My 7th grade daughter's letter to the editor

When me and my dad were driving back from school on Friday my Dad told me the terrible news that the House of Representatives failed to pass a bill that would help protect girls my age all over the world from being forced into marriages. As a seventh grader I can’t even imagine what is must be like for girls my age or younger to be forced to marry men as old as my dad and have their children soon after.

I don’t understand why after every member of the Senate voted to pass the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act – S. 987 our local Congressman Lamar Smith voted against it. Mr. Smith claims to be “pro-life” but seems to think it’s “OK” for young girls to die when their bodies aren’t strong enough and ready to have a baby? Why doesn’t he care?

I later found out that some people lied and said that bill would have funded abortions, but anybody can read the bill, which is less than six pages long, and see that it’s not true. Lamar Smith was either too lazy to read the bill or he just doesn’t care about kids because we can’t vote.

Cheryl Patterson for State Representative HD 44

In the race to fill the Texas House seat left open by the untimely demise of Edmund Kuempel many of the candidates have expressed themselves in party talking points such as small government and cutting budgets. Only one candidate has come out strongly for protecting the future of District 44 and Texas by continuing to fund education fully, that candidate is Cheryl Dees Patterson.

Mrs. Patterson has been a classroom teacher and a principal so she understands the needs of our children who are the future of this state. Patterson is also a trustee of the Navarro ISD and therefore understands the realities of the budget constraints our schools already face. Cheryl is committed to Guadalupe, Wilson and Gonzales and that means investing in the children of the state because we have no future without them. I urge you to support Cheryl Dees Patterson by voting for her Tuesday December 14.

Tax breaks for Paris Hilton and Oprah Winfrey’s dog

Not content to continue giving tax breaks to millionaires like Lindsey Lohan and LeBron James now Senators Cornyn and Hutchison are holding up legislation to extend unemployment benefits to give tax breaks on inherited millions for people like Paris Hilton and Oprah Winfrey’s dog.

I find it hard to accept that the millions who have lost jobs due to the near crash of Wall Street banks aren’t more important than a celebrity’s dog. Why aren’t average Americans as important as the Wall Street bankers who wrecked our economy and then got bailed out so they could take home million dollar bonuses this year?

Senate Republicans do have principles, if you can call them that

I’ve often heard my liberal friends accuse Republicans of being unprincipled but the recent actions by Senate Republicans shows that just isn’t true. All 42 have taken the principled stand if that if tax breaks for millionaires aren’t renewed then no other legislation will be passed in the current lame duck session.

Since the verifiable reduction of both U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals isn’t nearly as important as millionaire tax breaks why should it be voted on first. Since extension of unemployment benefits for those put out of work by the near collapse of the banking system owned by millionaires isn’t as important as tax breaks for those same millionaires why should it be voted on first. Since food safety legislation that would correct the lax standards that have allowed the deaths of hundreds and sickening of thousands of Americans who ate food tainted in processing plants owned by millionaires isn’t nearly as important as tax breaks for said millionaires why should it be voted on first.

So of course my liberal friends are wrong about Republicans because they do have principles, millionaires deserve tax breaks more than Americans deserve national security or safe food and more than the unemployed deserve food on their plates.

Voter fraud fraud

Some of the first bills filed for the upcoming state legislative session would require photo ID to vote. I find it absolutely fascinating that the Republicans in the Texas House are claiming that the Voter ID bill they’re pushing is necessary in order to prevent a serious problem with voter fraud. If voter fraud is really the problem they’ve been claiming it is then the party that won 99 of 150 seats, gaining 23, must be the perpetrators.

How this is really more important than stimulating jobs for the hundreds of thousands of Texans who are out of work I don’t know.

Improve National Security and address the budget deficit

It's time for the Senate to cut our bloated nuclear stockpiles and restore inspections of Russia's nuclear arsenal by approving the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START. Since it was signed in April, many Democrats and Republicans have said the Senate should ratify the treaty. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it has “the unanimous support of America's military leadership.”

Treaties require deliberation, but senators have all the information necessary to reach a decision on New START. In September, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended ratification by a 14-4 vote.

Let's put politics aside and national security first by ratifying New START this year. Call Sens. Hutchison and Cornyn and urge them to help secure our future by voting to ratify.

Mixed up priorities

Republicans won a whopping majority in the state house on November 2 and within days the chairs of various committees have released a letter naming their priorities for the coming session. In their top ten they include “passing a photo ID requirement as a protection against voter fraud”, but if voter fraud is really as rampant as they seem to believe doesn’t that call into question the legitimacy of their recent overwhelming victory?

Other topics in the letter include “ensuring businesses are not stifled by over-taxation, excess regulation or unfair litigation.” This should be deciphered as raising fees - which hurt small and startup businesses because they aren’t related to profits, continuing to allow air and water pollution by gas producers in the Barnett Shale – because being able to light your tap water on fire isn’t a problem, and limiting the rights of individuals to seek redress when a business or doctor has harmed them. The chairs claim that these steps will help the Texas economy and create jobs.

The chairs go on to claim that Speaker Straus is “a staunch fiscal conservative in the model of President Reagan”. I can’t say whether or not Straus is a fiscal conservative, but Reagan certainly wasn’t as he raised taxes twice and massively increased the size of the federal government in his eight years as president. Given their failure to know recent history it’s no wonder they have chosen to ignore the states abysmal education record or seek any means to improve it.