Quotes of the Day

“We’re losing teachers right now to other states. Who would like to work in the same place for the same amount of money with no increase whatsoever, and at the same time your bills are going up? It’s demeaning. It comes to the point where you love your job so much, you go hungry.”

– State Rep. Mike Brown, discussing how low pay contributes to the state’s teaching shortage (Source: bit.ly/1uiJUxh)

“The inmates, they know they can get away from stuff. They can run from us more often than when I started. If you put yourself in our shoes, knowing that there’s maybe one person who can respond if you’re not tied up somewhere else, are you going to go out searching for the crimes and rule violations that the inmates are committing? It’s getting extremely dangerous there and I don’t see the administration locally or down in (Oklahoma City) doing anything to mitigate the risks. We don’t get compensated enough to be put in that much danger and risk.”

-A former Oklahoma corrections officer, speaking anonymously to the Enid News & Eagle. Due to state budget cuts, individual corrections officers have been left responsible for watching more than 200 prisoners, and administrative staff at prisons have been diverted to helping out with security (Source: http://bit.ly/12n86YT)

“When you use a public office, pretty shamelessly, to vouch for a private party with substantial financial interest without the disclosure of the true authorship, that is a dangerous practice. The puppeteer behind the stage is pulling strings, and you can’t see. I don’t like that. And when it is exposed, it makes you feel used.”

-David B. Frohnmayer, a Republican who served a decade as attorney general in Oregon, speaking about revelations that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s letter challenging federal regulations of natural gas drilling was written by lawyers working for Devon Energy (Source: http://nyti.ms/1u9prf5)

“I want him to have a stable life. I don’t want him to be raised like this. I don’t like this — I feel like a failure.”

– Dennis LaRonge, speaking to a Tulsa World reporter about his five year-old son. LeRonge and his family are homeless, and live in downtown Tulsa. (Source: bit.ly/12r350W)

“A lot of people will tell you education is important, but you don’t see it at the polls on Election Day. Until people make the connection between saying they support education versus doing what it takes to support education, I don’t know that anything will ever change.”

-Patti Ferguson-Palmer, president of the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association, speaking about a new report that ranks the lifetime earnings of Tulsa and Oklahoma City teachers near the lowest in the nation, even after adjusting for cost of living (Source: bit.ly/1rYP5SR)

“Oklahomans expressed considerably more pessimism about the trajectory of the national economy than did their peers.”

-Russell Evans, director of the Steven C. Agee Economic Research & Policy Institute at Oklahoma City University, discussing the results of a recent survey that found most Oklahomans expect widespread unemployment within five years (Source: bit.ly/1yinmTd)

“In the state budget or the federal budget, direct services get the lion’s share of funding, but doing this prevention work and trying to get kids to never start smoking is so important so they don’t end up with cancer and other problems. If we don’t stop the pipeline, we’re only going to need more and more treatment services.”

-Tracey Strader, executive director of Oklahoma’s Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (Source: http://bit.ly/1vh0e6R)

“Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, and a handful of other Republican senators authored legislation to replace Obamacare with the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act. This legislation retains important features of Obamacare while shifting millions of Medicaid enrollees into private health plans funded by a public subsidy, a plan that bears similarities to our successful Insure Oklahoma. Obamacare exchanges are introducing competition to the marketplace, offering consumers more choices while helping contain rate increases. The fact that Coburn retained so much of Obamacare in his reform recognizes there are a lot of positives in this law, however controversial it may be.”

-Former state senator and Oklahoma Secretary of Health Tom Adelson (Source: http://bit.ly/1B5wcpD)

“In order for true healing to take place in Ferguson, Missouri, and communities around the country, law enforcement agencies, churches and civil rights organizations must come together to restore faith in our justice system.”

-Lindsay Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Tulsa YWCA, which helped organize a vigil to protest police killings of young black men in Ferguson and around the country (Source: http://bit.ly/1y1l5wX).

“Until our state leaders take that same emphasis on thinking more about tomorrow than today, our state and its people will never reach its full potential.”

-University of Central Oklahoma College of Business Dean Mickey Hepner, speaking at an Oklahoma City Chamber luncheon. Hepner said Oklahoma’s growth is threatened by lawmakers who put shortsighted gains ahead of investing in infrastructure and education (Source: http://bit.ly/1Cam7cw).