The American Voter - A Study in Stupid

Harlingen, Texas, September 22, 2008:  It is impossible for anyone with an ounce of grey matter under the hairline to understand the American voter.  For more years than can be counted, at least half of the population has disliked, even hated one of the major political parties.  That anger, distrust, worry, frustration, rage…whatever it was at the moment had them in such a tizzy that they voted for the candidate of the opposing party.

The reality is.… it really doesn’t matter which party is in office any longer.  What the voters are doing is attempting to choose one bad group, hoping it will be better than the other bad group.

The American voter….What logic.  He or she looks at the current administration and ranks it among the bottom dwellers of the local sewer system.  Then a vote is cast to remove this vile gang from the seats of power, only to replace them with the opposing group of bottom dwellers that had been cast aside four or eight years previously.

The American voter…What double standards.  He or she looks at the makeup of Congress and sees lies, liars, crooks, cheats, and an inability to do anything rational to correct the problems of Americans.  In the minds of Americans these are horrible, horrible people that have been placed in office by mistake and we rank them somewhere below whale manure at fifty thousand fathoms.  Then a vote is cast…but, it is usually to keep the man or woman from the voter’s district or state in office.  After all that representative or senator brings home the bacon.  It is all the other incompetents who should be removed from office.

The American voter…What a dreamer.  He or she hears those promises to make life better, improve education, end criminal activity, stop war, fight fire and find an effective cure for dandruff…and believes them again, and again, and again.  It has all been said before and it has always failed to materialize.  But, this time…this time the candidate will get it right.  How does the voter know this for sure?  Why, because the candidate has said so.  They don’t bother to check what the party said last week, or last month, or last year.  They don’t match up the words spoken in our town with the words spoken in another town or another state.  Our candidate said so…and it must be the truth.

We now have an administration trying to fix a mess that it was party to creating.  The problems were placed in front of us by a previous administration that was pandering to its voters.  The financial mess we face was given its foundation by a Congress that, when it comes to financial skills, ranks just slightly lower than my four year old grandson trying to buy a new hot wheels car with seven cents.

When it comes to war fighting, the Administration, the Congress, the Washington elite, and the other assorted politicos have the keen ability to ignore sound military advice, listen to the disgruntled, worry along with the bean counters and never take time to understand we need to do far more than keep sending our best and brightest young people into battle again and again and again…with no end in sight.  Our voters see this happening but fail to insist on a stronger, larger, better equipped combat force.  These are the same voters who ignore our men and women in uniform, while they keep the disloyal, the connivers and the crooks in office, allowing them to bail out the financial vampires who have sucked our economy dry.

One of the candidates has even used a line in his campaign about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes.  The American voters do just that every election…a real study in stupid.

Divine Intervention Sought To Curb Youth Gang Violence

Harlingen, Texas, September 17, 2008:  Gang violence is a rapidly growing cancer eating away at urban America.  There can be no better evidence of this than a plea from a police chief in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for the residents and churches of his city to “enter into their own time of prayer and intercession directed at the issue of gang violence, broken homes, and the deterioration of the family unit that is destroying our youth.”

Police Chief Daniel Castillo is the lead crime fighter in Harlingen, Texas, a city in excess of 60,000 people located about 20 miles from the border of Mexico and the United States.
Commendably, he is a man of faith and sees the Christian community as being a partner in the never-ending fight against gang formation and violence.  Unfortunately, most calls for divine intervention are usually made at times when crisis situations have grown to critical mass.  That could well be the case as Chief Castillo asks for his community to pray for the end of gang violence in the city.

The call for church involvement is just another step in the city’s ongoing fight against its ever-increasing gang activity.  With more than 160 officers patrolling every corner of the city, the chief still wants more light shined upon youth gangs.  In July he created a special police gang unit made up of four filed officers, one intelligence officer and a sergeant.

Also in July, Harlingen’s mayor Chis Boswell appointed a 10 member task force to address the issue of youth gang violence.  The Juvenile Crime, Graffiti and Gang Violence Task Force are expected to report it’s finding and make recommendations to the city in December.

Harlingen, Texas is well known for having a very effective police force and a low crime rate.  Until recently, the one or two murders reported each year were considered lead articles in the daily news and in television reports.  Sadly, that is no longer the norm.

Friday, May 9, 2008 a 14 year old youth was found stabbed to death following a gang melee on the west side of the city.  Two other teens were wounded.  Two hours later the fire department was engaged in a huge fire at a former dairy plant two blocks away from the murder site.  On Sunday night police responded to multiple gunshots being fired in the same part of the city.  Monday afternoon a car was set afire near the same locale.

This area near the intersection of F Street and Buchanan is well known to Harlingen police.  Gang activity has been reported there for years.  This activity has also included an occasional murder.  Now, however, the criminal activity seems to be escalating.

On June 26, 2008 Nineteen year old Abraham Mar was pulled over on a routine traffic stop at the same F Street intersection.  He responded to the stop by firing 10 shots at Officer Carlos Diaz, wounding him in the right shoulder, forearm and head.  Mar fled the crime scene, but was apprehended three days later in Mexico.  His criminal history includes three aggravated assaults, assault on a public servant, burglary, deadly conduct of discharging a firearm at another person, credit car abuse and escape from custody.

It is not just Harlingen that is feeling the onslaught of increased juvenile crime.  Across the Rio Grande Valley violence and death are on the increase.  Currently eleven teenagers are in custody awaiting trial on murder charges.

On August 24 a 14 year old was shot and killed in a Weslaco store parking lot, 15 miles from Harlingen. Roberto Castro, Jr. and his father were trying to recover their family truck, which had been stolen.  Following the shooting, the culprit sped off in that same truck.

In neighboring Hidalgo County there have been 17 suspected gang murders in the past year.  Of the eleven suspects apprehended, seven were foreign nationals.  It is suspected that Mara Salvatrucha, the infamous MS-13 gang, is adding to local criminal activity.  The Rio Grande Valley is a favorite crossing point for MS-13 gang members seeking entry into the United States.  This extremely violent Central American gang is known to have linked up with other gangs in the United States to engage in drug smuggling, human trafficking, black market gun running, assassinations, theft and attacks on la enforcement officials.  It is estimated that more than 20,000 MS-13 gang members are operating inside the United States and more arriving almost daily.  In the Rio Grande Valley alone, 40 MS-13 members were arrested in 2007.  So far in 2008, another 24 members have been apprehended.  Most people believe the number apprehended only show the “tip of the iceberg.”

It can be strongly argued that effective border security enforcement would add measurably to the reduction of crime in south Texas and across the United States.  As we all know, border security still remains almost non-existent. 

There has been no documentation presented to the public that MS-13 gang influence is driving the border crime rate upward.  However, it is very clear that juvenile crime is becoming increasingly more violent… and violence is the trademark of that organization.  Is it any wonder that Chief Daniel Castillo is calling for divine intervention?

More on the Government We Vote For

Harlingen, Texas September 8, 2008:  With an army of political partisans, pundits and vacuum heads filling the hard copy and electronic media with an overabundance of both written and verbal trash, I elected to block out both the Internet and television.  Some space and time was needed to clear my head and try to make a rational decision about our national approach to electing those who will govern the nation.

An often-used observation is “People get the government they vote for.” Or “People get the government they deserve.” Here the observation is quite simple.  We, as a nation, accept…and even encourage those seeking political office to “spin”, “equivocate”, “omit”, “ignore”, “plagiarize”, “pander”, “prostitute”, “cheat”, plus out and out “lie” in pursuit of power.  We accept the utter falseness of their campaigns, knowing full well that most of what has been placed on the table for us to view is complete bilge-wash.

There can be a strong argument made that almost half of our country accepts the above premise as hard fact and has completely opted out of the election system.  In all of our elections for national office the turnout of the voting age population runs from a high of 63% in 1960 to a low of just over 36% in 1998.  Even the highly contested presidential election of 2000 only brought out 51.3% of the 205,815,000 people who could have cast ballots for the candidate of their choice.

Why is this happening?  Many believe we have moved from the voting booth to the auction block when it comes to elections.  Americans have quit voting for the best possible governance and instead are voting on the impossible promises of candidates.  Those who still vote make their marks next to the names of candidates who aim at what they feel is satisfying the special hatreds of their possible constituencies.  If you hate the pocketbooks of those richer than yourself, they punch that button.  If you have pain over the idea of abortion, they feed that fire.  If the other guy has a better job or house or car…make it more difficult for him to keep them.  If the other guy is weak, needy, lazy, too young, too old, too good, too nice, to bad, too ugly… paint him with a brush others can relish.

We have forgotten that those in elected office are there to serve all of the people equally.  In place of having people who will govern on behalf of all, we have come to the two sided system of “parties” that even George Washington feared would bring our nation to the brink of collapse.

As long as we allow the worst of motives to dominate our electoral system, we lose.  As long as we allow political hacks to dominate our elections we will lose.  As long as we fail to demand complete honesty and fair-minded governance, we will lose.  We accept all of the above today as the “business of politics” format…. and that is another reason why half of our citizens are turned-off by elections and have walked away from the ballot box.  These are also the reasons we always end up with the government we deserve.