The Oklahoma Observercast

In a day when our leaders more often than not forego traditional routes to governing, buying power through political donations is ever more worrisome. In Oklahoma and the United States alike, we have leaders – if you can call them that – who lean on executive orders and executive power to rule, not the legislative process. In […]

For years, Oklahoma built its sales pitch to attract newcomers and business relocations and expansions around the idea of affordability. Few places offered better deals on housing, land, and availability than Oklahoma. That is no longer the case. Blame private equity, or soaring consumer prices, or escalating property insurance rates, or higher costs of materials, or rising interest rates, or all of the above. But the fact is, Oklahoma has a problem, a big problem. Consider this: the state is short 80,000 plus rental homes that are affordable for extremely low-income households. For this week's Observercast, Senate Democratic Leader Julia Kirk joins us for a deep dive into the vexing problems that threaten Oklahoma's very economic future, and into what can be done to help make housing more available and more affordable.

Twenty-five years ago this month, ascendant Republicans in lockstep with the state’s deepest pockets convinced [hoodwinked?] 447,072 Oklahoma voters in a special election to approve right-to-work. The State Chamber heralded it as a great day for worker choice and business recruitment. Why? Because laborers no longer would be required to join unions at businesses where […]

School already started. Food was ordered. Programs and schedules were set. Faculty and staff were hired. Without warning, Oklahoma’s interim state superintendent of public instruction abruptly pulled the plug on a state-federal program that extends the academic day … in order to help schools provide a late-afternoon supper to needy students. The decision was so […]

Like Donald Trump’s Justice Department, Oklahoma’s Attorney General’s office has strayed from its historically independent, just-the-facts approach to enforcing the law into a murky, disconcerting world of hyper-partisanship. For Oklahoma, the slide began with Mike Hunter’s 2021 resignation. Like Trump’s latest choice of Todd Blanche as the nation’s attorney general, Gov. Kevin Stitt tapped a […]

Are Oklahomans satisfied with being 49th in education? The worst state in the union in which to be a woman? Of being the 21st century’s Mississippi – the punch line: thank God for Oklahoma? If not, they have their next chance at demanding change on Tuesday, Aug. 25. Registered voters across the state – regardless […]

Oklahoma’s political elite are fond of crowing that we’re an oil and gas state. But the truth is, we should be prouder – and more thankful – that we’re a state with abundant, clean water. After all, there is no substitute for water, our one irreplaceable, sustainer of life – a resource the world-renowned geostrategist […]

Why were Oklahoma’s legislative leaders gung-ho to slip two proposed constitutional amendments onto the Aug. 25 runoff ballot – traditionally the campaign year’s lowest turnout election? As Observercast returns for its fall season, Del City Rep. Andy Fugate joins us to help answer that question in an episode we’re calling Everyone Should Care, a deep-dive […]

With all the pomp and circumstance they could muster, Gov. Kevin Stitt, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert and other statehouse luminaries gathered recently with students at an OKC charter school celebrate Stitt’s signing of SB 1778 – the state’s greatest education reform package since … what? … the invention of the alphabet? OK … so it […]

Remember when Republicans vowed to run government like a business if they ever got in charge at NE 23rd and Lincoln Blvd. The implication was: Unlike free-spending Democrats, GOPers would squeeze every penny, ensuring taxpayers got way more bang for their bucks. In the two decades since they seized the statehouse levers of power, Republicans […]