November 2011 Archives

BatesLine is pleased to welcome an ad from the Oklahoma Republican Party for the 2012 Oklahoma Straw Poll:

As we recently announced, the Oklahoma Republican Party is holding our inaugural Oklahoma Straw Poll. Many states hold presidential straw polls every four years creating national publicity and financial support for their respective state, but we thought it was about time the reddest state in the country had one of its own!

Straw polls are important because many times they serve as the first indicator of the strength of a candidate's organization and message.

We want to give Republicans from all across Oklahoma an opportunity to make their voice heard.

From November 21st until December 5th, donate $5 to the OKGOP to vote in the Oklahoma Straw Poll. Many Straw Poll voters can end up paying hundreds with travel costs, etc in order to vote in their states' poll, but we are making a way for you to support your candidate and do it from the comfort of your own living room!

The deadline for voting in the Oklahoma Straw Poll is Monday, December 5, 2011, at 5:00 pm. Click the ad at the top of the page to vote.

This is a great opportunity for Oklahoma Republicans to have a voice, and the money goes to a good cause. Whatever you may or may not like about the national party, the Oklahoma Republican Party is a low-overhead, grassroots-run organization that has produced amazing results.

There's a reason that the Republican nominee won all 77 counties in 2004 and 2008, that Republicans swept all statewide offices in 2010, and controls supermajorities of both houses of the legislature, after decades in the minority. Yes, Oklahoma voters are conservative, but a voter's views make no difference unless that voter turns out on Election Day. After a disheartening defeat in 2002, Oklahoma Republicans elected Gary Jones (now our State Auditor) as chairman, and Jones instituted a massive turnout effort for 2004, involving hundreds, perhaps, thousands, of local volunteers dropping voter information packets on the doorstep and making calls to remind people to vote. Matt Pinnell ran that successful program, and he's now chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party.

Beyond turnout efforts, the state party provides training for potential candidates and their helpers and runs the state and district conventions that will elect Oklahoma's delegates to next year's Republican National Convention. You can vote in the Oklahoma Straw Poll and contribute your $5 (or more) knowing that the money will be used effectively.

Vote now!

Maggie Thurber, a conservative blogger in Toledo, Ohio, calls attention to a seemingly petty and spiteful dispute involving the locally-owned daily paper (Toledo Blade), a successful free weekly paper (Toledo Free Press), a TV station, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In a nutshell, the TV station wouldn't allow the editor of the weekly on air to promote a benefit CD for the Make-A-Wish Foundation because he works for a "direct competitor" to the TV station's "valued partner," the daily paper. As Toledo-based BizzyBlog notes:

Here's the good news. The high and mighty Toledo Blade considers a free publication which it surely once viewed with utter contempt and ridicule as a serious competitor.

The daily paper, meanwhile, is suing the weekly because the publisher of the weekly, who once worked for the daily, signed a separation agreement upon leaving the daily, in which he promised not to disparage the daily. The daily claims that the weekly's editor, who has written critically about the daily and who commissioned an editorial cartoon depicting the daily's owners casting a shadow over the city, is a mere proxy for the publisher, who is using the editor to violate indirectly his non-disparagement agreement. The weekly's editor denies any prompting or control by the publisher as to the content he puts in the paper.

Confused? Hang in there. It's an interesting story, and Michael Miller, Toledo Free Press Editor-in-Chief, tells the story in a compelling way. Elements of the story may ring a bell.

Toledo Free Press has been named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Best Weekly Newspaper for three consecutive years and has garnered scores of industry awards for its writing and design (including my three consecutive SPJ awards in the Best Media Criticism category, for three deconstructions of the plaintiffs' work). To suggest any of that has been accomplished while I was being used as a pawn on a chessboard is to malign my abilities and achievements, a few of which clearly agitate the plaintiffs.

I am Tom's [the weekly publisher's] partner, not his puppet, and there is not one person who has worked for Toledo Free Press who could honestly say otherwise. My guess is that is one of the primary sticking points for the plaintiff; while so many community and business leaders have willingly and by choice allowed themselves to be controlled like marionettes, Tom and I have refused to allow Toledo Free Press to be cowed by the plaintiffs' threats, backroom arrangements and clear disparagement tactics.

Anyone who doubts this is the plaintiffs' attempt to silence my criticism should look at paragraph 31 of their lawsuit.

"On or about August 21, 2011, Pounds ... permitted Toledo Free Press to publish a cartoon that depicted a characterization of [Blade owners] John R. Block and Allan Block together with The Blade as casting an eclipsing shadow on jobs, tax revenue, investment and development in Toledo, Ohio."

The plaintiffs' suit describes the cartoon as disparaging and harmful....

The publication of the cartoon fairly criticized The Blade's own coverage and its owners' published opinions. As public figures at a public entity, the plaintiffs may be fairly criticized. The plaintiffs' lawsuit does not deny the accuracy of the cartoon, it just claims that it violates a nearly 8-year-old agreement that was never agreed to by myself or Lee, the cartoon's creators.

The attempt to silence this criticism should anger anyone who gives a damn about personal free speech and the rights of the press. While The Blade is quick to defend its First Amendment rights, it is telling that it does not extend that defense to others when it is the focus of criticism....

Toledo Free Press is a small company. A protracted legal fight endangers its future. But we will fight. The larger issue of free speech is more important than our business or financial concerns.

I wish the Free Press well, and I'm impressed by their growth and success: 100,000 circulation with home delivery. Pretty good for just six years in operation.

MORE: I'm informed that satirist P. J. O'Rourke hails from Toledo, which may explain any similarities (purely coincidental, of course) between the Toledo Blade and the Dacron Republican-Democrat, the subject of the brilliant 1978 National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody, written by O'Rourke and John Hughes.

Give Thanks to the Lord
by Katherine Bates

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
Sound hymns of joyous praise,
And Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice
Has freed the former slaves.
He died upon that blessed cross
And now we can enjoy
Salvation! Hearts are freed from sin
And Satan's evil ploy.

Two similar bills targeting online piracy, the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261), threaten free speech by putting unprecedented and unchecked power in the hands of the Attorney General, according to an analysis in Conservative Daily News. Under the current circumstances, with the Left in control of the Department of Justice, these bills, if passed into law, would be a particular threat to conservative blogs and websites:

The most catching part of SOPA, is that it allows the Department of Justice, run by Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder mind you, to pursue court orders for websites "outside" of US jurisdiction accused of enabling or hosting pirated content on their website.... Once a court order is obtained, the Attorney General could then direct a US web based companies to suspend business with the company or face the possibility of federal prosecution. The AG would also have the ability to direct search engines from blocking the IP in a search. The bill would also make it a felony to stream unauthorized copyrighted content.

...Can't you see it now? All the liberals will be scouring the Internet, with the music and movie industry's best interest at heart no doubt, looking at every conservative blog and website they can find regardless of importance with sole purpose of locating "pirated" content.... The Justice Department will request the court order to shut that blog down with the individual facing the potential of fines and restitution. Not a bad way to break the spirit. Lets not forget about all the new litigation that will ensue.

Blogs regularly make fair use of small excerpts of copyrighted material for the purpose of comment, and it would be easy enough for the DOJ to misconstrue that fair use as theft of intellectual property. Once shutdown, a website owner would have to go to great expense to reverse the DOJ block; in the meantime, his point of view is blocked from the internet.

The threat is bigger than the possibility of a leftist DOJ blocking conservative sites. Liberals should be concerned that some future administration could use PROTECT IP / SOPA to target their websites. It's not hard to imagine allies of Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Disney, using this law to shut down blogs promoting his conservative primary challenger. PROTECT IP / SOPA would be another tool in the tool box, along with SLAPP suits, for well-funded crony-capitalist cabals of both parties to shut down bloggers who oppose and expose them.

I'm happy to see that no Oklahoma legislators are sponsoring these bills; I hope they will oppose them vigorously. While most of the Senate sponsors are either Democrats or squishy RINOs (like Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain), I'm disappointed to see names of conservatives like Marco Rubio (R-FL) on the list. The support is somewhat understandable based on the stated intent of the bill -- to protect businesses that have invested in intellectual property from piracy -- but no amount of good intentions can make up for putting internet blacklisting power in the hands of one politically appointed official.

The best way for the music and movie industries to dampen down piracy is to make their content more easily and affordably available. If someone can watch episodes of a long-gone but favorite TV series on Netflix, or pay for and download MP3s of an out-of-print album from Amazon, they won't go hunting for pirated copies online.

Call your senators and congressman and urge them to oppose this threat to free speech. I consider these bills a key vote for determining my future support.

MORE: No article on online piracy is complete without "The IT Crowd" parody of anti-piracy warnings.

From Rusty Weiss at Newsbusters:

Bill Randall is a candidate for Congress, running in North Carolina's 13th Congressional District. Mr. Randall also happens to be an African-American. In early October, Randall had a campaign billboard vandalized with a spray-painted, vulgar phallic symbol, accompanied by the letters "KKK". It was the kind of message that would normally launch the media into full-blown racial apoplexy.

One small problem. Bill Randall is a Tea Party Conservative Republican.

Randall filed a complaint over a month ago with the local sheriff, issued a news release, but the local daily, the Raleigh News & Observer, has ignored the story, despite having covered similar acts of political vandalism in the past, according to Weiss's research, including one incident that occurred just 10 days after Randall's sign was vandalized.

One TV news station, albeit not in the same market, did cover the story, showing part of the graffiti (the KKK) and obscuring the obscene part. (Via breitbart.tv.)

Randall grew up in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and served 27 years in the Navy, rising to the rank of Command Master Chief.

Randall was the Republican nominee in NC-13 in 2010, when the district was heavily Democratic, receiving 44.5% of the vote against a four-term Democratic incumbent. This time around the legislature has redrawn the district to be predominantly Republican (and drawn the incumbent into a different district).

The aforementioned News & Observer scolded the Randall campaign in an October 28, 2010, editorial (Tulsa Library NewsBank link) about the campaign's "overzealous" poll monitors, watching early voting to ensure against voter fraud. Early voting would make it possible for someone to show up and vote in one person's name at the early voting location (no ID was required in NC), then show up again on Election Day and vote in your own name at your usual polling place. The N&O editorial pooh-poohs the risks of this sort of fraud, but Tulsans have heard of this sort of thing happening.

MORE:

Here's a link to the Bill Randall for Congress website.

Publius Forum has a video from the Randall campaign, spoofing the media double-standard and lack of interest in this case of hateful vandalism. (The video shows the graffiti uncensored.)

Thurber's Thoughts has more about Randall and notes the broader problem with the liberal backlash against the growing number of African-American conservatives who are running for office or are otherwise active in the political sphere. She mentions two speakers at last week's BlogCon '11: Deneen Borelli of the National Center for Public Policy Research and PJTV video humorist Alfonzo Rachel -- both conservatives who happen to be African-American and who spoke at BlogCon about the hostility directed at that combination of characteristics.

The challenges facing African-Americans who move from left to right is documented in an upcoming film, which was previewed at Blogcon. A Runaway Slave focuses on the Reverend C. L. Bryant, a Baptist minister who served as president of an NAACP chapter and is now active in the Tea Party movement in Shreveport. The slavery Bryant calls all Americans to escape is an enervating dependency on government. Here's a preview:

Philbrook's Festival of Trees 2011 begins today, November 19, 2011, running through December 11, 2011, and Santa will be there for pictures weekend days throughout the festival.

Admission to the Festival of Trees is included in admission for the Philbrook Museum of Art.

To learn more about David Bates, Philbrook's Santa since 2005, visit santatulsa.com

See the update below about what happened shortly before the hearing was to begin.

As the 12-member congressional debt commission flounders in its task to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars, the Tea Party Debt Commission, a crowd-sourced, online initiative organized by FreedomWorks and Contract from America, has identified trillions in cuts. The results will be announced at a special hearing, broadcast on C-SPAN-3 and C-SPAN.org today, November 17, 2011, at 1:00 p.m. Tulsa time.

The hearing will be led by Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (OH-4), Senator Mike Lee (UT), Senator Rand Paul (KY), Congressman Jeff Flake (AZ-6), Congressman Paul Broun (GA-10), Congressman Joe Walsh (IL-8), Congressman Michael Burgess (TX-26) and Congressman Steve King (IA-5). Twelve Tea Party Debt Commissioners will testify, followed by Q&A from House and Senate members.

The New York Times covered the launch of the Tea Party Debt Commission back in June, outlining its goals and structure:

"If you look if you look at the landscape in Washington, D.C., there's a lot of Democrats who control two-thirds of the process who are now sitting on their hands, waiting to point fingers at Republicans who propose something, and there's too many Republicans who are afraid that the public won't understand a serious proposal to solve the budget deficit," said Matt Kibbe, [FreedomWorks] president.

"We think, like with the first days of the Tea Party movement, that the only way we will ever reduce the debt and balance the budget is if America beats Washington and Tea Party activists take over this process, take over the public debate and engage the American people in the hard work of making tough choices."...

The activists, along with FreedomWorks staff, came up with parameters for their budget proposals, declaring that they would have to balance the federal budget within 10 years, reduce federal spending to 18 percent of the gross domestic product, reduce the national debt to no more than 66 percent of the G.D.P., assume that revenue accounts for no more than 19 percent of the G.D.P., reduce federal spending by at least $300 billion in the first year and reduce federal spending by at least $9 trillion over 10 years.

UPDATE: Shortly before the Tea Party Debt Commission hearing was to begin, Senate staffers kicked them out. FreedomWorks New Media Director Tabitha Hale tells the story:

It has been 932 days since the Democrats have passed a budget. With the formation of the Super Committee, we saw an opportunity for Americans to tell Congress what they would be willing to cut, and offer suggestions to make the budgeting process easier for them. The Senate Rules Committee, headed up by Chuck Schumer, told us they were uncomfortable with the word "hearing", and locked the doors and took away our microphones minutes before the event was scheduled to start.

So basically, they have nearly three years to put a budget forth and fail. We finally act, they kick us out. Senator Mike Lee's office took the lead and quickly found a new location at Hillsdale College's Kirby Center, where the hearing took place not too far behind schedule.

We will be heard, Washington.

More from the New York Times:

But the Capitol police shut down the room where they planned to meet, after a suspicious package was found in the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama.

Tea Party activists who arrived at Hearing Room 325 in the Russell building at 2 p.m. discovered Capitol police there, removing microphones and locking the room.

Evicted from the Russell Building, they saw suspicious motives - big government strikes again! -- and issued another press release declaring the shutdown "outrageous."

"They're kicking us out of our own building because they're afraid we are going to do something crazy, like balance the budget," said Matt Kibbe, FreedomWorks president.

Capitol Police claimed that the removal was for security reasons, but why would you take the time to remove microphones from a hearing room if there was a suspicious package in the office next door? Wouldn't you clear the building? Utah Sen. Mike Lee thinks so:

"The Rules Committee was threatening to shut us down," he said in an interview. If there was a threat, he said, the building should have been evacuated. And he disputed the Senate rule. As a senator, he said, he can call a meeting with an outside group in a Senate office building. "Is the First Amendment so weak that someone calls it a 'hearing' and so we can't have it?" he said.

The Tea Party Debt Commission report has been released; click that link to read it online. Key features:

• "Cuts, caps, and balances" federal spending.
• Balances the budget in four years, and keeps it balanced, without tax hikes.
• Closes an historically large budget gap, equal to almost one-tenth of our economy.
• Reduces federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the next 10 years, as opposed to the President's plan to increase spending by $2.3 trillion.
• Shrinks the federal government from 24 percent of GDP -- a level exceeded only in World War II-- to about 16 percent, in line with the postwar norm.
• Stops the growth of the debt, and begins paying it down, with a goal of eliminating it within this generation.

The Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA), which operates the City of Tulsa's water system, will vote today whether to approve a contract for $925,600 with Crossland Heavy Contractors for "Chloramines Modifications" at Tulsa's two water treatment plants, A. B. Jewell and Mohawk.

(See the TMUA agenda here.)

The meeting will be held at 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 16, 2011, in Conference Room 10 South.

If you're concerned, as many are, about the health effects of chloramine in our drinking water, this meeting might be a good opportunity to express those concerns to the people entrusted with the stewardship of our water system.

MORE: The Tulsa City Council Urban and Economic Development Committee Meeting dealt briefly with the chloramine issue on Tuesday, at the request of Councilor Jim Mautino, who asked questions of city public works employee Clayton Edwards. The 20-minute video of the meeting begins at 10 minutes into the clip at this link.

The video includes an excerpt of TMUA vice chairman Rick Hudson at the October 27, 2011, City Council meeting, defending the choice of chloramine as a water disinfectant and informing the City Council that the TMUA has the final decision over the use of chloramine. Hudson said on October 27 that he'd be glad to have chloramine expert Bob Bowcock, a member of the American Water Works Association, at the next meeting.

You can watch the full October 27, 2011, City Council agenda item about chloramine here, including Bob Bowcock's presentation and comments from Hudson. The agenda item starts at 1:30:00.

At Tuesday's committee meeting, city director of environmental services Clayton Edwards said that Bowcock will be on TMUA's December 14 agenda. The TMUA board could opt, Edwards said, to delay the contract award until they hear from Bowcock, but once approved it would be binding.

Mautino noted an interesting article on the website of RL Hudson -- TMUA vice chairman Rick Hudson is the president and CEO of the company -- about the effects of chloramines in our water supply:

So how do chloramines affect the seals and other elastomeric parts within the water distribution chain? With anecdotal evidence suggesting that chloramines hasten elastomer failure in devices ranging from toilets to faucets to fire sprinklers, the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AWWARF) conducted a study. The results indicate that chloramines do indeed pose a significant threat to many of the most widely used elastomeric materials, including natural and synthetic isoprenes, styrene butadiene (SBR), chloroprene (CR), and nitrile (NBR).

In side-by-side tests with chlorine, chloramines caused more material swell, deeper and denser cracking, faster loss of elasticity, and greater loss of tensile strength. In a susceptible material, chloramines appear to attack the polymer's cross-links, the connections that give the material a resilient, three-dimensional structure. Cracks develop and water flows in, swelling the material and resulting in a marked loss of other physical properties. Degradation becomes more pronounced as temperatures increase.

How to cope with this chemical that degrades the rubber and plastic parts in our plumbing systems? RL Hudson has a solution: "If your application requires it, we at RL Hudson can help you find compounds that will withstand chloramines."

Toward the end of the exchange between Mautino and Edwards, there's a discussion of elevated lead levels in the blood in Washington, D. C., related to the use of chloramines in their drinking water. Edwards acknowledged that that had been a problem but thought that Washington had taken steps to mitigate it.

It's evident that Councilor Mautino has done his homework on this issue. Tulsans should be grateful that Mautino is willing to continue to delve into this issue, despite being a lame duck since his defeat in September's primary. You may not miss him now, but you will in a few months.

Yet another Tulsa-area school board has voiced support for the lawsuit by Jenks and Union school districts to strike down the law that provides for adequate education for Oklahoma children with special needs. The Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Act allows parents of a special-needs child to transfer some of the money that has been allocated for their child's public education to pay for special education at a private school. The Sand Springs school board voted unanimously in favor of a resolution condemning the scholarship act in solidarity with Jenks and Union.

Brandon Dutcher at Choice Remarks noted the Sand Springs superintendent's claim that "education hasn't failed, except maybe in a few overcrowded, underfunded urban districts."

But on a global scale, Sand Springs students would get mediocre grades at best. According to globalreportcard.com, the average Sand Springs student would perform only as well or better in math than 16% of students in Finland and as well or better in reading than 39% of Finnish students. Comparisons to other developed countries are similarly dismal, particularly for math proficiency. (Jenks and Union numbers aren't that hot, either.)

If our public school districts are unable to provide an adequate education for children without learning challenges, how badly must they be failing children with special needs? Shame on Jenks, shame on Union, shame on Sand Springs, and on every other school board spending tax dollars to try to block this very modest legislation, rather than trying to do better at accommodating special-needs kids.

Attention, Sand Springs residents (and residents of any district seeking to block the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Act): Filing period for school board across Oklahoma is December 5, 6, and 7. Please consider running. It's apparent that the current school board members are more devoted to preserving their power than to providing the best education possible so these special-needs kids can reach their full potential.

It's been an exciting two days here at BlogCon11, FreedomWorks' 2nd annual conference for conservative bloggers. The sessions have covered policy, politics, and technology. Beyond the formal sessions, I've been renewing old acquaintances and building new friendships with bloggers, think-tankers, columnists, and activists from all over America.

I hope to do a summary of the event later, but one particular session pleased me no end, and I want to pass it along.

FreedomWorks for America is the FreedomWorks-affiliated Super PAC, and they're in the process of vetting candidates for the 2012 federal election.

FreedomWorks for America is trying to ensure that the new president is backed by (or faced with) a tough-minded majority of senators and congressmen who will do what we need to do to solve our fiscal crisis before we wind up like Greece. They want to make fiscal conservatives the majority of the majority party, controlling the agenda in both houses of Congress. This effort can't wait for the general election. It has to start well before the primary, helping solid fiscal conservatives to prevail over conservatives-of-convenience in Republican primaries.

This PAC won't be buying TV time. Instead, it will work to connect fiscally conservative Tea Party-type activists and donors with candidates who are worthy of their support, a "force multiplier for the Tea Party," as FreedomWorks political director Russ Walker put it. The website will help connect activists with any campaign in the country.

"You have to get your own house in order before you can get out there and start taking on the Democrats," commented Dick Armey, Chairman of FreedomWorks. "Our Super PAC is not about buying television ads, it's about engaging the American public, and getting them outside talking to their neighbors and putting up yard signs. We want to build a grassroots army of active volunteers that will work to retire Democrats in the House and Senate, but also hold Republicans accountable to the principles upon which they got elected."

Features on the website include candidate profile pages, official endorsements, interactive ranking systems for candidates on the issues, links to pledge time towards community organizing efforts, links to pledge money to a specific campaign, phone banking, grassroots training videos, and downloadable activist toolkits and door-to-door Get Out The Vote (GOTV) materials. It also features a "grassroots lab" where politically-minded volunteers can submit ideas on how to defeat President Obama in 2012, and rank the ideas already submitted.

"The website is designed to empower the leaderless, decentralized community of the tea party movement. There is no leader, no community organizing Czar. It's simply a political toolkit for individuals across the country to use as they see fit, with unique knowledge of their community and circumstances," commented Matt Kibbe, President of FreedomWorks.

It's a tough job to find candidates who will remain faithful to conservative principles once they get to Washington. Executive director Max Pappas noted that, with the popularity of the Tea Party movement, every candidate knows the right words to say, so FreedomWorks for America dives deep into the candidate's record and philosophy to find the candidate's fundamental beliefs. Without strong roots in the philosophical and economic basis for limited government, a public official is easily swayed by the prevailing winds of lobbyist pressure and Washington conventional wisdom.

Checking a candidate's roots means digging back through a candidate's complete public record, going all the way back to earliest part of a candidate's career, votes taken, endorsements made, and contributions given. If a politician endorsed, say, a city sales tax increase or a crony-capitalist state tax credit, it's going to count against him when he tries to move up to federal office.

In addition to the abundant amount of searchable online data (e.g., news stories, minutes of public meetings), FreedomWorks for America looks to local free-market, limited-government activists and bloggers to dig up information on candidates and to provide context. Local grass-roots opinion matters.

PACs connected with groups like FreedomWorks and Club for Growth played an important role in the election of strong conservative freshman senators like Mike Lee (UT), who defeated an squishy incumbent Republican, Marco Rubio (FL), who won over an ex-Republican governor who showed his true colors, and Rand Paul (KY). In each case, the national free-market PACs influence helped a consistent fiscal conservative prevail over a wishy-washy or weak Republican.

Having this kind of scrutiny from influential national conservative organizations will give local activists leverage in keeping Republicans from turning into RINOs on local issues. At the same time, it places a burden on us to ensure that key pieces of the record don't disappear into the ether. Campaign websites (and endorsements) often vanish from the web quickly after election day. In some cases, they never show up online. Local activists can help by scanning and posting candidate mailers and key documents and recording public meetings and political ads, tagging video and audio with the names of those involved, so that later searchers can find the information.

The FreedomWorks for America candidate browser lets you see the list of all announced and incumbent candidates and 2012 candidates already endorsed. Registered users of FreedomConnector can rate and leave comments on the candidates.

So far FWA has endorsed five Senate candidates Ted Cruz in Texas, Jeff Flake in Arizona, Adam Hasner in Florida, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and Don Stenberg in Nebraska. I got to meet Mourdock and Stenberg at a reception Saturday night. Both serve as treasurers of their respective states, making real budget cuts to their departments (not just cuts from the previous rate of growth).

FWA isn't the only group taking this approach. Sen. Mike Lee has set up a leadership PAC called the Constitutional Conservative Fund, using similar criteria to identify candidates worthy of support. So far they've endorsed Cruz, Flake, Stenberg, and Dan Bongino in Maryland.

Stay tuned for more blog entries in coming days about more force multipliers that FreedomWorks and its affiliates will be making available to conservative activists for this important 2012 election cycle.

Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) chairman Bill Leighty came across a wonderful documentary short subject about Tulsa. The 15 minute film was part of the Cities in America series, produced by the United States Information Service, the Cold War-era organization that used a variety of media to promote a positive image for America overseas.

The film tells the story of Sam Carson, a long-time Tulsan who had watched the city develop from its early days, his son Henry and daughter-in-law Ellen, and his grandchildren, Tom, Eddie and Janet. I'm curious to look them up in the Polk directory.

The film shows downtown Tulsa in its post-World War II heyday, with scenes on Boston and Boulder Avenues, a brief shot of kids emerging from a Saturday matinee at the Delman Theater. If you look closely and quickly, you'll spot the Beacon Building when it still had a beacon on top, 320 Boston when it was the National Bank of Tulsa. The University of Tulsa dominates one section of the film, and you get brief glimpses of the American Airlines maintenance facility and the lovely Art Deco municipal airport terminal.

At some point, I hope to give this little film the full James Lileks treatment, a lengthy blog post with still shots and details about each. I'm intrigued by one brief scene about 5 minutes in, showing a modern looking Oklahoma Tire & Supply store (you may have known it as OTASCO), with Vandevers in the background. The next scene shows a modern facade on a dress shop called Dorothy's. It ought to be possible to date the film by some of the features. Near the end of the film, it's mentioned that the Arkansas River has not yet been dammed. There are brief shots of a school, a library, and a park.

For now, enjoy, and tell us if you spot anything or anyone you recognize.

MORE: Architect and Tulsa history lover Paul Uttinger has written a scene-by-scene commentary, identifying locations in the film, and he thinks he's pinpointed the date:

1. On the map of Tulsa (time mark 1:05), West Tulsa and Garden City are shown east of the river. East Tulsa is shown north of the CBD. Trovillion is shown to the southeast of the CBD. I've read that Alsuma was re-named Trovillion for a short time. Howard is shown east of downtown Tulsa, about halfway between Trovillion and Dawson. I've never heard of a place called Howard there.

2. (1:44) Outside the Delman Theatre, Sam Carson waits for his grandchildren. He looks at the placard for The Last Round-up, starring Gene Autry. A poster for The Kissing Bandit, starring Frank Sinatra, is displayed in the window behind the placard.

3. (2:05) Sam, Janet, and Eddie walk north toward 3rd Street on Boulder Avenue in front of the World and Tribune building. The bottom of the Skelly Building sign is visible behind them. On the west side of Boulder, we can see the Citizens State Bank ( http://www.tulsalibrary.org/JPG/B1911.jpg ) and the Beacon Building at 4th, part of the Petroleum Building and the Halliburton-Abbott Building (with the Sears store sign) at 5th, the corner of the Medical Arts Building at 6th, and a spire of Holy Family Cathedral at 8th. There's two-way vehicular traffic on Boulder.

4. (2:15) The Carsons walk west on 4th, heading toward Boston Ave. Two-way traffic on 4th.

5. (2:21) The three have turned south on Boston. They're on the sidewalk next to what was originally known as the Cosden Building, which is now the old portion of the Mid-Contintent Tower.

6. (2:34) They're still walking south on the east side of Boston, but suddenly they are north of 4th Street again!

7. (2:44) Eddie and Janet wave to a policeman from the northeast corner of 4th & Boston. The policeman appears to be standing next to the Pioneer Building, but I don't see the Bell System "Public Telephones" sign that was displayed on that corner ( http://www.tulsalibrary.org/JPG/B9978.jpg ).

8. (2:55) The Carsons look at an oil boom display in a Philtower Philcade window. (CORRECTION from Paul Uttinger: "They are south of 5th, so it's not the Philtower, as I said in a previous email. It's probably the Philcade, around 511 S. Boston. The construction sign for the First National Building is across the street in the same scene, so that definitely dates the film prior to July 1950, when the tower was slated to open for business.")

9. (4:49) Looking south on Boston from the Katy tracks. The First National Bank Building appears to be under construction, with a crane leaning out over Boston near 5th Street.

10. (4:53) Looking northwest at 4th & Main (Arby's is there now).

11. (4:55) Northeast corner of 4th & Main (Ken Brune's Reunion Center Bldg now).

12. (4:58) 5th & Boston, looking east. We can see the corner of the Philcade Building and the sign for the D-X service station at 502 S. Cincinnati ( http://www.tulsalibrary.org/JPG/D4283.jpg ).

13. (5:16) A brief moment of racial integration. West side of Main, 300 block, looking north. The pedestrians are on the sidewalk next to the Froug Department Store and Kinney Shoes (World Publishing's big and brutal facade is there now). The bottom of the Holly Store sign is in the background at the beginning of the scene. There's a warped reflection of the Globe Clothiers sign, which projected from their store building at 217 S. Main. There's a reflected "NS," which could be part of the signage at Stein's, which was on the southeast corner of 2nd & Main. The 3-story building which stood on the northeast corner of 3rd & Main is reflected in the shop fronts, too.

14. (5:24) Looking northwest near 6th & Boston. The Vandever building spans over the alley between Main and Boston, and an old Vandever's sign is still faintly visible from 6th Street today. The view of the sign we see in the short film has been blocked by the Enterprise Building since around 1954. In the film, Burt's Malt-A Plenty Ice Cream store is on the corner where the Enterprise Bldg is now, just north across 6th St from the Oklahoma Tire Supply building.

15. (5:27) Another moment of racial integration on a public sidewalk? Dorothy's was a clothing store for women, but in those days, men went there for a particular pre-Christmas event:

Recently, men have been returning to "occupy" that location once again.

16. (5:31) Back to the World and Tribune building on Boulder, between 3rd and 4th.

17. (5:34) Renberg's and Clarke's on the east side of Main, 300 block. I noticed that Renberg's changed their logo in the 1948 Polk directory to the lowercase type face we see in the short film and on the facade of the building today. The last time I peeked inside a few years ago, Renberg's former ground level sales floor had been converted to a parking garage.

18. (5:40) Looking south at the Boston Avenue Methodist Church tower from 12th Street. The Fred Jones Ford dealership is on the southeast corner ( http://www.tulsalibrary.org/JPG/D4611.jpg ). Wat Henry Pontiac is on the southwest corner ( http://www.tulsalibrary.org/JPG/C1589.jpg ).

19. (7:08) The exterior of the "Carson" residence at 1735 S. Detroit Ave. In the 1946, 1950, and 1955 Polk directories, James Forster is listed at that address.

20. (7:14) Part of the house at 1725 S. Detroit is visible as Tom Carson leaves home to catch a bus to TU.

21. (7:19) Tom hails the "N. Denver" bus at 18th & Detroit. The bungalow at 302 E. 18th is visible in the background. The bus is heading west on 18th (7:29). (CORRECTED bus direction from "S. Denver")

22. (12:37) Looks similar to a few of the tanks near 21st & 33rd W Aveune ( http://tinyurl.com/TulsaTanks ).

23. (13:53) A partial view of the old Art Deco style Municipal Airport building.

24. (14:21) Looking southwest at 6th & Main.

25. (14:29) Old Public Library building at 3rd & Cheyenne. A bit of the the Mid-Co Bldg is visible in the background.

26. (14:37) 12th between Columbia Place and Delaware Avenue, looking northwest ( http://tinyurl.com/WilsonMS ).

27. (15:04) Henry Carson smoking somewhere northeast of the CBD. The final skyline view might have been shot from the top of the hill near North Elgin and Independence, judging from the perspective.

My best guess is that most or all of the local filming was done during the warmer months of 1949, based on the clothing worn by pedestrians and TU students, the lush foliage, the release date for The Kissing Bandit, and in-progress construction photos of the First National Bank and Trust building in the Beryl Ford Collection.

UPDATE: Paul sends along another confirmation of the 1949 date:

Another movie poster displayed at the Delman. I think it's for The Younger Brothers, which was released on May 3, 1949, according to Internet Movie Database. I can't see much of the Delman's poster, but the Technicolor film starred Bruce Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, and Robert Hutton, which all seems to jibe with what I can make out when Grandpa Carson and the kids leave the theatre.

A peek through the movie ads in the newspaper microfiche for May '49 might nail it down.

He also sends a link to a sharper version of the Tulsa film found on YouTube:

YouTube user Ella73TV2 has posted hundreds of public-domain historical documentaries of this sort.

A bit of unscheduled excitement this afternoon at BlogCon, the blogger conference sponsored by FreedomWorks. A couple of dozen protesters from OccupyDenver showed up in the hotel lobby and made as if they intended to Occupy the convention hall. They were not accompanied by Shelby, the border collie that was elected leader of OccupyDenver. (There's something fitting about an Occupy group being led by a dog whose breed is renowned for herding sheep.)

The thing about a bloggers' conference is that nearly everyone there has the means to record video, so the confrontation between "Cokeheads and Koch-heads" (as Warner Todd Huston put it) was well documented.

Here are links to a number of after-action reports, with photos and video, too:

John Hayward at HumanEvents.com:

I'm at BlogCon 11 in Denver today, and we had our much-anticipated visit from the Occupy movement at around 2 PM local time. About twenty of them stormed the lobby - shouting, chanting, and stinking to an astonishing degree. No exaggeration: the stench of these characters easily reached through closed doors. They were quickly surrounded by camera-wielding bloggers who outnumbered the Occupiers about five to one.

Why would the Occupy Denver crowd "protest" a group of people peacefully gathered at a hotel to practice their free-speech rights? Well, they were apparently under the impression that BlogCon organizer Freedom Works is part of the sinister Koch Brothers enterprise (it isn't.) It's so unlike the Occupiers to show up and start screaming when they don't know what they're talking about....

On balance, it was a disappointing appearance: no drum circles, no human microphone, no up twinkles, no celebrity dog, and no tuberculosis yet as far as we can tell.

Warner Todd Huston at Publius Forum:

It was all good fun, though, for we bloggers here at Blogcon. The Occupiers were silly, loud and rather pointless -- pretty much like they are everywhere else in the country. As the little disruption wound up the Occupiers went back to their tents and the rest of us got back to business at Blogcon 2011.

The topic after the Occupiers left? Wikipedia, a how to. That was preceded by such world-conquering and evil ideas such as a seminar on how to visualize data in pleasing ways, and how to better use WordPress and YouTbue features. Yeah. We're taking over the world with our Koch money!

... by the way... I've been waiting for a check from these guys for years.

Jeff Dunetz at The Yid with a Lid: Occupy Denver Fails in Attempt to Invade BlogCon:

The gentleman under the arrow was screaming that we were all getting money from the Koch brothers, that's when we began to chant "Where's the Dog?" referring to Shelby, the dog who was elected the leader of Occupy Denver.

Jeff has a photo of one protester with a Coors Light hat and a Guy Fawkes V-for-Vendetta mask. I guess he's not aware of the ideological leanings of the Coors family.

Ace's in-the-moment account:

Several of the BlogCon guys are barring the door to the conference room.

There's about 20 of them. They're fairly young and dirty and speak in a strange jargon like the Oasis Tribe in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome....

The BlogCon people continue chanting snarky things, like "I like spaghetti!" "Breitbart, Breitbart!" and "This is what losing looks like!" The cops are escroting the hoboes out to the rousing serenade of nah-nah-nah, hey-ey-ey, goodbye.

Here's Sunshine State Sarah's video of the confrontation (many more videos at the link):

Here's Weasel Zippers video of the arrest of one of the Occupods:

Tabitha Hale, FreedomWorks frequent-flying new media director, was confronted on Tuesday with an extremely unpleasant screening experience at at Houston's Bush Airport, the site of last November's "Don't Touch My Junk" rebellion.

Then she got to my waist band. I had on black tights under my dress, which I'm certain is not uncommon. She asked me to lift my dress so she could check the waistband of my tights.

I felt my stomach drop. I said "I'm not lifting my dress for you. No way." She was obviously irritated with me now and said that she would take me to the private screening area if I would like.

I said "No, absolutely not. If you can't do this in front of everyone, you should not be doing this to me."

She then called a manager over. The manager approached me and explained what they were going to do and that if I failed to comply, they would escort me from the airport. I told her I saw no reason that they should have to lift my dress to clear me to get on a plane. I would have, however, allowed them to escort me out of the airport before they got me to lift my skirt and stick their hands down my tights. I was bracing myself to spend another night in Texas.

They figured a way to check her waistband without lifting her skirt, but the resulting pat down "was so vigorous I had to readjust my clothes when she was finished."

Here's the thing. If anyone else had done this to me, I would have decked them and likely filed charges. The fact that the person has on a TSA uniform is supposed to make it okay? It isn't. Why should any person be subjected to this to get on an airplane? We're supposed to subject ourselves to inappropriate touch for teh sake of "safety"?

I fly for my job. I travel frequently. I take trains when I can, but most of the time it's just not practical. The fact that I have to endure this type of force just to do my job is horrifying. I don't really have another option. Most of us who travel for work don't have a choice.

I have to get on a plane to Denver tomorrow, and am honestly dreading the idea of going through the airport. TSA needs to go. This has gone so far beyond a security precaution, and is a clear violation of the rights of travelers. Showing my business to an airport full of people is not in the interests of safety. It is wrong.

Too bad for Tabitha that Republican legislative leaders in Texas blocked freshman State Rep. David Simpson's bill forbidding government employees from touching a person's private areas without probable cause. The bill passed both houses by wide margins, but fell short of passage on a procedural issue. In a personal privilege speech on the final day of the special session, Simpson explained the importance of the bill and what happened to it:

On Friday, after calling the Texas House of Representatives to order, declaring a quorum, and making a few brief announcements, the House was adjourned--without opportunity to lay before the House its scheduled business, specifically the legislation (HB 41) recently added by the Governor to the call for the special session that prohibits the intrusive touching of persons seeking access to public buildings and transportation. This is the same legislation requested by the Lt. Governor, the State Republican Executive Committee, and a deluge of grassroots activists to be added to the call. A nearly identical bill (HB 1937) was passed unanimously through the House during the regular session. The bill has had over 100 coauthors in the House; it was passed out of committee, and was placed again on the House Calendar by the leadership team the Speaker has chosen.

What is the objection of some? They object to the words used in the legislation to describe the private parts of the body. Specifically, the legislation prohibits the touching of the anus, the sexual organ, the breasts or the buttocks of an individual as part of a screening search without probable cause.

There is a specific reason those words are in the legislation. They happen to be those sensitive and private body parts of a traveler that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents are routinely groping, and sometimes in retaliation for simply opting out of a virtual naked body scan. The bill could prohibit the touching of your nose, or ear or kneecap, and those would be easier body parts to discuss in public, but it wouldn't solve the problem.

I fear the emperors in our state government, at least at times, are people who would rather allow despicable behavior to continue than speak out loud the necessary words to describe it.

In the name of security, travelers are being required to submit to a virtual naked strip by use of a scanner. Should one oppose the scanner based on modesty or for health reasons, then the result is a humiliating groping hand search which includes touching (and sometimes hitting or hard pressing) of the most private parts of an individual's body.

But will it stop here? The TSA claims in public records to have the authority to require a strip search as a condition of travel. In fulfillment of that belief, this last week the TSA forced a 95-year-old cancer stricken woman to remove her diaper in an extensive and extremely intrusive search.

Fifteen years ago, would you have believed that allowing a government agent to put their hand inside your underwear would ever be a condition of travel? If we do not stop now, what will our children be required to endure?

A delicate matter? Yes, certainly. But is it better to define what is indecent government behavior and to prohibit it by legislation, or to be "discreet" and allow the official oppression of travelers to continue?

Rarely in the history of this legislature has the State's leadership so masterfully worked against the will of its members and the people they represent. Leadership managed to arrange it so that every member could cast a vote in support of a bill which they ensured would not pass. No doubt, this deception will confound many Texans.

But, the people of Texas should not be confused. The explanation is simple and clear. The defeat of this bill can only be laid at the feet of the leadership of this state.

If you appreciate Rep. Simpson's stand for liberty and would like him to try again to pass this bill in the next legislature, he could use your help getting re-elected.

Gadsden Flag adaptation courtesy gulagbound.com, which notes that, like the original, this version omits the apostrophe.

A weird election season has come to an end. Tulsa voters have emptied out the City Council and turned down two radical plans to remake city government (while embracing two ill-considered modifications with bigger impact than voters appreciate).

After the polls closed, I collected results from precincts along the southern tier of District 4. Of the seven locations I personally checked, Ken Brune won only two -- 65 and 156 -- precincts in the heart of the Money Belt that pushed him over the top in the primary, but he won only by slim margins. It was apparent that Republican Blake Ewing would win by a handsome margin. I headed to the historic Church Studio at 3rd Street and Trenton Ave. for Blake Ewing's watch party.

During his victory speech Ewing explained why he chose the venue for his victory party:

"I chose to have it here, because this is one of those hidden gems in Tulsa. This place sat mostly empty for a very long time." He drew an analogy between the studio and Tulsa itself. "It's had this great, beautiful history, and then somewhere along the way it may have lost its way in some places. And the effort of creative, energetic people brought something special back to life again.... I appreciate what the Miller family has done with the Church, and I hope that on a much grander scale we can do that with our city, that we can see its potential and choose to raise the bar across the board, and that as a community we will work towards that together."

Blake surprised me with a very gracious shout-out for my work here at BatesLine during this election season. I found it especially touching because he gets why I do what I do, and one of the things I most appreciate about Blake is his commitment to honesty and transparency, exemplified by his willingness to talk about political machinations that are usually hidden from public view.

"Michael is an asset to our community in that he's a voice that continues to seek out the truth and continues to call things on the carpet for being unjust or for being vague or shady or anything other than transparent. And so I'm proud to call Michael a friend, proud to have had him on our team, and I hope that that same sort of attitude will start prevailing in our city -- that the things that happen behind closed doors or that happen because elite folks pull strings that the rest of us can't -- that we turn the tide as a city and that regular folks like you and I can trust in our government and trust in the future of our city."

(I've posted this here for my own sake, because once in a while, I can use a word of encouragement.)

I was happy to have a small part in helping Blake as a volunteer for the campaign. My five-year-old and I helped him on Saturday by knocking doors in our neighborhood, and from the beginning of the campaign, long before I endorsed him, Blake would call from time to time to use me as a sounding board (as did other candidates in the District 4 race).

The other result that greatly pleased me was the defeat of the at-large council proposal by a 3-to-1 margin. Hopefully that's driven a stake through the heart of a very bad idea.

The rest of the council races went about as planned, with the candidate of the dominant party winning by a 3-to-1 margin in each district, with one surprising exception: District 3, where Republican Dave Bell came within about 140 votes of beating off-and-on Councilor (and off-and-on Democrat) David Patrick. Perhaps the anti-incumbent sentiment damaged Patrick, too, although he took advantage of it in the primary.

I was sorry to see non-partisan elections pass. It was close enough that organized opposition might have been able to defeat it. In combination with the change in election dates, non-partisan ballots will add to the challenges that grassroots candidates face in getting their message to the voters.

The move to put elections in the fall of even numbered years won a bit more support, but one wonders if people understood the gist of the question. News outlets didn't seem to get it. Fox 23's results crawl described the proposition as "term limits" (not even close), while KOTV News on 6's story said it "reduces council terms to two years" and "restored the terms set out in the 1989 charter." That's partly true -- terms will end and elections will be held in even-numbered years, as in the 1989 charter, but in the fall, coincident with federal elections, not in the spring as was the case from 1990 through 2008. It seems that even the newsfolk did not grasp the salient feature of the proposition -- holding city elections with federal elections, rather than have a special time set aside to focus on and debate local issues.

This entry post-dated to remain at top until polls close.

New entries are posted several times a week. Links to new articles are posted to my Facebook page and my Twitter stream. Please have a look around while you're here, and please come back on a regular basis. Topic ideas and constructive criticisms are welcome: Drop me a note at blog at batesline dot com.

Happy election day! Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

In two districts (1 and 5), the primary has already determined a winner for want of any candidates filing from the other party. In the other seven districts the Republican nominee faces the Democrat nominee today.

Voters throughout Tulsa, in every district, may vote on four charter amendments. I have endorsed the defeat of all four.

The Tulsa County Election Board has a precinct locator which will tell you where to vote and which City Council district you're in. 42 precincts -- about 20% -- have been moved to a new district this year, so there are decent odds that you've been moved.

The Tulsa City Council website has a Google Maps search: Enter an address, and it'll show your address in your new council district.

Once you know your precinct, you can find your sample ballot here.

Key information as you weigh your decision:

Archive of all BatesLine entries on Tulsa Election 2011.

My endorsements, with links to more information:

I urge you to vote AGAINST all four ballot propositions.

I'm only endorsing in one council race. I enthusiastically support Blake Ewing for District 4 City Council.

In the other districts, while I believe we'd be better off without the candidates backed by the Cockroach Caucus (Patrick, 3-D; Steele, 6-R; Mansur, 7-R; Lakin, 8-R), I have reservations about their opponents.

I was impressed with the thoughtful and philosophically conservative answers given by William Suliburk (8-D) to many of the questions on the OK-SAFE questionnaire, a questionnaire that Phil Lakin (8-R) refused to answer, but I don't know Suliburk or his politics well enough to endorse him. I believe he deserves serious consideration by conservative voters in far south Tulsa.

I've expressed my displeasure with incumbent Councilor G. T. Bynum (9-R) on a number of issues, but he knows city issues, and he deserves credit for some fiscal reforms, including proposing the charter amendment that established of a city rainy day fund. His opponent, Mike Batman (9-D), is sincere in his love for Tulsa and admirable for his small business success. Batman has a good heart, but he doesn't seem knowledgeable about City Hall issues.

Dave Bell (3-R) is certainly conservative -- we met while volunteering for Randy Brogdon for governor. He's also prone to knee-jerk reactions, such as his curt and offensive dismissal of Preserve Midtown's polite request for a response to their survey about zoning and planning. I agree that the District 3 councilor needs to look after District 3's needs first, but the issues Preserve Midtown deals with affects every neighborhood more than a few decades old -- code enforcement, for example. If elected, a grassroots candidate like Dave Bell will have to forge bonds with councilors and neighborhood leaders from across the city in order to help the people of his district. David Patrick (3-D) has always been a reliable vote for the Cockroach Caucus and hostile to neighborhood protection, even in his own district.

At one of the Tulsa Press Club forums, Robert Gwin (6-D) showed himself to be more knowledgeable about city government than his opponent (Byron "Skip" Steele, 6-R), but Gwin, an erstwhile Republican candidate for council and mayor, is these days a hard-core lefty, touting his affiliation with moveon.org and using his Facebook account to defame tea party members as Nazis and promote the left-wing view of social and economic issues. (CORRECTION: I was apparently thinking of this post, on October 23, a table calling tea party members "racist, bigoted, and xenophobic," and which said that the Tea Party is "what fascism looks like." The table was accompanied by Gwin's one-word comment "TRUTH." Contrary to my recollection he did stop short of calling tea partiers Nazis.) He seems determined to offend as many conservatives as possible, even though he can't win without their support in this majority Republican district.

Neither Tom Mansur (7-R) and Michael Rainwater (7-D) impressed me as thoughtful or informed with their Tulsa Press Club performances, but at least Rainwater has experience as a neighborhood leader and is not backed by "Working Tulsans," TulsaBizPAC, or the Latham/Holmes/Ahlgren combine.

I don't know what to think about 2. I like Jeannie Cue's (2-R) roots and lifelong involvement in the west Tulsa community, but I have been unimpressed with her grasp on the issues. Her support from Working Tulsans, even if without her knowledge and consent, is worrisome as well. Philip Oyler (2-D) is a serious and respectable candidate.

Endorsements and questionnaires from various groups:

Tulsa Area Republican Assembly: Of their primary endorsements, only District 3's David Bell remains in the race.
Tulsa 912 Project: They endorsed Bell and Ewing in the primary.
OK-SAFE candidate questionnaire
Preserve Midtown questionnaire on zoning and planning

The City Manager-City Council proposal

Complete charter as revised if council-manager proposition (left side of ballot) is approved

Comparison of Proposed Council-Manager Charter Amendment to the Current Charter: Paragraph by paragraph

The Save Our Tulsa (for Our Kind, Dahling) propositions

Initiative Proposition No. 1 (At-Large Councilors; Mayor as Council Chairman)
Initiative Proposition No. 2 (Two-year terms, to coincide with state and federal elections)
Initiative Proposition No. 3 (Non-partisan elections)

Video and audio

KOTV News on 6 interviews with the candidates and the Tulsa Press Club forum for Districts 2, 7, and 8
KWGS Kiwanis Club debate for Tulsa City Council District 4

Who's trying to buy a set of City Councilors?

Scans of all pre-primary contribution and expenditures reports
Scans of all pre-general contribution and expenditures reports

Who are Ben Latham and Burt Holmes? They've given money to Patrick, Brune, Steele, Mansur, and Lakin.

Who is behind Working Tulsans? George Kaiser, Stacy Schusterman, Jay Helm, and council-suer Burt Holmes are the biggest contributors.

Who is Karl Ahlgren (and why you should care)? Ahlgren is consultant for Steele, Mansur and Lakin. His firm sent mailers before the primary on behalf of "Working Tulsans" in support of Cue, Patrick, and Steele. In an email, Ahlgren has endorsed Democrat Ken Brune in the general election.

What is Save Our Tulsa? Where do Save Our Tulsa supporters (median age: 75) live? Why do Money Belt denizens complain about SOT's proposals privately but refuse to denounce them publicly? (SOT's charter change proposals are on the November ballot, and SOT supporters have been active donors in the city council races.)

What is the "Midtown money belt"? Brice Bogle calls it "Tulsa's Golden Rectangle":

... an area he defines as from the northwest corner of the Inner Dispersal Loop to Skelly Drive in the south, and Harvard Avenue on the east.

"When the leaders of Tulsa talk about doing things for the benefit of Tulsa, it seldom means an area outside of the golden rectangle," Bogle said. "To many outside of the rectangular area, it often seems that those inside the area do not think of Tulsa really being anything beyond it."

My take on the Money Belt:

I would adjust his boundaries slightly -- shave off the less prosperous parts of southern and western Brookside and northeast of the Broken Arrow Expressway -- to come up with what I call the "Money Belt," but the attitude Bogle describes is spot on, and it manifests itself in election results, mayoral appointments, council-packing schemes, survey results, even water usage. That's not to say that all Money Belt denizens are afflicted with this insular attitude, or that those who are are bad people -- they just need to broaden their horizons. To them, the rest of Tulsa is something you drive through to get to Grand Lake or the airport.

But Money Belt blindness to the needs and concerns of the rest of Tulsa has real consequences. It's why it's important to provide some geographic balance on the city's boards and commissions, rather than drawing most appointees from this golden rectangle. It's why it's important for city councilors to advocate forcefully for their district's concerns; no one else in a position of power will....

(P.S. No, I don't think the Money Belt is a conspiracy. It's a demographic phenomenon, a mindset, a subculture. What makes it especially interesting is that it's a subculture that wields a good deal of political and economic power.)

The original use of the term "Cockroach Caucus"

I have struggled with what to call this cluster of special interests which has been trying to run the City of Tulsa without public input, and preferably without public debate....

They don't like the light of public scrutiny, so they conduct their business in the dark. But just because we can't see what's going on, it doesn't mean that they aren't there, contaminating public policy out of sight.

Why don't they like the light? Here's a link to reputable 2000 year old opinion on the subject. They know they aren't serving the interests of all Tulsans. They're serving the interests of a favored few, but they don't want us to know that.

Blake Ewing, Joe Bates, and Rocky Frisco, September 9, 2011. Photo by Trish Molina. Copyright 2011 Aithne Studios. Used by permission.

Of the seven City Council races on today's ballot, the District 4 race, the only one in which I'm allowed to vote, is the only one in which I feel comfortable making an unequivocal and complete endorsement. I am proud to support Republican nominee Blake Ewing for District 4 City Council, and I'm proud to call him my friend.

Everything I said about Blake before the primary still applies:

Ewing is clearly the best choice. A creative entrepreneur, Ewing has built a group of businesses that employ over 100 workers, breathing new life into historic Blue Dome District buildings. He has personal experience with the ways that city government can help or hinder someone trying to start or grow a business.

What I appreciate most about Blake is his frankness and willingness to speak his mind. I don't always agree with him, by any means, but he is willing to think out loud, to think outside the box, and to defend his ideas in depth. Most politicians are content to speak in platitudes; Blake Ewing is willing to talk specifics. You can see that spirit at work in his personal blog.

In building his businesses and in running this campaign, Blake Ewing has come face-to-face with some of the ugliness of Tulsa politics and the establishment that works hard to defend its death-grip on the city. That can be said about many of my acquaintances, but Blake is one of the few people willing to speak out publicly, as he did about his interaction with political consultant Karl Ahlgren, whose services Ewing chose to reject.

After his primary win, Blake posted answers to tough questions about historic preservation and protecting neighborhoods against inappropriate infill development while encouraging quality infill development. Not surprisingly, the build-anything-anywhere developer lobby supports Ewing's opponent, Ken Brune.

(It's become a running joke: At every forum I've attended, Brune defends his preservationist bona fides by citing his involvement with "Tulsa Foundation of Architects." The name of the organization is, in fact, the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture. While his stewardship of the Reunion Building at 4th and Main is praiseworthy, Brune's willingness to sacrifice HP-zoned residential areas "on a case by case basis" for the right development means we can't trust Ken Brune to protect the investments of residents in historic neighborhoods.)

Blake Ewing has run a relentlessly positive campaign, despite the negative attacks from his opponent and allied elements of the Cockroach Caucus. Blake is willing to argue his views, but always in a respectful and positive way, with a view toward maintaining the ongoing relationship with those who hold different views.

It's crucial that Tulsa has at least one independent, intelligent, creative, and courageous voice on the City Council. Blake Ewing is the man for the job.

MORE:

Blake Ewing's response to the OK-SAFE questionnaire. (Brune did not respond.)

Audio of the KWGS / Kiwanis Club Tulsa City Council District 4 debate, October 25, 2011.

Blake Ewing's response to the Preserve Midtown questionnaire. (Brune did not respond.

In the previous entry, I mentioned a candidate survey issued by OK-SAFE -- Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise. Say what you will about OK-SAFE and their views, but the group's questionnaire gets into the details of real questions facing City of Tulsa officials, and they allow candidates to respond with as much detail and nuance as they'd like, publishing each candidate's full response on the website. Cowardice is the only reason a candidate would refuse to submit a response.

Six general election candidates did submit a response. In District 8, William Suliburk, the Democrat nominee, submitted some sound and thoughtful conservative responses to the questionnaire. Republican nominee Phil Lakin, right-hand man to liberal Obama bundler George Kaiser, did not submit a response.

Suliburk, a Roman Catholic, is recently retired from a career in banking. He has a BA in economics from Georgetown University, an MA in economics from UCLA, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He serves on the Sales Tax Overview Committee.

Here are Suliburk's responses to questions about the proposed south Tulsa bridge, eminent domain for private redevelopment, city funding for Planned Parenthood, English only for government signs, the role of the Tulsa Metro Chamber and its city contract, immigration enforcement, the role of the City Attorney, the acquisition of the new City Hall, and the ballpark assessment. (Emphasis is mine.)

10. Regarding the South Tulsa/Bixby bridge, a) how would you pay for it, b) what street should traffic flow into from the bridge, c) when should it be built?

I am not in favor of the South Tulsa/Bixby bridge. There are already two bridges in the 91st St. area plus the bridge across Memorial Drive. There is little, if any, need for another bridge for South Tulsans. Neither Yale nor "River Road/Delaware Avenue/Riverside Drive" were meant to be the equivalent of Memorial Drive. Only that volume of traffic and commercial development could justify and support the bridge.

20. Would you support or oppose the City of Tulsa taking private property under eminent domain to transfer that property to private developers?

Oppose. This is nothing less than "crony capitalism", with its resulting corruption.

28. Would you support or oppose giving taxpayer funds (Community Development Block Grants) to Planned Parenthood?

Oppose. As with many groups, PP started as a limited purpose organization - in its case, for simple medical and counseling services. Even at that stage, it was subject to controversy - for example, my Catholic Church opposed ordinary contraceptive services. However, PP seemed to fill a void. Unfortunately, over time it evolved into what essentially is a political advocacy organization dealing in major medical and moral issues.
Therefore, taxpayer funds should not be directed to it. PP would be best served to return to its early perspective.

30. Would you support or oppose a city ordinance that requires all signs on government buildings in the City of Tulsa to be in the English language only?

Support. There would likely to be exceptions for certain federal rules and for some areas of emergency facilities (e.g., hospital emergency rooms). It is important to recognize that English not only contributes to our melting pot, but more importantly is the sole "language of success". Therefore, we must encourage its use by all new residents so that they can reach their potential.

34. Would you support or oppose putting the city's contract with the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce out for competitive bid?

Support. Since early in my candidacy, I have been asked about the Chamber of Commerce's (COC) new role in city candidate elections. I was asked by COC to an interview shortly after the filing period. However, I was going to be out of the state for their schedule. I indicated I would be glad to meet when I returned, but they were firm
on the date, because they had to gather a large interview committee composed of staff and members for the occasion.

My presence at the interview would not have made a difference toward my candidacy. I have long admired the COC's activities and was on some committees during the 1980s. I support much of their current plan.

However, I would also have discussed with them my disappointment in their involving the COC in local candidate elections. COC is a formal partner with the city regarding economic development activities, receiving perhaps $1,800,000 annually from the city for the COC's efforts. I would have politely indicated that I did not want to be included in endorsements or funding.

I think it is inappropriate for COC to recruit and fund candidates for city elective offices while receiving money from the city. First, I think it is an ethical issue, whereby the COC should keep itself neutral in such a monetary/functional partnership. Second, I think it may be shortsighted for the COC's best long term interests.

Over a couple of election cycles, it is likely that there will be a number of officials elected who are opposed by the COC. It will be highly unlikely that those officials - who believe they are doing their jobs well - will vote to continue the relationship with the COC that is trying to thwart them or remove them from office. The COC will have poisoned the well for a continuation of its partnership.

The COC needs to choose whether to continue its formal economic development partnership or to be an electoral force. If the COC stops its electioneering, I would favor retaining the contract and partnership.

39. Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett has stated, "Police officers are not here to send people back to their home country. That's not their job." (Source, Tulsa World, June 15, 2011) Do you support or oppose this stated position of the Mayor that it is not the job of police officers in the City of Tulsa to enforce federal immigration laws?

Again, nuances: Tulsans have always welcomed legal immigrants. We were also welcoming to the special exception for South Vietnamese immigration following the Communist North Vietnamese take over in 1975.

TPD does not have the resources to conduct sweeps of the population for illegal immigrants and should not be diverted from its core public safety tasks to do so. However, whenever TPD, in its normal course of law enforcement, does come in contact with illegal immigrants, the immigrants should be subjected to federal regulations. Tulsa should not be a "sanctuary city".

40. Do you support or oppose making Tulsa's city attorney an elected position?

This is not a singular issue to be voted on during this election cycle, although it is an element of the Council/City Manager proposal. I would prefer that the City Attorney be appointed by the Mayor with confirmation by the City Council. There has been an tendency in recent administrations for the City Attorney to rationalize the positions of the Mayor - which is not difficult to accomplish with the voluminous, imprecise, and sometimes conflicting city charter, city ordinances, and state legislation. I would propose an initial four year appointment which is done two years into a Mayor's term. The attorney would eligible for re-appointment and re-confirmation for one additional four year term. He/she would be limited to eight years total service.

49. Do you support or oppose the position taken by the City of Tulsa to move city hall offices to the One Technology Center?

Oppose. Although the price of the building/move was described as a "bargain", the owner would have been lucky to get half the price that the City paid. What is worse, a deeding/financing option was used to avoid the standard governance approval for such a substantial venture. Furthermore, everyone knows that an "independent consultant" can jigger the figures to show whatever the client wants; it was a low point for Roger Staubach's reputation.

51. Do you support or oppose the downtown assessment district fees on businesses to pay for the ballpark?

It is not appropriate for property located far from the ballpark to be assessed at the same level as property that is a few blocks away.

While conservative voters won't be in complete agreement with Suliburk's responses, they'll find much to link in his well-thought out responses and his willingness to disagree with the standard Cockroach Caucus position. A conservative District 8 voter who wants a councilor in line with his views, who wants a councilor not beholden to billion-dollar special interests or out-of-district donors may well prefer Democrat nominee Suliburk to a nominal Republican who won't go on record on these important issues.

A number of guides, interviews, and videos have been posted to introduce voters to the candidates on the Tulsa City Council ballot tomorrow. In most cases, the winner of a hotly contested primary for the district's dominant party faces the nominee of the minority party, who either got a bye or faced minimal competition in the primary. District 4 is the exception -- an evenly-divided district in which both parties had strongly contested primaries.

OK-SAFE (Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise) is a non-partisan but conservative/libertarian organization that produces a lengthy questionnaire for City Council candidates. Only six general election candidates responded: Jeannie Cue in District 2, David Bell and David Patrict in 3, Blake Ewing in 4, Robert Gwin in 6, and William Suliburk in 8. Candidates give a short answer, reflected on a summary grid, but may also elaborate on their responses, and their responses are posted in full.

Steven Roemerman has video of the Tulsa Press Club forum for districts 2, 7, and 8. These forums were somewhat disappointing, as questions dealing with development and land use planning weren't included, but they were still revealing in places. Check out the responses to the question about the involvement in the election of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, a city vendor, keeping in mind that Lakin, Mansur, and Cue all received money from the Chamber's TulsaBizPac.

Also note the responses to the question about trash service. Everyone likes the current service, but no one even addresses Mayor Junior Bartlett's efforts to stymie the ability of the Council to shape the trash service to address the public's concerns. Half of the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy board (William Bowles, expired 2010/07/31, Beverly Anderson and Michael Pierce, expired 2011/07/31) continues to serve despite expired terms. Mayor Junior has refused to put them up for reappointment, avoiding a Council vote, in which the TARE board members could be held to account for the board's refusal to consider public concerns about their approach to the new trash contract.

Mayor Junior's City Attorney has issued an opinion that the charter provision giving the council the power to fill expired terms that the mayor refuses to fill doesn't apply to the TARE board, because the TARE board is authorized under state statute. (The City Attorney conveniently interprets conflicts and precedence between charter and state statute as suits Mayor Junior. Sometimes state law trumps charter, sometimes vice versa.) There's also an opinion that although the city legislature created TARE, they can't eliminate it without TARE's approval, and they can't strip it of its powers. A council effort to do just that was vetoed by Mayor Junior, and councilors were told they'd be sued personally if they overrode the veto. In a nutshell, Dewey Bartlett Jr is standing in the way of Tulsans getting the trash service they want, and these candidates for City Council don't understand that playing nice with the Mayor won't make him budge on this issue.

KOTV News on 6 has posted interviews with each of the 14 Council candidates on the News on 6 election coverage home page. Click on the map to pop up the two candidates for the district, or click the link below:

District 2:

Jeannie Cue (R)
Phillip Oyler (D)

District 3:

David Bell(R)
David Patrick (D)

District 4:

Blake Ewing (R)
Ken Brune (D)

District 6:

Byron Steele (R)
Robert Gwin Jr. (D)

District 7:

Tom Mansur (R)
Michael Rainwater (D)

District 8:

Phil Lakin (R)
William Suliburk (D)

District 9:

G. T. Bynum (R)
Mike Batman (D)

Only seven districts have Tulsa City Council races but voters in every district of the City of Tulsa can vote Tuesday, November 8, 2011, on the four charter amendment propositions on the general election ballot.

On the left of the ballot (under a city council race, if you have one) is the City Council's proposal to convert Tulsa to a City Manager - City Council form of government. On the right are three propositions resulting from the initiative petitions of Save Our Tulsa (for Our Kind Dahling), a group of rich old midtown Money Belt types, all of which are designed to make money and powerful connections more important than grassroots support.

(Click here to see a sample ballot with the charter amendment propositions in PDF format.)

I urge BatesLine readers to vote AGAINST all four propositions. For each proposition, here's why I oppose it and what I believe would be a better solution:

City Manager - City Council: AGAINST

It's important for the executive power in the City of Tulsa to be accountable directly to the voters. In a city manager form of government that accountability is indirect. We have had enough trouble already with powerful department heads out of reach of public accountability. In my experience, a city manager becomes either the uncrowned king of the city (do a web search for "Francis McGrath"), using his power over the bureaucracy to help city councilors who back him and punish city councilors who buck him, or he becomes the scapegoat, taking the blame and getting the sack every time something goes wrong. I'm sure there are rare cases where the position works as advertised, and Oklahoma City may well fall into that category.

I'm sympathetic to the proponents of this measure. It seems that Tulsa's social and economic structure is such that our mayor will always be a denizen and product of the Money Belt, uninterested and unwilling to treat grassroots-elected councilors with respect as a co-equal branch of government and ignorant of the needs and priorities of Tulsans who don't live in the Money Belt. I believe that some adjustment to the charter is needed to help the council be an effective check and balance on the mayor. The City Council should have its own attorney, independent of the City Attorney. The mayor should have the authority to appoint and remove department heads, but only with the advice and consent of the council. Officially, our department heads are supposed to be civil service appointees, but mayors have always found a way around that, using one of their charter-authorized at-will positions to hire a police chief or city attorney.

An idea to bring the mayor closer to the grassroots: Require the nominating process to pass through the council districts. A candidate would have to win a nominating election in his own district in order to qualify for the citywide election. We could also decide the election based on number of council districts won, rather than total popular vote. (An explanation for Save Our Tulsa members: Match play rather than stroke play.) A mayoral candidate would need to campaign across the city, rather than racking up big numbers in the Money Belt.

Initiative Petition Proposition 1 (At-Large Councilors): AGAINST

Adding three at-large councilors, plus the mayor as chairman of the City Council (with the power to set the Council's agenda), would violate checks and balances, dilute geographical grassroots representation in favor of well-financed, Money Belt-backed candidates, and set up new rivals to the mayor -- super-councilors, like the mayor, elected with a city-wide mandate. The result promises to be just as contentious as the current arrangement with the added problem of opening Tulsa up to a Voting Rights Act lawsuit. The Tulsa County Republican and Democratic parties both oppose this measure, as do the Tulsa Metro Chamber, the Tulsa World, the Tulsa Beacon, the Oklahoma Eagle, the League of Women Voters, Mayor Junior Bartlett, and myself.

Tulsans Defending Democracy has a brief statement about the current proposal. TDD has been steadfast in opposition to at-large councilors since the idea was first floated. (Click these links to read TDD's 2006 position statement opposing at-large councilors and the conclusion of the Citizens' Commission for City Government to oppose at-large.)

Only the SOTs seem to think this is a good idea, and their claim that ward politics is the source of City Hall bickering is full of baloney. They won't and can't name a concrete example of ward politics. The disputes at City Hall have involved significant city-wide issues -- e.g., using Tulsa tax dollars to promote development in Tulsa rather than development in the suburbs, protecting neighborhoods and administering zoning laws fairly and consistently, defending taxpayers against attempts to garnish their money to pay back (illegally) the Great Plains Airlines loan, holding the Tulsa Metro Chamber accountable for how they spend our hotel/motel tax dollars.

The solution to the problem of bickering is to elect a mayor who will respect and work with the council, rather than pitch a fit and isolate himself, as Mayor Junior has done. The current council gets along very well with one another and has been as unified as I've ever seen a council. The idea that the council bickers has been promoted by self-interested special interest groups who want a council full of puppets and submissive milquetoasts. (Ever heard of national media bias, where news reports are distorted to make conservatives look bad and liberals look good? The same sort of thing happens in Tulsa, propping up the Money Belt's favorites and knocking down grassroots leaders.)

Initiative Petition Proposition 2 (Even-year elections): AGAINST

This SOT proposition would hold city of Tulsa elections simultaneously with federal and state elections in the fall of even-numbered years, moving the mayor's election to coincide with the presidential election and the council elections back to a two-year term fallling on federal and state election dates.

The result would be scant attention paid to city issues. While this proposition would increase the number of voters in city elections, it wouldn't increase the number of informed voters. If the elections remain partisan (if ballot item three fails), voters will likely follow a straight ticket when they get to the municipal races at the distant bottom of the ballot. If the elections go non-partisan, voters who are interested in federal issues but pay no attention to city matters will either skip the city races or vote for the most famous name.

Holding city elections at the same time as dozens of other races will spread available volunteer time, contributions, and voter attention even thinner than it already is, once again hurting grassroots candidates dependent on volunteers and small contributions. Because the voting universe will be larger, candidates will need more money to reach the voters with their message, and even more money to cut through the clutter of all the other races.

To refresh your memory, here's a link to all the sample ballots for the 2010 general election in Tulsa County. In all the precincts, voters had eight statewide races, two federal races, six judicial retention questions, three non-partisan district judge races, a county assessor's race, 11 state questions, and possibly county commission, state senate, and state house races, in addition to two city questions on a separate bedsheet ballot. One set of precincts had 34 separate races and issues to consider. We don't need to make those ballots any longer!

(Links to PDFs of 2010 Tulsa County ballot style 1 front side, state question ballot, and Tulsa city proposition ballot.)

I agree that moving to three-year staggered terms was a bad idea. My better alternative is to go back to the system that we adopted in 2008 and are only this year departing -- elections in the fall of odd-numbered years. Some adjustments could be made -- a primary in August instead of September, right after Labor Day -- but it was a good idea, one endorsed by the Citizens' Commission, and we didn't give it a chance.

Separate city elections allow voters to focus on city issues and make it easier for candidates to raise money and recruit volunteers without competition from federal, state, and county campaigns.

Ideally, I'd like to see all local elections -- city, county, and school board -- in the fall of odd years and state and federal elections in the fall of even years, with special votes like bond issues and state questions limited to the appropriate general election date.

Initiative Petition Proposition 3 (Non-partisan elections): AGAINST

Non-partisan elections would remove a useful if imperfect piece of information about the candidates from the ballot -- their national party affiliation -- and leave nothing but their name on the ballot. Non-partisan elections put a premium on name recognition -- an advantage to incumbents and candidates with high financial backing and newspaper endorsements. It's yet another SOT obstacle to trip up grassroots candidates for city office.

My alternative proposal is multi-partisan elections with preferential instant runoff voting. Candidates can run under their national party or a party label of their own devising, giving voters help in finding the name of their preferred candidate on the ballot. All candidates would run on the same ballot, allowing all voters to choose from all candidates. Voters would rank candidates in order of preference, which would avoid vote splitting among similar candidates, ensuring that the winner is supported by a majority of voters.

I dealt with the non-partisan proposition in detail in an earlier entry. See also Ray Pearcey's excellent takedown of non-partisan elections in UTW and my detailed description of multi-partisan voting.

Smear merchant Karl Ahlgren, the campaign consultant behind the current Money Belt effort to seize total control of Tulsa city government, is advocating for the defeat of Blake Ewing, the Republican nominee for Tulsa City Council District 4. Ahlgren is nominally a Republican, but he seems to support any cause or candidate that fills his bank account. Ahlgren has a bone to pick with Ewing because Ewing rejected his advances at the beginning of the campaign and spoke publicly about Ahlgren's negative reputation.

From: Karl Ahlgren
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 7:37 AM
To: Holmes Burt; Ben Latham
Cc: Holland Fount
Subject: Today's TW article on CD 4 candidates views

Blake can't help himself. In todays article he's made it crystal clear that he will be no different than the current 8-9 councilors. I've been saying this for weeks and finally he comes clean. Do we in fact want to elect another ....... or Ken Brune who will have the desire to collaborate with the mayor and his fellow councilors.

The time is now to make a difference in this election.

Karl

Ken Brune is the Democrat nominee for the District 4 seat. I'm told that the dots were inserted by Ben Latham (who forwarded Ahlgren's message to his mailing list) in place of a vulgar seven-letter synonym for gastrointestinal exit which has the same initials as Ahlgren's consulting firm. (Coincidence? I think not.) Latham is the Save Our Tulsa member who hired Ahlgren to help him fill the City Council with submissive milquetoasts.

The news story mentioned by Ahlgren is a report about the Kiwanis Club / KWGS debate
between Ewing and Brune. In response to a question about discord at City Hall, Ewing gave this response (transcribed on his blog):

Look, you're not electing people to city hall to get along. You're electing them, in fact, to argue. I think what we're seeing there is that the majority of the issues and the majority of the disagreements have very little to do with advancement of the city, or with making this a better place. They've become personal. You're putting nine people in a room from nine different parts of town, nine different ways of life, nine different backgrounds. They better disagree, and frankly, the reason we have a mayor balanced with the council is so they can check each other. So yes, I think as the leader, it's the mayor's responsibility, in many aspects, to present the big broad vision, so that everyone joins under that umbrella of hope for the city.

When it comes to the day to day politics, it's naive to expect that those ten people will always get along. That's where I think you elect the personalities to the conversation who can pursue the bigger picture at all costs and put the petty things behind us and work tirelessly on advancing the city."

In a nutshell, Ewing says our elected officials ought to bring their 10 different perspectives to the table to debate issues vigorously, without getting personal and petty. In response to a Brune mailer that takes his comments out of context, Ewing responds on his blog:

[Brune is] playing off of the community's frustration with our current representatives who are often accused (whether right or wrong) of being difficult and childish. Naturally, if one reads the whole answer or listens to the audio on KWGS, they'll find that I'm as against that negative activity and lack of progress as anyone. They'll also find Mr. Brune's naive assertion that the reason for our current discord is The Mayor and The Council's inability to find a "proper time" to "visit" or share their goals with each other. Ask anyone at City Hall if they think that's an accurate assessment or if it's just political speak.

Ewing doesn't elaborate, but I've heard from many different City Hall insiders that Mayor Junior Bartlett has all but cut off communications with members of the City Council, a pattern that began within months of his taking office. According to the same sources, even during the most contentious debates, Kathy Taylor was generally accessible to discuss matters with councilors at any time.

This week, Working Tulsans, the George Kaiser-backed 527 committee that concealed their donors prior to the primary, sent a mailer promoting Brune. Working Tulsans's pre-primary mailers bore the Oklahoma City bulk mail mark of Majority Designs, the direct mail firm run by Karl Ahlgren's partner Fount Holland. This pro-Brune Working Tulsans mailer has a Tulsa bulk mail permit instead, but the style is the same as the pre-primary mailers.

(Reminder: The median home size of contributors to "Working Tulsans" is 5,007.5 sq. ft. and median home value is $691,050.)

In the debates in recent years over taxes for special projects, we've heard over and over again (from the sort of people who are funding Working Tulsans) how important it is to offer fun and exciting entertainment options to help Tulsa attract and retain young people who are creative and entrepreneurial. It's crucial, we've been told, to Tulsa's future. We want our kids to come back after college and raise our grandkids here.

So along comes Blake Ewing, a young entrepreneur who has created a half dozen businesses employing over 100 people, with more in the works, helping to revive downtown as a fun place to be any night of the week. He's worked on a number of city task forces to promote Tulsa retailers and deal with important city issues, and he has a good working relationship with the mayor. He has even (to my chagrin -- one area of significant disagreement) supported Vision 2025 and the river tax (although he believes this would not be a good time for a tax hike).

But instead of endorsing this young, positive, energetic entrepreneur -- the epitome of the kind of young Tulsan they say we want to attract and retain -- George Kaiser and his allies are backing a submissive milquetoast.

I've emailed Alex Eaton, chairman of Working Tulsans (also the president of my high school class), and asked him to explain their criteria for candidate selection. I'll pass his response along as soon as it arrives.

My theory: George Kaiser doesn't want any leader on the Council other than Phil Lakin, trustee of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and G. T. Bynum, former Washington lobbyist for the George Kaiser Family Foundation. They want everyone else on the council to be a reliable follower, without the initiative or intelligence to challenge anything coming from Lakin or Bynum. Blake Ewing is bright, energetic, and inquisitive, not afraid to look for better ways to do things, not afraid to ask tough questions (but politely), not afraid to poke holes (pleasantly) in silly ideas. Kaiser and his allies want a council full of dullards who will do things their way without question.

How sad for Tulsa! Why not just post a sign at the city limits that says, "Creative, energetic entrepreneurs not wanted."

MORE: Since I invoked his name, here's a collection of Caspar Milquetoast cartoons at James Lileks's wonderful Institute of Official Cheer.

In this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly, Ray Pearcey deploys an apt analogy against the Save Our Tulsa non-partisan election proposition on Tulsa's general election ballot this Tuesday.

If you are a baseball fan you've had time to recover from late night World Series games, so I want you to imagine a very different kind of baseball game. You see, in this variation, the teams don't have uniforms and the players wear street clothes, so it's impossible to see who's on what team. There are lots of very confused folks in the stands -- in fact many people simply go home shortly after the game gets underway, other fans, having been told about the no uniform rules, simply stay home not wanting to waste their time with a confusing contest.

But there are a handful of people at the game who are yelling and clapping, these folks have inside info, maybe they know the players first hand, maybe the players are their kin or maybe the insiders are owners. The thing is, only a tiny set of people at the game know the players and their team affinities: that is what non-partisan elections will "look like" in Tulsa.

Pearcey points out that our current non-partisan elections for district judge are plagued with low turnouts and voter confusion. Non-partisan races are likely to hinge on name recognition, which in turn is driven by which candidate has the biggest budget:

Big print ads, sizable radio and TV runs will be paramount in "non-par" contests: council candidates will need big bucks to prevail in this newly chaotic, information spare environment. Expect the prospects of candidates with strong ties to banking, real estate, construction and big business to get a big boost: these folks should have some influence by right, but shouldn't be allowed to call all the shots.

That's likely why Save Our Tulsa supports non-partisan elections. Every one of their three ballot propositions -- at-large (citywide) city councilors, city elections at the same time as state and federal elections, and non-partisan elections -- is designed to raise the cost of running a successful race for city council, hampering the chances of a grassroots, door-to-door campaign from succeeding, resulting in a City Council entirely dependent on and subservient to the Money Belt.

Pearcey acknowledges that national party affiliation is an imperfect indicator in local elections, but, he says, "some info is better than zero."

To extend the metaphor, the problem we have right now is that the players are wearing uniforms, but the uniforms don't indicate their loyalties. Imagine a World Series where individual Cardinals and Rangers play not for their own team's victory but for the victory of someone's fantasy league team. Imagine Rangers catcher Mike Napoli tipping Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols to his signals to the pitcher, because they both happen to be on George Kaiser's Rotisserie League lineup, and Rangers pitcher Alexi Ogande is on the FOP's roster. The fans in the stands think the competition is Rangers vs. Cardinals; only the insiders are hip to the teams that really matter and which player is assigned to which team.

Pearcey would like to see the emergence of purely local political parties. That's something you see in Britain and in a few cities around the U. S. where city ballot laws permit it. I've advocated this idea, to be used in conjunction with instant-runoff ballots under the name "multi-partisan elections." The idea won the support of some members of the Citizens' Commission on City Government.

In the United Kingdom, the Electoral Commission maintains a register of national and local political parties. A party registers its name, a logo, and a description which appear next to the candidate's name on the ballot. The Electoral Commission has rules to reject names confusingly similar to existing parties. Each candidate files as a party nominee (with the party's authorization) or as an independent. At some elections, the candidate must post a deposit which will be refunded if he wins the seat or gets some nominal percentage of the vote. (Candidates for parliament post a £500 deposit, refunded if they receive at least 5%.)

In Minneapolis, for example, candidates declare a three-word "political party or principle" that appears next to their name on the ballot. (Here are filings from the 2009 Minneapolis election, with the designations chosen by the candidates, and here are the 2009 Minneapolis election results.) Most candidates chose a national label, and in some districts, two or more candidates with the same party label were on the ballot. Minneapolis uses ranked-choice voting, a form of Instant Runoff Voting, so all candidates appear on the general election ballot, and voters indicate first, second, and third choices. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the low-ranked candidate is eliminated and his votes redistributed based on the second choice marked on those ballots.

The beauty of the Minneapolis approach is that it lets every voter choose from among all the candidates, without obscuring real differences between the candidates, and yet it ensures that the winner has the support of a majority of the voters. Unfortunately these approaches to "multi-partisan voting" aren't on the ballot this Tuesday.

The Save Our Tulsa non-partisan proposition is a move by wealthy old midtowners to strengthen their faltering grip on Tulsa's city government, and it should be rejected. On Tuesday vote AGAINST all three initiative petition propositions on the right side of the ballot.

MORE: The Tulsa Whirled editorial board ridiculed (but didn't provide a substantive argument against) my multi-partisan idea back in 2007. In reply, I explained how a strictly non-partisan ballot would boost their influence in electing Money Belt toadies at the expense of grassroots candidates:

They oppose it for selfish reasons which they don't wish to reveal to the reader. A candidate's brief self-description on the ballot constitutes a media bypass. Without depending on the favor of the monopoly daily newspaper, without needing a pile of campaign cash, a candidate would be able to communicate something about himself, albeit very briefly, to every voter, in words of his own choosing.

If the Whirled editorial hive-mind gets its collective way, a city election ballot would comprise lists of bare names, with no other identifying information. As the still-dominant media outlet in Tulsa, the Whirled would define for many voters what emotions and opinions they should hold about each of those names.

Small wonder they don't like the idea.

Another earthquake struck Oklahoma tonight at 10:53 p.m. local time on November 5, 2011. The USGS has designated it a 5.6 magnitude, the strongest Oklahoma earthquake on record.

If you felt it, please tell the USGS what you noticed by filling out a brief online survey.

At our house in Tulsa, it felt like a parade of heavy semis were rolling past, rattling the windows and ceiling fans, and making lightweight objects on the kitchen table tremble for a minute or so after the main shaking stopped. No damage, but it was strong enough -- stronger and longer than early this morning -- that we were all wondering what to do.

Peak ground acceleration in Tulsa was around 3 to 4% of g (gravitational acceleration on earth, or 3 to 4% of 32 m per second per second, which works out to ) with a peak ground velocity of 2 to 3 cm per second.

The nearest station to the epicenter reported 14.3177 peak ground acceleration and 12.868 cm/s peak ground velocity.

It was the ninth detectable quake of the day, starting with a 4.7 magnitude quake at 2:12 this morning, all in a small area between Sparks and Prague in Lincoln County, Oklahoma.

MORE:

Oklahoma Geological Survey, based in Leonard (east of Bixby), has a preliminary report on the earlier quake. It's not the first time there's been a quake here:

On November 5, 2011 at 2:12 AM CDT (07:12:45.4 UTC) an earthquake occurred in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. The earthquake was located at 35.548 N latitude and 96.763 W longitude with an error of about 2.0 km horizontally, at a depth of 3.1 km. The earthquake occurred about 6 miles northwest of Prague and 5.2 miles southeast of Sparks. The OGS determined a ML magnitude of 4.8 and the USGS currently has it at a magnitude 4.7 (Mb) these two numbers are essentially the same given the errors in calculating magnitude. Both the USGS and the OGS have determined a magnitude 5.2 mbLg for this event. This earthquake occurred very close to where a magnitude 4.3 earthquake occurred on February 27, 2010. From the location of the earthquake and the focal mechanism it is most likely that this earthquake occurred on the Wilzetta fault also known as the Seminole uplift. As of 3:30 AM CDT on 11/5/11 the OGS has received a few hundred reports. As of 7:00 AM CDT there have been more than 30 aftershocks associated with this earthquake.

2010 was a big year for quakes in Oklahoma County, too, big enough to constitute a "swarm":

The OGS located 1047 earthquakes in Oklahoma in 2010. 103 of these earthquakes were reported felt. The largest earthquake to occur in 2010 was the October 13 magnitude 4.7 earthquake which occurred near Norman, Oklahoma. This earthquake was felt from Kansas City to south of Dallas, Texas. The was also a magnitude 4.1 which occurred on February 27 in Lincoln County near Prague, which was felt through parts of Oklahoma and Kansas.

Oklahoma County continued to have a significant amount of earthquake activity associated with the Jones swarm. The OGS located 695 earthquakes in Oklahoma County in 2010, and of these 65 were reported felt. The largest earthquake to occur in the swarm was a magnitude 4.0 earthquake. The OGS deployed additional seismic instrumentation to the area in early 2010. This instrumentation has allowed us to determine a great deal about the earthquakes occurring in Oklahoma County. We have not discovered a cause for the dramatic numbers of earthquakes, but continue to examine the data.

HOW TO HANDLE AN EARTHQUAKE: Drop. Cover. Hold on.

• DROP to the ground (before the earthquake drops you!),
• Take COVER by getting under a sturdy desk or table, and
• HOLD ON to it until the shaking stops.

The main point is to not try to move but to immediately protect yourself as best as possible where you are. Earthquakes occur without any warning and may be so violent that you cannot run or crawl; you therefore will most likely be knocked to the ground where you happen to be. You will never know if the initial jolt will turn out to be start of the big one. You should Drop, Cover, and Hold On immediately!

In the wee hours of this morning, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake hit Oklahoma. Epicenter was just north of the town of Prague (rhymes with plague -- seriously), about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City, and about 60 miles southwest of Tulsa.

The US Geological Survey wants to know if you felt it and what you saw and heard at the time. That link will take you to a very brief questionnaire that will help the USGS collect data about the effects of the quake.

I was still up when it hit. I thought it was a thunderstorm getting started with a couple of sustained, booming but muffled rumbles, but that was it.

Democrat Ken Brune sent out a mailer to Republican voters in Tulsa District 4 with a list of 74 "Republicans for Ken Brune (1 MB PDF)."

Ken Brune seems to be liked only by an elite and elderly class of Republicans.

A BatesLine analysis of the 74 names, using voter registration and county assessor records, shows that 67 of them live south of 21st Street in the Money Belt precincts that were recently moved from District 9 to District 4, 4 live north of 21st Street in the district, and 3 don't live in District 4 at all.

Median age of the names on the list is 66. The youngest, former City Councilor Eric Gomez (who threatened to sue his constituents), is 42. Only four of the 74 are under a half-century old.

The median value (as assigned by the Tulsa County Assessor) of the homes where they reside is $392,450, and the median home size is 3,473 sq. ft. Only six people on the list live in homes worth less than $200,000. (The median sales price for Tulsa is $135,000.)

The list of Brune fans includes John Brock, leader of Save Our Tulsa, who believes that City Councilors should be seen and not heard; Joe Westervelt, a developer and former TMAPC chairman who believes citizens should not be heard and historic neighborhoods should not be protected; Frederic Dorwart, the BOK attorney, George Kaiser Family Foundation trustee who pushed through the legally-dubious ballpark assessment scheme; Bob Poe, the highway construction hothead and 2004 Tulsa Metro Chamber chairman, famed for his divisive and embarrassing rants against city councilors and state legislators (Poe was a Democrat as recently as 2009); and Gomez, who decided his constituents didn't need to know about a massive residential facility for the long-term homeless being planned for their neighborhood, then threatened to sue a constituent who complained about it.

What kind of Republican supports Ken Brune? The kind that doesn't want to protect our beautiful older neighborhoods. The kind that wants the council to be a silent rubber stamp. The kind that would rather tear apart the city charter than cooperate and compromise with city councilors who have different priorities. The kind that is well insulated by his wealth from the daily concerns that affect most Tulsans. The kind that wants higher taxes and more corporate welfare. The Cockroach Caucus type of Republican.

As I wrote about the Cockroach Caucus back before the primary:

A small group of wealthy Tulsans want total control of city government. They don't want thoughtful citizens on the City Council who will ask direct questions or who will stand firm against special-interest manipulation. They want a City Council full of well-trained monkeys who will vote on command. They exist under various names -- TulsaBizPac, Coalition for Responsible Government, Tulsans for Better Government, Save Our Tulsa -- I call them the Cockroach Caucus. They've used unsubstantiated claims of "bickering" and "ward politics" to discredit the councilors we've elected to represent us.

These are the people, the Cockroach Caucus, who created a year of turmoil with their 2004-2005 attempt to recall two city councilors over policy differences. For all the whining and complaining they do about "Council bickering," they dragged the city through a divisive year of attacks and smears, all because they didn't like the results of an election, and they refused to work harmoniously with the councilors that the people of Tulsa had elected.

These are the people who led us into the Great Plains Airlines mess. They promised us openly that the taxpayers were at no financial risk, while they were secretly promising financiers that the taxpayers would pick up the tab if their wacky airline idea failed. It failed, state taxpayers coughed up $30 million in transferable tax credits with nothing to show for it, and Tulsa taxpayers got saddled with $7.1 million, which we're paying for with higher property taxes.

These are the Midtown Money Belt people who don't like the councilors that east and west and south and north Tulsa elect to represent our interests at City Hall. Middle-class and working-class Tulsans want more cops on the beat, city pools that open in the summer, streets that don't tear our cars to pieces, zoning that protects our neighborhoods against shoddy redevelopment, and economic policies that attract and keep growing businesses. The Midtown Money Belt types want taxpayers to subsidize their entertainment -- islands in the river, expensive concerts at the arena, WNBA. They want us to subsidize the success of their investments in suburban real estate, at the expense of growth within the city limits to help fund public safety and infrastructure.

So because they don't like the fact that the rest of us elect councilors focused on efficient basic city services, these people propose charter changes to dilute geographical representation on the City Council. They yearn for the days when you could drive a golf ball from the Mayor's midtown backyard into the yards of the other city commissioners. They want to pack the council with at-large councilors who have to be wealthy enough to afford a city-wide race or beholden to those who are.

That's the kind of Republican that backs Ken Brune.

The Brune mailer makes a preposterous claim: "Partisan politics have hampered real progress for our great city." I can't think of a single example of national party affiliation being relevant to a major city government dispute. The divisions that have hurt us are those caused by the rich, old Money Belt coots of both parties who won't work cooperatively with the rest of the city.

When I was the Republican nominee for District 4 City Council, my opponent put out a robocall the day before the election. It was Scott Petty (also on Brune's list as Robert S. Petty), speaking on behalf of "Republicans for Tom Baker."

It was the same bunch then as now. They don't want a bright, independent, creative, and courageous man like Republican Blake Ewing on the City Council. They want a submissive milquetoast like Democrat Ken Brune.

This conservative Republican is proud to support my fellow Republican Blake Ewing for District 4 City Council.

Red-white-and-blue RINO logo courtesy the conservative blog with the tongue-in-cheek name AngryWhiteDude.com

Don't forget that every Tulsa voter has a reason to go to the polls, as charter amendments will be on the ballot even if you're in a district (1 or 5) which doesn't have a general election for city councilor.

An email from Tulsa County Republican Party HQ reminds GOP voters that the party platform, adopted by grassroots party activists in March, opposes two of the four propositions on this year's city ballot: at-large City Council members and non-partisan city elections in this years county party platform. The email also briefly states pros and cons for the other two propositions.

An important message for Republicans in the City of Tulsa:

In addition to Tulsa City Council races in seven of the nine districts, four city charter amendments will be on the ballot. Even if you live in a district where there is no City Council race, all Tulsa Republicans can and should vote on these issues that significantly affect Tulsa's form of government.

On March 26, 2011, delegates to the Tulsa County Republican Party adopted a platform that opposes two of the four propositions -- Initiative Petition Proposition No. 1, which would add three more city councilors, elected at-large (city-wide) to the council, and Initiative Petition Proposition No. 3, which would make city elections non-partisan. The Local Government section of the Tulsa County Republican platform states:

9. We do not support city non-partisan elections or the current movement to change the Tulsa City Charter to allow such.

11. We oppose all efforts to add a Charter Amendment which would add at-large Councilors, elected city wide, to the Tulsa City Council.

Click here to read the 2011 Tulsa County Republican Party platform.

Adding at-large councilors would increase contention and rivalry at City Hall, dilute geographical representation, weaken checks and balances on government power, and expose Tulsa to the risk of a Federal lawsuit. Non-partisan elections would deprive voters of useful information, blur distinctions between the parties, and interfere with the local GOP's ability to assist conservative candidates who are running for city office.

The platform did not address Initiative Petition Proposition No. 2, Charter Change - City Election Dates. Here are two views on this issue.

Oppose: Holding city elections at the same time as federal, state, and county elections could hurt Republican campaigns by spreading available campaign dollars, volunteers, and voter attention among too many different races.

Support: Holding city elections on a major election date would save the taxpayer's money by consolidating elections. Also city elections historically have a low turnout rate. Having the city elections on the same date as state and national elections would increase voter turnout.

The platform did not address Proposition No. 1, City Council - City Manager form of government. Here are two views on this issue.

Oppose: The city manager is vested with much power in order to run the day to day operations of the city. He/She would be hired by the city council and would answer to the city council not the citizens. If the citizens are not happy with the way their city was being ran they would have to get a majority of the city council to support the replacement of the city manager. This adds another level of bureaucracy to local government.

Support: Many people support having a "professional" run the day to day operations of the city. Five of the six current Republicans on the City Council support this measure.

We urge all City of Tulsa Republicans to vote on November 8th.

Tonight the Tulsa City Council will vote on whether to annex a 300-foot fenceline running along the west side of the future alignment of the Gilcrease Expressway, parallel to 57th West Avenue. Other parcels within that fenceline belonging to owners who want their property in the city limits will be included in tonight's vote.

The proposal has been described as affecting Berryhill, but it runs to the east of the unincorporated community surrounding Berryhill schools, which would remain unclaimed territory between Sand Springs and Tulsa's fencelines. There's no threat here to the Berryhill community's semi-rural lifestyle. Berryhill would still be outside Tulsa's fenceline, any annexation move would require residents to vote their approval, and they would still have option, should they choose, to be taken into Sand Springs instead.

This is an important strategic move for Tulsa. City of Tulsa tax dollars are building the Gilcrease Expressway, and we need to make sure that future development along that expressway returns money to the city's coffers, rather than funding Sand Springs or Sapulpa. Tulsa fell asleep at the switch a few years ago, and Sapulpa reached an arm into Tulsa County to claim all the development on I-44 leading to the Turner Turnpike. We can't afford to have that sort of thing happen again.

Here's a map with the proposed parcels to be annexed in yellow, extracted from the City Council backup packet. I added annotations marking Berryhill Schools, certain subdivisions, and Chandler Park. Click the image for a full-size view.

It's a sad day. Urban Tulsa Weekly editorial cartoonist Dave Simpson has resigned (or, reportedly, was fired) and has announced an end to his career amidst revelations that some of his recent submissions were ripoffs of the work of the late nationally syndicated cartoonist Jeff MacNelly. Indications are that the admitted ripoffs are just scratching the surface.

On October 25, the Daily Cartoonist revealed that, in the October 20-26, 2011, issue of UTW Simpson had repurposed a MacNelly cartoon from the Carter Administration, down to bits of junk and blades of grass, making minor alterations and relabeling it as some sort of indecipherable commentary on the Supreme Court's rejection of the Great Plains Airlines / Bank of Oklahoma settlement.

This Land news editor Holly Wall (former managing editor and arts columnist for UTW) brought the plagiarism accusation to Tulsa's attention this past Monday, and shortly thereafter the Daily Cartoonist had learned that the then-current issue of UTW, October 27 - November 2, 2011, contained yet another Simpson re-draw of MacNelly -- a cartoon about US involvement in Bosnia recycled to make some obscure point about Oklahoma selling water rights to Texas.

Before long, This Land had uncovered more examples of Simpson's cribbing from other cartoonists and invited its readers to look for still more.

On Wednesday, the Daily Cartoonist ran Simpson's apology to MacNelly's widow ("I accidentally stole the cartoon 25 years ago") and her reaction:

Mike Peters so accurately described David Simpson as a cartoon kleptomaniac. Tulsa must be in a black hole with different journalistic ethics because neither Simpson nor his editor/publisher seem repentant. His editor wanted me to write the retraction....I declined. Mr. Simpson's next gig should be matriculating at a state run giggling academy.

This was not the first time Simpson had been caught copying. His June 7, 2005, cartoon for the Tulsa World was a near-exact copy -- words and pictures both -- of a 1981 cartoon by Bob Englehart of the Hartford Courant. In November 2005, the World fired him, months after earlier attempts by Englehart and the Courant to seek redress.

Englehart said at the time, "Having not learned his lesson in the late 1970s when he was busted for stealing Jeff MacNelly's cartoons, he has recently stolen one of mine." This week Englehart elaborated for the Washington Post: "In the '70s, Simpson lost his syndication gig but not his newspaper job."

Cartoonist Mike Peters was a victim as well:

"I think it was sometime in the '80s, maybe earlier, I was syndicated with United [Feature] Syndicate and someone sent me a bunch of Simpson's cartoons traced from large parts of my cartoons, with just the caption changed," Peters, who is now syndicated by King Features, tells Comic Riffs. "I was mad but was not going to do anything about it until I realized that we were syndicated by the same syndicate.

"That meant that he was picking up papers using my cartoons with different captions on them [for] the same syndicate. So I sent my cartoons with the Simpson copies to my syndicate and he got fired the next day."

I don't imagine too many UTW readers will lament Simpson's departure. It's wonderful that an alt-weekly would have a cartoonist to poke fun at local politicos, but Simpson's work for the weekly rarely elicited a laugh, rarely seemed to have a coherent point, rarely seemed to be tuned in what was happening in Tulsa. It was as if 13 years at the World, drawing their favorites in iconographic style and toeing the editorial line, had drained all the creativity and edginess out of him.

You see, I am old enough to remember when Dave Simpson was funny. (That's pretty darned old.)

To confirm that my recollection of Simpson's past glories wasn't just a reflection of my immaturity when I first encountered him, I went to my shelf of comic and cartoon paperbacks and pulled out a 1980 collection of over a hundred cartoons he did for the late, lamented Tulsa Tribune.

As I paged through the collection, I found myself laughing out loud. Sure, they're topical, but Simpson was so on target most of the time, that the cartoons refreshed my recollection of the news stories that inspired them.

As you can see from the cover (above -- click to enlarge), Simpson was quite a good caricaturist. These 1970s newsmakers are exaggerated but recognizable to those of us who lived through the decade (and were paying attention).

I love this one. He used no labels, and at the time this cartoon needed none.

The man with the brilliant smile and the pompadour? Former Oklahoma Governor David Hall, on his way to federal prison on bribery and racketeering charges for steering state pension funds to a favored banker.

The collection includes national and global topics and covers locals that made national news: the prison escape and recapture of Rex Brinlee (apprehended at last by the ferocious Oklahoma chigger); Oral Roberts, his university, and his hospital; Anita Bryant. Sadly, the editors of the book left local politics out entirely, perhaps thinking it would limit the book's appeal, so it doesn't include caricatures of Mayors Jim Inhofe or Robert LaFortune or gadfly Betsy Horowitz or takes on the local controversies of the day.

The book includes several gently satirical pokes at Oral Roberts: A divine hand giving the big thumbs up as doctors give the thumbs down to his planned City of Faith hospital (the licensing board claimed it would create too many hospital beds for Tulsa); God as depicted on the Sistine Chapel, wearing a referee's shirt, blowing the whistle on an ORU basketball player (NCAA sanctions), a junior demon on the phone to HQ, asking for a transfer, complaining that Oral just got him to contribute $777, and this one, poking fun at ORU's strict physical fitness and appearance policies:

Paging through this collection and the recent work posted by This Land, it's apparent that Simpson has been recycling his own material (or material he'd recycled long ago from other cartoonists) for some time. The cartoon at the top of the page is a recaptioning of a cartoon from that 1980 book. I immediately recognized image 15:

as a recaption of this cartoon from the 1970s:

which we now know appropriated its central figure from a Gahan Wilson cartoon:

The lady in curlers and bathrobe appears a few pages away in the same collection, this time with a human toaster that is clearly the work of Mad magazine cartoonist Don Martin. (Haven't scanned this one yet.) Any nerdy teenage boy in the 1970s could have spotted that; it's amazing that Tribune editors didn't. And while he acknowledges Charles Schulz and Walt Disney in comics that spoof their style, he didn't acknowledge Don Martin or Gahan Wilson.

When the Tulsa World bought and shut down the Tulsa Tribune in 1992, Simpson sold off some of his originals at the Tulsa Press Club. Pickings were slim by the time I got there -- perhaps local pols had long since bought up his spoofs of them -- but I found one featuring Henry Bellmon and House Speaker Jim Barker for me and another featuring Michael Dukakis for the friend who kept me supplied with Howie Carr columns during the 1988 presidential campaign.

A month after the Tribune's death, Simpson debuted in the World, the paper's first cartoonist, as far as I'm aware, since Clarence Allen decades before. Over time, the constraints of the World's editorial position seemed to squeeze all the playfulness out of his work. I don't know that he ever poked fun at Mayor Susan Savage.

When he wound up at UTW shortly after I began writing for them, I thought he might loosen up, but it never happened. Only rarely did his work elicit even a chuckle.

For whatever reason, at some point, he stopped doing what made him successful in the first place and started phoning it in. To some extent there was clearly some phoning-it-in happening in his '70s heyday, but you might write that off to the pressure of five original cartoons a week. Did he stop paying attention to the news? Did he fail to set aside enough time to create something new and fresh? What was he doing instead?

It's sad to see talent left to atrophy. Tulsa could use the kind of editorial cartoonist that Dave Simpson was in the '70s.

CORRECTED to include all Working Tulsans contributions. In my haste to post the list of contributors, I only included those on the printed attachment and missed those on the handwritten portion of the form. Adding in Paul Lackey and Jay Helm didn't change the median home value, but it did bring the median home size down from 5,649.5 to 5,007.5 sq. ft., because Mr. Lackey's $1,472,000 Utica Place condominium is a paltry 2,718 sq. ft. Since this was originally published, a Working Tulsans mailer went out on behalf of Ken Brune, Democrat nominee in District 4.

Ten contributors were listed on the "Working Tulsans" C-1 form.

Contributors' median home size: 5,007.5 sq. ft.
Contributors' median home value: $691,050

Contributors' average home size: 5,885.4 sq. ft.
Contributors' median home value: $937,120.

Four contributors live in homes valued at greater than $1 million. The cheapest house of the bunch belongs to Burt Holmes, who lives in a 3,080 sq. ft. ranch-style house built in 1948, valued at $312,200.

Three contributors live in District 9. Three live in Money Belt sections of District 4 that were in 9 until this year. Two live in District 8.

Two contributors live in a district targeted by a Working Tulsans mailer. They live in District 2, in the neighborhood just south of Southern Hills Country Club.

Working Tulsans sent mailers into District 2 in support of Jeannie Cue, into District 3 in support of David Patrick, and into District 6 in support of Skip Steele. The mailers bore the bulk mail endorsement of Majority Designs, the Oklahoma City direct mail firm associated with Fount Holland and Karl Ahlgren.

The address of the committee, P. O. Box 52804, 74152, which appeared on the mailers and in the committee's filings, shows up in voter records as belonging to a 48-year-old woman registered to vote at a street address well outside the City of Tulsa. (Because her name turns up in a web search as a past victim of domestic violence, I'm not going to give the name here, but I have to wonder why her P. O. Box is being used for this committee.)

(Residence information derived from voter registration and county assessor records.)

The Tulsa County Republican Party is holding a fundraising estate sale this Friday and Saturday, November 4-5, 2011, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, at 3635 S. Louisville, Tulsa, OK, 74135.

For a $5 donation, you can attend a come-and-go preview party on Thursday night, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Proceeds will go to cover the county party's operating expenses, which include running a headquarters office, which provides the party an ongoing presence and point of contact for voters and candidates, and holding next year's Tulsa County Republican Convention, at which delegates to congressional district and state conventions will be elected and a county platform will be considered, the planks of which may ultimately wind up in state and national party platforms.

It's important to keep in mind that the Tulsa County Republican Party is a grassroots organization The county party's officials are elected by Republican voters who attend precinct caucuses and the county convention, and they receive no compensation. The national and state party organizations provide absolutely no funding for the county party.

They're still looking for large items to sell, such as furniture. They also need volunteers:

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS TO HELP SETUP, WORK ON SALE DAYS, TRUCK DRIVERS TO PICK UP ITEMS, AND TELEPHONE CALLERS

To donate items or arrange for special pickup of larger items, call Rich Fiedler (918-742-4503); To volunteer to make calls, setup or run the sale, call Alana Duvall (918-294-3780) or GOP Headquarters (918-627-5702)

MOST OF ALL WE NEED GOOD ITEMS TO SELL

If you can help, please call the numbers above. Otherwise, please plan to stop by and purchase some items in support of a good cause.

Tonight, November 1, 2011, at 5:30 p.m., All Souls Unitarian Church will host a candidate forum for Tulsa City Council districts 4 (Blake Ewing and Ken Brune) and 9 (G. T. Bynum and Mike Batman). According to the announcement, candidates will speak on the proposed charter changes and the future of PLANiTULSA and will take questions.

Some links and notes about presidential candidate Herman Cain, related to Politico's thinly-sourced barely-a-story about decades-old sexual harassment allegations.

I got to know Karol Markowicz at the 2004 Republican National Convention. She had just served as a staffer on Cain's 2004 bid for U. S. Senate in Georgia. (Cain lost the July 2004 primary to Johnny Isakson.) I remember her speaking with glowing admiration for Cain, for his intelligence, character, and political views. Here's what she said about Herman Cain back on July 25, 2004, in her post-mortem of the Cain campaign (interesting reading in its own right):

If you work or volunteer in politics, I hope you will someday have the opportunity to work for someone that you admire as much as I admire Herman Cain. He is a breath of the freshest air, he is honest, direct, engaging, brilliant, funny and very, very real. He will never forget your name after meeting you. He will never try to pretend to be something he isn't. It takes guts that I can barely understand to do what he did down here in Georgia. He shaped the debate, his opponents ended up using his language and positions as their own. He is a force, if you ever have the opportunity to hear him speak, go do it. You will never forget it. You will not be the same when it's over. I know he will do great things and I will be watching closely.

In April 12, 2006, she asked for prayers for Cain, undergoing treatment for colon cancer:

Whenever I'm disenchanted with politics and politicians, whenever I think they're all the same and nothing matters, thinking of Herman Cain makes me remember that there are very real exceptions.

Powerline blog links to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune story about Herman Cain's years as an executive at Pillsbury

"My career spans 38 years and I've worked for 26 different managers," said Frank Taylor, a recently retired Burger King financial executive whom Cain hired as his regional controller in 1983. "Herman was far and away the best I've worked for in terms of getting a team together, sharing a vision and accomplishing the goals. And nothing diverted him."

Cain also shared the wealth. When Burger King distributed $50,000 apiece to the regional vice presidents as reward for good performance in 1985, most of the regional bosses spent it on a trip to a posh resort for themselves and other managers and spouses. The enlisted troops got a dinner. Cain took everybody in his office, including administrative staff, on the same three-day reward cruise, Taylor recalled....

"I worked with him fairly closely at Burger King," recalled George Mileusnic, a former Pillsbury executive, now a Twin Cities consultant. "He was good strategically and good with people, including working long hours in Burger King stores to get that bottom-up experience. He had about 500 stores in that Philadelphia region and he did a great job."...

Along with his analytical skills, Cain brought an entrepreneurial fervor to the hurried turnaround at Godfather's in 1986-87. He listened, asked questions and acted, including closing stores, shifting people and even cooking and testing new products in the company's kitchen.

"I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke," he told Godfather's employees when he arrived on April 1, 1986. "We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everybody else that we will survive."

An accomplished singer and pianist, Cain occasionally led the headquarters crew in after-hours song, and performed charitable gigs in Omaha, backed by a chorus of managers. He also demanded that senior managers know every employee working for them on a first-name basis and occasionally quizzed executives on that and other personnel issues.

"That was pretty unique," Mileusnic said. "Those stories got around Pillsbury. Herman was very quantitative and analytical, but he demanded that everybody be engaged and every employee must be appreciated and respected."

Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard spoke to aides and assistants to Herman Cain, including Karol Markowicz, longtime executive assistant Sibby Wolfson, and 2004 campaign political director Matt Carrothers -- none of whom currently work for Cain:

"It's just not Herman," says Sibby Wolfson, who was Cain's executive assistant from 1997 through his first campaign for office in 2004, in a phone interview. "He's got a lovely wife, a lovely family."

Did Wolfson ever see Cain act in a way that could be construed as sexual harassment? "No, God, no," she says. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, I think Herman was careful to act in the opposite way."...

"Never once have I ever seen anything but professional behavior" from Cain, says Matt Carrothers, who was Cain's political director from December 2003 to July 2004. "I find [the allegations] extremely hard to believe," Carrothers says in a phone interview....

"This is a man of incredible character," Carrothers says. "He has nothing but respect for women."

Other veterans of the 2004 campaign agree. "The allegations seem completely unbelievable to me," says Karol Markowicz, who was Cain's assistant press secretary in '04. "He was never anything but a completely perfect gentleman." She says many who worked on that campaign have the same assessment.

"Sometimes someone is nice or good to you personally but you know they behave a different way toward other people," Markowicz says. "Herman is not like that. I never saw one moment where he wavered from being an upstanding, solid person."

Karol called into last night's Mark Levin show, starting at 31:25 for about 3 minutes. And she has a column standing up for Herman Cain in today's New York Post:

With Cain, however, his electricity comes from his authenticity. People fall for him because he is so unpolished and real. He is a serious, solid man who speaks often of the importance of family and faith. He never seems as if he is selling a line or covering up his true self.

MORE: I'm impressed that Herman Cain is willing to speak the truth about Planned Parenthood's racist roots, and not backing down an inch when challenged:

"Here's why I support de-funding Planned Parenthood, because you don't hear a lot of people talking about this: When Margaret Sanger--check my history--started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world," Cain responded.

"You don't see that talked that much about," Cain said. "It's not Planned Parenthood. No, it's planned genocide. You can quote me on that."...

"It's carrying out its original mission," said Cain. "I've talked to young girls who go in there and they don't talk about how you plan parenthood. They don't talk about adoption as an option. They don't say bring your parents in so you we can talk to you before you make this decision.

"Talk to some young lady who has gone into some of these centers to see what kind of conversation takes place," said Cain. "They have basically carried out their original mission. There's not any planning other than to abort the baby.

"When they have an objective to put 75 percent [Planned Parenthood facilities] in African American communities, says to me they are targeting blacks," Cain said....