The Weekly Wonk November 9, 2014

The Weekly Wonk is a summary of Oklahoma Policy Institute’s events, publications, blog posts, and coverage. Numbers of the Day and Policy Notes are from our daily news briefing, In The Know. Click here to subscribe to In The Know.

This week on the OK Policy Blog, we urged all Oklahomans to get a flu shot. In our continuing discussion of democracy and elections in Oklahoma, we examined why so few Oklahomans vote. In his Capitol Update, Steve Lewis discussed races worth watching in Tuesday’s election. Executive Director David Blatt suggested some goals for Gov. Fallin’s next four years in office in his Journal Record column.

On the OK PolicyCast, we spoke to Blatt about what this week’s elections mean for Oklahoma and the US, and also discussed some non-election news. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS. Blatt also spoke to KGOU about the problems with Oklahoma’s many uncontested elections.

Tomorrow, on Monday, November 10th, OK Policy will host Dr. Lawrence R. Jacobs, a leading national expert on health care policy, for his lunchtime talk, “The 2014 Elections and the Future of Health Reform,” at the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. There are a few tickets left!

In our Editorial of the Week, Religion Dispatches discussed why Oklahoma’s two recent beheading murders by a “Muslim” and a “Christian” should challenge our narratives around religion and violence.

Quote of the Week:

“This year, I’ve been asked to present to the Legislature a plan on how OETA could operate — I think the operational word there is could operate — without state funding in a three-, five- and seven-year plan. Short of an $80 million endowment, we’re going to need the help of the state of Oklahoma, in order to operate the state network.”

-Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) Executive Director Dan Schiedel, speaking to a Rotary club on Monday. State funding currently comprises about one-third of OETA’s budget (Source: bit.ly/10nbpy0)

See prior Quotes of the Day here.

Numbers of the day:

• 889,137 – Oklahomans who received aid purchasing food through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2013.
• $34,321 – Median annual wage of a substance abuse counselor in Oklahoma in 2013.
• 211,006 – How many fewer Oklahomans voted in this year’s governor’s race compared to 2010, a 20 percent drop in turnout.
• $1,097,763 – The average amount of money saved, in medical expenses and lost productivity, for each suicide prevented in Oklahoma.
• 100 – Number of obstetricians and gynecologists working in Oklahoma in 2013.

See prior Numbers of the Day and sources here.

What we’re reading:

• Journalist’s Resource summarizes the state of research into the environmental impact of fracking.
• Vox discusses why the most important elections happening today are for state offices, not Congress.
• The American Prospect looks at the red states that approved minimum wage increase ballot initiatives last night.
• The New York Times reports that only 11 percent of uninsured Americans know about the Affordable Care Act’s next open enrollment period beginning November 15.
• Vox examines the plight of workers trapped in forced labor in the US.