Stan Geiger

Kivisto the Great?

Last week, Urban Tulsa Weekly published its list of Tulsa's "absolute best." Below is an excerpt.

Business Leader

Tom Kivisto

Tom Kivisto is the CEO, president and co-founder of the Tulsa-based international crude oil service company SemGroup. He was featured in one of our cover stories in May, just after his company sponsored the LPGA Championship. Along with his business acumen and golf patronage, Kivisto is also a modest but avid benefactor of Project Single Parent, the Tulsa Ballet and a host of other endeavors in both charity and art.

It was about, oh, 15 minutes after the above hit the stands that reports came out about SemGroup being in financial trouble. Yesterday, it was reported that SemGroup has filed for bankruptcy. Kivisto has been fired. And, if I'm not mistaken, George Kaiser has bounced him off the BoK board to boot.

If this guy can get voted the best business leader in town, I'd say we have a serious problem.

I'd be very interested to know how much Kivisto was paid, say, last year, as he was calling the shots that financially destroyed SemGroup. I'd also like to know how much money he walked away with after getting fired from the top spot in a bankrupt company.

What say you, KOTV?

Another Funky Murder Tale

Not long ago, a Tulsa man murdered his wife. He made up a BS tale about a home invasion. His story didn't hold water. He was arrested.

Now, another interesting case has hit the news. This time, the husband was murdered---in his own front yard a hair north of Sand Springs. As with the previous case, the only witness to the crime, according to reports, is the spouse. And though the cops, to date, are calling this a random act, I see flags.

So the story goes, the wife and the husband were in the garage at 10:45 in the evening, moving a boat. A 13-year-old daughter was asleep in the house. A couple of dudes, armed and wearing masks, approached. The husband engaged them physically and was shot twice in the head. The wife escaped without a scratch. The wife claims one of the masks of one of the assailants was removed during the scuffle, revealing a black man with braids. The assailants fled in the family pickup truck.

Now, it is possible that's the way it went down. But statistics show most murder victims know their murderers, and that most murder victims have criminal records. According to reports, the surviving wife did not recognize the assailants, and the murder victim was just an average, everyday citizen.

Bypassing that issue, other questions arise.

It's summertime; school's out; it's not even 11 o'clock. Yet a 13-year-old girl isn't talking on the phone, watching TV, playing with her computer, texting her BFF or painting her toenails. She's in bed.

The murder happened in a neighborhood---at 10:45. An altercation; two shots fired into a guy's head; presumably you have a screaming wife that witnesses the whole thing; the assailants steal a pickup and go speeding away. Yet---from what I've seen reported at least---the neighbors neither heard nor saw anything.

The assailants, though going to all the trouble to launch this attack and kill a man, stole nothing but the family pickup, which they dumped at an apartment complex a few blocks away. The best guess here would be they parked their car, took a walk, committed the crime, drove the family pickup to where they had parked their car, switched vehicles and drove away with nothing gained. Strange behavior for a couple of random armed marauders, I'd say.

The wife claims to have been a pointblank witness to her husband engaging in mortal combat with two assailants. She had access to a garage. No doubt there were weapons available, a shovel, an ax. Yet, she just stood there and watched?

I have heard no reports of the typical frantic 911 call. No dash into the house to make the call as her husband was fighting two intruders in the front yard?

And then comes the biggest question of all: Why is this woman still alive?

I mean you don't hang any longer for killing two people than you do for killing one. There was, according to reports, one witness that saw the whole thing up close and personal---including the removal of one of the killer's masks. And she was right there. Why not kill the wife, too? Why just jump in a pickup and leave the one person that could fry you in court alive?

Funky stuff in a local murder once again. If I were an investigator, I'd look deeply into love lives. I'd look deeply into finance. One of the two is usually the motive in a spousal murder.

I guess I should again issue a disclaimer at the close: It's more than possible that the version being portrayed in the media reports is quite correct. As the old saying goes, all I know is what I read in the papers. I'm just analyzing and supposing.

The Bjorklund Game

According to KJRH, fired fairgrounds CEO Rick Bjorklund has hired heavyweight plaintiff attorney Gary Richardson and is threatening a lawsuit, claiming he was terminated for no good reason.

Recent reports say Bjorklund is now blaming Randi Miller for the whole Big Splash mess. He says Miller told him to keep the park's woes "off the radar screen."

I'm no Miller fan, and I have no problem believing she was up to her boobs in the Big Splash cover-up. But even if Bjorklund's claim is true, so what? Pointing a finger of blame at Miller does nothing to clean his hands.

When I was a boy, and I got into some kind of trouble with one of my youthful co-conspirators, pointing my finger at the other guy cut no ice with my mom. I was held responsible for what I did, period. Whether or not a cohort was egging me on was irrelevant.

Bjorklund is trying the little boy defense. It's all Randi Miller's fault, he shouts. She made me do it!

Nope, no ice cutting here. Bjorklund could have blown the whistle at any point---with impunity. He chose complicity instead.

Bjorklund did wrong. His job title was "CEO." That means he had job responsibilities, and he had a duty to the public. By his own admission, he ignored those responsibilities and that duty. He knowingly allowed a $68,000 Big Splash check to lie around for a year. He knowingly allowed Big Splash to avoid paying $130,000 in rent for 9 months. He knowingly allowed Big Splash to open for the season without doing state-ordered repairs.

If I were a legal scholar, I'd say Bjorklund's actions, or lack of them, constitute willful misconduct. And that, in my mind, means he has no case. His firing was appropriate.

Of course, I can fully understand why he has run to a lawyer. I mean George Kaiser yelled lawsuit and Kat Taylor immediately wrote him a $7.1 million check---covered by your tax dollars. Why would county government behave any differently?

Oklahoma's Prison System: Sad Shape

Last night, KOTV reported a study has been released that says Oklahoma's prison system is pathetic. There is nowhere near enough space. The buildings are crumbling. The report noted one instance where a medical facility has been turned into prison space. The facility is anything but secure.

On the heels of that report comes a post from Mike McCarville. Mike says he got a complaint concerning a two-time convicted felon that was put on a parole docket just 8 months after being imprisoned. He did some research into Department of Corrections records. Below are examples of what he found.

Three-time felons with parole hearings just 18 months after being imprisoned for multiple-year terms.

Convicted drug dealers being assigned to minimum security facilities and being placed on parole dockets having served less than one-fifth of their sentences.

In one case, Inmate X has a record (12 felony convictions) that begins in 1983 with multiple burglary convictions for which he served time. In 1996, he was again convicted, this time on a burglary charge, and was given probation. In 1998, he was convicted of multiple drug possession and drug-dealing charges and served seven years of concurrent 15-year sentences. In late 2007, less than two years after being released from prison, he again was convicted on multiple drug charges and given four concurrent 7-year sentences in Oklahoma County District Court. He was turned over to the DOC in April 2008 and is scheduled for a parole hearing in December 2009, the DOC website shows.

So what's the problem?

Is it that cops aren't doing their job? Apparently not. They are arresting bad guys. In fact, from the sound of things, they are arresting the same bad guys time after time after time.

Is it "liberal" judges and juries? Apparently not. The felons are being convicted and sentenced.

Is it DOC? Do you think corrections officials want to run prisons with revolving doors? I don't. But what are they to do? Lacking enough space, for every one that comes in one has to go out.

Is it lack of money? Hardly. The state's general fund has increased in size by roughly 40 percent since the early years of this decade. In nominal dollars, about 2 billion.

The problem, quite simply, is education. State politicians have, for years, sold us out to educators. We have a crappy prison system for the same reason we have broken down roads and bridges: Anytime the state finds itself with more to spend, educators are the first in line to gobble it up.

We can't get ahead of the crime problem this way. People that choose to make livings as car thieves, burglars, armed robbers, meth cooks or whatever need to know that when they do the crime they will do the time---all of it. And we can't get to that point if we continue to pour excessive public resources into the pockets of educators.

State Senator Displays Ignorance

Oklahoma Senator Nancy Riley, school teacher turned politician turned turncoat that was elected as a Republican and switched to Democrat in midterm, made a widely-reported---and most ignorant---comment in an interview with the Broken Arrow Ledger.

The passage below comes courtesy of Mike McCarville.

Senator Nancy Riley, Democrat seeking reelection, says in a newspaper interview, "thank goodness for high gas prices." She says the high prices are helping the state's economy.

Helping the economy?! Those $50 and $100 trips to the gas pump are crushing people. And it doesn't stop there. High gasoline and diesel prices are helping to fuel across-the-board inflation.

Riley, obviously, never took Econ 101 in college.

High energy prices are putting money in the state's coffers. That's what Riley means to say. And that, in her mind, is good for the economy. I mean, you know, screw the people, what is important is that politicians have more money to spend.

If they are that stupid, maybe we should have a law banning school teachers from running for office.

I'm going to go now---before my potty mouth gets the best of me.

Government Charges Man for His Own Car

A dirt bag stole a car. After a high-speed chase, the thief wound up at Tulsa International Airport. He was arrested.

So far so good.

But, as KOTV's Lori Fullbright reported this evening, the victim---the victim---of the car theft was penalized by the government. The guy had to PAY $175 TO GET HIS OWN DAMN CAR BACK!!!

The greed of government is unbelievable. It is just un-freakin'-believable.

What's New in the World?

News reports say Barack Obama---vaunted advocate for traveling a new road---promises another "stimulus package" if elected. He puts the price tag at $50 billion.

A politician is promising people money in exchange for votes. Yeah, that's new.

The vilified President Bush has passed out checks. Now the man that promises change, and condemns his opponent on grounds that his election would be 4 more years of Bush policy, wants to do what the current president has done---twice.

You can go back even further in history. Roman emperors used to pass out gifts from the public coffers with regularity. It was circuses and grain for the masses; it was cash for the Praetorian Guard and the rest of the army.

Roman emperors, of course, didn't have to worry about elections. But they did have to worry about public sentiment. If they got unpopular, they got dead.

Got any more "fresh new ideas" there, Mr. Change?

Natural Gas: The Quiet Problem

The price of oil grabs a lot of headlines these days. But there is another piece of the energy mosaic that has quietly become problematic. And things could get much, much worse.

The price of natural gas has been inching up for quite a while now. The price is currently over $13 per thousand cubic feet, which nearly matches the record high price set in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita a couple of years back.

We've been fortunate since those days. No storm of significance has gotten loose in the Gulf of Mexico. But we are officially in hurricane season now, and our luck can't hold forever.

The Gulf of Mexico, along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, is the biggest gas-producing region in the country. When a storm shows up, production has to be shut down and the facilities evacuated. Turning that production back on isn't like flipping a light switch. It takes time. In the meantime, that production is off line.

The late summer and early fall months are typically a time when the industry is filling underground storage tanks in preparation for the coming winter. If the Gulf production is shut down, there is no excess to put in the storage tanks. And that could mean shortages in the winter months.

With prices already running at near-record levels, if a major storm this summer forces a shutdown in the Gulf, and if we then experience a particularly harsh winter, pick a number. Nat gas would surely top $20 per thousand. It might even hit $30. And utility bills would go through the freakin' roof.

Hey, just thought I'd brighten your holiday weekend a bit.

What About Those "Naming Rights?"

"Naming rights," which are all the rage these days, aggravate me. I mean it's not the Rose Bowl anymore, it's, like, the Twinkies/Tyson/Exxon Mobil Rose Bowl. Sheesh.

Citizens of Tulsa County coughed up nearly $200 million to build an arena. Then BoK handed over a few bucks and put its name on the building. Or did it just hang its name on the building and forget about the few bucks?

The Tulsa Beacon ran a story on a recent City Council meeting, in which announced mayoral candidate David O'Conner asked about that.

O’Conner asked if the Bank of Oklahoma had paid for the naming rights to the downtown arena and no councilor would answer him.

I'd say O'Conner put a simple, straightforward question. Why couldn't he get an answer? Could it be that no councilor is willing to publicly confirm that BoK has paid up because it hasn't?

BoK, as we all know, is George Kaiser---one of the richest men in the world.

Whether or not George has paid to hang his name on our arena is a question that needs to be answered. But, at the same time, it might be a moot issue. Even if he has paid, he really hasn't. That thanks to a recent action by Emperor, excuse me, Mayor Kat Taylor that handed Kaiser a $7.1 million gift from the public coffers.

It's a wonderful world---if you happen to be rich and powerful.

Speaking of the Fairgrounds...

The Tulsa fairgrounds has been in the news a lot lately. And that makes me think of the fair. So what about the big fall event?

Well, if I had anything to do with the fair, I'd be scared shitless right about now.

Reports from last year's fair said attendance was down---and that midway spending was way down. And it's been nothing but bad news for average folks ever since.

PSO has bumped up its charges considerably since last fall. Air conditioning bills for this summer will, no doubt, be a shock to many family budgets.

Thanks, PSO!

Gasoline has gone up considerably since last year. It's running close to $4 a gallon now, and I'd say there is at least a reasonable chance it will hit $5 by September.

Food prices have gone up since last year---and are predicted to continue to rise. In large part, we can thank maybe the most ignorant public policy decision ever: that of pushing the production of ethanol.

We're taking food and burning it, in essence. Corn has gotten more expensive because of it. That makes feeding animals more expensive which, in turn, makes just about everything in the food supply more expensive.

Ethanol is not the solution to our energy woes. And it is anything but "green." More corn fields equals more pesticides, more fertilizers and more fuel consumed by farm equipment. I understand it takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn than the ethanol creates. Ethanol can't be pipelined; it breaks down, they say. That means more fuel-burning trucks for transport. And to cap it off, I saw an expert on TV not long ago that said adding alcohol to gasoline causes a chemical reaction that makes the gasoline burn dirtier.

Ethanol makes no sense at all.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, given the financial beating working people are taking, from where will the 8 bucks for a corn dog and a watered-down beer and the 7 bucks for a turkey leg come?