| Established | 1993 |
|---|---|
| Chair | David Brown |
| President | Jonathan Small [1] |
| Staff | 10 |
| Budget | Revenue: $2,261,816 Expenses: $1,811,131 (FYE December 2014) [2] |
| Address | 1401 N Lincoln Blvd. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104 |
| Coordinates | 35°28′57″N97°30′14″W / 35.4826°N 97.5040°W |
| Website | www |
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) is a conservative, state-based think tank in Oklahoma, US.
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) was founded in 1993 as a public policy research organization focused primarily on state-level issues. The founders, led by Dr. David Brown, envisioned an organization that was capable of affecting the state's public policy similar to national level think tanks. Since its founding, OCPA has conducted research and analysis of public issues in Oklahoma from a perspective of limited government, individual liberty and a free-market economy.
The group was founded following a meeting arranged by Tony Wyman, a Republican political staffer working in the Bill Price 5th District congressional primary campaign and the George H. W. Bush re-election campaign, who brought a representative from Iowans for Tax Relief to meet with local business and political leaders in the board room of Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1992.
OCPA's headquarters are near the Oklahoma State Capitol in Oklahoma City. Jonathan Small serves as the organization's president.
A Ten Commandments outdoor monument tablet was installed at OCPA headquarters in 2015. [3] The monument had been removed from the Oklahoma State Capitol as a reaction to an activist group's attempt to install a Satanic monument alongside the tablet.
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within government, and some are associated with particular political parties, businesses or the military. Think tanks are often funded by individual donations, with many also accepting government grants.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan, is the largest U.S. state-based free market think tank in the United States. The Mackinac Center conducts policy research and educational programs. The Center sponsors MichiganVotes.org, an online legislative voting record database which provides a non-partisan summary of every bill and vote in the Michigan legislature. Mackinac Center scholars generally recommend lower taxes, reduced regulatory authority for state agencies, right-to-work laws, school choice, and enhanced protection of individual property rights; they avoid socially conservative issues such as reproductive or marriage rights.
Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case involving whether a display of the Ten Commandments on a monument given to the government at the Texas State Capitol in Austin violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The International Policy Network (IPN) was a think tank based in the City of London, founded 1971, and closed in September 2011. It was a non-partisan, non-profit organization, but critics said it was a "corporate-funded campaigning group". IPN ran campaigns on issues such as trade, development, healthcare and the environment. IPN’s campaigns were pro-free market.
Mary Fallin is an American politician who served as the 27th governor of Oklahoma from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, she was elected in 2010 and reelected in 2014. She is the first and so far only woman to be elected governor of Oklahoma. She was the first woman to represent Oklahoma in Congress since Alice Mary Robertson left office in 1923.
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is a court of appeal for non-criminal cases, one of the two highest judicial bodies in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and leads the judiciary of Oklahoma, the judicial branch of the government of Oklahoma.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is an American conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas. The organization was co-founded in 1989 by James R. Leininger and Fritz S. Steiger, who sought intellectual support for his education reform ideas, including public school vouchers. Projects of the organization include Right on Crime, which is focused on criminal justice reform, and Fueling Freedom, which seeks to "explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels" by rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change.
James R. Winchester is an American lawyer and judge who has served as on the Oklahoma Supreme Court for district 5 since 2000. He had two-year terms as chief justice of the Supreme Court beginning in 2007 and 2017.
Robert Leonard Schenck is an American Evangelical clergyman who has ministered to elected and appointed officials in Washington, D.C. and serves as president of a non-profit organization named for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Schenck founded the organization Faith and Action in 1995 and led it until 2018. He is the subject of the Emmy Award-winning 2016 Abigail Disney documentary, The Armor of Light. Schenck stated that he was part of a group that paid Norma McCorvey to lie that she had changed her mind and turned against abortion. Once a prominent anti-abortion activist, Schenck has since repudiated this work and expressed support for the legality of abortion. In 2022, Schenck testified before the House Judiciary Committee concerning his allegation that a member of the Supreme Court leaked information about a pending case before the Court.
The State Policy Network (SPN) is a nonprofit organization that serves as a network for conservative and libertarian think tanks focusing on state-level policy in the United States. The network serves as a public policy clearinghouse and advises its member think tanks on fundraising, running a nonprofit, and communicating ideas. Founded in 1992, it is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with member groups located in all fifty states.
Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, a fictitious name for P&R Schenck Associates in Evangelism, Inc. (PRS), had its organizational headquarters in Washington, D.C. The stated purpose was to "bring the good news of salvation in Jesus the Messiah to strategic places in the world and to participate in the evangelization of the world. The President of PRS is Rev. Rob Schenck.
Stanley Jason Rapert is an American politician from the state of Arkansas, who served as a member of the Arkansas State Senate from 2011 to 2023 and represented the 35th district.
James Michael Ritze is an American politician from the state of Oklahoma United States. A Republican, Ritze served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, representing the 80th district, which includes parts of Tulsa and Wagoner counties.
Prescott v. Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission, 2015 OK 54, 373 P.3d 1032, was a landmark case by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in which the Court found the placement of a Ten Commandments Monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol was unconstitutional.
Oklahoma Ballot State Question 790 was a ballot question in Oklahoma during the 2016 Elections that would have removed the Blaine Amendment from the Oklahoma State Constitution. Question 790 was defeated.
The Ten Commandments Monument is an outdoor monument installed on the Arkansas State Capitol grounds in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the United States. The monument is being challenged as unconstitutional by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU says that the monument demonstrates a religious preference, violating the First Amendment and the religious preference prohibition clause of the Arkansas State Constitution.
The Ten Commandments Monument, authorized by the Oklahoma legislature and approved by the governor in 2009, was installed on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol, in Oklahoma City, in 2012. The mere concept engendered years of political controversy, court suits based on freedom of religion issues, destruction in 2014 by a man who drove his car into it, replacement in the same location, and even attempts to remove Supreme Court justices who ruled in 2014 that the monument must be removed to another site. After Governor Mary Fallin, key legislators, and the justices agreed on a substitute site, the monument was removed from the capitol grounds in 2015.
Baphomet is a bronze statue commissioned by the Satanic Temple depicting Baphomet, a winged, goat-headed, humanoid symbol of the occult. First unveiled in Detroit in 2015, the statue stands 8.5 feet (2.6 m) tall, weighing over 3,000 lb (1,400 kg), and features a prominent pentagram as well as two smiling youths gazing up at the seated central figure. Petitions to display Baphomet on public grounds have resulted in arguments concerning religious equality. Production of the statue, and its initial notoriety, is featured in the documentary Hail Satan?.
The Ten Commandments Monument is installed on the Texas State Capitol grounds in Austin, Texas, United States. The Texas Sunset Red Granite artwork was designed by an unknown artist and erected by the Fraternal Order of Eagles of Texas in 1961. It was the subject of litigation in the Supreme Court case Van Orden v. Perry (2005).
