Today Dr. Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, Jonathan Williams, and the American Legislative Exchange Council released the sixth edition of Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic State Competitiveness Index (RSPS). RSPS is one of the premier analyses of economic performance and economic outlook for the 50 states. ...

The Oklahoma Legislature is considering a last-minute commitment of roughly 80 million taxpayer dollars over the next few years to two museums. The institutions in question are the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum (AICCM), still under construction in Oklahoma City near the intersection of Interstate 35 and Interstat...

I’ve lamented before that, just as President Barack Obama is the biggest government spender in world history, Oklahoma’s current political leaders are the biggest government spenders in state history. Indeed, according to the venerable Tax Foundation, Oklahoma led the nation in government-spending growth over the past dec...

A few aspects of Obamacare are, per last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, still voluntary for the states. First among these is Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, projected to cost Oklahoma taxpayers a total of $1.6 billion over the next 10 years if implemented.President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

As the 2013 legislative session nears its end, a very positive change concerning a number of employee positions is receiving serious consideration by lawmakers. This change would convert a number of open employment positions to more resemble the employment rewards and requirements of private-sector employees.For state employe...

Because it doesn’t fit the narrative, Obamacare proponents in Oklahoma, including many in the media, are ignoring an important development related to Obamacare. Obamacare created optional, temporary high-risk pools (a temporary public option) that could be established in every state, to provide coverage for those who could no...

You may think that conservative policy wonks are a bunch of uptight curmudgeons openly hostile to the destructive musical genres so beloved of kids these days. But you would be wrong!Indeed, last week two of my twentysomething colleagues here at OCPA were amazed — mortified might be a better word — to learn that I in fact kno...

Last week Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed legislation which would have authorized an optional defined-contribution retirement plan for new state employees. Had the bill become law, employees would have had the opportunity to choose between this new defined-contribution plan and the current Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System ...

OCPA president Michael Carnuccio recently pointed out in his Journal Record column that “Medicaid expansion, in any form, will be funded by Obamacare dollars.” Then last week in his Journal Record column, law professor Andrew Spiropoulos warned of “a potential last-minute creation of a legal vehicle for the expansion of the d...

In the May issue of Perspective (arriving in mailboxes soon), you’ll learn why OCPA research fellow Vance Fried thinks college is about to get better and drastically cheaper. You’ll discover which frightening numerals keep Congressman James Lankford awake at night. And OCPA research fellow Wendy Warcholik will tell you what s...

You’re perhaps aware that the Oklahoma City-based retailer Hobby Lobby is challenging the HHS anti-conscience mandate, born of Obamacare, which forces employers to cover drugs — such as the “morning-after pill” and the “week-after pill” — that can end a new human life by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg. Lawyers fo...

When OCPA was founded in 1993, we began to discuss the need for workers’ compensation reform in Oklahoma, with the most necessary reform being a move to an administrative system that was not adversarial to business owners or employees.

We are proud that our state’s policymakers have seen the merit in this concept, and we a...

Like cicadas emerging from their shells, they come out every spring — a delegation from Oklahoma’s monopoly education system warning us with dire looks that we absolutely must “invest” more millions in our schools. To achieve exactly what they never quite make clear, but this year as in past years there’s a number attached. F...

“As the battle over Medicaid expansion rages in the states,” Christina Corieri writes today in The Wall Street Journal, “supporters of expansion have dusted off an age-old favorite in making the case for taking federal dollars. They say: If our state doesn't take the money, those dollars will go to some other state instead.Ha...

Oklahoma taxpayers are familiar with the constant poormouthing that emanates from state agency heads pleading for more funds each year. Give us more extra bucks, the agency heads complain to legislators, or we’ll have to close facilities, cut services, and throw granny out into the snow.But thanks to some diligent reporting b...

Earlier this year, feminists across the country celebrated the golden-jubilee reissue of Betty Friedan’s wave-making work, The Feminine Mystique.The book — so I am told — inspired many a malcontent woman to seek “liberation” from “the comfortable concentration camp” of suburban housewifery and, for that reason, deserves to be...

Urging Oklahoma’s policymakers to show “compassion,” some leaders of the state’s Religious Left last week called for expansion of the Medicaid program as allowed for under Obamacare.“Liberalism, of course, professes to speak for ‘the poor,’” the great Catholic essayist Joseph Sobran once observed, “even though, given a choice...

On Saturday, April 27, in Tulsa, a portion of singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie's archives, “including the original, handwritten version of Guthrie's landmark anthem, ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ will be available for viewing at the grand opening of the Woody Guthrie Center,” according to a press release.As Lee Habeeb wrote last y...

Alejandro Chafuen is the president of Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a think tank devoted to the principles of free markets and limited government. In a recent Forbes article (“How Did He Get So Rich? Think Tanks vs. Crony Capitalism”), Dr. Chafuen writes:Increased publicity about economic transactions where profits are ...

“Medicaid was established in 1965 with the worthy aim of providing medical care for the poor; it was never intended as a middle-class entitlement or as inheritance protection for the children of well-off seniors,” The Wall Street Journal has correctly observed (“Medicaid for Millionaires”).Yet the latter is precisely what has...