The "Great Plains Airline" program started it all. Under the hype of an Oklahoma based airline flying to both coast gullible, and apparently not so wise, Oklahoma officials were duped in to giving economic aid. Pouring $27 million in to a project that went bankrupt before its first passenger would breath salt air. The Great Plains Airline company, was a Tulsa conceived scam under the support of then Governor Frank Keating. The airline launched in 2001 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2004, citing "heavy debt" and a lengthy repair schedule for its aircraft. Costing Oklahoma taxpayers roughly $1 million per month for nothing. Nothing unless you consider the legal work coming from court battles over who cheated who, which is still under way in 2007. The legal battle are over sources of funds other than $27 million of state tax credits. Oklahoma's Attorney General is treating this like everything else, simply ignoring.

Only so much of the tax credits could be used each year. Showing its loyalty to community service the Bank of Oklahoma paid Great Plains about 85 cents on the dollar for the tax credits. Allowing the Great Plains management team to speed up the business of making money vanish, and getting on with the bankruptcy filing stage of the venture. The Bank of Oklahoma's largest money fencers and dealers of misappropriated money, are now selling ill gotten taxpayer money for a tidy little 15% profit. In all fairness our leading money fencers are probably giving prefer customers a few points off in lieu of another toaster.

Great Plains used a lobbyist, Margaret Erling, to work the lawmakers and Gov. Keating. We will see Ms. Erling has such strong feelings about the content and intent of the bill that she takes issue, over the intent of the bill, with Rep. Fred Perry, who is listed as the bills author. Since the bill was designed solely for the benefit of Ms. Erling's client, and she takes such a strong position, she acts as if she were the author. Which she most likely is. [Ref A109]

For those who may not already know, Oklahoma legislators allow lobbyist to write the bills that affect their client. Generally the lobbyist will then brief the lawmakers of the bills contents. Yes, it is that lax and informal in our state government. You will see this as you read in the news articles we have gather here, legislators claiming they were not aware of what they were voting on. I.e., they don't remember the lobbyist explaining that part. Well then, we certainly can't hold a lawmaker accountable for what a lobbyist didn't tell them. Now can we?

Rep. Fred Perry, R-Tulsa, coauthored one of the tax credit bills. He said he did not realize at the time that Great Plains would be allowed to sell $27 million in tax credits for nearly $23 million in cash. [Ref A109]

"When I voted for the bill, my [a coauthor] understanding was there wouldn't be any assistance until Great Plains made a profit," Perry said. "The whole idea of an income tax credit is when you have a profit and are in a position to pay income tax, then you get a credit for that from the state. That's what I thought I was voting for."

Lobbyist Margaret Erling, who represented Great Plains to the legislators, however, said the language in the tax bills was clear.

"The purpose of tax credits like this is for them to be resold. The state has issued tax credits for a lot of entities, including Goodyear and others, through the years," Erling said. "I do not feel there was any deception. These tax credits were overwhelming approved by the legislature in two sessions and were both signed by Gov. Keating."

The lawmaker that coauthored the bill is corrected by the lobbyist?

The Owl can't imagine anything more vividly illustrating how on the take Oklahoma's government is, than for Lobbyist to have free run of our laws.

You will see in another article [Ref A103], covering this same tax credit scam, where Senator Ted Fisher said "the abuses started after some unknown person 'tweaked' the law, and he failed to notice."

We have to wonder if that were a lobbyist subverting our system of laws. The glaring problem that none of the legislators are apparently willing to admit, is the fact the lobbyist are roaming free inside our state government. And, no one is willing to do anything about it.

Quartz Mountain.

Then came Quartz Mountain, an airplane manufacturer in Altus. This brought a new cast of characters.

A man name Paul Doughty, President of First State Bank of Altus, must have gotten wind of Bank of Oklahoma's customer friendly money fencing services and decided to make his little bank famous by upstaging BOK as the leading money fencers and dealers of misappropriated money in the state. He gathered up a few friends and they setup a den of flim-flam that goes by the name Altus Venture Group and/or Oklahoma Industrial Venture Management Co. They then teamed up with Capital West Securities a House of Sham, near the capitol. Creating a formidable flim-flam force, bringing honesty and integrity, to the business of tax shams in order to raise some good honest money for the Quartz Mountain venture.

After all this tax credit program was designed to offset an investor's risk. Giving an investor back $2 for every $1 they invested (Actually $3 for $1 since they keep the investment, and the $2 is all incentive), and letting the investor keep the investment, is about as investor friendly as one can get. Just a good honest investment advisors way of taking care of his investors.

The one hitch was that some lawmakers were feeling the heat to change the tax rebate legislation. Mr. Doughty then contact a good business friendly republican, by the name of Kevin Calvey. And, to Mr. Doughty pleasant surprise, Mr. Calvey just happened to be the Chairman of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, and was the lawmaker working to change the legislation. This was Mr. Doughty's lucky day. As it turns out Mr. Calvey had heard of Mr. Doughty through one of his campaign fund collectors, and was well aware of Mr. Doughty unbiased and respected knowledge of how to write tax legislation for tax rebate programs. Mr. Doughty advised Mr. Calvey that in his infinite wisdom he believed the state would be better of if Mr. Calvey did not make any changes that would hurt the "good programs". Since Mr. Calvey was not aware of any "bad programs" he did the thing, any good business oriented republican would do, and left the legislation unchanged.

With the support of Mr. Calvey, the Den of Flim-Flam and House of Sham could now safely put their creative minds together and devised a program where they could guarantee investors a return of $2 for every $1 they invested (Actually $3 for $1 since they keep the investment, and the $2 is all incentive). They had an airplane manufacturer to come up with the $32 million Quartz Mountain project. Mr. Flim-Flam, then flim-ed the math until he was able to flam the Oklahoma Tax Abuse Permission Commission into giving the group $66.3 million to offset their $32 million risk.

Our Oklahoma Tax boys wants everyone to know they are another invesotr friendly arm of Oklahoma's government.

Now all of those who were so willing to risk their money to help Oklahoma create jobs though Great Plains and Quartz Mountain are living happily on some beach without a worry.

The morale of the story is that in Oklahoma we may not create many jobs, but when we create a lot of millionaires.