Saturday, March 3, 2012

Give Me One Good Reason I Should Vote

Convicted criminals do not vote because they can't in most cases. Non-citizens do not vote because they can't. Adherents of the Jehovah's Witness religion do not vote because it violates church rules. The Amish are discouraged from voting, but not prohibited. All of the above has no bearing on why 87% of those who REGISTER to vote in the Rio Grande Valley do not, in fact, vote. All of the above does not factor into why 96% of the REGISTERED voters in the City of Brownsville chose NOT to vote in the last runoff election.

Among all of the factors contributing to low voter turnout, one solitary reason races to the top of the ledger:

DISILLUSIONMENT.

For Brownsville, Cameron County with perhaps the lowest voter turnout in the nation, disillusionment factors in mightily. Before turning over Cameron County rocks in search of mitigating factors, let's examine the word itself. Definitions of the word "disillusionment" frequently include the word disappointment, or even depression. A very straightforward definition is: a feeling that arises from the discovery that something is not what it was anticipated to be. A more literal definition may be: the act of freeing from an illusion.

Why would Cameron County voters be disillusioned?

Start with 28 years of "representation" by Solomon Ortiz, a politico focused on personal gain who set the bar for junkets to exotic locales, usually the Far East. In his last 4 years of office nearly two years were spent on such play. Add Ernie Hernandez, Jr. with two decades of surveying the city and county for business opportunites while allegedly representing the people. Does the city or county need vending? Ernie provides. Wrecker service or printing? Ernie provides. Now factor in Gilberto Hinojosa, the mustachioed scowler who allegedly fixed elections with a variety of maneuvers over the years. We haven't even mentioned Conrado Cantu or Abel Limas. But, we should mention election administrator Roger Ortiz. If Judge Carlos Cascos and the county commission had any concern about voter apathy, disillusionment or lack of confidence in the election process, the weakminded, inept Ortiz would have been long gone.

Contributing factors we have not mentioned

We're not dealing at length with uncertainty over polling places, lack of transportation or other logistics. Disillusionment trumps them all. A confident, informed, believing electorate would vote at midnight at the Upside Down Bar if that was the program.

Ok. So why should I vote?
The elected men and women who get sent to Austin or Washington share control of a huge amount of federal and state funds and resources. Hospitals, interstate highways, universities do get built or subsidized. Industries, agriculture, job training are included in various ways. The distribution of these resources is not necessarily based on raw population or even need. Elected officials are almost always running for re-election. So, logically, they think in terms of VOTERS while doling out these goodies. Did you know that portions of Intersate 69 have been completed? Did you know that other less populated areas with fewer veterans have access to a VA hospital? Do you realize other less strategic ports have been awarded assistance while the Port of Brownsville gets repeatedly overlooked? At 13% voter turnout, the RGV has little political clout. Yet, we sit on a potentially huge, powerful voting block if energized, reassured and convinced that votes count.

21 comments:

  1. Bad headline. You left out a key word: Why.
    "Give Me One Good Reason Why I should Vote."
    It's a proposition, asking for a "yes" or a "no" - why yes on voting, or no voting. It's a small mistake, and one that the residents of Southmost or Las Prietas would not catch, but it makes you look like a real Rube to Brownsville's intelligentsia...

    /DP-M

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    1. Thanks /DP-M for your well-meaning help. Brownsville has no intelligentsia. All the pretentious moved to Austinburg. We Brownsville rubes recognize the "why" as understood, assumed.

      Jim

      ps: I read "The Paz Files" almost daily, gently overlooking the numerous typos, grammatical and syntax errors. I get the gist of it, overlooking the weakness of the writing.

      Delete
  2. Thoughtful read Jim. I know voter turnout would get our area at least some consideration, but I still wish we had some actual public servants.

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  3. Don't pay Duardo any mind Jim. His ass is still incredibly sore from the multiple impressions from my size 11 boots.

    Tad

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    1. Tad Hasse was outed by DP-M when he ran for county treasurer. Hasse has never recovered and now lives the life of a desperate loser. Running again, Taddy?

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    2. The above post was not me. I wear size 10 1/2, but you are still a putz.

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    3. How many desperate losers can populate one grubby border town? Please don't tell me you're cloning inferiority down there!

      /DP-M

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  4. Early voting at the Brownsville library is so easy. Really, there is no excuse for not voting.

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  5. All one can do is spread the word like fire, and ....hope!

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  6. I would like to vote but none of the candidates impress me. I only know those I definitely don't want: erin hernandez, villalobos, masso and sofia.

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    1. oops more out there but ur honest for a "unfair" decision may haunt u if u tend to "step on certain politicians TOES" COMPADRE SYSTEM...MOST OF OUR VOTERS/NON.VOTERS ARE SICK OF THEIR CRAP.(for use of a polite word!)

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  7. *Sigh!* One less once you are gone.

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    1. I write about vermin but don't live among them. If the city ever gets cleaned up some, I may pay a visit. Do you still get happy at "Happy Hour" Tad-eo?

      /DP-M

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    2. Now your just fishing (as usual). Never have I seen such a coprophagic writer who anons in so many times to comment on his own puffed up graffiti. The sheer intellectual fraud of it turns my stomach. Other than that, I simply find you as annoying as walking around with damp socks. As an author, I find your work as interesting as the guy who can turn his eyelids inside out at parties. You are guy who takes three pages to write what could have been said better with more depth in a sentence or two.

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    3. If you can write such magical sentences, Tad-eo, why must you labor as a mere janitor at City Hall well into your twilight years?

      /DP-M

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    4. that is not nice! Better than being a THUG! Where did u go to school? Mars??

      Delete
  8. Tad, if you're going to go gunning for DP-M, you're going to need more than a thesaurus to look up big words for fecal matter. You might begin with learning the difference between your and you're.

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  9. It appears, Barton, that my original - and only - true comment here, posted March 3rd at 3:18 p.m., has yielded an excellent crop of comments for your blog. I'm glad to help, but I should note that it is not rare for these border urchins to come out and spew their bad genes whenever - and wherever - I'm involved. Lord knows, we had epic battles on El Rocinante back in the late 1990s and during the entire first decade of this millenium. So, really, who cares? This Tad Hasse is an odd fellow. I don't know him and he does not know me, other than from his days blogging as The Merovingian, a fact he never admitted during his doomed campaign for County Treasurer. But don't misinterpret my characterization of him; I am not granting him any sort of standing. The high-throated, slouchy Tad Hasse remains just another Do-Nothing from Brownsville, Texas, a cypher and a mental midget in league with the poorest of cantina sweepers and politiquera mavens. Keep plucking that chicken...

    /DP-M

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    Replies
    1. Muchisimas gracias for taking ownership of the two comments generating the flurry of pseudo-comments. I've never measured the worth of my infantile blog by comments. Some of my best work received very few comments. Nena tells me that's because no one cared about the subject matter, but I like to think my expose' was written with such authority and a note of finality that there was nothing else to say.

      Tad Hasse is a Brownsville informational resource regarding computer science, local politics, scouting and patenting an invention. Tom Robinson, another close friend, covers botany, entomology, astronomy, ocelot migration, marine life and canine dental science. Both men put out more information than can be processed.

      Failure as a local political candidate, especially for someone who thinks outside all of the proverbial boxes is not shameful. If I ever ran for office the laughter would echo far beyond Austinburg.


      J

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    2. What a nice choice of words that do reflect intelligence! AMEN TO U! (oh, sorry misspelled YOU not U)

      Delete
  10. TODAY IS THE LAST day to get a PACKET FOR TSC TRUSTEE, AND
    THE FIRST day to get a packett from the democratic party for a position.

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