I am the 2.7 Percent

I am the 2.7 percent of the Texas population that voted.

Texas population-                    25,145,561
Legal voting age-                     18,789,238
Registered Voters-                   13,269,233
Votes cast on Prop 1-                    686,479

Percent of Registered Voters who voted-   5.173%
Percent of legal voting age who voted-      3.6536%
Percent of Total Population who voted-     2.73%


I used the votes cast on Prop 1 because out of the 10 proposed amendments, Prop 1 had the highest turnout.  This is not only disappointing, it is, in my mind, downright scary.  How can so many people be apathetic?
It also highlights what I said in this post, about my vote counting for even more in an election like this. 
My single vote effectively represented:

19 people out of Registered Voters
27 people out of legal voting age
36 people out of the entire Texas population

During the 2010 Gubernatorial Race, there were 4,979,870 votes cast so my vote during that election counted for

2 people out of Registered Voters
3 people out of legal voting age
5 people out of the entire Texas population

Amazing!  In a span of one year, my single vote became 7 to 10 times stronger!  If this scares any of you, the thought that a complete stranger who you may not agree with politically or philosophically could be casting you and 20-30 of your closest friends votes, please, participate in ALL elections.  Make your voice heard!  Be the change you want in the world!

Vote

I am a very strong proponent of voting.  I encourage everyone I know to vote, even if I know they don't share the same political views as I do because I believe strongly that it is our civic duty to be involved with politics at every level.  It is precisely why, after taking my Munchkin to the doctor for a diagnosis of pink eye on Friday, poor baby, that I went and voted.  Elections like the one we are currently having, where you are only voting for constitutional amendments, generally have an extremely low voter turnout which makes it even more important to make your voice heard.  Every vote counts in any election but in ones like this, I believe your vote counts even more which is why I would like to encourage anyone who might read this to PLEASE, go vote on Tuesday, November 8th if you haven't already.  You can find out what the proposed amendments are here and you can find your local polling place here.

I also have a completely unrelated tip for everyone.  If you have a basement, and the bathroom where your young children take a bath happens to sit over a part of this basement, I recommend NOT placing your networking equipment underneath said bathroom. 
Friday night, Monkey and Monster were taking a bath when Munchkin starting crying.  I left the bathroom to go grab her and feed her and in the few minutes I was gone, my children somehow managed to splash so much water outside the tub that they essentially turned the floor into a mini lake.  While I tried to mop all the water up, I wasn't fast enough and some of it ran under the baseboard, into a closet and dripped down, directly on top of our router, modem and switch, effectively killing our entire network. 
My husband was understandably upset, given that it destroyed an 800 dollar piece of equipment and he had to go scrounging through spare parts to piecemeal our network back together.  Thank God I am married to a network technician who can take even a disaster like that and within 2 hours, have our entire house back up and running.

Leave a comment and tell me, what is the most expensive thing your child/ren have ever inadvertently destroyed?

Why I Don't Support Occupy Wall Street...Yet

Occupy Wall Street has officially hit the one month mark today.  They say they want to end economic injustice, corporate influence in politics and the control of wealth by the 1 percent. 
The method they are using to try and get this outcome is to protest Wall Street, march in front of millionaires homes and trespass on private property at Zuccotti Park.  Now, Obama, Biden, Pelosi and other politicians are expressing their support for the movement and trying to co-opt it into a rallying cry for Democrats.
Here is my issue and why I can't support this movement yet, but if the right changes are made I could.  These protesters shouldn't be protesting the corporations, they should be protesting Congress.  It is because of our Congress and the bills they pass that any of this happened in the first place.  Instead of protesting the cause, the #OWS people are protesting the effect.  The worst part is that the very politicians they should be protesting are now expressing support for the movement.  Let us take a look at some of the numbers, shall we?

From the years of 1989-2010

Barack Obama received a total of:

$16,004,693 from Securities & Investment companies with these being some of the specific companies

$1,058,395 from Goldman Sachs
$759,197 from Citigroup Inc
$751,695 from JP Morgan Chase & Co
$523,056 from Morgan Stanley
$426,674 from Lehman Brothers
$421,242 from Bank of America
$327,837 from Merrill Lynch
$238,035 from Wells Fargo
$40,800 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Joe Biden received:

$916,875 from Securities & Investment

Nancy Pelosi recieved:

$625,950 from Securities & Investment

Hillary Clinton received:
 
$10,324,347 from Securities & Investment

Harry Reid received:

$1,568,933 from Securities & Investment

Daniel Inouye received:

$360,200 from Securities & Investment

Max Baucus received:

$1,542,004 from Securities & Investment

Please don't think I am singling out Democrats, I mention them first because they are the ones I have seen and read about giving their support to this movement.  Here are some of the Republicans as well.

John McCain received:

$10,534,171 from Securities & Investments with these being some of the specific companies

$454,020 from Merrill Lynch
$395,116 from Citigroup Inc
$338,065 from Goldman Sachs
$271,402 from Morgan Stanley
$244,007 from JP Morgan Chase & Co
$196,450 from Bank of America
$94,465  from Wells Fargo

Sarah Palin received:

$25,250 from Securities & Investment

John Boehner received:

$992,536 from Securities & Investment

Eric Cantor received:

$1,149,050 from Securities & Investment

Herman Cain received:

$44,857 from Securities & Investment

Rick Perry received:

$5,873,509 from Securities & Investment

Mitt Romney received:

$5,462,414 from Securities & Investment

all the above information was collected from http://influenceexplorer.com/

Now lets look at the fundraising so far for the 2012 presidential election and see who is trying to buy the election this time shall we?

Barack Obama has received:

$1,643,149 from Securities & Investment
$4,687,716 from Misc. Business

Mitt Romney has received:

$3,561,783 from Securities & Investment
$1,382,295 from Misc. Business

Rick Perry has received:

$2,473,310 from Misc Business
$375,275 from Securities & Investment

Ron Paul has received:

$679,070 from Misc Business
$89,587 from Securities & Investment

the above information was collected from http://www.opensecrets.org/

Are we seeing a pattern here?  Do the protesters honestly expect these companies to stop doing what they are legally allowed to do just because it is ethically questionable?  Do the protesters honestly expect our politicians to act against the very companies that are getting them elected?  If the government made it a law that anyone that wanted to could walk into my store and take anything they like without paying for it as long as those who took it gave a cut to the government, should I protest the people taking from my store or the government telling them to do it?  
If these protesters would start protesting the cause of our nations problems, our elected officials and the broken laws they created after being paid off, instead of the affect, if everyone in our country would band together and refuse to vote for any politician who is in bed with any company, then we could really make a difference in this world and make a change for the better.