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October 2024

Wetumka Teacher/Coach Arrested – Victims Speak Out

Wednesday, October 16th, was the hardest podcast I’ve had to do in the roughly two years we’ve been broadcasting. Our friend Mary with V1SUT Substack joined us on the third Wednesday as usual, but this time she brought her own guests.

With Mary were Justin Cotes and Casey Yochum – two men who have bravely come forward to tell the stories of their abuse at the hands of, teacher, coach and athletic director, Brent McGee.

The stories the two men have shared with Mary are simply heartbreaking, but they want to encourage other survivors of Brent’s employment at either Noble Public Schools, or Wetumka Public Schools, to come forward and they believe telling their stories can help.

In the clip below, Casey shares how he was able to record Brent McGee’s confession.

Yes, you heard that correctly. Casey recorded McGee’s confession, took it to an attorney who agreed that the confession was good, only to find out that he had just aged out of the Statute of Limitations for sexual assault while a minor.

This begs the question; why is there a Statute of Limitations on ANY crime? Doesn’t that handcuff the victims?

Sexual abuse can be buried in the subconscious – as it was in Casey’s case – for many years. Does this mean that abuse couldn’t have happened if a victim doesn’t remember it? Clearly not, but Oklahoma’s current law puts victims in that nonsensical predicament!

Obviously, next legislative session, a brave legislator needs to come forward and remove the Statute of Limitations on crimes committed against children!

Before we signed out of the podcast, Mary goes over the warning signs of sexual abuse happening WITHIN THE SCHOOL and how to spot predatory behaviors by adults toward children.

To recap; be particularly observant about behaviors of coaches around young men (and, as we know from Ashley Roland’s story – young women too!). Watch for teachers overstepping their bounds and taking on parental roles, as well as violating school policy.

Mary reminds us about Representative Sherrie Conley’s bill to protect students from one-on-one communication with a school-employed adult – communication that can be allowing, or furthering, inappropriate relationships among students and school employees.

In fact, schools were supposed to train personnel in the law at the beginning of the year in order to help close this avenue of connection between students and school employees.

Please, speak with your Oklahoma legislator NOW about stepping up to write a bill that would remove the Statute of Limitations on child predation next session. In the meantime, watch the full podcast on our YouTube and Rumble channels and share this information with all those you know whose children are enrolled in ANY school outside their own home.

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Is Everyone Listed On Oklahoma Voter Rolls A Qualified Elector?

Not according to our friend Amber Evans – who has pulled Oklahoma voter roll data for examination.

What does this mean?

According to state law, everyone who votes in Oklahoma must be a valid elector. What is a valid elector? Watch and Amber will show you and explain.

How do these people get left on the rolls? Because they aren’t noticed by election personnel and deleted. What personnel would delete them? Personnel at either the County, or State, Election Board (SEB). Why isn’t this getting done – especially when we were just given the talking point by the state that the SEB purged 450,000 voters since 2021? That answer is unclear.

The SEB performed an official audit of the state’s Primary Elections which was released at the end of August. I urge you to review it. We are told at the beginning, “The post-election audits were conducted pursuant to the procedures developed in advance under the direction of the Secretary of the State Election Board”, but we’re not told what those procedures were or where they were located in state law, so we know nothing about the procedures used in the audit.

Were the absentee ballots checked to make sure they followed state law? I’ve said on numerous occasions that – before I was fired from the Oklahoma County election board – we didn’t check to make sure there weren’t more than 20 absentee ballots submitted by one notary as state law required. What about the notary themselves? They’re required to maintain a log of their absentee ballots for two years so their records can be checked against absentee ballots submitted to county election boards. Have any of those been audited? If not, why have the law?

Notice these things about the released audit;

  • Not every race was fully audited – they were ‘spot’ audited, meaning one race was audited for absentee ballots and another for precinct reports (machine tabulations) – so it was not a full audit as we were led to believe by the press release.
  • Not every precinct, or race, was audited.
  • Only certain results were printed in the audit ‘report’, the public was not provided a link to the database with the information collected. This is important because we have no way of ‘checking up’ on the results, we’re just told by the SEB what they were.
  • The ‘audit’ results given are not broken down. All we’re given in the ‘audit’ is a list indicating that ‘everything’ (whatever that is) matched up 100%, which results in the following questions:
    • how many absentee ballots were there in the race?
    • how many in-person voters were there in the race?

Consequently, when you stop to really examine the ‘audit’ released by the SEB, how do we really know that what we’re being told – that the primary elections were 100% accurate – is true? Where is the data? Why wasn’t the report specific in nature? All the information I mentioned that wasn’t included, could have been collected in a spreadsheet and a link provided to the public.

Again, this information doesn’t even take into consideration the VOTER ROLLS.

We were told by the Governor on September 18th, about the numbers of voters who have been purged from Oklahoma’s voter rolls since 2021. KOSU, received actual data from the Governor’s office, as it was not provided in his press release.

Look, I’m a former scientist. I understand data. This is nonsense. Again, actual data would be listed in a spreadsheet and broken down for all to see. This is meaningless data that requires us to take the SEB at their word.

The SEB insists that we have 100% accuracy in the Oklahoma primaries, however – and again – how is it that Amber found all the non-eligible electors on the Comanche County voter rolls and over 100,000 on the state rolls AFTER the multiple purges this ‘data’ represent.

But it’s not only that.

What about people who have moved into and out of Oklahoma? The clip on that topic was too large to create, but if you find the FULL LIVE video on our Rumble or YouTube account and fast forward to 34:27 and watch until about 1:13:20(ish), you’ll get a great discussion on the fact that it isn’t clear how often Oklahoma’s voter rolls are run against the National Change of Address database as per law.

Amber ran Comanche county data against the NCOA in September of last year and found that 19.3% of the registered voters in the county had moved and/or registered in another county or state. That’s a very large number of INELIGIBLE VOTERS on the rolls in that county and who’s to say if people are double voting? How would anyone know?

In addition, she also found a voter with double registration – another thing that was supposed to be in the purged data according to our Governor and the SEB. Again, without real data on the purge – which we’re not given – Oklahoma citizens are unable to examine these issues for themselves. THAT is a problem.

And one last thing that we briefly covered on the full LIVE video, how can Oklahoma have a law that says that election board members SHALL certify an election? At 28:42 on the full video, we talk about that. That’s a problem in and of itself.

The takeaway here is this: Oklahoma’s elections are probably some of the safest in the country, but are they 100% accurate as the SEB and Secretary Ziriax have asserted? No. There’s no way they could be. There are way too many unanswered questions about the number of unqualified electors on the roll according to the data Amber has pulled and analyzed.

We need to find legislators willing to make changes to Title 26 to clarify the ways in which Oklahoma’s voter rolls are cleaned and maintained. Without that, Oklahoma’s election results still can’t be guaranteed. Hopefully, after the video, that’s 100% obvious.

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Liberty, Or A Surveillance State – ALPR Use In Oklahoma Is Inconsistent With Individual Liberty

Tuesday morning (10.8.24), the State Powers Committee held an interim study by Representative Tom Gann on the use of Automated License Plate Readers in Oklahoma, titled, “Track and Tax, Surveillance Cameras and Warrantless Searches“.

It was a really great study and brought out some very important issues that I think so many of us just going about our day, don’t really think about. Thanks to Representative Gann and the State Powers Committee for hearing the study.

Wednesday morning (10.9.24) for our regular podcast, our beloved regular guest Julianne Romanello – who was supposed to educate us about Carbon Credits – was unable to be on. Unfortunately, she ended up with sick kiddos and was unable to both be on the podcast and help sick kids at the same time! We hope everything gets back to normal for her soon – and don’t worry, we’ll have her BACK on to cover the topic next month!

Without a guest, Michael and I and our friend Whitney Mullica from PikeOffOTA, spent our time discussing the Interim Study on ALPRs.

You can find the live video on both our Rumble and YouTube channels, but below is a clip where we all three talk about the use of ALPR cameras (and software). According to the interim study, ALPR cameras were ONLY to be used to determine who was and wasn’t complying with Oklahoma’s compulsory insurance law. Below, we discuss that topic. Have you ever thought about what we discuss here?

Oklahoma’s compulsory insurance law is SB359.

So why are we all so fired up about this interim study and ALPRs? The video below contains the answer. Would you want to be a party to this traffic stop? How do you think the cop acted? Would you be nervous or scared in this situation? Wouldn’t you wonder how – AND WHY – this policeman had so much information about your travels?

After watching the interim study all of us were troubled, but it was after watching the chest cam video of a traffic stop that all of us became exceptionally troubled about ALPRs.

My House Representative is John George. Representative George has a degree in criminal justice and was the long-time President of the Oklahoma Fraternal Order of Police.

Now, I will say this again – I am not a ‘cop hater’, I loved working with our police department when I was Mayor in Luther (OK) – however, for many years, I’ve watched policeman go from being the kind, but steely-hearted men and women willing to throw down their lives for their community, to people who are gruff or authoritarian when I encounter them. I understand that the police have had a very rough time in the PR realm in the last number of years, but someone whose job it is to ‘protect and serve’ individuals in their communities shouldn’t tend toward authoritarian, as the policeman in the video above.

I’ve also seen police departments militarize themselves by purchasing armor-plated vehicles and now, in Tulsa, robot dogs. Why? Are MOST of the people they stop horrible people just looking to give them trouble? I, of course, don’t know the answer to that, not being a beat cop, but I expect we haven’t crossed that threshold yet.

When I contacted Representative George about this issue, we had a cordial conversation. He is willing to put safeguards on the software that backs up ALPRs because he believes we don’t have any right now and we need to. However, when I asked him why we had a compulsory insurance law in the first place, his fall-back was the ‘public safety’ catch all – he didn’t really have an answer. He also believed that ALPRs are absolute necessity to find missing children, or catch murderers and other bad guys. I asked him why the police couldn’t use traditional methods for this and his answer was because with the new technology we don’t have to. I told him I disagreed with that perspective thoroughly and we ended the conversation agreeing to disagree, however, as the citizen who elected him to represent me, I don’t want the state using these things at all because there are way too many ways for their misuse.

So, let’s review – Oklahomans can buy insurance for their cars if they are financially able (I’m not going to explain socialism here, but if you blanch at that statement, please do a thorough bit of research into the topic) and if they so desire. Lots of insurance companies provide that service. Individuals can also buy insurance against an uninsured motorist. Why, then, must the state force citizens to do such a thing? If we didn’t have the compulsory insurance law, we wouldn’t have the ALPRs reading license plates in the first place. And therein the slippery slope that every legislator seems to hate for you to bring to their attention. We allowed state use of ALPRs and now the ALPR software is able to track our every movement. Bad. Deal.

But let’s continue, why do we all have to get a REAL ID? Don’t we already virtually have that with our driver’s licenses which now use facial recognition and a thumb print? Is that really necessary? If so, why? The answer, ‘public safety’, means exactly what? Whatever the person using it wants it to mean to get what they feel like is important to a concept of ‘safety’ which is not at all well drawn – we saw that in full splendor during COVID.

This quote was thrown out in the podcast, but I’ll leave it here as well. As Benjamin Franklin said so famously, but is so unheeded by both those who like being mommied and those who like being authoritarians, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” So note, when we choose not to parent ourselves – BIG BROTHER will do it for us, and if we choose not to fight for our privacy – BIG BROTHER will take it from us.

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Norman’s TIF and Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s Ethics.

Friday’s live podcast on October 4th featured Whitney Mullica and Kelly Wilson from PikeOffOTA (Oklahomas For Responsible Transportation) to talk about a recent ‘win’ they had with the Norman City Council.

This year, the OTA – which is attempting to build a turnpike extension through the city of Norman (and numerous other places) – presented the Norman City Council with a contract in which they would provide Norman a list of items for the turnpike right of way.

PikeOffOTA researched the contract and found that no town with which OTA had signed a contract previously, came out getting what they expected. All, instead, were forced to pay for road repairs and other infrastructure issues created by OTA activity for which they hadn’t budgeted.

Kelly, Whitney and the group took their research to the Norman City Council, who, after a listening session, decided against signing the OTA contract – something that hasn’t happened previously.

After discussing this win, Kelly and Whitney showed more of their research on the OTA, which, as it turns out, is simply a glorified, Roosevelt-style works program for favored individuals and companies. Whitney and Kelly explain this thesis, below.

It’s maddening, but tolls don’t go back to simply repairing the roads, they are used as collateral for FURTHER BUILDING. Why does Oklahoma need so many toll roads? To keep paychecks rolling in – and not for the taxpayer.

As mentioned in the video, Governor Stitt has a PAC called The Turnaround Team PAC. Donations to this PAC have been made by people who have benefited from Stitt’s governance.

For example, David Streb, President of POE Associates, has donated $15 thousand dollars to the PAC, $5,000 each year from ’22, ’23, and ’24. The Hilliary’s of Hilliary Communications in Lawton – of which both Dustin and Edward have been appointed by Governor Stitt to the Regents for Higher Education and the State Board of Career And Technology Education, have donated a total of $50,000 over the course of 2020 to 2024. To name just a few examples.

This cronyism at the taxpayer’s expense must stop, but the only way this will happen is if this information is shared widely and people decide they don’t want to fund the bank accounts of OTHERS with their tax dollars and stand up against OTA in their cities and towns and work to have legislators dissolve the agency and return toll roads back to the citizens.

NORMAN TIF

At the end of the program, Kelly introduced Dr. Rogers – a professor of economics at OU – who explained what a TIF is, why it works and who is benefiting from the TIF.

This is yet another example of crony capitalism and economic development WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. She explains here.

As Dr. Rogers so eloquently explains, a TIF is a way for a project to garner funds that excludes the direct will of the people over how they intend for their tax dollars to be spent.

While it is true that the City Council has to pass the TIFF and the City Council is an elected body, meaning that their voice is SUPPOSED to be directly tied to that of their citizens, as it often happens, developers and others involved in the TIFF have the time and money to skew the opinion of Council members while the citizens may not even understand the ramifications of the issue at hand.

Raising the tax rate of any city or town must be done by a vote of the people. In the case of a TIFF, taxes aren’t raised, but diverted, leaving the people with no direct say on this type of financing at the ballot box. In the case of the Norman TIFF, OU – the benefactor of the TIFF – paid 65 OU students to be at the Norman City Council meeting where the vote was taken – making it seem as though the TIF had more community support than it did. Dr. Rogers argues that the community doesn’t want the TIF and the only way to determine that, is through an initiative petition to recall the vote and institute a public vote on the matter, an effort currently underway in the City of Norman.

Dr. Rogers doesn’t say that she doesn’t believe the Norman arena project should be undertaken at all, but that there were no alternative ways to fund the project explored before the TIF was voted into place. By circumventing the will of the people in the matter of how their tax dollars are spent in their community, the people lose control of their government and are stymied in their ability to control their fates. In a Republic this is wrong.

To find the full live video please see our YouTube and Rumble channels.

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A Teacher’s Story – Why I Quit Teaching In Oklahoma Public Schools

Becky Pellam, PhD, spoke to Michael and Jenni on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024, about her teaching experiences in Oklahoma.

Dr. Pellam came from Texas, where she taught in the Dumas district. She loved it there, but she met a man from the Oklahoma panhandle and settled in on a ranch they bought there together. Hungry to teach again, she applied to Guymon PS and was hired as a Teaching Coach.

Before she started, she had great feelings about her time there and what she could do to help the kids – the majority of whom had ACT scores in the single digits. After she began, her experience changed drastically.

During her year of employment in Guymon, she was bullied by the other teachers, many of whom told her she was a ‘plant’ from the central office sent to spy on the other teachers and refused to submit their benchmarks to her. She talked to her superintendent about the situation but she seemed to get nowhere.

She talked to the school board president, who listened intently and believed her report, but asked her to contact the Board’s vice-president. When she did, the long-time, active OSSBA (Oklahoma State School Board Association) member told her that he had heard she was a trouble maker and knew she was the problem, not anyone else.

Needless to say, after she was told by the Superintendent to falsify benchmark data to the school board, she had it in her mind to quit, but then the school essentially fired her anyway.

Here’s Becky’s story about her employment with Guymon in her own words:

After being forced to leave Guymon public schools, she was hired at DOVE Virtual Acadmy (DVA) – an Oklahoma online public charter school.

Dr. Pellam talks about how – just like her experience with Guymon PS – everything started fine, but quickly turned sour.

The Principal almost immediately had Dr. Pellam teaching THE ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL class of nearly 100 kids to the tune of 12 and 13 classes per week. For those who aren’t teachers, that’s 3 TIMES a ‘normal’ amount of coursework. For each class, there is a certain amount of ‘prep’ that has to happen to develop the course and to assist/grade/monitor the students. This level of coursework would exhaust anyone, but Becky also was helping to run a ranch and raise their daughter at the same time.

In the end, she found that DVA was ALSO cheating the accountability system by enrolling ‘ghost students’ to get their enrollment up (in Oklahoma, schools are appropriated funds via the number of ‘butts in seats’), but then unenrolled over 40% of their students – the ones on the lower end of the academic spectrum – when it came time for state testing.

Here is Dr. Pellam telling the story about her employment with Dove Virtual Academy:

Toward the end of the LIVE 2 hour+ broadcast, Jenni and Dr. Pellam began to talk about what education actually is.

Few people – including teachers and administrators today – know what it means to EDUCATE a child. It’s certainly NOT what we’re doing in Oklahoma right now. Right now, we’re training kids for jobs, not educating them in order to be the people best able to decide what they want to do.

There is method to this madhouse approach of education, however. Uneducated people are compliant people because they don’t know how to think for themselves. They do what they’re told because they’re conditioned to do that. They can’t think for themselves because they’re not educated, they’re conditioned.

Becky and Jenni took several minutes to flesh out this fact so that people could hopefully understand what it is that Oklahoma is doing wrong in public education. And that’s after we spoke about the horrible public school culture – the teacher/administration bullying that goes on against those who want to come in and actually teach and do the right thing.

Here are Becky and Jenni discussing the idea of what REAL EDUCATION looks like:

Dr. Pellam is VERY BRAVE for coming forward in this way.

Jenni had the very same kind of experiences while she was teaching in Oklahoma public schools 25 years ago, so this is not a new thing – THIS IS TEACHER/ADMINISTRATION CULTURE IN MOST OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS. Good Oklahoma teachers simply leave rather than try to do anything because they know nothing they will say will be heard or addressed.

See, no one listens to them because the fixes necessary REQUIRE HARD WORK, not just THROWING DOLLARS AT THE PROBLEMS and no one from public school administration, to our legislature, to our Governor really want to do the work that is required to solve the deeply entrenched problems with public school culture in Oklahoma.

Oklahoman’s shouldn’t BE FORCED TO PROVIDE THEIR TAX DOLLARS FOR THESE UNFUNCTIONAL SCHOOLS. If we really care about kids – and do we really? – we would FIX the broken public school administrative culture, instead of forcing taxpayers to provide private school tuition dollars to people who can already afford a private school education for their kid/s!

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