Quotes of the Day

The same activity is taxed at roughly 11.5 percent in North Dakota. Guess what? They’re drilling like mad in North Dakota!

-Ken Levit, executive director of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, on why energy companies don’t need a tax break that drops the tax rate on horizontal wells to 1 percent in Oklahoma (Source: http://bit.ly/15KB1Sb)

You didn’t need a law degree to know that this bill was unconstitutional when it was passed.

-Rep. Jerry McPeak (D-Warner), arguing against asking taxpayers to pay for a special legislative session to address a 2009 lawsuit reform law that the Oklahoma Supreme Court recently ruled as unconstitutional “logrolling”

Middle-class consumer demand is a much greater driver of business expansion than wealth at the top.  The basic reasoning is simple: a successful business will only hire more workers and increase production when people are able to buy what the business wants to sell. That demand won’t continue if the average American can’t obtain the skills, opportunities and, ultimately, good wages to keep up this ‘virtuous cycle.’

 -Gene Perry, policy analyst with Oklahoma Policy Institute

There were nights when I was captain when I walked all night long, all night by myself. There was no one in the control centers. They kept saying we had to economize.

-Berl Goff, former prison captain for The GEO Group, Inc., which oversees some 2,500 inmates in Oklahoma and is the 2nd largest for-profit private prison company in the U.S.

There’s two things about the Texas Model. First, there’s this kind of arrogant refusal to distinguish what God has done for you and what you’ve done for yourself. So, we’re awash in oil and gas, which is nothing we did–God did that–and it’s powered our economy. We have a coast and one of the biggest ports in the world, Houston. And we’ve got interstate highways that run north and south, east and west. And we’ve got great weather. So it’s really geography and geology. The other piece of it is the arrogance of refusing to look at our very high poverty rate, our very high percentage of low-wage jobs, our top rate of uninsured medically in the country, and say that this is a miracle.

-Scott McCown, executive director of Center for Public Policy Priorities, a think tank based in Austin (Source: http://bit.ly/15AAIvp)

Any fiscally responsible policymaker needs to seriously consider at what level government should incentivize something that is now standard practice. It’s not responsible for government to give money away as an incentive if no incentive is needed.

-Oklahoma Finance Director Preston Doerflinger, who said Oklahoma should end a tax break for horizontal drilling that has grown to cost hundreds of millions (Source: http://bit.ly/15iU8T8)

The first part of the title is substantive law — reducing your income tax liability. The second section of the title is creating a fund and providing for an appropriation. Here we have two subject matters as quickly as you can use your eyes to look at the title.

-Attorney Jerry Fent, arguing before a state Supreme Court referee on why the income tax cut/Capitol repairs bill violates the single-subject rule in Oklahoma’s Constitution (Source: http://bit.ly/15w5V2N).

Quote of the Day: “[Dr. Ramona] Paul understood that while pre-K is no silver bullet, the failure to help children destined to start kindergarten far behind their peers is ultimately more expensive. She understood that an early investment in children is a building block for future success.”

-The Oklahoman Editorial Board (Source: http://bit.ly/15tvuBu)

Even on the days when you’re not quite sure the decisions you make are the best for everybody, or if it’s that gut-wrenching decision where you’re just like ‘Could this be the best decision? Did I do this right?’ … you go home to your own child, and you’re like ‘Every kid deserves to have the safety and stability that I hope I’m providing for my child.’

-Katie Cooper, a child welfare worker with teh Oklahoma Department of Human Services (Source: http://bit.ly/156LirF)

Because the wages of DOC employees are so low, we struggle to keep anyone on the job, much less recruit anyone. This is dangerous because our prisons are full and we continue to imprison Oklahomans at a higher rate than just about anywhere in the world. There were large disturbances involving dozens of inmates at three institutions in recent months. One officer caught in a melee at the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center in March admitted that the inmates beating him could have killed him if they’d so chosen. He’s thankful they didn’t, and legislators should be, too.

-Sean Wallace, executive director of Oklahoma Corrections Professionals (Source: http://bit.ly/14QiqUu)