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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A Tax Holiday
To the editor: “Freeze in Forecast” (Aug. 2, 2006) was a timely article, as we read of additional tax increases by the county, city, school, college district, and the John Peter Smith hospital district. The taxpayers young and old need a moratorium on tax increases, whether by rate as set by your local officials or by upward appraisal of property values. The rhetoric, public notices, etc. all boiled down to the same old story. Higher taxes.
A handful of old hell-raisers in Tarrant County stood in the cold in February through the heat of July, acquiring more than 43,000 signatures of registered voters. The stories we heard repeatedly from these taxpayers was that enough is enough — taxes should be frozen for all ages.
I agree. We have enough government now, we can’t afford any more. Our county and Fort Worth have granted millions in tax abatements to encourage more growth and we are already overcrowded. Traffic is at a standstill, fuel is being wasted, the air is polluted enough that we are being penalized by the federal government for it.
We need to take a tax increase holiday for a few years and be content with the state we are in.
Jack O. Lewis
Haltom City
Pledged to Avarice
To the editor: Betty Brink’s exposé of the shenanigans at city hall with Mayor Mike Moncrief presiding (“Single Family Affair,” Aug. 16, 2006) was an appreciated article.
It’s all about how politicians practice nepotism, cronyism, and downright fraud of the office they hold and the voters who placed them there. With Moncrief’s pedigree of being a state senator for over a decade, he knows the rules of the game. He should have recused himself to avoid the shadow of suspicion. Since he also circumvents the Texas Open Meetings Act at his leisure, that ought to serve as the impetus to remove him from office.
He’s not serving his constituents and public, he’s pledged allegiance to avarice, and he’s doing it with impunity.
Delbert Cantrell
Fort Worth
Coming Home Soon
To the editor: I just wanted to let you know how much my husband and I appreciated your article “Call Sign: HAVOC,” (July 19, 2006) in Fort Worth Weekly. I got the link from my Families of the 3/5 India Company Yahoo group. Many of the Lima and Kilo families are on the list.
Your article was very well written, very real. We are passing it along to friends and family, so they can have an idea, finally, of what our troops are up against.
I read all I can about where my son, Cpl. Nick Jeffries, is “hanging out”. I knew about a lot of the things you mentioned in the article, and I am so glad you chose to enlighten others. Of course, I didn’t know the details yet of the incident you mentioned, since Nick doesn’t talk a lot about those incidents. Our boys will be coming home soon. I know we feel like we’ve lost our own family members, with those we lost in their unit.
Thank you again for your detailed, descriptive article. I know my son and others like him thank you too.
PMM Wanda Jeffries
Seattle
Strange in the Stockyards
To the editor: Great article that really gave a good summary of all sides of the current and continuing sagas of the Stockyards (“Fo’ Shizzle, Pardner,” Aug. 16, 2006). I’ve been gone from Fort Worth for a while, but — yikes! Gun totin’ bar guzzlers in the Stockyards? Not again! Isn’t there still a sign outside of the White Elephant that says “leave your guns at the door”? My kiddo had to go through a metal detector to get to school classes, and we can’t take Oil of Olay or a Diet Coke on an airplane ... Why would anyone question trying to keep violence and guns out of the Stockyard’s bars?
The fight doesn’t seem to be about the music at all this time. And I’m plum con-fuzed — ain’t them thar folks in them pictures flashin’ the peace sign? Is they the sameuns’ totin’ the pistols? Whether it be Wild West cowboy shootouts, crack houses, gambling, fast food/chain joints, techno music, etc., etc.—the battles down there just get weirder and weirder.
My hat’s off to all ya’ll on this one. Good luck towards peace negotiations. There’s still no other place on earth quite like the Stockyards. Something is still very cool about that.
Carter Milner Brakefield
Canyon Lake
How High the Def?
To the editor: Thank you for the informative article on digital multicasting (“Brave New Broadcasting World,” Aug. 2, 2006). There was one additional point that I thought should be made — call it the “no free lunch” concept.
For those of us who go out and buy a nice, shiny hi-def tv and expect to receive tons of HD programming from the local network affiliates, multicasting has a distinct downside. There is only so much “room” for a station to work with, so they have to decide how to divide that up. They can give 100 percent of it to a single pristine HD signal (which does sometimes happen, during major sporting events), or they can start dividing that up into smaller chunks. Every portion they take away for a subchannel leaves less room for the primary signal, which then further degrades the HD signal on the main channel.
Some folks can see the difference with even one subchannel, but with just two it becomes readily apparent to most people. The idea of five simultaneous channels being broadcast is completely opposed to the kind of high-quality picture that most of us were sold on when we first saw high-definition television. So keep this in mind: The more digital channels a local station pumps out, the lower quality each of their images will be.
David Meek
Denton
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