Bad News

The only thing worse than fake news: real news

How to be a pioneer

Ree Drummond, Oklahoma’s famous “Pioneer Woman,” will release a new cookbook in October. In case you can’t make it to her illustrious Pioneer Woman Mercantile store in Pawhuska—or don’t watch her Pioneer show, or read her Pioneer magazine, or have her other four Pioneer cookbooks, or own her children’s book “Little Ree”—here are some ways you can get the authentic Pioneer experience:

• Make something out of wicker, like a basket or a shitty bowl. Now go drink lemonade out of a Mason jar and light a $100 bill on fire.
• Make some sun-tea with an old jar you have lying around. Be sure the sun doesn’t make the water too hot. You’d hate to miss out on some old-school frontier dysentery.
• Roast hotdogs over an open fire in your backyard for five minutes before you remember that mosquitoes exist. Make your way westward in a covered wagon in search of your fortune. Or to the farmer’s market in your SUV. Either way, don’t expect your kids to like it.
• Drive out into the country and pay a stranger 20 bucks an hour to pick berries on their farm. Take the berries home and let most of them go bad before you decide what to do with them.
• Use a spittoon for its intended purpose. Find out how honest your kids are by giving them a doll made of corn husk.
• Shoot something. Don’t eat it, though. That’s gross.

In the news

• Blake Kenneth Hagin, great-grandson of Rhema Bible Training College founder Kenneth E. Hagin, was arrested in March for taking part in a drive-by shooting in Broken Arrow. Blake must have been born under an extra lucky star, however, because he has received help from former Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris. Harris, who said that he “doesn’t think that particular case is going to go to trial,” negotiated on behalf of the Hagin family. There’s a chance this is all a hilarious misunderstanding. After all, he and his accomplices did “call the alleged victim just prior to the shooting, saying they were en route to ‘shoot up his house.’” Who knows what they meant by that?
• On July 20, a record number of inmates received postsecondary certificates through TCC. This is great news, especially since it finally answers the question “what do I have to do to get a decent education around here?”
• Oklahoma House Majority Leader Mike Sanders floated the idea of defunding DHS’s 211 helpline system, rather than other projects that have a more direct effect on vulnerable individuals, even though the 211 helpline already lost its funding last year. Mike, buddy, we realize taking a principled stand for something isn’t really in Oklahoma legislators’ job descriptions, so you might be a little rusty. Pro tip: next time, Google that shit first.
• A judge in Oklahoma City issued a secret ruling after a two-day secret hearing relating to the case of Daniel Holtzclaw. Holtzclaw was convicted in 2015 of committing multiple rapes while he was a patrol officer in the Oklahoma City Police Department—not that it’s anyone’s business.
• State Senator Bryce Marlatt is under investigation for allegedly groping and kissing his Uber driver. While Marlatt hasn’t been charged or arrested, this should be an important lesson to our legislators: just because you make your living screwing us, doesn’t mean you can actually screw us.

Oil wells produce most when taxes are lowest, study finds

In a stunning analysis by Oklahoma Watch of over 3,000 horizontal oil wells, researchers found that more than 50 percent of a well’s total lifetime output is done in the first three years of its life, dropping off just as taxes increase. It’s as if the wells are as allergic to taxes as the oil companies and their lobbyists.

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