One Person Can Make A Difference

  President Reagan once said, regarding the legislative branch, that you couldn't make them see the light, but you could make them feel the heat.

   A very good example of that occurred this past week but first, some background. Last May, the Republican dominated legislature was looking for a way to fill an $800+ million budget hole brought on by a fall in energy prices and tax cuts. The tax cuts passed a few years ago were a good thing. Too bad state spending was not cut as well.

 My state representative Mark Lepak voted for the cigarette tax last year and this year. So when the cigarette tax came up last May, I called Mark Lepak and told him I hoped he'd vote against it and if he didn't, I'd run against him. He voted for the cigarette tax, called a 'fee,' and now I'm running against Mark Lepak.

When the World is too much to take

On March 19 the Tulsa World ran an opinion piece from Allison Moore, a Muslim member of the Tulsa World's “Community Advisory Board.” It was titled: Why not hate? Your own health may be at risk.

Most of it was innocuous, citing health studies that suggest hating people leads to mental and physical illness for the individual who hates. But her first paragraph was more than any rational person should have to take:

Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry - Squatters on the Moral High Ground

Oklahoma State Representative
John Bennett of Sallisaw.

by Theodore J. King - 

On September 11, 2014, Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry (TMM) released a statement condemning State Representative John Bennett of Sallisaw for comments he made about the dangers, he perceives, of Islam in the United States.

On February 15, 2015, TMM promoted a candle light prayer vigil held at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church for three Muslim college students: Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, who were shot to death by an atheist over a parking space in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

While it is reasonable for TMM to condemn the murder of anyone over a parking space, regardless of religion, TMM had no comment on the beheading of Colleen Hufford and the stabbing of Traci Johnson, employees of Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma. Alton Nolan, a recent convert to Islam who had renamed himself Jah'Keem Yisreal, on September 24, 2014, beheaded Colleen Hufford and stabbed Traci Johnson at the Vaughn Foods factory in Moore, Oklahoma. He was stopped from killing Johnson when the owner of the factory, a reserve Oklahoma County Deputy, shot Nolan/Yisreal, wounding him. TMM promoted and participated in a prayer vigil for the killings that occurred in North Carolina, a thousand miles from Tulsa, but made no mention of a killing by an Islamic fanatic, a little over a hundred miles away in Moore. In my meeting with Rev. Ray Hickman, TMM's executive director, on November 8, 2016, I asked him about this.