Local News
Gov. plans trip to city
A special guest plans to be in McAlester for a town hall meeting hosted by oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens next week.
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry plans to travel to McAlester for the event, confirmed the governor’s Press Secretary Phil Bacharach.
Henry plans to do more than attend it.
“He will be introducing T. Boone Pickens,” Bacharach told the News-Capital. After introducing Pickens, the governor will stay in the city for the town hall meeting, Bacharach said.
Pickens’ representatives have rented the Southeast Expo Center for a town hall meeting set for 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Doors at the Expo Center, about three miles west of McAlester on U.S. Highway 270, are scheduled to open at 9 a.m.
Like the two previous town hall meetings Pickens has held in Kansas and in Colorado, the event in McAlester is free and open to the public.
The meetings have been set so Pickens can talk about his Pickens Plan — his idea for helping the United States reduce its dependence on foreign oil.
Pickens has said that America is in a hole that’s getting deeper every day, since the U.S. imports 70 percent of its oil at a cost of $700 billion annually.
The Pickens Plan calls for America to help break its dependence on foreign oil by setting up a series of windmills to harness wind power. That would free up more natural gas that could be used as an alternative for other fuels used for transportation, according to the plan.
Pickens is originally from Holdenville, in neighboring Hughes County. The 80-year-old billionaire currently lives in Texas and is touring the country to talk about his plan to wean the U.S. off its dependence on foreign oil.
Pickens held his first town hall meeting in Topeka, Kan., then held one this week in Lamar, Colo.
The trip to McAlester this Wednesday is the next scheduled stop on his tour, followed by a meeting the next day in Le Mars, Iowa.
Pickens hopes to get enough people behind his plan that the U.S. Congress will support it.
Contact James Beaty at jbeaty@mcalesternews.com.
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