Home of Today's Common Sense

Sent 10/19/2003 Published Brownsville Herald

I have been watching the political activities with regard to the redistricting with interest. What the major parties would have us believe with regard to the accomplishments gerrymandering of election districts has, really concerns me.
Our forefathers envisioned citizen statesmen not the professional politicians we seem to have now.

Every ten years when the census shows us that there are now more of us and many of us have moved to where we thought the conditions were better than where we were, the politicians arrange the voting districts so as to keep or change the incumbents according to the office holders preferences not to provide a fair representation.
In Texas considerable effort to maintain the incumbency power center in Austin and Houston at the expense of the Border areas has been undertaken for years. That is the real reason for the long thin district lines rather than compact area lines that follow county or regional boundaries.
I for one do not like to be told that the outcome of the election has been determined already by the way the district lines are drawn.
The result of all this political wrangling has been the evolution of a professional ruling class that decides what is best for us and then extorts money in the form of taxes to pay for their view of progress not necessarily ours.
In the recent California recall, the electorate fired the icon of the ruling class structure that caused the problems. The rulers in their insecurity struck out by saying that the people did not have the right to do that, that the State Constitution was not legal, that the only reason to remove an elected official was a criminal act or malfeasance, that the people obviously were not smart enough to know what is right only the leaders were.
Here in Brownsville where only a small portion of those that can vote do and 51% of those become our office holders could easily result in the perpetuation of a ruling class. If only 15% of the voters actually vote then only 8% of the people are making the rules for the rest of us. The folks setting the district voting lines are counting on past voting practices to remain the same and their plans can be defeated.
If more of us here get out and vote our weight will be felt and the planned outcomes defeated. We will also get public leaders that more fairly represent what we feel the direction of our community, our state and our nation should be.
Lastly, the Constitution defined Congress as a “deliberative body” which may mean that they were supposed to think about things and talk about them but if they didn’t get around to doing alot, it might not be really bad.