Thanks For Smoking

Last month, the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council voted unanimously to pass a law that subsidizes the sale of tobacco.  So, the Nation is now in the position of buying billboards that say “Tobacco Stops With Me,” while at the same time paying people to sell you tobacco at below-market prices.

Here’s the deal: The Cherokee Nation is going to take $725,000 of the Cherokee people’s money and give it to the people who own the land that the smoke shops sit on.  Which means that the people who run the smokeshops don’t actually have to pay their rent anymore, the Cherokee Nation is picking up the tab.

Which is actually good news, because if the Cherokee Nation has close to a million bucks to subsidize the people who sell us cancer sticks, we’re sure that means they’ve already fully-funded health care and college scholarships, and of course, eyeglasses and dentures.   

We’re glad there are no longer any social problems that need to be addressed in the Cherokee Nation, and we anxiously await the roll-out of subsidies for folks at liquor stores and perhaps the fine folks at Hostess because the price of Ding-Dongs is getting just a little too high for our diabetes-riddled communities.

Kinship v. Kin. Who wins?

People keep emailing us more info on Bill John Baker and how he’s made his personal love for “the best President ever” B. Obama into Cherokee Nation’s official stance.  And of course, his defense of not-quite-Cherokee Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.  Someone sent us a link of Baker ‘splainin’ his affection for a woman who, as one blogger put it: “…has usurped Indigenous identity, just as her ancestors stole the land and resources. It's a hostile act of genocide and it is not okay.”

Baker’s justification for backing faux-Cherokee Warren: “I wish every Congressman and Senator in the U.S. had a kinship, felt a kinship to the Cherokee Nation.” Check out Baker on camera in his own words:

Well, that sounds good.  But what if there were an actual Cherokee citizen who really had a kinship with the Nation?  Baker would really, really love that person, right? Right??

What if there was a Cherokee citizen from Westville running for Congress, who’s already won his party’s nomination in a district that encompasses almost all of the Cherokee Nation, including Bill John Baker’s house?  Well there is, and his name is Markwayne Mullin.

So how does Baker and the Cherokee Nation support this Cherokee (who happens to be a Republican, rather than Baker’s preferred brand)?  Well, Baker tells the Daily Oklahoman in an article published September 4 that the Cherokee Nation will “stay out of it,”-- "IT" being the race between Mullin and the Democrat Rob Wallace, who is not Cherokee. 

Which is all well and good, except that Wallace, the non-Cherokee candidate, had already cashed a $2500 check from the Cherokee Nation back on July 19th, about six weeks before Baker told the world that we weren’t going to take sides. 

Whoops! Whether that was a lie or a simple mistake, the Nation has officially taken sides AGAINST the Cherokee.  So, a non-Cherokee Democrat gets Baker’s undying support while a card-carrying Cherokee Republican gets thrown under the bus.  By the way, Mullin’s reports show no donation from his own tribe, even though his non-Cherokee opponent has already been to the bank.

Then, in September the Democrat, Wallace, attacked Mullin for taking money from the Cherokee Nation on stimulus projects while Mullin simultaneously denounced the stimulus.  A week later, the Cherokee Nation produced documents that helped Wallace’s cause and slammed the Cherokee citizen, Mullin. 

So, let's go back to that video and take a look at what is really going on here. What it boils down to is that Baker supports Elizabeth Warren not because she has a “kinship” to the Cherokee Nation, like he says, but because she is a Democrat.

And Baker goes out of his way to go against Markwayne Mullin, EVEN THOUGH he is Cherokee, because he is a Republican.

No matter what your political affiliation: if you judge by actions, you might think being Democrat was more important to Baker than being Cherokee.  And it puts the Cherokee Nation in the position that if a tribal citizen gets elected to the U.S. Congress, his own nation will have fought him every step of the way.  

And if Mullin’s elected, every member of Oklahoma’s congressional delegation will be a Republican and the Cherokee Nation will be on the record as having pointedly backed Obama and all the Democrats our congressional delegation ran against.  That's not a great position to be in when most of the Nation’s budget comes from federal funds.  

Would You Trust this Man with $600 Million Part 2

Yesterday we talked about Bill John Baker’s new pick to assist the best CPA in Vian, Lacey Horn. The Cherokee Nation now has some help from another Sequoyah County CPA, Jody Reece-- who just happened to be in charge of either the finance department & grants administration in the 1990s when the Nation got busted for not auditing its own books, for using federal program funds illegally, and using tens of millions of dollars improperly. The details are in yesterday’s blog, and you will find the list is very long and very embarrassing for the Nation.

How embarrassing? Well, the result way back when of all the financial shenanigans during the Byrd/Baker/Reece era was that the Cherokee Nation wasn’t trusted with its own money and had to be put on an allowance, like a third grader.

According to the Tulsa World, because the Nation was in such bad financial shape and the feds had “substantial concerns about the tribe’s financial systems” so they gave the money to the nation “month-by-month until the tribe restores its financial credibility…”

That made Cherokee Nation officials upset at the time.  The Tulsa World quotes one as saying: “While it’s embarrassing and uncomfortable for us to have lost credibility by having weaknesses pointed out everywhere, we’ve got a plan in hand,” said the tribe’s executive director of finance and administration in a November 6, 1998 interview with the paper.

So who said that he was so embarrassed about what happened either under his own watch as the top finance guy or the controller, Jody Reece, who moved over to administer grants, which then somehow got used for purposes they weren’t supposed to be?

None other than Charles Head. Remember him? He was recently appointed by Baker to be the new Secretary of State for the Cherokee Nation.  Head and Reese were in charge of the Cherokee Nation’s finances during the worst financial crisis in the history of the Cherokee Nation.  And now Baker has brought them both back.

Justice Darrell Dowty (left) administers the oath of office to the newly confirmed Secretary of State Charles Head while Frances Head looks on.
Photo Courtesy Cherokee Nation

Background Checks Are For the Little People

If you want to go to work for the Cherokee Nation or one of its businesses, you have to pass a background check.  Unless you want to actually RUN the Cherokee Nation Businesses, in which case the Tribal Council doesn’t care whether you can pass one or not.  They only care if you can run funeral home, in which case you are qualified to run a $600 million a year business.

Last week, Jay Hannah, the executive vice-president of a bank with $5 billion in assets, was replaced as Chairman of CNB by Sam Hart, a mortician.  

This all happened because the council changed a law last week that Baker’s newly appointed board members did NOT have to get security clearance.

These guys get background checks; Bakers guys don't

This means that the council thinks that having someone who fails a background check can't clean the carpets at Housing Authority offices, but someone who can't pass a background check running our casinos is just okie-dokie.  It's the little guys that they are worried about, us common citizens, not Baker's hand picked guys at the top. The Tribal Council decided that doing business with the federal government in the defense industry (only a trillion dollar chunk of change, according to the fine folks at Wikipedia) was not worth pursuing if it meant they had to wait any longer to get rid of a Cherokee who knows how to run a multi-billion dollar business with a guy who knows how to run a small town funeral home.