Legislature

Legislative Retaliation Against Ryan Walters For Neutrality On Jeb Bush’s Plan To Collect Data On Your Kids?

Today, at nearly 3pm, Representative Dell Kerbs and Senate Pro-Temp Paxton took a bill already on the floor calendar in the House for today under Title 20 – SB646 (An Act relating to judicial and federal official security and privacy😉 – gutted it and amended the entire bill to amend the education statutes under Title 70 to An Act relating to education which relates to State Board of Education membership;).

The bill now creates a board of 10 members from 7. One will be the Secretary of Education who will be the chair plus, five members shall be appointed by the Governor by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, two members shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and two members shall be appointed by the Pro Tempore of the Oklahoma State Senate.]. It also changes the way items may be added to the agenda. If three or more Board members wish to add an item to the agenda, they may – it does not have to be approved by the State Superintendent who is the chair of the board. (it was not heard 5.8)

This is a problem because if the governor has five appointments to the Board and the governor is interested in making changes to the Oklahoma State Department of Education, policy or procedure, he could conceivably ask Board members to take that issue to the full board by asking for an item to be added to the agenda. As we’ve seen, Governor Stitt – who has about a year left on his term – has made radical changes to the board in just this year alone because he didn’t like collecting data on illegal children (even though we already do that) so that conception isn’t really out of the question.

Why would this bill be changed just today?

Possibly because our friend Mary with V1SUT Vantage published a story on SB224 – the government data sharing bill we’ve been pushing back on for weeks – OEQA Will Hold Oklahomans’ Lifelong Data Under SB 224: Why You Should Be Concerned. I urge you to read it. It’s eye opening about so many things!

Midway down the page, Mary reports:

During committee hearings, Caldwell claimed the SDE under State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ (R) supports SB 224. We reached out to Supt Walters who denied any public support and asserted his agency’s neutrality concerning the bill.

“I have never publicly supported the bill. Not sure where that would be coming from,” said State Supt Ryan Walters of SB224. “SDE has always been neutral on the bill. We are required to provide data to legislators when they request it.”

OEQA’s claims of having “worked collaboratively with SDE, Regents, OESC, and CareerTech to advance the development of a Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS)” are also exaggerated.

When asked if he had personally attended any meetings with any OEQA personnel concerning SB 224 or a centralized database over the last year, Walters replied, “No, I was not personally involved in that.”

Until today, the Superintendent of Public Instruction had not made a comment – publicly – about whether or not he supported the bill.

Now, put the two things together.

WHAT IS JEB BUSH’S INVOLVEMENT WITH OKLAHOMA AND SB224?

Let me be clear – I do not definitively know. What I’m about to report is pure speculation, but speculation that deserves real consideration.

We know that Jeb Bush has a long history of involvement with Oklahoma education policy. He was heavily involved in pushing Common Core here in our legislature. We know that Superintendent Barresi and others got a free trip to Bush’s – then Foundation for Educational Excellence, now ExcelInEd – during her tenure. We also know that he has come to Oklahoma – at least once – to push school “choice” in 2021.

Here’s a bit of an article summing up Bush’s influence here in Oklahoma, but let’s also not forget, that – not only does Jeb have his own educational policy-pushing organization – his father was the guy who STARTED THE IDEA OF TAKING DATA ON KIDS FOR ‘EDUCATIONAL’ PURPOSES.

The many of us who are trying to stop this bill from passing the legislature this year have heard that ‘someone big from outside the state’ is interested in seeing this bill pass. A few names ran across my brain, but Jeb was at the top. On his ExcelInEd website is something called, “Pathways Matter: How The Right Combination of State Policies Builds a Skilled, Educated Workforce“.

So, this initiative by the non-profit ExcelInEd organization run by Jeb Bush, has a MODEL POLICY that states can use to create an initiative in their state to allow kids to be tracked from birth through workforce to make sure they can get a job.

No, scratch that – make sure our businesses have the workers they’ll need to keep their business open, pay taxes and wine and dine legislators to create policy to help them do business. Listen below.

Notice “How Can We Fix It?”. Gosh. That sounds a whole lot like what bill SB224 is attempting to do, doesn’t it?

Here’s the Power Point program all about Oklahoma where – shockingly so much legislation stacks up to mesh with the intent of Bush’s initiative. Look specifically at the last three pages on data collection. So uncanny!

BOTTOM LINE

Do we know that Jeb Bush is influencing Oklahoma education? No. Do we have enough evidence to believe so? YES.

I fought hard to have Oklahoma repeal the Common Core State Standards from law. I never really thought anything had been accomplished afterward, because teachers/schools went right back to using them and there was nothing to make them stop. After reading the contents of a search I asked Grok to run for me, I’m having second thoughts.

Groks analysis indicated that the 2014 Common Core data repeal and NCLB waiver revocation “created policy turbulence, potentially disrupting COWIBs alignment with Oklahoma Works’ educational goals. Political resistance to federal mandates may have complicated WIOA implementation”.

So, call your Senator and Representative RIGHT NOW and tell them you

don’t want Oklahoma to be like every other state,
you don’t want your kids to be trained to fill a job, you want your kids to be educated so they can make up their own mind about what they want to be when they grow up
and Oklahoma doesn’t need an out-of-state globalist, policy-monkey ,wrenching up Oklahoma’s education policy.

We MUST defeat SB224 and keep the Oklahoma State Department of Education data from being hooked up with Workforce data (collected at the Department of Commerce) at the Oklahoma Educational Quality and Accountability board, helping to create the Planned Economy our overlords – like Bush! – want!

May 9, 2025 0

PikeOffOTA (aka Citizens for Responsible Transportation) Request Bills For 2025

Bills requested to help curb the power, influence and transparency of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. Please contact your legislators and ask them to watch for these bills.

OTA SPECIFIC

HB1188 – Title 69, Section 1707 – Abutting property owner rights along turnpikes, including compensation for damages, devaluation of property or at the request of the property owner, acquisition of property plus all relocation costs incurred by owner. (Rick West) **MIRROR BILL TO SB969

HB1781 – Title 69, Section 1914 (NEW LAW) – Restricting how and where the OTA can advertise. (Shaw)

HB1939 – Title 69, Section 1705 – Sunset location authorizations if the OTA has not commenced physical construction in earnest within five years. (Sterling)

HB2090 – Title 74, Section 213 – State Auditor and Inspector to perform a special audit providing a determination of the revenue required to repay the original cost of existing turnpikes, provide an assessment of risk within the agency, conduct a 15 year look back and 10 year projection of maintenance reserved fund balances, deposits, expenditures and explanation of cross pledging refinancing practices, provide explanation of gap between required reserve maintenance fund deposits and actual reserve maintenance funds, provide an explanation of financial impact of cost overruns on the driving forward program. (Menz)

HB2093 – Title 69, Section 1709 – Establishing a bond debt ceiling on the OTA. (Menz) **MIRROR BILL TO SB963

HB2097 – Title 69, Section 1711 – – NEW LAW – Requiring legislative approval via a joint resolution for toll increases. (Menz) **MIRROR BILL TO SB964

SB963 – Title 69, Section 1709 – Establishing a bond debt ceiling on the OTA. (Standridge) **MIRROR BILL TO HB2093

SB983 – Title 69, Section 1705 – Audit by the State Auditor and Inspector prior to Bond Sales. Auditor can request any information necessary for the determination of the feasibility and economic soundness of any turnpike projects or parts thereof listed in 1705(e) which are to be financed with revenue bonds. (Standridge)

SB966 – Title 69, Section 1703 – Creation of a Turnpike Legislative Oversight Board. OTA must annually provide a copy of its most recent annual report to the members of the Turnpike Legislative Oversight Board, in addition to any information requested by such body. (Standridge)

SB969 – Title 69, Section 1707 – Abutting property owner rights along turnpikes, including compensation for damages, devaluation of property or at the request of the property owner, acquisition of property plus all relocation costs incurred by owner. (Standridge) **MIRROR BILL TO HB1188

SB 964 – Title 69, Section 1711 – NEW LAW – Requiring legislative approval via a joint resolution for toll increases. (Standridge) **MIRROR BILL TO HB2097

Open Records Act

HB2095 – Title 51, Section 24A.5 – Requiring state agencies to reply to open record requests within 30 days.

February 3, 2025 0

Out Of State Investors Are Causing Your Insurance To Soar!

Wednesday, September 18th, Michael and I had Kayla Blount, with 317 Insurance Advisors, return to talk to us about why Oklahomans have such EXPENSIVE CAR INSURANCE.

I have to say, I’m rarely shocked by anything the guests on our show say, but this one got me.

Did you know that there are people – often outside of the US – who give money to law firms to help car accident clients get bodily injury claims? Yup. You know me – I’ve got to research it myself before I am really going to report on it – and yup, it’s 100% accurate. It’s called, “Third Party Litigation”.

Click here to read a really great description by the Insurance Information Institute of what 3rd Party Litigation is, what it can do to the insurance industry and your bottom line as a consumer needing car insurance. And here is another short informational piece that describes the damage this practice is doing to economic inflation.

Watch Kayla describe this fun little practice and how it negatively effected one of her clients:

Here in Oklahoma, at least two organizations have been found to be engaging in this practice of financing law firms to collect vast over-market settlements for their clients with car insurance companies, usually over often hard-to-detect soft tissue injuries.

Westfleet Advisors is an American-based organization that uses funds from PRIVATE investors (outside the stock exchange) to prop up law firms attempting to gain large settlements for their clients which are then split up between the client, the law firm and the investors, leaving car insurance companies with HUGE payouts or litigation bills, the cost of which then roll on down to the consumer.

If you might be unconvinced that 3rd Party Litigation isn’t making a difference in your pocketbook, realize that an author from Westfleet Advisors themselves wants you to know that “$2.7 Billion of Capital Committed in U.S. Commercial Litigation Finance Industry in 2023“.

But it’s not only PRIVATE investment firms that take part in this ‘for the love of money’ scheme. I found several that trade publicly on the American Stock Exchange that do the very same thing for their investors – fund law firms to get big payouts for clients at the expense of automobile insurance companies and THEIR clients.

For example, Burford Capitol has offices in the US and all over the world. They’re happy to say that they’re publicly funding the misery of American consumers on their website.

So what are we to do here?

Watch the full video when you have time (find it on YouTube and Rumble). Kayla has a lot more great information outside of just the clips I pulled out. A full viewing of the interview will help you put everything in context.

Contact your legislator and tell them that OKLAHOMA MUST HAVE TORTE REFORM IN THE AREA OF VEHICULAR ACCIDENT JUDGMENTS NEXT SESSION before we all go broke just trying to lawfully drive our vehicles on Oklahoma roadways. You might propose it like this; if the legislature wants to make laws about how we can operate our vehicles on our roadways, they better help us afford to follow their laws (of course it would be better if they quit writing so many laws, but let’s start there).

Next, watch the short video below that talks about what you can do PERSONALLY to stop yourself from being victimized by a car accident. Take notes, save the video, whatever you need to do to follow Kayla’s advice and help keep yourself – and by extension your pocketbook – safe.

Lastly, TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS BY SHARING THE VIDEOS/BLOG, ETC. We’ll never win the hearts and minds of legislators if we don’t come at this problem with one really loud voice and that will take all of us we can muster up!

September 22, 2024 0

Public Schools Have Zero Accountability To Taxpayers – Just Look At What Happens When They Are Sued!

I remember a song from the ’60’s whose chorus says, “I fought the law and the law won” (here is a version by the Clash for you younger folks LOL). It reminds me so much of public education in Oklahoma – and probably across the nation, actually. Here’s why.

April 12th, 2022, Brice Chaffin – a taxpayer in the district of Stillwater Public Schools – attended a school board meeting to discuss his concern about allowing boys to use the girl’s bathrooms.

Addressing the Board from the podium, Chaffin began his remarks by discussing the forms of law – natural law, physical law, spiritual law. What happened after that really requires viewing, so check out the original video below. It’s only a bit over 3 minutes.

You may view the entire Stillwater Board meeting for April 12, 2022 here.

If you haven’t watched the video by this point in the piece, you really have to. It’s the only way to understand the derision with which Brice was treated by nearly every single member of the Board. As he’s being told he has to actually leave the building, the Board is laughing and carrying on as though Chaffin (not with a long A, but a short ‘a’ as is the correct sound for a vowel before two consonants – but this is a school board, what would they know about English rules?) a piece of gum stuck to their shoe. It’s simply gross.

After this egregious act of silencing a district taxpayer before he had even completed speaking for the time allowed by the Board, ROPE and Maria Seidler of Legal Overwatch for Parent’s Rights, filed a suit against each member of the Stillwater School Board citing the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act in May.

Press statements and the filed lawsuit can be found here.

Please note; all that Brice and ROPE were asking, was for the SPS Board to apologize to Chaffin for the way he was treated. THAT’S ALL. No monetary damages, no compensation for time, no payment of our attorney fees. We asked only for an APOLOGY.

The Judge appointed to the case was Payne County Associate District Judge, Steven Kistler, appointed by Brad Henry (D) to the position in 2008.

The lawyers for Stillwater Public Schools, Rosenstein, Fist and Ringold (RFR), are well-versed in education law – it’s one full subset of their entire practice. Of course, they asked the court to dismiss the suit.

In July, Judge Kistler ruled against RFR’s request for dismissal and scheduled a pre-trial hearing for November, that was moved to October.

Unfortunately, Kistler denied Seidler’s motion, but after hearing the arguments of both side’s attorneys, refused to rule from the bench, saying instead that he was going to review the video again and, following, supply a written ruling to the parties through the court.

In April of 2023, Maria Seidler was a guest on our podcast, ROPE Report Live, where she updated us on the case. You can find that video on our Rumble and YouTube channels.

Essentially, Judge Kistler ruled against us and Brice and for SPS, literally providing no support for his decision. It was simply something to the effect of, “I’m ruling for Stillwater Public Schools”, period. If we wanted to have any notion about his thinking as to why, we weren’t going to get it. (You can find that specific information at 33 minutes almost exactly on the live video)

Following Kistler’s (bizarre) decision, SPS’ attorneys then file a lawsuit against Chaffin and ROPE for court costs and attorney’s fees. Because we filed our suit under the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act, this was a real surprise. The Act does not allow for court costs or attorney’s fees to be collected UNLESS the suit is won and the attorney’s fees and court costs are to be paid by the governmental entity that was found at fault. The private citizen or organization suing the governmental entity is not to pay court costs or attorney’s fees for the other party, even if they lose.

Here are the costs submitted to Stillwater Public Schools by Rosenstein, Fist an Ringold TO KEEP FROM APOLOGIZING TO A COMMUNITY MEMBER!

Yet and again, however, ROPE and Chaffin were back in court with the intrepid Maria by our side, trying to defend ourselves – when we shouldn’t have had to – from paying nearly 45 THOUSAND dollars in attorney’s fees and court costs.

Fortunately, the judge actually HAD read the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act and ruled against Rosenstein, Fist and Ringold (and SPS) and for Chaffin and ROPE, but it was at that court proceeding that Seidler and Chaffin learned something interesting.

The two were approached by several attorneys who told them they were sorry about the first ruling and that they believed we had a case. In fact, the attorneys identified Judge Kistler as an ‘activist’ judge who would have never ruled with us because of the subject matter and defendants. This information, led Maria to expound strenuously against ‘activist’ judges in this ROPE Report Short from that April’s interview.

We went on to file an appeal in Payne County, but our appeal was lost. Though we thought about filing an appeal to the Supreme Court, the costs are prohibitive and made little sense to any of us (from an AI answer to a search for Oklahoma Supreme Court costs: The total estimated cost of appealing to the Oklahoma Supreme Court can range from $2,750 to $14,000 or more, depending on the complexity of the case and the number of briefs filed.)

So here are your takeaways:

Listen to what Brice says here; Stillwater Public Schools LIED to pastors and other members of the community about the policy of allowing boys in girl’s bathrooms by telling them nothing was going on. They only found out for certain, when a woman went to her pastor and told him what she had personally seen!

If a public school offends your Constitutional – or other – rights, and you decide to sue them, you will pay for YOUR attorneys AND THE SCHOOLS ATTORNEYS because your tax dollars go to the school and the school is PAYING A FIRM OF ATTORNEYS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO KEEP FROM HAVING TO APOLOGIZE TO A COMMUNITY MEMBER. We discuss that in this segment:

But it only gets worse. What happens if we had sued SPS for tens of thousands – or millions of dollars? Does the school have to pay that? What about the employees that caused the issues?

A Kingfisher Public Schools family sued Kingfisher Public Schools for some horrible hazing incidents that happened under the watchful eye of the KPS coach. The court awarded the family a 5 MILLION dollar settlement for the case. Will the Coach pay that? What about the school board that hired the Coach and allowed him to continue on in his position after numerous complaints from the community? What about the Superintendent? Nope.

A Daily Oklahoman article sums it up just in the title alone: “Angry taxpayers to confront Kingfisher school board about $5 million settlement of hazing case”. Why are Kingfisher taxpayers angry about a lawsuit that didn’t involve them? “Property owners in the Kingfisher school district are mad because they’re being told their taxes will go up for three years to pay $3.75 million of the settlement. Estimates are the increase could be as much as 12%.” You read it right! Yup.

Kingfisher school district taxpayers will pay the cost of the lawsuit settlement against the district.

Now tell me. Where in the world is the accountability for any public school TO the taxpayers whose money they take – either in property taxes or in appropriations by the legislature?

So let’s discuss that as well. Oklahoma’s academic scores are in the toilet. Across Oklahoma, less than half of ALL students are proficient in English and math, yet the Oklahoma legislature – again this year, after what they termed an HISTORIC INVESTMENT of tens of millions of dollars in education in 2023 – have done it again.

This is the website that contains the budget for Oklahoma for 2024. A total of $13.2 BILLION dollars. Education? Yeah, that’s a NEW appropriation of $45 MILLION dollars to a total $7.9 BILLION dollar budget. Who says public education is underfunded? Why would we fund them at all? We have ZERO control over them and the people we elect to take the reigns of control over them, simply throw money at the problem and move on.

Share this far and wide – every single Oklahoma taxpayer should know exactly where there money is going and what they are, or are NOT getting for it.

June 9, 2024 0

How To Find A Bill On The Oklahoma Legislature Website

This video was made from one of our ROPE Report Live podcasts (2.9.24).

If you’ve always wanted to look up – and/or understand bills once you’ve looked them up – check out this short video tutorial that can help you make a bit of sense out of the sometimes non-sensical!

February 12, 2024 0