OKAgPolicy Today is a morning email containing the day’s top agriculture and policy headlines. The inclusion of a particular story does not equal an endorsement. Subscribe to the email here.
TOP HEADLINES
Commission OKs sales tax election:
Enid City Commission has authorized an August election for voters to decide on a sales tax increase to fund the Kaw Lake water pipeline project [Enid News & Eagle].
Oklahoma bankers take fight against Dodd-Frank to Congress:
Bankers are making a final, big push against what they consider overreaching federal regulations before the presidential election [Journal Record].
New Mexico battling federal government over water:
Ranchers claim the U.S. government is stealing their water and using an endangered animal to do it [KRQE].
Bernie Sanders’ state wants to unlearn the lesson of competition:
When Boris Yeltsin stopped by a Houston grocery store in 1989, his faith in communism began to crumble. “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote in his autobiography [Real Clear Markets].
Science takes big leaps; vulnerability lies with public trust:
Science and technology are on a roll. High impact discoveries seem to be advancing at an increasing rate, at times outstripping our knowledge and sending scientists scurrying to investigate the potential impact of these new developments on how we live, the foods we grow and eat, and the general health of people and the planet [Agri-Pulse].
Human life > animal life:
It’s not a stretch to say that animal rights groups—you know who I’m talking about—place animal lives at a higher priority than human lives. Once an easily brushed off fringe group, these folks are spending hefty amounts of money and gaining increasingly more political power in Washington [High Plains Journal].
OKAGPOLICY: LEt Them Eat Cake
In the late 18th century, France experienced a great famine and many of its citizens suffered from hunger due to a lack of bread. When told about the hardships of the poor, Queen Marie Antoinette is rumored to reply, “Let them eat cake.” As revealed in her response, the queen understood little about the plight of the poor and cared even less. [Read more here].
