Perspective - June 2017

JUNE 2017

OKLAHOMA COUNCIL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Economists Scott Moody and Wendy Warcholik examine

Oklahoma's State Budget Crisis HINT: It's not what you think

In Case You Missed It The Oklahoma Bar Association is subsidizing the totalitarian Castro regime. bit.ly/OBA-Cuba

OCPA is asking Congress to combat excessive government intervention in the farming and ranching industries.

A reduction in the gender pay gap would come at a huge cost: Several thousand more women will be killed each year.

bit.ly/OCPAFarmBill

A wind-energy giant sued a small town in one of Oklahoma’s poorest counties. bit.ly/WindSued

Sandy Garrett, a longtime state school superintendent in Oklahoma, says the charges against current superintendent Joy Hofmeister are “very serious.” bit.ly/HofmeisterDonors

We need to be skeptical about the existence of Oklahoma state government’s fiscal “crisis.”

bit.ly/AEI-GenderPayGap

Oklahomans believe the $411,000 annual compensation of the higher education chancellor, a former state legislator, is excessive. bit.ly/SoonerPoll-Survey

Liberal Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a major donor to Barack Obama and a key investor in the bankrupt solar company Solyndra, contributed $25,000 to Joy Hofmeister’s legal defense fund.

The Ponca City superintendent, who is paid $205,025 annually, says the schools need more money—even though total and per-student spending in Ponca City, adjusted for inflation, is higher today than it was a decade ago. bit.ly/ChoiceRemarks-PoncaCity

Stanford researchers show we’re sending many children to school way too early. bit.ly/SchoolTooEarly

bit.ly/HofmeisterDefenseFund

bit.ly/Right-Thinking

PERSPECTIVE

Brandon Dutcher, Editor

OCPA Trustees

OCPA Researchers

Glenn Ashmore • Oklahoma City

Mike O’Neal • Edmond

Robert D. Avery • Pawhuska

Larry Parman • Oklahoma City

Lee J. Baxter • Lawton

Bill Price • Oklahoma City

Douglas Beall, M.D. • Oklahoma City

Patrick T. Rooney • Oklahoma City

Steve W. Beebe • Duncan

Melissa Sandefer • Norman

organization. OCPA formulates and

John A. Brock • Tulsa

Thomas Schroedter • Tulsa

promotes public policy research and

David Burrage • Atoka

Greg Slavonic • Oklahoma City

analysis consistent with the principles

Michael Carnuccio • Yukon

Charles M. Sublett • Tulsa

Tom Coburn, M.D. • Tulsa

Robert Sullivan • Tulsa

William Flanagan • Claremore

William E. Warnock, Jr. • Tulsa

Josephine Freede • Oklahoma City

Dana Weber • Tulsa

in Perspective are those of the author,

Ann Felton Gilliland • Oklahoma City

Daryl Woodard • Tulsa

and should not be construed as

John A. Henry III • Oklahoma City

Perspective is published monthly by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc., an independent public policy

of free enterprise and limited government. The views expressed

representing any official position of OCPA or its trustees, researchers, or employees.

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PERSPECTIVE // June 2017

Robert Kane • Tulsa Frank Keating • Oklahoma City

EMERITUS BOARD

Gene Love • Lawton

Blake Arnold • Oklahoma City

David Madigan • Lawton

David R. Brown, M.D. • Oklahoma City

Tom H. McCasland III • Duncan

Paul A. Cox • Oklahoma City

David McLaughlin • Enid

Henry F. Kane • Bartlesville

Ronald L. Mercer • Bethany

John T. Hanes • Oklahoma City

J. Larry Nichols • Oklahoma City

Lew Meibergen • Enid

Lloyd Noble II • Tulsa

Daniel J. Zaloudek • Tulsa

Steven J. Anderson, MBA, CPA Research Fellow Tina Dzurisin Research Associate Trent England, J.D. Dr. David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty Jayson Lusk, Ph.D. Samuel Roberts Noble Distinguished Fellow J. Scott Moody, M.A. Research Fellow Andrew C. Spiropoulos, J.D. Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow Wendy P. Warcholik, Ph.D. Research Fellow

By a Margin of 5 to 1, Oklahomans Say Let Teachers Vote on Unions

By Brandon Dutcher

“Getting public policy right in the area of education includes respecting teachers and freeing them from the shackles of old, outmoded systems,” OCPA president Jonathan Small wrote in The Journal Record on March 10. New survey data show that Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly agree.

“One old system that is particularly unfair is the state law that gives private political organizations power to claim to represent teachers, whether they like it or not,” Small wrote. “The real absurdity of this situation is becoming clear in some Oklahoma school districts. Many were unionized long ago, before most current teachers or other staff members were ever employed there.

Since voters adopted right-to-work [in 2001], many employees have opted out of those unions. But the unions mostly remain and continue to exercise power to represent all those public servants.”

Legislation considered this year in Oklahoma would let teachers and other education employees vote “whether to keep their union, look for a new union, or pass on union representation altogether,” Small wrote. “Current state law allows workers to ask permission to hold such an election, but makes the process difficult in a way that benefits the union status quo.”

What do Oklahomans think of letting teachers vote on unions?

A recent statewide survey asked likely Oklahoma voters: “Do you agree that Oklahoma school employees who are represented by a labor union should be allowed to vote every five years to decide whether they want to be represented by that union?”

Fully 67 percent of Oklahoma voters agree, while 13 percent disagree.

Interestingly, Democrats (70 percent to 11 percent) are even more emphatic on this issue than Republicans (67 percent to 14 percent).

The statewide survey of 503 likely voters was commissioned by OCPA and was conducted by the firm Cor Strategies from March 29 through March 31, 2017. The margin of error is plus-minus 4.37 percent.

Brandon Dutcher is OCPA’s senior vice president. He is editor of the book Oklahoma Policy Blueprint, which was praised by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman as “thorough, well-informed, and highly sophisticated.” His articles have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, WORLD magazine, Forbes. com, Mises.org, The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, and 200 newspapers throughout Oklahoma and the U.S.

www.ocpathink.org

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Oklahoma State Budget Crisis?

I Should Say So

By J. Scott Moody and Wendy P. Warcholik

When it comes to government spending in Oklahoma, the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone ignores is this simple question: Should government grow faster than the private sector’s ability to pay?

To answer that question, a little history needs to be explored so we can put the growth of government in Oklahoma, at all levels, into perspective. Looking at the publicly available data going back to 1929, we clearly see an overwhelming preference for growing government over growing the private sector.

There are two major components of government spending in Oklahoma—state and local government worker compensation (SLGWC) and personal current transfer receipts (PCTR, which mostly consists of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare).

First, Chart 1 illustrates the growth differentials between state and local government worker compensation and private sector income. The data are for calendar years 1929 to 2016 (the latest year of data available).

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the rate of growth for SLGWC was faster than for privatesector income. But by 1944, SLGWC and private-sector income were virtually identical, with ending index values of 1.16 and 1.18, respectively.

However, after 1944 the growth in SLGWC began to pull away from the growth in Oklahomans' privatesector income. Between 1944 and 2009, the gap between the two is the largest.

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CHART 1

State and Local Government Compensation Outpaces Growth in PrivateChart Sector (Calendar Years 1929 to 2016) 1 State and Local Government Compensation Outpaces Growth in Private Sector Calendar Years 1929 to 2016

30 30 Private Sector Index State and Local Government Compensation Index

Since then, growth in SLGWC has slightly receded while an oil-and-gas boom reinvigorated private-sector growth, thus shrinking the gap. The subsequent (post-2014) reversal of the oil-and-gas boom has seen the gap widen again. Clearly, much more needs to be done to close the chasm.

Second, Chart 2 illustrates the growth differentials between PCTR and private-sector

Index Value Index Value

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15 15

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1929 1934 1939 1944 1949 1954 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 1929 1934 1939 1944 1949 1954 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 Private Sector Index State and Local Government Compensation Index

Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis; Calendar Years Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis; Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

Why should the government grow faster than the private sector’s ability to pay?

CHART 2

Personal Current Transfer Receipts Chart 2 Outpace Growth in Private Sector (Calendar Years 1929 to 2016) Personal Current Transfer Receipts Outpace Growth in Private Sector Calendar Years 1929 to 2016

140 Private Sector Personal Current Transfer Receipts

Index Value

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Index Value

income over the same time period.

As distressing as growth in SLGWC has been, that in PCTR has been meteoric in comparison.

The growth in PCTR outstripped private-sector income right out of the gate in 1929 and has not looked back. By 2010, PCTR had an index value of 132.4, while private sector income had an index value of only 7. Fortunately, since 2010, growth in PCTR has also plateaued. [Note: The comparative growth indexes shown in Charts 1 and 2 were created by setting the base year (1929) equal to one and then multiplying each successive year by the growth rate. The values were adjusted for inflation, using the GDP deflator, prior to creating the indexes. This makes it easier to visualize the relative growth differentials without worrying about the differences in starting values.]

What can Oklahoma policymakers do to prevent the further crowding out of private-sector income? Though PCTR is a much bigger problem, SLGWC is the realm most under the control of state policymakers. Both employment levels and compensation levels must be critically examined.

At a minimum, a hiring and pay freeze would be welcome relief to the private sector, especially if the savings were invested into a complete overhaul of the income tax system (such as a flat tax) or as a down payment on eliminating the income tax altogether.

In addition, policymakers at the state and local levels must refrain from imposing unnecessary regulations on businesses that make it harder for the private sector to do its job—creating new jobs and income.

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1929 1934 1939 1944 1949 1954 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 1929 1934 1939 1944 1949 1954 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014

Private Sector Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis Calendar Years Personal Current Transfer Receipts Oklahoma Sources: Council of Public U.S.Affairs Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis; Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

OCPA research fellow J. Scott Moody (M.A., George Mason University) is a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union. Formerly a senior economist at the Tax Foundation and a senior economist at the Heritage Foundation, he has twice testified before the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Moody is the co-creator of the Tax Foundation’s popular “State Business Tax Climate Index.”

His work has appeared in Forbes, CNN Money, State Tax Notes, The Oklahoman, and several other publications.

OCPA research fellow Wendy P. Warcholik (Ph.D., George Mason University) is a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union. She formerly served as an economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, and was the chief forecasting economist for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Medical Assistance Services. She is a co-creator (with J. Scott Moody) of the Tax Foundation’s popular “State Business Tax Climate Index.”

www.ocpathink.org

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Does School Choice Expand the Welfare State?

By Greg Forster

Congratulations, Oklahoma! By pursuing school choice, you did the impossible—you turned some big-government progressives into radical libertarians. Unable to persuade Oklahomans to solve their problems by further expanding the omnipotent and omnibenevolent state, opponents of school choice in Oklahoma have resorted to denouncing Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) in anti-government rhetoric that would make any goldhoarding survivalist proud. The truth, of course, is that school choice represents one of the few really viable solutions to the problem of the ever-expanding technocratic state.

ESAs are a relatively new form of school choice that empowers parents more than any other kind of choice program does. Like vouchers, ESAs give parents rather than government (or, as with some forms of choice, a scholarship organization) control over what school to use their child’s portion of education spending at—whether a public or private school. Unlike vouchers, though, they let parents shop for other education services as well, not just tuition. And parents get more freedom to use their money wisely, with the option to save over time instead of being required to “use it or lose it” each year.

Oklahoma State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, noting the state’s budget shortfall last year, attacked the proposal to create ESAs as an expansion of big government: “Is this the right year, is this the right time to start a new government program?”

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Is Hofmeister sincere in her concern about expanding government? That’s hard to believe in light of her exchange with her consultant Fount Holland.

Advising Hofmeister on how to avoid being publicly endorsed by Oklahoma’s teacher union, the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA), when in fact she really favored OEA’s policies and wanted their covert support in the election, Holland wrote: “We will lose if they endorse us.

I can give them some ideas about how to be savvy and truly helpful. A little savvy would make OEA unstoppable.

The question is are they for us, and can they be quiet and stomach our right wing rhetoric long enough to get what they really want; a pro-education environment for our state.”

The email exchange was later made public by subpoena, to Hofmeister’s embarrassment. (Why anyone involved in government uses email or texting is beyond me.)

But let’s set aside Hofmeister’s shenanigans and look at the question on the merits. Does school choice expand government at a time when it’s already so bloated it can’t pay its bills?

In fact, a well-designed school choice program won’t cost money, but merely redirect existing levels of spending.

Most choice programs actually save money for state budgets, even as they improve educational outcomes. Parents making choices for their own children are more efficient and more effective than the bloated bureaucracy that controls spending decisions under the government school monopoly. A state in

fiscal trouble has more reason, not less, to enact universal school choice pronto.

At this late date, it’s not remarkable that school choice opponents have a weak grasp of the facts. What’s remarkable is the use of anti-government rhetoric by opponents of choice.

It’s always been a theoretical possibility. In my years in the school choice movement, I’ve had hallway conversations on “why don’t the school unions do more to try to split libertarians off from the choice coalition?” (The favorite answer is usually “because

Educational choice breaks down a corrupt alliance between government power and special-interest groups. they’re as bureaucratically bloated, lethargic, and incompetent when it comes to political maneuvering as they are at running schools.”) But I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen this animal in the wild before.

You don’t have to be libertarian—I’m not—to favor school choice. But one important argument for choice is that it breaks down a corrupt alliance between government power and special-interest groups. Politicians deliver money (in the form of school spending) to the teacher and staff unions and other special interests that profit from the existence

of a large, inefficient government school monopoly. In return, the special interests deliver votes to the politicians who support the monopoly.

This is a critical reason why choice delivers better educational results for less money. It pulls off the leeches who suck money out of the school bureaucracy without contributing to education.

However, costs and budgets are ultimately secondary concerns. The more important question is philosophical. Does school choice expand government into a new area of activity where it has no legitimate function?

That’s the argument, at least hypothetically, of Oklahoma edu-blogger Rob Miller. I say “hypothetically” because, unlike some school superintendents, Miller doesn’t pretend that he’s concerned about the size of government. But he attacks those of us who are simultaneously concerned about the size of government and supportive of ESAs. He argues that ESAs expand government. If he were us, he says, he’d be against ESAs because they create “another government entitlement.”

They therefore expand the “entitlement culture” people like us are supposed to be so worried about.

Now, it is true that ESAs are an “entitlement” in the way that term is normally used in the context of public policy. Like Social Security and food stamps, they create a benefit to which all people in the relevant class (retirees for Social Security, the poor for food stamps, parents for school choice) are entitled under the law.

The key difference is that Social Security, food stamps, and other typical entitlement programs represent the expansion of government into a leading role in areas previously dominated by private savings, employer-paid pensions, church and community organizations, and other non-governmental solutions.

This is how entitlements got their bad name in conservative circles.

They used the power of government to crowd out individual initiative, economic interdependence, and spiritual communities.

It is not true that there were no programs for the poor before the modern

welfare state. The programs used to be mostly church-run. Abraham Kuyper, who lived through the transition from church-led to government-led charity, denounced it as the work of greedy and slothful churchgoers who couldn’t be bothered to do the Christian thing and care for the poor themselves, and wanted government to do it for them instead. In his memorable words: “Never forget that every penny of state aid for the poor is a blot upon the honor of your savior.”

He was right. And if you’re not religious, you can make an analogous argument in favor of organizing voluntary charity rather than sloughing off the problem on a leech-heavy government bureaucracy. Our own greed and sloth—our desire to have someone else bear our moral burden—was then, and is now, the primary cause of the welfare state’s destructive and seemingly unlimited expansion.

That’s not to say there’s no role for government. As I said, I’m not libertarian.

It’s only to say that government shouldn’t be taking the lead. We have allowed it to bully its way to the front of the parade because we found it too much trouble to lead ourselves.

A well-designed school choice program won’t cost money, but merely redirect existing levels of spending.

Most choice programs actually save money for state budgets, even as they improve educational outcomes. A state in fiscal trouble has more reason, not less, to enact universal school choice pronto.

School choice, by contrast, reverses the endless expansion of government by moving us away from a government monopoly. An entitlement to education funding involves less, not more, government control than a governmentowned, government-run school system.

Obviously the typical conservative critique of “entitlement programs” and “entitlement culture” doesn’t apply to programs moving us in exactly the direction conservatives are trying to move us!

Compared to the government school monopoly, school choice liberates individual initiative, economic interdependence, and spiritual community. It allows parents to take control of their children’s education, becoming stewards over their own lives, instead of treating them like perpetual wards of government—as if they were cattle in the government’s pen. It supports educational entrepreneurs who create new school systems designed to serve the customer base created by school choice. And it allows schools to have a holistic vision of what it means to be an educated person—one that doesn’t yank the leash and stick a gag in teachers’ mouths when students ask big spiritual questions about the meaning and purpose of human life.

School choice moves us away from dependence on government and toward individual initiative, economic interdependence, and spiritual community. So Miller would have a really good point if he were only saying that some of our conservative friends, if they’re not actually libertarians, ought to tone down their ham-handed rhetoric about the evils of “entitlement” programs. But if he thinks this is an argument against school choice, I think we’re entitled to disagree.

Greg Forster (Ph.D., Yale University) is a Friedman Fellow with EdChoice. He is the author of six books, including John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and the co-editor of three books, including John Rawls and Christian Social Engagement: Justice as Unfairness.

He has written numerous articles in peerreviewed academic journals as well as in popular publications such as The Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

www.ocpathink.org

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China Plants Flag in Norman Why is the Universit y of Oklahoma advancing the interests of one of America’s global adversaries? OU should close its Confucius Institute as soon as possible.

By Mike Brake

Mike Brake is a journalist and writer who recently authored a centennial history of Putnam City Schools. He served as chief writer for Gov. Frank Keating and for Lt. Gov. and Congresswoman Mary Fallin, and has also served as an adjunct instructor at OSU-OKC.

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PERSPECTIVE // June 2017

If you want to take a course in Chinese at the University of Oklahoma, or study Chinese culture, there’s a chance you’ll be instructed not by an OU faculty member but by an employee of a shadowy agency of the Chinese government which Li Chanchun, a senior Beijing official, once called “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.”

And if you dare to ask about Tiananmen Square, where the oppressive Chinese government once ran over dissidents with tanks, you’ll likely be told it sure has interesting architecture!

OU is one of 103 American colleges and universities (and 500-plus high schools) that host Confucius Institutes (CIs), which are little more than colleges within colleges funded, staffed, and in large measure managed by agents of the Hanban, the Office of Chinese Language Council International, which is in turn part of China's Ministry of Education.

If that sounds like a case of giving the fox free run of the henhouse, it is.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) recently published a detailed report on Confucius Institutes titled “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education,” by Rachelle Peterson (see photo 3, page 11). The report, the product of extensive investigations into CIs on a dozen American campuses, contains some startling revelations: • The agreements between most CIs and their host universities are secret as to funding sources and rules of operation, though most seem to include provisions that classes within the CIs must be conducted under Chinese “speech codes.”

• Staffing is largely by visiting professors from the school’s linked Chinese university, and in many cases the textbooks to be used are printed in China. Most reflect the Chinese government’s official lines, including that Taiwan and Tibet are parts of China.

• CIs have successfully pressured some universities to disinvite speakers who might be critical of Chinese policy. At North Carolina State University, for example, school officials cancelled a 2009 speech by the Dalai Lama when the director of the resident CI objected.

• There are disturbing suggestions that CIs conduct surveillance of Chinese students studying in America.

If they thought they were getting away from the oppression at home while earning a degree here, those on campuses with CIs might be disappointed. This is not a small matter; the NAS report notes that there are almost 330,000 Chinese students enrolled in American colleges and universities, almost a third of all foreign students.

The NAS investigator ran into repeated stone walls when she asked to see copies of CI/university agreements. Only one showed a draft copy, then refused to display the final signed document. Most CI directors declined to meet with her at all, and on one campus the provost (not a CI employee) ordered her off campus, never to return. At another she succeeded in asking several CI faculty members what they would say if asked about Tiananmen Square.

“Several replied that they would talk about the Square’s historic architecture,” the report said.

Yes, and Dachau is a nice little town in Germany.

What do these people have to hide? It may be simply embarrassing to many higher education administrators to admit that they have handed over a segment of their student bodies to be instructed and propagandized by agents of a hostile foreign power.

“The American colleges and universities that sign up are naïve,” the NAS report said, “and they are generally indifferent to the consequences. What motivates the college administrators who accept these invitations is a combination of

greed and vanity. The Hanban knows exactly how to play the contemporary American college president and his staff.”

Though not all of them. In 2014, 100 University of Chicago faculty members successfully forced the CI off campus over what their petition called the “dubious practice of allowing an external institution to staff academic courses within the university.”

At OU the CI has its own webpage, which shows that it has established satellite CIs at 46 or more public schools around the state. In addition to Chinese language, CI enrollees can take courses in “Chinese culture” and “acupressure,” the latter instructed by a professor from OU’s partner Beijing Normal University who is also qualified to teach “sword fighting and spear fighting.”

While most Americans accept the need to maintain relations with China, the truth remains that the regime there is still a closed, oppressive one which has brutally occupied Tibet for generations and conducted frequent suppressions of dissent. To draw a not-unreasonable parallel, what would OU patrons have thought in 1938 if their administration invited an agency of the Nazi government in Germany to come over and set up courses in German language and culture, taught by people wearing swastikas?

The NAS report offers a number of urgent recommendations, first among them the expulsion of CIs from all American schools and campuses. Failing that, they urge reforms that would include: • Open transparency of Hanban/university agreements, including financial data and management.

• Establishing separate budgets for CIs from their host universities.

• Assigning university faculty members, not Hanban employees, to teach Chinese language courses.

• Assuring academic freedom by removing barriers to classroom discussions, especially on subjects where CI faculty members appear to be parroting the communist line.

• Settling any disputes in U.S., not Chinese, courts.

• Making CI directors volunteers, not paid Hanban employees.

Because of the closed-door secrecy that NAS encountered, it is not possible to know how often students in CI classes are subjected to communist propaganda, or what other nefarious activities CIs conceal. What is certain is that there is no comparable institution associated with the American system of higher education.

The NAS report also calls for congressional and state legislative investigations of Hanban influence on American campuses through the 100-plus CIs already in place. Hopefully Oklahoma legislators will begin asking some pointed questions of the OU administration as well.

www.ocpathink.org

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Oklahoma Higher Education Spending Continues to Rise

By Trent England

The Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education and administrations of state universities and colleges have become a retirement center of sorts for former politicians. Theirs are among the loudest voices at the Capitol and in the media arguing that their funding has been cut to the core.

Chancellor Glen Johnson, who earns more than the President of the United States, recently claimed: “For fiscal year 2017, cuts to public higher education exceeded $157 million, a 16.4 percent decrease from the fiscal year 2016 appropriation. With current appropriations below 2001 levels, funding for public higher education has been set back a full generation.”

Perhaps Chancellor Johnson earns the big bucks because he is careful with his words. In his statement, he makes sure to mention “appropriation” and “appropriations” even while making it sound like that is all the money spent on state higher education in Oklahoma.

The nearby chart however shows that while the legislative appropriations to higher education have declined, the total spending has dramatically increased.

In fact, total spending has increased so much in higher education that the legislature could zero out its appropriation altogether—saving more than $800 million, closing nearly all of the shortfall—and it would simply return this part of state government to slightly more than its 2013 spending level.

REGENTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

LISTEN LIVE. LISTEN LATER. WEEKDAYS 7-9 A.M.

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Trent England serves as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, where he also is the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty and directs the Center for the Constitution & Freedom and the Save Our States project. He also hosts a radio program, The Trent England Show, from 7 to 9 a.m. every weekday on Oklahoma’s AM 1640, “The Eagle.”

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State Sen. Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville), Rebecca Friedrichs, and state Rep. Kevin Calvey (R-Oklahoma City) are pictured at a breakfast meeting April 6 at OCPA. Friedrichs is a veteran public school teacher and one of the plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a labor law case which was heard before the Supreme Court of the United States.

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Jorge Marin, a policy specialist at Americans for Tax Reform, speaks at the April 13 meeting of the Oklahoma center-right coalition. The meeting is held monthly at OCPA.

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Rachelle Peterson, director of research projects at the National Association of Scholars, is pictured here delivering a presentation earlier this year at OCPA. Peterson is the author of the new report "Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education" (see page 8).

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OCPA’s Estela Hernandez (right) presents a “School Choice Champion” award to Tracy McDaniel, principal of KIPP Reach Academy, at the 2017 Oklahoma School Choice Summit and Expo.

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OCPA’s Trent England (right) debates “The Pros and Cons of a $15 Minimum Wage” with David Blatt of the liberal Oklahoma Policy Institute (left) on March 23 at the First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City.

Community organizer Kristen King (center) served as moderator.

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Oklahoma City University law professor Andrew Spiropoulos discusses the importance of judicial reform with 17 state lawmakers at a recent breakfast at OCPA. Spiropoulos, a former senior counselor to Oklahoma House Speaker Todd Hiett, serves as the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at OCPA.

www.ocpathink.org

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QUOTE UNQUOTE “Whatever happens to Trump, the respect and regard the mainstream media once enjoyed are gone ... The people have concluded that the media really belong to the political class and merely masquerade as objective and conscientious observers.”

Patrick J. Buchanan, in his May 2 syndicated column

“$66,034” The average cost to taxpayers per Oklahoma teacher (counting salary, benefits, and payroll taxes) in 2016, according to 1889 Institute researchers Baylee Butler and Byron Schlomach

“How about trimming higher ed? Look at all of Oklahoma’s state-supported colleges and universities, in a system encouraging ju-cos in every Podunk.

Take away the Greek system and NCAA sports and tell students they can’t park on campus, and lawmakers would see how much public support for higher ed remains.”

William W. Savage, Jr., professor emeritus in the department of history at the University of Oklahoma, writing at nondoc.com

“22” The number of Tulsa Public Schools employees (several of whom have the job title “executive assistant”) with six-figure annual compensation, according to a Tulsa World database

“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, directed, indoctrinated, numbered, estimated, regulated, commanded, controlled, law-driven, preached at, spied upon, censored, checked, valued, enrolled, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.”

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon