Submitted to the Marshall Independent

To the editor:

It is time to take a check on the direction politics is taking in our area. In 2010 some 15 money bills came before our house of representatives. The district 20 A representative, Andrew Falk, voted taxpayer friendly 7 percent of the time. This is from 2010 legislative scorecard of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. He did not have the courtesy to respond to Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Survey and gave no response on nine queries; what does that say about his social values? How can Andrew say that Jay does not live in the district when Jay is building a house in this district, which will add tax base, as well as the taxes his business pays to Minnesota This should be encouraging instead of demeaning him. Then we have the loss of the Appleton prison with its big loss of jobs and taxes. We then can turn to District 7, Congressman Collin Peterson following Nancy Pelosi's tax and spend policies more than 90 percent of the time. They include the gigantic health bill with its mandates and ways to destroy the best health care in the world, Cap and Trade, a most nonsensical idea, which will effectively destroy the corn ethanol and sugar beet industries, so vital to our district. Also known as Cap and Tax, this will add $1,500 to the average American families energy cost annually. Besides his negative voting he insults his voters saying, "if they didn't hear all this negative stuff from the national press, if they would've been isolated from everything the last three to four years, they wouldn't have known anything was going on" - a fresh quote from Collin Peterson about the 7th Congressional District.

Lee Byberg for Congress is our answer for creating jobs, Washington getting out of the way, will bring fiscal principals and responsibility back to Washington to work, to simplify tax system, reducing financial burden on families and small business, would vote to replace Pelosi Care. With a bi-partisan solution to reduce ever rising cost of health care without cutting medicare. National defense should be used to protect the vital national security interests of the United States. We're in the middle of difficult times. Lee Byberg for U.S. Congress and Jay Backer for State Representative will help answer our problems.

Albin Skogstad