Quotes of the Day

“I’m not even a seismologist. I can tell you what made the earth start shaking. Forty-five years I’ve lived on this hill. I never felt anything until they started injecting that salt water.”

-Marietta resident Jonny Hickman, speaking about the link between earthquakes and oil and gas wastewater injection wells (Source: http://bit.ly/PYmd0l)

Well, what are they there for? We ought to be monitoring those deaths just like we monitor infectious diseases and track where these people are getting their drugs, what’s the source of the drugs, and finding out where we need to intervene.

-Dr. Hal Vorse, an Oklahoma City addiction treatment specialist, who said he finds it hard to understand why Oklahoma medical examiners don’t collect the names of the doctors who prescribed drugs involved in overdose deaths (Source: http://bit.ly/PRspHD)

For the average person and the average kid (athletics) should be seen as a plan B. The purpose of this book is to change the paradigm … People ask, “What is your plan B if sports doesn’t work out?” They should be asking, “What is your plan A?” And sports should be your plan B. 

-Damario Solomon-Simmons, OK Policy’s legislative liaison who is also writing a book with the working title, “How the Sports Lottery is Destroying Black Communities” (Source:  http://bit.ly/1ja4Aot).

So now it doesn’t matter if you have a pre-existing condition; I’m not going to have to worry.

– Jim Curry, a Tulsa resident with diabetes who signed up for health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Curry estimates that he spent hundreds of dollars every month on diabetes supplies before he became insured (Source: http://bit.ly/1kqPJ8J).

We know of one Oklahoma district that is using history textbooks that name Frank Keating as the Governor of Oklahoma. That’s more than a decade outdated.

-KFOR reporter Sarah Stewart, who also found Oklahoma schools are using textbooks held together with duct tape and missing covers (Source: http://bit.ly/1opzUVR)

Lawmakers are considering automatic tax cuts that would be triggered whenever revenue grows modestly. But we need a better trigger. How about no more income tax cuts until per-pupil funding climbs back to where it was in 2008? How about no tax cut until our teacher salaries are no longer among the lowest? How about no tax cut until our students are no longer being taught from outdated textbooks? How about no tax cut until our college graduation rate reaches the national average? The message from Oklahomans is clear: “Don’t cut our taxes until you fund the services we need.”

– Oklahoma Policy Institute Executive Director David Blatt, speaking to a crowd of 25,000 at the Oklahoma Capitol at a rally in support of funding for public education (source: http://bit.ly/1olkpOz).

When we go to career fairs, especially at big universities, you can watch where graduates are going. They’re going to the districts and states that pay more. We joke about Texas, but Texas takes a lot of students away from here because their starting pay is almost $10,000 more per year.

-Ken Calhoun, Executive Director of Human Capital for Tulsa Public Schools, who said they are struggling to find enough teacher applicants due to the low pay in Oklahoma (Source: http://bit.ly/1ohFAkJ) 

[It] says we don’t care. It says we don’t care about our kids and we don’t care about the future.

Guthrie Parent James Long, on what it says that state school funding is $200 million less than in 2008 when schools are educating 40,000 more students (Source:http://bit.ly/1hgEujJ).

The energy industry doesn’t pay a lot of income tax because of the intangible drilling cost deduction. And we don’t have an ad valorem tax on oil and gas wells, like Texas does. So what is going to be their contribution to the running of the state? Severance taxes, historically, has been how the oil and gas industry has helped contribute their part to the state. And as corporate citizens, they ought to be contributing their part.

-Don Millican, the Chief Financial Officer of Kaiser-Francis oil company. Millican also serves on the board of Oklahoma Policy Institute. He said Oklahoma’s generous tax break for horizontal drilling is not creating any extra economic activity, because companies drill where the hydrocarbons are. (Source: http://bit.ly/1o3OUZf)

Let me tell you about one of these people, a 27-year-old Oklahoman named Kendall Brown. When Kendall was in middle school, she was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Her medication and treatment are expensive, and when Kendall was growing up, her mom would sometimes take on clerical jobs just to get insurance. At 27, Kendall can no longer stay on her mom’s plan, and until recently, she was uninsured because of her pre-existing condition. Today, Kendall is covered by a quality, affordable plan she bought through the marketplace — which she told us meant “life or death” for her. And because of the Affordable Care Act, her new insurer can’t legally discriminate against her just because she’s a woman, or because she has a health condition.

-U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, writing in the Tulsa World about how Oklahomans benefit from the Affordable Care Act (Source: http://bit.ly/1o0DGoy)