One Sunday I went to a local grocery store for fried chicken and as I paid I left my wallet on the little shelf for check writing. As soon as I got to my truck I noticed I didn’t have my wallet with me. I hurried back in the store and looked around the area I was at. No wallet to be found. I asked the cashier if she had seen it and she said no. I went to the office to ask about security cameras and was told there were none. I called the police and gave a description of the person behind me in the checkout line and wondered why can’t everyone be honest.

I lost over a hundred dollars in cash, money on a gas card, along with a credit card, social security card and drivers license. My Sunday was ruined because of a box of chicken and a thief, who had a great Sunday.

I have had a John Deere riding mower stolen out of a locked shed, the radio out of my truck parked in my driveway, a chainsaw and recently a weed eater. I now drive with a hole in my dashboard where my radio once was. I purchased a new weed eater and if I’m away from my truck I have to chain it or lock it inside. I’m out making an honest living and have to deal with this element of society.

After the John Deere riding lawn mower was stolen I quit calling the police, it’s a waste of their time and mine. The thieves never get caught.

I am not the only one having this problem. I talked to a man who had his air compressor stolen from his truck parked at his house. You have to chain everything to keep it from walking off.

Danny Slovacek

Ennis

I am writing to take issue with your caption of my “NO BAIL OUT” sign on your front page today. You misrepresented my position regarding the city’s plans to use tax dollars to purchase the golf course and convert it into a park.

I want to clarify that my opposition to the plan is NOT based on a concern that it would “help only residents whose property abuts the former course land.” Quite to the contrary, most residents of the golf course area very clearly stated that they felt their home values would be hurt, not helped, by the creation of a public park in their backyards.

My opposition was to the use of public funds to bail out the owner of the failed golf course, freeing him from the cost of maintaining the property and paying taxes on the land.

Given the unpopularity of the park project among local residents, those public funds would be better spent elsewhere in the city with higher population density and less open spaces.

As currently written, the proposed project benefits neither residents of properties abutting the golf course, nor city tax payers in general.

It only benefits the owner of the golf course by bailing him out of his responsibilities as the land owner.

If the city wants to buy the land to ensure it retains a golf course for economic development goals, then it should explicitly limit the use of that land to golf.

This would satisfy impacted area residents by preserving the status quo, since they bought their homes with the understanding that there would be a golf course in their backyards, not a park.

If the city wants to buy land to build another park, then there are many other suitable locations available throughout the city which would better serve this purpose by benefitting more residents who could use a park closer to their homes.

Unless the proposal is reworded either way, it should be scrapped altogether.

Amelia Alvarez

Ennis

What a joke. Please publish my letter so your readers can become aware of the real solution to this financial crisis.

The 100-year-old income tax is an abysmal failure. It is unfair and the only ones who benefit from it are congressional lobbyist and congressmen on the take. The Fair Tax HR25 and S13 will replace the income tax with a fair consumption tax by eliminating the IRS.

All tax measures must originate in the House Ways and Means Committee.

The bill has been shelved there for over five years without a vote. It is time to pressure our representatives to do the right thing and move this bill out of committee and on the floor of the House for a vote.

Anyone doubting the Fair Tax only need to realize what would happen to the economy if every person received their full paycheck/retirement every payday and every business never has to report anything to the IRS ever again. Think it through and support the Fair Tax.

Roy T. Newsom

Granbury

Scot Ramsey
Ennis

I would feel so much more optimistic about a positive judicial outcome if the bench was vacated by the current judges and reconvened with border collies.

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The descendant of a poor family, he had been working his way through college on a pay-as-you-go self-scholarship. This meant some semesters were put on hold due to lack of tuition funds. He had had to sit out the last semester while saving. Today, however, this recession caused layoff meant not only financial uncertainty but another semester delayed. Worst of all, the missed college attendance had set him up for the Vietnam draft.

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The kind of Republican vision that will lead the American people, if the good Lord permits a big win, is a very important consideration. The division and discord among the Whigs in the 1830s rendered them incapable of leading, even though the Van Buren administration was very weak, and incapable of dealing with the pressing economic issues of the times. No solid shared vision emerged and the Whig Party went out of existence … the Republicans replaced it!

Wise Republicans will think like Sen. Jim DeMint, who has worked tirelessly to help awaken the renewal of love for constitutional life and liberty and balanced budgets. These and many other abiding principles, in spite of being scoffed at regularly by elitists, are the stuff that binds Americans into a movement that can produce the kind of “hope and change” that patriotic souls are hungry for! This Republican vision gladly accepts the beneficial contributions of all of its candidates, without making personality a bigger deal than any one Republican!

Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are much better candidates to face President Obama because they have engaged in debates. This is true for all of them. Some of it has been painful to watch, because all of us who are watching have a favorite we support. But, there will be a pay-off for the whole country … if a unified Republican vision emerges!

Republicans want to win … but only with a strong vision to serve as a roadmap! Republicans have a good chance for a big political victory, in spite of the naysayers. However, if Republicans do not win with a solid and comprehensible vision, their victory will be dimmed by division. Champagne is appropriate for a political victory; but from the next day forward, only a unified Republican vision will transform speeches into something our grandkids can be proud of!

Paul Richard Strange

Waxahachie

I saw in the newspaper a while back that we, the citizens of the United States of America, are going into debt another $1.2 trillion this year. Further, the article stated that our total debt will now exceed $15 trillion by the end of this year.

Now, I believe that all our federal spending budgets originate in the House of Representatives.

I can only conclude, then, that those same representatives have neither the slightest clue about finances and budgeting nor have they ever lived through a drought like the ranchers of Texas did last year.

It takes many years to build up a herd of cattle and to develop a profitable method of operation suitable for your particular piece of ground.

It involves capital investment, genetic selection and long hours of manual labor. There are no shortcuts to profitability. A rancher has plans for good years and bad years. With a little attention to the details everything can pretty much go according to plan — unless an act of God delivers a drought.

By late May of last summer, following an unusually dry winter, it was obvious we were not going to have a normal summer. Grass that should have been knee-high was struggling to sprout a second layer of leaves.

My cattle were working hard, daily, to find a sufficient amount of roughage.

Following my set of plans for just such a situation, I took some steers and older cows to market. I simply needed fewer hoofs on the ground for the amount of forage available.

It was earlier than I had planned; but it was the sensible thing to do.

Then by late June, the sun seemed as though it never set. As consistent 100-degree degree days heated the earth, the grass started to go dormant.

Only the hardiest, heat tolerant grasses remained. I divided the pasture into paddocks with electric fence and started a calculated rotation of the herd through the paddocks.

Daily observations of the amount of forage consumed became my timetable for herd movement. I waited for the rain that I knew would inevitably come.

It never did. By Aug. 1, I took some more cattle to the auction. Now I was selling some of my best cows. It was not only a financial loss, as the sale barn held some of my neighbors’ cattle as well; but it was a profound genetic loss for my entire program and herd maintenance. It was deeply disappointing to have a drought destroy so many years of work and careful planning.

By mid-September with both the wife and I quietly saddened, we loaded up all but our very best stock for a final trip to the sale barn.

It was our calculated decision to take money out of savings for hay purchases that would feed the remaining herd through the rest of the fall and into winter — if we had to.

This was the type of emergency we had set contingency funds aside for.

The scorched, serrated fields reflected the feelings in our hearts as we took our precious cows and heifers to market. Many years of nurturing, caring and planning rode in the trailer behind our truck.

Our ranch is a business enterprise and, as such, sometimes painful business decisions have to be made.

Nonetheless, we didn’t speak much on that trip.

Every business enterprise has good seasons and bad seasons. During the good seasons, a little profit is put back to insure against the bad season which will surely come.

This is not only a sound business practice; it is a prudent and wise thing to do.

To operate otherwise is to ultimately lose the entire ranch. For a rancher operating on borrowed funds during the bad season, ultimately and inevitably results in the next season being a hired hand on some other far-sighted cowboy’s ranch.

Now neither my wife nor I graduated from economics at Harvard or Yale; but we didn’t need to as the basics of finance are pretty straightforward. You must simply make more than you spend to keep your ranch. So how do you figure that those high-paid ranch hands we have in Washington with all their deficit spending and borrowing haven’t figured that out by now?

Larry Burden

Ennis

The wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table tonight just after sunset discussing with some wonderment the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 just signed into law by the President.

He stated, magnanimously, that even though he had the power to detain (arrest) indefinitely, place in an internment camp and subject to a military tribunal any American citizen deemed a “terrorist” by him; he would never use those powers.

Now I realize that all of you (Barton, Cornyn, Hutchison) are probably younger than me.

So, I must remind you that after my 50 years of watching national travesties such as Social Security, welfare and income tax that it is not wise to leave these gates open.

For as I’ve learned, sooner or later all the cattle will figure out that the corral latch is undone and will stampede with inevitable destruction toward an open pasture.

Let me explain, if I may, why it’s best to think about unintended consequences.

I share my back pasture with what used to be a good neighbor. We had a gentlemen’s agreement to maintain and repair the co-owned fence by “first to notice — first to fix.”

Several years went by without any problems under this arrangement.

However, one spring a young bull of mine noticed the girls next door and as bulls are wont to do — walked through the fence to make a visit.

I didn’t notice the bull missing for a couple of days. When I went to uncover his whereabouts, I discovered the gaping hole in our mutual fence.

After taking an afternoon to make the necessary repairs, I called my neighbor to explain the situation.

He knew, as I did, that the location where the escape occurred was in the river bottom and that it would be impossible to round up any animal on foot because of the creek, mesquite and poison ivy.

I needed access with horses onto his property to drive my bull back home.

To my surprise, the neighbor I thought I knew so well suddenly became an irascible, unmovable and argumentative son-of-a-gun who refused to give me access to his ranch to retrieve my property (bull).

No amount of logic would persuade him toward long accepted and established cowboy etiquette. Ultimately pugilistic confrontation rather than cooperation became my neighbor’s attitude. I had no choice but to call the sheriff.

The sheriff and his men spent two full days on horseback looking for my bull. They never did find him.

My heretofore friend and neighbor denied any knowledge of that bull or his whereabouts.

I later learned that he had moved the bull late at night to another “no-accounts” corral where he was later sold with a mixed herd at auction. The money was split between the two worthless cowboys.

I’m afraid, Rep. Barton, Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Hutchison, that by voting in favor of this bill, you have let another bull go through a hole in the fence; that there will be the unintended consequence, someday, of an American citizen being corralled and his freedom auctioned off.

The wife and I have pretty much figured out by now that Washington is occupied by mostly “no account” cowboys who talk a lot of bull but intend to return nothing to their neighbors.

Larry Burden

Ennis

I live in Ward One, and I also would suggest that those responsible for making decisions about the repair should drive down South Elm Street.

Ever since I’ve lived there, I’ve had to pull over to let oncoming cars pass.

Otherwise I run the risk of running into someone’s mailbox.

I am sure our street does not meet city specifications for the proper width.

I am most concerned about the possibility of an emergency vehicle such as a fire truck or ambulance getting through if there happened to be a car parked on the street.

In addition, the street has been patched so many times you can hardly tell what the original street looked like.

If the commissioners and City Manager Steve Howerton are reading this, I encourage them to designate for replacement the streets that are in the greatest need of replacement or repair.

Dolores Vrana

Ennis