Last Saturday was "Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day," an informal holiday initiated by concerned Americans who support Hobby Lobby in its lawsuit to challenge the Obama administration mandate that all employers provide insurance that covers contraception -- including the "morning after" and "week after" pills that can and do caus...

More than three months after my wedding, I find myself in the dreaded line at the Department of Public Safety (a.k.a. the DMV). It's before 8:00 a.m. on a Monday morning in January and about 18 people are already assembled outside the unopened door of the office. Even though this winter has been unseasonably warm, it's more t...

In a lengthy article last month (“Brownback says his changes in Kansas are a model for the nation”), The Kansas City Star reported that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has rammed through massive income tax cuts, wiped away thousands of public sector jobs, and slashed spending for public broadcasting and social services. He squ...

Writing in The Journal Record, OCPA Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow Andy Spiropoulos writes that the lottery has not lived up to its billing, raking in just $65 million this fiscal year when supporters said it would regularly raise $150 million a year. More importantly, Spiropoulos continues, the lottery hurts those it's...

The president and congressional Republicans have consistently disagreed about whether to allow taxes to go up on those the president deems "rich," but, to judge by rhetoric alone, they have apparently always agreed that the so-called "Bush tax cuts for the middle class" must not be allowed to expire. To be sure, the last-minu...

In the cover story of the December 17 issue of National Review (“An Agenda for the Middle Class”), Ramesh Ponnuru argues that “conservatives need an agenda to cut the costs of energy, health care, child-rearing, and higher education. Each initiative would raise the middle-class standard of living.”He’s right. And in a recent ...

Writing in The Oklahoman, OCPA vice president of policy Brandon Dutcher contends that, in at least one respect, the new Oklahoma school report cards are a gift to the education establishment: As long as concerned citizens are comparing Oklahoma school districts to each other, they aren't comparing them to school districts aro...

In our daily work and especially in our "Freedom Agenda for 2013," we identify specific policy prescriptions as among our top "wishes." If we wish for particular policies, though, it is only because we wish -- at an even deeper level -- for Oklahomans to know true peace and joy. At the heart of all policy innovation, after al...

Writing in The Journal Record, OCPA Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow Andy Spiropoulos pays tribute to a key insight of William Rusher, the longtime publisher of National Review and one of the most important American political activists of the twentieth century. Whatever the differences in their private lives, Rusher sugge...

Less than a week after troubled gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., political leaders, sophistic pundits and ordinary Americans reel -- not in shock, exactly, but in a desperate determination to do something to forestall future tragedies.We've been...

The Oklahoma Health Care Authority will soon have a new Chief Executive Officer. The OHCA is the state’s chief Medicaid agency and has seen significant cost and enrollment growth over the last decade, facing significant funding challenges in the future just to maintain the status quo, much less expand.I recently noted in an o...

After 19 years, it’s no secret that OCPA is second to none when it comes to hosting speakers who believe in free markets and limited government, and yesterday’s health-policy forum did not disappoint. After watching a brief documentary (“Oklahoma Doctors vs. Obamacare”) produced by the Reason Foundation, attendees were able t...

Reform of the Oklahoma workers' compensation system is a bipartisan priority of state legislators, according to remarks from House and Senate majority and minority leaders at the State Chamber of Oklahoma Public Affairs Forum last week.OCPA experts, business leaders and several legislators also gathered yesterday for an excha...

Writing in The Journal Record, OCPA Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow Andy Spiropoulos defends Gov. Fallin's rejection of federal dollars to expand Medicaid with oft-forgotten facts. Medicaid isn't just expensive, he writes; it also delivers substandard health outcomes.The left argues that, while they care only about the w...

There are 18 students in Johnny’s classroom. Multiply that number by $8,301 (Oklahoma’s per-student expenditure), and you end up with $149,418 for that classroom.Now subtract $44,094, which is the salary for Johnny’s teacher. The difference is $105,324.Where is that money going?The real number is higher, but for purposes of...

"The American Dream": The term -- like so many in the modern lexicon -- has been so overused as to be almost devoid of meaning. Once, it called to mind a particular economic and social progression through life -- a progression that almost invariably included work, marriage, family and homeownership. The particular starting an...

School-board elections will be held across the state on February 12, 2013. Charles Daniels, a Bartlesville attorney who served on his local school board for eight years, has some words of hard-earned wisdom to pass along to future school-board members. He writes:  School systems exist primarily for the benefit of the adu...

Total state spending is at an all-time high. One of the biggest drivers of total state spending is the use of federal grants by state agencies. As incoming House Speaker T.W. Shannon has so aptly reminded us, this is an addiction that must stop. Given the broken and debt-ridden financial condition of the federal government, o...

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the dedication of the USS Oklahoma Memorial on Ford Island at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Memorial was designed, built and funded by the citizens of Oklahoma. The USS Oklahoma lost 429 sailors that fateful day -- the second-highest loss of life next to the USS Arizona. For 66 years there was...

Five reasons Michigan is right to pass Right to Work Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder Tuesday said Right to Work legislation is on his agenda for "thoughtful discussions." Today, he suggested he'd sign Right to Work legislation into law. Lansing lawmakers indicate they'll likely land such a bill on his desk. Predictably, Michigan ...