House Speaker Craddick has decided there is no possibility of losing the vote on HB 2 and HB 3 this time. Both Bills were brought up and sent to the appropriate committees on Thursday. Speaker Craddick then changed them to go to Select Committees after they had been assigned. That means that he gets to hand pick the members of the House to hear the Bills. In each case he chose the same five Republicans who sat on the Conference Committees during the 1st special called session. With Reps. Grusendorf and Jim Keffer chairing the committees they quickly passed out each Bill the same way they passed out of conference earlier this month without any public hearing.
Don’ t it make you wonder why it takes so long to move something the public wants and yet they can move quickly when big law firms, utility and insurance companies have something on the table. This says a lot about who our Reps are representing.
Not so for the senate. Despite the fact that they moved House Bill 2 out of committee in just a few minutes after adjournment on Thursday with no public input they did at least move their Bill from last go around and didn’t bother with HB 3. I guess we will see how many of them listened to the impassioned plea from Senator Whitmire Wednesday night to stand fast for the educators and for education. It didn’t appear that many were listening as they stood around in groups laughing at whatever was attracting their attention. They paid even less attention when Senator Barrientos drew their attention to all the six figure salary lobbyist sitting there representing big business and asked who is lobbying for the working man. He then pointed out that they were supposed to be watching out for us. Apparently some listened but unfortunately Lt. Governor Dewhurst wasn’t among them.
On the Federal level things didn’t go much better yesterday. The Congress voted 257-171 to reauthorize most of the Patriot Act. All but two provisions were mad permanent and the two most controversial parts were given a ten year Sunset Provision. Hell that sounds permanent enough to permanently destroy a lot of our Liberty. Only six Texas Congressmen, Cuellar, Doggett, Jackson-Lee, E.B. Johnson, Ron Paul and Al Green voted against the Reauthorization and Congressman Hinojosa did not vote. They all know that if terrorist want to hit Texas they will have no problem at all coming across the Mexico border, planting timed or remote controlled bombs and be back in Mexico before they detonate. If a man would trade one RIGHT for IMAGINED SAFETY that man deserves neither liberty or safety.. You are all familiar with that saying and who said it. To bad most of those Texans in Congress did not study American History or the Constitution.
Hopefully Texans in the Senate will pay more attention to both. That of course will be up to us to bring them to their attention. Get busy now.
Brothers and Sisters we are in for a long bumpy political ride at least until the next election. If we are still stuck with a lot of those Texans from both Parties currently holding State & Federal offices then I guess we get what we deserve But of course that is just my personal opinion.
Footnote: I guess Governor Rick Perry feels confident as well. It has been reported that he is back on his overseas junket being paid for by someone who wants to get his attention.
Sputnik
