Credit: Brad Gregg Let the postmortems commence. Despite little actual change in the national political landscape, with President Barack Obama holding on to the White House, Democrats retaining Senate control and Republicans holding the House, inquiring minds want to know: How “red” did Oklahoma — already known as one of the reddest states in the […]
election
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Solutions for progressives
President Barack Obama was reelected in an Electoral College rout; Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin were elected to the U.S. Senate, Tammy Duckworth won a U.S. House seat, three states approved same-sex marriage and two states passed legalized marijuana. The country’s demographics are changing and so are cultural and social attitudes. By the 2016 presidential […]
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A chilling effect
But the threat of new taxes on intangible property could have a chilling effect on home builders and homeowners. When the state Supreme Court ruled that all intangible property could be taxed, we realized that this could impose new taxes on our designs, architectural drawings, computer software, and even the awards we’ve won for our […]
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Don’t tax ideas
As executive director of the Oklahoma City Boathouse Foundation, I believe it’s wrong to tax ideas, inventions, brand names — all are “intangible property” that are the seeds of future growth. These are the very things that fuel new businesses and new jobs across our state. New ideas are at the core of Oklahoma’s success. […]
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Mitt Romney and the demise of Anthony’s
Credit: Brad Gregg Mitt Romney does, or at least he might, as detailed in a recent Newsweek story by David Stockman, former budget director in the Reagan administration. As reported in the article, Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, began buying up big-box retailers in the late 1980s and early ’90s that were failing amid […]
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Lest ye be judged
Credit: Brad Gregg The rankings came from the Oklahoma Civil Justice Council, a partnership between the State Chamber, the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce and other organizations. The State Chamber has said in the past that it planned to rank judges, who are re-elected on retention ballots, and […]
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Romney is the choice for Oklahoma
—The Keystone XL Pipeline: From our state’s perspective, I could rest my case there. The Obama administration’s decision not to approve the pipeline is one of the greatest failures of his term. National security, small business and Oklahoma jobs are at risk of serious setback. Keystone XL Pipeline means more construction jobs, more industry jobs, […]
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A taxing question
Fred Mogran Credit: Shannon Cornman A coalition of business groups headed by the State Chamber of Oklahoma support passage of SQ 766, which is on ballot Tuesday, asserting that its failure could spur a vast expansion of state taxes on items as varied as retirement benefits, professional licenses, hunting leases, and even copyrighted song lyrics […]
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Sheriff in town
The contest pits Sheriff John Whetsel, a Democrat who is running for his fifth consecutive term, against 20-year law-enforcement veteran and U.S. Marshal Service special deputy Darrell Sorrels. While Whetsel has a definite edge in fundraising — totaling around $333,000 against Sorrels’ $28,000, as of this writing — Sorrels is a Republican in one of […]
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Obama deserves the vote of Oklahomans
The difference between the two candidates couldn’t be more evident. On one side, there is President Obama’s track record of strong, stable leadership, delivering transformational policy. Then there’s Mitt Romney’s opaque platform on the other side, featuring vague policies and positions that shift like a weather vane in the Oklahoma wind. When Obama took office, […]