Try as they might, big government cannot stop free enterprise. TransCanada, the company building the Keystone Pipeline, announced today that it will proceed with building the section of the pipeline that would connect Cushing, Oklahoma, with refineries on the Gulf Coast in Texas. This announcement is big news because it shows...

It’s only fitting that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the featured speaker at this year’s OCPA Citizenship Dinner. For just as Wisconsin was (and remains) the battleground for a clash of visions over labor policy, Oklahoma too has become a battleground—over tax policy.You’ll recall that in November OCPA teamed up with an econ...

The U.S. Department of Energy was created by consolidating a handful of federal agencies under the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977. Section 101 of the Act states the findings upon which Congressional action was being taken. Among other things, Congress cited “an increasing shortage of nonrenewable energy resourc...

The 2012 legislative session has begun, and it could be an historic year for taxpayers. With state spending at an all-time high, phasing out the state’s personal income tax is quite possible if lawmakers choose to put an end to waste, inefficiency, and spending on non-core functions. One example of non-core spending involves...

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville warned that if despotism were to come to America, it wouldn’t be your garden-variety despotism. “It would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them.” He speaks of a “regulated, mild, and peaceful servitude” which “does not tyrannize, it hinders, comprom...

Oklahoma government spending is at an all-time-high.One of the areas of duplicative spending in state government is funding for the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation (OCTP). According to the commission’s website, the OCTP’s mission is “to develop, implement, and facilitate competency-based teacher preparation, candi...

Needless to say, space travel is not a core function of Oklahoma state government. When it was created in 1999, the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority (OSIDA) was intended to operate entirely on self-generated revenues. Despite this intent, lawmakers have given $7.8 million in taxpayer appropriations to the SIDA si...

Many Oklahomans have been paying close attention to the recent announcement of the settlement reached with five major mortgage companies. The settlement comes after an 18-month investigation by attorneys general in all 50 states and by the U.S. Department of Justice into mortgage servicing practices that contributed to the na...

For years, OCPA has stood for the principles of free enterprise, limited government, and individual initiative. We stand for those principles because we believe in the talent, creativity, and determination of entrepreneurs. We will choose free markets over government intervention every time. We make that choice because those ...

What the Cadillac Motor Car Company understood nearly a century ago remains true today: “Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done.”Dr. Arthur Laffer [pictured here with President Ronald Reagan], a member of President Reagan’s ...

“Whether it is in the area of environmental regulations, labor and immigration law, No Child Left Behind, the auto bailout, the selective enforcement of other federal laws, or the regulation of the Internet (among others), the Obama Administration has in fact enacted its agenda via legislative fiat,” attorney Mike Brownfield ...

This week Gov. Mary Fallin set phasing out the state’s personal income tax as the priority for the 2012 legislative session. The boldness of Gov. Fallin, state senators, and state representatives is receiving national attention and charting a path toward greater economic freedom for Oklahomans.Fallin’s vision is in stark cont...

The 2012 legislative session starts this week, and it could be an historic year for taxpayers. Although state spending is at an all-time high, phasing out the state’s personal income tax is quite possible if lawmakers choose to stop waste, inefficiency, and spending on non-core functions.An example of non-core spending in sta...

Many thanks to everyone who came to our “What Would Reagan Do?” event at the state capitol today, and who posted your ideas on our Reagan Wall. Several of us here at OCPA have been thinking about this too, and have come up with several ideas of our own:Phase out the state income tax over 10 years and replace it with nothing. ...

Horace Mann, generally regarded as the father of America’s current public school system, once predicted: Let the Common School ... be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged.Suffice it to sa...

It is progressives who are credited with creating the environment of our “welfare state” and the subsequent entitlement philosophy that many of our citizens today embrace as “rights.” Matthew Spalding, in his bestselling book entitled, We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, notes, “A ...

I’ve written before about the defenders of the status quo in common education. Hopelessly stuck in the last century, they seem to think “you’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma.” Unfortunately, this appears to be a problem in higher education as well. In his most recent column in The Journal Record, law professor Andrew Spiropoulos, who ...

State spending is at an all-time high. The most significant driver of state spending growth is federal funds, or what tax users like to think of as “free” money. It is the federally induced welfare programs, such as Medicaid, that require ever-increasing state funding matches for the programs’ exploding costs. (Michael S. Gre...

A mantra from self-described “progressives” in Oklahoma is that the middle class is shrinking and “the rich” don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Despite this exercise in the politics of envy, the Oklahoma Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) tells a different story. The CAFR is the primary means of reporting the stat...

Last year a state senator from Little Dixie made the astonishing claim that Oklahoma’s public schools “are doing a great job in educating our students.”That remark came to mind this month when the latest edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts was released. Oklahoma received a “D” grade for student performance. Also releas...