Oklahoma State Flag

On April 23, 2009, House Bill 2245 passed  in the Oklahoma Senate with a vote of 43 to 0.  The “Oklahoma Criminal Illegal Alien Rapid Repatriation Act of 2009” allows the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to immediately send inmates who are in the country illegally to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.

State Bill 1102 would require that illegal aliens and criminals convicted of a host of misdemeanor crimes submit themselves to law enforcement DNA sample collection and the data entered into a federal database.  Named after a University of Oklahoma ballet student raped and killed in 1996, the bill was approved April 20, 2009. 

Oklahoma’s House Concurrent Resolution 1028 will give the state sovereignty.    

House Bill 1025 was passed by the Oklahoma house by a vote 70-8 which makes it a misdemeanor for employers to inquire if job applicants own a gun. 

Joyce Politano, Chattanooga, Tenn.

sedonaeye.com Editor’s note: Prior to posting this letter from our reader, we verified the TruthorFiction.com reference; all items above are listed as Truth on its site. Further research indicated that since 2009 eight states have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington and analysts expect that additional states may introduce similar measures; Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, Maine and Pennsylvania. A few other states such as Hawaii are showing interest. Whether these are political posterings will remain to be seen. The amount of US debt stands at over 63% of GDP this year and is climbing, an indicator of the fifty states massive current and future fiscal burden.

For the most part, it appears that the sovereign states issue is not about political statements of independence as it is an expressions of fiscal authority directed specifically at the growing cost of unfunded mandates being placed upon the states by the federal government. Despite the movement picking up steam as he came to office, the target of these bills is not President Obama, but rather the Democrat-dominated Congress whose plans for massive bailouts and expanded social programs come at an enormous cost to the states.

It has become increasingly common for Congress to pass legislation which dictates policy to the states but which comes without adequate federal funding. The expectation that the cost of these programs, which the states had no real say in approving, will come out of state budgets.

This has been a long-term problem with Medicaid and Medicare, but President Bush’s unfunded mandate No Child Left Behind caused educational budgets in states to be severely impacted. The reauthorization and expansion of the SCHIP program with its history of requiring more expenditure than is provided for in the federal budget is another example of negative fiscal impact on states budgets.

CSPAN covered the recent meeting of the country’s Governors in Washington DC with many Democrats and Republicans expressing exasperation and disgust with several mandates imposed upon the states by the new federal government massive health care law; without exception the Democratic and Republican governor’s complained that they were never consulted by the federal government at any time during the process to write the federal health care legislation, overlooking hands-on proven successes and pitfalls: Several states now provide more coverage at less cost than the federal government health care system, but states will not be allowed to continue with the better coverage in lieu of the federal law; many states view underfunded and unfunded mandates as a violation of the federal government constitutional authority thus the “sovereign states bills” popularity.

Dear Editor:

Oklahoma House bill 1330 authorized a monument resembling  the Ten Commandments to be placed in the State Capitol Park in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma House passed a final version of the bill by a vote of 83-2 on April 23, 2009.