Dead-voter bill passes over Democratic opposition

[April 14, 2021]  Legislation that requires swift removal of dead individuals from voter rolls has passed the Oklahoma Senate over the united opposition of Senate Democrats.

House Bill 1752, by Rep. Denise Crosswhite Hader and Sen. Dave Rader, requires county election boards to remove the names of deceased individuals from voter rolls within 30 days of notification.

“What this bill is trying to do is close an open-ended process,” said Rader, R-Tulsa.

Under current law he said the process for removal “could be carried on forever,” although he said some county election boards promptly remove the names of deceased individuals.

Crosswhite Hader made a similar point when she presented the bill on the House floor in March, saying the legislation simply provides a deadline for action that election boards can easily meet.

“Many times these county election boards are actually doing it even faster than 30 days,” said Crosswhite Hader, R-Piedmont. “I’ve heard even as quickly as a week.”

Even so, the bill faced opposition in both chambers.

In the Senate, HB 1752 passed on a vote of 38-8. All Democrats present voted against the bill’s passage.

That largely continued a trend begun in the Oklahoma House of Representatives where HB 1752 previously passed on a vote of 81-15. All opponents in that chamber were also Democrats, although four House Democrats did join Republicans in support.

Apprenticeship Bill Passes House

OKLAHOMA CITY – A bill that extends high school apprenticeship programs to include sophomores that are at least 16 years old passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 619 by Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, and Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, passed with a vote of 94-0. The bill was amended in the House, so it now moves back to the Senate for final passage.

“This bill is near and dear to my heart, as I work in the trades and see the need for such early training of our future workforce,” West said. “This opens the door to our students to the possibilities of great career opportunities in the trades. It will help us develop a stronger and more skilled workforce to attract greater business development and more jobs into the Oklahoma economy.”

One of those other churches is Trinity Bible Chapel in Windsor, Ontario. From Protestia.com:

Pastor Jacob Reaume has been fined thousands of dollars and faces jail time. The six elders have all been fined thousands. The church has 26 charges before the court and faces 30 million dollars in fines. They had a service in January that cost them $83,000 – fines and court costs which are not able to be waived, removed, or appealed.

In the panic of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the State of Oklahoma seems to have made a series of bad purchase decisions, two of which have resulted in the Attorney General being forced to sue to get the state's money back.

Back in January, AG Mike Hunter filed a petition in district court for over $1.8 million over a personal protective equipment order that a company never delivered to the Oklahoma Department of Health. The Attorney General's press release notes that said company "was formed on March 23, the same day the first purchase order was made by the Department of Health." That should have set off alarm bells, but we are talking the Oklahoma Department of Health: they don't have a good financial track record.

The latest lawsuit is in regard to an order of nearly $900,000 for 40 ventilators in April 2020, of which only two were delivered by June. The order was canceled in October, but a portion of the original order was finally delivered in December. What a mess.

OKLAHOMA CITY (April 13th) – Attorney General Mike Hunter has filed a lawsuit against A&K Distributors for failing to deliver an order of ventilators to the Oklahoma State Department of Health at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic.

In the lawsuit, the state claims the Oklahoma State Department of Health paid over $890,000 for 40 ventilators last April. The company had only delivered two ventilators by June 2020. 

Despite canceling the order in October, the company had 21 ventilators delivered in December. The Oklahoma State Department of Health returned the wrongfully delivered ventilators but has not received a refund.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Rep. Sheila Dills, R-Tulsa, today commented on statements from the NCAA that they will pull championship events from locations where transgender biologically male athletes are not allowed to participate in girl’s or women’s sports. The news came after passage of Senate Bill 2, the Save Women’s Sports Act, in a House committee last week. The act requires public school or college athletic teams to be designated based on biological sex. Dills is a coauthor of the bill.

We all want to promote business and economic development opportunities in our state and our local communities, and we certainly love athletics. But we cannot sacrifice our Oklahoma values, which include fairness in sport and the protection of opportunities for women and girls in Oklahoma, for the sake of dollars or even the popularity of such events.

Title IX, federal civil rights law, specifically protects women and girls based on the intent of the definition of biological sex. A small section of the population wants to cloud that intent.  

Hollywood hates Oklahoma's culture, people, values, and politics. Take one look at Georgia and see what reward there is for doling out years of corporate welfare to the woke leftists. It doesn't end well.

1889 INSTITUTE: END THE FILM ENHANCEMENT REBATE

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK (April 7, 2021) – The 1889 Institute has published “Corporate Welfare Directory: Oklahoma Film Enhancement Rebate,” which makes it clear that the state’s tax rebate program for filmmaking is a corporate welfare scheme. Dressed up as something to help Oklahoma’s image and to create jobs, the 35 percent rebate applies to projects with production budgets as low as $50,000 and as little as $25,000 in qualifying expenses.

“With qualifying production budgets as small as this, it’s obvious that the Film Enhancement Rebate Program is more about throwing a sop to an industry than it is about making Oklahomans more prosperous,” said Tyler Williamson, the study’s author and 1889 Institute Research Associate. “One wonders if Oklahoma’s tax system is being manipulated just so our elected officials have a chance to meet movie stars,” he said.

In an earlier publication, the 1889 Institute devised a series of yes/no questions for determining if a particular policy could be considered corporate welfare. “The film rebate checks off every box,” said Williamson. “A recent Incentive Evaluation Commission report that supports the film rebate, reversing that commission’s earlier judgment changes nothing. The film rebate is a net cost and effectively a subsidy to a California-based, and very wealthy, industry,” Williamson said.

About the 1889 Institute

The 1889 Institute is an Oklahoma think tank committed to independent, principled state policy fostering limited and responsible government, free enterprise and a robust civil society. The publication, “Corporate Welfare Directory: Oklahoma Film Enhancement Rebate” and other reports can be found on the nonprofit’s website at www.1889institute.org. 

Yeah, I know, I'm not a graphic designer...

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK -- Today, Americans for Prosperity-Oklahoma commended Governor Kevin Stitt for signing into law S.B. 913, a transformative bill that will provide for a more expedited review of state regulations and give the Legislature additional oversight of agency rules. AFP-OK continues to work closely with Governor Stitt to reduce regulations and foster a culture of a “customer-focused” state government

AFP-OK State Director John Tidwell issued the following statement:

GOVERNOR STITT SIGNS GROUNDBREAKING REGULATORY REFORM INTO LAW

OKLAHOMA CITY (April 12, 2021)— Governor Kevin Stitt signed groundbreaking regulatory reform into law today, building on the Break the Tape initiative and fulfilling another priority of the People’s Agenda. Senate Bill 913 will create the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules
to review agencies’ rules throughout the year and streamlines the rule repeal process to help get unnecessary and costly regulations off the books quicker.

“I am thrilled to sign this reform into law and am grateful for the shared commitment in the Legislature and across all level of government to cut red tape and reduce burdensome regulations for Oklahomans,” said Governor Stitt. “SB 913 builds on our Break the Tape initiative and is another step forward to foster Oklahoma’s pro-business environment as we strive toward becoming a Top Ten state.”

If state can’t reward success, don’t punish it

In the free market, those who provide the best products or services are usually rewarded with greater pay or profit. But in government, the opposite often occurs.

Those who want Oklahoma’s educational outcomes to improve must change that dynamic. Fortunately, the State Board of Education has taken an important step towards achieving that goal.

Charter schools are public schools that operate under a legal agreement with a sponsor. If the charter school fails to live up to the terms of its agreement, it can be shut down. Charter enrollment is also the result of student families’ proactive choice, while traditional school enrollment is a passive process in which students are assigned based on geography. In exchange, the charter is granted certain flexibility in how it operates.

The public-school charter system has worked as hoped. Poor performers have closed, but the best schools have become islands of success. Review the state’s A-F report cards for schools in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and you’ll notice a trend. Nearly all A and B schools are charter schools. Nearly all F schools are traditional public schools. One of Oklahoma’s charter schools is even ranked among the best schools in the United States.

Yet those public charter schools are serving the same basic demographic groups as their lower-performing traditional counterparts.

First of all, notice how the alphabet soup of sexual deviancy continues to grow? LGBT... LGBTQ... LGBTQ+... LGBTQ2S+... eventually it will literally be an alphabet long. It must be a wearisome task keeping up with the new religion of wokeness (or, as Erick Erickson calls it, Woke-O Haram

Second, the "Party of Science" sure hates science as it relates to human biology. The first victims in the secular drive for sexual deviancy are always women and children.

Third, as should be obvious, I don't post every press release that I receive and I don't agree with every press release that I post. The ones I publish are worthy of publication for public distribution or public ridicule (the latter in this case).

The modern Democratic Party has embraced pure lunacy.

Democrats Respond to Anti-Trans Legislation

OKLAHOMA CITY -- House Minority Leader Emily Virgin, D-Norman, and State Rep. Mauree Turner, D-OKC, released the following statements today in response to Senate Bill 2, which prohibits anyone of the male sex from playing on athletic teams designated for females, women, or girls. The bill is specifically aimed at Oklahoma’s transgender student population.