Oklahoma Law

LA report was released yesterday saying 1\4 of the children in Oklahoma are living in poverty, with a percentage of those having parents who do not have steady employment.
Oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates of males in the US and is #1 in the amount of women it sends to prison.
Our welfare and family services are nearing a crisis-there are not enough foster homes for the children who have been removed from homes. The number of children had gone up every year.
Oklahoma prisons are overflowing with people serving outrageously long sentences for non violent drug crimes. Due to the state's outdated sentencing guidelines and mandatory sentencing, a non violent drug offender will do more prison time than someone convicted of assault, robbery, rape or manslaughter. These offenders are often inmates that get "early release"  due to overcrowding. Most sentences for drug offenders include stipulations that they not be considered for early release.
The budget for the state run prisons is into the BILLIONS of dollars. 3 times the budget for education.
I"m not  politician and I don't have a college degree but even I can see the issue here.  When you throw people in prisons with no rehab programs no programs to help them learn a job skill, no programs to help them learn to function in society, no programs to help them find jobs when they are paroled. So they stay in the system and their children stay in the welfare system.
The reason there aren't enough foster homes are the majority of the kids are older, who have been shuffled from home to home, their parents are addicts who can't get out of the vicious circle and they've seen the law raid their house and take their parents to jail. They act out and rebel against authority because regardless of how crappy a kids parents are, they are still their mom and dad and they love them. They are separated from their siblings. How about some of that prison budget go for programs to help the addicts get unaddicted and programs to help these kids deal with what they are going through.
It all comes down to breaking that circle. Often parents who are addicted and in and out of jail have children that are the same way. How about coming up with a plan to help them break that circle? DHS is not the answer, its as broken as our education. System. Kids deserve an education, they deserve to have food to eat, they deserve to live in a safe home with their parents and siblings. People living below the poverty line in Oklahoma deserve the opportunity to get above it and to better themselves and no non violent drug offender should be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
There's starting to be an alarming trend in Oklahoma of law enforcement at the local level are doing whatever they want including breaking the law for a drug conviction. If racial profiling wasn't bad enough, it seems that going after lower income folks that they believe to be ignorant of the law and their rights are getting court appointed attorneys who don't care if the arrest was pursuant to the law. They talk them in to taking a deal and going to prison. So the prisons are filling up with people who were unfortunate to be poor and not have a working knowledge of the law. Surely I can't be the only one who finds it more than a little repulsive that law enforcement is getting away with breaking the law to send people to jail.
It should be obvious to our conservative state government that their way is not working and it needs to be changed. Seriously, who in the hell can think that its a good thing that the state prison budget is larger than their education budget!!
Its time for people to start making some noise for change.

STOP BLACK FRIDAY

People it is time to take a stand against this huge giant that is consuming our nation. Yes, I am talking about Black Friday. Doesn't anybody remember the good ol' days when everything was closed on Thanksgiving except for some random gas station? Families gathered together to eat a whole bunch of food, visit and watch football. It was tradition, the American way. Stores may have had sales but THEY OPENED AT THEIR REGULAR TIME on Friday. Then a few businesses decided to open their doors at 5:00 am for the "Black Friday Specials" that were top secret. It was a gamble. You would drag yourself out of bed at 3 or 4 am wake up your still tired kids, put them in the car in the pjs to get to one of these early bird stores. At 5 am when the doors were unlocked a mob of people would rush in and start looking for these marked down gems that would make everybody's Christmas so much brighter. Then the retailers started competing to get you to their store at 5 am by advertising the crappy stuff that would be marked down. As this trend started to snowball businesses started opening a little earlier, putting ads out a little earlier, letting people camp on their sidewalks all night to be first in line and first in the door. But it's not just the shopping, as all that happened stores started putting their Christmas merchandise up earlier. I work in retail, at a home improvement warehouse. We now have to have all of Christmas on the shelves and displays up by the first day of October and retailers are either opening Thanksgiving evening, afternoon or working their usual store hours. In the world of retail who cares about Thanksgiving?? People don't buy each other gifts for Thanksgiving so why should they be closed, I mean after all they do close for Christmas Day so their employees can be with their families that one day, what more do you want? I'll tell you what we want-TO EAT TOO MUCH TURKEY, DIG OUT FAMILY PICTURES AND TO WATCH FOOTBALL!! We don't want to get to Grandma's gobble down dinner and then have to leave so we can go home and be in bed by 6 or 7 that evening because we have to be to work at 2am or worse be at work at 5 that evening.
And before you say it, NO WE CAN'T TAKE VACATION OVER THANKSGIVING. It's all hands on deck. If the Black Friday merchandise was spectacular I could maybe understand-MAYBE. If it's dirt cheap, it's because it's stuff they couldn't get rid of. If there is really good merchandise, something that is popular they will have 10-30 of them, if you're lucky. No rain checks, no back orders, it's a one time deal.or as I have learned since going to work in retail, it will be items that the vendor or manufacturer is going to discontinue, either they will be making changes to the product or doing away with it completely at the first of the upcoming year. That means you on down the line, if it needs repaired if you can get parts they will cost an arm or a leg. It can't be exchanged because it's no longer stocked and no that doesn't mean you can trade it straight across for the upgraded version.This, my friends,  is why it is time to put a stop to this yearly "brawl at the mall". Its starting to look like the only thing that Americans worship is the almighty dollar-how to make it-how to save a few. Dollars have made everyone forget what Thanksgiving is all about. Being with the people that you love and being thankful for the blessings you've had the past year. Sharing your good fortune 
no matter how big or small with someone else. For crying out loud, doesn't anybody remember what the first
Thanksgiving feast with the pilgrims and Indians was all about? Well it wasn't buying 10 iPads because they are 40% off. 

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

I'm cheering for the Walmart employees that decided to strike during the Thanksgiving/Black Friday shopping extravaganza. Black Friday shopping has gotten so out of hand it's beyond ridiculous. For those of us that work in retail, we have already given up our weekends and evenings. Meaning that we miss family events, graduations, birthdays cookouts, sports events and the list goes on and on. Most retail businesses are closed 2 days out of the year, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day giving us a chance to be with our families but still making it difficult to travel too far, if you're unlucky enough not to have vacation time. As Black Friday shopping has become a bigger and bigger deal stores are opening earlier and earlier, cutting in to the time it's employees get to spend with their families on Thanksgiving. Store opening Thanksgiving evening or at midnight. The holidays have become so commercial with the focus being on the almighty dollar it's hard to even look forward to them. Especially when you've been looking at Christmas decorations since the first of October. We all just want it to be over with. My girlfriend sent me a picture of people camped out at Best Buy on Monday to be first in line for Black Friday. What the hell for?? People dragging their kids out at midnight or the middle of the night in these masses of people drinking coffee drinks in their pajamas looking for a bargain. There's nothing like seeing 2 fat women fight over the last $40 Shop Vac to get you in to the Christmas spirit. I refuse to buy anything on Black Friday-I know it has no effect on anybody's bottom line but it gives me a little holiday joy and I'm going to need some kind of joy since I have to get up at 1:00 am on Black Friday so I can be to work by 3:00 am.