Ta'neeszahnii Techno

One Nation United exposed as a political front group
by Troy Abbit Tuesday, May 9 2006, 3:36pm
troy_abbit@yahoo.com
national / first nations issues / feature

Mainstream Media Publishes One Side of the Story

Anti-sovereignty organization One Nation United recently advented its 3-year anniversary with a televised article designed to whip up sentiment against First Nations within Oklahoma. A closer look reveals that One Nation United is an industry front group, applying pressure to Oklahoma elected officials to further a selfish agenda.



Anti-sovereignty organization One Nation United recently advented its 3-year anniversary with a televised article designed to whip up sentiment against First Nations within Oklahoma. A closer look reveals that One Nation United is an industry front group, applying pressure to Oklahoma elected officials to further a selfish agenda.

Oklahoma- May 2006 marks the 3rd anniversary of One Nation United, and last week Tulsa Oklahoma's Channel 6 Charles Ely interviewed a One Nation spokesperson. Never before has One Nation United attracted the interest of an Oklahoma television station. And never before has One Nation extended its anti-Indian rhetoric to scare landowners that one day Oklahoma's 39 Indian tribes might take over their land or assert jurisdiction over non-Indians.

The interest in conjecture is fuelled by the Tobacco PILT War, initiated in May 2005 by Oklahoma Treasurer Scott Meacham, when tobacco revenue projections in Oklahoma fell short of expectations. Ironically, Oklahoma claims that American Indian Nations have failed to fully exercise their jurisdiction over non-Indians who buy from tribal business and the smoke shops regulated by tribes-- and that Indigenous Nations in Oklahoma are violating Oklahoma laws by not collecting for the state.

The controversy arose when Oklahoma compacted with various Indian Nations, and then Oklahoma voters passed State Question 713, restructuring tobacco taxation for Oklahoma convenience stores. Although SQ713 didn't apply to Indian smoke shops, it disrupted the pricing equilibrium. Smoke shops responded by buying from border smoke shops, who make payments in lieu of tax (PILT), at alower rate. It isn't illegal for a store to buy retail and then sell at a markup. So many of the American Indian Nations in Oklahoma took offense when first Meacham, and then the Oklahoma Tax Commission began to accuse them of wrongdoing.

Not one to miss an opportunity, a team of Oklahoma Republicans saw this as an opportunity to agitate for a new governor, and in August 2005, Ernest Istook began edging for the Anti-Indian vote, followed shortly by Kevin Calvey, who thought the CD5 seat of Istook looked like a good step up. Calvey held hearings in November 2005 to get to the bottom of the tobacco PILT controversy, and concluded that Meacham had negotiated bad compacts and Governor Brad Henry should not have entered the compacts without the legislature's oversight. Yet, Oklahoma law reads otherwise.

What, we might ask, is the link to One Nation? One Nation has been there at every opportunity to drive the wedge between Oklahoma's half-million Indian voters and Brad Henry. A visit to the website at http://www.onenationok.com in its press pages, reveals that almost every news item starts out with a criticism of the Governor of Oklahoma.

Looking a bit closer, we notice that One Nation is an industry shill or front group, made up of those who compete with Tribally-owned businesses: Notably, QuikTrip, the Oklahoma Association of Convenience Stores, Oklahoma Petroleum Marketers' Association and Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association. We didn't mention Farm Bureau, because when its members found out that they were being counted as the 180,000 families claimed as the racist group's membership, Farm Bureau members didn't take too kindly to the association, and it caused internal uproar which resulted in some people quitting the company, resigning their posts, etc.

If you look really, really close, One Nation United is an even more insidious creature, although its IRS classification is misnomered as a 501(c)(4) social benefit organization. Its inner workings are embedded in the type of skunkworks which gave us "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" and "Cindy, You Don't Speak For Me." Yep, the outfit was born and bred by political strategists: Cothran Development Strategies in Ada, affiliated with Wilson Research Strategies, a subsidiary of Qorvis. If you google Qorvis and spell it correctly, before long you will find them in with the "K" Street crowd, rehabilitating the image of the Saudi Royal Family in the aftermath of 9/11 and managing other political crises. One Nation United's new leader, who doesn't even live in Oklahoma, claims some credit for the California petition drive which ousted Governor Gray Davis.

And that's how the big-boys come to play in Oklahoma. Compare the Oklahoma names in One Nation United's website with FEC donor records, with Open Secrets and with Follow the Money. There are some correlations between excess givers and those who speak for One Nation. Big oil politcos whose half-million apiece donations to the Bush campaign were the same folks who bought the ads which secured Tom Coburn's seat away from Brad Carson.

Meanwhile, in the Tulsa television viewing area, some elder couple is now quaking in the fear that they will fall under Creek Nation jurisdiction. And because the media business operates while just skimming the surface, American Indians are portrayed yet again as the bad guys. Meanwhile, in a political boiler room some place in Oklahoma, racists are plotting yet another campaign to take a few more seats away, using fear and scare tactics and racism to win profits and power.

If you'd like to stand up to it, please visit http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/128408562 and sign the Petition to keep racism out of the 2006 race. It will let One Nation United that the light of truth is shining.

(Feel free to reprint and share this article). Troy Abbit is a hobby free lance journalist.





Read further: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/128408562

outershell

I can understand the need/desire to maintain history and tradition
I can understand that there are always opportunists and parasites and that they should be stopped.

but throughout the history of the world, any time a culture tired to "racially cleanse itself" or "purify its race" they caused more problems than they solved...

*prays for balance and wisdom in these matters*

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^ this post brought to you by the miracle of caffeine

OneidaDreamer

That is so jacked up, holy tabernacles batman!

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