As reported by the Capitol Beat OK, Speaker Benge is going to pull a health care bill authored by Rep. Mike Ritze (R-Broken Arrow) that would exempt Oklahoma from any nationalized health care mandates (ie. Obamacare).
In response to questions from CapitolBeatOK, Speaker of the House Chris Benge said this afternoon (Feb. 3) that House Joint Resolution 1054, a proposed constitutional amendment, would be pulled from consideration by the House Rules Committee.
Ironically, Charlie Meadows with OCPAC sent an email to his followers this morning encouraging them to continue calling Speaker Benge about this bill.
I did a little checking around and this is what I learned. It appears that Speaker Benge is concerned about the number of state questions to be on the ballot this coming November. Speaker Benge told one source that there are already 9 questions to be on the ballot, with 13 questions held over from last year’s session and 31 pieces of legislation coming from this year’s legislative session that are still eligible to be placed on the ballot. Benge told the source that the committee is “working to manage the number of state questions to avoid overloading the ballot.”
I have been telling people for over a year now that I too am concerned bout the large number of ballot questions. However, this issue is so important that it must be heard and hopefully pass asap. Therefore, we just do whatever is necessary to urge Speaker Benge and the rest of the legislature to move this issue along. Speaker Benge could negotiate with Governor Henry to put some of the lesser important issues, such as requiring a photo ID for voting purposes, to be put on he ballot during the primary election. The governor has that option. Therefore, please contact Speaker Benge’s office and ask him for an assurance that he will use his INFLUENCE to allow HJR 1054 to be heard. If he is really against Obama’s health care plan and wants to rotect the citizens in Oklahoma from the unconstitutional actions that may come out of Washington, then he needs to support this legislation. The Speaker’s Capitol number is (405) 557-7444 and his e-mail is
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. A phone call is preferred or do both. Speaker Benge has near dictatorial power over legislation, so no matter where you live in Oklahoma your call is needed and important. Please act today through Thursday.
Therefore, please contact Speaker Benge’s office and ask him for an assurance that he will use his INFLUENCE to allow HJR 1054 to be heard. If he is really against Obama’s health care plan and wants to rotect the citizens in Oklahoma from the unconstitutional actions that may come out of Washington, then he needs to support this legislation. The Speaker’s Capitol number is (405) 557-7444 and his e-mail is
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. A phone call is preferred or do both. Speaker Benge has near dictatorial power over legislation, so no matter where you live in Oklahoma your call is needed and important. Please act today through Thursday.
I'm a history nut, and I don't apologize for being that way. I love reading up on history and learning from the past. Here's a story I came across a few days ago on Wikipedia. The FAA prohibits planes from breaking the sound barrier over land. But before they made this rule official, they had to do some test. These tests resulted in the Operation Bongo II in which 1,253 sonic booms were carried out over the OKC skies from February through July of 1964.
Starting on February 3, 1964, the first sonic booms began, eight booms per day that began at 7 a.m. and ended in the afternoon. The noise was limited to 1.0 to 1.5 pound-force per square foot (48 to 72 pascal) for the first twelve weeks, then increased to 1.5 to 2.0 psf (72 to 96 pascal) for the final fourteen weeks. This range was about equal to that expected from an SST. Though eight booms per day were harsh, the peak overpressures of 2.0 psf were an order of magnitude lower than that needed to shatter glass, and are considered marginally irritating according to published standards. The Air Force used F-104 and B-58 aircraft, with the occasional F-101 and F-106.
I love airplanes, and I love Oklahoma. Just wished I lived back in 1964 to have been a part of this unique history.
Here's a video of an F-18 breaking the sound barrier.
It's hard to believe, but a city in Canada is not only debt free, it has money in the bank....a lot of it. In our modern day society, it is a common belief that in order to succeed, you need to borrow money. Unfortunately, we've kept on borrow so much money that it has tied our hands and limited our productivity. Instead of using money to our advantage, we end up wasting time, energy, and money to pay off borrowed money. Here's a video of a town that has had the mantra of paying for city structure with cold hard cash.
This is a late notice, but the Tulsa County Republican Party will be hosting an open meeting/rally tomorrow - Saturday - Feb. 6th. Numerous GOP candidates and elected officials will be on hand to meet with voters. This will be the perfect time to come and meet your State Rep, State Senator, or a candidate running for those offices. To find your elected officials, go to this website and type in your address.
There will be a meet n' greet time with elected officials and candidates from 9 am - 10 am, and a meeting scheduled from 10 am - 11 am. There will also be a straw poll for various office including the upcoming Governor's race.
I bought a flip camcorder earlier this week and got to use it last night at the Tulsa bloggers meetup. Here's a video of some of the highlights from the night.
A new website is up and running in Tulsa: ThisIsTulsa.com. ThisIsTulsa.com was founded by Rick Rose in November 2009. His goals include:
providing users with several helpful web links, interesting articles, online shopping and looking for some items of interest about the Tulsa area. In addition, I began what I call a "My Take On Tulsa" series - where I am writing my own short articles as a means of providing a somewhat different take on my own view of Tulsa.
Rick has also been very gracious with a page that highlights other local Tulsa area blogs. Thanks, Rick, for including GetRightOK.com! Best of luck to you as you travel along this online highway.
On another note, Rick and other bloggers from the Tulsa metro area will be meeting Thursday, Feb. 4th at Joe Momma's for a blogger's meetup. This event is being hosted by Tasha Does Tulsa, Art of Manliness, and Tulsa Project. For more info, check out the Facebook event. Hope to see you there!
State Rep. Jason Murphey (R-Guthrie) sends out a weekly email to his constituents on a variety of issues. The other day, he outlined his proposal on incorporating social media into state government agencies in an effort to streamline government bureaucracy and offer better service to the citizens of Oklahoma. Rep. Murphey has led the way in utilizing technology to make government smaller and more efficient. This new effort of incorporating new media is an exciting prospect.
Last week I enjoyed being in attendance at a Social Media conference which encouraged participants to engage in discussion and strategy sharing regarding their use of social media. Myself and State Representative Joe Dorman were in attendance to share our experiences of using social media as Legislators. This forum provided me with an opportunity to explain how House Bill 2318 will empower the state's Chief Information Officer (CIO) to develop and implement uniform social media policies by which state government can use social media.
I believe this is extremely important as social media provides the potential to establish an effective feedback mechanism in which the citizens can let state officials, and everyone else for that matter, know about the performance of state government.
In the past, when a citizen was ill-served by state government they likely had a few select channels into which they could direct their story of state government's failure to perform. They could place a call to the bureaucracy which had performed poorly and with luck their complaint might reach up into the bureaucracy at some level. However, it is extremely unlikely that the leadership in that particular bureaucracy would ever hear about, much less remedy, the wrong. In too many cases the citizen's voice simply goes unheard.
I believe state government should adopt social media as a feedback tool much like the private sector is now proving possible.
For instance, a few months ago, speaking on the Charlie Rose television show, the CEO of Hulu, Jason Kilar, explained that he uses twitter as a mechanism for seeing what the people are saying about his company. He said that several times a day he checks for the use of the term "Hulu" on twitter. Not only can he can use this feedback to change his company's services to meet the need of the customer but he now knows firsthand how the customers feel about the product. After his appearance on the Charlie Rose show, a twitter user tested Kilar by posting a tweet asking if Kilar was watching. Kilar proved that he was watching by responding directly to this message.
Now, imagine the possibilities when the executives of government agencies will have this same ability to see and respond firsthand to those who are immediately affected by their decision making. The response of these officials would be public material and available for everyone to see from the comfort of their own homes thus providing for real accountability.
Currently state agencies operate under various assumptions about their legal ability to use social media tools. From limited liability issues to concerns surrounding open records requirements, there are any number of legal barriers to agencies that serve to disincentive their use of the tools. Our job as legislators is to clear these barriers and put in place a set of standards by which social media tools can serve to make state government more responsive to the citizens.
Next week I intend to write about how social media can provide state government with a data delivery mechanism which will be used to provide a level of transparency and accountability to the citizens
The mayor of Tampa isn’t a Third World potentate, totalitarian dictator, or terrorist leader so I can’t understand why Obama would be in full-bow mode. Is bowing now the standard way the President greets people these days? Is he misoriented, for some reason, and thinks Tampa is a terrorist stronghold or an enemy of the United States? Does the US owe Tampa a boatload of money and the bow just good business practice?
