Articles
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Criminal Justice
Prison Isn’t for Everyone
Writing in the Enid News & Eagle, OCPA's Trent England explains why four measures passed this legislative session are important steps in reforming Oklahoma’s criminal justice system.Trent England | June 14, 2016
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Education
Free Market Friday: An important data tool
We all have opinions about how to make public schools better. Some want to spend more money, even to the point of increasing taxes. Others favor reforms like school choice. We are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Unfortunately, some important facts have been hard to find – until now.Jonathan Small | June 11, 2016
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Budget & Tax
Free Market Friday: A tale of two states
Illinois offers a contrast with Oklahoma this year. In President Obama’s home state, liberal Democrats have supermajorities in both the House and Senate. Here in Oklahoma, Obama never won a single county and Republicans hold significant majorities in both legislative chambers. Yet we have one thing in common: state budget troubles.Jonathan Small | June 3, 2016
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Energy
Sustainability: The Left’s New Façade
The Sooner State suffers less from eco-apocalypticism than most, but it isn’t immune to environmental groupthink. Look no further than the college campus, where ill-conceived ideologies flourish under the innocent-sounding label of “sustainability.”Rachelle Peterson | June 1, 2016
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Health Care
Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Creates Expensive New Entitlement for Able-Bodied Adults While Endangering the Truly Needy
The Oklahoma Health Care Authority has proposed a plan to “rebalance” Medicaid eligibility in the Sooner State. But this “rebalancing” is really just an Obamacare expansion by another name.Jonathan Small & Jonathan Ingram | June 1, 2016
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Budget & Tax, Education
Oklahoma’s Budget Hole Could Be Much Deeper
Oklahoma’s budget crunch has been much in the news lately. But imagine how much worse the situation could be.Brandon Dutcher | June 1, 2016
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Criminal Justice
Another Way to Trim Incarceration Costs
As state policymakers work to reduce prison incarceration rates and their resulting costs, there is a second way to address this issue from the bottom up. Offenders whose crimes do not merit prison time are still clogging county jails across Oklahoma, driving costs at the local level. While legislators and the governor grapple with ways to trim prison populations, we already have a ready-made program in place to begin a similar local effort in our 77 counties.Brian Maughan | June 1, 2016
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Budget & Tax, Health Care, Good Government
Free Market Friday: Invention of a crisis
The predictions were dire. Nursing homes and hospitals would close. Pregnant women in labor wouldn’t receive care. Thus the story told by state agency officials and lobbyists for big hospital corporations. The only way to prevent catastrophe was to raise taxes and massively expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults.Jonathan Small | May 27, 2016
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Education
Why Are School Choice Opponents Afraid of the Facts?
Oklahoma has embraced the national revolution of educational choice—it’s one of 30 states with private school choice programs. As the state has now moved to embrace the best kind of school choice, Education Savings Accounts, government unions and their allies have howled all the louder that choice is awful. But if that’s so, why do they have to keep running away from the facts? What are they afraid of?Greg Forster, Ph.D. | May 27, 2016
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Health Care
It's Not OK: Oklahoma Obamacare Medicaid Plan Puts Needy At Risk
Today in Forbes, OCPA president Jonathan Small, along FGA's Jonathan Ingram and Josh Archambault, explains why OHCA's Medicaid "rebalance" plan would put the truly needy in danger and create perputual budget crises.Jonathan Small & Jonathan Ingram | May 23, 2016