ethics

Citizens Of HD32 Effectively Taxed Without Representation As Representative Jim Shaw’s Bills Blocked From Hearings

Last year, political newcomer Jim Shaw, driven by the fact that he didn’t want to see wind turbines scattered all over the Oklahoma landscape, or deal with the after effects of having human sewage dumped on the fields around him, decided to run for the Oklahoma House against a very powerful, nearly-termed-out Representative, Kevin Wallace, then House Appropriations Chair.

In a surprising upset, Shaw – with an army of grassroots rural Oklahomans worried about all the same things – beat Wallace in the primary.

This was unheard of. No newcomer out of nowhere beats the House Appropriations Chair running for this 5th term. And so the RINO forces gathered.

Governor Stitt put out numerous messages urging voters in the district to vote for Wallace, including this video, where he called those advocating AGAINST Wallace “Political Animals”.

Everyone from the Speaker of the House Charles McCall, to the Speaker-Elect of the House, Kyle Hilbert, came out to little ‘ole District 32 to churn up support for House Appropriations Chair Wallace.

Speaker-Elect Kyle Hilbert stumps for Kevin Wallace in HD32

Here, you see Kevin Wallace in the background with then-Speaker-Elect Kyle Hilbert (foreground) stumping for Wallace at a campaign event in HD32.

Here is Wallace (L) with (in order), Speaker of the House Charles McCall, Governor Kevin Stitt, Thomas Tillison (broadband and other business owner/Wellston) and Grant Green, Senator for SD28, which includes Shaw’s.

With that much ammunition behind him, Wallace must not have been poling well. And then came the point where Wallace apparently got desperate, and doxed Shaw, toward the end of the campaign, posting pictures of his residence to his Facebook page.

Unfortunately for Wallace and his campaign – funded nearly 100% by special interests and business professionals – none of these measures helped. In the end Shaw prevailed in the general election by a wide margin (3,291 to 2,764).

But then came Shaw’s first day on the floor. Organizational Day, the day on which the House rules would be voted on by the House for the 2025 legislative session.

Shaw had read the rules and didn’t approve of the two-tiered Committee structure and other issues. He had studied the rules in the few days they were available to him and began to debate them on the floor, when he was tersely debated (bullied?) by Counselor to the Speaker (a new leadership position just added this year), Representative Chris Kannady – the same Chris Kannady who openly admitted to working to oust 12 Conservative Republicans from the House in 2018 for being too conservative. The same Chris Kannady attached to the Conservative Alliance PAC – used to fund the campaigns of the Conservative’s opponents – which was fined 45 thousand dollars for, among other things, not filing spending reports.

Here is the Kannady/Shaw exchange on the floor February 7th, 2025. You can find more here in the full live video on YouTube where everything that happened on the House floor during Organizational Day is broken down.

Can it be proven that leadership has blocked Shaw’s bills from hearings? No. However, a simple look at the history of the HD32 election in which Shaw challenged Wallace provides ample support of that contention. In fact, people may look at the clip of Wallace and Kannady on the floor and feel that Kannady was NOT trying to intimidate Shaw, but it is well known that Representative Kannady hates conservatives so much that he actively worked to remove 12 conservative Republicans from the House in 2018 using a PAC eventually fined for unethical actions.

In the end, it matters not the actual reasons Shaw’s bills weren’t heard in Committee because the end result will ALWAYS be the same – the people that voted Jim Shaw into office deserve to be heard. In point of fact, that concept is the MAINSTAY OF OUR REPUBLIC. One would think an attorney with the self-appointed Constitutional knowledge of Chris Kannady would know this. Even young kids know that taxation without representation is the reason colonists dressed as Native Americans and dumped tea into the Boston Harbor in December 1773.

And so it stands that because none of Representative Jim Shaw’s bills were heard in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, the effect is none other than that ALL of the citizens of HD32 have now been TAXED WITHOUT REPRESENTATION and that IS UNFORGIVEABLE.

If this is the way House leadership intends to act for the duration of the session, Oklahomans had better commit to removing each and every one of these individuals for impeding the Constitutional rights of an entire county’s worth of citizens. And just in case you don’t know who these individuals are, here is the list and the link to find them on the House website. It behooves all Oklahomans to get very familiar with these elected Representatives now and to start looking for their replacements as June 2026 looms on the horizon. Included next to the name is that Representative’s 2024 conservative index according to the Oklahoma Constitution. Without a Boston Harbor, removal and replacement will be the only way to get our point across.

Kyle Hilbert – Speaker; 56
Anthony Moore – Speaker Pro Temp; 60
Stan May – Majority Caucus Chair; 63
Nick Archer – Majority Caucus Vice-Chair; 46
Josh Cantrell – Majority Caucus Secretary; 80
Josh West – Majority Floor Leader; 60
John Pfieffer – Majority Deputy Floor Leader; 66
Steve Bashore – Majority Deputy Floor Leader; 80
Tammy West – Majority Whip; 60
Mark Lawson – Majority Leader; 70
Toni Hasenbeck – Majority Deputy Leader; 60
Scott Fetgatter – Tribal and External Affairs; 70
Chris Kannady – Counselor To The Speaker; 63
Collin Duel – Assistant Majority Floor Leader; 70
Gerrid Kendrix – Assistant Majority Floor Leader; 90

February 22, 2025 0

Dissecting The Implications of School Choice Expert Corey DeAngelis Recent Outing As A Former Gay Adult Film Star

Oh. My. Word. Here’s where we are today; flipping through pages of social media postings about a school choice mouthpiece who has recently been accused of having a former life as a gay, adult film star.

So let’s break this latest phenomenon down, shall we?

NUMBER ONE: If you’re a professing Christian, you shouldn’t be using this story to bolster any of your own personal political points.

Every one of us is human and 90% of us have done something crazy/awful/horrifying/creepy when we were young people. We are certainly right to judge other professing Christians for their behaviors – and even call them out on them – but I don’t recall DeAngelis being one of those. In fact I have no memory of any of his talking points revolving around Jesus Christ or Biblical living.

I’ve never been a DeAngelis fan because I’m not for giving taxpayer money to other taxpayers so they can put their children in private schools at my expense, but in all honesty, I can’t imagine being Corey DeAngelis right now. He apparently married last year. He’s been wined and dined and admired as an expert by many thousands of people over many years. What a screeching halt to a rather charmed life. The kind, in fact, that should probably make each of us internalize the notion, “there but by the Grace of God go I“.

NUMBER TWO: People can change. Granted, some people never do, so there’s that, but the world is full of stories in which people overcame a life predicated on bad circumstances and/or choices to become better people – changed people. It matters not the circumstances, if they’ve rebuked their former lives and done a 180, it’s the Christian perspective to ‘forgive and forget’.

When I was in high school, I spent most of my time hanging with the stoners. I drove stoned. I went to work stoned. I was stoned a lot.

At 20, I was a married mother of one and my whole high school hanging with the stoners lifestyle went out the window as I took up the mantle of respectable, homemaker and mother. I then went on to become a respectable divorced parent putting myself through college while simultaneously raising a small person (who, incidentally, became a respectable adult).

The stuff I learned from my high school years kept me from doing further stupid stuff as an adult. The world didn’t end because I did stupid stuff, it could have actually made it a bit better because I learned some hard lessons about the consequences of doing stupid stuff that I have never forgotten.

Look, I get that acting in gay porn movies when you’re spokesman for a group touting parental ’empowerment’ and bettering kids, isn’t a small deal, but bad is bad is bad. Let’s avoid getting into an argument – for now – over what’s ‘badder’ in a ‘previous life’ – doing drugs or performing gay porn.

NUMBER THREE: We should NEVER take people who put themselves in the role of ‘expert’ on anything, at face value.

It happens over and over and over again. It’s a story as old as the hills.

A Music Man comes into town and says he’s created the world’s biggest band – with 76 trombones no less – and can do that for them! The townspeople, amazed at his eloquence, believe his pitch, throw their lot – and their money – in behind him only to find out that their marching band expert is nothing more than a conman trying to make money off the backs of naive Midwesterners.

Today, people are all too willing to believe the words of people who are deemed experts by others – or deem themselves as experts. We don’t even have to mention Anthony Fauci or anyone at the UN, or WEF here. After all, everyone knows these people are experts who deserve our complete faith, because, well, ‘science’ and all that.

Corey DeAngelis (and every other ‘school choice’ ‘expert’) is no different in any singular way.

NUMBER FOUR: There are about 99,999,999 things more important in this world than Corey DeAngelis right now and one of them is to note who IS using this information for their gain.

Trump endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ author put on leave from school choice group after his ‘gay porn past’ is discovered. Gosh, that’s not obvious – and I’m not going to add the article written by Oklahoma’s own very left blogosphere regular who loves to gleefully point out anything that jabs anyone on the right hard in the ribs.

When the left comes out of the woodwork with all kinds of garbage about anyone on the right, you know it’s to shiv them politically and skewer public opinion and trust in whatever topic it is they’ve shiv’ed them over.

IN THE END: So, all of those things, but of all of those things – this; STOP BELIEVING IN EXPERTS. People in power, STOP COURTING THEM; stop wining and dining them and giving them your Citizenship Awards, or bringing them into your office at the capitol and predicating [flawed] education policy on them.

Believe it or not, there are REGULAR people out here in the real world of non-experts who have become everyday experts just by our own experiences and we might have a thing or two to say, but we can’t because…well…experts.

July 11th, I went to the Capitol for an Ethics Commission ‘Working Group Meeting’ seeking input regarding Governor Stitt’s Ethics and Elections Executive Order.

I sat there quietly as a Democrat legislator and the head of the task force, Chairman, AJ Ferate, explained the work his group had done to satisfy the Governor’s EO. At one point during his presentation, Mr. Ferate mentioned how “his friends in Washington DC” didn’t like one of the proposals the group had made, and, after all, everyone should know that every DC swamp rat is an expert in ethics.

After all the experts in the room had spoken, the head of the Ethics Commission, Lee Anne Bruce Boone asked if there were any comments from attendees. I asked if I could go to the mic and was allowed to say a few things about what I had uncovered in my research on Dark Money in Oklahoma.

I was fascinated – but not surprised – by how many of the experts in the room seemed disinterested in what I had to say, yet they had asked Ferate and others, several questions during the session. But then again, who am I? I’m no expert. And why? Probably because the ‘real’ experts don’t want me to be.

So, instead of using the DeAngelis scandal for political gain, let’s use it to inform ourselves about what it means to be an ‘expert’ in today’s political space. Then, let’s use that knowledge to remind our elected officials that we citizens can be experts just as knowledgeable as those on FOX, or in DC – and we don’t have quite so far to fall off our pedestals.

September 24, 2024 1

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.

August 29, 2024 3

Land Grab Disguised As A Turnpike To Make The Rich Richer

Yes, I’m a registered Republican. No, I’m not changing the title of this blog. Unfortunately, we now live in UPSIDE DOWN WORLD. Maddeningly, our Republican Governor – Kevin Stitt – and the Republican SUPERMAJORITY Oklahoma legislature, is going Big Business for $1000 Alec.

Oklahoma, once considered to be the reddest state in the 50, is now Tyrannyville thanks to the economic development mantra of the group that used to be for ‘the people’; the property owners, those who had worked hard for a living and wanted to protect their investment/s – the Republicans. Nope, not any more.

Friday, May 24th, ROPE Report hosted Whitney Mullica and Kelly Wilson of PikeOffOTA (Citizens For Responsible Transportation) to talk about how the Oklahoma Transportation Authority – the pseudogovernmental agency peopled with unelected bureaucrats unaccountable to the public – work with members of the business development community to develop tolled roads that, not only must the citizens of Oklahoma pay to use, but that removes their property from them using the force of the state.

You can find the full video on our Rumble and YouTube channels. I suggest you watch the whole thing – it is very informative when hearing all the information at once – but until you have the time, watch the very short pieces I’ve clipped from the whole, below.

Though many people do eventually cut a deal with the OTA for the ‘sale’ of their house and property to the Authority, many people refuse. It doesn’t matter, however, because the state kicks them off the property anyway only to wait – in some cases – over A YEAR to have the issue settled by the court. This is OUTRAGEOUS and citizens of Oklahoma simply shouldn’t tolerate this kind of nonsense.

Here, Kelly shows that, while eminent domain is used to remove property owners from their property, the ‘surplus’ land ‘left over’ after the turnpike has been created, is then sold to the public. Many times, the purchasers of the land are people who benefitted in some way through the OTA turnpike process in the first place. While this is not illegal, personally benefitting from the process of removing the property of a citizen using the force of the state is ethically and morally wrong. If people can’t police themselves along moral and ethical lines, why is the state not protecting citizens by preventing this kind of behavior?

Could it be that ‘the state’ would rather have the money afforded it by the rich and powerful – especially when it comes time to be re-elected?

Below is the most important video you’ll see if you really want to know the way citizens are being tyrannized by Oklahoma’s governmental bureaucracy because this video connects all the dots. Suffice it to say, ‘the people’ simply don’t matter in the face of business interests that want to enrich themselves.

Here, Kelly provides THE CIRCLE OF GOVERNMENT INTERESTS – the ways in which the rich just keep getting richer off the backs of those whose property is seized by eminent domain to create roads they’ll be forced to pay to use. Rinse and repeat. It’s like shampooing your hair.

Who’s going to protect the citizen now when all the people whose job it is to PROTECT THE RIGHTS AND PROPERTY OF THE CITIZEN are essentially in on the deal to benefit from government contracts and government planning and government’s support of private business and public/private partnerships…..

We’ll never get our liberty back until we figure out a way to get a tire iron in this wagon wheel right here!

So…PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!! Help us educate all Oklahomans about what’s happening right under their feet!

May 24, 2024 0

The Frontier Newspaper Blasts Oklahoma’s Every Kid Counts For Not Disclosing Its Donors, But There’s More

https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/billionaire-philanthropists-pushing-charter-schools-and-school-vouchers-also-fund-oklahomas-secretary-of-educations-six-figure-salary/

Though The Frontier blasts Every Kid Counts Oklahoma (EKCO) for not disclosing their donors, the real story here appears to be that an Oklahoma non-profit embroiled in controversy on several levels has no publicly-filed 990 since 2019. Though there are Republicans who might dismiss information ferreted out by The Frontier as ‘biased’ or ‘ax-grinding’, the research I’ve been doing independently for some time, supports most reports made by The Frontier.

Here’s what I have found – including as always – screen shots and URL locations where you can find this information for yourself and not take my word, or the word of an ‘independent’ newspaper supported by funds from enormous leftist Tulsa donors, including Kaiser and Schusterman.

ECKO – BEGINNINGS

{All information listed is from documents filed with the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s Office unless otherwise mentioned.}

12.6.2016 – The beginning of ECKO lies with a non-profit organization founded in December of 2016 called Upward Oklahoma, Inc. It’s purpose was to engage in “various charitable, educational, and scientific activities in the state of Oklahoma”.

Secretary of State filings show that the Registered Agent was Brett Farley (now Executive Director of the Catholic Conference) addressed from a post office box at the Post Office on Covell in Edmond.

The principle Incorporators were Brett Farley, Cordon DeKock (former Vice-President of Political Affairs for the Oklahoma State Chamber), addressed at 330 NE 10th Street (the address for the Oklahoma State Chamber) and Jason Reese (former General Counsel to Governor Stitt) addressed at 100 Park Avenue Suite 500. Upward Oklahoma’s Directors are listed as the same three men.

2.10.2017 – February 10th, 2017, An Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of Upward Oklahoma Inc. was made, describing it as a 501(c)(3) entity officing from the 10th Floor of Two Leadership Square and the Registered Agent as McAfee & Taft A Professional Corporation. At that time, Jennifer Carter (former Chief of Staff to former State Superintendent Janet Barresi and Senior Advisor for American Federation for Children Oklahoma) and Kyle Beauregard (a tax manager from Oklahoma) were added to the list of incorporators.

3.30.2020 – Upward Oklahoma is re-named ECKO (Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, Inc.).

Interestingly, the Scissortail Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization that houses the Choice Matters school choice program headed, until recently, by Robert Ruiz (now the Executive Director of External Affairs At Oklahoma City Community College) and funded in large part by grants from the Walton Foundation, filed for trade name reports for ECKO and Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, January 14th, 2020. March 30, 2020, both were withdrawn.

Under the March 30 filing, the business is described as being located at 16212 Sonoma Park Drive in Edmond (a building housing Atlas Construction) and Trent Smith (Governor Stitt appointee to the Oklahoma State School Board) is listed as ‘President’. Smith’s LinkdIn account also verifies that he carried this title. AJ Griffin (former state Senator and Director of Government and Community Affairs for PayCom) is listed as the Secretary of ECKO.

12.3.2021 – Finally, in December of 2021, the address for ECKO is changed to 309 NW 13th Street, Suite 103, OKC (the site of the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center) and the President is listed as Jake Yunker (former Policy Director for Governor Mary Fallin and the President of the Board of ECKO) and the Treasurer listed as Cory Christofferson (Vice-President of Corporate Banking at Bank of Oklahoma and ECKO Board Member)

ECKO – TAX FILING

From 2016 to 2019, it appears that Brett Farley dutifully posted 990-N postcards for the non-profit Upward Oklahoma from the post office box on Covell.

But after that – filing stops. The IRS has no record of anything filed after 2019.

ECKO – TAXES AND TIMELINE

From 2016 until March of 2020 when Upward Oklahoma is re-named Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, little seems to have happened in the life of the organization. In fact, it looks like the State Chamber and friends were considering a new school choice venture at some point and secured a non-profit filing with the Secretary of State toward that end. In fact, a June 26, 2020, press release verifies that “Oklahoma Achieves Transitions To [a] New Reform Initiative” called “Every Kid Counts”.

No harm, no foul – lots of people create organizations, even changing names and personnel along the way.

The State Chamber ran the initiative, Oklahoma Achieves, from 2013 to 2020 – fighting FOR the Common Core State Standards along the way – and hiring Secretary of Education Ryan Walters in May of 2019. Walters then became CEO of the transition initiative ECKO.

There is no line item on the Oklahoma Achieves 990 filing for 2019 for a ‘Ryan Walters’ salary and the IRS has no public 2020 990 filing for Oklahoma Achieves at all. Walters worked for Achieves until he was named CEO of ECKO in the summer of 2020.

This is also the case with ECKO – there are no public IRS filings for 2020 or 2021 for an organization that – today – reports having six employees, (though according to their LinkdIn profiles, it appears 2 may be contract employees and 3 were hired in 2021 – April, August and December) and CEO – Ryan Walters – who makes over $100,000 dollars per year.

According to The Frontier, Every Kid Counts produced ‘tax forms’ (there was no specific information provided as to what kind or for what year) after a month of asking. They also report these ‘tax forms’ showed that ECKO raised just under $140,000 in 2020 – nothing is reported for 2021. Of interest on those ‘tax forms’ should be the salaries and expenses of ECKO compared to the $140,000 raised. Where’s that information?

ECKO – DONORS

I’m going to make this very clear: I don’t fault any non-profit for raising funds – that’s what a non-profit does to advance their mission statement. I do think, however, that the public should know who the largest donors of non-profits are, as that provides an idea of that organization’s political lean.

Our organization also believes that if Ryan Walters is directing education policy as the Governor Stitt-appointed Secretary of Education, his work for an education non-profit (501(c)(3)) where there is a LOT of crossover, should be 100% transparent because of the ethics concerns this type of situation generates – how easy is to push the agenda of ECKO through legislative policy when the CEO of ECKO is a legislative liaison?

The Frontier has reported that some of ECKO’s funds come from The Walton Foundation. This I cannot corroborate. The Walton Foundation has a very transparent search tool in their grant database that identifies the organizations to which they donate and no search ever returned a grant for “Every Kid Counts” or “ECKO”. The Walton Foundation filed an extension on their 2020 990’s and don’t have a publicly filed 2021 990 via the IRS, so there was no way to corroborate via that method either.

The Walton Foundation DID provide a total donation of $500,000 for Oklahoma Achieves over three years (2017, 2019, 2020), however, under the name Oklahoma Education Excellence Initiative. If the Walton grant was given to ECKO under a different name, I didn’t find that either.

I did locate a $10,000 donation to ECKO from the Koch/Walton start-up non-profit, Yes. Every kid, for 2020.

It is of interest that the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center – the building in which ECKO offices, has received MILLIONS of dollars from The Walton Foundation over the years, but then OPSCR is very transparent that it is funded via “annual membership fees [and] 4 foundations that fund the OPSRC: The George Kaiser Family Foundation, The Inasmuch Foundation, The Charles & Lynn Schusterman Foundation, & The Walton Family Foundation.” According to the filed 990 for 2020, OPSCR collected 3.7 million dollars in funding. It also had a payroll of 1.3 million and gave grants to schools in excess of 2.6 million dollars.

Suffice it to say, ECKO has a long, interesting history and discovering exactly how ECKO has supported Ryan Walter’s $100,000 + salary and numerous employees on the $140,000 reported by The Frontier, has raised more questions for yet another blog.

May 27, 2022 2