Quotes of the Day

“I question why the [Ten Commandments] monument was placed outside of the Capitol building in the first place. Was it to imply that Oklahoma is a ‘Godly’ state? When we abuse and murder our women and children at one of the highest rates in the country? When we suffer one of the highest child hunger and poverty rates in the country? When our teen pregnancy and divorce rates are shockingly high? When we choose to incarcerate the mentally ill and addicts rather than providing preventative treatment and therapy?  Given that, can we not do a better job of expressing our faith than placing a monument on the Capitol grounds?”

-Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater (Source)

“[Governor] Fallin no doubt will continue to argue Oklahoma won’t be able to afford Medicaid expansion once federal support drops to 90 percent. The state, after all, is staring at a $1 billion hole next year. Of course, this is a budget crisis of state leadership’s own making – the result of imprudent income tax cuts that primarily benefited the state’s wealthiest. It is made worse by the decline in oil and gas revenues – again, wholly predictable, given that the industry is historically boom-bust. What state budget writers can’t or refuse to see is that by improving health outcomes, Oklahoma can expect a more productive, taxpaying workforce – fewer uninsured who all too often end up tapping taxpayer-financed services when manageable health problems, ignored because of costs, become cataclysmic.”

-Journal Record columnist Arnold Hamilton (Source)

“The mental health systems were told those (mental health) dollars will now be given to you to do community-based services. But the dollars never made it.”

-Terri White, commissioner of the state Mental Health Department, speaking about why the closure of many state mental hospitals in the 1980s and 1990s has led to many of the mentally ill ending up in jail or prison (Source).

“It’s not unreasonable to be too busy or uninterested when it takes 3 elections (2 of which are exclusive) to fill 1 office. It takes an almost superhuman level of interest to properly participate in our current Byzantine system.”

-State Senator David Holt, R-OKC, speaking about Oklahoma’s system of primaries and run-off elections. He has proposed moving to a single ‘top-two’ primary with candidates from all parties and vote-by-mail elections to boost Oklahoma’s very low voter turnout (Source).

“I told her, ‘It sounds like to me you’re about to become the judge, prosecutor and jury.’ I said, ‘Please ma’am, don’t turn my son into a statistic. He needs care.’”

-Johnny Magness, the stepfather of Monroe Bird III, a 21-year-old Tulsan who was shot by a security guard while sitting in a car with a friend and left paralyzed from the neck down. Magness was speaking to an offical with HealthCare Solutions Group, an insurance claims processor that denied coverage to the young because they said his injuries resulted from “illegal activity”, even though he was never charged with a crime. Bird was sent home from the hospital and later died  from a preventable complication often seen in paralyzed patients (Source).

The inference here of course is that SNAP is somehow at odds with the principle of free markets. In fact, significant numbers of the working poor are eligible to receive SNAP assistance due precisely to the “normal functioning” of the “free labor market” where often full-time employment does not pay enough to feed a family.

-University of Tulsa economics professor Scott Carter, discussing recent derogatory comments concerning food stamps recipients posted on the Oklahoma Republican Party’s Facebook page (Source)

“Just because you were convicted of a felony doesn’t mean your ability to weigh in on the state’s government has no merit. Even if you’re released on exceptional behavior back into your community, working, spending time with your family and friends, you are still not a full citizen in Oklahoma.”

– Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, speaking about a rule that disallows Oklahomans convicted of felonies from voting for the full length of their sentence, regardless of whether they’ve been released early.  Some 54,000 Oklahomans are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction (Source)

“The ACA is here to stay. It’s time for Oklahoma to stop fighting this reality and instead look at the enormous opportunity this creates.”

– David Blatt, executive director of Oklahoma Policy Institute, speaking at a Tulsa Regional Chamber forum on health care reform in oklahoma. Expanding health coverage to low-income Oklahomans would provide over one hundred thousand people with access to needed care, create thousands of jobs, bring billions of dollars into the state, and alleviate pressure on struggling rural hospitals (Source)

“Obviously you did not bother to know the majority of the 604,000 people receiving food benefits in Oklahoma are people who are aging, people with disabilities (including disabled veterans) and the working poor who are raising children. The able-bodied adults who do not have children can only receive food benefits for three months if they are unemployed or must work at least 20 hours a week to receive help beyond that point. Last month, only 13,000 or 2.1% of the total recipients were in this category. Food benefits are a very small amount and are not intended to be a person’s entire food budget, thus the name ‘Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’. In fact, the average SNAP benefit is $4.27 per person per day or $1.42 per meal. The people who need this meager benefit are dependent upon it in order to keep themselves and their children from starving. Is that the kind of dependency you are suggesting we discourage?”

-The Oklahoma Department of Human Services, responding to a Facebook post by the Oklahoma Republican Party that compared SNAP food benefits to feeding animals in National Parks (Source)

“Lawmakers don’t like spending one penny more than they must on corrections even when revenues are healthy, much less when they’re in the tank. Yet, they’ve failed repeatedly to follow other states’ examples of how to safely reduce a prison population — the ultimate cost-cutter. If the state gets backed farther into a corner at budget time next year, the hasty early-release of a lot of prisoners could become the go-to solution. The danger is that it would be done California-style, very unsystematically.”

-Tulsa World columnist Julie Delcour (Source)