Here's a list of #Oklahoma politicians who have taken money from EPIC charter schools' co-founders David Chaney and Ben Harris and former CFO Josh Brock, all of whom were arrested today on RICO and other criminal complaints. 🧵
These records only go back to 2016, but you can see that the founders definitely spread their wealth around to numerous #Oklahoma politicians, including this year's two major gubernatorial candidates before they were opponents - Stitt and Hofmeister, as well as former AG Hunter
Page 1 of Chaney's donations. Ignore the first two entries, the David Chaney from Perkins. That's a different guy.
Page 2 of Chaney's donations.
Page 3 of Chaney's donations
Page 1 of Ben Harris's donations
Page 2 of Ben Harris's donations
Page 3 of Ben Harris's donations
Page 4 of Ben Harris's donations
Page 5 of Ben Harris's donations
Page 6 of Ben Harris's donations
And here's the contributions from former CFO Josh Brock.
As you can see, that's a lot of money going to powerful politicians, and much of it likely originated from taxpayer school funds before going into EPIC's private management company and distributed to the owners, who it appears then showered it upon your elected officials.
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When a politician or one of their sycophants tells you “now is not the time” to talk or ask about the causes of a tragedy that just happened, it almost always means it’s definitely the right time to ask/talk about it. It’s a bad faith response. 🧵
First, it attempts to shame/shut down the person asking the question, as if they are somehow disrespecting the victims, while allowing the politician/toadie to appear above the fray, and gets them off the hook to give a substantive answer to the question.
Unchallenged, the response allows the politician and/or their flying monkeys to claim a moral high ground and accuse the requester of politicizing the issue, when the response itself is the political equivalent of hagfish slime.
In his state of the state address today, Gov. Stitt touted SB1647, The Oklahoma Empowerment Act by Sen. Greg Treat. The bill is actually a model school choice bill pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Here's the ALEC model: alec.org/model-policy/t…
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, part of the State Policy Network (which often works hand-in-glove with ALEC on drafting/pushing model legislation), issues statement endorsing @GovStitt's agenda in his state of the state speech, specifically on SB1647
During the course of my research for the new @readfrontier McGirt v Oklahoma site, I was struck again & again by how similar some of the arguments for Indian removal were to the complaints we hear today in regard to the McGirt ruling. Hear me out…(thread) interactive.readfrontier.org/mcgirt-v-oklah…
For those who know only the broad strokes of how the eastern tribes came to be in Oklahoma, the reason is often boiled down to White people seized Indian land and moved the tribes west on the Trail of Tears, which is true but…
That’s not necessarily what the Whites at the time told themselves they were doing. There had to be a legal and moral justification beyond ‘we want this land, so we’re taking it.’ While there were several different rationalizations, the main one was…
Thread: Today, @readfrontier launched the McGirt v. Oklahoma site, which contains information about each of the (so far) six #Oklahoma American Indian tribes whose reservation status has been affirmed by the McGirt ruling last year. interactive.readfrontier.org/mcgirt-v-oklah…
Since the ruling, there has been a great deal of confusion and little easily-accessible info about the tribal systems. This site is an effort to provide an info and resource hub for those who find themselves within the tribal legal system, as well as journalists and researchers.
For instance, the site provides info such as lists of tribal attorneys, courthouse locations, judges, court dockets, law enforcement officials and government officials for each of the tribes covered by the decision in one location.
Thread: Today, @readfrontier published a story about a Tulsa "church" that has no congregation and no house of worship, but was used to allow the org's president/pastor to avoid thousands of $ in property taxes, & to work with and #Oklahoma political action committee...
The "church," Gateway Ministries, once had a congregation in Ada, from 2000 to 2014, when the church's president/pastor Jesse Leon Rodgers dissolved the congregation and moved to Tulsa five years ago. The church's equipment was sold by Rodgers at a yard sale...
...and the church, controlled by Rodgers, purchased a 4,200 sq. ft. house in Tulsa. Rodgers is the state head of @FRCdc's Watchmen on the Wall ministry, which is a nationwide network of pastors.