Keith Hazelton

Oklahoma’s lottery, approved 2-to-1 by voters in 2004, promised it would fix a funding gap in the state’s K-12 educational system, conveniently deferring some of the difficult decisions legislators and state residents have not had the political will to confront. So instead, we got a state lottery, which further promised to bring back to Oklahoma […]

While recession rages around us and now encroaches upon our borders, according to the latest tax revenue numbers from Oklahoma State Treasurer Scott Meacham, one corner of the state’s economy is booming. Sales tax revenue was up $14.6 million from last year, according to the April report. Second Amendment merchandise and accessories may be part […]

As gasoline prices plunge to near record lows, only a few months after reaching record highs above $4 a gallon, an unintended casualty regrettably may be the nascent enthusiasm for alternative and renewable energy. “This time,” we thought last summer, “we finally will do something about all those petro-dollars being exported to mostly unfriendly foreign […]

A year ago, our state’s business outlook appeared bright. But over the horizon, storm clouds were gathering and a malaise of Seventies-style stagflation ” higher prices, falling asset prices and sluggish growth ” that began on the coasts is now encroaching upon America’s midsection. Oklahoma’s energy-dominant economy, bane of the Eighties, so far has shielded […]

T. Boone Pickens, legendary oilman and Oklahoma university benefactor, has a plan to relieve our oil addiction, that pesky substance abuse problem first identified by President Bush in January 2006. With crude oil prices hovering around $140 per barrel, Boone says payments for our nearly 70 percent import requirement represent “the greatest transfer of wealth […]

Plan A for the proposed Ford Center upgrade is a Tuesday vote to extend Oklahoma City’s 1-cent MAPS for Kids sales tax for a year to fund major improvements and another three months to build a practice facility for a professional basketball team, raising about $120 million.   If the Big League City sales tax […]

Clean-burning natural gas or abundant, less-expensive coal? The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has been asked to approve a new power plant to be built in Red Rock, a joint venture between OG&E Electric Services and American Electric Power-Public Service of Oklahoma.   As submitted, plans for the $1.8 billion, 950-megawatt generating facility propose it will burn […]

A quarter-century ago, Penn Square Bank failed spectacularly in Oklahoma City, ushering in the untimely end of a previous oil boom, indelibly changing the landscape of banking throughout the state and hastening the emergence of national mega-banks.   And yet, after a generation of national consolidation in the banking industry, we enjoy one of the […]

Addiction, it is said, often blinds those so afflicted to the moral and ethical considerations of behaviors intent on satisfying their habits. In our present oil addiction, we so fervently have embraced corn ethanol as one solution to our petroleum dependency that we have neglected to question the ethical and moral propriety of using food […]