Mexican-Americans in Tarrant County: taxes are mandatory, voting is your choice.

By Franco

December 13, 2015

Vote, Tarrant county

The government takes a good portion of what people produce. It is done mostly through taxes: federal, state, county, city, school, and sales. Then periodically the people decide on how those taxes are going to be spent, mostly through voting. Voting is ultimately about money, your money. When you vote you are trying to influence how the government will spend your money. If you need better schools for your children and the wrong school board member gets elected, she or he may decide to spend the money on contractors instead of improving your kid’s education. You might have to walk miles to a bus stop, or you could have good hospitals. You could have your streets full of pot holes, or decent clean water to drink. It all depends who gets voted in.

Votes can make you poor or prosperous; they can make you sick or healthy; they can make your children ignorant or educated; they can give you clean, decent neighborhoods or ghettos. It's about who gets voted in and how the money is going to be spent. If your neighborhood is full of crime, pot holes, terrible schools, sick and poor people, the votes are working against you, in fact you are not even getting the leftovers of what you contribute to society.

You shouldn't vote for anyone, unless they talk to you, and tell you what they are going to do to improve your quality of life: in your neighborhood, in your schools, in your employment, and in your health care institutions. Are they committed to making your life better? If they don't have anything to offer you, then you shouldn't vote for them. Become informed, look at their history, by their acts you shall know them.

Voting is not mandatory. Although voting is considered a moral duty of citizens. In ancient Greece the slaves or working class couldn't vote. In the US, throughout its past history: blacks, poor white males who didn't own property, and women, couldn't vote. Today all US citizens with some exceptions can vote. Voting is a moral choice. You could have moral reasons why you vote or don't vote. But taxes are mandatory, you have no choice, you have to pay up, or else!

Many Mexican-Americans in Tarrant County have gotten fed up with voting, because they see it as a form of begging that gets them nowhere. Their attitude is - keep my money, I'm not going to plead for you to give some of it back to me, I'm not going to get on my knees by voting, voting is a big joke and it's not making my life better. You've used power to create districts where no-one who will truly represent my interests will get voted in. If you are going to take all the power and money, at least I can be dignified and not beg by voting for your crumbs.

Taxes are mandatory, voting is your choice.