This energy mess doesn’t look like you ‘fixed’ the power grid, Governor Abbott

Ominous signs about energy

Six power-generating facilities in Texas failed, and we’ve been asked to raise our thermostats and reduce energy use during peak times. (May 16, 1A, “What’s causing repair delays, high costs in Texas”) It is only May. There is a lot of hot weather to come.

Our governor has indicated that the grid was fixed after the outages in 2021. But this is not a sign that it is ready for a Texas summer.

Let’s tell the governor that we expect him to work to increase the reliability of the grid. This can be accomplished by increasing capacity, managing the gas suppliers and plugging in to the interstate power grid.

- David Troiano, Highland Village

Buses need to ditch the cash

It is time for the Fort Worth Trinity Metro to accept credit and debit and contactless payment forms on all its buses. This is 2022, not 1999.

The transit authority has promised riders for years that they would take other payments. The failure to do so leads to fewer people taking transit. Cashless is the future, and transit buses are missing out on it.

- John Davis, Fort Worth

Start it at conception, then

If life begins at conception, so should child support. When paternity is proved or admitted, support payments should be retroactive, and parents should be financially responsible for minor fathers.

Support should last for 20 years, adjusted for inflation and local costs. And failure to pay should be a felony.

Add all that to the abortion trigger laws.

- Gabrielle Gordon, unincorporated Tarrant County

Rape, incest by the numbers

Some argue that ending abortion is inhumane because there are circumstances in which having to raise a child is too traumatic — specifically, rape and incest.

There are two answers to this, one philosophical and one practical. Philosophically, the real question in all instances of abortion is, should an innocent baby be deprived of a right and opportunity to live, whatever the circumstances giving rise to her being conceived may be?

Practically, though, the suggestion of a horrible circumstance is a red herring, because thousands of people are standing in line for an opportunity to adopt an “unwanted” child. I suspect there are far fewer instances of rape and incest pregnancies than there are those who are waiting with open arms.

- Thomas F. Harkins Jr., Fort Worth

Leonard Pitts has the right wrong

Leonard Pitts Jr. does it again. His May 8 column, “Advocate for beliefs instead of debating words,” (5C) strongly implies that breathing polluted air, drinking polluted water, eating unsafe meats, condoning 80-hour work weeks, allowing minors in the workforce, condoning slum neighborhoods, violating women’s health care, treating LBGTQ people like less than human and denying Black people the right vote are the agenda of the right.

All of this is untrue. His technique is consistent with his penchant for feeding the uninformed with a steady diet of lingo designed to have them believe in his cause: woke, liberal progressivism.

- Gary Lambert, Mansfield

I’ve had enough of Biden

How much longer does this nation have to suffer under the leadership of this incompetent buffoon of a president? Election year 2024 cannot come soon enough.

- Paul Gabel, Fort Worth