1889 Blog

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 ...

“You don’t want to live in the Oklahoma City school district.” That was the universal advice I got from everyone I talked to in Oklahoma when I moved from Phoenix with my wife and son, who had a couple of years of high school left to complete. The clear and simple message was that Oklahoma City district schools were pitiful and should be avoided at all costs. You’d think that with a reputation like this, the last thing on the mind of the superintendent of Oklahoma City district schools would be to make sure every school has a Black Lives Matter chapter, but you’d be wrong. I happened to see a recent meeting of the Oklahoma City school board, and that is exactly what the superintendent, Sean McDaniel, said, that he wanted to make sure every campus had a BLM chapter. You’d think that OKC district leaders would be concerned about academics, student motivation, and how to hold both students and educators more accountable for attaining what most people think schools are for – decent educat...

Last week SCOTUS told Montana, and by extension, the other 49 states that they can't exclude religious schools from generally applicable school choice programs simply because they are religious. This should have been the self-evident conclusion of anyone who read the First Amendment through the lens of history. The idea that the founders would have allowed states to discriminate against religious schools is foolish.   At the time of the founding, many states had established religions. It was only the federal government that was prevented from establishing a religion. It was also barred from interfering with states’ establishments. The relevant phrase is “ Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (emphasis added) The constitution has since been amended, and most of the rights codified in the Bill of Rights have been applied to or “incorporated against” the states - that is why state police can no longer search ...

As the media turns its attention back to COVID-19, there is a renewed push to shut down the economy. Some states have even begun to scale back reopening plans for their economies; others continue to delay opening. It is essential to look past their catastrophizing and focus on the facts of COVID-19. One fact to consider: while testing has risen 23%, the rate of positive results has only risen 1.3 percentage points to 6.2%. Even as alarmists point to the rise in cases, they still admit that the boost in testing has played a role in the rise in the total number of known cases. Therefore, the total number of positive cases is not of much use in this case, as it only paints a partial picture. The rate of increase in total positive cases is a more meaningful measure, and it has barely increased. Even more important is who is getting infected. The data show that recent cases are primarily younger people. But that’s a good thing; these are precisely the people that are key to building herd ...

With COVID-19 heating up again, and the resumption of societal shutdowns in other states, a pandemic strategy never seen in modern times, it seems appropriate to post facts with appropriate recommendations for action independent of politicized governmental institutions. Providing this information, along with relevant context, is the purpose of the new “ COVID-19 ” webpage on the 1889 Institute’s website .   With the recent widely-reported surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the impression created is that the pandemic has spiraled out of control. Therefore, our first factual installment is the following figure, which shows the number of daily new cases and the number of daily new deaths from COVID-19 in Oklahoma. Seven-day moving averages are also illustrated in order to show trends.   Source: The Covid Tracking Project ( https://covidtracking.com/data/state/oklahoma ), which assembles data daily from the Oklahoma Department of Health (OKDOH). OKDOH does not provide l...

“There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure, ‘cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.” - Robert Plant Words have meaning. This allows us to communicate with each other. Suppose you and I are having dinner. If I ask you to pass me the salt, meaning the seasoning commonly applied to food, and you have decided to redefine the word “salt” as an explosive device activated by pulling a pin and releasing a handle (or what I would call a hand grenade), it's not difficult to see why you would be very worried, and why I (having asked for a common seasoning) would be surprised by your concern. If words mean whatever the speaker decides in the moment, then we lose even the most basic ability to communicate with each other.   In light of the continued debate over whether "defund" means “end all funding for” or “reduce funding for,” and especially in light of last week’s Supreme Court ruling, I am reminded of Genesis 11's account of the Tower of Babel. The s...

So we vote next week on whether or not to expand Medicaid according to Obamacare’s provisions. A vote “Yes” on State Question 802 would expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults above the poverty line. A vote “No” would keep the status quo, with taxpayers buying health care under Medicaid mainly for poor children and pregnant mothers. But as with just about anything proposed by initiative, State Question 802 is not really that simple. For one thing, it forever entrenches a federal program, which can be changed by Congress at any time, in our state’s constitution, which is not so easily amended. Obviously, the proponents of SQ 802 want to set the terms of the Medicaid expansion permanently, sidestepping our constitutionally instituted legislature, which is supposed to react and adjust to existing circumstances. SQ 802 would take that flexibility away. A consequence of that reduced flexibility will likely be sacrifices in other state-financed programs such as public education, both in the n...

The Oklahoma Bar Association has gone half way towards respecting its members’ First Amendment rights. It should go the rest of the way. Lawyers in Oklahoma are forced to join and pay dues to the OBA in order to keep their license to practice law. The OBA uses that dues money for many things, including political activity like advocating for or against public policy proposals. The result is that lawyers are forced to fund political speech they may disagree with as a condition of continuing to earn a living as a lawyer. This is called a mandatory bar association, and many of us contend that it fundamentally infringes lawyers’ First Amendment rights. The United States Supreme Court agrees. About 30 years ago in a case called Keller v. State Bar of California , the Supreme Court held it unconstitutional for a bar association to use compelled dues from lawyers to engage in political speech without providing meaningful procedures for lawyers to “opt out” of funding the speech. Exactly what ...