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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.
On the OK Policy Blog this week, we found that same-sex marriage will boost Oklahoma’s income tax revenue. We argued that we shouldn’t allow criminal justice reform in Oklahoma to be driven by fear. In a guest post, a local high school history teacher describes what Oklahoma’s education crisis looks like from the ground.
Executive Director David Blatt wrote in a blog post and in his Journal Record column that the state Attorney General’s lawsuit to take away the subsidies that allowed 55,000 Oklahomans to purchase affordable health insurance is based on a misguided reading of the law.
On the heels of new poverty data from the Census Bureau, we’ve released our 2013 Oklahoma Poverty Profile. We reviewed the new poverty data earlier, and found that Oklahoma’s economy is leaving too many people behind.
Mark your calendars: On November 10th, OK Policy will host Dr. Lawrence R. Jacobs, a leading expert on health care policy, for his lunchtime talk “The 2014 Elections and the Future of Health Reform.” Click here to purchase tickets.
This week on the OK PolicyCast, we talked to policy analyst Carly Putnam about economic opportunities for women in Oklahoma, a topic she wrote about on the OK Policy Blog. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS.
In our Editorial of the Week, The Tulsa World’s editorial board argued that the state Department of Education still needs to meet its testing mandate this winter despite unrest over standardized testing and having no testing vendor lined up.
And finally – if you receive the Weekly Wonk by email and want more information and analysis from OK Policy, you can sign up anytime to receive In The Know, our weekday morning news brief. Click here to sign up for In The Know.
Quote of the week:
“The first thing I thought was ‘Yay.’ The second thought I had was ‘We have so much to do!’”
– Mary Bishop, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that resulted in the legalization of same-sex marriage in Oklahoma, who married her long-time partner on Monday (10/06/14) after judges ended a stay on the ruling (Source: http://bit.ly/1EoT5Vn)
See previous Quotes of the Day here.
Numbers of the day:
- 43% – The growth in Oklahoma’s Asian-American population from 2000-2010.
- 22 – Number of threatened or endangered species in Oklahoma.
- 69.6% – Percentage of Oklahoma students who took the SAT in 2014 who met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark.
- 16% – Drop in crude oil prices at the Cushing, OK oil hub since mid-June.
- 27,275 – Number of marriage licenses issued in Oklahoma in 2013. 17,227 divorce decrees were issued in the state that same year.
See previous Numbers of the Day and sources here.
What we’re reading:
- KGOU shared details on a new program that doubles how food stamp recipients can purchase at farmers’ markets.
- John Oliver offered a revealing look at civil forfeitures, a process which allows state and federal government to seize individuals’ property without convicting them of a crime.
- The Washington Post discussed a surprising Obamacare experiment that is improving health in low-income communities while saving taxpayers $24 million last year.
- Vox examined why oil prices are plummeting and what that could mean for the economy.
- The New York Times reported on a poll of low-income Southerners found that they preferred Medicaid over private health insurance.
