Oklahoma City Oklahoman Editorials

OFFICIALS dreamed but could have not known in 1993 what the original MAPS projects would mean for Oklahoma City’s tourism and convention business.

NO further tax cuts are in the offing for the foreseeable future, so Oklahoma’s tendency to tax lower-income citizens disproportionately is also unlikely to change any time soon.

The state is rated as having an exceptionally regressive tax system by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which says low- and moderate-income Oklahomans surrender a greater portion of their incomes to taxes than those with higher incomes.

The problem is multifaceted and begins with the fact that Oklahoma’s highest personal income tax rate (now at 5.5 percent) kicks in at a relatively low income level.

TERRY Cline’s frustration was evident as he re-acted to a national report that placed Oklahoma next-to-last on a listing of healthiest states.

"This is a reflection of what we live every day,” said Cline, who returned to Oklahoma this summer to become the state’s health commissioner.

Dead policy walking? That’s how one blogger described global warming legislation in the U.S. Senate — which Majority Leader Harry Reid put on ice this week, astutely recognizing the public and the politics are against this turkey.

"We’re going to try to do that sometime in the spring,” Reid said.

MAJORITY Leader Harry Reid unveiled Senate Democrats’ health care fig leaf Wednesday, and what a fig leaf it is — totaling $848 billion.

We call Reid’s merging of competing Senate health care bills a fig leaf for what it hides — more than $2 trillion in actual program spending — funded with tax increases and Medicare cuts, which legislates insurance mandates and an expanded government role in Americans’ health care.

There are detail differences between the Senate’s version and a bill passed earlier this month by the House.

Mental health professionals work terribly hard to throw the shroud of secrecy off of mental illness and provide help for those in need.