Lights On and the Cockroaches Scatter For the Corners

Tulsa Academic Center

The Tulsa Academic Center, which is in the former Lindsey Elementary School facility at 2740 E. 41st St. North, is a two-part alternative school for grades six through 12. The program was launched in August 2007. Students who are suspended from school can be referred to the Term Academic Program, most for 30 days or less. The most troubled students can be referred to the Performance Training Program (PTP). Superintendent Michael Zolkowski has described PTP as a kind of boot camp designed to improve students’ reading and social skills. PTP students must earn their way back to their home schools by amassing points for attendance, behavior and work completion.

In a series of recent articles inspired by former students, anonymous teachers and various other insiders, the Tulsa Whirled has successfully "turned on the lights" and exposed the debacle that is the alternative school, Tulsa Academic Center. Apparently everything but an education was going on before, during and after school.

The allegations were brought forward and boiled over during a recent school board meeting. Allegations include: Among other things, they described daily physical fights among students, frequent attacks on staff, student enrollment two times the size for which the school was designed, limited classroom materials, and no access by classroom teachers to special education students' Individual Education Programs, which include critical information about the students' unique needs.

It sounds like this place is now a public nuisance and should be closed immediately.

Watch closely and see how a bloated bureaucracy reacts to these charges.

Are You A Minuteman?

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution states in its entirety:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed"

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear an important case regarding the second amendment. Interestingly, this case is brought by a citizen from the District of Columbia, which is not a State.

Especially during the last 50 years, we have seen a steady erosion of the constitutionally guaranteed right. And this is certainly an individuals right. The historical minuteman was the citizen-soldier always ready to grab his rifle at a moments notice to protect himself, his family, and his community.

Notice that it says the right is to keep (own, have possession of), and bear (carry on your person), arms (plural, multiple). And that right shall not be infringed (impeded, encroached, invalidate, violate).

This right has been attacked and infringed on every level. Right now the main discussion is the right of an individual to just have a firearm. The right to bear it is already severely restricted. Waiting periods, conceal-and-carry permits, etc. all certainly infringe this right.

We are like the frog in a pot of water that is beginning to boil. If the Court determines the second amendment applies to the States instead of the individual, this right will have been removed from individuals. Combined with the Federal Governments refusal to protect the States from invasion, we are between a rock and a hard place.

Tulsa, The Oil Capital of the World?

I really like the representation I'm receiving from my District 7 City Counselor, John Eagleton.

It seems he has an innovative and out of the box potential solution to the city infrastructure problems: Let's see if T-Town still holds the mineral rights to drill for oil and gas underneath the thousands of acres of land owned by Tulsa.

Read more about it here. Focusing at first on Mohawk Park, wouldn't it be great to see a gusher? And perhaps once more Tulsa would assume its historical role of the Oil Capital of the World.

We could thumb our collective noses at the idiots who block the further development of our natural resources, either at Anwar or off the Pacific coast.

Tulsa Bombed! No One Injured.

Following an evening of thunderstorms, Tulsa awakened to find that they had been inadvertently bombed by our own Oklahoma Air National Guard F-16!

Officially an accident, the cynical Tulsa Chigger cannot help but think the real story is that as part of the Federal Government's war on drugs, this was intended to be dropped approximately one more mile to the west (51st & Peoria).

From KOTV:

A military rocket crashed into a Tulsa building late Thursday night, knocking out a nearby apartment wall and power to the apartment complex.

The incident happened at the Canyon Creek Apartment complex at 51^st and Lewis.

The rocket was discovered when a couple returned to their apartment Thursday night.

Tulsa Police say the couple found a big hole in a wall and the rocket, some of which was buried in the foundation. The rocket had knocked out power to the complex.

Officials say the rocket had a dummy warhead on it and came from an Air National Guard jet. The pilot thought he had lost the inert rocket over a field in Kansas during a training mission Thursday.

Tulsa Police say because of the power outage, PSO crews were called to repair the problem.

Agents from the FBI and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are investigating.

No one was injured in the incident.

Why is Barack Obama Black?

The race card has now been played in the Presidential race. Geraldine Ferraro has resigned from the Clinton campaign amid a firestorm resulting from some off-handed comments she made regarding the race of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.

The pictures you see are of a recent photo of Senator Obama in the top left corner, an old picture of his mother, Ann, to the right, and an old picture of his father, Barack Obama, Sr. And as you can plainly see, his father is mostly black and his mother is mostly white, in today's terms. So, what does that make the Senator?

In anthropological terms there are three races, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid, or a mix thereof. Senator Obama is then a mixed race person.

The Senator's father was a Kenyan educated in the U.S. His parent's divorced when he was two years old. His absentee father returned to Kenya to work in the government there. Here are some quotes from the Senator about his absentee father:


"All my life, I had carried a single image of my father, one that I had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned, one that I had later tried to take as my own," the brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader -- my father had been all those things."

But, as an adult, he learned there was a darker side to his Harvard-educated father.

"A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!"

Barack Obama Sr. was born in Kenya in 1936. He met Obama's mother while both were college students in Hawaii. But the marriage broke up when the senior Obama went to study at Harvard.

"He and my mother divorced when I was only two years old, and for most of my life I knew him only through the letters he sent and the stories my mother and grandparents told."

The senior Obama was also essentially a polygamist.

The way Obama describes it in his book, his father had two children by a woman in Kenya before meeting Obama's mother in Hawaii. Then, when the junior Obama's parents' marriage dissolved around 1963, the senior Obama returned to Kenya with another woman he met in the United States and had two children by her. But that didn't stop him from resuming his relationship with his first wife.

I certainly understand a young Barack wanting to discover his roots. But upon discovering those roots and seeing that he was chasing a ghost, it would seem that he would tend to distance himself from that.


So why is Barack black when he is as much white as he is black?

Good Ole Boy Network Active Again

In a 6-1 Board vote, Tulsa Technology has elected a successor to Dr. Gene Callahan. Who is it? None other than Dr. Kara Gae Neal, the wife of Tulsa Whirld editor Ken Neal. The beat goes on.....

New York's Bad Apple

Democrat Governor Eliot Spitzer is the latest version of corruption and is a bad apple for New York. It appears Oklahoma is not alone in this regard.

You can read about it here.

He was caught in a net cast by Federal agents investigating corruption. Caught red-handed arranging a night with a high priced call girl in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, he used the alias of George Fox (his picture is to the right of the Governor's). What a joke! Read about the real George Fox here. Eliot Spitzer is no George Fox!

I am really sad for his attractive wife, Silda. Her picture is to the far right. She looked miserable and who wouldn't be?

The Governor initially refuses to step down. At that point, in righteous indignation, a group should have stormed the podium, physically removed him, found some tar and feathers and tried to restore a sense of decency to a high elected office.

Corruption sears the conscience so that they don't think either they have done anything wrong, or it really wasn't that bad. But he has brought shame to the high office of Governor for New York. Especially since he came to power as a crusader for doing things right.

If he won't remove himself, I say the electorate should remove him. Perhaps impeachment is more appropriate to our society today. But a rail and some tar and feathers would make a lasting impression and accomplish the same thing.

Easter Tidbits

Do you realize how early Easter is this year?

As you may know, Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the,1st full moon after the Spring Equinox (which is March 20). This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar.

Based on the above, Easter can actually be one day earlier, (March 22) but that is pretty rare. Here's the interesting info. This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives!! And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above!). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier!

Here's the facts: 1) The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you're 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!). 2) The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year!

Hat tip to Gary Bonner

One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Entire Barrel

The tentacles of corruption run very deep in Oklahoma. My theory is that due to the nature of how we became a state, Oklahoma attracted some very unsavory people, and let's just say the the apple never falls far from the tree.

Pictured are just a few examples of corruption. First is convicted former State Insurance Commissioner Carroll Fisher. Second is the infamous Gene Stipe currently charged with numerous crimes of corruption. Third is former Governor David Hall who plea bargained his way out of a jail term. Fourth is the Kingfish, Huey Long, not of Oklahoma fame, but certainly associated with Louisiana corruption on a large scale. And lastly is former Governor David Hall, who I personally met briefly as he was helping his daughter move into Bennett Hall at OSU in 1974 just a few weeks before he was to start serving his sentence.

According to the FBI, Oklahoma has the distinction of having the largest political corruption scandal in the history of the United States. During the 1970's a majority of the county commissioners were convicted of corruption, including taking bribes and kickbacks. To this day, there are still few controls on each county's 3 county commissioners!

In Oklahoma History, I learned that Oklahoma had impeached so many of our territorial governors, that one more would have jeopardized our status as a state.

Just like a spoiled apple or potato will spoil all the rest in the bag it comes in contact with, so too does political corruption. As with the bag of potatoes, sometimes it becomes necessary to throw out the whole bag and get a new one.

We know that corruption is a reality in our politics. Now the rot continues to spread. It is commonplace to see someone charged with embezzlement. Banks, churches, businesses, schools, you name it and its there. We see long time politicians get term limited out of office and suddenly they get cushy jobs that take a political appointment. Or they turn right around an start a PAC and become a lobbyist. We also see it when the same contractors are awarded contracts for public projects. And the list goes on and on.

Term limits have helped flush out some corruption. It was a start. We should ban any retirement programs for "public service". It should be just that, service. I don't mind that they get paid something reasonable, but it should never be considered a career with retirement benefits. I think our society as a whole would be better served and we would have better checks and balances, if we saw regular turnover in all levels of politics.

Unscientific Poll Results

The results are in. The numbers were not great, nor are they statistically significant, but the readers of Tulsa Chiggers voted 8-2 that they are not satisfied with their "choice" for public schools in the Tulsa district.

The numbers were extremely low in light of over 1,400 people who visited Tulsa Chiggers over the time the poll was open. I guess that most of my readers don't like on-line polls, or perhaps they did not like my question. And after all, it is at the bottom of the page, so it could be easily missed.

Now I have posted a new poll question regarding the decision by the TPS Board to file suit against the Oklahoma Charter School Act, claiming it is unconstitutional. Please take the time to vote.

Illegal Immigrants Cost the U.S. More Than the Iraq War

The URL's are included for verification of the following facts:

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers.http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National Policy Institute, 'estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.'http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States'.http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

Total cost is a whooping... $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!

Snopes is provided for doubters:http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/bankofamerica.asp