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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 discuss the the new leadership team appointed by House Speaker Jeff Hickman. A guest post from the Director of Communications for the Oklahoma Public Schools Resources center describes the importance of supporting innovation in the state’s rural schools. In an upcoming Practice & Policy event, the state Department of Human Services will host Tim Knapp of The Bowery Mission, one of New York City’s oldest missions to the homeless.
In this week’s episode of the OK PolicyCast, we share Dr. Nick Carnes’ keynote remarks on what’s keeping working-class Americans out of public office, recorded at our 2014 Summer Policy Institute. Carnes is a graduate of the University of Tulsa and Princeton, and presently teaches at Duke University. We also review the major headlines of the week. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS.
Writing in the Journal Record, Executive Director David Blatt notes that the voices of women and minorities will be largely missing in the state legislature in the upcoming session, and discusses why that matters. In our Editorial of the Week, Tulsa County sheriff Stanley Glanz argues that Oklahoma’s overincarceration of people with mental illness rarely results in positive outcomes.
Quote of the week:
“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)
See previous Quotes of the Day here.
Numbers of the day:
- 160 – Number of people working as embalmers in Oklahoma in 2013.
- 66.40% – Percentage of women incarcerated in Oklahoma who experienced childhood physical and/or sexual abuse.
- 20 – The season limit on bobcat hunting in Oklahoma (per license).
- 10.9% – Percentage of households in Oklahoma that do not have bank accounts. The US average is 8.2%.
- 24 – Number of babies born to women incarcerated in Mabel Basset Correctional Center in 2013.
See previous Numbers of the Day and sources here.
What we’re reading:
- USA Today examines why a growing number of rural hospitals are shutting down, and the effects of those shutdowns on the communities those hospitals served.
- NPR discusses some schools’ tactics in convincing their students to eat healthier school lunches.
- ESPN columnist Jason Whitlock explains how gains of the Civil Rights Movement have been thwarted by a half-century of segregation by incarceration.
- Slate shares an excerpt of a new book on why it’s so hard to climb out of poverty in the United States.
- PBS reports that domestic violence is as prevalent an issue among college students as sexual assault.
