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Sheriff Waybourn can’t run away from the Tarrant County Jail’s mental health crisis

Tarrant County sheriff’s image

It seems clear that people with mental health issues and developmental disabilities are being thrown into the Tarrant County Jail instead of being admitted hospitals, where they should receive treatment instead of incarceration. At worst, Sheriff Bill Waybourn is so consumed by his image and demagoguery that he’s happy to oversee a disastrous, lethal and cruel jail regime to further a political agenda. At best, Waybourn is an incompetent political hack.

It’s a shame one of the most populous counties in the country has such poor voter turnout that we get a truckload of all hat and no cattle whatsoever in what should be an administrative position.

- Jason Eudaley Brown, Fort Worth

Help with pregnancies

When I read the May 10 letter to the editor under the subheadline “Who will help the mothers?” (9A) I was reminded of a famous quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

You can help by volunteering or financially supporting the many ministries and pregnancy centers throughout Texas where people walk alongside mothers during their unwanted pregnancies and continue after the children are born. You can insist that your elected officials provide fully funded insurance for children and hold fathers accountable for providing for their children. You can mentor young boys and girls in how to become loving fathers and mothers.

Sadly, the easiest action you can do is just abort.

- Debbi Hunt, Fort Worth

Not preventing the problem

I read Cynthia L. Allen’s May 8 column with bemusement. (4C, “For pro-lifers, overturning Roe is one step in fight to make abortion unnecessary, not the end”) From the headline, including the words “fight to make abortion unnecessary,” I was expecting advocacy for the prevention of unplanned pregnancies. But the gist of her piece was promotion of agencies to support women in the aftermath of giving birth.

Nowhere did Allen address the roots of the problem: lack of sex education, access to family-planning tools and availability of low-cost birth control. This would be the logical first step in making abortion unnecessary: preventing the unplanned pregnancy before it happens.

- Lori Cole, Fort Worth

Can’t stop using fossil fuels

Ryan Rusak’s commentary on record fuel prices was spot-on. (May 11, 13A, “As record gas prices hurt drivers, let’s drill for more oil”) I would add that high fuel prices inflate the prices of all consumer goods because they must be transported somewhere.

Only wealthy countries have the luxury of environmental concern. A mother in an undeveloped country would gladly take a chunk of coal to replace the dung she may be using for a cooking fire.

National wealth is only possible with abundant, cheap energy. And, here is the most important point: Coercive environmental policies such as drilling restrictions and carbon taxes cannot work in a democracy because the voters will remove the politicians who foist them on us.

Climate policies must work on the other side of the equation. The supply of non-carbon energy must be developed first. Before we turn off the fossil fuel spigot, the alternative must be abundant.

- Clete McAlister, Arlington

We’re all held hostage by oil

I respectfully disagree with Ryan Rusak’s piece May 11 supporting expanded oil drilling. The conflict in Ukraine can serve as a wake-up call for our country’s dependence on oil. If we continue to work as a nation to diversify our energy sources, we will be better off in the future and not beholden to the whims of a foreign dictator.

- Dana Harper, Fort Worth

The great shale boom mirage

The suggestion that high gasoline prices can be alleviated by more oil drilling is naive at best. Drilling costs more and yields less now than ever before. Drillers need higher prices. The vast debts accumulated in the so-called “shale boom” have mostly been discharged through bankruptcy, not paid back.

Cars themselves have become difficult for the typical household to afford. Better public transit could alleviate both these burdens. And as for our energy supply, what could be better than a fuel we have already paid for? There is more energy locked up in America’s stocks of spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium than in the entire world’s fossil fuel reserves.

- Christopher D. Carson, Fort Worth