.
Also the timing of the announcement is particularly fishy. You have to wonder how eager voters would have been to encumber themselves with fifty million in debt on Tuesday if they had known that another ninety or so was coming on Thursday. Since the members of the council clearly did know, their failure to disclose the facts before the election is simply dishonest. I hope someone sues over it.
Finally there is the flagrant, astounding, stupefying hypocrisy of it all. The ones doing this deal are the same sturdy, four square, “conservative” West Texans who gripe all the time about bureaucrats, debt, and government power grabs. Yet in reality they seem to object not to government controlled enterprises as such, but only to government controlled enterprises that they do not get to run. As a matter of simple good manners and not adding insult to injury, every politician and board member participating in this deal should have to swear a blood oath never to criticize Obama or the leftists for running up debt, taking over private businesses, or “socialism”. After all, it really does not matter all that much if the bureaucrat in charge delivers his orders with east coast condescension or with a good ol’ West Texas country boy drawl.
Gary W.
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