I’m a happy customer of Amazon.com and I don’t like having to pay sales taxes on purchases made anywhere. But the idea, put forth state rep. Linda Harper-Brown, that Texas sales tax law should be changed to benefit them is ridiculous.

Too often ideas for government action are pushed with the excuse that the poor dumb citizens who built this country are in need of protection from their own stupidity.

Loving County, east of the Pecos River and just southeast of the Guadalupe Mountains, has long been the least populated county in Texas, and for the last 10 years, the smallest in the U.S. of A.

On yesterday’s Pratt on Texas, Senate State Affairs chairman Robert Duncan, SD28, explained his position on a statewide, as opposed to the existing local, property tax for public education funding.

The total interview is about 10 minutes long.

This past weekend the Associated Press reported that the “father of a Texas A&M junior who died of bacterial meningitis says he plans to push the Legislature to require that all students at Texas universities be vaccinated against the fast-moving infection.”

I’ve a perfect example for you of how even a vociferous conservative can find himself supporting a tax increase, get it through the Legislature, and get away with few ever knowing.

If there is anything the DC debate on the ill-named DREAM Act has taught us in Texas, it’s that our public universities are filled with those who are residing in the country illegally and, despite that fact, are politically active.

“Institutions of higher education, like other state agencies, are looking for already lean budget areas they can take a knife to – a second time. They are charged by the state’s leadership with identifying an additional 2.5 percent in cuts in state General Revenue funding from their Fiscal Year 2011 budgets.