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Open in TheBrain

Oklahoma

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see TWO

promoted to primary 7/15

reddest state

merri ok

1019 bak

1119 aha: what's the matter with, oil plus god? poster boy for?  inhofe, bridenstein....

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eliz warren home state

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PRUITT AND INHOFE

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Pesticide use and cancer risk rise together across America’s heartland - Investigate Midwest

A direct correlation can be difficult to determine, as cancer development times can range from months to decades. Overlaying cancer rates onto a map, however, highlights the nation’s top crop and vegetable growing regions, where pesticide use is highest.

The Midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Missouri — leading corn-growing states — had the highest rates, while rates were also high in California and Florida, high fruit-growing states.

OKLA PREEMPT LAW FAIL?

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rww 1 24

william Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Newsmax Airs Alarming Discussion of Civil War With Federal Government.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Newsmax host Carl Higbie mused Thursday about a potential “force-on-force” conflict between Texas and the Biden Administration after the Supreme Court ruled against the state’s Republican governor by declaring that federal agents can remove razor wire laid along the border with Mexico.

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recall trump hdhs ice head was tracking menstruel cycles

They'e whining that "globalists" are trying to control everyone. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Oklahoma are pushing a bill that would create a database for pregnant women so they can track if they get abortions.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/08/27/black-lives-matter-protesters:{-terrorism:(style="background-color:#ffcc66ff"):}:-felony-charges

prOSECUTORS AND LAWMAKERS in several states have responded to mass protests against police brutality by charging demonstrators with committing felonies, including terrorism charges. The trend of criminalizing protest has been on the uptick since the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, during and after which numerous states upped charges for protests “near critical infrastructure” as felonies. 

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Since 2016, 14 states have enacted new laws to restrict the right to peaceful assembly,a**ccording to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks related state and federal legislation. But in the wake of the nationwide movement in support of Black lives, numerous states have increased the severity of criminal penalties for protesters along political lines and are prosecuting them more aggressively, as demonstrations continue with no sign of slowing down.

just last week, following more than 60 days of demonstrations outside the State Capitol, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a law that made it a felony to participate in some types of protests, including camping out overnight on state property.Charges for the same activity were previously classified as a misdemeanor. In Tennessee, people convicted of felonies lose their voting rights — making the new law a tool for disenfranchisement. 

Earlier this month, police in Muscatine, Iowa, apprehended two people they say were attempting to drive a vehicle into the city Public Safety Building and got stuck on a planter. They charged both men with numerous counts, including terrorism. That follows an Oklahoma district attorney’s pursuit ofterrorism chargesagainst five young people, including three teenagers and two people in their 20s. The fourth-term prosecutor also threw felony charges at numerous other people in relation to protests and damage to local and police property in late May. 

The terrorism charges reveal a “false equivalency between people who kill, and people who commit acts of property damage,” said Kate Chatfield, policy director at the Justice Collaborative, a policy and media organization focused on mass criminalization and incarceration. “Maybe not a great thing.” 

“To say that the power of the state will be wielded in this way against political enemies is incredibly frightening,” Chatfield said, drawing a parallel to the post-9/11 era, when many people who had never committed an act of violence were prosecuted for terrorism. “Let’s not ignore the fact that we have a history of this in this country. A very recent history. And a continuing history, unfortunately.”

The nationwide protests prompted by George Floyd’s killing have continued through the summer, though at a lower intensity over the last month — before picking back up this week. Streets across the country swelled with demonstrators after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot 29-year-old Jacob Blake in the back seven times, in front of his children. Blake is paralyzed from the waist down, his father told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday. Protesters burned down a state Department of Corrections building on Monday. The following night, armed white members of a militia group organized counterdemonstrations to protect local property. Video footage from Kenosha shows the militia members chatting with the police. Shortly after the video was captured, one member of the militia shot and killed two protesters, and left a third in serious condition. Police arrested 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Illinois on Wednesday and charged him with first-degree intentional homicide. 

“When you hear our president talk about Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization, or antifa as a terrorist organization, it is the kind of thing that — his statement holds no weight in law, but it sends a message to prosecutors like this that they’ll be supported,” said Thomas Harvey, justice project director at the Advancement Project, a non-profit civil rights group. “And even more frighteningly, I think it sends a message to people like the militia members we saw in Kenosha, and gives them the state and the latitude to commit even more violence than what we see on a daily basis in this country against black and brown folks.”

IN SOME STATES where police have charged protesters en masse with felonies, prosecutors have swiftly dropped them, calling into question the reasoning behind the original charges. 

In Louisville, Kentucky, police arrested 87 protesters who had staged a sit-in on the lawn of a home belonging to state Attorney General Daniel Cameron last month — part of an ongoing  call for accountability in the killing of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT whom three Louisville police officers shot at least eight timesinside her home in March. (The officers were acting on a no-knock warrant in connection with a suspect who did not live at Taylor’s residence. The police department fired one of the three officers who were involved in June. Local activists including Louisville Black Lives Matter worked with Taylor’s family to develop a list of demands, including firing, charging, and convicting the three officers.) Three days later, Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell dismissed the felony charges and said his office would consider misdemeanors and other violations for prosecution at a later date. On Tuesday, Louisville police arrested another 68 protesters and charged them with obstructing a highway and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors.

Earlier this month in Washington, D.C., police arrested 41 protesters in the Adams Morgan neighborhood on charges of felony rioting and assaulting police officers. The Metropolitan Police Department said in a tweet on August 14 that it only arrested people “engaged in rioting behaviors.” Between May 30 and June 1, District police arrested more than 100 people on charges of burglary, destroying property, and violating curfew, including at least 40 charges of felony rioting.Prosecutorsdropped most of the charges in both sets of arrests.

In Salt Lake City on Friday, a judge droppedpossible life sentence charges facing protesters who poured paint, broke windows, and posted signs at the District Attorney’s Office building, reducing some charges to lower-class felonies and misdemeanors. In June, West Valley police and FBI agents arrested two men in Salt Lake who had allegedly threatened officers and were headed to protests armed with multiple weapons. Prosecutors later charged one man with terrorism. 

Also in early June, police officers in Columbia, South Carolina, arrested more than 80 protesters and charged three men with instigating a riot, typically a low-level felony or misdemeanor. 

Elected officials participating in the protest have also been caught in the crackdown.In Portsmouth, Virginia, on Monday, sheriff’s deputies delivered a summons charge to the vice mayor, after a resident pressed misdemeanor criminal charges against her for calling on the Portsmouth police chief to resign. Earlier this month, police brought felony charges against the Virginia State Senate pro tempore, a local school board member, local NAACP leaders, and public defenders for injury to a monument and conspiracy, in relation to the destruction of confederate statues in June.

Federal authorities have also carried out their own crackdown on demonstrations, arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon, and New York City in recent months. The FBI has opened some 300 domestic terrorism investigations since late May. Last year, according to the agency, most federal arrests for domestic terrorism involved white supremacy, though the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit has also investigated a fictional “black identity extremists” movement. The FBI has also quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement in recent years, The Intercept reported. 

AMONG THE MOST serious recent charges against protesters are those of terrorism in Oklahoma.  There,Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater charged three teenagers and two other people in their 20s with terrorism related to their alleged activity during protests in late May. 

“We found it especially inappropriate — and unconstitutional — because it was made with the explicit purpose of silencing protesters who are standing up for Black lives,” American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma Staff Attorney Megan Lambert told The Intercept, regarding the recent terrorism charges. “We didn’t even see terrorism charges for the Murrah bombing,” she added, referring to the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

Read Our Complete CoverageProtests for Black Lives

The terrorism charges, which were filed in June and July, stem from allegations that protesters set fire to a sheriff’s van and caused damage to a local bail bond business. Last month, Prater charged two other teenagers with terrorism in connection to demonstrations at the end of May, bringing the total to five. The DA also charged multiple people with rioting, assaulting officers, andat least five others for incitement to riot for painting murals in the city’s downtown area in June.

Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair Alicia Andrews, the ACLUof Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City Black Lives Matter founder and Executive Director Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson slammed Prater’s move, saying that the charges of terrorism were far too harsh. During a press conference early last month, Andrews said she didn’t condone vandalism or destruction of property but that Prater was using the charges to silence protesters. “‘Use your First Amendment right in a way that we don’t like, and we will ruin your future.’ These charges are an attempt to send a message, ‘We’re tired of hearing about Black lives,’” she said. 

Prater took office in 2007 and is currently serving his fourth term as DA. His current term ends in 2023.He started his career in law enforcement at age 19 as a deputy sheriff, according to his bio. “These people are speaking out against violence that Prater himself has largely been complicit in,” Lambert said. “This is just another example in a pattern from David Prater’s office of upholding white supremacy.” Prater’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Last May, Prater declined to charge officers who killed 17-year-old Isaiah Lewis, who was in the middle of a mental health crisis when police shot him in Edmond. Over the last few months, local activists have brought renewed attention to Lewis’s killing, which has been a focus of some demonstrations in the area. Other cases have gotten less attention, Dickerson pointed out. Derrick Scott, 42, died last May after being apprehended and restrained by Oklahoma City police. In video footage of the arrest released in June, Scott tells officers he can’t breathe and asks them repeatedly to give him his medicine. An officer replies, “I don’t care.” 

“The Scott family is not receiving any justice,” Dickerson said, adding that Scott’s killing was eerily similar to Floyd’s. Earlier this month, police shot 32-year-old James Harmon in the head, saying that he had a weapon in his hand (Oklahoma is an open-carry state). Harmon is still in the hospital. 

“Systemic racism, institutional racism, and white supremacy is so deep-rooted,” Dickerson said, agreeing with Lambert’s characterization of Prater’s office. “There’s really nothing more Oklahoman than that.” 

“This was a state that was formed basically for them to literally lump Natives and Blacks here together,” she said. “And so it has always been very intentional and deliberate, for us to be victims of what I consider state-sanctioned violence and state-targeted violence.”

For the Oklahoma City teens and young adults facing terror charges, “what’s next is they fight for their lives,” Lambert said. The statute carries a maximum of life in prison. “Many of these charged protesters are young teenagers. … So they are facing spending their entire lives in prison simply for, in some cases, attending a protest to try and hold police accountable.” Criminal defense attorneys are still working to get those charges dropped or significantly reduced.   

“Some of the young people were saying, ‘We should go to Kenosha and stand with the young people there,” Dickerson said. “And I was like, ‘How do you choose?’”

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no lnx ya cheap bastard

Los Angeles Times

POLITICS

People live longer in blue states than red; new study points to impact of state policies

States that have pursued more liberal policies in education, environment and civil rights have a longer life expectancy.

States such as California that have pursued more liberal policies in education, environment and civil rights have seen a swifter rise in life expectancy than more conservative states. Above, the California Capitol in Sacramento.(Los Angeles Times)

By NOAM N. LEVEY STAFF WRITER

AUG. 3, 2020

WASHINGTON —  Weak environmental protections, safety rules and labor and civil rights protections may be cutting lives short in conservative states and deepening the divide between red and blue states, according to a new study on links between life expectancy and state policy.

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The report, published Tuesday in the health policy journal Milbank Quarterly, finds that states where residents live longest, including California, tend to have much more stringent environmental laws, tougher tobacco and firearms regulations and more protections for workers, minorities and LGBTQ residents.

Since the mid-1980s, the gap among U.S. states in how long their residents live has widened, reversing decades of progress toward greater equality.

One group of states, mostly in the Northeast and the West, have seen average life expectancies rise relatively steadily, placing them on par with the wealthiest nations of Western Europe. Those states tend to have more stringent regulations.

By contrast, the life expectancy in states with more conservative health, labor and social policies — concentrated in the South and Appalachia — have stagnated in recent decades, according to the study, which adds to growing research on health and political disparities between states.

California has among the highest average life expectancies in the country, at 81.3 years. It also had the most liberal policies in the nation in 2014, the most recent year the study analyzed, according to the system the authors developed to rank states.

Although the study’s authors note that they can’t prove that state policies caused the gap in life expectancy, the correlation is a persistent one across multiple states and several decades.

“It’s disheartening to see another example of a missed opportunity by policymakers,” said David Radley, senior scientist at the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund who studies differences in state health policies and the effects on people’s health. Radley was not involved in Milbank report.

[pix Bakersfield, CA., March 4, 2020 - Jenny Morones, 26, of Bakersfield poses for a portrait on Wednesday, March 4, 2020 in Bakersfield, California. Morones is working mother struggling to raise three children on a low income. Morones fled an abusive relationship and though in her twenties, has dealt with health challenges.Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Morones had health insurance that protected her from financial ruin. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)]

Coronavirus widens healthcare divide between red states and blue states

May 25, 2020

The new report may help shape efforts to rethink government policy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has exposed deep structural weaknesses in the U.S. as well as yawning gaps in many state safety nets.

“The overarching conclusion is clear: States that have invested in their populations’ social and economic well-being by enacting more liberal policies over time tend to be the same states that have made considerable gains in life expectancy,” the study’s authors wrote.

Even before the current public health crisis, life expectancy in the U.S. had been declining, setting America apart from most other wealthy nations. That decline has fueled tough questions about domestic policy.

The opioid epidemic, which has had a devastating impact on regions of the country already hit hard by economic stagnation, has been the focus of a lot of the discussion about that shift.

But Syracuse University sociologist Jennifer Karas Montez, the lead author of the new study, said the impact of opioids may be only part of the story.

“When we look at what is happening with life expectancy, the tendency is to focus on individual explanations about what Americans are doing,” she said, noting obesity and smoking behaviors as well as drug use. “But state policies are so important.”

To assess what role these policies may be playing, Montez and other researchers reviewed more than 120 policies enacted by states over the years and assessed whether each policy choice in each state was more liberal or more conservative.

Policies included housing rules such as rent control; health and welfare policies such as Medicaid eligibility and welfare limits; labor protections such as paid sick leave and minimum wages; and civil rights policies such as gender discrimination bans, hate-crime laws and same-sex marriage.

They also looked at state abortion restrictions, tax policy, education spending, immigration rules and gun control laws.

Each state was ranked by how liberal or conservative its policies overall have been, going back to 1970.

The researchers then compared these findings to trends in life expectancy in all 50 states.

Montez said the trends they saw were unmistakable. They also correlated with important points in the nation’s political history.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, for example, state life expectancies generally converged. That trend began to reverse in the mid-1980s, around the same time that a conservative movement, led by President Reagan and mirrored in many state capitols, became ascendant.

The gap between states accelerated further after 2010, when sweeping Republican victories in state elections shifted policies further to the right in many places.

By 2017, residents of the state with the highest life expectancy — Hawaii — were living on average seven years longer than residents of the state with the lowest life expectancy — Mississippi.

By contrast, the gap between the best- and worst-performing states in 1984 was less than five years.

The gap is not only about policy: States where people live longer tend to be wealthier and have better educated populations, for example.

But Montez noted that decisions by state leaders have helped shape those factors.

“States like Connecticutare investing in their population, investing in schools, setting an economic floor for their workers, discouraging behaviors like smoking that kill people,” she explained. “You have other states like Mississippi and Oklahoma that aren’t doing any of this.”

In Connecticut, whose policies have become steadily more liberal over the last half century, life expectancy increased 5.8 years between 1980 and 2017 to 80.7 years.

In Oklahoma, which has become markedly more conservative, life expectancy increased only 2.2 years over the same period, reaching 75.8 years in 2017.

Identifying which state policies may have the most impact on how long people live is difficult, the researchers concede. But the study points to a group of policies that appear to correlate most closely with longer lives.

These include some unsurprising candidates such as tougher environmental laws, which the authors note may protect people from toxic substances. The authors also found a correlation between longer life expectancy and labor policies that increase economic security, such as a minimum wage.

Tougher gun laws appear to track with longer life expectancies, the study notes, as do stricter tobacco controls.

The authors also point to civil rights laws, which they suggest may protect residents from ill health related to persistent stress.

And they found a correlation between longer life expectancy and better access to abortion, which the study notes may reflect other research that has linked abortion restrictions to women’s poverty and ill health.

Noam N. Levey writes about national healthcare policy out of Washington, D.C., for the Los Angeles Times. He covered passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and has written extensively about the landmark law and reported on its implementation from around the country. A former investigative and political reporter, he is a Boston native and a graduate of Princeton University. He joined the newspaper in 2003 and has reported from Washington since 2006.

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gov stitt

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/oklahoma-governor-falters-on-fox-news-when-asked-about-medical-association-opposing-reopening

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chesapeake #2 fracker, marcellus, big donor, lobbyist

mclendon ceo suicide

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https://ballotpedia.org/Fracking_in_Oklahoma

h fracturing, also known as fracking, is a method of oil and natural gas extraction that involves injecting fluid into subterranean rock formations at high pressure. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), there were approximately 23,000 hydraulically fractured wells in the United States in 2000. In 2015, the United States contained approximately 300,000 hydraulically fractured wells, which accounted for 67 percent of U.S. natural gas production and 51 percent of U.S. crude oil production.[1][2][3]

Oil and natural gas is produced throughout Oklahoma. As of May 2017, Oklahoma did not track the number of oil and gas wells that were hydraulically fractured.[4]

This article focuses on fracking in Oklahoma and state-specific, rather than federal, regulation of the process.

...[grafs of boom, bigger than neighbor states]

Injection wells

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 revised the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974) to exclude “the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to fracking operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities” from the EPA’s underground injection control program. These control programs are meant "to prevent underground injection which endangers drinking water sources." The 2005 act authorized state governments to regulate fracking as the process relates to underground drinking water sources, though state regulations must meet the minimum requirements outlined in federal laws that affect oil and gas wells, including the Clean Air Act (which regulates air pollutants emitted from oil and gas wells), the Clean Water Act (which regulates discharges of any pollutants into surface waters), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (which regulates the prevention and cleanup of released hazardous substances), among other laws.[21][22]

To ensure drinking water quality, the EPA or authorized state agencies regulate Class II injection wells, which are underground shafts used to store salt water, carbon dioxide (CO2), brine, and other fluids, to dispose of waste, and to enhance production during the oil and gas extraction process. These agencies set rules and issue permits outlining minimum safety requirements related to the construction, operation, maintenance, plugging, and abandonment of injection wells.[23]

The table below shows the number of Class II (oil and gas) injection wells in Oklahoma and surrounding states in 2015.

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subtitle birth of the fbi

https://www.npr.org/2017/04/17/523964584/in-the-1920s-a-community-conspired-to-kill-native-americans-for-their-oil-money

generations ago, the American Indian Osage tribe was compelled to move. Not for the first time, white settlers pushed them off their land in the 1800s. They made their new home in a rocky, infertile area in northeast Oklahoma in hopes that settlers would finally leave them alone.

As it turned out, the land they had chosen was rich in oil, and in the early 20th century, members of the tribe became spectacularly wealthy. They bought cars and built mansions; they made so much oil money that the government began appointing white guardians to "help" them spend it.

In his new book, Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann describes how white people in the area conspired to kill Osage members in order steal their oil wealth, which could only be passed on through inheritance. "This was a culture of complicity," he says, "and it was allowed to go on for so long because so many people were part of the plot. You had lawmen, you had prosecutors, you had the reporters who wouldn't cover it. You had oilmen who wouldn't speak out. You had morticians who would cover up the murders when they buried the body. You had doctors who helped give poison to people."And then Osage members started turning up dead....

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_in_Oklahoma

Oil in Oklahoma was first discovered, by accident, in 1859, near Salina, in the then Oklahoma Territory, in a well that had been drilled for salt. In 1907, before Oklahoma became a state, it produced the most oil of any state or territory in the United States. From 1907 to 1930, Oklahoma and California traded the title of number one US oil producer back and forth.[1] Oklahoma oil production peaked in 1927, at 762,000 barrels/day, and by2005 had declined to 168,000 barrels/day, but then started rising, and by 2014 had more than doubled to 350,000 barrels per day, the fifth highest state in the U.S.[2]

In the latter quarter of the 20th century, an average decline of 3.1%/year, until additional drilling led to a temporary increase from 1980 to 1984, followed by a decline at 6.6%/year until the average decline of 3.1% was met in 1994.[3] As of September 2012, 72 out of the 77 counties in Oklahoma have producing oil or gas wells. The deepest natural gas well is 24,928 feet (7,598 m), in Beckham County, and the deepest producing oil well is 15,500 feet (4,700 m), in Comanche County.[4]

Oil drillers active in Oklahoma include Fred M. Manning.[5] The first woman to drill a producing oil well on her own property, and the first female oil operator in Oklahoma was Lulu M. Hefner.[6]

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1119 kpfa #1 jail rate

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/how-an-oklahoma-prosecutor-launched-malicious-probes-against-criminal-justice-reformers/

no lnx

How an Oklahoma prosecutor ‘launched malicious probes against criminal justice reformers’

Photo of DA Prater via Oklahoma County DA’s office

Written by Filter October 28, 2019

by Rory Fleming

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater stands accused of firing his investigator for refusing to conduct a bogus criminal probe into supporters of decarceration efforts.

That is according to a Notice of Claim?—a legal document that must be submitted before suing Oklahoma’s state government?—filed on October 24 and reviewed by Filter.

Oklahoma County includes Oklahoma City and, with around 750,000 residents, is the most populated county in the state. DA Prater’s reported general behavior has echoes of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

William Muller?—a former Oklahoma County DA office investigator, whose law enforcement career includes time on President George W. Bush’s security detail?—alleges that DA Prater demanded he obtain a Multi-County Grand Jury Subpoena for the financial records of Oklahomans Criminal Justice Reform, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

Kris Steele, the former speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, is the executive director of this organization; a probe of Steele was separately ordered. Prater also started a retaliatory probe against the American Civil Liberties Union, focusing on its financial contributions to reform efforts.

Muller initially complied but later refused, saying there was no probable cause—the usual legal threshold for a criminal investigation. Prater also exhibited apathy toward the legal rules about the proper handling of evidence, the Notice claims.

When Muller told Prater that he couldn’t sniff anything out, Prater gave him the cold shoulder. Then, in late January 2019, Muller gave an internal presentation on an unfurling political corruption case. Seemingly out of nowhere, Prater “called two Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Deputies into the office where then [he] lost control of himself and began to yell and curse uncontrollably,” states the Notice.

Prater also personally seized Muller’s firearm, it is alleged, then had the deputies kick Muller out of the building. He then announced Muller’s firing to a law enforcement email list that spans the entire state.

In the context, none of this is even surprising.

A 2015 article from the Oklahoman recounts Prater’s reputation for “tackling crime,” or at least defendants he is prosecuting. He ignores the political decorum expected of prosecutors, having once endorsed Reverend Paul Blair, a hateful fundamentalist who spreads Islamophobic conspiracy theories, for state senate. He has been accused by fellow lawyers, most notably those working on Richard Glossip’s potential innocence case, of witness intimidation.

And he despises even the mildest positive changes to the criminal justice system, as exhibited by his war against his own voters. When Oklahomans, including his constituents, voted by ballot initiative in 2017 to make drug possession a misdemeanor (rather than a felony), Prater unsuccessfully labored alongside anti-reform allies like former Sen. Ralph Shortey (who shortly thereafter went to federal prison for child sex trafficking), to reverse the popular mandate.

Robert D. Gifford, II, the attorney representing William Muller, is a former Assistant US Attorney who has dedicated most of his career to getting justice for the most defenseless victims. One of his most notable cases was the prosecution of Matthew Durham, the young missionary who raped Kenyan orphans as young as six years old.

In a conversation with Filter, Gifford likened Prater to Richard Nixon and called him “the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.” He added that, “but for a whistleblower, Mr. Prater’s misuse and abuse of secret grand jury subpoenas would have never come to light.”

On top of being an example of how prosecutors can wreak havoc on their communities when given too much power, Prater’s alleged misconduct shows how it is crucial for district attorneys to have opponents when they come up for re-election.

Prater skated to re-election in 2018 without an opponent, despite a cornucopia of reasons for him to be booted out of office. Hopefully, 2022 won’t tell the same story. Or the Oklahoma State Bar wises up and disbars him, before he does anything worse.

This article was originally published by Filter, a magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights. Follow Filter on Facebook or Twitter.

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desmog

Oklahoma

Earthquakes caused by fracking wastewater injections were a major topic in the race for corporation commissioner in Oklahoma. The corporation commission oversees the oil and gas industry in the state.

One of the main issues Ashley McCray, a 34 year old former activist, was running on was limiting fracking wastewater injection wells to reduce related earthquakes in Oklahoma. Her opponent was the Republican Bob Anthony, who has held the position for 30 years and whose campaign was financed with help from railroad and energy companies, including BNSF, Chesapeake Energy, American Electric Power, and Koch Industries, as well as from fracking pioneer and billionaire Harold Hamm.

While McCray only managed to gain 34 percent of the vote, the local paper The Journal Record credits her campaign with shedding more light on just what the powerful corporation commission does. Industry-caused seismic activity has been a hotbed issue in Oklahoma for years and has managed to cross typical party lines.

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In the midst of the colossal upset that saw progressive African-American Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum win the Democratic nomination for the Florida governor race, another lesser-known but huge development unfolded in Oklahoma, giving Democrats a clear chance to win the governor's mansion there.

In the runoff elections on Tuesday night, pro-Trump Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt defeated Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett to win the GOP nomination. He will now face off against former Democratic state attorney general Drew Edmondson, who already won the nomination in June — which is shaping up to be a truly competitive race.

Republicans blew a huge potential advantage by not nominating Cornett, who has campaign experience and is known for bringing the NBA to his state. Stitt, by contrast, has never held elected office, faces questions about his mortgage company's business practices, and said he opposes the badly-needed recent pay increases that ended the state's teacher walkouts.

Edmondson, by contrast, is the Democrats' dream candidate — a Vietnam veteran who has already won statewide office multiple times and has decent name recognition. One poll released in July showed Edmondson leading the race by one point with Stitt as the nominee.

Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in America. It is one of only two stateswhere President Donald Trump carried every single county. But Democrats have held the governor's mansion as recently as 2011.

Republicans in Oklahoma are also reeling from voter resentment amid the massive unpopularity of retiring Gov. Mary Fallin, who oversaw reckless tax cuts that collapsed the state's finances and crippled state agencies. The teacher strikes only scratch the surface — under Fallin's tenure, rural hospitals have shuttered, waiting lists for community help for the elderly and disabled have stretched to 10 years, and there is even a driving limit on state troopers to ration fuel.

In an ominous sign for Republicans, Tuesday night's runoffs also saw the defeat of half a dozen GOP state lawmakers who voted against the tax increase to fund teacher pay— which cannot inspire confidence for a gubernatorial nominee who claimed he would not have signed it.

The upshot is that Democrats now have a real chance to win in a heavily red state, and punch deep into Trump territory. They should heed the anger of voters hurt by GOP misrule, and fight for them.

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COAL

Okla. firm tops midterm donations

E&E Daily: Thursday, August 23, 2018

Incumbents on Capitol Hill have gotten more money from magnate Joe Craft and his coal company than any one else in the industry, the Center for Responsive Politics found.

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april 2018

walkout in Oklahoma — which could stretch for days — is part of a wave of educator revolts striking states where tax cuts have drained state funding for schools.

In Kentucky, teachers rallied Monday in Frankfort, the state capital, against teacher pension reforms, shutting down schools in a dozen districts. In Arizona, teachers have threatened to strike if they do not get a 20 percent raise and an infusion of money into schools. On Monday,Gov. Doug Ducey (R) said it would not happen, raising the likelihood of a standoff between the two groups.

The job actions in Oklahoma, Kentucky and elsewhere were inspired by West Virginia teachers, who won a 5 percent raise after a nine-day strike, emboldening frustrated educators across the country....Oklahoma has faced some of the deepest cuts to education in the nation. Adjusted for inflation, state spending per student has fallen nearly 30 percent over the past decade, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The result? Oklahoma teachers ranked 49th in teacher pay in 2016, according to the National Education Association, a leading union.

In 2015, Oklahoma spent a little more than $8,000 per student, far below the national average of $11,400. The cuts also took a toll on school budgets.

When their state funding took a hit, administrators trimmed electives, programs for struggling students and money for teachers to buy supplies. Eventually, many were forced to cut positions, pushing class sizes and workloads for counselors higher...

Many schools reduced classes to four days a week because they could no longer keep the lights on [literally?]for five. The basics that are a given in most U.S. classrooms — textbooks, curriculum materials, staples, printer ink — are often in short supply in Oklahoma schools.

“I came to the Capitol not just for myself, not just for a raise, but for my students,” said Misti Vann, who teaches at Belfonte Elementary in the tiny community of Belfonte. She ticked off a litany of problems that the dearth of funding has spawned: leaky roofs, drafty windows, balky heaters. “My classroom, my books are falling apart,” she said.

After lawmakers this year again cut the education budget, a fed-up superintendent began polling his colleagues to see whether they would be interested in backing a strike. Then, inspired by West Virginia’s educators, teachers in Oklahoma — who in 2016 made less money on average than their counterparts there — began planning their own walkout, organizing on Facebook. Teachers demanded a $10,000 raise for themselves, a $5,000 raise for other school workers and an additional $200 million in education funding.

...

seemed to have worked: Last week, state lawmakers passed a measure increasing teacher pay by an average of $6,100 and giving schools an additional $51 million in funding — with $33 million of that set aside for textbooks.

“I hope they can come up here and say ‘thank you’ on Monday and go back to the classrooms,” Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said at a news conference last week, a remark that infuriated educators.

Instead, many teachers remain frustrated that the state dedicated only $51 million more for schools, which does little to reverse a decade of cuts. And while some said they were satisfied with their raise, they said they will remain out of the classroom until the state boosts funding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/04/02/fed-up-with-school-spending-cuts-oklahoma-teachers-prepare-to-walk-out/

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/oklahoma-gop-candidate-denies-advocating-euthanasia-poor-and-disabled-people

==

Official PAC Name:

Location: , 

Industry: FEC Committee ID: C00167213 (Look upactual documents filed at the FEC)

okla leadrship council GOP

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00167213

1Republican Party of Florida$132,0002Direct Mail Systems$32,8933Renaissance Hotels$31,9704Republican National Cmte of Pennsylvania$30,0005Mayo Hotel$18,8316Marriott Tulsa Hotel Southern Hills$13,8257Brogdon, Randy$8,5178Hilton Hotels$7,5009Petroleum Club of Okc$7,22510Vanco Payment Solutions$6,172

==

http://www.alternet.org/environment/oklahoma-sues-epa-calling-clean-air-rule-unconstitutional

Oklahoma sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, claiming it exceeded its powers by proposing new rules to reduce pollution at coal-fired power plants.

Attorney General Scott Pruitt sued the EPA in Federal Court, claiming its plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the next five years is unconstitutional.

Oklahoma claims the agency's timeline for its Clean Power Plan is unrealistic, and that it will need a minimum of eight years to implement the changes.

[clean pwr plan video 101]

RELATED: U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Obama's EPA Limits on Air Pollution

"In sum, due to the EPA Power Plan, simply maintaining electric service across the State of Oklahoma requires substantial expenditures of time, effort, and money by the Oklahoma Legislature, OCC [Oklahoma Corporation Commission], ODEQ [Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality], and other state actors, as well as private utilities," the complaint states.

"These expenditures cannot be recouped. If the State does nothing while EPA implements anything like a 35.5-percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions from Oklahoma's coal-fired power plants, the lights will go out in many Oklahoma communities, impacting State governmental operations, as well as the health and welfare of citizens. The same is true of the 33 percent 'interim goal' set by EPA and would be true of even a substantially smaller goal, on the order of 15 or 20 percent."

Pruitt claims that the plan would require "the complete restructuring of Oklahoma's power sector even though it has no chance of surviving eventual judicial scrutiny."

RELATED: GOP Congressman Lamar Smith Declares War on NASA and EPA Climate Science Research

He claims the plan violates at least three statutory bars and two constitutional limitations on federal power. Pruitt said the state can challenge the plan in the D.C. Circuit under Section 307 of the Clean Air Act, but expects it would take at least nine months for a final decision to be issued.

"Even if Oklahoma is able to obtain a stay of the EPA Power Plan in the D.C. Circuit, that is still likely to take months," according to the 19-page complaint. "By that time, Oklahoma will have either implemented or taken irreversible steps towards implementing most, if not all, of the changes described above, meaning that they will be implemented even though the EPA Power Plan is certain to be invalidated. The ordinary petition process under Section 307 is not an adequate means of obtaining the relief required if Oklahoma is to maintain its power sector in anything like the form it exists today and if it is to forgo the massive expenditure of resources required to accommodate the EPA Power Plan."

Federal officials could not be reached for comment after business hours Wednesday.

RELATED: EPA Moves to Regulate Airplane Emissions Under Clean Air Act, Citing Danger to Human Health

Pruitt said in a statement late Wednesday that the plan "forces Oklahoma into fundamentally restructuring the generation, transmission, and regulation of electricity" in a way that threatens the "reliability and affordability" of electricity in the state. He said that decisions on power generation and emissions reductions are best made at the local level.

"The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan," Pruitt said. "The EPA is ignoring the authority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats' authority over states' energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity."

Pruitt seeks declaratory judgment that the EPA Power Plan violates the Clean Air Act and "exceeds Congress's Article I authority and violates the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." He seeks an injunction preventing its enforcement.

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Citizens Can Sue Fracking Companies for Earthquake Damage, Says Oklahoma Supreme Court

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http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/5-most-dangerous-states-live-and-5-safest

According to the study, the five safest states to live in are Massachusetts, Vermont, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Hawaii.The least safe states to live in are New Mexico, Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Mississippi. Massachusetts is the state with the lowest share of residents who lack health insurance, the second fewest number of fatal occupational injuries, and the second lowest rate of fatal automobile accidents.=

==

Oklahoma scientists pressured to downplay link between earthquakes and fracking

Oil company execs and university bigwigs leaned on the Oklahoma Geological Survey so it wouldn’t blame quakes on fracking techniques.

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former AG, gov cand: BS  BS: Okla dem  http://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_Attorney_General_-_Drew_Edmondson

Drew was personally involved in overseeing the tobacco litigation, involving multiple defendants and billions in damages, as well as the state’s litigation against the poultry industry alleging violations of state and federal environmental laws. He was also involved in the state’s prosecution of Bernie Ebbers in the Worldcom case.

===

alternet 5/14

3. Oklahoma Bans Increases in the Minimum Wage

While the Obama administration raises the minimum wage threshold for private contractors working with the government, Democrats in Congress push for a $10.10 minimum wage, and Seattle votes in the country’s highest minimum at $15.00 an hour, Oklahoma is going in the exact opposite direction: not only is Oklahoma not considering a statewide increase, but it banned individual cities [6] from even considering such a raise on their own.

The move was widely viewed as a preemptive attack on a movement by the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation to raise the Oklahoma City’s wage to $10.10, in line with that being called for by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and her fellow Republicans in the legislature argued [7] the bill created a “level playing field for all municipalities in Oklahoma” and protected against “artificial” raises in the minimum wage, whatever those are.

"Mandating an increase in the minimum wage would…would create a hardship for small business owners, stifle job creation and increase costs for consumers," Fallin said. "And it would do all of these things without even addressing the goal of reducing poverty."

Not quite. The statistics on the relation of minimum wage to job creation or loss are murky, but most studies find raising the wage’s overall affect on employment to be negligible. Two things raising the minimum wage definitely does: increases earnings for lower-income workers (by $33 billion in the case of a nationwide raise to $10.10) and lifts almost one million people out of poverty. Neither is something metropolises in Oklahoma are going to find out about any time soon.

4. Oklahoma Punishes Solar and Wind Power Producers

Oklahoma wasn’t done. Unhappy with people who install their own solar panels or wind turbines, an action that helps the utilities by easing the pressure on the companies during peak hours, the state is now penalizing private energy producers through a surcharge [8].

The extra charge applies to those who sell excess energy generated by the panels or turbines back to the grid, known as net metering. It was snuck in as a rider on another bill at the last minute, catching lawmakers and alternative energy groups off guard. It passed without a single dissenting vote.

It didn’t take long for Oklahoman owners of small businesses to point out the absurdity of a law that punishes in-state producers of energy.

“Oklahoma offers tax credits for large wind turbines which are built elsewhere, but wants to penalize small wind which we manufacture here in the state?” Mike Bergey, president & CEO of Bergey Windpower said [8]. “That makes no sense to me.”

Who would support such a bill? The ultra-conservative advocacy group ALEC, which has framed people with solar panels as “freeriders on the system,” though they actually contribute to the city’s power resources. ALEC is in good with Fallin. Thanks to this cozy relationship, Oklahoma is set to become the first state to pass a law of this kind. Where states have deals worked out between utility companies and individual power generators, ALEC is set on repealing them. They now have a template in a last-minute sabotoage in Oklahoma.

==

alec win 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427392/oklahoma-fee-solar-wind/

Oklahoma residents who produce their own energy through solar panels or small wind turbines on their property will now be charged an additional fee, the result of a new bill passed by the state legislature and expected to be signed into law by Gov. Mary Fallin (R).

On Monday, S.B. 1456 passed the state House 83-5 after no debate. The measure creates a new class of customers: those who install distributed power generation systems like solar panels or small wind turbines on their property and sell the excess energy back to the grid. While those with systems already installed won’t be affected, the new class of customers will now be charged a monthly fee — a shift that happened quickly and caught many in the state off guard.

“We knew nothing about it and all of a sudden it’s attached to some other bill,” Ctaci Gary, owner of Sun City Oklahoma, told ThinkProgress. “It just appeared out of nowhere.”...

As the use of solar power skyrockets across the U.S., fights have sprung up in several states over how much customers should be compensated for excess power produced by their solar panels and sold back to the grid — a policy known as net metering. Net metering laws have come under fire from the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group backed by fossil fuel corporations, utility companies, and the ultra-conservative Koch brothers. Forty-three states and the District of Columbia currently have net metering policies in place and ALEC has set its sights on repealing them, referring to homeowners with their own solar panels as “freeriders on the system.” ALEC presented Gov. Fallin the Thomas Jefferson Freedom award last year for her “record of advancing the fundamental Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty as a nationally recognized leader.”

Oklahoma “could be the first complete defeat for solar advocates in their fight against utility efforts to recover costs lost to DG [distributed generation] use,” writes Utility Dive. Net metering survived attacks in Colorado and Kansas and Vermont recently increased its policy in a bipartisan effort. Last year, Arizona added what amounts to a $5 per month surcharge for solar customers, a move that was widely seen as a compromise, particularly after ALEC and other Koch-backed groups got involved.

While any extra charge placed on potential customers is a concern, Gary hopes that like Arizona, Oklahoma’s fee is modest enough to protect her business from serious damage.

Matt Kasper, energy research assistant at the Center for American Progress, contributed to this piece.

==

Oklahoma

Titled, the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” H.B. 1551 is also essentially a copycat of Tennessee's version of the ALEC model bill — it failed to pass. A Senate version of that bill, S.B. 320, was also proposed in 2009, but failed to pass through committee.

Key clauses of that bill read (emphases mine),

    "[T]eachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught."

    "[N]o student in any public school or institution shall be penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific theories."

Notice how the first bullet is exactly the same in both the Tennessee and Oklahoma bills — also notice how similar bullet number two is in both language and substance in both states' bills.

Rep. Sally Kern (R-84), sponsor of H.B. 1551, is a member of ALEC, according to CMD. She received $12,335 from the oil and gas industry in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, in total, according to FollowTheMoney.org. Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-34), sponsor of S.B. 320, while not a member of ALEC, received $22,967 from the oil and gas industry while running and losing for Governor of Oklahoma in 2010, according to FollowTheMoney.org.

On the whole, sponsors and co-sponsors from the six states in which the ALEC bill was proposed were recipients of $44,409 in campaign money from the oil and gas industry, a miniscule down payment for some of the most lucrative corporations known in the history of mankind.

==

ALEC Assembles "Most Wanted" List, and Oklahomans Say "ALEC Is Not OK"

by Brendan Fischer [1] — May 6, 2013 - 7:44am

 Share this [6]

-- by Brendan Fischer and Nick Surgey --

In anticipation of protests at ALEC's recent meeting in Oklahoma City, state legislators were handed a set of talking points [7] that read "The American Legislative Exchange Council recognizes the first amendment rights of free speech and assembly, and asks that ___ do the same," apparently to prepare legislators for press questions about citizen activism. But ALEC didn't live up to those spoon-fed talking points: ALEC assembled a dossier of disfavored reporters and activists, kicked reporters out of its conference who might write unfavorable stories, and managed to boot a community forum critical of ALEC from its reserved room.

In what might be the biggest anti-ALEC rally yet, the ALEC legislators and lobbyists arriving at the Renaissance Hotel on May 2 were greeted by awave of protesters [8] that outnumbered the conference attendees.

More than 600 firefighters, teachers, environmentalists, and church leaders carried signs reading "ALEC is Not OK" and chanting "backroom deals are ALEC's game/sweetheart deals for corporate gain," while a giant inflatable pig wearing a banner reading "Hi, my name is ALEC" floated overhead. Two big rigs adorned with Teamsters logos circled the convention center, honking their horns and blowing air brakes. Harold A. Schaitberger, President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, told the crowd that ALEC's "sole purpose is to develop the most anti-worker, anti-employee, anti-union, anti-middle class, pro-business, pro corporation policies, legislation and agenda possible."

Inside, white men in dark suits milled in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel and the neighboring Cox Convention Center. Laughter floated through the hotel bar as corporate lobbyists (with a "private sector" tag on their name badge) huddled with state legislators (wearing "public sector" tags).

Fresh-faced interns hustled through the crowds, appearing exhilarated to be in the midst of dealmaking and power brokerage. Oklahoma City Police Officers in full uniform -- but reportedly off-duty and paid by ALEC -- stopped anyone not wearing a name badge from entering ALEC's sections of the convention center.

"We Know Who You Are"

On the morning of May 3, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin -- an ALEC "Legislator of the Year" in 2009 -- gave the ALEC meeting's keynote address. The short, relatively generic speech was the only portion of the ALEC event open to the press: the task force meetings where prospective "model bills" are discussed and adopted were entirely closed-door and guarded by police.

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TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma and Texas have argued for years about which has the best college football team, whose oil fields produce better crude, even where the state border should run. But in a hot, sticky dispute that no one wants to win, Oklahoma just reclaimed its crown.

After recalculating data from last year, the nation's climatologists are declaring that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S. last year— not Texas as initially announced last fall.

"It doesn't make me feel any better," joked Texas rancher Debbie Davis, who lives northwest of San Antonio.

In the new tally by the National Climatic Data Center, Oklahoma's average temperature last summer was 86.9 degrees, while Texas finished with 86.7 degrees. The previous record for the hottest summer was 85.2 degrees set in 1934 — in Oklahoma.

"I'm from Oklahoma, and when you talk about the summer of 1934, there are a lot of connotations that go with that," said Deke Arndt, chief of the NCDC's climate monitoring branch in Asheville, N.C. "That whole climate episode — the Dust Bowl — that is a point in our state's history that we still look back to as transformative."

Yet the summer of 2011, "was warmer than all those summers that they experienced during the Dust Bowl," Arndt said.

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Need That ‘A’ Grade? Try Denying Climate And Evolution

It’s happening in Oklahoma – again.

A bill that would prevent teachers from marking down students who turn in papers that dispute ideas like climate change and evolution was approved by the Oklahoma Common Education committeeon Tuesday by a 9-8 vote.

HB1674 states that students in science classes would be able to make totally unscientific and unfounded faith-based claims, and not be penalized for it. This is a horrible travesty of education, one that I’m sure most teachers would protest vigorously.

From Mother Jones:

Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. “I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks,” says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. “A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.”

Really? So I can declare that God created the world around six thousand years ago, even though my textbook says something quite different, and get an ‘A’ in science class? Whatever happened to the inquiry method, in which students are required to develop a solid argument based on proven facts?

Of course, this is Oklahoma, the same state that has brought us Senator James Inhofe who famously stated, “Climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that mandated religious instruction in science classes, lawmakers in many states are still trying to water down the teaching of science and push creationism into the public schools.

It’s not just Oklahoma. Just a few weeks into the 2013 legislative session, there are already anti-evolution bills circulating in Missouri, Montana, Colorado, Indiana, in addition to Oklahoma. And in some cases, like this one, climate change has taken a prominent place, along with evolution, as a target for creationists.

These lawmakers have also changed their tactics. Take the bill proposed byMissouri State Representative Rick Brattin: HB291 would require that intelligent design and “destiny” get the same amount of textbook coverage in Missouri schools as the theory of evolution. Brattin insists that his bill is not influenced by religion. After all, the legislator has declared: “I’m a huge science buff.”

Again from Mother Jones:

Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, says Oklahoma has proposed more anti-evolution legislation than any other state, introducing eight bills with academic freedom language since 2004. (None has passed.) “The problem with these bills is that they’re so open-ended; it’s a kind of code for people who are opposed to teaching climate change and evolution,” Meikle says.

“An extremely high percentage of scientists will tell you that evolution doesn’t have scientific weaknesses,” says the NCSE’s Meikle.

As Bill Nye the Science Guy puts it, denial of evolution is unique to the United States. The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades — and yet, defying Darwin, creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Let’s hope this egregious bill never passes.

Related Care2 Coverage

Louisiana Uses Public Funds To Teach Creationism

And On The Seventh Day, God Created A Museum

My Senator Denies Climate Change And Oklahoma Pays The Price

http://www.care2.com/causes/need-that-a-grade-try-denying-climate-and-evolution.html

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koch

Oklahoma Facts

Based in Wichita, Kan., Koch Industries, Inc. is one of the largest private companies in America according to Forbes magazine. It owns a diverse group of companies involved in refining and chemicals; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; minerals; fertilizers; polymers and fibers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products; and ranching. Koch companies have a presence in nearly 60 countries and employ about 70,000 people. Since 2003, Koch companies have completed more than $32 billion in acquisitions and investments, and nearly $11 billion in capital expenditures.

Companies in Oklahoma