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Government at Any Level is Unfit to Run Your Life
In plain English this time. What is the right way to think about the risk of Covid? About three percent of people who get Covid are dying from it. That number drops precipitously for those outside a few well-defined risk groups (namely older adults and those with certain preexisting conditions). People do risky things every day. We all get in cars, some smoke cigarettes, and most of us eat things we know are unhealthy. Here’s a list of the top causes of death in the U.S. since the first confirmed Covid death: Heart disease (340,889), Cancer (299,358), Covid-19 (148,772), Lower respiratory disease (78,443), Stroke (78,350), Alzheimer’s (66,401), Diabetes (49,215), and Influenza/Pneumonia (30,216). In addition, car accidents cause about 38,000 deaths per year in the U.S. To reiterate: we get in cars, smoke cigarettes, and eat things we know are terrible for us. We do these things every day. We do them without thinking about it. Some caveats to the Covid numbers: there is reason to think the reported deaths may be higher than the actual deaths. The U.K. health department recently reduced their Covid death count by 11 percent, owing to a recognition that their methodology for...
Same Ol’ Story: Blocking Opportunity, Freedom, Prosperity
I know. Sometimes we sound like a broken record. ANOTHER blog about licensing? Long-term care administration licensing? Seriously? Does this theme not get old? Well, yeah, it’s old. We wish we could stop writing about what may very well be the stupidest, most onerous, and most disgusting type of regulation on the books. Frankly, until something is done about it, we don’t believe we have a choice. And more should be getting done. This is not a partisan issue, after all. The Obama administration put out a white paper on the over-abundance of licensing in the United States and its deleterious effects. Nevertheless, Oklahoma has a do-nothing Occupational Licensing Advisory Commission headed by Labor Commissioner Leslie Osborn who clearly couldn’t care less. They rarely meet and almost never recommend that the legislature repeal a license. Nonetheless, NOTHING is more fundamental to freedom than the ownership of oneself. Therefore, the most basic freedom we have is the right to sell our time – our skills and God-given talents – as we see fit. This ability is a pre-requisite, indeed what it truly means, to have freedom of opportunity – the opportunity to develop talent, to grow income,...
A Blunt Cry for Covid Dread’s End
Allowing an admittedly adverse ailment to be inaccurately advertised as an apocalyptic abomination able to annihilate all is aggravating, annoying, and abhorrent. An accurate assessment advises any and all to avoid alarmism and act appropriately. Anxieties are anticipated, but authentic appraisal admits an alternative: any of advanced age or anemic autoimmunity are advised to avert ailment by avoiding acquaintances and afflicted areas. Adults, adolescents, and any of an early age are able to get back to business. Bodies are besieged and beset by baseless bombast. Broadcasters blithely belch baloney. Boorish bullies berate and belittle. Bureaucrats ban beneficial business. Busybodies blinded by bad bulletins belittle benign behaviors. But bravery and boldness bolster benevolence. By bringing back businesses, cities can commence circulation of currency and cooperative commerce. Concededly, Covid causes casualties. However, careful consideration confirms: car crashes cruelly cause catastrophe, cigarettes cause cancer, and cardiac crisis claims more lives than any contrary cause. Curiously, coupes and carriages continue to cruise, cigar consumption carries on, and corpulent...
How to Spend $47 Million in 4 Months
The CARES Act passed by Congress has a provision to give funds to state and local governments. Out of this, Oklahoma County has been given the onerous task of spending $47 million by the end of the year. The caveat being all expenses must be related to COVID-19. Any money not used must be returned to the federal government. While the county is undoubtedly receiving a plethora of self-interested letters requesting a portion of the funds, there are a few ways to spend the money to the benefit of all Oklahoma County residents. This should not be read to condone spending money just because it is available. Government officials must remember that the money they spend comes directly from the taxpayer, and should only be spent in ways that benefit all or most of society. Oklahoma County could also use the money to give grants to small businesses that were forced to shut down or otherwise damaged by the government’s actions related to COVID-19. Small businesses could use the money to avoid layoffs, rehire staff, and stay afloat as the economy recovers. They could also use the money to fulfill any government mandates related to COVID. There should be rules limiting which businesses...
How Oklahoma Can Be Number One in Covid Policy
South Dakota, that sound you hear behind you is footsteps. Oklahoma can be Number One in the policy response to Covid-19. We’ve done fairly well to this point compared to other states, but to take us to the top, our leaders will need good, accurate information, must ignore hyperbole (often outright falsehoods) from the media-politico controversy machine, and should trust individual Oklahomans to do what is best for themselves and their families. Oh, and it would help to have some courage in the face of criticism (or ear plugs to tune out the whining). Fortunately, 1889 Institute has compiled a very helpful webpage containing the cold, hard facts about SARS-CoV-2. Based on these facts, not hysteria and virtue signaling, we recommend some straightforward policy responses. The page is here for anyone who wants to arm themselves with knowledge, rather than bask in the newly virtuous habit of broadcasting how afraid and ignorant one is. For example, did you know that the evidence for widespread masking limiting disease-spread is, at best, mixed? The World Health Organization notes (see page 14 of this report) that there is no scientifically-verified evidence that masks slow the spread...
If Licensing Protects Consumers, Why Are Licensing Laws Blatantly Anti-Consumer?
Once upon a time, there was a small island whose economy revolved around scuba-diving tourism. Unfortunately, the island elected legislators who considered scuba dangerous. Inexperienced divers would surface too quickly and get the bends. The legislature, wanting to make diving feel safer, passed a law that banned sharks in designated scuba diving zones. There were no known cases of sharks attacking divers, nor were divers being frightened into surfacing too quickly by sharks. This is what most occupational licensing schemes look like. Legislators act, giving the public a sense of security, and giving powerful industries protection from competition. The laws do almost nothing to help consumers. Not only are they futile, they are also deceptive. Some licensing regimes, like the Oklahoma Real Estate Broker’s Act, take the deceit one step farther. Instead of just telling the sharks not to eat people (which they weren’t doing anyway) the act does the equivalent of gathering a group of great whites to police the no-shark zone. The great whites chase away the sand sharks that might bite the occasional toe, and in return they get to feast on divers whenever their normal prey becomes too...
Praise and Criticism of Governor Stitt’s Plan for Reopening Schools
Governor Stitt recently held a press conference to announce his plans for opening Oklahoma’s schools in the face of fear and loathing by many regarding Covid-19. There is a great deal of paranoia surrounding this disease, which the 1889 Institute has attempted to moderate by posting accurate information, in contrast to media more interested in sensation. Despite the fear, Governor Stitt is admirably insisting that schools should open. He cannot overrule local school boards and mandate that schools reopen, and even if he could, it would be impolitic not to take steps to reassure parents, teachers, students, and administrators that schools can be opened and attended safely. So, he has taken extraordinary measures to reassure everyone. His plan includes measures like regular viral testing and provisions for personal protective equipment (PPE). Just about any public policy has unintended effects that decision makers fail to anticipate. Unfortunately, when public policy is being devised, the people in the room helping to make decisions are frequently not the people who have to deal with the consequences of their policies. Intentions might be pure, but Governor Stitt’s announced...
Is Education No Longer the Primary Mission of Our Public Schools?
Did you know that the state of Oklahoma is currently experiencing not one, but two pandemics? Until yesterday, neither did I. According to the Oklahoma City School District, the state is currently experiencing the “dual pandemics of COVID-19 and Systemic Racism,” and has decided to spend valuable time and resources to ensure that their teachers learn how to “practice alternative ways of relating to…[their]students.” In the meantime, teachers are supposed to conduct their classes online into November. Unfortunately, if the District doesn’t adequately prepare their teachers to use the available online learning platforms, it won’t matter how woke they are, they won’t be interacting with their students at all. At this point, we really have no idea what the school year will look like, and school districts have given little basis for optimism that students will actually learn anything. Oklahoma City public schools closed in March and “went online.” However, due to lack of sufficient technology, internet access, or proper training, the actual schooling that occurred was slim to none. Since that time, they have had the entire summer to gear up for the upcoming school year. What has the...
Corporate Welfare is not OK
Largely buried under the constant barrage of COVID-19 news and the baffling decision by the Supreme Court to declare half of Oklahoma "Indian Country," was Oklahoma’s and Tulsa’s attempt to bribe Tesla to locate a new facility in that city. Tesla chose Austin, Texas instead, a decision Tesla likely made months ago, but for the opportunity Oklahoma's bid provided for milking as much as possible in concessions (bribery) from Austin. Thus, it may well be a blessing in disguise that Tesla chose Austin over Tulsa. After all, Oklahomans aren't on the hook to pay off a big corporation that is perfectly capable of financially taking care of itself. What's more, consider what might have happened if the deal had been made and ground had been broken before the McGirt decision. Tesla likely would have had to pull out of the deal, and might well have sued the state for bad faith negotiating, which have reflected poorly on Tulsa and Oklahoma. One study estimates corporations receive at least $30 billion a year in tax incentives from state and local governments nationwide. Oklahoma ranks 9th in the amount of corporate welfare it gives out as a percent of GDP. This is higher than California....
Who Speaks for Oklahoma? Setting the Scene for Coming Tribal Negotiations
The situation in Oklahoma is fluid after the Supreme Court’s consequential decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma. There are many moving parts. Independent state officials apparently have different goals and motivations, and legal uncertainty abounds. Against this background, it can be difficult to track what is going on and to sort through leaders’ public statements and actions. Let’s cut through some of the clutter. First, a brief recap: a monster everyone agrees is guilty as sin had his conviction for raping and forcibly sodomizing his wife’s 4 year old granddaughter overturned by the US Supreme Court. In so doing, a slim 5-4 majority on the Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) reservation, encompassing nearly all of the City of Tulsa, is still in existence because the US Congress never formally “disestablished” the reservation when it admitted the State of Oklahoma into the Union more than 100 years ago. As a result, Oklahoma no longer has jurisdiction to prosecute a slew of serious crimes in at least the Creek lands, and likely the other tribal lands covering the entire eastern half of the state. Instead, those crimes will be prosecuted by the federal government. As I noted last...
Undo 802
Why is it that when conservatives suffer a major loss, they give up, accept the new status quo, and fall back to the next retreat position? When progressives suffer a major loss, they regroup and try again. And again. Until they finally wheedle the American public into giving in. I propose a change in strategy. The Oklahoma Legislature should make undoing State Question 802 its top legislative priority for 2021. This will not be an easy task (legislators seem to prefer avoiding difficult tasks) but it is a critical one. The normal legislative process, with all its pitfalls and traps for the unwary, will only bring the topic to another vote of the people. So why spend so much political capital and effort if the same result is possible? Three reasons. First is the disastrous consequences of the policy. Forget that it enriches already-rich hospital and pharmaceutical executives. Forget that it gives the state incentives to prioritize the nearly-poor covered by expansion over the destitute covered by Oklahoma’s existing Medicaid. Here’s all you need to know: legislators are now required by the state constitution to fund the state’s portion of Medicaid expansion, to the tune of $100...
How to Be Number One in Government Transparency
A 2020 HBO movie entitled Bad Education, starring Hugh Jackman, tells the story of Frank Tassone, a real-life superintendent of the Roslyn, New York school district who along with an accomplice, it was discovered in 2004, stole an overall total of $11.2 million in district funds. It’s been called the “largest public school embezzlement in U.S. history.” It should be called the “largest public school embezzlement ever discovered in U.S. history” because there is no way to be sure that a worse theft has not occurred. The theft would never have been discovered had Tassone’s partner in crime, Pamela Gluckin, not had her son buy $83,000 in home remodeling supplies on the school’s credit card. But for alert Home Depot employees, Gluckin and Tassone likely would have gotten away with their theft, carried out over years, to this day. The movie’s dramatization of a student reporter digging into filed receipts and investigating suspicious (fake) vendors likely reflects the hard work of real-life reporters at the time. The sleuthing portrayed in the movie involved many hours combing through piles of invoices stored in a basement room and then calling (or attempting to call) suspect vendors....
Oklahoma Leaders Should Demand Congress Fix the Supreme Court’s Mess, Not Rush to Strike a Deal with the Tribes
Five lawyers in Washington, D.C. have announced that many of us have been living on Indian reservations all this time, we just didn’t know it. In response, several of our elected state leaders have made noises indicating they are in the process of giving away the store in resulting negotiations with tribal leaders, apparently driven by defeatism and panic. They should get off this losing course, and instead demand that the one body that can fix this mess do so: Congress. First, how we got here. Jimcy McGirt, a revolting human being who was convicted of molesting, raping, and forcibly sodomizing his wife’s four-year-old granddaughter, has been justly rotting away in a cage for some 20 years as part of the 1,000-years-plus-life-in-prison sentence he was mercifully handed by an Oklahoma jury in 1997. McGirt came up with a clever legal theory, though. He claimed the State of Oklahoma never had jurisdiction to prosecute him because he is Indian and his crimes were committed on Creek reservation land. You didn’t realize we have Indian reservations in Oklahoma? Neither did anyone else, including the tribes. We’ll get to that. Under a very old federal law called the Major Crimes Act,...
Covid-19 Facts and Statistics for the General Public
The 1889 Institute has published a new webpage on its website explicitly about Covid-19. Its purpose is to provide the best current information for dealing with the pandemic to the general public and policy makers. It also tracks official new daily positive tests and daily deaths, showing trends in the data. It seems like new information, some of it reported out of proper context or highly speculative, is being reported by authorities and researchers every day. Information provided by the Centers for Disease Control is oriented toward health professionals. We wanted to provide good information that is easily digestible. This continues the effort that we promised in an earlier blog post. We hope the information is useful and welcome feedback. Included on the COVID-19 webpage are: A graphic showing daily positive tests/deaths and 7-day averages, Who is NOT vulnerable, Who IS vulnerable, Information on the relationship between age and COVID-19 vulnerability, How COVID-19 is transmitted from person to person, Information on mask efficacy, The effects of societal lockdowns, Information about herd immunity and its importance, Recommendations for the general public and policymakers. All...
One More Suburban Draw: A Black Lives Matter Chapter in Every Oklahoma City School
“You don’t want to live in the Oklahoma City school district.” That was the universal advice I got from everyone I talked to in Oklahoma when I moved from Phoenix with my wife and son, who had a couple of years of high school left to complete. The clear and simple message was that Oklahoma City district schools were pitiful and should be avoided at all costs. You’d think that with a reputation like this, the last thing on the mind of the superintendent of Oklahoma City district schools would be to make sure every school has a Black Lives Matter chapter, but you’d be wrong. I happened to see a recent meeting of the Oklahoma City school board, and that is exactly what the superintendent, Sean McDaniel, said, that he wanted to make sure every campus had a BLM chapter. You’d think that OKC district leaders would be concerned about academics, student motivation, and how to hold both students and educators more accountable for attaining what most people think schools are for – decent educations. Instead, proposed guiding principles for the district, in order, are: Health and Safety; Learning; Social and Emotional Needs; Equity; and Flexible Learning Models. Only two of the five guiding...
Supreme Court Frees States From Oppressive Blaine Amendments; School Choice Is Within Reach For Legislature
Last week SCOTUS told Montana, and by extension, the other 49 states that they can't exclude religious schools from generally applicable school choice programs simply because they are religious. This should have been the self-evident conclusion of anyone who read the First Amendment through the lens of history. The idea that the founders would have allowed states to discriminate against religious schools is foolish. At the time of the founding, many states had established religions. It was only the federal government that was prevented from establishing a religion. It was also barred from interfering with states’ establishments. The relevant phrase is “Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (emphasis added) The constitution has since been amended, and most of the rights codified in the Bill of Rights have been applied to or “incorporated against” the states - that is why state police can no longer search a home without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. But many First Amendment scholars argue that the establishment clause cannot be applied to states, since it was a protection of states’ rights...
The Truth About COVID-19: Better Than You Think
As the media turns its attention back to COVID-19, there is a renewed push to shut down the economy. Some states have even begun to scale back reopening plans for their economies; others continue to delay opening. It is essential to look past their catastrophizing and focus on the facts of COVID-19. One fact to consider: while testing has risen 23%, the rate of positive results has only risen 1.3 percentage points to 6.2%. Even as alarmists point to the rise in cases, they still admit that the boost in testing has played a role in the rise in the total number of known cases. Therefore, the total number of positive cases is not of much use in this case, as it only paints a partial picture. The rate of increase in total positive cases is a more meaningful measure, and it has barely increased. Even more important is who is getting infected. The data show that recent cases are primarily younger people. But that’s a good thing; these are precisely the people that are key to building herd immunity, which is the only long-term solution for fighting COVID-19 and is inevitable anyway. While the news readers reporting “surges” of people testing positive for coronavirus renew calls for...
Filling the Truth Vacuum Regarding COVID-19
With COVID-19 heating up again, and the resumption of societal shutdowns in other states, a pandemic strategy never seen in modern times, it seems appropriate to post facts with appropriate recommendations for action independent of politicized governmental institutions. Providing this information, along with relevant context, is the purpose of the new “COVID-19” webpage on the 1889 Institute’s website. With the recent widely-reported surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the impression created is that the pandemic has spiraled out of control. Therefore, our first factual installment is the following figure, which shows the number of daily new cases and the number of daily new deaths from COVID-19 in Oklahoma. Seven-day moving averages are also illustrated in order to show trends. Source: The Covid Tracking Project (https://covidtracking.com/data/state/oklahoma), which assembles data daily from the Oklahoma Department of Health (OKDOH). OKDOH does not provide longitudinal data. Note that while the number of new cases trended upward lately, the number of deaths per day have trended downward since April. The Centers for Disease Control and state agencies are notoriously...
Whether in the Streets or on a Court, Chaos Results when Words Lose Their Meaning
“There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure, ‘cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.” - Robert Plant Words have meaning. This allows us to communicate with each other. Suppose you and I are having dinner. If I ask you to pass me the salt, meaning the seasoning commonly applied to food, and you have decided to redefine the word “salt” as an explosive device activated by pulling a pin and releasing a handle (or what I would call a hand grenade), it's not difficult to see why you would be very worried, and why I (having asked for a common seasoning) would be surprised by your concern. If words mean whatever the speaker decides in the moment, then we lose even the most basic ability to communicate with each other. In light of the continued debate over whether "defund" means “end all funding for” or “reduce funding for,” and especially in light of last week’s Supreme Court ruling, I am reminded of Genesis 11's account of the Tower of Babel. The short version is that a group of people decided that they would build a tower to heaven. God, seeing that they would accomplish this goal if they continued to work together, and having His own reasons for not wanting them...
Think Carefully before Voting on SQ 802
So we vote next week on whether or not to expand Medicaid according to Obamacare’s provisions. A vote “Yes” on State Question 802 would expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults above the poverty line. A vote “No” would keep the status quo, with taxpayers buying health care under Medicaid mainly for poor children and pregnant mothers. But as with just about anything proposed by initiative, State Question 802 is not really that simple. For one thing, it forever entrenches a federal program, which can be changed by Congress at any time, in our state’s constitution, which is not so easily amended. Obviously, the proponents of SQ 802 want to set the terms of the Medicaid expansion permanently, sidestepping our constitutionally instituted legislature, which is supposed to react and adjust to existing circumstances. SQ 802 would take that flexibility away. A consequence of that reduced flexibility will likely be sacrifices in other state-financed programs such as public education, both in the near term and during inevitable future economic downturns. That’s because Medicaid will be an absolute entitlement ensconced in our constitution. Funding for public education, roads, parks, prisons,...