Rumors are that at this Wednesday’s August 28, 2013 Business Committee Regular Meeting the BC will claim they cannot obtain the financial analysis necessary in order for GTC to vote on whether to dissolve Oneida Seven Generations Corporation until January 2014.
First, doesn’t that prove the BC has done a lousy job of keeping track of the financial risks & liabilities that OSGC poses to the Tribe?
Second, one would think ‘Chief Financial Officer of the Year’ award recipient Larry Barton could provide the analysis within the 30-day period he was allotted at the July 24, 2013 BC Regular Meeting.
CFO Barton received that award from the Native American Finance Officers Association, and Treasurer Tina Danforth just happens to be the 2nd Vice-President of the NAFOA Board of Directors.
Native American Finance Officers Association Board
Funny how Tina’s NAFOA Board membership wasn’t even mentioned in the May 2, 2013 Kalihwisaks front page story about Larry receiving the award, isn’t it? Maybe she forgot to mention it when she was interviewed for the puff piece article.
In fact, Tina uses her position to travel the country and make appearances on behalf of NAFOA and herself.
For example, Tina was in Las Vegas performing her ‘Tribal Governance’ lounge act on August 19 & 20, 2013. Maybe she staged her tap-dance routine regarding the art of misrepresenting what you’re actually voting for, such as when the BC reaffirmed Resolution 12-08-11-B to build dioxin-emitting incinerators on the Oneida reservation but instead falsely claimed their vote was somehow regarding OSGC’s doomed Green Bay incinerator proposal. Ta-da!
But Tina’s not the only member of OSGC’s Variety Show out on the song & dance circuit.
Just over a month after General Tribal Council voted to prohibit OSGC from building waste incinerators on the Oneida reservation, Tina attended the same conference as OSGC President & Chair Atty. Bill Cornelius held June 10-12, 2013 in Albuquerque, NM:
Two months after GTC’s anti-incinerator vote, OSGC’s President & Board Chair, Atty. Bill Cornelius, made a presentation at a conference held July 9-11, 2013 in Golden, Colorado:
Atty. Bill Cornelius at NREL
In fact, Atty. Bill Cornelius made his presentation on July 9, the exact same day that Frank Cornelius and Leah Sue Dodge delivered to the Oneida Tribal Secretary’s office a petition to dissolve OSGC with over 350 signatures of Oneidas: 600% more signatures than were required.
Bill has been quite the poster boy for building dioxin-emitting incinerators on reservations which is the business model of Oneida Seven Generations Corporation, despite the fact that in Novemeber 2000 the Business Committee unanimously adopted Resolution 11-08-00-B which called upon the U.S. State Department to end the production of dioxin everywhere.
Bill was featured in the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy newsletter, ‘Indian Energy Beat,’ which is kind of like the ‘Tiger Beat’ magazine of promoting toxic incinerators to tribes.
WTF: OSGC’s WTE Project
In recent years other performers such as Atty. Carl Artman, former OSGC CEO Kevin Cornelius and OSGC Liaison & BC member Brandon Stevens have gotten face time with audiences to promote the magic show of turning dioxins into dollars.
Could the rumored attempt by BC to stall and delay the OSGC dissolution petition from being placed on GTC’s agenda until January 2014 have to do with maintaining the illusion that OSGC is somehow still a viable business so that Bill, Tina and others can guest star at upcoming conferences such as those scheduled for September 9-11 and September 18-20, as well as the big extravaganza – the 2013 Tribal Energy Program Review – to be held November 18-22, 2013 in Denver, Colorado?
It’s hard enough to be promoted as a big shot after your own Tribe votes to shoot down the incinerators you wanted to put on their reservation, but how would it look if Bill had to go to Colorado as a living example of how NOT to promote incinerators lest your Tribe pull the plug altogether on the Tribally-owned corporation of which you were the President & Board Chair?
Some of the money that OSGC has received via conditional grants and loans can be utilized for traveling to promote their incinerator projects, but it is unclear what the funding source for Tina Danforth‘s travel to various conferences is, and it seems unlikely that she’s personally paying for it out of the kindness of her own wallet.
So what is Tina’s real motivation to try to convince other tribes to put themselves in the same dangerous financial jeopardy that led OSGC to apparently lose $5 million or more?
Could it have anything to do with Tina’s role since 2007 as the Chairperson of the Native American Bancorporation and their desire to make money servicing the loans that tribes will have to take out to finance these kinds of fiscally risky projects? Would there be any kinds of ‘finder’s fees’ involved (and would she disclose them if there were)?
[BTW: If CFO Barton is having trouble getting the financial analysis on OSGC done in a timely manner, shouldn’t Treas. Danforth clear off her side jobs travel schedule and help the poor guy out? Priorities, Tina.]
Beyond potential consulting fees and direct sales OSGC was hoping to make to tribes, does Atty. Cornelius get any extra incentives each time OSGC convinces another tribe to go down the same dark alley that OSGC & the BC tried to lure the Oneida Tribe down before GTC voted to defend its own health, safety & welfare by saying ‘NO!’ to both?
How much louder will GTC have to ‘Boo!’ to successfully demand that OSGC & the BC stop serenading us with off-key karaoke versions of ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?‘ and ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby?‘ and instead allow GTC to vote on dissolving OSGC by placing the matter on a meeting agenda no later than October 2013?
Will it require GTC making a hardline stand at the September 21, 2013 GTC Budget Meeting and bringing out the Apollo Theater’s Sandman?
The time for OSGC’s & the BC’s unentertaining encore duet is now over, and it’s time for GTC to prepare to use its stockpile of rotten tomatoes.
UPDATE: This report by Treas. Tina Danforth on the June 10-13, 2013 NAFOA Energy Summit which is included in the August 28, 2013 BC Regular Meeting Packet demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt Tina Danforth’s ignorance or deceitfulness on the topic of ‘recycling’:
I was asked to be a speaker at the NAFOA Energy Summit to talk about renewable energy sources. The source of my inspiration was the Oneida Seven Generations Corporation Gasification Plant. …
Despite our own trials and tribulations with the OSGC project, many of the other Tribe in attendance were eager to learn more. It was a great opportunity to highlight a project OSGC has been working on for some time and to get people to start thinking about how important it is to recycle our waste products.
Tina repeatedly makes the false assertion that melting plastic into combustible products and incinerating those products is somehow ‘recycling.’ It is not recycling; it is incineration.
Would anyone with even half a clue claim that their car ‘recycles’ gasoline? Or that their fireplace ‘recycles’ newspapers when they’re burned? Of course not! That would be completely ridiculous, as are Tina’s false claims that combusting the products of melted plastic, whether gas or liquid, is in any way a form of ‘recycling.’
Recycling is turning a plastic product into another plastic product; turning a paper product into another paper product; turning a glass product into another glass product. That’s why the ‘Recycling’ symbol is a continuous loop of arrows and doesn’t include a symbol indicating toxic exhaust from incineration.
According to EPA.gov
EPA adopted the National Recycling Coalition’s definition of recycling: ‘…activities by which materials that are no longer useful to the generator are collected, sorted, processed, and converted into raw materials and used in the production of new products.’ This definition excludes the use of these materials as a fuel substitute or for energy production.
So for Tribal Treasurer Tina Danforth to bogusly claim that anything OSGC has ever proposed is in any way a form of ‘Recycling’ is either evidence that she’s entirely clueless, or that – just like her beloved OSGC – Tina Danforth is intentionally misrepresenting the facts in order to trick people into thinking that opponents of incinerators are somehow opponents of recycling and that advocates of incinerators are somehow “maintaining Mother Earth.”
No, really, she said that. Read her report for yourself. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sinister.
Oneida Eye, while not underestimating Tina’s lack of knowledge, tends to think she’s intentionally lying in order to whitewash the toxic schemes of OSGC off which she hopes to make money by selling other tribes a means of genocide.
You decide for yourself.
