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Government Malfeasance

Wind Energy Property Easements – Tax Scams As Well As Property Rights Theft?

Friday, November 22nd, Michael and I welcomed John Baca – a real estate attorney from Hughes County, Oklahoma – to the podcast to talk about some things he’s been seeing with the influx of wind energy leases in the county.

During the course of the conversation, John told us that over 42,000 acres of land in Hughes county has been leased to wind developers by a relative handful of residents – most of whom are absentee land owners and don’t even reside on the land they’ve leased. This is a problem because those land owners won’t have to see the ravaged landscape that has become their property, or have to listen to the horrifying noise they make, or put up with the light flicker that could drive a person insane. (And read this WELL-RESEARCHED, horrifying article I just read on wind energy and whale deaths on the eastern seaboard. Why are we allowing these supposedly ‘green’ activities to ruin our planet? Are we really this stupid?)

Listen to John describe that problem in the clip below, where he also talks about the leases themselves – they’re over 70 pages long, they have non-disclosure agreements (NDA) which prevents lease signers from providing information about the lease to anyone without getting sued (gosh, that’s transparent) and the easements granted to the wind generation company sign your property away to whomever the company chooses until eternity and their language is incomprehensible to land owners who otherwise might have previously worked with an oil and gas company. Just. A. Bad. Deal. All. Around.

In the next clip, John gets to the bottom line – conservation easements and wind turbine leases are creating a situation in which land owners are unable to use the land for farming and we’re all becoming less able to manage our lives self-sufficiently while wind turbine companies – that already get MASSIVE taxpayer subsidies – use the system even more efficiently to collect more taxpayer dollars.

In further researching the concept of conservation easements, I found this really great article that gives the pro’s and con’s of the practice. Apparently President Trump applied for (and got) a conservation easement for Mara Lago, yet it’s easy to see how this particular tax-shelter would create a HUGE set of loopholes allowing bad actors to take advantage of other people’s property.

In fact, ProPublica (yes, this is a liberal organization, however, liberal organizations actually watchdog ‘conservative’ issues unlike conservatives – who generally tend to love everything labeled with an ‘R’ just because it’s labeled with an ‘R’) did a series of articles on conservation easement tax scams that is quite informative.

An article from 2022 called, “The Tax Scam That Won’t Die“, seems to describe the issue John believes wind turbine companies are using to their advantage. Here is the relevant paragraph:

“The syndicated versions are different (conservation easements). Instead of seeking to protect a bucolic reserve for wildlife or humans, profit-seeking intermediaries have turned the likes of abandoned golf courses or remote scrubland into high-return investment vehicles. These promoters snatch up vacant land that till then was worth little. Then they hire an appraiser willing to declare that it has huge, previously unrecognized development value — perhaps for luxury vacation homes or a solar farm — and thus is really worth many times its purchase price. The promoters sell stakes in the donation to individuals, who claim charitable deductions that are four or five times their investment. The promoters reap millions in fees.”

Last year, Congress apparently had found a way to crack down on conservation easement abuse:

“During a June 22 Senate Finance Committee markup on retirement legislation, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., a longtime sponsor of the Integrity Act, identified the projected windfall from a clampdown on syndicated easements as a way to pay for a popular proposal enhancing benefits for disabled police, firefighters, paramedics and EMTs. That bipartisan legislation, months later, got added to the massive, must-pass government funding bill, where no single lawmaker had the power to strip it out.

A big concession sealed support for the deal: Daines and other backers agreed not to apply the law to transactions that date back to when the IRS flagged syndicated easements as abusive in 2016 (though the IRS can still pursue cases from back then). Instead the new limits apply only to transactions that occur after the law’s enactment. Along with a much smaller change exempting the measure from applying to historic buildings, this reduced the projected Treasury windfall to about $6.4 billion.”

This year, however, the US Tax Court “boldly declared the Treasury Regulation section 1.170A-14(g)(6)(ii) as invalid, citing non-compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) as the primary reason. This particular regulation had previously served as a cornerstone for the IRS in disallowing deductions claimed by taxpayers under the guise of conservation easements, imposing stringent conditions that required the easements to be perpetual.“

So, go figure – the government giveth, the government taketh away, then the government giveth it backeth. Phenomenal. Apparently, the taxpayer will continue to take it in the hind end until the practice is somehow done away with permanently.

In the meantime, neither this, nor Governor Stitt’s “more of everything” approach to Oklahoma energy, is helping regular land owners from getting screwed out of the pleasure of owning their own property (sorry, renting it from the government).

Again, contact your legislators about this issue too…

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Wind Energy Isn’t Benefiting Oklahoma

Wednesday, November 20th, Michael and I were happy to interview Chad McDougall, Chairman of the Petroleum Alliance Of Oklahoma. Check out the full video on our YouTube and Rumble channels.

What he had to say about wind energy and solar energy in Oklahoma was FASCINATING, but FRUSTRATING.

In the clip below, Chad talks about how Oklahoma produces WAY more energy than it uses. In fact, here is an interesting factoid from the US Energy Information Administration: Overall, the state produces almost three times more energy than it consumes, and much of the energy produced in Oklahoma—particularly natural gas, petroleum, and electricity—is sent to other states.

WHAT? How many of us actually knew that?

In the clip below, Chad mentions that, wind energy companies doing business in Oklahoma are just USING OKLAHOMA. We don’t need the energy, but they blight our landscapes with those ridiculous, horrendous wind turbines so that they can turn around and send the energy OUT OF STATE!

In this clip, I asked Chad about the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) and the answer is – OKLAHOMA DOESN’T NEED THIS! Our legislators need to know this information so they can STOP it from coming through Oklahoma.

Also in the clip, Chad refers to the Inflation Reduction Act as the ‘Green New Deal’ because of its incentives and taxpayer giveaways to ‘green’ companies totaling a probable 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS! And, by the way, if you’ve had OG&E call you lately to tell you that they’ll help you install solar panels, you’ve got the IRA to thank for their largess with YOUR money.

In the clip below, Chad gets to the bottom of the issue – oil and gas producers pay tons of taxes – wind energy companies are subsidized by the state and federal government.

According to the Institute For Energy Research, Oklahoma stopped its wind subsidies in July of 2017 because of the BURGEONING cost to tax payers, yet wind producers that had completed projects prior to that date were still eligible for TEN FULL YEARS of subsidies from the time of project completion.

I guess because Oklahoma likes giving away taxpayer dollars, after the subsidies stopped, a tax credit was made available in 2003 to include wind producers. Here’s what the IER says:

Beginning January 1, 2003, Oklahoma instituted a state income tax credit to producers of electric power using renewable energy resources from a zero-emission facility with a production capacity of 1 megawatt or greater. Besides wind, eligible renewable energy resources include moving water, sun, and geothermal energy. Credits are available for electricity generated on or after January 1, 2003, during a 10-year period following the date that the facility is placed in operation. The credit ranges from $0.0025 per kilowatt hour to $0.0050 per kilowatt hour depending on when the facility is placed in operation and when electricity is generated.

The crazy thing is, we’ve let Oklahoma’s Governor Stitt and our legislature GIVE OUR TAX DOLLARS TO GREEN COMPANIES AT THE EXPENSE OF OUR POCKETBOOKS AND THE BEAUTY OF OUR LANDSCAPE! Why?

Probably because Governor Stitt has an “all of the above” prescription for energy here in Oklahoma – as we’ve so often heard him say, but look at this.

In February of this year, the Italian ‘green’ energy company Enel, was ordered to remove 84 wind turbines from Osage land in northeastern Oklahoma at a cost of $300 MILLION dollars because they acted unethically with the Osage, including conducting unauthorized mining on Osage land.

Last year, Governor Stitt TOUTED this very same company – Enel – for bringing a solar panel factory to Oklahoma.

This year, he and several other Republican governors condemned the Biden Administration for its stance on fossil fuels, claiming that the federal government was blocking permits and creating business-stifling regulations, yet Governor Stitt has not shown any interest in lifting the taxes on oil and gas producers in this state while pimping every green energy business that comes by (see our story on the nation’s biggest carbon capture plant no one knew about located in Shidler, OK). But then, Oklahoma actually has a whole part of its website devoted to all the taxpayer dollars it’s giving away to businesses here and it starts with these words: “Oklahoma has some of the lowest tax rates and some of the best tax incentives in the nation. The state offers companies a low cost of doing business, a low cost of living for employees, and tax rebates that reduce tax burdens even further.“

Meanwhile, though the oil and gas industry is trying to push back on the general unfairness of federal and state energy policy, regular every day Oklahomans should too. While tax incentivized green energy companies are producing energy in Oklahoma and sending it out of the state, Oklahomans continue to pay higher prices on energy than we should if we were using our own natural gas to power our homes. Ask your legislator to make sense of THAT.

BELOW ARE THE SLIDES CHAD PREPARED FOR OUR INTERVIEW THAT WE BARELY USED – check them out for more information.

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Carbon Credits, Hydrogen, Kim David And Oklahoma’s Push Into The Green Agenda

Friday, November 15th, our friend Julianne Romanello of Hearts Over Hexagons joined us to talk about Carbon Credits. Check out the full live video – for ALL the information – on Rumble and YouTube.

After finding out that we have the LARGEST CARBON CAPTURE PLANT in the US, I’ve wanted to delve deeper into this phenomenon and find out why in the world people, in red state Oklahoma where trillions of dollars are invested in oil, would want to even entertain such a massive green energy scam.

In the clip below, Julianne explains why carbon would be captured and shipped through pipelines in Oklahoma. Basically, the new economy will run on carbon which is a byproduct of new, ‘clean’ energy offerings – like hydrogen – which is made from natural gas, but producers of hydrogen fuel will have to waste CO2 during processing to say it’s a ‘clean’ energy source. The carbon dioxide created from the creation of hydrogen fuel can be captured and then used to push oil out of depleted shale deposits, or stored for use later as carbon offsets in the new carbon economy.

In the clip below, Michael and Julianne talk about the fact that this WHOLE green deal is about nothing more so than money! Big businesses and rich investors put money into carbon sequestration, hydrogen, wind mills and solar farms infrastructure and their ‘investment’ is pumped up by the added federal dollars found in the Infrastructure Bill and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021 – all so we can get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 like the World Economic Form wants! YAY!

According to our own Oklahoma government, Oklahoma produces way more energy than we use – SO WHY ARE WE DOING ALL THIS?

Governor Kevin Stitt. Though we rarely hear about all this green energy nonsense in our local news sources, here’s an article from 2022 when he went – unannounced – to London for the Farnborough Airshow (though probably not on the state plane on which taxpayers have spent over $300,000 in flights that no one seems to be able to get the records for) and spoke about his “all of the above” energy strategy.

In 2021, then-Senator Kim David, authored SB1021 which created the hydrogen pipeline Task Force (picture above). The Report generated by the task force describes how Oklahoma can create hydrogen fuel via natural gas while sequestering the remaining CO2 in several different ways but mainly in cavities left by the extraction of oil. The report is extensive (112 pp). Here is a paragraph from the Executive Summary:

The OK H2 Task Force recommendations include continued focus on growing a hydrogen energy economy here in Oklahoma, assuring hydrogen fuel is included within existing regulations and legislation similar to compressed natural gas (CNG) and electric vehicles (EV), readying our infrastructure and supporting policies to champion FCEV heavy-duty transportation, fuel production and as a back-up power generation asset, aligning our state’s business and manufacturing friendly taxes and incentives to attract companies that reflect that full value chain within the hydrogen sector, and continue to investigate opportunities to collaborate with neighboring states and federal agencies to grow a competitive hydrogen economy.

Later, the report – from the bill created by a REPUBLICAN and a REPUBLICAN governor – acknowledges that “Hydrogen production from natural gas must be coupled with a carbon capture strategy to meet net-zero carbon emission metrics.”

Just FYI, Kim David was term limited in the Senate, serving from 2010-2022. From the Senate, she ran for Corporation Commissioner with a war chest of over 600,000. Her campaign for CC included donations mainly from oil and gas producers and individuals in oil and gas, as well as attorneys and a large $5,000 donation from NextEra – the company taking farmland for windmills all across Oklahoma, who spends millions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign donations.

David graduated college with a geology degree, but how can she expect to be impartial in dealing with the kinds of situations she must at the CC when she’s been given money by people she’ll have to regulate? Isn’t there something that seems unethical about that? And to add insult to injury, her campaign was run by CAMP and managed by all the people who were employed at the Ethics Commission who left to start Red Bud reporting – a service to help campaigns manage Ethics Commission rules.

Once again, we have to watch these so-called Republicans and their love of the Green New Deal. We do not want that here, but the only way to make that clear, is to let our Representatives and Senators here in the state know and stay on them to keep any more Green energy legislation from passing. Oklahoma has abundant natural gas, and new ways to extract oil are being found every year. The reddest state in the nation should NOT be playing the carbon credit games under any set of circumstances!

By the way, here is the list of buzzwords, Julianne talks about in the video. We ALL need to MEMORIZE these!

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Rep. Humphrey Calls for DHS Oversight in Oklahoma

The full podcast can be found on YouTube and Rumble.

Friday, November 8th, Oklahoma Representative Justin “JJ” Humphrey joined us to talk about the endless roadblocks and political nonsense that has prevented him from getting a full investigation of Oklahoma’s DHS system.

Though many of us have heard about situations within Oklahoma’s DHS system that have made us cringe, none more so than the plight of the Wooley family now enshrined in the documentary Saving Clayton. The documentary details the events that have unfolded since the tragic death of one of the grandsons left in their care, which resulted in the removal of the other grandson by DHS in 2018. Sadly, though the Wooleys have continued to fight to have Clayton returned to them, he is STILL in the Oklahoma foster care system.

According to Humphrey there are many other similar situations playing out in OKDHS and though he has the evidence to request an investigation of the agency, he has been unable to do so himself as allowed by law. And even if there’s an argument as to whether or not Humphrey has the ability to request an OSBI investigation of the agency, the Governor has not, nor has AG Drummond, nor has the Speaker of the House Charles McCall. Why? Why not an investigation? What could THAT hurt? Couldn’t it only help by proving current allegations as false?

Humphrey makes this point in the clip below.

In the next clip, Humphrey talks about the Oklahoma SWAMP and how that creates issues for state agencies, transparency and children.

After the resignation of Oklahoma DHS director Deborah Shropshire, Governor Stitt moves one of his appointments from the Director of the Office of Juvenile Affairs, to that position. Jeffery Cartmell was Stitt’s appointment to OJA. The following is an excerpt from Stitt’s announcement of Cartmell’s appointment to DHS.

It’s interesting that Stitt says that the OJA has “flourished” under his leadership when, while under Cartmell’s leadership, “Feds, police search Tulsa’s juvenile center in ‘multiple’ misconduct probes“.

But Cartmell is a SWAMP creature of the most amazing kind. Look at the resume over which Stitt is so proud and waxes so eloquently – like so many SWAMP creatures, the man has barely ever been employed off the government teat – in Cartmell’s case, he survived in private employment for two whole years.

THIS is the kind of thing that is killing Oklahoma – multiple appointments to multiple government jobs of individuals who are friends or donors to Governor Stitt and/or Swamp creatures who have continually been in and around government. Where are The People in Stitt’s government? I have yet to find one – at least one that can be appointed and still manage to work for The People and not for our tall, but Napoleonic Governor.

Here’s Humphrey’s take on that phenomenon.

Humphrey and the Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee in the House, sent an official order to the OSBI to investigate Oklahoma DHS and other agencies on September 25th of this year and yet NOTHING has happened. Why? What is our Oklahoma government hiding from its citizens? We want to know!

Contact your Representative IMMEDIATELY and inform them that you need them to contact the OSBI and tell them they must investigate OKDHS based on the official, September 25th order by Humphrey and Committee. Oklahoma’s children and families MUST BE PROTECTED!

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Garfield Residents Have To Sue Enid Government To Protect Them From HUGE Solar Installation

On May 8th of this year, Michael and I welcomed Garfield County freedom fighter, NeeAnn Clinton to the podcast to talk about a 5000 acre solar installation proposed by NextEra Energy – a private corporation with an extensive ESG strategy that has given lots of money to Oklahoma legislators and has numerous pending lawsuits including securities fraud and which is under active investigation by the Federal Election Commission due to a web of dark money influence across numerous campaigns in Florida.

October 25th, we hosted NeeAnn again so she could give us an update on their fight to stop the solar installation.

I urge you to watch the full live podcast on either our YouTube or Rumble channels, but below is a clip of NeeAnn talking about the fact that Garfield County residents have had to sue the City of Enid’s Metropolitan Area Planning Commission to force them to uphold zoning laws inside a 3 mile corridor through which NextEra has already begun construction WITHOUT ANY PERMITS.

Now think, just like we – and V1SUT Vantage – have explained with public schools that trample on parental rights, victims (taxpayers) of the Garfield County NextEra solar scheme, have to take their hard-earned dollars in hand and sue people whose jobs only exist because of TAX DOLLARS. So, citizens have their dollars taken from them by their government by force with the Constitutional expectation that their rights and liberty will be upheld by that same government, only to find out that they’ll have to use MORE of their hard-earned paychecks to force the government to do their jobs. This, is a sure sign of government tyranny.

NeeAnn and I also talked about the fact that what we’re seeing with the NextEra solar project in Garfield County is the same thing I’ve found with carbon capture in Oklahoma – NO ONE IS IN CHARGE OF PERMITTING OR PROTECTING THE SAFETY AND PROPERTY RIGHTS OF CITIZENS. How can this be? Because our Governor wants Oklahoma to be an “Open For Business“, “Top Ten State“, with a “More Of Everything, All-Of-The-Above Approach” to energy development. Okay, but where are the citizens in those political soundbites? What about their rights to their property and safety?

Those thing aren’t a priority of our Governor and that’s made very clear when you hear both NeeAnn and I talk about our findings with respect to the ‘green energy agenda’ in Oklahoma.

So let’s hear that from NeeAnn again…

Please, go to the website Garfield County residents have created to educate residents and other Oklahomans about NextEra’s solar facility, Stop Skeleton Creek Solar. While you’re there, be sure to donate to their cause because, as I well know – lawsuits aren’t cheap!

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Make It Stop! Oklahoma’s Managed Care System Hurting Exactly The People It’s Supposed To Help

Families who need health care the most in Oklahoma – foster and adoptive families and those in low income brackets – are having an impossible time getting it since our previous system – SoonerCare – was uprooted to implement a managed care system – SoonerSelect – but how did we get here and what do we do?

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

In 2020, Oklahomans decided (by a very narrow vote on SQ802 and although they had rejected Medicaid expansion as far back as 2016) to provide Medicaid to 200,000 more people in the state than were being served at the time. In bi-partisan opposition – that included Governor Stitt – it was argued that making more Oklahomans eligible for Medicaid would cost Oklahoma tax payers millions of dollars at a time when Oklahoma’s budget was in the red and that patients would receive significantly worse care on a system which would become overburdened by costs and bureaucracy.

Millions and millions of dollars were devoted to convincing Oklahomans to vote ‘Yes’ on the measure by the ideological left and the Hospital Association – the members of which stood to receive federal and state dollars for treating Oklahoma Medicaid patients. Because millions in one-time federal funds were available to help start managed care via President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (dubbed ObamaCare), proponents of the question argued that Oklahoma would be turning away millions in federal funding because of partisan disdain for the HCA and disadvantaging from health care those already financially disadvantaged.

October of 2020, The Oklahoma Health Care Authority (HCA) put together an RFP (Request for Proposals) to institute a ‘managed care’ system in place of the current SoonerCare program.

January 2021, Governor Stitt announced that he would create a new managed care plan for Oklahoma’s Medicaid patients called SoonerSelect. During that month, the HCA awarded 2.2 billion dollars worth of contracts to four companies for administration of SoonerSelect – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Complete Health (aka Centene), Humana Health Horizons and UnitedHealthcare, though the Oklahoma legislature – the voice of the people – was never consulted on either the RFP, or the selection of the insurance managers.

During early 2021, Oklahoma Health Care officials were told the state would also qualify for approximately 520 million dollars in Federal funds under the American Rescue Plan Act (instituted to ‘help’ Americans with the burgeoning costs of everything during the ‘pandemic’) to help the expansion of the Medicaid program along for two years.

After finding that the Governor and HCA had created an RFP and awarded contracts, the legislature began to push back on the SoonerSelect plan.

March 25th, 2021, several associations representing various Oklahoma medical providers filed a lawsuit against the state arguing that SQ802 didn’t allow the OHCA to award contracts for SoonerSelect to private insurance companies.

June 1st, the Supreme Court upheld the argument of the plaintiffs.

Meanwhile – though the legislature hadn’t gone into the 2021 session believing Oklahoma would institute Medicaid expansion – SB131 was created to put “guard rails” on the creation of a policy should it be brought to the legislature. SB131 was meant to prevent managed care administration of the SoonerSelect program because the legislature preferred – overwhelmingly – for the OHCA to administrate the expansion directly (as it had done with the SoonerCare program) without allowing private insurance organizations to serve as middle men between the HCA and the provider. The bill became law without Governor Stitt’s signature.

Consequently, the 2021 legislative session ended without passage of any specific legislation regarding the SoonerSelect program.

This led the OHCA to try and pass ’emergency rules’ based on SB131 at their board meeting in September, in order for the SoonerSelect managed care process to continue, but the rules were tabled by a 7-1 vote.

Several days after the vote to table, the ONLY physicians appointed to the OHCA by Governor Stitt, Dr. Jean Hausheer and Dr. Laura Shamblin, were removed – also by Governor Stitt – without explanation.

When the legislature resumed in February of 2022, SB1337 – a 44-page version of the Governor’s managed care plan – was introduced via floor substitute, passed after a very lengthy process, and signed by Governor Stitt in May, all to provide the needed legislation for the change to the SoonerCare system that should have been provided from the beginning. This put many legislators who were against managed care from the start in an unenviable position, as they felt they had to vote for SB1337 in order to provide some of the ‘guard rails’ SB131 was to have provided for a managed care system.

SB1337 recognized the three private insurance companies identified in the schematic above, who would act as the middle men between OHCA and healthcare providers. One of these – Centene – has been under investigation and embroiled in lawsuits in multiple states for setting up shell corporations, increasing costs to the state and diverting millions from health care delivery to their own pockets.

WHAT IS GOING ON

Since the implementation of managed care last year, foster families, adoptive families and others qualifying for Medicaid, have been unable to get the services that they had gotten under SoonerCare.

Several Oklahomans have reached out to us about this, so we called Senator David Bullard – a stalwart against the managed care system – to talk about the issue. We also included Salome Vaughn, an adoptive mother to her special needs grandson, who has not been able to receive services for him since the program began.

In the clip below, Senator Bullard describes what managed care is and some of the problems he’s seeing with the program, especially in RURAL AREAS – patients not being seen, doctors leaving the SoonerSelect program because they aren’t being paid, clinics literally going out of business – including an obstetric clinic that helped to deliver babies in the rural area around Hugo, Oklahoma. Everything so many Oklahoma Republican lawmakers said would happen BEFORE Governor Stitt forced this program.

HOW TO MAKE IT STOP

In the clip below, Senator Bullard tells Oklahomans how they can help stop managed care and revert it back to the previous OHCA-administrated system. Oklahomans banded together to remove a large number of moderates from the Senate and House this primary season, we just need to stand together and demand that the legislature STOP the SoonerSelect program and revert to the SoonerCare system in 2025.

As Senator Bullard said, doctors and PA’s need to send emails to, or call, their Representatives and Senators (find them here at the bottom of the page if you don’t know who they are) and ask them to ROLL BACK MANAGED CARE.

And as Salome said, parents with children on SoonerSelect, should do the same thing.

If you would feel better about it, send emails directly to david.bullard@oksenate.gov, but MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD! WE CAN ROLL BACK MANAGED CARE, BUT ONLY IF YOU STAND UP AND SPEAK OUT NOW before the 2025 session starts.

LIKE, SHARE and COMMENT on our clips. Send them to your family and friends! Find the FULL live videos on YouTube and Rumble and don’t forget to subscribe to our channels while you’re there!

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Something’s Afoot In Chickasha…

Not everything is economic development and not all economic development is good.

In 2022, the town of Chickasha Oklahoma decided that – in the name of ‘economic development’ – they would erect a 50 foot leg lamp statue mimicking the one found in Warner Brother’s, A Christmas Story.

You know the one. Ralphie’s dad gets the lamp as a prize of some kind and installs the ‘soft glow of electric sex’ in the front window, much to the chagrin of the neighbors and his mom. Quickly, the leg lamp meets an untimely death by reasons unknown (although his mother was watering plants in the room when it happened…) and is carted to the trash bin.

Chickasha has had the Festival of Lights for many years – an amazing display of lights put together by the town for the benefit of the many people who flock to see them as part of their Christmas celebration traditions. Yet, one day, townspeople were told that – in the interest of economic development – the angels traditionally sitting atop the downtown light polls during Christmastide would be removed and lamp shades used instead.

Many residents were upset and wanted to know more about these plans, which included the installation of the giant leg lamp.

Since that time, concerned residents have been trying to crack the mystery of the lamp – especially how it was planned and erected without the blessing of Warner Brothers Studios – the owner of the rights to the movie.

Today, what started as questions regarding why the town would want a statue of the ‘leg lamp’ from the movie A Christmas Story, has become a full on pursuit of the truth over its funding, resulting in reams of Open Records Requests and angry interactions among normally-friendly townspeople, the Economic Development Authority, and other town leaders.

Watch the full live video (YouTube and Rumble) with town resident Laurie Wood-Allen for more information and how to get answers from YOUR town when you are concerned that something might be amiss. Also, don’t forget the show we did with regular Julianne Romanello where we talked about the GRIFT Of Economic Development. It can really help to put this story in context.

But first, watch the short clip below where Laurie tells why she decided to start pursuing the issue of the lamp.

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Carbon Capture Can Kill You – All To Satisfy The World Economic Forum’s Agenda And Help The Rich Get Richer

Wow, what a way to come back from vacation! Friday, September 20th, Michael and I hosted a record THREE guests on the podcast at once – former Iowa Congressman Steve King and Robert Nazario of Freesoil Foundation and Steve Kenkel, an Iowa county official with a job akin to our County Commissioners – all to talk about carbon capture pipelines being created in mid-America and how these can kill us and our property rights.

What is a carbon capture pipeline you ask?

Here’s former Iowa Congressman, Steve King, to explain a bit about it:

According to the World Economic Forum, “To limit global warming to 1.5C, in line with the Paris Agreement, we need to cut current greenhouse-gas-emission levels in half by 2030 and reduce them to “net zero” by 2050.”

So…a carbon capture pipeline is a pipeline that stores CO2 removed from the earth’s atmosphere by carbon capture technology (see below), which can then be sequestered in the ground and used as currency when the WEF wins it’s war on the fiat exchange mechanism we’re all used to now (dollars) and our unGodly rich overlords want to buy a little CO2-producing yacht – or something nice for themselves.

What are “greenhouse gas” emissions?

Basically anything with CO2.

What is CO2? A compound of the elements Carbon and Oxygen which is produced by every living, breathing animal or human on the planet as a bi-product of cellular respiration (the process of breathing in Oxygen, which then powers all our cells by turning it into CO2, which we then breathe out), but also the burning of fossil fuels and decomposition of formerly-living (respiring) things to name a few others. Check out the schematic of the Oxygen Cycle which everyone should have learned in sciences courses throughout our school years. Seriously, it’s this easy to understand –

So stop and think on this a second…if plants use CO2 to create the O2 we breathe, what happens when we remove a huge chunk of CO2 from the air? If you wondered if it could be like putting a plastic bag over your head, you’d be right.

In fact, we know this to be true in practice – and here’s how.

The climate goonies have already started manufacturing these carbon sequestration pipelines and slipping them below the earth’s crust in numerous places – 5300 miles worth of them to be exact.

One of these is Satartia, Mississippi, where a CO2 pipeline rupture injured 45 and forced the evacuation of 200 townspeople.

See, CO2 is heavier than O2 – which should make you wonder how enough of it gets into the upper atmosphere to cause the heating effect we’re all supposed to be scared to death of. In great quantities – like that leaked from a CO2 sequestering pipeline – it flows out of its source and onto the ground – where people are. The following is an excerpt from an NPR article, “The U.S. is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story“, which you should read.

Cars stopped working, hobbling emergency response. People lay on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe. First responders didn’t know what was going on. “It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse,” says Jack Willingham, emergency director for Yazoo County.

Now, three years after the CO2 poisoning from the pipeline break, some in Satartia see the incident as a warning at a critical moment for U.S. climate policy. The country is looking at a dramatic expansion of its carbon dioxide pipeline network, thanks in part to billions of dollars of incentives in last year’s climate legislation. Last week, the Biden administration announced $251 million for a dozen climate projects that focus on CO2 transport and storage.

Satartia residents are lucky. In Cameroon, Africa in 1986, a large CO2 bubble was released by Lake Kuk. It flowed out of the lake, down the mountain and killed absolutely everything that breathed oxygen for many miles, including 1,746 people and around 8,300 livestock.

Obviously, this ‘scheme’ is riddled with problems. Here are a few others.

Private Ownership Means ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY To Anyone But Investors

Summit Carbon Solutions – the organization mentioned by Congressman King in the above video, as the pipeline pushing organization – is a subsidiary of Summit Agricultural Group – a PRIVATE CAPITAL firm that includes as one of its offerings, Summit Carbon Solutions – all led by one guy, the Chairman and CEO, Bruce Rastetter, who Congressman King calls, “The Republican George Soros Of The Midwest”.

Unfortunately, one of Oklahoma’s own – Continental Resources – is a Summit Carbon Solutions investor, as are TPG RISE, (“a leading global alternative asset management firm, dedicated to the climate investing strategy of its global impact investing platform TPG Rise”, led by Bono and Richard Branson among others) and Tiger Infrastructure Partners (with offices in NY and London) who is excited about ESG and focuses their investments on transportation, digital infrastructure and “energy transition” to include ‘decarbonization’.

So what? Who cares? People are free to invest in what they want, right?

Private Property Rights VS Privately Funded Corporations Seeking Eminent Domain Rights

The full video (which you can find on Rumble or YouTube) shows the frustration the three men have had fighting THEIR OWN ELECTED OFFICIALS to make sure their personal property rights guaranteed by the Constitution are secured.

Private organizations engaged in making money on the back of a community, do anything they can to win the community over. After all, who wouldn’t trust Nick? He just donated a crap-ton of money to the local FFA. Why should I question his motives in getting me to sign a contract for an easement on my property line to accommodate a pipeline I wouldn’t have to see? He’s obviously invested in the community. Sure I’d trust him – even if I had to sign a piece of paper saying I couldn’t divulge the specifications of our contract to anyone.

Here’s a perfect example of this technique. This is Summit Carbon Solutions “aren’t we great” page. They’re great, right? Who couldn’t see that?

Then, there’s the problem we’ve seen here in Central Oklahoma with wind turbine developers. The developers – flush with taxpayer funds from the Biden Administration to power the ‘green agenda’ – donate to legislator’s campaigns, essentially assuring that any legislation they need for their projects could go their way – including the removal of citizens from their land.

No, not all legislators are influenced in this way, however, Senator Jessica Garvin and Representative Kevin Wallace (among others) were booted out of office this summer, in part due to complaints that they worked harder for their donors than they did for their constituents.

We The People can’t regulate private investor firms powering private companies who want access to our land if we don’t want them to have it. All we can do is beg our elected officials to follow the Constitution and hope they’ll side with their constituents and not the ever-knee-bending cries of “ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT” and “GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” or the big bags of money these investor and taxpayer-powered people have that we middle-Americans don’t.

This is a bad position to be in as an American that can ONLY be rectified by being a LOUD, ACTIVE voice at County Commissioner meetings, Corporation Commission meetings and in the state Capitol with our own – and other – legislators and getting very involved in local elections.

Listen to Robert Nazario talk about the IMPORTANCE OF PROPERTY RIGHTS below. Take the words to heart and get ready to get in the game, because even if you don’t have property, dwindling farmland will effect your way of life and the way of life of your children and/or grandchildren as we’re all funneled into corporate solutions that will allow our Managers to manage us.

None of this ‘green’ nonsense is sustainable, or designed to truly help the planet – it’s designed to help people with money, make and keep their money.

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Governor Stitt Calls Us “Political Animals”, The Oklahoman Calls Us “Far Right-Wing” – Who Really ARE HD32 Jim Shaw Supporters?

It is a very sad thing to have to say, but we’ve come to a point in our country when the basic values held by so many in America – particularly rural Americans – of hard work, faith in Jesus Christ, love of family, patriotism, being neighborly and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps without bending the knee and kissing the ring of government, are being out right demonized.

And not just demonized by a media many Americans today have begun to realize merely manufacture government propaganda rather than reporting actual news, but by their own elected representatives and fellow citizens.

This primary season, a young man from HD32 – a district which bumps up against the border of eastern Oklahoma county where I live – decided he had great concerns about what was happening in his backyard.

Plans are being enacted by private ‘green energy’ companies (which get American tax-payer subsidies and couldn’t exist in the free market without them) to create wind generation installations in the back 40’s of these Oklahomans – some of whom have maintained family ownership of their properties since statehood. Most landowners don’t want that, yet absentee owners have sold out for the promise of the dollars they think they can collect while ruining the health and vitality of the land of their on-site neighbors with giant, bird-killing, non-compostable, oil-leaking monstrosities and they’re nervous about keeping their land intact. [If you’re interested in the problems with this ‘technology’, you can find a full podcast on the issue here.]

His own Representative, Kevin Wallace (Chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Committee – a very powerful position in state government because it holds the purse strings to how Oklahoman’s tax dollars are spent), admitted to dumping human waste on his property as fertilizer twice and then defended it by saying that it was legal in Oklahoma to do so.

Biosludge is a nightmare. It smells so badly that neighbors who live downwind of an application often can’t take full breaths outdoors, it draws flies and it contains everything that goes down the sewers in Oklahoma county from pharmaceuticals to industrial chemicals. Like many of his neighbors, this young man had developed great concerns about what this substance could do to the health of his family and his neighbors, but also the health of the aquifer from which we ALL draw in this region. [If you’re interested in the problems with biosludge, you can find a full podcast on the issue here.]

And these are just a few of the concerns residents in the district have had for years.

After realizing that no one – including Wallace – seemed to be confronting the issues that affected them beyond giving them lip service, entrepreneur and family man, HD32 resident, Jim Shaw, decided he needed to run against his politically powerful representative to try and do something about these issues for his neighbors and himself, running on a platform of Land, Livelihoods and Legacies.

The incumbent conducted his campaign abysmally. Wallace called Shaw (a political newcomer and a neighbor) a liar and a hypocrite via social media, direct mail and video ads nearly daily, and – late in the campaign – posted a Google Earth photo of Shaw’s farm with his address clearly labeled for the public to see, calling him a hypocrite for coming out against ‘green energy’ initiatives when he used a small solar panel bank for personal sustainability. According to one writer, Wallace’s construction company has undertaken numerous state jobs, “raising questions about whether Wallace’s legislative position has intersected with his business interests”. But then, Wallace is no stranger to public money, having accumulated about $68,000 in disaster and commodities subsidies over the last 10 years.

Donors to Wallace’s campaign – during which he spent over $440K just in the pre-run off period – read like a “who’s who” of lobbyist, special interests and PACS. In fact, frequent ROPE contributor Karmin Grider found that – over his entire career in the House – Wallace had collected less than 1% of his campaign funds from people in his district.

One of Wallace’s campaign issues centered on a bill to stop foreign ownership of private land in Oklahoma. Shaw researched and found the touted bill did nothing to stop foreign ownership of private land. When he challenged Wallace on the issue, Governor Kevin Stitt produced an off-the-cuff video supporting Wallace, the bill and Wallace’s role in passage of the bill while calling Shaw supporters “political animals”. (But Wallace did vote for a bill to protect people who put biosludge on their farms from possible EPA fines over ‘forever’ chemicals.)

During the run-off election, House Speaker Charles McCall, Governor Kevin Stitt, Marathon PAC Chairman Thomas Tillison (a PAC which contributed $5k to Wallace in the run-off and whose family contributed $7,600 during the primary), Senator Grant Green and Speaker-elect Kyle Hilbert all came to the district to stump for Wallace. (Photos taken from public posts to Kevin Wallace’s Facebook page)

I awoke this morning to a video in Facebook Messenger and a headline from the Oklahoman.

The article in the Oklahoman labeled those of us who supported (and still support heartily) candidate-now-Representative, Jim Shaw, “far right-wing”.

The video (below) was from a man I’ve become friends with while supporting Jim Shaw for election. He lives on his family’s long-held farm in the district, is wildly intelligent and salt-of-the-earth as they come. This is a timeline he created from pictures he’d taken from start to finish of the campaign featuring all the neighbors, friends and now-friends who came together wanting a leadership change in the district.

THESE are the “political animals” – the “far right-wing” people who overturned a powerful member of the Oklahoma legislature when they believed he didn’t have their best interests in mind.

Call us what you will, but we’re God-fearing, loyal, patriotic, self-sufficient and loving. We’re proudly American. We’re your neighbors. We’re everything all Americans USED to be.

So as the propagandists seek to minimize us, demonize us and destroy us, they should just understand one thing with every fiber of their being;

WE’RE THE FOUNDATIONS OF RURAL AMERICA AND WE’RE NEVER GONNA TO CHANGE.

Video audio: Sturgill Simpson Coal Miner Family From Kentucky.

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