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Are charter schools "state actors"?
The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board has authorized an explicitly Roman Catholic virtual charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, to begin operation in the 2024-2025 school year. Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a pretend-conservative and Biden for President donor who won the GOP nomination with the help...
Christian denominations in 1923
While searching for info on the state of Christianity in America circa 1923, when J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism, I found the US Census Bureau's 1916 two-volume survey: Religious bodies : 1916 : United States. Bureau of the Census : Internet Archive This is Volume 1 of a...
Tulsa's Gathering Place sues Shawnee coffeehouse
See the end of this post for an update with the lawsuit's resolution. Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against a family-owned coffeehouse in Shawnee, Oklahoma, 90 miles away. The trademark complaint, filed on Friday, September 24, 2021, in the Western District of Oklahoma, claims...
Can the blogosphere be reconnected?
Some recent articles have had me thinking about blogs, what we had, what we lost, and how we might be able to get it back. As massive social media sites have brought the global conversation under centralized control, concentrating the power to exclude people and opinions in the hands of...
David Brumbaugh, RIP
Oklahoma State Representative David Brumbaugh died Saturday night, April 15, 2017, of a heart attack. Brumbaugh, a Republican who had represented House District 76 in Broken Arrow since his first election in 2010 and chaired the House Republican Caucus, was 56 years old. He is survived by his wife and...
Oklahoma SQ 779: Boren sales tax for schools and colleges
Oklahoma State Question 779, an initiative petition promoted by University of Oklahoma President (and former Oklahoma governor and senator) David Boren, would amend the Oklahoma Constitution, establishing a permanent 1 cent on the dollar sales tax (a permanent increase in the state sales tax rate from 4.5 cents per dollar...
Regalado plays <em>La Raza</em> card
You saw it here first, back on February 25. BatesLine broke the story of maximum or near maximum donations by 16 executives and employees of ISTI Plant Services to Tulsa County sheriff candidate Vic Regalado, many of them of apparently modest means. On Tuesday, officers of the Tulsa County Democratic...
Sheriff candidate Regalado backed by Rogers Co. plant employees
Why are the executives and employees of a Rogers County manufacturing company, many of whom don't live in Tulsa County, so passionate, so willing to give sacrificially in support of a candidate for Tulsa County Sheriff? An odd thing about Vic Regalado's campaign contributions report: A surprising number of max...
Oklahoma election 2014: BatesLine ballot card
Here are the candidates I'm recommending and voting for (when I can) in the Oklahoma general election on November 4, 2014. Links lead to more detailed information or earlier blog entries. (This entry may change as I decide to add more detail or discuss additional races between now and...
"Protecting Oklahoma Values" and its bogus claims against Katie Henke
An unknown, untraceable organization called "Protecting Oklahoma Values" has sent three postcards to voters in support of Oklahoma House District 71 Democrat candidate Dan Arthrell and attacking Republican nominee Katie Henke. The District 71 seat is the ballot next Tuesday, April 3, 2012, in a special election to fill the...
Nancy Rothman: Where did all the money go?
On July 17, 2011, the Tulsa World ran a story on the 2003 appeals court ruling that levied attorney's fees on Tulsa City Council District 2 candidate Nancy Rothman because of her contemptible attempts to alienate her sons from their father and to smear her ex-husband's reputation. (The story ran...
Tulsa Realtor Martha Thomas Cobb on historic preservation zoning
URGENT UPDATE: I've heard that Ms. Cobb sent an email blast that's generating some panicked comments attacking PLANiTULSA. If her email is as misinformative as her remarks to the TMAPC (see below), her influence will need to be countered by those who have actually read the PLANiTULSA policy plan and...
Kathy Taylor's Trail to revenge: Martinson defeat financed by Lobeck, associates
What many of us suspected was confirmed by the post-primary ethics filing from Tulsa District 5 City Councilor-elect Chris Trail: Trail was Mayor Kathy Taylor's instrument of revenge against City Councilor Bill Martinson, who opposed her on the ballpark improvement district, raised concerns about the overly rosy revenue projections in...
One Technology Center as Tulsa City Hall: Remembering the eight-to-Eagleton vote
The Whirled editorial board says, regarding the news that the new Tulsa City Hall at One Technology Center will cost $1.4 million more to operate than projected this year, draining Tulsa's general fund budget, that "the old I-told-you-so refrain isn't going to help anything." On the contrary, a healthy dose...
CAIR sues Abercrombie & Fitch over Tulsa hijab decision; Coburn protests ISNA grants
As See-Dubya says, "Whom to root against?" The worst reactionary impulses of the seventh century, or the engines of postmodern degradation? A pox on both their houses. That's in reference to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint filed by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OK)...
BOk bailout: Other voices
Comments from elsewhere on the web about the City of Tulsa's payment of a $7.1 million Great Plains Airlines debt it did not owe: KFAQ's Chris Medlock was a City Councilor the last time someone tried to get the City to pay for the Great Plains mess. Here's what...
Simulation: It's the real thing
An edited version of this column appeared in the December 5, 2007, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted September 9, 2017. Simulation: It's the real thing by Michael D. Bates How often do the stars line up this auspiciously for Tulsa? Congress...
Arkansas River roundtable
It's always fascinating when you get civic and business leaders speaking more candidly than they normally would in public. Back in February, the Journal Record published a transcript of a panel discussion concerning Arkansas River development in Tulsa. It was the Square Feet Real Estate Roundtable, and the discussion involved...
Will a Democrat run for Mayor?
Three Republicans have already declared their intentions to seek office: Councilor Chris Medlock, Mayor Bill LaFortune, and former Republican Party Vice Chairman and District 11 State Senate nominee Brigitte Harper. Councilor Bill Christiansen is widely expected to run, as long as his Benjamin'n'Burdge stablemates on the Council (Randy Sullivan and...
"Grilled" Schuller?
UPDATE 8/9/2004: After viewing the complete segment of the hearing on TGOV 24, I've added some detail and reorganized this entry somewhat. The conversation between the Council committee and Stephen Schuller was so bland, so calm, and so brief that it makes the Whirled's hysterical editorial look even more ridiculous....
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