There was some good reporting Sunday in The Oklahoman on the topic of school consolidation in Oklahoma. As OCPA never tires of repeating, policymakers have a solemn duty to spend tax dollars as efficiently as possible. So if money could be saved by consolidating school districts and/or sharing administrative services, that’s ...

With approximately three months to go before the November 2012 elections, political strategists are busy scattering rhetoric among the masses in hopes we will just gobble it up, blindly accept it and vote accordingly. This rhetoric would have us believe that the upcoming election is about a few very wealthy people trying to u...

In March, we called on President Obama to use his trip to Oklahoma as an opportunity to listen to energy experts in the state and develop a national energy policy that makes sense for all Americans.  Unfortunately, that meaningful exchange did not take place, and the president’s Oklahoma visit appeared to be more style t...

The Washington Post highlighted Oklahoma in an article yesterday about public disdain toward the Obamacare individual mandate, referring to Oklahoma as the Wild West, where contempt for strong centralized government is most evident.  The article cited Oklahoma’s car insurance rate as evidence that the state cannot get Ok...

At an OCPA speech in Tulsa and in other venues, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has said: "Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose. We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible because, when we took it, we diminished that person's freedom."Ev...

In The Orange County Register Friday, OCPA fellow Matt Mayer illuminates the unintended consequences of President Obama's imperial decision to implement parts of a stealth-amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants act, which failed to pass Congress:President Obama's unilateral decision to implement parts of the failed DREAM Act legisla...

When the Oklahoma Education Association tried in 2010 to push through a ballot measure hiking education spending, many of the other tax consumers in Oklahoma—eyeing each other like folks in an overcrowded lifeboat that needs to be lightened to stay afloat—formed a coalition to defeat it.  Now with the Medicaid monster go...

Even if state legislators across the country choose not to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, they might still have to cut school funding or levy tax increases just to maintain the beleaguered program, according to a recent report by the State Budget Crisis Task Force. The nonpartisan Task Force asserts:Medicaid costs have been...

University of Oklahoma president David Boren is to be applauded for acknowledging that higher education needs to be "more cost-effective" and that professors need to teach more. In this regard, President Boren's thinking matches that of economist Richard Vedder. “Are there unique or unusual aspects of Oklahoma’s system that m...

In his latest column in The Journal Record, OCPA president Michael Carnuccio shone a spotlight on the words of President Barack Obama and others whose views on entrepreneurship and limited government leave much to be desired.Milton Friedman, of course, has heard it all before, and this 33-year-old video clip (h/t: Mark J. Per...

The state of Oklahoma stands to lose 8,000 defense-related jobs (and a total of 16,000 jobs) if the U.S. Congress fails to reverse a $500-billion spending cut to the Department of Defense, The Daily Oklahoman noted in an editorial this week.IF you think our country's hurting now, wait another 5 ½ months. As became clearer th...

“Gov. Mary Fallin and politicians-turned-higher-education-bureaucrats like Chancellor of the State System of Higher Education Glen Johnson and University of Oklahoma President David Boren agree that the state’s future relies upon more Oklahomans earning college degrees,” law professor Andrew Spiropoulos writes this week in Th...

“Opposition to state scholarships for children with special needs may have a far-reaching, negative impact,” the state’s largest newspaper editorialized this week (“'Win' in special-needs lawsuit would harm many Oklahoma students”).The ongoing court battle centers on a lawsuit filed by the Jenks and Union school districts aga...

“So what do we do now?” That’s the question many people are asking since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the president’s health-overhaul law.“Our friends on the left have pronounced the debate over and urged us to accept our fate and faithfully implement the law,” writes law professor Andrew C. Spiropoulos, w...

At an OCPA speech in Tulsa and in other venues, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has said: "Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose. We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible because, when we took it, we diminished that person's freedom."Ev...

At an OCPA speech in Tulsa and in other venues, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has said: "Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose. We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible because, when we took it, we diminished that person's freedom."Ev...

At an OCPA speech in Tulsa and in other venues, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has said: "Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose. We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible because, when we took it, we diminished that person's freedom."Ev...

What it is: The OCPA Policy Impact Team is comprised of freedom ambassadors who have heard the OCPA message -- that is, that our government should be limited and markets should be free -- and been so compelled by it that they want to take concrete action to advance that message and make Oklahoma the freest state.What we do: P...

I had a nice chat this week with a reporter who’s doing a story on the push (by Gov. Mary Fallin and higher-education officials) for more college graduates in Oklahoma. I told the reporter:I think it’s healthy to be skeptical of central planning. We should take with a grain of salt the latest “five-year plan” from politicians...

OCPA research fellow Matt Mayer is out with a new book, and I highly recommend it. Taxpayers Don't Stand a Chance: Why Battleground Ohio Loses No Matter Who Wins (and What to Do About It) describes how Ohio [declined] from … an economic and political leader to a national laggard. As shown by specific examples, Ohio’s fall occ...