Think Twice Before You Publish

Recently I read an article entitled "I won’t publicize a YES vote of TxDOT Prop 1 on my campaign website, but I will tell you through email…" Which was an author, Yvonne Larsen criticizing a politician, Rick Miller, for what she essentially described as trying to sway people in favor of proposition one, which is a legislative agenda which is supposed to decrease congestion on large roads such as MOPAC and IH-35 by creating more roads with the pre-existing funding we have. More than likely Larsen's intended audience are political skeptics who are looking to criticize politicians for anything that they're able to, including a harmless email that was meant more for voters education rather than to persuade anybody. In addition to a poorly written and laid out argument, Larsen's credibility is questionable as well, seeing as she is a conservative, petroleum related sales executive, so not only could her argument be made for personal reasons, but The politician she argues against happens to be a republican, so she could be criticizing him due to her proclaimed party affiliations as well. All in all, I think if she was going to make an argument against Rick Miller, she could have made a more well thought out criticism.

The Best Representation

I am critiquing an article called "Fast Growing Districts Deserve Seasoned Senators", which is an editorial written by the Austin American Statesman editors board. The targeted readers were essentially anyone concerned with the experience of the senators representing their voting district, particularly the fast growing voting districts, such as district five which includes Williamson county and district 14 which includes Travis county. Since the article was written by the Austin American Statesman's editorial board, this article is more credible than the majority of other potential sources that are available, especially because it was more than likely written collaboratively. The argument being made in this article is that a senators experience should trump party affiliations and other things similar to this that voters generally concern themselves with. One such example would be the case of District five, which has been predominantly a republican area. This coming election there is a republican senator running and a democratic senator running and while the republican matches up with the majority party affiliation in Williamson county, the democratic senator has much more experience. The proposition is that while the republican may have more in common with the majority of voters, it might be more wise to vote for the democrat based on his experience because the voters would likely get better overall representation. I am in agreement with the editors because I feel that a less experienced senator would likely be less active and therefore even if he held more similar values to mine I still would not be represented well.