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Tulsa and Oklahoma historical maps and aerial photos
What was here? Who owned it? What did it look like? There are a number of resources available for reconstructing Oklahoma's geographical past, and they're easier to use than ever. These are my go-tos when researching the history of a neighborhood or answering questions about the past. This is an...
Oklahoma Runoff, Tulsa General Election 2022: BatesLine ballot card
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, Oklahoma Republicans and Democrats have a partisan primary runoff election in a number of statewide, federal, legislative, and county races, and the City of Tulsa will conduct a non-partisan citywide general election, including races in all nine council districts as well as three charter-change propositions....
Coronavirus notes: 2020/03/16
News and opinion on the coronavirus plague, in reverse chronological order (mostly): Here is a coronavirus COVID-19 dashboard and interactive map showing current numbers of cases from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Here is the spreadsheet that feeds the map. As of 7 a.m....
Tulsa election 2018: Campaign finance reports online, but most are delinquent
The City Clerk's office of the City of Tulsa has at long last begun publishing campaign contribution reports for City of Tulsa candidates on their website. In years past it was necessary to visit the City Clerk's office for physical copies of the reports; more recently they began providing them...
Mapping Tulsa: historical maps on exhibit downtown
Mapping Tulsa, a diverse collection of historical maps illustrating Tulsa's history and culture, is on display at the Henry Zarrow Center gallery, at the southwest corner of Brady Street and Cincinnati Avenue in Tulsa's Bob Wills Arts District. The gallery is open noon to 6 pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and...
Does the "Swedish economic model" even work in Sweden?
An interview with Swedish author Johan Norberg explores the reality behind the Left's fantasies about Nordic socialism. Read the whole thing, but notice below the historical context that preceded the Swedish welfare state and the effect it had on the Swedish work ethic. To borrow Ronald Reagan's phrase, the safety...
Run for School Board
Next Monday through Wednesday, December 7 - 9, 2015, is the filing period for public school board positions in Oklahoma. Most school districts will have a single seat, Position No. 1 up for election to a five-year term. Skiatook will have one additional seat on the ballot to fill an...
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...
Oklahoma Primary 2014: BatesLine ballot card
Here are the candidates I'm recommending and voting for (when I can) in the Oklahoma primary elections on June 24, 2014. (This entry will change as I decide to add more detail or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at...
Oklahoma adopts strong anti-SLAPP law
There's one more reason for Oklahomans to celebrate April 22. Last Tuesday, on the 125th anniversary of the Oklahoma 1889 Land Run, Gov. Mary Fallin signed HB 2366, the Oklahoma Citizens Participation Act, giving Oklahomans valuable protection in the exercise of their First Amendment rights. From the bill: The purpose...
British history, county boundaries, and detached parts
Some links of interest to me and possibly no one else within a 500 mile radius: (Remember, "blog" is short for "weblog," a log of things found on the World Wide Web.) Some games for testing your knowledge of historic counties of Britain and Ireland: Historic Counties of Scotland: See...
Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe, friend to single mothers (and fathers)
We had one fewer gift to buy this Mother's Day, one fewer card to send, one fewer phone call to make. A little more than two months ago, my mother-in-law, Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe, Ed. D., died after a two-year battle with breast cancer at the age of 79. In lieu of...
Blog roundup 2013/01/28
Notes hither and thither: If you're a fan of beautiful cartoon art, you should make at least a weekly visit to Whirled of Kelly, which features the art work of Walt Kelly, most famous for the comic strip Pogo. Blogger Thomas Haller Buchanan has been running a series of Sunday...
Oklahoma Election 2012: Yes on State Question 766
How in the world can you fairly assess the value of intangible property? And if you can't fairly assess it, how in the world can you fairly tax it? That's why Oklahomans should welcome the opportunity to approve SQ 766 and abolish this arbitrary tax which has only been tolerable...
Excise board rubber-stamps property tax hikes
While Oklahoma voters have closed off most avenues for tax hikes without a vote, there remains one loophole: the sinking fund. As Tulsa County Assessor Ken Yazel explains in the news release below, each taxing entity (a city, for example) presents the county excise board an estimate of the property...
Tulsa Metro Chamber's 2011 election manifesto
Here is the Tulsa Metro Chamber's "candidate priorities" -- effectively the Chamber's "manifesto" for the 2011 City of Tulsa election. Candidates seeking the endorsement of and funding from the Chamber's PAC (TulsaBizPac) were interviewed and questioned about these issues. I have added bold font for emphasis on the most controversial...
2011 Oklahoma Republican Convention tweets and retweets
Technical note: Copying and pasting tweets into this post was a very frustrating and time-consuming process. In the end, I had to paste the HTML into an Emacs buffer, use a series of regex replacements to clean the text up enough so everything would post without messing up everything else...
The old paths: Historic Oklahoma USGS maps
My apologies for the lapse since my last post. I've been writing, but it's all technical stuff for the gig that pays most of the bills. While I was at the Coffee House on Cherry Street cranking away on that technical documentation, a customer at the next table, a gentleman...
PLANiTULSA: Wither INCOG?
A commenter on another website noticed that I hadn't said anything about behind-the-scenes machinations by the INCOG -- the Indian Nations Council of Governments -- to modify the PLANiTULSA vision and policy plan, particularly the part that recommends that the City of Tulsa bring in-house the planning functions it currently...
Murphey calls for county government reform
Via NewsFifty's Oklahoma news page: State Rep. Jason Murphey (R-Guthrie) is considering proposing legislation to reform the structure of county government in Oklahoma. In an Edmond Sun op-ed, Murphey sets forth his concerns. At the heart, the lack of adequate separation of powers when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars:...
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