Oklahoma

What's Going on With Lt Governor Mary Fallin?
Oklahoma's Rasputin Takes Charge of Lt Gov's office

Word from the Capitol is that Lt. Governor Mary Fallin and her chief of staff, Michael Levy, forced all of the staff of her office to submit resignation letters this week. An unknown number were accepted. This method of getting rid of employees denies them unemployment benefits. Nice, if you have no principles.

Levy, like the two chiefs of staff that preceded him, has a reputation for cold political calculation and Machiavellian tactics. Sources at the Capitol say he has alienated most he comes in contact with. Others question why the Lt. Governor has a penchant for selecting overbearing chiefs of staff that seem to have a strange degree of control over her. This seems to be yet another case of a politician so hungry to continue in office that she puts her principles and good gut feelings aside to allow political hacks to control them. Mary Fallin is a good person that has lost her way. OkiePundit hopes she gets back on track.

Senator Goofball

Senator Frank Shurden had the following letter published in the Tulsa World this week:

( Published in the Tulsa World - 1-05-03)
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

-- The Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant pastor in a German church and a concentration camp survivor of the Holocaust of World War II.

No, I am not a fan of cockfighting.

No, I have no financial interest in any game fowl.

No, I have not received any money from the Game Fowl Breeders Association or any of its members.

Yes, I am a hunter, a fisherman, a cattleman, a fan of rodeos, livestock shows, circuses and zoos.

Yes, if I live (my life has been threatened by animal rights zealots), I will continue to fight and speak out for the rights and freedoms of the minority because I know that my rights and freedoms and yours are next. Frank Shurden, Henryetta
Frank Shurden is a Democratic state senator from Henryetta.

The thought of the Nutty Senator from Henryetta putting on the cloak of persecution and comparing his cockfighter/gambler buddies to the Jews of the Holocaust is both outrageous and pitiful. People who pit animals against each other in forced fights to the death for entertainment and gambling are not deserving of either support or pity. Pornographers get as much sympathy from me.

Frank Shurden is a sad and pitiable case. An embarrassment to the state and its people. He is also a dangerous person that has, most regretably, been empowered by his district to wreck havoc on democratic principles and make a laughing stock of Oklahomans.

From Hermes to Red Man?

Word on the street is that Governor-elect Brad Henry chews. Tobacco that is. He was recently seen whackin that tobacky agin his pants leg. Hope he doesn't do that in polite company. What a contrast that would be with the quite proper Frank Keating. Frank "Hermes" Keating and First Lady Cathy Keating always represented Oklahoma with diplomacy and style. Let's hope the new residents at the Mansion represent us in cosmopolitan style. We have enough trouble shaking the bumpkin image without our Governor traveling with a spitoon. Will there be a First Spitoon in the Mansion?

New Mexico, cockfighters and Lexus

The following is from the Ar-news.org website:

"A bill to ban cockfighting in New Mexico is making promising headway through the Legislature, but is abruptly terminated when state lawmakers, after meeting with generous cockfight lobbyists, suddenly discover cockfighting is an important part of New Mexico's cultural heritage. Three lawmakers put down payments on a new Lexus. New Mexico, having caved once again to the cockfighting lobby, maintains her status as the most stupid state in the nation."

While the cockfighters and the legislators deserve all the ridicule they get, the good people of New Mexico shouldn't be painted as stupid of course. A large majority of Oklahomans had opposed cockfighting in our state for decades while our Legislature and corrupt judiciary ignored the will of the people. The profits from illegal gambling trump the people's will ALMOST all the time after all.

Oklahoma's College Saving Plan

You've probably read about the college savings plans that most states have now. They are called 529 plans. Oklahoma has one too and according to consumer advocate Clark Howard, Oklahoma's plan is in the top 11 plans in the nation. Clark evaluated each state plan and came up with a list of those that charge no commission and very low management fees. You can see Oklahoma's 529 plan at www.ok4saving.com

He said, She said Diplomacy

Now that North Korea has admitted that they have already developed nuclear weapons in violation of the agreement of 1994 President Bush must decide how to handle two ends of the Axis of Evil simultaneously. The Administration is mulling over strategies to take on North Korea diplomatically while attacking Iraq with a "vast coalition" that they are cobbling together. I'm surprised the obvious hasn't occurred to them. This is actually a splendid opportunity and should be handled the way any high schooler would. Colin Powell should surprise everyone and make a trip to Baghdad to meet Saddam. After having lunch with the Iraqi dictator he should proceed on to Pyongyang to have dinner with Kim Jong-il, the alien life form that rules North Korea. While at dinner Powell should whisper in Kim's ear that Saddam thinks Kim's hair is positively the goofiest he's ever seen. And besides that, Saddam is telling all the other dictators that Kim can't keep any of his kidnapped Scandinavian hos satisfied. Powell should get Kim really pissed off before shuttling back to Baghdad to tell Saddam that Kim said that his lips were fat like a camel's and show him Kim's Little Red Book of Saddam Jokes that the CIA created in their fake documents lab. Powell should keep this up until Iraq and North Korea attack and annihilate each other. We won't have to fire a missile.

Christmas Driving

I've done almost all of my Christmas shopping but today I had to do a little last minute shopping. What is it with people behind wheels at this time of year? A minority, a very noticable minority, of them go crazy just before Christmas. They become rude, aggressive, monsters that will risk lives to get a parking place. Even in Oklahoma, where most drivers will stop to let pedestrians cross a street (try that in Dallas!), the normal civility is hard to find at these times.

BBB to the Rescue?


I recently had a need to enlist the aid of the Better Business Bureau of Central Oklahoma. I had been ripped off by an auto repair shop in a small town near Oklahoma City and they were refusing to even deal with me. I didn't want to go to the expense of suing the shop so I contacted the BBB on their national website, filled out their online complaint form and waited. The BBB in Oklahoma City was pretty quick about writing the auto shop and asking for their side of the story. The crooks at the auto shop wrote back and denied any responsibility even though I had written statements from a car dealership saying the little shop caused hundreds of dollars of additional damage to my car in their bungled attempt to fix a small problem.

Here's where I thought the BBB would either whip the crooks into shape or at least force them to settle with me - or maybe just humor me a bit. Instead, the BBB did nothing. They did not reply to my letter stating my dissatisfaction with the auto shops refusal to consider a remedy and with the BBB's lack of aggressiveness in the matter. Apparently, the BBB can't do a thing about businesses that rip customers off. The most the BBB does is keep a record of complaints. And that is not reliable. Months after I filed my complaint it still hasn't shown up in the BBB online database on that auto shop. All their database tells one about the company is that it is a member of the BBB! Hmmmm?

If you have a complaint against a business that rips customers off and doesn't care - don't waste your time with the BBB of Central Oklahoma. Where do you go to file a complaint against the BBB?

The Dangers of Staffing by Patronage

Brad Henry has charged his transition team with reviewing the various state agencies he will take nominal charge of on January 13th. I say nominal, because boards and commissions control so many of the state's agencies that the Governor does not have has much control as the public would expect. In many cases, agencies are overseen by appointed commissions whose membership he has not appointed. Nevertheless, the transition team has been broken up into three or four-member committees that are interviewing the leadership of the state agencies now. Word is that their recommendations are due next week.

Brad Henry has taken a bipartisan approach thus far - appointing both Democrats and Republicans to the transition team. Preliminary signs are that he is not going to politicize the agencies he controls. Politicization, replacing everyone in state agencies with partisan cronies and friends-of-cronies, is destructive in the short and long-terms. In Texas, even the secretaries in the agencies get replaced if they aren't of the "right" party. It's one reason Texas' state government is as ineffective as it is. Their agencies have no institutional memory. Everyone that knows what mistakes not to repeat, get thrown out everytime the Governor changes. Texas' state government is so politicized that there is constant political struggling in every section of every state agency. It's hard to get the peoples' work done if everyone from agency head to secretary and mail room clerk owes their position to political patronage. That has, to a large degree, not been the case in Oklahoma. Let's hope it stays that way.

U.S. versus The World

I try to focus OkiePundit on matters related to Oklahoma but it is undeniable that we are not isolated, that what happens in Bali or Buenos Aires also often affects Oklahomans. It's with this global scope in mind that I want to draw your attention to just how out of step our foreign policy is with that of most other countries. I wouldn't argue that the U.S. needs to compromise our principles or allow others to determine a foreign policy for us that is not in our best interests. But I would argue that a principle-centered foreign policy would be in our best interest and that such a standard often eludes us.

The examples below illustrate the isolationist voting of the United States on important selected issues over a two-decade period at the United Nations:

U.S. Voting Record

Ending the US embargo against Cuba 155 countries voted Yes 2 countries voted No
Abolition of land mines treaty 133 countries voted Yes Only the U.S, voted NO
UN Convention on rights of children 180 countries voted YES Only the U.S. and Somalia voted NO
Condemnation of Israel for human rights abuse 121 countries voted YES Only the US voted NO

Can so many other nations be wrong? Why do we so often find ourselves totally alone in our stance? What does this tell us?

Brad Henry a bi-partisan leader?

Brad Henry is talking bi-partisanship and his transition team tends to confirm his desire to be a governor for ALL of Oklahoma. There are a lot of Republicans on that transition team. Even Governor Keating's former chief-of-staff, Ken Lackey, is on the team. That's a good start. Let's hope it's not window-dressing.

Robert Butkin is weilding big influence with Governor-elect Henry - that's good news for anyone interested in honest, crony-free government. Butkin, widely respected by Democrats, Republicans and independents, is said to be in charge of vetting cabinet postings. Let's hope he searches out the best candidates for the cabinet. Invariably, the best candidates are those who don't put themselves forward for the posts. The really good ones have to be sought out and asked in the name of public service.

If they want it so much to ask for it or demand it, please don't give it to them Mr. Henry.

Henry Cabinet?

Among the names being tossed around for Governor-elect Brad Henry's cabinet include former Tulsa mayor Rodger Randle, or Senate staff director Connie Irby as Henry's pick for Secretary of Commerce. Former state senator Brooks Douglas for Secretary of Tourism. Former state senator Paul Muegge for Secretary of Agriculture. Former Keating chief-of-staff Ken Lackey as Henry's chief-of-staff. Former OU football coach Barry Switzer can have any slot he wants.

Black Friday and Divorce Court

Did you go shopping on Black Friday? I was determined to avoid the insanity at the shopping malls on this, the busiest shopping day of the year. I did, for reasons I won't go into, did end up having to go to an electronics store in search of an emergency item. The store, of course, didn't have what I needed. But then I spotted a couple of CDs on sale. I picked them up and headed for the checkout area where I spotted a long line with a befuddled-looking teenage cashier trying to cope with the job. I laid the CDs down and left the building. Argh! The traffic was bad but the drivers were worse. The lack of civility in society is a peeve of mine and so being exposed to rude drivers tends to shorten my life with toxins pumped into my system. I try to be Buddha-like and go with the flow but when jerks in autos do their jerk things I just want to strangle them. But all I succeed in doing is making myself upset because roadways are not conducive to chasing down jerks and strangling them.

That's why I keep an Enya cassette tape handy for calming on days like Black Friday. So today, as I idled in line watching jerks speed down a closed lane and nose into line ahead of those of us who get in lines I was glad I had Enya there with me. Oh, happy holidays.

Then I stopped in SuperCuts for a haircut. I was third in line and there was nothing to read while I waited. The women who were cutting hair had a TV blaring with a program I later learned was called Divorce Court. A series of the most irritating, inarticulate people were screaming and crying on this horrid show. The "judge" hearing their cases was almost as irritating as the fools that had placed themselves on national television to air their most embarrassing problems. I couldn't shut it out, the TV was turned up high. The women in the shop were eating it up. The men who were waiting were rolling their eyes or tightening their jaws. I contemplated leaving without my haircut but I stuck this one out. I vowed that next time I'd bring my portable cassette player and Enya cassette with me to the barbershop.

Dogfighting in Creek County

The day before Thankgiving, in Creek County, county sheriff deputies arrested four "people" for engaging in dogfighting. The deputies took possession of 53 dogs, many of them in terrible condition. According to the Sapulpa Herald there were three dogfighting arenas west of Sapulpa, one inside a barn. "The indoor arena's sideboards were caked with blood," said Creek County investigator Cpl. Terry Burton. "What we found was just disgusting, just disgusting," he said. "To think there were people who would put two dogs together to fight is just disgusting."

The deputies also found drugs and firearms on the property. Humane groups and law enforcement officers have tied dogfighting and cockfighting to drugs and other crimes but this may be the most recent confirmation of the claim. According to the Oklahoman, those arrested were James Fiarris, 55, Jamme A. Fiarris, 54, both of Sapulpa, Roger M. Scott, 50, of Tulsa, and Steven King, also know as "DJ Spinmaster," of Broken Arrow. Scott reportedly works for the City of Tulsa and had driven to the areanas in a city truck.
An investigator said fights were held on Sundays at the areanas and that at least 30 vehicles were seen to be parked there.

Let's thank the Creek County Sheriff's office and detective Cpl. Terry Burton for investigating and arresting those alledged to be involved in this most barbaric of cruelties. Let's also urge maximum prosecution. Thank you calls should go to:

Creek County Sheriff's Office
P.O. Box 927
Sapulpa, Oklahoma 74067

Phone: (918) 224-4964

Brad Henry's Transition Team

Governor-Elect Henry announced his transition team on Friday and everyone is scratching their heads to understand why there are so many academics on the lightweight, but bi-partisan team. Not that there's anything wrong with university professors and administrators but where are his cronies? There's a lot of term-limited State Senators fresh out of jobs and wanting to know where their cushy jobs are. The most likely scenario is that the real powers are behind the scene and the transition team will not be selecting a cabinet for the Governor-elect. None of the expected cabinet members are on the transition team. Senators Dave Herbert, Kelly Haney, Brooks Douglas, etc are not on the transition team. Dave Herbert and Kelly Haney would be good choices but lets hope Brad Henry does not load his agencies with friends and cronies from the State Senate. That would be an early kiss of death for his administration.

Another kiss of death to success is a Governor that surrounds himself with young neophytes in the Governor's office. It's cursed many a Governor and is hard to recover from. The Governor-elect would be wise to hire just a few pragmatic and experienced Oklahomans rather than a bevy of fresh recruits from the Young Democrats. Hopefully he won't make the mistake of hiring out-of-state political hacks for chief-of-staff (like Lt Gov Mary Fallin has). If the Lt Governor wants to ever become Governor she needs to stop hiring chiefs-of-staff who insult and irritate her allies and constituents.

Oklahoma's Tax Credits for Child Care program a failure

Quoting a report by the National Women's Law Center report the Washington Post points out in a November 18th article that the tax-credit system launched by nearly two dozen states, including Oklahoma, to boost corporate investment in child care has been a failure. The Post says that some public money was diverted from child-care programs, according to a report by the National Women's Law Center.

In the report, "The Little Engine That Hasn't: The Poor Performance of Employer Tax Credits for Child Care," researchers reviewed employer tax-credit use in 20 states and found that in 16 of them five or fewer corporations had ever applied for the credits. In five states -- Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia -- not a single corporation had claimed the credits.

More on Senator Frank Shurden

A couple of years ago when Senator Shurden was doing everything he could to stop the people of Oklahoma from having a chance to vote on cockfighting he came up with the brilliant idea of Legislation (HB 1375) that would stop the anti-cockfighting group from bypassing the Legislature and going straight to the people. Shurden would have the Legislature put a vote on the ballot that would change the Oklahoma Constitution to require double the number of signatures required on initiative petitions if the issue had something to do with animals. If the people passed his ballot initiative he figured the anti-cockfighters would never be able to reach such a high requirement. Instead of about 70,000 signatures they would have to get about 150,000. Shurden thought this would be a way to get the hunters and fishermen to siddle up to his cockfighter buddies. They could pitch it as a measure to stop the "animal rights" people from targeting the hunters and fishermen after they dispatched the cockfighters. Shurden succeeded in getting our Legislature to go along with this crafty but undemocratic idea to establish an unequal system for voter initiatives.

But Shurden was counting on the cockfighting initiative that was currently underway to be killed in the courts by the cockfighter's attorney. Well, he bet wrong and Shurden's bill (SQ 698) AND the anti-cockfighting vote (SQ 687) showed up on the same ballot in November 2002. SQ 687 was on the ballot because over 100,000 Oklahomans signed an initiative petition within a three-month period to get it to a vote. Shurden's bill was on the ballot because he had enough fellow Legislators backward enough to buy in or trade votes in backroom deals. When the two state questions appeared on the ballot this month, Senator Shurden and his ilk were roundly defeated on both statewide votes.

Now it is instructive to return to Senator Shurden's statements of just over a year ago when he was attacking State Representative Russ Roach for trying to stop Shurden's bill to put the two-tier initiative petition idea on the ballot. According to the Oklahoma Rifle Association "The Henryetta legislator challenged Rep. Roach to "trust the people" on HB 1375, pointing out that the measure would put the question to a statewide vote. 'I don't understand why Rep Roach is afraid to trust the people on this question-Let's put the bull aside and let the people decide," said Sen. Shurden."

Fast forward to November 2002. The people have decided, Senator Shurden. They have spoken in no uncertain terms. Cockfighting was overwhelming defeated and your attempt to keep animal-related issues off the ballot has been soundly defeated. Now lets see who trusts the people.

A Majestic Symbol of Progress for Oklahoma

Today, 16,000 people watched the dedication of the 155-foot-tall dome that finally completed the 85-year-old Oklahoma Capitol building. Anyone who has visited the pre-dome Capitol and seen the new domed Capitol can appreciate what a difference there is. The dome gives the seat of our state government a majesty that can serve to raise our expectations of what our state can be. We owe our appreciation to Governor Frank Keating for leading the effort to raise the private money to fund the dome. We also owe appreciation to all the donors that made it a reality. All but $1.8 million of the $21 million cost came from private citizens and corporations. For decades our Legislature didn't have the backbone or vision to fund the completion of the Capitol. So, again, someone else had to do what the Legislature should have done.

We can't blame the decades of waiting entirely on the Legislature however. There's been a plentiful supply of crabby, vision-less citizens that frothed at the mouth every time someone talked of finishing the Capitol with a dome. It's these vociferous nay-sayers that Legislators run from. I was having a conversation with one such woman recently when the topic of the Capitol building came up. She suddenly launched into an epitaph-laden explosion of spitting emotion over the use of tax monies to build a dome. How dare the Governor spend money on "his dome" instead of on schools. She wasn't interested in the facts about private funding I tried to tell her about. She cared nothing about the kind of symbolism that lifts a people to a higher level, gives them a point on which to hang their pride, and shows the world that we are proud of who we are.

The Dome is that.

State Agriculture Commissioner Helping Cockfighters to Thwart Citizens' Will

This cockfighting war in Oklahoma just keeps getting more and more bizarre. The Daily Oklahoman reports today that Dennis Howard, the Commissioner of Agriculture in Oklahoma, announced he was considering becoming involved in the cockfighters attempt to weaken the anti-cockfighting law that was overwhelmingly passed by the electorate last week. According to the article, Howard is considering using the legal staff at the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture to try to help the cockfighters overturn the new law by joining in the effort to get a Little Dixie judge to declare the law unconstitutional. A few days after the law passed in a statewide vote cockfighters succeeded in getting District Judge Willard Driesel of Idabel to issue an injunction against enforcement of the ban pending consideration of whether it was unconstitutional. Some have speculated that cockfighters are taking this action in far southeast Oklahoma where their base is strongest in an effort to remove the contest from media view as much as possible.

Dennis Howard was an early opponent of the anti-cockfighting campaign. According to the Tulsa World, Howard, a state employee, traveled to cockfighter meetings in 1999 to advise them on how to stop the Oklahoma Coalition Against Cockfighting's initiative petition drive. In an October 10, 1999 Tulsa World article Dennis Howard was quoted as saying:

"I gave them a lesson in Politics 101," Dennis Howard said, describing his presentation to cockfighters at the Oklahoma Gamefowl Breeders Association's annual meeting in McAlester. "I told them, `You need to pick an election date when you can win.' "

The World said that Howard advised the cockfighters to do everything they could to challenge the signature process and postpone the cockfighting measure to an election date other than the presidential election of 2000. Howard said that the bigger the election turnout by voters the worse their chances of winning were.

After the cockfighters failed in their attempt to have enough signatures disqualified from the initiative petition Howard put his state agency to work to assist the cockfighters. In a letter on state stationery dated September 7, 2000, and widely used by the cockfighters, Burke L. Healey, DVM and director of Howard's Animal Industry Services Division said:

"The gamefowl industry is significant to Oklahoma's economy. There are millions of dollars pumped into the state through the retail sales of gamefowl out of our state to other states and other countries... Understand that I promote agriculture commerce and the gamefowl industry is a large part of our economy. I truely hope it will continue in the future."

During the cockfighter's campaign to defeat State Question 687 (that banned cockfighting) they sited estimates from Howard's Department of Agriculture that the "gamefowl" (cockfighting) industry "pumps $105 million into Oklahoma". Proponents of SQ 687 demanded the substantiating data for the supposed Agriculture study but the Department of Agriculture was not forthcoming. The state's media were also unable to obtain any information to support the Department of Agriculture's reported figures.

The cockfighters took the Ag chief's advice and through court challenges were able to delay the vote until November 2002. The people of Oklahoma finally got their chance to tell the politicians what they wanted. By a margin of well over 100,000 votes Oklahomans let Dennis Howard and the Legislature know that they wanted cockfighting banned and they wanted it to be a felony to engage in cockfighting. After three-years of support of the secretive cockfighter/gambling network Howard is trying to step in in the guise of an objective state official.

Citizens may rightly be asking if Dennis Howard (e-mail at: dennis.howard@gov.state.ok.us) has used state funds to support the much-disdained cockfighters' association in their efforts to keep Oklahomans from voting on the controversial issue and to distribute misleading information designed to support the cockfighting side. The media should now be asking why Howard wants to use the state's resources to try to overturn a resounding vote of the people to ban this third-world bloodsport in Oklahoma. Perhaps its time for the State Auditor and Inspector to look into whether Howard has inappropriately utilized state resources?

Thanks to J. Casey for contributing the above.