If you’re reading this, chances are you depend on blogs for at least part of the information you consume on a daily or weekly basis. Yet if you’re an Oklahoman interested in state politics and policy, it’s not easy to know which blogs provide good information and interesting perspectives on the issues you care about – besides, of course, this one.

Here’s a list of and brief description of 15 blogs that : 1) are written by Oklahomans; 2) have a political or policy focus; 3) are likely to keep you informed, amused, enlightened or outraged. They’re grouped based on my sense of their ideological leanings – left, right, and center/apolitical. If you disagree with my take, or think I’ve missed a notable site, please jump in with a comment. Read the rest of this entry »

My decision to take vacation over the final week of July and first week of August allowed me to avoid not only some of the worst of the summer heat wave here in Oklahoma but also much of the heated controversy that followed the release of OK Policy’s issue brief on State Question 744, the ballot measure that would peg education funding in Oklahoma to per pupil expenditures in neighboring states. We set out four main arguments that have led us to take a position opposing the measure, the most compelling of which is the strong likelihood that mandating an estimated $1.7 billion increase in funding for common education over three years without a new revenue source would set the state even  further behind in our other areas of public investment that all Oklahomans, including our schoolchildren and teachers, depend on.

Our position was strongly praised by the Oklahoman in a written editorial and this video editorial by editor Ed Kelly (you’ll first get a short commercial for an investment company):

Read the rest of this entry »

Kurt Hochenauer, whose OkieFunk: Notes from the Outback blog provides consistently sharp and perceptive commentary on Oklahoma political issues, recently had a nice piece in the Oklahoma Gazette putting the recent rise in poverty in the state in its historical perspective. He notes:

But what’s probably needed more than anything else is for more Oklahomans to realize how poverty is deeply rooted in the state’s history and remains the foundation for so many of the state’s social problems.

Hochenauer cites Robert Lee Maril’s 2000 book Waltzing with the Ghost of Tom Joad, which provided a vivid ethnographic study of  how poverty plays out in the lives of eight Oklahoma families.

If you missed Doc Hoc’s commentary, it’s well worth a read.