Womb with a view
Syndicated columnist Rich Lowry wrote this week of the Obama campaign’s condescension toward women. He cited the views of early feminists that women are “just as capable of rational deliberation as men.”
He didn’t mention how out of sync Obama’s views on reproduction are with those of some pioneers of women’s rights.
More than 100 years after her death, Susan B. Anthony remains the subject of scholarly debate about her views on abortion. Anti-abortion groups believe Anthony actively opposed the practice; abortion-rights groups claims she had no strong feelings on the subject.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton once wrote of the “murder of children, either before or after birth.” Victoria Woodhall, the first female candidate for president (1872), said, “Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.”
The point of this is that women — including some modern feminists — don’t have a unified view supporting abortion at any stage of a pregnancy or government-mandated contraception. Obama’s one-womb-fits-all philosophy is patronizing and an insult to many American women.
Sticker shock may be on the way
Old-school Pikepass users, this is your final warning: On Monday the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority will be sending one more notice — the agency’s fifth in the past several months — to Pikepass users who haven’t yet switched from the old plastic devices to the new window stickers.
Beginning in early December, old Pikepasses won’t work. Motorists who pass through the automated turnpike gates using those old devices will be charged $25.
The authority has about 590,000 Pikepass accounts; 495,000 or so have switched over. In addition to the mailed notices to customers informing them of the change, the agency has reached out by phone and through newspaper ads.
Those who wind up seeing $25 charges on their bill can’t say they weren’t warned, but many are sure to do just that.
Splitting the ticket
With the presidential election looming, many ask how anyone can still be undecided. The Associated Press recently interviewed some of those voters. Their answers didn’t bring much clarity.
Texas native Robert Dohrenburg said he voted for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush but not George W. Bush. He supported Barack Obama in 2008. He’s decided to vote for Obama again but he wishes Ron Paul had won the GOP nomination.
So Dohrenburg has supported the most conservative president in living memory and the most liberal president in living memory. Now he plans to stick with a liberal president because Ron Paul, who’s often to the right of Reagan, isn’t the GOP nominee.
If such political split personalities bother you, imagine how tough it must be for the presidential campaigns that must tailor their sales pitch to these voters.
The ebb and flow on Oklahoma tax cuts
The conservative Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which pushed hard for a reduction in Oklahoma’s income tax rate during the 2012 legislative session, wants you to know it has no plans to give up that fight.
OCPA President Michael Carnuccio issued a statement Thursday seeking to make that point clear. One day earlier Tina Dzurisin, a policy impact director for the think tank, had said the OCPA would focus more of its time on other areas such as workers’ compensation reform and pension reform as opposed to “expending so much energy on a proposal that the Legislature didn’t feel like they were quite ready to put through.”
The OCPA has promoted a plan, backed by former Reagan economic adviser Arthur Laffer, to immediately cut Oklahoma’s top personal income tax rate by 3 percentage points, to 2.25 percent, and eventually phase it out entirely.
Carnuccio says his group is working to conduct new research with Laffer, to be released soon, and will “continue to build the case for Oklahoma becoming the next no-income tax state.”
The question will be whether lawmakers will pursue it. There was considerable chatter ahead of the 2012 session about cutting taxes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case presently. Gov. Mary Fallin sought to cut the top rate to 3.5 percent and simplify the tax code, but her plan and others wound up being tabled.
Shades of State Question 744
In 2010, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly rejected State Question 744, which would have required education funding to increase by more than $1 billion over several years. This year, voters in five states — Arizona, Missouri, South Dakota, Oregon and California — face similar measures that involve tax increases to boost education spending.
The measures range from a sales tax hike in Arizona to income tax increases in California. At least those ballot measures are transparent about who will pay the price. Oklahoma’s SQ 744 provided no such details. The proposed massive infusion of money would have been the largest unfunded mandate in Oklahoma history.
Sadly, those pushing for higher education funding in Oklahoma — such as the group “49th is Not OK” — continue to duck that issue. They refuse to say what taxes they’d raise or what programs they’d cut to boost K-12 funding, which already gets 34 percent of all state appropriations.
EMSA bidding for trouble
The folks who manage EMSA, the ambulance service for Oklahoma City, Tulsa and several surrounding communities, don’t seem too keen on implementing one of the changes suggested in a review of the agency.
Tulsa’s Management Review Office took issue with the many sole-source contracts EMSA uses with various vendors. It found that at least six of the nine providers that got at least $50,000 from EMSA were sole-source agreements.
At an EMSA board meeting Wednesday, the agency said it disagreed with the review’s recommendation that purchasing practices should be given a second look. The Management Review Office, understandably so, didn’t like that answer.
Professional services are for the most part not required by state law to seek bids for contracts. But especially given that taxpayers help fund EMSA, the agency should change its ways.
The MRO said it well: “More competitive bidding would force EMSA to do a better job of specifying exactly what’s required and likely deliver a better value proposition.”
Good advice from OU President Boren
University of Oklahoma President David Boren is urging OU football supporters to show Notre Dame fans the same kindness that Sooner fans bestow on other visitors to Norman. It’s a good move by Boren.
Notre Dame hasn’t played a game in Norman in 46 years, but the Fighting Irish did snap OU’s record 47-game win streak back in 1957. Some Sooner fans are still sore over that. Others just don’t like the Irish program, for whatever reason, as has been clear on radio talk shows and was reflected in an Oklahoman story Monday that gave OU fans a chance to vent.
There’s no accounting for knuckleheads, but our guess is Oklahoma fans will heed Boren’s advice and do as they always do, which is to root for the Sooners and treat the visitors in a way that leaves them impressed with the hospitality and glad they came — even if the game doesn’t go their way.
Water wars
Gov. Mary Fallin is seeking federal Environmental Protection Agency approval for the state Department of Agriculture to handle EPA’s role in permitting concentrated animal feeding operations. Naturally, environmental groups are up in arms.
David Ocamb, director of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Sierra Club, says “water is our state’s most precious resource” and claims animal feeding operations threaten water quality.
But large-animal feeding operations also depend upon a clean water supply. Without it, dead carcasses and diseased animals start to stack up and massive financial losses accrue. Agriculture producers in general are far more reliant on clean water than the average citizen.
It’s nonsense to claim the Department of Agriculture — or the agriculture industry as a whole — would turn a blind eye to potential water pollution. Environmentalists prefer the EPA not because it’s for clean water, but because its knee-jerk positions are often simply anti-business.
Does anyone really want to go to prison?
Former state Sen. Mike Morgan’s request for leniency wouldn’t pass the laugh test if it came from the average citizen convicted of a serious crime.
Morgan, former president of the state Senate, was charged with taking more than $400,000 in bribes for influencing legislation. He was convicted of accepting a $12,000 bribe; jurors acquitted Morgan of other charges but deadlocked on some felony counts.
One reason cited for requesting probation instead of prison time is that Morgan suffers from “uncontrollable anxiety, depression and an extraordinary elevated blood pressure.” Is there anyone in Oklahoma who would not suffer those symptoms when facing years a prison cell?
Morgan’s request for leniency was echoed by a Who’s Who of Oklahoma politicians. That shouldn’t matter. The baseline for this sentencing decision is simple: How would the courts treat a non-prominent politician convicted of the same crime?
Where’s the harm in judicial ratings?
Injecting class-warfare arguments into nearly every debate is a staple of the Democratic Party machine and its operatives. Even a nonpartisan voter information project involving nonpartisan judicial seats isn’t immune from class warfare.
A Tulsa trial lawyer says the State Chamber’s ratings of state Supreme Court justices is based on cherry-picked cases and “whether big business won or not.” Note: big business. The state’s civil liability system and judicial precedents affect businesses large and small, and by extension the entire economy.
All the chamber is doing is providing information, a small counter to the legal community’s outsized influence on the selection of justices. Although they are appointed to office, the justices must be periodically “retained” by voters.
Many voters are surprised by the retention ballot when they arrive at the polls. What’s the harm of calling more attention to the ballot, regardless of who’s doing the attention-calling? The trial bar’s attempts to keep voters uninformed is self-serving and pathetic.
