Oklahoma Robbery in Progress
How to Steal a State: Introduction
Introduction
Change is happening quickly and it’s happening state by state. Places that formerly enjoyed an enviable quality of life and low crime rates are transforming before our eyes in a way that defies the traditions and history of those areas. We’re somewhat accustomed to watching cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago move through cycles of prosperity and relative safety followed by eras of violent crime and observable deterioration. We watched during the 1990s as New York City residents voted in new leadership committed to cleaning things up, only to have the cycle repeat itself with future administrations.
What’s happening now is something quite different. Against the beliefs and will of the majority within the country’s interior, great places are being stolen and ruined. Entire states are falling to policies that have proven to be not just ineffective, but destructive for all but a select few. It seems to be happening so fast that citizens rarely recognize the steal is on until their entire state is pulled out from under them. Good people wake up only after the crime is complete, never noticing the intricate and patient plan that preceded the fall of the place they call home.
To understand the anatomy of the crime, stop the steal and prevent the fall of other areas, it's necessary to witness the act as it happens. Here’s your chance. Keep your eyes on Oklahoma, where an attempted robbery is in progress. And while you’re watching Oklahoma, remember to also keep your eyes on public education in your state. As you will see, the steal often starts where politics and public education meet.
Within any complicated crime, there are a host of characters. In this case, they are grifters looking to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Some are wealthy, many are highly educated, a few are neither but wishing to appear as both. When stealing a state, it takes those of means who must find a willing puppet to parade as a leader and do their bidding. This person must be attracted to the position through the temptation of power and importance, present themselves publicly as a believable pillar of virtue, and then be tested for a required and non-negotiable willingness to betray the laws they will pledge to follow and to deceive the people they will vow to serve.
Once this person bites at the bait and the hook is set, full resources and questionable tactics will be deployed to ensure he or she is elected or appointed to a series of positions from which the theft will be managed. Ironically, this now pawn continues to operate as if fully in control while all-the-while being maneuvered by the will of nefarious funders and interests void of real concern for the populous.
In Oklahoma, the pawn is Joy Hofmeister, and she took the bait like a large-mouthed bass back in 2013. Once the local power brokers had her on the line, the vibrations in the water attracted the much larger predators Joy Hofmeister serves during the current election cycle. Within this age-old pattern, when a newbie politician quickly becomes known as a willing and active participant in shady dealings, larger players will see that person’s usefulness within a wider plan and make their move.
And this carefully planned theft of Oklahoma is anything but boring. In fact, it may be more fit for reality television than the Tiger King, Oklahoma’s other well-known web of scandalous entertainment. Hold tight for a tale of dark money, several not-so-anonymous donors, a cocaine arrest, laptop secrets revealed, duplicity from both political parties, teachers and their unions gone wild, an office break-in, scheming text streams, nasty attack ads, multiple felony indictments, billionaire defense fund benefactors, a university president and predator, ties to national money pools and players, a rat’s nest of echoingly hollow non-profits and duplicitous PACs, a schizophrenic DA and his media marriage, tragic and timely terrorism, stoner and tribal alliances, and one grandstand of a political party defection.
A Bird’s Eye View of The Escalating Steal Cycle
Stealing a state and sealing up its power structure to prevent voting citizens from ever again having future input about the policies that directly affect their lives involves far more than a one-time maneuver. Like a building tornado, a complete takeover involves an escalating and predictable cycle of deceit stretching over years, ever higher offices, and a growing team of double-dealers. Before we get into the details in this worthy of reality TV story, it’s helpful to briefly cover the basic anatomy of this type of an operation. Here’s how the basic steal cycle works:
The People Speak - The people elect a representative to an office of significance who bravely seeks to represent the wishes of the people with fidelity and digs in to make the changes promised during his or her campaign.
The Steal Team Forms - Those who benefit from the current bureaucracy and corruption quickly fall in behind the common goal of removing the people’s representative and restoring power to the corrupt. A handful of the state’s most notorious political consultants coordinate recruiting, as they troll for a power-hungry office seeker to link with the special interest money eager to fuel the steal.
The Steal Team Leader Emerges – This team of resistance will then appoint, promote, or support the election of a Steal Team Leader to a position from which he or she will sabotage the efforts of the people’s representative while doing their best to maintain the public perception of being fully aligned with the will of the people. This person’s job is to kick up the dust and make the people’s representative appear to be a high-conflict individual, incapable of the kind of decorum and flexibility required to govern in an effective way.
The Subversion Begins - The Steal Team Leader then spends his or her time in office saying all the right public words to convince the public of his or her full commitment to their wishes, while doing everything possible to create a hyperbolically false image of the people’s representative as impossible to work with and incompetent. As if on cue, the mainstream portion of the local media will eagerly jump in at every opportunity to ensure the “bully”, “dangerous” or other carefully selected label firmly adheres to the target.
Dark Money Speaks - When the next election cycle approaches, the Steal Team Leader is perfectly positioned, with the help of an avalanche of dark money and a well-crafted hit campaign, to primary out the people’s elected representative. The Steal Team Leader is still wearing his or her sheep’s suit during the campaign, falsely embroidered with the majority party letter of the populous, in this case an “R”, all while subversively and illegally assisting in coordinating the hit campaign using funds from the team’s dark money masters. He or she is careful to present a polished and believable public campaign, fully distanced from the “anonymous”, manufactured and shockingly negative media ads running in heavy doses against the people’s representative.
The “Leader” in Office - The Steal Team Leader’s duplicity is rewarded with a win, and due to his or her willingness to secretly conspire in the shady places where power grabs are planned, bigger funders and interests begin planning the next, more powerful office to propel him or her toward. The Steal Team Leader uses the time in office not to do the people’s work as promised, but to talk much and accomplish little to nothing but surreptitiously thwarting the agenda he or she campaigned to enact. If a pandemic or crisis happens to overlap this time in office, all the easier.
A Higher Target - At this point in the steal, a new target, preferably the occupant of an even higher office, is identified for the Steal Team Leader to publicly discredit at every opportunity and seek to primary, and thus remove, during the next election. Again, dark money has his or her back, now in an even more significant way. Thus, the cycle continues and escalates until the state is no longer recognizable to its occupants and taxpayers.
The Mask Comes Off – At some point, the capture of power reaches a level that allows the Steal Team Leader to dispense with the full charade. This typically includes the adoption of policies contrary to the people’s best interests yet overtly aligned with the dark money that supported his or her political rise. This could even be as dramatic as the Steal Team Leader openly shedding a previously false party affiliation, no longer needing to fool the populous to gain power already in hand.
It's easy to see parallels within this escalating cycle of power grabbing, not only in other states, but at the federal level of our government. And while the cycle is clearly observable and undeniable from the air, it’s the down and dirty details and tactics of the individual steals happening across the country that truly show how shifty and grifty these polished actors truly are. Many of their unethical dealings and individual acts of subversion are identified and reported on factually by the handful of independent, local journalists still committed to bringing truth to the masses. Those bits and pieces of the full story are rarely, if ever, picked up by the wide-reaching press, having been suppressed and relegated to smaller, independent sites with a much more limited audience, and making it nearly impossible for citizens to string together a full picture of the people in power.
Few in Oklahoma are seeing the best and most accurate coverage of the Oklahoma Steal Team, despite the hard work of reliable reporters at online outlets such as Tulsa Today, Oklahoma Digest, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA), and several others. Much of the work contained within the five-season journey we are about to take came from these remnants of a press committed to the truth and the people. If you are an Oklahoman, take the time to access the related links to their content placed throughout How to Steal a State, bookmark their sites, and support them, as they are all that stands between a free and a stolen Oklahoma. If you reside outside of Oklahoma, find similarly committed and independent news outlets in your state and make them your regular reading before thieves threaten to transform your state without your knowledge or approval.
Now, just in time for a most important mid-term election, let’s do the one thing the Steal Team would never want us to do… slow down, back up, and connect the dots our local fact-finders have been placing for us for nearly a decade. Make some popcorn and settle in as we dig into the red dirt of Oklahoma politics. You may just learn something you can use to save your state, or perhaps our nation. Subscribe and keep an eye on your inbox. Season 1 of How to Steal a State is coming soon.
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