Letters to the Editor – Austin, education, trees, drag shows, mental illness, Club Q

My Christmas wish

Re: “Efforts target city of Austin — Frisco Republican files legislation to replace capital with a ‘district’, ” Nov. 21 Metro story.

Your story called the filed legislation a ”long shot.” Have you not read some of the legislation passed during last session?

It no longer surprises me that legislators file bills that are in no way beneficial to the citizens of this state. Instead they waste the valuable time of a part-time legislative body to promote legislation that does little but create dissension among the members and public.

Why not focus on issues that benefit the citizens, like a fixed grid that doesn’t result in higher utility bills for fixed-income residents, or expanding the Medicaid program for all those women having babies because of the new abortion restrictions enacted last session?

With the holidays fast approaching, I make only one Christmas wish: That elected officials stop filing divisive bills and focus on the best interests of the citizens of Texas.

Yes, I know it’s never going to happen. Sigh.

Dee Wilson, Plano

Why won’t state fix this?

In my opinion, public education in Texas is in dire straits right now. For the past decade, the performance of our state’s children in math has seen a sharp decline, with most scoring below the grade average. It doesn’t help that public education is severely underfunded, teachers are underpaid and schools are understaffed in Texas.

Our state government has stalled on these improvements for years, but most Texans look at this issue and can tell that, for the sake of our state’s children and their future, more funding would go a long way in improving education in Texas.

Rodrigo Wilson, East Dallas

These trees are important

Texans need Oregon trees.

I disagree with many of the policies of the Biden administration, but there is one we should all support: Executive Order 14072, requiring an inventory of mature and old-growth forests and development of policies to protect them.

It doesn’t matter which side of the climate debate you’re on. This is a bipartisan issue in which we all have a stake. MOG forests are estimated to sequester more than 280 million metric tons of carbon each year. They are a valuable asset of the American people.

In the nine largest national forests outside of Alaska, Oregon holds almost 50% of the MOG in those forests. Forest management agencies in Oregon aggressively seek logging of those MOG forests.

Please write or call your U.S. senators and representatives to urge them to support this bipartisan legislation that is important to all of us.

Mike Honkomp, Arlington

‘Freedom’? Nope

Speaking as a long-time child development consultant, I tell you: sane adults do not give sharp, pointed scissors and knives to toddlers to carry around and play with. Nor do sane adults make available lethal military weapons to adolescents (and arrested adolescents) to carry around and play with.

It is not a “freedom.” It is a deviation from common sense. Civilized, sane adults do not vote to be led by those who are not sane.

Paula Craig, Dallas/ Oak Cliff

A silly fixation

I don’t understand the right’s hatred and fixation on drag shows. We grew up listening to Bugs Bunny’s take on Richard Wagner while in drag. When we were teens we laughed at Corp. Maxwell Klinger’s stylish outfits on M*A*S*H.

Two of the highest grossing movies in the 1980s and ‘90s featured popular actors in drag: Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire. The other night, we watched Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, and yep, they were in drag.

Drag has been around for ages; indeed, Shakespeare utilized this device in his plays. If drag was fine for Shakespeare and Bugs Bunny, it’s not going to worry me!

Kate French, Waxahachie

Inmate should not be executed

Re: “Mentally ill inmate shouldn’t be executed — Convicted killer who ate his own eye is incompetent by legal standard for death penalty,” by Greg Hansch, Nov. 20 Opinion.

I was horrified to learn from Hansch’s opinion column that Texas seeks to execute Andre Thomas, who is so clearly mentally ill and maybe worst of all, tried to get help just two days before the murder. If he’d gotten that help, maybe this tragic crime would not have happened.

I was particularly struck by the fact that Thomas is not on death row but rather at the prison unit that holds mentally ill prisoners. Surely that tells us everything we need to know about his incompetence for execution. I hope common sense, and common decency, will prevail in this case and the execution will be stopped.

Hannah Goff, Grand Prairie

Is this really important?

If the Republicans in the House are going to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings with foreign countries while his father was vice president, then why don’t they investigate, while they are at it, Ivanka Trump’s special deals with China and Jared Kushner’s deal with Saudi Arabia worth billions of dollars while their father/father-in-law was president of the United States? Doesn’t Congress have more important things to do than launch “revenge investigations”? What about gun control, poverty, immigration reform, health, inflation, etc.?

Susan Nehez, Plano

Missing at Uvalde

Has anyone else noticed that the unarmed guests at Club Q in Colorado Springs did more to stop the mass murderer than the armed police did at Uvalde? It appears to me that the Club Q patrons were motivated and brave enough to stop the killing. That motivation and bravery were missing at Uvalde.

Ralph Goins, Coppell

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