Skip to main content

Oklahoma Is OK, but Seriously, That’s Not OK


The Americans at the table, negotiating a business deal, ask one of their number, “You can speak Dutch?” He replies, “I’m OK.” With his fellow Americans looking doubtful, he proceeds to mistranslate what they want him to say to their Dutch counterparts. The “OK” translator tells the Dutch that the Americans really need a hug, when he was supposed to tell them they really need the deal. With that, the AT&T commercial ends as one of the Dutch negotiators gives an American a hug with the announcer saying, “When just OK is not OK.”

There are several of these commercials, each with a different scenario, in which, indeed, just OK is not OK. And every time I see one of these commercials I think of the license plates that were once so common – “Oklahoma is OK.”

As someone who works to develop policy suggestions intended to make Oklahoma better, and hopefully, the best that Oklahoma can be, it often seems that slogan – Oklahoma is OK – gets in the way.

The fact is, in most respects Oklahoma IS OK. We don’t have the best tax system in the land, but it’s not the worst, either. We don’t have the lowest taxes, but they’re not nearly the highest. Our roads seem pretty terrible compared to Texas, but eight states have worse ones. Eleven states are worse than Oklahoma when it comes to education systems, by one ranking. Sure, it was only recently that Oklahoma was included in a list of “judicial hell holes,” but we have a lower unemployment rate than 25 other states. It can’t be all that bad, right?

But do Oklahomans tolerate being “OK” from their sports teams? Would slogans like “OU football is OK,” “OSU football is OK,” and “Thunder basketball is OK” be stated with pride?

Suppose the coaches at OU and OSU were the best-paid in the country, and the Thunder’s payroll was above the luxury tax. If all these teams had mediocre winning records, would anybody brag that Oklahoma’s teams had the highest paid coaches and players in the land? No. Rather, it would be a mark of shame.

Yet, many of Oklahoma’s legislative leaders have made it a goal to raise average teacher pay to the highest in the region. How well our students perform in demonstrating how much they know doesn’t seem to matter.

Oklahoma isn’t at the bottom in education, it seems, so hey, it’s OK. We’re fixing bridges, so hey, the highways are OK. New companies set up shop in Oklahoma now and then, and movies get made here occasionally, so hey, economic incentives (bribes) are OK. Oklahoma City spends money on an artificial canal, artificial rapids, and a trolley to nowhere, and hey, it’s OK because maybe we’ll get our share of millennials.

But is just OK really OK? Do we really know what we ought to be OK about? Shouldn’t our leaders strive for being the best? Would “top 10” ever be good enough for OU football? Why shouldn’t it be that way for Oklahoma government, in ways that matter, which is not just how much money we spend?

Don’t get me wrong. I live here. I’m glad Oklahoma is OK. I just want it to be so much better.

Byron Schlomach is Director of the 1889 Institute and can be reached at bschlomach@1889institute.org.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of 1889 Institute.


Popular posts from this blog

Licensing Boards Might Violate Federal Law: Regardless, They Are Terrible Policy

Competition is as American as baseball and apple pie. “May the best man win” is a sentiment so old it doesn’t care about your pronouns. The beneficial effects of competition on economic markets are well documented. So why do we let powerful business interests change the rules of the game when they tire of competing in the free market? Most of the time when an occupational license is enacted, it is the members of the regulated industry who push hardest in favor of the license. Honest competition may be fundamentally American, but thwarting that competition through licensing seems to be fundamentally Oklahoman. Oklahoma doesn’t have the most occupational licenses, but when they do license an occupation, the requirements tend to be more onerous than the same license in other states. But what if, instead of merely breaking the rules of fair play to keep out would-be competition, Oklahoma licensing boards are also breaking the law? Normally a concerted effort to lock out competition would v...
Read more

COVID Inspires Tyranny for the "Good" of Its Victims

The Christian philosopher, C.S. Lewis, once said, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." The moral busybodies C.S Lewis warns of reminds me of those who would have Americans give up their liberty to combat COVID-19.   A recent Oklahoman op-ed compared COVID-19 to World War II, stating that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is approaching the number that died fighting for this country and the freedoms it protects. This comparison is, of course, nonsense. This suggests that a virus with a high survivability rate is an equivalent threat to the Nazi and Japanese regimes that brutally murdered millions. The piece uses wartime rationing of meat and cheese, a sacrifice necessary to ensure men on the front lines had adequate nutrition, to justify Americans accepting counterproductive lockdowns in exchange for additional stimulus c...
Read more

Present Reforms to Keep the Ghost of State Questions Past from Creating Future Headaches

Oklahoma, like many western states, allows its citizens to directly participate in the democratic process through citizen initiatives and referendums. In a referendum, the legislature directs a question to the people — usually to modify the state constitution, since the legislature can change statutes itself. An initiative requires no legislative involvement, but is initiated by the people via signature gathering, and can be used to modify statute or amend the constitution. Collectively, the initiatives and referendums that make it onto the ballot are known as State Questions.   Recently, there have been calls to make it more difficult to amend the constitution. At least two proposals are being discussed. One would diversify the signature requirement by demanding that a proportional amount of signatures come from each region of the state. The other would require a sixty percent majority to adopt a constitutional amendment rather than the fifty percent plus one currently in place. ...
Read more

Covid-19 Facts and Statistics for the General Public

The 1889 Institute has published a new webpage on its website explicitly about Covid-19. Its purpose is to provide the best current information for dealing with the pandemic to the general public and policy makers. It also tracks official new daily positive tests and daily deaths, showing trends in the data. It seems like new information, some of it reported out of proper context or highly speculative, is being reported by authorities and researchers every day. Information provided by the Centers for Disease Control is oriented toward health professionals. We wanted to provide good information that is easily digestible. This continues the effort that we promised in an earlier blog post . We hope the information is useful and welcome feedback. Included on the COVID-19 webpage are: A graphic showing daily positive tests/deaths and 7-day averages, Who is NOT vulnerable, Who IS vulnerable, Information on the relationship between age and COVID-19 vulnerability, How COVID-19 is transmitted ...
Read more