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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Steve Byas
While the candidate filing for office for the 2026 Oklahoma elections is still a year away, candidates are beginning to announce for the various offices. In non-presidential election years, a host of state offices are up for election. The list includes the offices of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor and Inspector, Attorney General, State Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Labor Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, and one of the seats on the Corporation Commission.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Tim Bakamjian |Steve Byas
In recent years a state tax revolution has swept the nation. Many states have lowered their income tax rate to attract investment and create jobs. Red states have led the way. Iowa reduced their rate from 5.7% to 3.8% in the last year. Louisiana dropped theirs from a 4.25% top rate to a 3% flat rate. North Carolina has scheduled a gradual decline to 2.49%, South Carolina’s has gone from 6.2% to 3%, and Indiana cut theirs to 3% this year.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Steve Byas
State Representative Tom Gann (R-Inola) has expressed concern over recent revelations that he believes highlight a widespread and ongoing violation of Oklahomans’ rights. Gann led an interim study on this issue before the House State Powers Committee last October.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Jason Murphey |Steve Byas
“I would suggest that if the university wants to truly honor the legacy of Boren – not King David, but the David who became a statewide name for taking on Goliath, in the name of transparency, even as it seemed pointless to do so – it should drop its obstruction and release the report.”
The carefully qualified statement of Tom Cole said it all.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Shane Smith |Steve Byas
Why, two decades after its passage, is the REAL ID Act finally being enforced? Authored by the same man who wrote the liberty-destroying Patriot Act, passed into law amid the hysteria of the living nightmare that was the War on Terror, why has this relic of that hideous era not been scrapped years ago? We’ve gotten along just fine for twenty years without it, and it’s obvious after those two decades that there is no dire need of it.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Allan Wall |Steve Byas
Is the metropolis of Tulsa on Indian reservation land? It sounds ridiculous, but thanks to the wisdom of our national Supreme Court, since 2020, Tulsa has been regarded as reservation land, part of it on the Muscogee (Creek) reservation and part of it on the Cherokee reservation. It sounds ridiculous and it is.
McGirt v. Oklahoma, and its companion case Sharp v. Murphy, were decided in 2020, both based on 1990s criminal cases. Jimcy McGirt was a child molester and Patrick Murphy a murderer.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Steve Byas
Former President Donald Trump announced in 2023 that if he won the White House again in 2024, he would end birthright citizenship via an executive order. On his first day in office, President Trump signed Executive Order 14160, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, making clear that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution does not grant citizenship to those born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction of and allegiance to our country.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Steve Byas
Certain words came quickly to mind when I heard of the April 2 passing of former state Representative Bill Graves. He was 87. One was dear friend. Other words were patriot, Christian, and scholar. He is survived by his wife, Connie, their six children, sixteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
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1 month ago | 
oklahomaconstitution.com | Charlie Meadows |Steve Byas
In his State of the State Address on the first day of this year’s session of the Oklahoma Legislature, Governor Stitt challenged the lawmakers to put on his desk a tax cut of one half a percent and then a pathway to get our state income tax reduced to zero over a reasonable amount of time. Since the revenues for this year are a little less than that available last year, some legislators are suggesting there is little chance for a tax cut this year.
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2 months ago | 
normantranscript.com | Steve Byas
President Trump has said and done things that I do not agree with. However, I must take exception to the letter you printed from Wallace Collins, concerning Trump. In his letter, Collins repeated the Trump quotation from 2017 which the Left and their allies in the media have distorted to charge that Trump is somehow supportive of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and the KKK.
