Thank You For Smoking, Part Tali: Follow the Money

We got some feedback about our blog regarding the mysterious smoke shop subsidy, which puts money in the pockets of people who sell cancer sticks in our communities.  Seems pretty stupid, but it passed the Tribal Council unanimously, and Baker’s treasurer was there to support it.  So someone said we should follow the money.  As in, whose pockets does that $725,000 land in?  And lo and behold, the mystery became much clearer.

First, remember that the money helps two classes of people:  1) the people who lease their land to smoke shop owners, who now have most of their rent guaranteed, and 2) the smoke shop owners themselves, who now don’t actually have to pay their own rent. 

So a closer look shows that one of the proponents of giving Cherokee money to cancer peddlers instead of senior citizens was Chuck Hoskin, Jr.  And it turns out that his dad, Chuck Hoskin, Sr. owns land that is leased to a smoke shop.  Cha-ching!  What a great deal!  Chuck Jr. didn’t even recuse himself, he just voted to have the Cherokee Nation send money to his dad.  Pretty sweet.  It must be tough for Chuck Sr., making ends meet.  He’s already having to work two full-time jobs (State Rep and Chief of Staff).  The Nation was only paying Chuck Senior $130,000 this year, and the State of Oklahoma was chipping in a mere $38,400. 

While that’s not bad for a guy who lives in Vinita but whose offices at both of these “full-time” jobs are in Tahlequah and OKC, he did manage to find a way to squeeze another few extra bucks out of the Nation.  Well played.

Who else?  Well, who else is close to Baker?  No one is closer, literally, to Baker than the guy whose job is to drive him around.  Billy Bob Dougherty was a campaign donor Baker hired to be his driver/special projects guy.

But guess what?  Dougherty also owns a smoke shop and apparently needs a second check from the Cherokee Nation. Thanks to his boss/co-pilot, he doesn’t have to pay rent at his store anymore, according to the Cherokee Phoenix. 

So, he can continue selling low-tax tobacco, because of course it is in the Nation’s best interest to do so.  And the idea of giving the Cherokee people’s money away to people who sell tobacco, instead of say, that elder stipend we’ve be waiting by the mailbox for, is not just a stupid idea.  It’s starting to look like a corrupt one.

How the Freedmen Deal Went Down Part IV: Are You Okay With Being Lied To By Your Government?

Over the last week or so (in parts I-III), we’ve established that the Cherokee people are being lied to about how the Freedmen miraculously became citizens just days before last fall’s elections.  Joe Crittenden was asked to supply all the communications he had with the BIA and the Freedmen as he negotiated a deal to make them citizens, but all Crittenden turned over were a bunch of all-employee emails which appears someone else wrote and signed his name to, and receipts for this trip to DC so he could get paid some cash money for going to our Nation’s capital and selling HIS Nation’s constitution down the river.

So, what are you, the Cherokee citizens, going to do about it?  You’ve been lied to, and there is a cover-up going on!  Documents that exist have not been turned over as required by law, and no explanation has been given as to why.

On this blog, we only care about the TRUTH.  And nothing makes us madder than when people lie to the Cherokee people.  Crittenden will get away with the lie and his noncompliance with the law if the Cherokee people let them.

So here’s what you all need to do.  Get out a sharp pencil, a dull crayon, an old IBM Selectric or the writing utensil of your choice and send a Freedom of Information Act Request to Bill John Baker, Cherokee Nation, PO BOX 948, Tahlequah, OK 74464.

Write something like this:

Dear Chief Baker,

One of the pillars of your campaign and pledged hallmarks of your administration was transparency.  In the interest of the Cherokee people’s understanding of how people with no Cherokee blood became citizens of the Cherokee Nation just before September’s election, even though our Tribal Supreme Court had ruled they were not citizens.

Please provide ALL written emails, letters and phone call notes, travel, meeting dates and topics Acting Chief Joe Crittenden, and ANY of his staff, liaisons, contractors or other types of representatives have had with Larry Echo Hawk, Echo Hawk’s staff, BIA officials, DOI officials, Marilyn Vann, Jon Velie (attorney for Freedmen), any other Freedmen plaintiffs or representatives and DOJ concerning the Freedmen, citizenship for the Freedmen, pending Court cases, Judge Kennedy and anyone else associated with this important case for the past six months.  Please include the materials left out by Joe Crittenden in a previous FOIA request, including the letter(s) he sent to the BIA that the BIA acknowledges receiving but that Crittenden refused to disclose earlier.

Please respond to this request as required by LA 25-01, Cherokee Nation’s  Freedom of Information Act."

Or something like that.

Better yet, ask him to put the documents on the web.  Pester the folks at the Cherokee Phoenix about why they are ignoring the story and it’s coverup. 

Write your council members demanding to know what happened.

Write the Attorney General and point out Crittenden’s noncompliance.  It’s AG Todd Hembree's duty to make sure EVERYONE follows the law, including and ESPECIALLY elected leaders.  If our Constitution is ignored, supposedly for the greater good, we have a right to know how that happened.  We have a right not to be lied to and then have the TRUTH covered up.

Do it.  And if no one else will publicize what you find, rest assured we will always stand for the CHEROKEE TRUTH.

The Price of Sovereignty: Part "Tali" (That's Cherokee for "2")

In the discussion about the HUD funding being restored, we neglected one more retroactive and inaccurate statement.

While Baker was busy taking credit for selling our sovereignty for roughly $40 million pieces of silver, he also took a shot at Smith, by saying he was getting the money restored that was “withheld from the Nation and the previous administration.”

Either Baker is taking a shot at APCSJC, or he forgot that Smith wasn’t Chief when the ruling came down on August 22.

August 22 is the day that the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court issued the ruling saying the freedmen weren’t citizens any more, and threw everything sideways.  Until that happened, HUD was giving us our money.

Remember--Smith left office on August 14th, and Joe Crittenden was sworn in as Acting Principal Chief, a week before all this hit the fan.

Baker was there; he ought to know that his buddy Joe Crittenden was in office when the Supreme Court issued their ruling and got the ball rolling on this.

Not that its Crittenden’s fault… the Chief doesn’t control the timing or the content of Supreme Court decisions. That goes for Chief Smith, Chief Crittenden and now, Chief Baker.

So, if Baker wants someone to blame for HUD withholding housing funding, he really should start with HUD.  They withheld the money even though there was no law that said they should.  Or he could start with the Cherokee people, for changing the Constitution.

Baker should learn that he doesn’t necessarily look better when he tries to make Smith look worse, especially when he does so by ignoring the Truth.

22 Days Until the New Election: Pants on Fire!

Our evening did not go according to plan.  We had a blog ready to go, until we got a phone call and had to write a new blog.  Because if there is one thing you can’t do to us here at Cherokee Truth, its call us up on the phone, act surly, and lie to us.  And that’s what happened tonight.

We got phone call(s) that said, to the best of our note taking ability: “For 12 years Chad Smith has refused to audit the casino’s finances but Bill John Baker will order an independent audit to make sure that casino money goes for services to the Cherokee people and not to line the pockets of campaign contributors and vendors.  I hope that Bill John can earn your vote in the upcoming election.”

As readers of the Cherokee Truth know, this is a lie and worse-- Baker knows it is a lie!  As we showed everyone in May, 53 Days before the June election, the Cherokee Nation and its businesses are audited every year and win awards.  Mr. Baker knows this, because the audit is not only presented to the CNB Board (of which he is an advisory member,Resolution R-52-10) but also the council’s executive and finance committee just a few months ago.

Not only are the audits for the past 10 years available online, but video footage of Baker sitting and listening to the audit being presented is also available online!

The auditor even talks about the special audit of JUST THE CASINOS, which is sent to the feds every year for compliance purposes.

There’s also the Tulsa World story that cites a national rating company for praising Cherokee Nation for its "careful and conservative governmental financial management" and for its "ability to manage cash flow issues." It goes on to tout Cherokee Nation's creation and expansion of non-gaming businesses like health care and information technology. 

To sum up:  The casinos are audited every year.  They win awards for their clean audits.  Baker knows this and lies about it anyway.  Apparently he thinks no one will notice that he’s not telling the TRUTH. He must think we’re all stupid and can’t look up readily accessible public information that shows he’s lying.

We’re sure the Cherokee Nation isn’t perfect, and Baker can certainly point out all the flaws he wants, but if he has to lie to people to create problems with the Cherokee Nation, that says more about him than it does anyone else.

Election Limbo Day 8: The "Resounding Loser"

The Muskogee Phoenix deserves a shout-out for their latest story on the election, especially the first line:

“Two winners were declared this week in the contest to elect the Cherokee Nation’s principal chief. But the resounding loser appears to be the tribe’s election commission.”

Both sides have had problems with the commission, and no one seems to know for sure what the real vote was at this point.  When Smith was ahead, he thought it was fair to have a recount and Baker thought the commission was ‘stealing’ the election from him.  But when Baker went ahead on the recount, which the commission admits was screwed up, he suddenly thought they were a-ok and  reliable. 

So who are these people and how did they get there?  As some of our readers point out, the Cherokee Nation web site has some good information on the commission. 

They are not, as Mr. Hoskin has said in statements, Smith’s ‘hand picked’ election commission:  Hoskin and Baker voted in favor of the two commissioners selected by the council. The commissioners are:  Roger Johnson and Martha Calico, both of whom were selected unanimously, (including votes from Baker and his spokesperson/fellow council member Chuck Hoskin, Jr.).  Resolutions 07-08 and 08-08 on legistar show those votes.  Chief Smith also selected two people, Patsy Eads-Morton and Curtis Rohr.  Together, those four selected Brenda Walker.  Johnson, one of the council’s selections, is the Chairman of the commission.  So even though both sides seem to have no confidence in the commission, it’s true that both sides had an equal say in assembling the people who have created the mess.

One bit of truth that has gone unnoticed so far:  either candidate could have avoided any of this mess by getting, say, 500 more votes than the other thus making the margin large enough that the rest of these things would seem irrelevant.  However, with such a close election and such a mess made by the election commission, neither candidate has a mandate or the right to invoke the strong will of the Cherokee people. 

5 Days Until The Election- Partying Like It’s 1997

We decided to wait until after tonight’s council meeting to do the TRUTH tonight, and we’re kinda glad we did.  We had some campaign finance stuff ready to go, but there was some interesting action at the council meeting, so we’ll save that other stuff for later. 

We watched the video stream, and then afterwards got an email from Chad Smith’s campaign.  The email referenced a vote tonight, which repealed a couple of laws that have actually been referenced in campaign material and have been the subject of Cherokee Phoenix Truth Reports as well as some of our reports.

Basically, the council tonight was repealing the laws where Bill John Baker had made motions in illegal meetings (meetings without a quorum) in 1997.  Smith said during the council meeting, and in his news release, that Baker pushed these illegal measures when he should have known better.  To paraphrase, Smith basically said that the Constitution says a quorum is 2/3 of council, and that third grade math shows that 2/3=10/15, so a council meeting with 9 doesn’t work.

In 1997, Baker (and eight other council members) ignored that and went ahead with their illegal meetings.  Apparently, the repeal of this illegal law has been in front of the Rules Committee already this month and Smith’s email included a link to the May 2011 Rules Committee meeting, where he says just last month Baker voted twice to table a measure that would repeal the illegal laws and then finally voted against repealing them.  Check out this link to watch for yourself. (shuffle forward about an hour and 20 minutes or so into the video)

After viewing the link, that’s right.  However, tonight Baker reversed himself and asked to be a sponsor of the bill repealing the illegal actions of the 1997 council of which he was a part.  He made no explanation, so we won’t hazard a guess why he changed his mind, but not every council member did.  The final vote was 13-3 in favor of repealing the bill.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Baker has to say about why he changed his mind on the vote, and if he acknowledges that the 1997 actions were illegal or wrong.  He’s avoided that one so far.  Smith, on the other hand, is starting to pick at Baker’s record.  Baker has been hitting Smith’s record hard,  often taking things out of context to do so, but now is Baker’s opportunity to give us some context as to why he changed his vote and to defend his 1997 actions.

10 Days Until the Election- Accusations & Truth

More than a week ago, we addressed Baker’s allegation that Cherokee Nation employees were breaking federal law by sending a letter to other employees asking them to support Smith with their votes and money.

The U.S. Attorney told the Cherokee Nation the same day this was not the case, move along, nothing to see here.

At the time we said “Hopefully, from here on out, he’ll use the truth to educate Cherokee voters. Maybe (Baker) doesn’t like employees supporting Smith, but he shouldn’t accuse them of breaking the law if they haven’t done so. Maybe that one-day "investigation" will be the end of it, but for some reason we don’t think so.”

Boy, were we right!  Since then, Baker has sent out mailers, done some pretty spooky sounding robo-calls and apparently taken out radio ads along the same theme.

A lot of people, if they were told by federal prosecutors to stop accusing people of committing crimes when the people hadn’t done anything wrong, would stop.  Not Baker, apparently.  Instead, he’s kept repeating the story, and finally got the folks at FOX 23 to bite yesterday. At least part way.  

The hard hitting FOX news journalists told you what we told you 9 days ago:  there is no violation of federal law.  They did a story anyway, where Baker said, even if it’s not illegal, it’s wrong.  Since we care about the truth here, we have a little rule that says you lose the moral high ground and the ability to say what is right and what is wrong when you wrongfully accuse Cherokee people of violating federal law in public. Especially when you do it repeatedly after the experts have weighed in and said you're wrong (we're talking about the lawyers here, not us)!

The FOX story lets Baker tell his side of the story and references employees who said they were afraid to talk on camera.  Then they let Smith respond, and he says, basically, that he’ll abide by the Constitution and Cherokee employees have no reason to fear for their job. 

We’ll let their story stand for what it is, though the reporter waving around a piece of paper in front of the hospital looks kinda funny.  The real TRUTH is that the story shouldn’t have happened, if Baker would have just taken the word of the U.S. Attorney and moved on down the road to talk about important issues, rather than attacking employees who support Smith.

16 Days Until the Election-Broken Promises

Tonight's truth delves into the murky water of campaign promises. Usually, a candidate waits until he/she is elected before they break a campaign promise. Remember "Read My Lips---No New Taxes?" But in this election, one candidate already has egg on his face. 

Since Bill John Baker first announced his candidacy for Principal Chief, he's made a big deal out of campaign finance, honesty and integrity. As recently as the end of April, Baker "challenged" Chad Smith to forgo campaign contributions from non-Cherokee, outside vendors. He also challenged Smith to not accept campaign donations from owners of businesses that contract with the tribe and its entities.

Baker, early on in January, told the Cherokee Phoenix, "I believe refusing contributions from anyone who benefits from contracts with our people will ensure there is not even the hint of impropriety or conflict of interest."

Then, in campaign material Baker mailed out to voters he made a promise. It was such a big promise that he underlined it. He declared to Cherokee voters that "He is the only candidate who refuses to accept campaign contributions from non-Cherokee outside vendors who make money from our Nation."

The Truth? Bill John Baker has taken at least $11,000 from three individuals who are both non-Cherokee AND vendors who make money by doing business with Cherokee Nation. What's even more startling is that when he made the above challenge to Smith on April 27, 2011, he had ALREADY POCKETED all $11,000 from the very folks he promised he would not take campaign contributions.

We'll break it down for you. Baker took $5,000 from non-Cherokee vendor Dr. Christopher DeLoache back on January 13, 2011. Dr. Deloache has made more than a million dollars thru his association with the tribe. 

Then, on April 14, 2011, he took $1,000 from Randy Skinner, owner of Tahlequah Lumber, a non-Cherokee vendor who has made more than $6.7 million doing business with Cherokee Nation.

A few days later on April 18, Baker pocketed another $5,000 from George Glover of Glover Construction Company who has been paid more than $6 million by the tribe for services rendered.

Want to see for yourself? Click here to and scroll down to page 4 to see DeLoache's donation and click here and scroll down to pages 5 and 7 to see Glover and Skinner's donations.

And because we are only interested in the truth, the Freedom of Information Act confirms what we are reporting tonight:

It's possible, but not likely, that Baker didn't know that three of his biggest campaign donors did business with the Cherokee Nation. Especially the two Tahlequah donors. If he knows them well enough to ask them for money, and he's made an important campaign promise about his donors, you'd think he'd ask them whether they did business with the Cherokee Nation.

In the campaign flyer in which Baker talks about not taking money from vendors, he also says 'the integrity of tribal government needs to be restored.' At this point, Baker needs to either return the money and keep his promise, or admit that he's breaking his promise.

The Truth is that Baker broke a campaign promise just weeks after he made it, and weeks before he was even an official candidate.