I’m taking a break from the John Bennett series. There is information I am requiring to make it beneficial to my readers and not just my lame speculation. As much as I’ve made fun of Lance Beefflank, I’m pretty sure he would win in a brawl. And even if somehow the whole “What in the world is that behind you?” trick worked and I got away, I’m finding his network is pretty much James Bond territory, so if I’m going to anger someone who could easily end me, I at least wanna make it one last good post. So in the meanwhile I’ll give you my half baked analysis on why Oklahoma is screwed.
First of all, there is not even a semblance of democracy here. It has no bearing on party, we are a one party state, and a monopoly never cares about its customers. Second, our economy is dominated by the most tyrannical, spirit killing industries ever, and the haves have ground the half nots into the dirt. Whether it is true elsewhere or not, in Oklahoma Meatloaf’s lyrics are correct. Its not a game, its just a rout. Last of all…education. We’ve been dumbing down for 30 years (and I suspect that is deliberate), so there isn’t a strong enough base of intelligent people to rock the boat. With the Morlocks tamed, the Eloi need do nothing but play.
Let’s dig in.
Red State Hell! There is No Competition!
https://oklahomawatch.org/2022/09/06/why-most-oklahoma-state-legislative-races-are-uncontested/
According to the Tulsa World: “Nearly 70% of Oklahoma’s state legislative elections will be decided without a single vote cast in November.
Those uncontested, no-voters-required races span the state — from Bartlesville to Edmond to west Lawton, where a former Oklahoma Sooners football player named Larry Bush lost the closest state House race in 2018.”
According to Oklahomawatch.org in the last elections cycle “Oklahoma voters will decide only 31 of 101 House races and seven of 24 Senate on Nov. 8, a far cry from those 2018 midterms, when the statewide teacher walkout inspired more than 100 active and retired teachers, support staff and school board members to file for state legislative seats.” Now I know why I don’t feel heard. The people running the show don’t have to listen. Where have I heard something like this before?
Oklahomawatch.org criticized the Democrat party for not doing a better job of fielding candidates in rural Oklahoma, and I do think that is a legitimate criticism. But then, the Democrat party in Oklahoma is dying. Even the Democrats in Oklahoma are conservatives compared to their national leadership, and I’m sure the Clintons, the Obamas, and George Soros are lying awake in agony over the loss of Oklahoma to their party. Honestly, unless we turn things around, neither party is ever going to give a dog’s crap about this state.
Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules
The top industries and the top employers in Oklahoma are the most abusive tyrant rat bastards that were ever spawned in Satan’s sewage pool of so called capitalism. We have the oil and gas industry, which basically broke my father. The banking industry, which has broken everyone else. Wal-Mart. The medical industry. At least farming isn’t on there. Thank God we broke all the small farmers, if we hadn’t the proletariat might have been able to escape their oppression and at least find jobs on farms.
https://toughnickel.com/industries/Why-Never-To-Work-for-Walmart
Meanwhile, our economy keeps slipping, and the rates of poverty keeps rising. But at least the Waltons can keep betting on the ponies, hobnob with the Clintons, and dictate our state education policies. On that note…
Dumb, dumber, dumbest. You mean to tell me we ain’t gotta chance.
I’ve written ad nauseam about this but…the rich want their kids getting the best education, but they want your kids dumb as posts so that they will be good docile workers, and not have the brains to start their own businesses and possibly be competition. Let’s take a quick look.
https://www.ocpathink.org/post/study-demographics-dont-explain-oklahomas-bad-school-results
https://okpolicy.org/poverty-oklahoma-compared-third-world-nation/
https://www.ocpathink.org/post/oklahomas-best-school-fares-poorly-in-national-comparison
According to ocpathink.org “Oklahoma’s NAEP results are so bad the state remained mired at 45th in Flanders’ study. The gap between what Oklahoma should have scored, based on student demographics, and how the state actually scored on NAEP, was among the largest in the country—on the negative side of the ledger. Only six states fared worse.
“Oklahoma’s results contrasted sharply with most other states that have comparable or greater levels of child poverty.
“Among the nine states that have a larger share of children living in poverty than Oklahoma, six achieved higher NAEP fourth-grade reading scores than Oklahoma: Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
“And seven of the nine outperformed Oklahoma after adjusting NAEP results based on student demographics.”
Even compared to states that have similar levels of poverty, our children are not doing well. One has to wonder why?
Another article states that “The Jenks Public Schools district has been identified as the best school in Oklahoma in a national review, despite that same evaluation finding less than half of students at the district read at grade level.
“In no other state were less than half of students proficient in reading at a state’s “best” school.
“The website Stacker, which describes its mission as the production of “engaging data journalism,” recently released an article that identified what its researchers concluded was the “best school district in every state.” The Jenks district, located in a suburb of Tulsa, was named Oklahoma’s best.
“But the Stacker evaluation also stated that just 44 percent of the more than 12,000 students in the district are “reading proficient,” a measurement that typically refers to students who read at grade level.”
This was reported June 9, 2021.
And from okpolicy.org we learn “Faced with a 30 percent cut in its programs and activities budget, the state Department of Education slashed funding for high-quality early childhood programs by $2.5 million and eliminated funding for financial literacy programs. Oklahoma used to invest heavily in parenting training for disadvantaged families, but the Department of Education just eliminated the last $1 million from the Parents-as-Teachers program, while the Health Department has cut funding for the Children First program by 30 percent since 2011. Until five years ago, the state provided over $2 million for adult education programs; that funding was wiped out in 2011. Drug treatment providers had their contracts cut earlier this year by the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and those in need of residential drug treatment face long waiting lists. The number of families qualifying for child care subsidies has been declining for years, and in June DHS announced a freeze – to be lifted in August – on accepting new families for subsidies. And as a final blow, a single mother with two kids working year-round at $10/hr will now lose $231 a year because the Legislature cut the state Earned Income Tax Credit.”
But on the flip side, at least Walters is keeping our children pure by unilaterally banning a book…oh wait, what? Oh…my overpaid assistants told me that the book had never been in an Oklahoma school library. My bad.
As I shake my head in disgust, I hope your Super Bowl team wins, I hope you climb out of poverty, and I hope you have a great Valentines.
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 
This, this is an epic post and a really solid break down of reality. I loved your take, what follows is NOT addressed to you specifically but is really a matter of my thinking about this topic as a whole nation and individually at a state level.
If I may be the devil’s advocate for a minute.
– Rich parents and poor parents want the same things for their children in most cases, (not all) they want them to be secure, to not suffer and to “hopefully” be better than they were. I would suggest that given money we would all be as the “rich” we dislike are now. The only real divider there is the money itself, and, as a poor person who has made under 28k for most of my children’s lives…I do not hate others for making more, I can and do dislike people for their actions, but not the money itself.
– as someone who has volunteered on average 12 hours a week for over 2 years with high-risk children in care (foster kids locally) and who volunteers and is occasionally paid a little to work on average 50 more hours a week with local schools as a substitute teacher (I am very well educated but disabled so) – the true issue with our education system is the centralization of control, I am not adverse to having standards for basic education ( K through 5th grade) however, after this a BOX that represents our national and individual state systems only harms more than it helps honestly. (I reside in Arizona, which I believe is worse off than your fine state in this area)
– And lastly, poverty sucks, and until we understand that poverty will always exist in some form and work towards helping people BE better versus simply paying them to remain poor…it will never change and in fact, as the programs expand MORE will get on them. This is reality, in Western European nations that have large programs for this there are actual jobs where people do nothing except work the system for others money. After all, ALL government funding comes from those who work. Again, I have been disabled since 2007, I did not choose this however, I am UNIQUELY qualified in stating the reality surrounding government assistance and poverty and what we see today. If you want the bears to hunt/gather you have to let them hunt and gather while preventing them from doing this in others property. If you feed the bears, cloth them and provide them shelter…they will get fat and eventually die or turn feral when they are not given what they think they deserve. Humans are animals, and zoos are cities – think about it and look at the statistics without using personal experiences or singular stories – again, I LOVE HOW YOU THINK!
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This may be the most thoughtful and intriguing comment of yet received on this channel right now I can’t really give you the reply that it deserves because I want to reply to be as awesome as the comment was. Thank you very much for the comment. Let me do some thinking, and hopefully I’ll either reply to this comment or make a post that hopefully is as gracious and as intelligent as your comment. Thank you so much.
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