The state legislature is back in session with a slate of serious (we would argue dire) propositions.  In search of comic relief, we’ve decided once again to highlight the bills filed this session that deserve a spot on the blooper reel.  Many of these bills tickled our funny bone, but most of them had us doing a double take – say what now?  If you have any insight, please enlighten us in the comment section below.

Sen. Shortey tops the list with SB 1418, a fundamentally strange bill to ban “food and goods” which contain aborted human fetuses.  Umm, okay.  Rather than pile-on the national ridicule, we’d like to call your attention to a lesser-known Shortey bill.  SB 1749 would limit the state highway system’s use of chemical fertilizers and weed killers to protect honey bees.  Every third mouthful of food we eat we owe to honey bee pollination – worth billions of dollars a year to American agriculture.  Honey bees across the country have been succumbing to a mysterious ailment known as colony collapse disorder, caused in part by the very chemicals SB 1749 proposes limiting.  Bravo.

Sen. Bass thinks teenagers should be required to take a safety course before driving a golf cart on a street or roadway.  Reaching top speeds of 15 mph, with the turning radius of an electric Barbie Jeep, we question the wisdom of allowing golf carts on streets and roadways at all.  But if we must, we suppose there is nothing wrong with keeping the kiddies safe.  Although shouldn’t SB 1356 mandate safety training for all ages to capture those tipsy post-happy hour golfers and anyone with bogey-rage?

Attention sports fans, HB 3078 proposes that persons licensed to practice medicine in another state traveling with a sports team do not satisfy the definition of “practice of medicine” in Oklahoma.  Is Rep. Dorman trying to secure the mother of all competitive advantages?  Imagine how much easier it will be to win once other teams have to check their trainers at the state line.  We’re gonna need him to Thunder Down.

In an apparent sequel to a bill filed last session, we are dubbing SB 1270 the ‘Who Let the Dogs Out Act: Part II.’  If your hunting dogs run off, Rep. Wyrick wants you to be able to retrieve them from private property without being charged with illegal trespass or a hunting violation.  Proceed with caution, however.  If the lawful owner expressly forbids you – orally or in writing – from entering, you had better stay put and try and lure your canines back without trespassing.  We suggest bacon, anything smelling of bacon, or squirrels.

Rep. Rousselot endeavors to create the “Animal Massage and Acupressure Therapy Act.”  HB 2400 would define animal massage and acupressure, set up a training program, and outline certification and record-keeping requirements.  Basically, a new bureaucracy especially for animal massage.  Your guess is as good as ours.

Last but not least, Rep. Williams hopes to legally codify the definition of a ‘canoe’ with HB 3093.  Drum roll please….

“Canoe” means a light narrow boat with both ends sharp and which is propelled by paddling and includes similar craft such as kayaks.

Stay tuned for what is sure to be a weird, delightful, and truly strange legislative session.

We all know that the state legislature is tasked with addressing the state’s most urgent and important public policy problems.  From program budgeting to educational standards to defining and specifying criminal penalties for unlawful acts, state senators and representatives enter each new session with a long list of weighty and substantive issues on the docket.  However, as the elected voice of the people, the state legislature is also tasked with the particular and idiosyncratic concerns of a wide range of constituencies.  We thought it would be enlightening – and entertaining – to start the session with a survey of some of the bills that won’t qualify for OK Policy’s brand of serious and in-depth analysis, but deserve a spot on the 53^rd Legislature’s highlight reel.  Besides, why should the Lost Ogle get to have all the fun?

Senator Judy McIntyre wants to declare, ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ the official state gospel song.  If passed, SB 73 would add ‘Swing Low’ to the states growing list of official songs.  Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Oklahoma!’ was appointed the official state song in 1953, Woody Guthrie’s ‘Oklahoma Hills’ was declared the state’s folk song in 1988, and in 2009 the Flaming Lips’ ‘Do You Realize’ was pronounced Oklahoma’s official rock song. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out Slate.com’s animated map of the changing job picture over the last three and a half years. If you scroll down to the map and click the green arrow at the lower right, you can watch the job picture change for individual counties on a month-by-month basis. Counties are blue when they’ve gained jobs over the most recent year and red if they’ve lost them. The red circles spreading across the country are pretty dramatic evidence of how deep and broad this recession has been and continues to be. While we should avoid being smug at a time like this, we think most Oklahomans, regardless of their political leanings, will be pleased and grateful to see that we are one of the very few states that look more blue than red.

OK Policy focuses not just on budget and tax issues, but on finding ways for government and households to work together to make Oklahoma and Oklahomans more prosperous. One great example of this kind of partnership is 529 college savings plans. These state-managed savings plans are open to everybody who can come up with the $100 initial deposit. Savers can deduct their contributions to the account (up to $10,000 per year) from their Oklahoma state income taxes. If the account is used for qualified education purposes, all the money it earns over the years is exempt from both state and federal income taxes. So the federal and state government have established a system to encourage saving for college and to make it easier by managing the plans. Families just have to take advantage of this structure.

That’s easier said than done. In 2002, the last year for which we have data, only 4,420 Oklahoma tax returns–about 1/3 of one percent of all returns filed–reported contributions to a 529 plan.Most of those who did contribute were from higher income brackets; over half of all contributions were from families making $70,000 or more.

One of Oklahoma’s biggest needs is higher educational attainment. As the economy changes, college and technical education are more and more essential to family security and a growing economy. OK Policy is committed to making education more attainable and more effective. 529 plans are one path toward that goal. We can broaden participation by improving policy, but we also need to broaden awareness. Here’s a video  on starting a college savings plan by Tammy Trenta, whose credentials are led by being a contestant on The Apprentice. Still, it’s a good example of financial planning made simple, which will be one thing we have to do in order to open 529 participation up to all Oklahomans regardless of income and assets.

The New Yorker‘s Shouts & Murmurs humor column recently ran a brilliant piece by Ian Frazier that imagined a colloquium convened by Al Gore to address the problem of global warming… of hell. After presentations by a Samaritan sorcerer of the first century consigned to everlasting perdition for the sin of simony, a scientist from NASA, and the former Vice-President, Satan Himself takes the microphone. Here are excerpts of his talk:

Right now in Hell we are hurting. That’s the single most important take-away I would like you to get from what I have to say to you this afternoon: we are hurting. Hell is being pressed to and beyond its limits to such an extent that we are having trouble simply performing our jobs. Every day, I must make hard choices from among an inadequate supply of options. People in the land of the living are constantly requesting that this or that other person “rot in Hell,” and we’ve always tried to accommodate that, and as a result we have literally tens of billions of individuals—tier after tier after tier of them—sitting there rotting, and we have had to put in new tiers and still they are all over the place. And is anybody besides us giving any thought to maintenance? To the necessary monitoring of the rot? To staffing?…

Because of ongoing constraints, I am sorry to say, the operation of Hell is no longer even close to what it should be, and important areas of quality are being degraded. I hate with my most ancient and implacable hatred of all that is good to have to say this, but unfortunately it’s true. So, for me, the whole increase-in-temperature thing, while important, is pretty far down on my list of concerns. I can stand at the exact center of the sun, temperature twenty-eight million degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s like a summer breeze to me. Far as I’m concerned, warming is not the problem; it’s the over-all decline in Hell’s capabilities. Right now, with the resources we’re being given, we are not punishing souls for their specific transgressions anymore, we’re just warehousing them. And that’s a shame.

Overcrowding?  Decaying facilities? Warehousing? Maybe Oklahoma Corrections Director Justin Jones could be brought in to offer Satan some solace!

Have you visited TED.com? TED gathers smart people for topical conferences and then offers us the speeches in video form, organized both by topic and by user classification–persuasive, beautiful, funny, etc. You’ll find people you’ve heard of, like Al Gore and Bono, and many more you may want to hear from.

We’ve found a couple short speeches that describe some different and successful approaches to reducing poverty. First, Jacqueline Novogratz, who operates a market-oriented non-profit, provides an entertaining overview of micro-credit and other mechanisms allowing poor African women to improve their lives and those of their families. Novogratz argues persuasively that alleviating poverty requires creative approaches and providing individuals with the tools and the opportunities to help themselves.

Closer to home, Majora Carter, the president of Sustainable South Bronx in New York, makes a persuasive connection between environmental policy and fighting poverty. She describes her transition from believing that beautification programs in the ghetto were “a little bit naive” to a conviction that urban design and renewal still must be part of a comprehensive attack on poverty.

OK Policy is dedicated to expanding opportunity and alleviating poverty in Oklahoma. We advocate government policies that help people in need not just through cash and other assistance, but through opening up opportunities that have been closed off to our lower-income neighbors. TED offers some great ideas on this and a host of other important issues.

If we need any more evidence for how divided politics is in our nation today, here’s a couple video clips. Here, Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat from California, argues for his cap-and-trade bill on climate change, while Oklahoma Republican Rep. Mary Fallin argues against.

If you were a pessimist, you could take this interchange as another sign that our differences are irreconcilable and you’d move to one of the states that wants to secede. If you were an optimist, you’d believe that there’s room in the middle for a solution, whether this year or later. We blog, you decide.