The 2020 Senate Freedom Index is now published, to compare the lawmakers' commitment to restoring and protecting individual liberties in their powers to create and rescind laws.
  This year a pair of freshmen who are also former military officers, are tied for the top spot in the senate. Adam Pugh & Joe Newhouse both voted to restore & protect citizen freedoms in 9 of 10 floor votes. They also gained bonus points for authoring bills the Sooner Politics selection committee deemed essential and/or scored in the index.
 The young Republicans from OKC & Tulsa metro districts, led all scores with a +85, on a spectrum of 100 to +100.
  A person scoring a zero on this index is deemed to vote against freedom in half the scored floor votes.  A score of +50 on this index is equivalent to a +75 on many other indices that do not issue negative index scores.
  8 Republicans were close behind with scores of 80. they were:

  The 2020 House Freedom Index is now published, to compare the lawmakers' commitment to restoring and protecting individual liberties in their powers to create and rescind laws.
  This year a member of the House leadership team Terry O'Donnell of the Tulsa metro delegation, led all scores with a +85, on a spectrum of 100 to +100.
  A person scoring a zero on this index is deemed to vote against freedom in half the scored floor votes.  A score of +50 on this index is equivalent to a +75 on many other indices that do not issue negative index scores.
  Once again, two House freshmen tied in the 2nd spot; along with Rep. Kevin West of the OKC metro delegation. The freshmen were rural lawmakers from eastern Oklahoma, David Hardin, and David Smith.
  Former Democrat, Johnny Tadlock was one of four Republicans tied for the 4th spot, along with Jim Olsen, Sean Roberts, & Judd Strom. Olsen & Strom are in their first 2-year term.  Tadlock completed his 3rd term, Roberts finished his 5th term.
  
  Unlike last year's inaugural index, the two major parties are not as clearly separated. Democrat Merleyn Bell scored 0, but that still put her as high or higher than 26 Republicans. Dell Kerbs was the lowest scoring Republican with a -40, which is worse that the worst Democrat in the 2019 index. Last year's average score was +28.8, but this year's score is a pathetic +6.8, which isn't small govt. creed.

    House Majority Floor Leader, Jon Echols; met with Joey Magana of Americans For Prosperity (an economic policy think tank), to discuss what will happen this week. The capitol is closed to the public and only floor business will be conducted.
  He talks about;

1.  why the governor called the emergency session
2. how the legislature will meet
3. what happened to the current regular session
4. the financial impact of the crisis
5. the strategies for success
6. the Tiger King series.

​

  Democrat lawmaker, Jason Dunnington, proposed a new law to strip parents of their important role of approving a 16 or 17 year old's request to get married.  He dramatically detailed one scenario of an unnamed and unverified instance where a child felt forced into a marriage she regretted.
  Dunnington's solution is to end all marriages where a spouse is under 16 years of age.
  But the real sticking point was to also end parental permissions for 16 & 17 year olds and exchange the parental right for a judge's order of emancipation.
  Reps. Gann, Olsen, Russ, Randleman, Lepak, West(K), & David Hardin; challenged the measure on various points and provided several scenarios where Dunnington continually insisted that only judges were fit to make the decision to remove the youth from the parents and make the decision without any parental consent or perhaps even knowledge of the proceedings?

  On Saturday, Governor Kevin Stitt addressed the Tulsa County GOP Convention. One of his 2020 agenda items is a call for the people of Oklahoima to vote to authorize a new constitutional convention.
  Gov. Stitt said the original constitution ratified in 1907 was the longest of any state. It's decried by President Theodore Roosevelt as "Twice as long as the New Testament and twice as hard to read."
  Since then, the voters have continually amended the document at a rate of once every 8 months.  Many potions of the original constitutions are merely legislation to appropriate the first funds of budget year 1908 to various agencies.
  Many more portions are now ruled unconstitutional as they are contrary to federal constitutional law.
  We teach our teenagers that "Ignorance of the law is no excuse", but so many statutes and constitutional language remains in the official documents, even though they cannot and should not ever be enforced to the detriment of the Oklahoma residents.
​ Meanwhile, in the Oklahoma Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Joe Newhouse achieved passage of his SJR31 call for a ballot question to ask the voters to authorize a convention. 
  If that convention is called and succeeds to create a proposed replacement or amended current constitution, then the voters will have final authority to ratify or reject the proposal and continue under current constitutional framework.

For the past several years, several lawmakers have presented annual calls for a ballot question.  But leadership has failed to even call for such a committee vote since 1974.  Banz, Loveless, Dahm, McEachin, Fetgatter, and others have insisted that presenting this required 20 year question is an oath of their office.

 Rep Sean Roberts worked with the House Public Safety Committee to advance an effort to combat the growing problems with crime committed by illegal aliens in Oklahoma.
  The measure would allow law enforcement to seize vehicles and other property of illegal aliens if the alien has a past criminal history in the U.S.
  The HB4136 goes further, to hold municipalities liable if the local policy declines to take proper police action and the negligence results in other citizens being further victimized by the criminal illegal alien.
  The procedure of committee passage hit a few controversies when Democrats objected to germaneness of inserting the new language into a bill titled as a sex crimes reform.
  The passed committee substitute is a bill that started out as rep. Danny Sterling's initiative, but he allowed Rep. Sean Roberts to present a completely different title, enacting clause, and language. 
  Another bit of drama developed when the vote fluctuated and rested in a 6-6 tie. The chairman, JJ Humphries, attempted to hold the vote open for the 3 non-present committee members to have opportunity to vote. He intended to proceed to essentially table the voting while the roll was open.  That met with strong & unanimous opposition. 
  The committee paused for just a couple minutes until Speaker Pro Temp, Harold Wright entered the room. Just as he was casting the deciding vote in favor of 'do pass', Democrat Matt Meredith also switched his vote to 'yay', resulting in a final 8-5 vote tally.

  Former Adair County Sheriff, David Hardin, successfully advanced a 'dead bill' by working with Rep. Danny Sterling, & gutting another bill in the House Public Safety Committee and inserting the capitol language. 
 We spoke with Rep. Hardin yesterday, about the substance of the measure. He indicated that lawmakers and retired certified law enforcement should have their 2nd Amendment rights in the seat of govt. While the bill only addresses some of those who enter the capitol, the effort to lay aside the fears that have been created by the gun bans which have become so prevalent in recent decades.
​ Rep. Hardin adds that those with valid OSBI licenses to carry are also given privileges.
 The leadership of OK2A has signaled reservation about this bill because it appears to create an elitist upper tier of citizenship rights. rep. Hardin said he acknowledges that optic, but says the larger goal is to restore all constitutional rights to everyone. He believes fear is what leads the pressure to curtail freedoms and even constitutional rights. Addressing that fear may sometimes be done more successfully by creating a progressive and incremental plan.
  The bill also authorizes the retired law enforcement and lawmakers to carry concealed firearms in all other state govt. buildings.
  After passage of this bill, the chairman followed up with a similar bill, HB2901. That bill applies only to lawmakers authorization to carry firearms in the State Capitol building.

  Lawmakers and the State Treasurer are facing a dire condition of their own making. A couple years ago, Natural gas was booming. So lawmakers hiked the taxes on Gross production. Meanwhile, they kept giving some of that tax revenue to windmills, just for sitting there, on the prairie.
​ We were 'fat & sassy'.  We spent money based on a confidence that Natural Gas prices would stay around $2.70 per standard unit. But that lofty projection is 50% higher than our current reality of $1.80. 
  Part of this 20-year-low market price is due to wind energy competing for industrial market share. As a result, the state is actually collecting less in tax revenue. We may have $150 less to fund core state services, just from this one market price swing.
  Consumers and utilities  are getting lower prices. But the big picture is that tax hikes are a dynamic factor. As Ronald Reagan used to remind us..."the power to tax, is the power to kill". And killing the state's most reliable industry will have dire consequences  for families all over the state.
Zack Lee of the Petroleum industry legislative advocacy team, went into much the same details in his column for state news outlets, this week.

 Rep. David Smith is a freshman Republican from McAlester whose police-state bill puts soviet block nations to shame. HB3359 would allow any cop to demand the papers of any citizen, any time they get curious (or vengeful). It even allow a cop to lock up any law-abiding citizen without any charges. 
​  This would put Oklahoma under a perpetual curfew state, but only for those the police selectively decide to go after. 
  The new law would shield cops from any civil lawsuits arising from a person being fired from jobs or failing academic requirements because of a cop's suspicions that they are 'up to no good'.
  This bill would not require a police report of any crime. Just the suspicion that unless detained, a crime might have occured.
   This is the year when we're finding out the real character of the nearly 50  new legislators in the House of Representatives. Some are a grave concern. This bill clearly places Rep. David Smith on the growing list of predatory operatives seeking to rob good people of their privacy, liberty, and constitutional right of peaceful assembly.
  The bill rests in Rep. Chris Cannady's Judiciary Committee. Cannady has been a practicing defense attorney and understands individual rights to remain silent and the constitutional requirement to due process.
  Oklahoma has not seen such an Orwellian bill like this since Senator Barrington's 'Hoodie Bill' of 2015. That bill was mocked on national TV by Bill O'Reilly and many other national commentators.

  The cops will clearly harm communities by disrupting employment, family cohesion, and health needs by this kind of legislation. We completely expect Rep. Smith to tell the people of Oklahoma just who is requesting this bill, or if he just came up with it all by himself?

  The State House & Senate will meet at noon, today, for a joint session in the larger House Chamber. The keynote speaker will be the Governor of Oklahoma.  several legislative agenda items will be unveiled, but the biggest news will be his healthcare rollout. The federal block grant that he claims to have secured for Oklahoma is said to resemble the program that the state of Indiana currently provides it's residents. Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) is currently being sued in Federal court because of a new work requirement it imposes on enrollees.
  The plan has a token enrollment premium and no pre-existing conditions or annual deductible. But a new requirement to work 20 hours per week (at gainful employment) has some saying that the federal rules were violated, and jeopardizes the federal grant.
  Utah has a plan, using a similar block grant funding, but the end product of the legislature resulted in the federal govt. rejecting the format and refusing to fund it... leaving Utah's lower income residents without a way to get medical emergencies paid for.
   There are three entities who have to come together for this strategy to be viable. The Governor, the legislature, and the Federal Health & Human Services leadership.