Category Archives: Business

OKC Rail Plan: Questions & Crime

By Jonathan Small

In multiple states, failing large-scale public transit projects have produced demands for state-taxpayer-funded bailouts. This has happened in California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, to name just a few.

That’s why all Oklahomans should be concerned about Oklahoma City metro officials’ efforts to create a $1.8 billion commuter rail system covering 39 miles from Edmond to Oklahoma City to Norman.

Proponents claim passenger rail will boost economic development in the metro, but similar rail services have augmented the worst problems of urban settings—homelessness and crime—and spread them throughout surrounding areas.

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Tulsa Should Use AI

By Gleb Tsipursky, PhD

Tulsa is spending real effort on a problem many growing regions share: finding and developing skilled workers. The Tulsa Regional Chamber has been building a talent pipeline for high-demand fields including engineering, accounting and industrial machinery maintenance. Tulsa Tech is also helping employers design CareerTech apprenticeships around the skills they actually need.

AI changes the design problem. Companies can now automate more of the routine work that once gave new employees their first exposure to a profession. That raises productivity, but it also removes practice unless leaders deliberately replace it with better practice.

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What Detroit’s Comeback Teaches

By David Arnett

For generations, American workers have built the cars, technologies, businesses, and industries that helped make the United States the most dynamic economy in the world.

Now, the nature of that work is changing. Artificial intelligence and advanced technology are transforming the workplace, even as skilled tradespeople, technicians, and manufacturers remain essential to America’s strength and competitiveness.

As Labor Day approaches, Hoover Institution Director Condoleezza Rice sits down with General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra for a timely conversation about American workers, innovation, and what it will take to keep our workforce strong in the decades ahead.

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On Inola: Mazzei Was Right

By Wade Burleson

Analysis: I’ve learned something over the last few years that I wish every American understood:

A nation that cannot produce the metals necessary to defend itself, power itself, build its airplanes, manufacture its automobiles, maintain its electrical grid, and supply its factories is not really industrially independent.

That is why the controversy surrounding the proposed aluminum smelter at Inola, Oklahoma, deserves more than campaign slogans.

Rendering of the proposed Inola primary aluminum plant.
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Penrhyn Port Project Signed

By David Arnett

Contrary to assertions by critics, the United States Foreign Policy under the Trump Administration has reached levels of international cooperation unseen since the 1940s. To that point, the following text statement was released August 31 by the Governments of the United States of America, Cook Islands, and New Zealand on the announcement of the Penrhyn Port Project.

The United States, Cook Islands, and New Zealand will partner to deliver a major port upgrade on the island of Penrhyn in the northern Cook Islands
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