Assuming two to the customer, as one probably should do:
The $1 million Crutcho school bond issue passed Feb. 9 by a vote of 11-3. Turnout for the race was 2 percent.
As it happens, I drove past Crutcho School (NE 23rd and Air Depot) today, and the marquee said simply THANK YOU VOTERS. Heck, they had almost enough room to call them out by name.
Then again, you could say that the bond issue was approved by 78.6 percent of voters.
Outgoing Governor Brad Henry may be the state’s most popular Democrat; he spanked Republican Ernest Istook in the 2006 election, pulling 66 percent of the vote, and he still enjoys lofty approval ratings.
But a Rasmussen poll shows that not even Brad Henry could dislodge Tom Coburn from the Senate:
The first Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 telephone survey of likely voters in Oklahoma finds Coburn, a Republican, leading Governor Henry by 12 points, 52% to 40%. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.
Both men are popular with Oklahoma voters, but the problem for Democrats is that Henry, who is term-limited and can’t seek reelection, has said so far that he has no interest in running for the Senate this year.
Just more evidence that the conservative movement is turning Oklahoma the ‘reddest of the red’, thanks in part to the work of people like President Ronald Reagan, President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Harry Reid, all for convincing Democrats that they were actually Republican, and to OKGOP Chairman Gary Jones, for his adept leadership of the Republican Party in Oklahoma.
I’ll grant him Gary Jones, but at the moment, Harry Reid doesn’t have the persuasiveness to run the ice-water concession in hell, and Nancy Pelosi would spend all her time trying to get the lesser demons to agree to a bottle deposit.
The newest manifestation of Reefer Madness surrounds something called “K2″ or “spice,” masquerading as a mild-mannered herb at your local Don’t Call Us A Head Shop. Apparently it contains synthetic cannabinoids:
It turns out Spice contains the synthetic substance JWH-018, which is incredibly similar to the main active component of marijuana. Although sold legally in many countries, governments around the world are lining up to put the kibosh on the Spice party.
Spice has been on the market since 2002, but it wasn’t until December of last year that German pharmaceutical company TCHPharm announced JWH-018 was found as one of the active components in at least three versions of Spice. On January 19th, the University of Freiburg in Germany announced the other main active substance in Spice is an analog of the synthetic cannabinoid CP 47,497. Three days later the German government added CP 47,497 to its controlled drug schedule, making Spice illegal. Austria, France and Poland were quick to follow.
Oklahoma drug authorities apparently discovered the stuff just this month, and already there’s a bill to ban it:
K2 is the Kansas brand of manufactured marijuana. Kansas police officers first learned of the synthetic form of pot this past fall. It’s legally sold as incense and undetectable on a basic drug test. Marketed as “spice” in Europe, it produces the same high as regular marijuana, and now it’s spreading in the states.
On Wednesday, HB 3241 passed out of committee unanimously at the state capitol. Just like Kansas[' bill], the Oklahoma bill bans K2 placing it in the same category as other drugs such as meth, marijuana, and cocaine. Representative David Derby is sponsoring the bill.
“This allows our law enforcement another tool to combat this problem, and it allows our court systems an avenue to charge people,” he said.
Which is, after all, the highest purpose of government: to find avenues to charge people.
This probably needs no comment whatever from me, so I’ll just quote it the way Mike McCarville posted it:
The Senate has approved a measure designed to close a loophole in Oklahoma’s sex offender registration law.
Senator Cliff Branan is the author of the legislation, Senate Bill 2231, which won unanimous approval today.
“Requiring sex offenders to register is supposed to be a way to keep track of where these predators are and ensure the public can access that information,” said Branan, R-Oklahoma City. “But the way the current law is written, offenders can legally give a post office box number instead of a street address. This defeats the whole purpose. SB 2231 would require them to use the actual address of where they’re currently living.”
Disclosure: I live in Branan’s district (40).
Once in a very blue moon, someone will ask if there was any aspect of Oklahoma history I find troubling. Most of the time, I suspect, they’re looking for Dust Bowl and/or Grapes of Wrath commentary. That’s not what they get, though.
In this piece, I refer to “Oklahoma’s infamous Senate Bill One.” I might go so far as to say “heinous.” Steve Lackmeyer fills in the details:
The state had taken its own steps toward creating Jim Crow laws in 1907. Several attempts had been made prior to statehood to codify Jim Crow rules into the constitution. But opposition by President Theodore Roosevelt stymied such efforts, which including the writing up of about 50,000 words, exhaustive debate and committee discussions on the matter.
Roosevelt proclaimed statehood November 16, 1907. Lawmakers made segregation their first order of business when they convened at Guthrie’s City Hall from December 2, 1907 to May 26, 1908. Senate Bill 1 went through the overwhelmingly Democratic body, 37-2 in the Senate, 95-10 in the House — showing that the issue was bipartisan. The law required separate facilities for blacks in public transportation, public education and other public places and situations. In response riots erupted in Taft and other black communities.
Doug Loudenback has an extensive history of Jim Crow in the Sooner State.
What reminded me of this was this piece in the Gazette which explores the stories of emancipated slaves in Oklahoma, collected by the WPA in 1937. The one that stung was this one from Alice Alexander, born 1849 in Jackson Parish, Louisiana; she’d literally walked here, hoping for education. When the WPA came calling, she was 88 years old.
“We come to Oklahoma looking for de same thing then that darkies go North looking for now,” she said. “But we got disappointed. What little I learned I quit taking care of it and seeing after it and lost it all.”
So much promise we offered; so little we delivered.
By which I don’t mean that I, specifically, would like to have the envelope, but you know how this works.
Anyway, the 2009 Okie Blog Award winners have been named, and it’s a wild assortment to say the least. Even better, they gave the Lifetime Achievement Award to someone deserving.
A tip of the ol’ fedora to Jennifer James/JenX67, who saw this thing through, from fumbling rebirth to more-or-less triumphant finale.
Last month, you’ll remember, privately-owned (but Senate-appointed) tag agents registered their displeasure with the state’s plan to process orders over the Web, which might put a dent in their business model.
Displeasure duly noted, the Oklahoma Tax Commission has now opened up that Web site and bestowed upon it the incredibly-obvious acronym CARS, which stands for “Convenient Auto Renewal System.”
Note that word “renewal.” New registrations can’t go through the Web. And other functions handled by tag agents — the issuance of a driver’s license, for one — are still going to be handled by tag agents. Still, this counts as progress of a sort, even if it’s probably not going to change my particular habits.
(Via The McCarville Report.)
In Oklahoma, we have a beer-like substance designated “3.2,” and we have beer. If you go to the grocery store, you can buy the former from a refrigerated case; if you go to the liquor store, you can buy the latter, nice and warm.
If you don’t live here, let me tell you: this is even sillier than you think it is. The 3.2 stuff was originally designated as “non-intoxicating” as a ruse to get around Prohibition, a term which persisted until 1995.
Occasionally efforts are made to drag the state, if not into the 21st century, at least into the last half of the 20th, but they always seem to fail; as is often the case with regulation, there are people who benefit from it, and they’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much. This year’s effort comes from Sen. Andrew Rice (D-OKC), and in SJR 62 he’s careful to limit it to the two most populous counties (Oklahoma and Tulsa).
Whether this will spur economic development — which is to say, finally getting a full-line grocery store somewhere near downtown OKC — I can’t say. (Doc Hoc seems pretty sure it will.) But I’d like to see Rice pull this one off, just to shake up the status quo a bit.
Michael Bates goes through the Tulsa water-use statistics, and turns up one example of pure comedy gold:
On average, the six board members of Sustainable Tulsa use 173,167 gals/yr, a bit more than twice the average for a single-family home.
Big Saint Al wouldn’t have had it any other way.
(Disclosure: I use around 25,000 gallons a year.)
Mike Hermes, father of the Okie Blog Awards, describing his offspring:
[M]y admiration goes to the entire Oklahoma blogging community, both readers and authors, for supporting such a fertile breeding ground of ideas, observations and entertainment. Just like a seething Petri dish, we may not like everything that comes out of it, but where one person sees mold, another finds penicillin. Or something like that.
Speaking of that which is moldy, I’m inexplicably on the final ballot in a couple of places, so you have ample opportunity to vote against me this week. (Deadline is midnight Sunday, 14 February.)
By now, everyone in the 918 knows that they’re about to get an overlay code.
Traditionally, overlay codes have been hated because they mean everyone has to dial ten digits, even to someone across the street. But who dials anymore? You call up the name on the cell and push a key.
And some places have more than one overlay, as Gothamist notes:
According to a press release, “929″ will join “718″ and the much-maligned “347″ in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. That’s because all the existing phone numbers will be tapped out by 2012, reports Neustar.
After Costa Tsiokos linked to this, I had to ask:
Was [347] really maligned? For that matter, does anyone malign 646?
His answer:
347 is generally shunned. In fact, I personally shunned it: My first NY number was a 347, and I couldn’t wait to dump it in favor of 646. 646 is deemed worthy, and an acceptable alternative to 212 (which is fairly impossible to snag).
Is this a preference for palindromes over non-palindromes? Or just a distrust of the new kid on the block? (New Yorkers have had over a decade to get used to 646.)
I think it’s a safe bet, though, that the first time someone says he has a 539 number, the person being told this will say something like “Where the hell do you live?”
And we here in the 405 should not be smug; we’ll be facing something like this ourselves in a couple of years. (572?)
If you privatize a government function, you should not be surprised if the private sector responds to an effort to retrieve it:
Oklahoma tag agents are flexing their political muscle to delay the state Tax Commission from implementing an online program that would allow vehicle owners to renew their tags on the commission’s Web site.
The online service was set to start this week, but House Speaker Chris Benge confirmed Tuesday legislative leaders asked the Tax Commission to postpone activating the service. It was the second delay this month.
The state has about 300 tag agents, scattered hither and yon. And they mean business:
Clayton Taylor, a lobbyist for the Oklahoma Tag Agent Coalition, said talks are under way to have a link to tag agents on the Tax Commission’s Web site instead of vehicle owners renewing registrations directly with the state.
“We want to work this so whatever business comes to that state site comes to the tag agents,” he said.
Indeed.
I’m not too put out by this; my local tag agent is decently efficient and is only a couple of miles away. However, the agencies are not exactly evenly distributed: if I lived out in West Boondoxia, I might crave some Web action instead of having to high-tail it down to the county seat. (The official list starts here.) And there’s always the hint, sometimes more than the hint, of political patronage, since the agents are appointed by state senators.
You have about a week to get your nominations in for the 2009 Okie Blog Awards. There are twenty-four categories this year, which ought to make things extremely interesting.
(As usual, they’ve not set up a category for Least Improved, so there’s no obvious niche for me. Not that I worry about such things.)
DeadMalls.com has had a listing for Midwest City’s Heritage Park Mall since 2006, which noted:
Sears is largely responsible for keeping what is left of the mall from folding into closure, as it is the only Sears store within a good 10 mile radius.
What is left of the mall, however, is rapidly dwindling to zilch, and the last handful of tenants will be gone by mid-February, leaving Sears, which owns its section of the structure outright, all alone.
I suspect Sears isn’t going anywhere: the five stores in the metro (Quail Springs, Sequoyah — 44th and S. Western — Midwest City, Norman and Shawnee) have remained in place for many years.
The owner has decided to cut his losses and sell:
The mall’s current owner, California investor Daniel Rafalian, said the electric bill is more than the rent he’s receiving, so it makes sense to shut it down.
The two empty anchor spots, once Dillard’s and Montgomery Ward stores, are owned separately, one by a church, the other by an individual.
The previous dead mall in town, Shepherd Mall, was successfully (more or less) converted to office space. I don’t think this is feasible for Heritage Park: there’s just not that much demand for office space in Midwest City.
Rafalian, who acquired the mall in 2005, was invited to bid for a block in Bricktown that year, but did not participate.
This is the logo of the Detroit Tulsa Shock of the WNBA. A pretty decent graphic, I think: not so busy as the one they used in the Motor City, and I really like that little Art Deco touch applied to “Tulsa.” An in-joke, perhaps, but a good one.
The Draft Dave Rader campaign, introduced earlier this week, has apparently asked itself: “What can Scott Brown do for us?” The answer, of course, is to provide a catchphrase. From yesterday’s email by David Tackett:
This is not John Sullivan’s seat. This is the people’s seat. And
that’s why I’m involved with the Draft Dave campaign.
“I’m not even dead yet and they’re already treating me like Ted Kennedy,” John Sullivan was not heard to say.
One complaint leveled against some politicians is that they have no experience in the private sector, that they have no idea how to run a business; get some sound business principles in place, we are told, and things will improve in no time flat.
With this philosophy in mind, the Irritated Tulsan suggests some strategies for T-town that have already proven themselves at retail giant Best Buy:
Performance Service Plans: PSPs guarantee that if anything goes wrong with a product, other than it quits working, Best Buy will repair or replace it. The same concept could apply to public utilities. The city could sell PSPs for items such as water pipes, power lines and garbage cans. If a main water line should break, *you’re covered under the PSP. The city will repair it at no cost to you. After three breaks, the no lemon clause kicks in, you’re given replacement pipes. Those without the PSP will pay $10,000 per foot of broken pipe. (*Does not include damage caused by nature, abuse or anything reasonable.)
Installation Services: A new family moves to town. Rather than deal with the trauma of setting up your own house, the Geek Squad can do it for you. A snarky teen with no technical training can come into your home and plug in your lamp for only $140. While there, they’ll set your clock, demonstrate the difference between the H and the C on the water faucets and possibly take a picture of your teen daughter in the shower.
There are several other practices worthy of emulation. Perhaps the Tulsa Housing Authority could offer to “optimize” properties they manage upon the arrival of new tenants, by filling up the cabinets with offers for local products and services.
There’s a campaign being developed to draft former football star Dave Rader for the House seat (OK 1) not necessarily being vacated in 2010 by incumbent John Sullivan.
I got a letter from the Draft Dave organization in email yesterday, signed by political consultant David Tackett. Some of what it said:
I know many of you have read the newspaper article about our initiative to draft Dave Rader for the 1st Congressional District. While we have had many calls in support of our initiative, several people have asked why are we working against a sitting Republican incumbent Congressman? A few have flat out asked us, “Hasn’t he voted right during these past eight years?”
I’m here to tell you that I’m part of the Draft Dave campaign
not because our current Congressman has voted wrong on bill “a” or resolution “b” (Although, I’m not the least bit happy of John Sullivan’s vote for the TARP Bailout program or his several votes against free trade). I’m doing this because I believe we deserve better than a rubber stamp in Washington D.C.We deserve better than a Representative who just goes to
Washington and has a great time sitting comfortably in the back benches of Congress, never trying hard to pass meaningful legislation and just pushing the “aye” or “nay” button enough times to placate his constituents back home.We deserve better than a Representative who can only claim 7 authored bills and resolutions that have successfully passed in his past eight years in office. And of those, only one has been enacted into law, and that was to change the name of VA Children’s Outpatient Clinic in Tulsa. (source — Govtrack.us)
I’m just weird enough to think that placating the constituents is a major part of a Representative’s job.
In Sullivan’s defense, he did subsequently call for TARP to be rolled up and discarded. And my idea of “meaningful legislation” is legislation that undoes previous bad legislation, of which we have an abundance; it’s probably unrealistic to expect anyone to be able to pass anything like that in the current Congressional environment, and I’m not anticipating that, say, Nancy Pelosi, who presumably is placating her constituents, will suddenly decide to turn her life around and become a community organizer/Mob enforcer/kindergarten teacher [choose one].
More to the point, I don’t live in Sullivan’s district, and the person who represents the district in which I do live is busy running for governor. Maybe they can talk Dave into moving to Edmond or something.
Getting around Tulsa is tricky if what you want to do is literally get around Tulsa; the sort of beltway found in places like Houston and Indianapolis, and vaguely approximated in Oklahoma City, doesn’t yet exist in T-town, though they’ve been working towards one for decades. The Gilcrease Expressway, which began at I-244 east of Memorial, is now complete as far west as L. L. Tisdale Parkway, and construction is about to begin on a section to extend to 41st West Avenue; there’s a short stretch north of I-44 that’s designated as part of the Gilcrease, but it’s only two lanes for the moment.
To fill in the gap, they’ll have to cross the Arkansas River somewhere, and right now they’re pondering a toll bridge:
A working group made up of private citizens and public officials has raised the funds needed to study the feasibility of constructing a toll bridge across the Arkansas River in west Tulsa.
The group sees construction of the bridge — which would connect 21st Street and Charles Page Boulevard at approximately 57th West Avenue — as the integral next step in completing the Gilcrease Expressway.
What’s needed, of course, is actual funding:
About $7.5 million a year in federal and local funds are currently dedicated to construction of the expressway. But with the remaining work expected to cost $200 million to $300 million, city officials estimate the project won’t be done until about 2052.
Twenty fifty-two? Geez. OKC’s Crosstown Expressway will already be done by then. I think.
(Via Jeff Shaw.)
Way back in 1940, Oklahoma decided to specify the county of registration on the state’s license plate as part of the actual number, and the counties would be listed in order of population: Oklahoma County was 1, Tulsa County 2, and so on down to 77. It perhaps did not occur to them that these numbers might be variable, and in 1963, after a couple of Censuses had realigned them, the state switched to a two-letter county code followed by up to four digits. This would not be enough plates for the two biggest counties, and so Oklahoma County was assigned all combinations starting with X (later also Y), and Tulsa those with Z. But this wasn’t enough either, since several counties ran out anyway, including Cleveland and Tulsa, and after 1985 they gave up on the whole idea.
Until 2010, anyway. Per Senate Bill 318, passed last year, all new stickers issued henceforth, those expiring in 2011 and thereafter, will once again bear a two-letter county code. Presumably there will be different combinations for Coal, Comanche and Cotton.
This does not mean, however, that tag numbers can be duplicated from county to county, as Kansas had been doing with vanity plates.
Yes, we have two:
MLB and Umpires reach a five year deal. Still no vision plan.
(Linked to this.)
(Linked to this.)
For more than a year, Arrow Trucking Co. has faced financial problems that include bills going unpaid and vendors and contractors filing lawsuits totaling almost half a million dollars against the company, records show.
Now Arrow Trucking, a 61-year-old Tulsa-based flatbed carrier, has suspended operations indefinitely, laying off employees and stranding scores of drivers around the country.
Jeffro could have seen it coming:
Arrow has a pretty bad reputation — a simple web search will find a lot of bad info on forums and the like. It’s one thing to go belly up, but to strand their drivers just before Christmas? Arrow actually dispatched drivers with loads knowing they were going to shut their doors and kill their fuel cards. Their management has known of this for quite some time, so one can only infer what sort of benefits they received by keeping this quiet until the last second. I’m quite sure “they got theirs” out before the walls came crashing down.
Apparently they were considered at least somewhat solvent early last year, when they financed (through Freightliner) a plan to replace their entire fleet over five years. Still, a lot can happen in a very short time.
Michael Bates watches a software demo and reaches a conclusion:
I attended a brief training class on Return on Investment (ROI) software developed by Fregonese Associates. The system allows you to evaluate the economic viability of a proposed development by specifying a variety of factors affecting the cost of development and the potential revenue (from leasing or selling units). Some of those parameters are derived from the parking requirements in the City of Tulsa’s zoning code. It’s quickly apparent that our high minimum parking requirements act as a barrier to new commercial development.
Seems to work that way in Austin, too:
City code requires restaurants to have 1 parking spot for every 100 sf for the first 2,500 sf, and 1 spot for every 75 sf over that. This means that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, had it built on a suburban greenfield, would have needed 30 parking spots to comply with code.
It has 13.
And — surprise! — thirteen is enough most of the time. Most mornings there is at least one empty spot to the side of the shop. Some mornings there is not, but even then I manage to get my coffee. I park on Lee Barton Drive. Or I park in the Taco Bell parking lot next door — which is no big deal since Taco Bell lets CBTL use its parking lot before 10 a.m. I doubt CBTL loses any business because it is “short” 17 parking spots.
And flexibility is what is needed:
Businesses want their customers to have a place to park. Sometimes they might prefer to provide another 2,000 sf of asphalt. Sometimes, though, they might prefer to find space elsewhere that is not being used. The asphalt on Lee Barton Drive, rather than lying empty, is now being used productively. Taco Bell’s asphalt, rather than lying empty before lunch time, is now being used more productively. CBTL avoided pouring a bunch of concrete that would have lain empty 23 out of every 24 hours. Each square foot of asphalt provides more value now than before. And that’s all because CBTL was allowed to figure out an informal solution to its “shortage” of parking.
Austin is seriously crowded these days, with 750,000 people in an area half the size of Oklahoma City, but I don’t remember having any problems parking at neighborhood establishments last time I was there (summer of ‘08).
Duane Cuthbertson, on the Tulsa Board of Adjustment, notes:
“A shopping center will have 10 different uses, and the zoning code looks at each use individually and applies the parking requirement on the assumption that each use could need its minimum parking at the same time… When it comes to parking, we look at every piece of property as if it’s on an island.”
This is simply not feasible for infill development, in Tulsa or anywhere else.
I suspect that at the heart of most such ordinances is the belief — supported by ample visual evidence, alas — that most people can’t parallel-park worth a damn. It’s time we learned. Oklahoma City is planning to double the amount of curbside parking in the Central Business District, which beats the hell out of adding a bunch of little asphalt islands scattered hither and yon, even if you do have to feed a meter once in a while.
As actual Latin, it’s canine at best; as advice to traveling Federal employees, it’s almost sensible.
For fiscal year 2010, the standard per diem rate in the Lower 48 is $116 a day: $70 for lodging, $46 for meals and incidentals. However, if you’re coming to OKC or Tulsa, you’ll be paid more: $150 in Oklahoma City ($84 for your room, $66 for everything else), or $142 in Tulsa ($81 and $61 respectively).
Here’s the catch: the OKC per diem rate applies only in Oklahoma County. The Tulsa rate applies in four counties: Tulsa, Creek, Rogers and Osage.
Aside to readers who may think I’m encouraging needless Federal spending: hey, I’ve seen $84 hotel rooms in this town. Nobody gets to play plutocrat on that kind of budget.
(Suggested by Charles Pergiel, who has compiled all this data into a spreadsheet.)
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OG&E and the Environmental Protection Agency are once again at odds. The question: whether the EPA-prescribed scrubbers for OG&E’s two coal plants are worth the billion-dollar price tag.
The sticking point: a regulation adopted by EPA in 1999 calls for restoring visibility in national parks and wilderness areas to “natural conditions” by 2064. The scrubbers would be required for those coal plants to have any chance of meeting the standards.
OG&E says, though, that it’s planning to mothball those plants by 2026 anyway and switch over to natural gas, which doesn’t produce the sulfur-compound emissions that cause the haze. It’s a win-win, says the company: compliance comes ahead of schedule, and the ratepayers don’t have to be soaked. The EPA’s position seems to be “But what about right now?”
On the utility’s side: the usual suspects — other electric companies, suppliers of natural gas — plus, says OG&E, the Sierra Club, which places a high priority on getting away from coal altogether.
The Department of Environmental Quality, which is supposed to come up with a state plan to meet that EPA regulation, will hold a hearing today.
Portfolio.com/bizjournals has come up with a methodology for determining whether a given metropolitan market can support a major-league sports team, based on available personal income for that market, less whatever it takes to support existing teams there.
On this basis, there are almost enough dollars to support MLS soccer in Oklahoma City without affecting the existing NBA team, but not close to the amount needed for the NHL or the NFL. (The requirements for Major League Baseball are considerably stiffer, no doubt owing to the utter lack of controls over salaries; only two additional markets could support MLB.) Interestingly, Seattle, which currently has three teams, falls slightly short of NBA support, as Clay Bennett could probably have told you.
But $40 billion in personal income is enough, says this study, to support a team other than baseball. And that leaves the field open for Tulsa, which comes in a hair short of $40 billion. The NBA is unlikely, for obvious reasons; but Tulsa has the potential to support soccer or hockey, or even the NFL, were there a suitable venue for the latter. (The NHL would likely be very happy with the BOk Center.)
Of course, gaining a team requires league expansion, which is happening only in MLS — or a Major Market Fail:
Nineteen areas are overextended, with Denver, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Tampa facing the worst problems. The income bases of these overextended markets are inadequate for their existing teams, let alone any new ones.
Not that you’re going to see the Tulsa Steelers any time soon.
With the spectre of mandatory health insurance looming in the shadows, Miriam has decided that we probably shouldn’t have mandatory auto insurance either:
I have car insurance, because I own assets, including property. I can’t afford to be sued. Poor people, however, don’t have anything to lose.
If everyone didn’t have to buy this expensive and totally useless product, those who do want it — like me — could purchase additional coverage for accidents involving uninsured drivers for a nominal sum. That’s the way things used to be before mandatory car insurance was instituted.
I dunno how “nominal” this coverage is: it costs me over $300 a year. Then again, this isn’t so surprising, since something like 25 percent of drivers in Oklahoma can’t be bothered to obtain insurance, the state mandate notwithstanding, which gave the Department of Public Safety a less-than-wonderful idea:
State officials are looking at beefing up the state’s electronic insurance verification system by setting up cameras across the state to randomly record vehicle tags.
Cameras set up at about 200 locations along selected highways would focus in on a tag’s bar code — found at the bottom of each tag — and record it. Bar code scanners would match the tag numbers with a national database containing real-time vehicle insurance information. Vehicle owners without valid insurance would be mailed a ticket.
Beyond the usual Big Brother considerations, this will not work worth a damn: a substantial proportion of drivers have metal or plastic plate frames that obscure the bar code, and J. Random Deadbeat is a lot more likely to fork over $19.95 for a piece of frippery than to pay for actual insurance.
Suggestions are welcomed, since I can’t see any plausible way to improve the situation.
State Senator Jim Wilson (D-Tahlequah) has introduced a measure to make it a misdemeanor for anyone to intentionally lie or spread misinformation in a political campaign.
The sort of “misinformation” he means:
The penalty would specifically apply to materials that provide false information regarding the personal or political character of a candidate, voting records or the effect of legislation authored.
This should, in other words, eliminate just about everything but “I’m [fill in name of candidate] and I approve this message.”
Del Creek Estates was platted in 2003; it’s up toward the northeast corner of Del City, west of Sooner Road and north of Reno Avenue. While I was planning my escape from the CrappiFlats™, I looked at a couple of the model homes, modest but modern.
Yahoo! Maps shows it like this:
The street names aren’t in place, but you can tell where it is. (The stuff to the east of Sooner Road is a long-established Midwest City neighborhood.)
Mapquest renders it this way:
For some reason, though, Google has never heard of it:
If I didn’t know better — and I don’t — I might think it had been erased. (Here’s a view of the area west of Sooner in TIFF format. [Warning: over 1 MB.] Screenshots by Trini.)
I’ve been on television twice, both times in time slots where nobody could possibly be watching (I keep telling myself), and I’ve had a couple of mentions in the Gazette. The Oklahoman, however, tends to ignore me, and I’m starting to think that’s a Good Thing, since the absence of coverage gives their brow-at-nose-level Web commentariat no shot at me.
This story, for instance, has drawn all sorts of nasty remarks:
Cathy Velte is not your average 54-year-old. The Oklahoma City woman is a successful medical researcher. Financially secure, she’s single, beautiful and confident. She’s a speed junkie who races cars professionally. And she’s proud to be a cougar.
But wait. Most people think of a cougar as a lonely, desperate woman over 40 who is on the prowl for a younger man. That hardly describes Velte.
That’s because Velte is one of thousands of women on a crusade to redefine the term cougar as applied to women.
A sample of the verbiage:
It is flabbergasting that someone would think they could appropriate a term — “cougar” — which is code for “I sleep around” and *NOT* think they are going to “inherit a degrading label.” The “label” fits.
“Code,” incidentally, is code for “This is a blatant example of projection” a good 90-95 percent of the time.
I’m guessing that if Cathy Velte races Porsches and runs a medical lab, she probably doesn’t have time to sleep around, not that it’s anybody’s business in the first place. Furthermore, I have just enough glass around the house to remind myself of the qualifications for stone-throwing. I will, however, lob a lump of feldspar at Steve Lackmeyer if he somehow sells the Dark Tower suits on the notion that I’m somehow newsworthy; I’d almost rather get Valentines from the Lost Ogles.
