Oklahoma Leads Nation In Imprisoned Women

Pretty Little Stat

It is one of those pretty little statistics that says everything about Oklahoma. It is the pretty elephant in the room ignored by the chamber of commerce types, the right-wingers, and the state’s ultra-rich power structure.

A report by the Women’s Prison Association shows Oklahoma leads the nation in the number of women in prison on a per capita basis. We can “boast” we have 129 women behind bars for every 100,000 women. Mississippi, the state we just love to beat in all these awful categories, is second with 107. The states with the least number of women in prison, of course, are those awful, blue northeastern states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It is the same story, only a different social category.

(Oklahoma versus Mississippi is a true rivalry in the Oklahoma/Texas football sense, only this is a contest over which state can generate the most impoverished lives. I think Mississippi has an edge in the series, but Oklahoma is quickly catching up.)

Experts say Oklahoma leads the nation in women incarceration because so many crimes here are considered felonies, like drug possession or minor theft.

Essentially, Oklahoma fills its prisons at a huge cost to taxpayers with non-violent meth addicts or pot smokers (and pot should be decriminalized), instead of offering less expensive rehabilitation. And then the so-called law and order Republicans cut taxes so much we cannot afford to fund schools because we have to fund prisons. It all makes sense to short-sighted, ignorant people who do not read or think beyond the next rerun of Dukes of Hazzard or Reba.

Here is how their thinking and logic must go: For god’ssake, we need prisons, not textbooks in this state. Any idiot can see that. Why would we want to educate people and help them make better decisions in their lives? That is just sheer, liberal nonsense. Put ‘em in prison and throw away the key .

Meanwhile, in the continuing attack against women, the state government here is taking away women’s reproductive rights, from restricting abortion to limiting access to emergency birth control, probably to ensure that all the state’s imprisoned women have even more children the state will have to support in one way or another in the coming years.

Then those children grow up to fill up our prisons in about twenty years. It is a cycle that never changes here. Ignorance runs deep in states with large, religious fundamentalist populations. It is all so pretty, isn’t it?

Racist Legislation Dead

The legislator who sponsored a bill that would have denied illegal immigrants access to social programs and criminalized those that helped them in the state now says his bill is dead for the year, according to news accounts.

State Rep. Randy Terrill (R-Moore) was able to get his bill passed by the Republican-dominated House, but it died in the Senate before it could come up for a vote. The bill would have required people to show proof of citizenship before they could participate in government programs, and state workers would have been required to report any illegal immigrants.

The bill is part of the Republicans’ attempt here, in other states, and nationally, to generate hate against people of Hispanic descent. But the Republican Party—and even some Democrats--actually split on the issue. The Republican moneyed interests want a full amnesty program to ensure a cheap labor force. The Republican “base,” or whatever remains of it under the inept and quasi-fascist presidency of George Bush, wants all the illegal immigrants rounded up and shipped back home.

President Bush, always the rich person’s friend, wants an amnesty program along with a symbolic but obviously ineffective fence along the Mexican border.

This issue of immigration “reform” is really about sanctioned, institutionalized racism. It tries to create that scapegoat the Republicans need to arouse anger and hatred among people. This hatred and anger, according to conventional wisdom, will translate into votes at the polls for right-wing candidates.

I received several emotional responses to a recent piece of commentary about the issue I published in the Oklahoma Gazette. In that article, I simply argued that, in a philosophical sense, the vast majority of Americans are immigrants. We should, therefore, be more sensitive to people who are seeking freedom from hunger or oppression. The argument of those people who contacted me goes like this: (1) Italian, Irish, Polish, etc. immigrants are different because they were “legal” immigrants. (2) They learned English unlike today's immigrants from Mexico.

My counter arguments to these arguments are simple enough. (1) Mexico and the United States are contiguous. There is more wealth disparity between our contiguous countries than any other contiguous countries in the world. Those earlier immigrants coming from European countries had to come by ship. These big ships were easily intercepted. There was no border issue. (2) Hispanic immigrants know they must learn English in order to become successful since English is the language of money throughout the world. In addition, immigrants from European counties and their decendants celebrate their heritage and native languages all the time.

The larger issue, of course, is the economy in Mexico. It is important to have a financially secured ally on our southern border. How can Mexico improve its economy so its citizens do not have to leave there? This is difficult question, of course, but, then, it is easy to forget the difficult issues when hatred and anger are at play.

This is what we know for sure: As long as there is a huge wealth disparity between Mexico and the United States, people will try to cross the southern border into our country

Candidates Need Web Sites

Okay, the year is 2006, or correct me if I am wrong. Is it still possible some candidates for office do not have Web sites? Yes. I went looking for the Web sites of some state candidates recently and came up with nada. I will refrain—for now, anyway—from naming the candidates.

Maybe these are not serious candidates. Someone can host a Web site and add daily information to an open source content management system for about $10 a month, maybe even less. Maybe these candidates do not understand technology or know anyone who can help them. Maybe these candidates think Oklahomans are too stupid to get on the Web. Maybe they think computers are just a fad like hula hoops or Beanie Babies.

In any event, Okie Funk hereby decrees every candidate for an Oklahoma office shall create a Web site explaining her/his positions in today’s political drama. (Of course, those candidates who do not have a Web site will obviously not be reading this.) Okie Funk also decrees voters shall ignore any candidate—Democrat or Republican—who does not have a Web site. Come on, folks, we can do better than this, even in Oklahoma.