El Nacional de Tulsa

ENGLISH RANDY QUIROGA-KING PUBLISHER Oklahoma's #1 Hispanic News pa per, Website, Yellow Pages, Attorney & Health Guides and Metro Magazine! 300 SW 25th ST | OKC, OK 73109 www.noticiasoklahoma.com Los artículos que se publican aquí, son responsabilidad de quién los escribe. Las cartas deberán contar con el nombre del autor y un teléfono para confirmar. The opinions expressed in articles published are not necessarily those of El Nacional. Letters should must have a name and phone for verification purposes. SUBSCRIPTIONS/ SUSCRIPCIONES $96 Year. Mail check or money order: Attention Subscriptions $96 por año. Envíe el cheque o mo- ney order: Atención Suscripciones OKLAHOMA OWNED. HISPANIC OWNED. SARA MARTINEZ coordinator of the hispanic resource center of tulsa-city county public library system ISAAC ROCHA chairman tulsa's young profesionals DANIEL CHABOYA president of tulsa intercultural association 918·947·8100 REPRESENTANTES DE VENTAS PERRY KEPFORD VICTOR VILLAR ALEX GOMEZ DISEÑO GRAFICO SAMUEL CARDONA MARCO SANTA MARÍA EDITOR DE VIDEOS MATTHEW COON EL DE OKLAHOMA NACIONAL Oklahoma's Trusted Spanish News Source. EDITORA EJECUTIVA ROSA QUIROGA-KING CHIEF - EDITOR CARLOS ORTIZ GERENTE DE OPERACIONES SOFÍA HIDROGO Proud Partners Of: ADS E-MAIL ads.nacional@coxinet.net NEWS E-MAIL news.nacional@coxinet.net noticias.nacional@coxinet.net GENERAL E-MAIL nacional@coxinet.net SERVICIO AL CLIENTE LAURA BECERRA INDECISION 2014: (OR WHY WE'VE FAILED OUR DEMOCRACY) e electoral bloodbath of the Midterms is over, as the dust settles, a Republi- can controlled Congress has emerged from the fighting. Like real war, many good people where lost to politi- cal tides and forces beyond their powers. Many candida- tes lost because of their alig- nment with the party occu- pying the White House and growing discontent of the administration's perceived incompetence and ineffective policy handling over the last few years. e former Demo- cratic controlled Congress had served as a holding point for the Obama Administration. With that vanquished, nobo- dy is sure what is going to happen in the next coming years. Will organizations like ALEC (e American Legisla- tive Exchange Council) have a bigger influence in Congress? Will the XL Pipeline finally be approved by Congress? Or will nothing change, and will we continue the same path of inaction of the last 10 years? According to statistics, the largest party in America is not the Democrats or the Republi- cans…It's the party of apathe- tic voters. at is to say, the largest voting bloc in this cou- ntry doesn't even vote. In this midterm, 1/4th of all candi- dates to state legislatures will run unopposed, including Rep. Sally Kern of Oklahoma who said that "people of color (African-Americans)…didn't want to work as hard," and used her experience as a tea- cher of 20 years to back her claim. Also, Rep. John Ben- nett will run unopposed, a politician who grabbed natio- nal media attention for his comments about rooting out Islam from American society since he considered it a threat to America values. I'm not going to feed into the idea of identifying our last election as the election of the century. I firmly believe that all elections are important and if we want our society to be free and prosperous we must elect candidates based on their ability to get things done, do the right thing and have their perceptions groun- ded in reality, and not in the clouds of ideology. e 113th Congress with a Democratic majority in the Senate, and a Republican majority in the House, is poised on breaking many records. Not for pro- ductivity or transparency, but for inactivity and cronyism. Our Congress in the last ses- sion only passed 185 pieces of legislation in 113 session days. at is 1.63 bills per day, and 0.34 pieces of legislation per member of Congress. If you compare that statistics with the 103rd Congress that was in session 20 years ago, which passed 465 bills, about 3.03 bills per session days (153 session days, compared to 113 of our last session), and 0.86 bill per member of Congress. e outgoing 113th con- gress is the first in which the majority of its members are millionaires, with the average worth of each member of con- gress being $1,008,767. Yet our congress fails to draw up any mayor legislation to fix corporate tax loopholes, and vote to end crippling student debt, a mayor issue among young voters. In America, the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Rep. John Kline who his biggest cam- paign contributors are insti- tutions of higher education like the University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, etc. etc. also known as "for-profit" schools. ese schools notoriously advice their students to take outra- geously high interest loans, even worse, 88% of all stu- dents who attend e Univer- sity of Phoenix (their biggest contributor) fail to graduate. Do you see why elections mat- ter? I hope you do. Locally, for the members of Tulsa's District 6 can be a little relieved as the incum- bent Skip Steele has been defeated. I had the opportuni- ty to speak with Skip on seve- ral occasions I can honestly say that he had the best intentions and was a who- le-hearted concerned mem- ber of his community. But intentions only take some- body so far, and his inten- tions fell short. As the dis- trict becomes more ethnically diverse, with Hmong, Latino, African American and other Asians, they need to feel that they are equally represented along with the long-time resi- dents of the district. Yet, Skip has met changing times with lukewarm responses. Showing up to events in the various ethnic communities, but not really interacting with any of the attendees. Skip even attempted to stall the Cinco de Mayo festival held in his district by claiming some kind of deal with the organizers of the event. e councilor would also hold regular mee- tings to speak with the public, but looked like he wanted to be somewhere else when he was there. In his district, there has been a serious rise in cri- mes from burglary to murder. But the councilor hasn't lit a fire anywhere, and in my opi- nion has not done enough. He was a silent spokesperson for his district, which eventually cost him his seat. But in 44th State Sena- te District, the loss of Michael Brooks-Jimenez (D) has been a difficult one to stomach as a Latino. His candidacy, hinged the hopes of many Latinos for wider participation in sta- te-wide politics. MBJ was the real deal, a well-known attor- ney who had a very public profile and had the much cra- ved common touch with the people he met. Yet, he fell short. But I don't want to be completely negative about it, he ran a strong campaign, and was a strong candidate with many of us proud supporters and active participants in his campaign. College kids, who most likely would not partici- pated in an political campaign started stuffing envelopes, passing out signs, and that in itself might be its biggest reward and longest lasting contribution of his campaign, a critical one in my opinion. Now, I've only met him three or four times, but every time I've met MBJ he has been courteous and everybody that I've met only speaks well of him. But such is the way of candidates from ethnic mino- rities. Maybe he could of clo- sed a very small margin in voting if many more citizens would have been active parti- cipants, instead of passive dis- senters. Our country faces a wide ranging field of issues; it is my hope that we can find issues that we hold dear to ourselves. Whether Republi- can, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Green Party, or just a non-voter. ere are many issues in which we can find common ground, we all want good schools, a free press, and an open demo- cracy, a right to privacy and a right to vote (even if we don't). Yes, we disagree with the details, but while we vote for corrupt candidates, or even worse, not vote at all we put at risk everything our cou- ntry stands for, for sale to cor- porations, or in the hands of greedy and cold-hearted men. So, if you didn't vote, I hope to see you in the polls next go around, and remember so much is at stake. Our country needs you to participate, ima- gine a world in which every- body had grown too cynical of politics to vote anymore, and then the system would fail. "e ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challen- ge and controversy." –Martin Luther King Jr. Por: Omar Cisneros T-2 EL NACIONAL DE TULSA VIERNES 7 DE NOVIEMBRE, 2014 • www.noticiasoklahoma.com TULSA

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