Tag Archives: Oklahoma

National blood crisis 

For only the second time in history, the American Red Cross has declared a national blood crisis — and patients may already be feeling the impact. Northeast Oklahoma Donors are asked to act immediately to help save lives.

Blood donations have fallen to a four-year summer low, worsening this season’s emergency blood shortage. All blood types are needed, but the situation is especially dire for type O blood as the Red Cross is now limiting distributions of these blood products to hospitals. The supply of type O positive blood has now dropped below a one-day supply.

Monroe Carell Jr Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Nashville, Tennessee. Photo by Sanford Myers/American Red Cross
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How Hissom’s Teachers Escaped

The Paradox of Silence: Hissom’s Teachers, Including Current Candidate for Oklahoma Superintendent Dr. Robert Franklin, Escaped Accountability

When federal investigators exposed the depravity of the Hissom Memorial Center in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, the public faced an unsettling truth.

In 1987, Hissom Memoral Center was legally condemned by U.S. District Judge James O. Ellison as a “human-development emergency.” the institution was found to have subjected vulnerable children with disabilities to relentless physical abuse, gross medical neglect and widespread chemical sedation of vulnerable children with disabilities.

Yet, an intriguing professional paradox arose from the landmark litigation. Despite the facility’s closure due to inhumane conditions, the teachers who worked there neither faced any judicial consequences nor experienced career repercussions. Instead, Hissom’s teachers cleanly transitioned into local public-school systems. Among them was Dr. Robert Franklin, who taught special education at Hissom for five years, from 1981 to 1986, before embarking on a respected, decades-long career in public school leadership. The key question is how the judicial system and the Oklahoma State Department of Education permitted these educators to keep their licenses and certifications and advance in their educational careers.

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Two to Build, Now Four to Permit

Analysis: In 1905, Oklahoma’s first major oil boom erupted on a small farm south of Tulsa. Within two years, the field had grown from 80 acres to 8,000 acres, making Oklahoma the nation’s leading oil producer. Today, it takes four-and-a-half years on average for a company to obtain a permit to build infrastructure in the U.S. That is not caution — it is a broken system, and it is costing Oklahoma.

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OK SNAP Trends Headed Right

The share of Oklahomans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, better known as “food stamps”) has often exceeded the share of Oklahomans living in poverty in recent years, at times by a sizable amount, leading to concerns that fraud may be a growing problem.

But in the last year Oklahoma has begun aggressively paring down those numbers.

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Straight Up Tulsa Primary Guide

Analysis: Let’s hope everyone in Oklahoma can tell the difference between good, evil, and outrageous idiocy. The attacks on Trump endorsed candidates Mike Mazzei and Jackson Layhmeyer are unjustified and executed by known operatives Oklahomans will long despise. Dark Money, overseas Muslim media manipulation, and local fools have been active this election cycle. We will remember them all and especially the line, “POLITICAL SATIRE. AI-GENERATED IMAGES DO NOT DEPICT ACTUAL EVENTS.”

Screen Shot: Self Identified Political Satire

This article highlights the good. The disgusting actors we will be discussing in future stories.

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