Kip Averitt Departs

I am sorry to see Kip Averitt end his tenure as our state senator.

As those who know me understand, I generally vote against incumbents. The very few exceptions are those who have done more good than harm while in office.

My "theory" on this says that it takes time for a newly-elected office holder to "put down roots" into the good-old-boy corruption system. Therefore, if we "weed that garden" at every possible opportunity, we will get more honest, responsive government.

My general assessment is that politicians are a sorry, greedy, self-serving lot, completely owned by whoever gave them the most money. I am extremely dismayed at how many of these evil parasites keep getting re-elected for decades.

There are very, very few exceptions to my assessment, but Kip was one of them. Like our federal representative Chet Edwards (another one on my "re-electables list"), he did lots of good things for his constituency, and from his voting patterns, obviously felt far less bound to party agendas.

The political agendas of both parties are quite offensive to me, placing the good of the party above the good of the people, as they so clearly do. This has been going on for decades, and is now worse than I have ever seen, constituting in my view a "clear and present danger" to our Republic.

My list of re-electable incumbents is very short. The only other one on it is state representative Doc Anderson, who voted against his party's agenda when he helped defeat a huge swarm of dirty coal power plants, to be built in and around McLennan county.

These were being "pushed" very hard by the governor and a bunch of rich special interests. They would have been a pollution disaster for almost the entire state of Texas.

About 3/4 of the year, these plants would have pushed the DFW nonattainment area beyond any hope of avoiding direct (and very intrusive) federal intervention to clean up the mess. The other 1/4, it would have been Houston.

When you add in the recent foreign-owned toll road and eminent domain-abuse debacle, you can see why my re-electables list clearly does not include our current governor.

Some I don't really know about, but if I don't know, I vote "no". You all should, too.