Peace Y'all
First I must apologize for my lack of political acumen. I mean I totally forgot this was the year of the elections, so there I said it! LOL
I mean after all, it's not like I don't have any interest in politics, but I don't believe that old cliche' "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" is an all-encompassing statement, I mean sometimes you have to know when to continue to try and when to quit, when to let it go, ya know?
In this great state of mine our governor has slickly gotten away without any notice about the allegations of taking bribes from a Big Pharma company in exchange for making the HPV vaccine mandatory for ALL public school- attending girls over the age of 12, regardless if they are sexually active or not. Local schoolboard elections have given victory to gangsters who masterfully take the money from school(84,000,000 dollars last I checked) superintendents come and go like Arab nomads, our two-faced mayors and other city officials are continuing to find themselves on the news, and not for good reasons either. And the grand fiasco of all, realizing America's first Black President is not any better than America's last White President, bailing out the real bank robbers, lying about the economy, and now resorting to Juniors' old tricks of the same old tired "somebody's trying to terrorize America" scam, one must begin to wonder what is this politic mess all about.
But I must admit there are some things worth really voting for, and this year brought out some doozies, mainly Propositions 1 and 2, propositions about whether or not beer and wine can be sold in grocery stores in Dallas proper. For the most part Dallas is still a dry city, except for certain business areas and in the parts in the 'hood(as if that's a surprise). Surprisingly my area which is now seeing its part of ghettoization/gentrification taking place, had an ordinance prohibiting the sales of liquor in stores, but like most if not all pre-dominately African-American 'hoods, they were at one time predominately White neighborhoods until the n... well you know the rest of THAT story.
Now advertisements now popping up on so many billboards entering downtown and even skyscrapers are encouraging passers-by to get tow-down, with giant-size billboards of the latest and greatest of hooch, elegantly packaged to make even the stinky-bummy drunk look and feel as if they are privileged to swig such a fine wine.
To suck the voters into approving this move brochures were printed out using the old "enhance the economy" and "encourage economic development" and paying better wages to policemen routine, and adding the notion that if this is not passed, the city will be unable to recouperate at least 30 million dollars from an already whopping 80 million dollar city deficit. This lack of funding has supposedly made the city cutback funding to parks, pools and libraries, now even the downtown library looks like a ghost town every Monday, but strangely enough orchestrated music is piped through the elegant Bose speakers hanging above the entrance. This past summer, stores all around the Dallas area, even Wal Mart neighborhood markets hosted registration tables encouraging people to vote YES to sell beer and wine in grocery stores in Dallas proper.
This photo was taken at a gas station in my 'hood. My area has not had a grocery store in the past 2 years, yet people are being encouraged to vote YES on November 2nd to allow beer and wine to be sold in such places.
A couple of problems here, especially in my hood, where the nearest grocery store is a DOLLAR STORE! Which is more important, a grocery store, or the ability to sell hooch in a grocery store? If you don't have a car in my neck of the 'hood, tough rockos kid, 'cause the nearest decent store is miles away. There's only two ways to get food in my area, the dollar store(with its limited supply of meat, and even more limited supply of non-pork meat), or pretend you're poor(if you're not) and go to Mt. Tabor Baptist Church and front yo' self a sack of groceries every Tuesday.
Another issue is the cry about the rise of crime already in these 'hoods, especially in the impoverished areas, but nevermind that correct? I mean the only drugs that are illegal here are marijuana, crack and cocaine(which you won't see in my parts), right? Never mind that before the invention of crack, alcohol was the suicidal choice in the hood, right? Nevermind that every year more people die of alcohol-related incidents 4 times over than the amount of people killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, but hey, no one's shut down a brewery right? Or accused a liquor store of being a terrorist cell, right? Then why use the same old revenue-generating excuse( which we the taxpayers won't see anyway) as a means to pump sauce into the neighborhoods, knowing fully we won't see the results of such ventures except maybe increases in deaths, dependency and depression? What happened to the Texas Lottery, that was legalized in 1992, which the proceeds from that was said to fix roads, schools and.... Where's that money? More and more casinos are being built, more ways to gamble your money away are being established, and more and more ways to hype up your addiction or depression are concocted, but what happened to the jobs? How can private-owned buildings continue to go up downtown while public libraries, pools and parks are closing down?
In closing, I want to make it clear that this is not a blog to encourage or discourage voting, or to urge to vote no, but basically showing the sickness of this society, allowing corporations and political pundits to to further contribute to the spread of vices and addictions and hide them under pseudonyms called "urban development" "economic growth" and so on. In the end who really wins?
Peace y'all
