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" (Permanent Musical Soundtrack to This Feature)      Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what&amp;#039;s going down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin&amp;#039; actually gets done, and the skies are not cloudy all day. Most of our state legislatures are in recess. This means that all those back orders at the feed storees and the catfish farms are finally being filled. This also means that our survey likely will rely heavily on individual acts of governmentin&amp;#039; rather than the usual ensemble acts. However, before we begin, we would be remiss if we did not mention that those state legislators not currently working their day jobs gathered in Utah this week for the ALEC convention, at which they could all pick up some tips on how to sell off their home states piecemeal. Governor Gary Herbert of Utah was deeply moved by the sight of so many bagmen gathered in one place. &amp;quot;The principles that ALEC stands for, is one of limited government, free markets and economic opportunity for everybody,&amp;quot; the governor said. &amp;quot;I hope you&amp;#039;ll take some of the examples of Utah with you back to your states.&amp;quot; Herbert noted Utah has, in recent years, lowered its tax rates and modified or eliminated nearly 400 regulations on business to create what he called a fertile field for companies. Regulations, he said, &amp;quot;are like weeds&amp;quot; and need to be eradicated. And, luckily, if ALEC has its way, we&amp;#039;ll all be able to use all the pesticides we want, wherever we want to use them. Thus will our four-headed great-grandchildren continue to be free. Pausing for a moment to admire how handsome Utah looks up there on the auction block, we move along to Oklahoma, thanks to a tip from Friedman of the Plains, friend of the blog and incipient Dust Bowl correspondent. He hipped us to the saga of Fred E. Ray Smith, a man with a middle initial and a middle name \u2014 suspenders and a belt! \u2014 and the sad country song he has made out of his life and his campaign. Fred E. Ray Smith was picked up Saturday on two outstanding warrants, said Pontotoc County Sheriff John Christian. Smith is challenging Sen. Susan Paddack, D-Ada, for the state Senate District 13 seat. &amp;quot;He is currently still in jail because our money has been going to campaigning, so he will serve the time he needs to serve until we can get funds to get him out,&amp;quot; Smith&amp;#039;s campaign manager, SunShine Fox, said Tuesday. &amp;quot;The fact is we should have found other resources to possibly pay that.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s never a SuperPAC around when you need bail money. But, don&amp;#039;t worry, SunShine. You&amp;#039;re doing fine. No campaign manager in history has had to spin what you have to spin. Smith owes $2,921.46 in child support and $1,850 in fines to the city of Ada, Christian said. According to county court clerk&amp;#039;s records, the fines are for two separate incidents: one in which he was caught driving with an open container and a suspended license and another in which he was driving with neither a driver&amp;#039;s license nor insurance and also had expired tags. Fox, who is engaged to Smith... The blog would like to pause right here to offer a suggestion \u2014 Run, SunShine, run! Surely, there must be hundreds of Oklahomans who would be thrilled to meet a woman of your curiously multi-capitalized abilities. Besides, if you marry some else besides Fred E. Ray, you won&amp;#039;t have to name your first child SunSpot. Smith, 28, is an Iraq War veteran. His campaign got off to a rocky start when Paddack challenged his candidacy, bringing up bad checks Smith was convicted of writing and claiming that constituted embezzlement, a charge that disqualifies someone from running for state office in Oklahoma. Smith was permitted to keep his name on the ballot by the election board, whose members voted that bad checks were not embezzlement. During that hearing, it was revealed Smith didn&amp;#039;t have a driver&amp;#039;s license due to a previous drunken driving conviction. Smith&amp;#039;s ex-wife has also filed a protective order against him, which he was accused of violating in June 2011. This is clearly a man who doesn&amp;#039;t take &amp;quot;no&amp;#039; for an answer. This also is clearly a man who doesn&amp;#039;t take &amp;quot;No, or we&amp;#039;ll throw your ass in jail&amp;quot; for an answer, either. Fox said Smith would have to miss a Konawa Tea Party event scheduled for Tuesday night. Too bad. If he&amp;#039;s planning on pleading diminished capacity, this might&amp;#039;ve really helped. We leave the curiously heliocentric world of Oklahoma politics and drift east to Florida, where the state legislators put their pants on like we do, one leg at a time, but then they take off their shirts whenever they want. I have been a diabetic for many years and like many diabetics have had problems with my weight and my blood sugar control. The attached pictures are all originals with no photo shopping which include a before picture and after picture of my face and also a before and after picture of my body.  OK, I&amp;#039;ll buy it. But there&amp;#039;s no excuse for the barbed-wire tat on your right bicep. Just sayin&amp;#039;. Keeping fully clothed, as is our wont, we journey north to Wisconsin, where a state senator is nursing a bruised fee-fee and screwing up the work of a couple of million people last spring. Sen. Tim Cullen of Janesville said Majority Leader Mark Miller offered to make him chair of a new small business and tourism committee. Cullen said he refused, telling Miller the committee isn&amp;#039;t important and he wanted to deal with health care and prison issues. Miller released a committee chairmanship list on July 16, the day Democrats officially took control of the Senate after winning a one-seat majority in last month&amp;#039;s recall elections. The list showed every Senate Democrat had a committee chairmanship except Cullen. Their last conversation about it on Saturday ended with Miller hanging up on him, Cullen said. &amp;quot;I said it was an insult to my district and the line went dead,&amp;quot; Cullen said. &amp;quot;(Miller) blatantly, intentionally intended to insult me.  Cullen, it appears, had designs on becoming the Weepin&amp;#039; Joe Lieberman of Dane County. He returned to the Senate in 2010, painting himself as a throwback compromiser in a bitterly partisan world. He took office in January 2011, a month and a half before Republican Gov. Scott Walker introduced a bill to strip most public workers of their union rights and fled to Illinois with the rest of the Senate Democrats in a futile attempt to block a vote. While the Democrats were in hiding he tried to negotiate with Walker&amp;#039;s administration to soften the bill, ultimately to no avail.  And then he was all, well, I&amp;#039;ll leave, and then I was, like, OK, leave then, and he was all, well, I will, and I was, like, so go then, and he was all, well, I&amp;#039;m outie, and I was, like, so leave. Keep going long enough and it turns into a Nickelodeon afternoon series.  Moving along the northern border, we meander down into Washington state, where a mayor and the cops in one town discover how the separation of powers really can work. And here his strategy had been working so well, Cy Sun figured. When someone got in his way, the 82-year-old Pacific mayor simply fired them. His police chief and city works director were among the first of a half-dozen city employees to be axed or resign since January. But last week, when Sun told two of his police officers they were fired for literally standing in his way, they sent him packing - in handcuffs. At high noon Thursday, while a tipped-off news crew from KOMO-TV rolled video, Sun ripped off the police tape across the clerk&amp;#039;s door at City Hall. With his friend, a locksmith, urging him on (&amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re in charge of the city, tell your boys what to do!&amp;quot;), he pushed past the cops and prepared to enter a locked office he&amp;#039;s been told is off-limits due to one of the many feuds he&amp;#039;s started in the south King County town of 6.800. When two officers grabbed him, the mayor immediately put his arms behind him to be cuffed and arrested - likely his plan all along.  You can&amp;#039;t fire us, you&amp;#039;re busted! And no, alas, as far as I can tell, Mayor Cy Sun has had no contact with either Fred E. Ray Smith or SunShine Fox. I&amp;#039;ll be seeing them all soon, though, when ALEC has its convention in Rivendell. This is your democracy, America. Cherish it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15073/the-labs-of-democracy-july-26/>