Homeless camps; bathroom bill; trustees in a bar; mental healthcare; TrumpCare

Homeless camps

Clearing the homeless camps is beneficial to all concerned. However, these people need to know there is a place to go and the services these places provide. (“Fort Worth takes ‘great first step’ with clearing of 18 homeless camps,” Thursday)

Many homeless campers need medication so that they can tolerate being around other people, and many need job training. They do not need code compliance citations. They cannot pay fines.

Also, asking the railroad or other businesses to help with cleanup is absurd. Homelessness is a city problem. The only responsibility the railroad and other businesses have is to call the city when the service is needed.

Bathroom bill

Fallacies abound in state Sen. Lois W. Kolkhorst’s pro-Senate Bill 6 op-ed. (“‘Bathroom bill’ protects privacy of women and children,” March 5)

The fact is that transgender persons are no more likely to be pedophiles or rapists than anyone else. So, is it heterosexual rapists that SB 6 will protect women and children from?

Surely we are not so naïve as to think would-be rapists must wait for SB 6 to gain entrance into women’s bathrooms. They can already do that, and no bill is going to prevent it.

Another fallacy is that children will “declare their own gender” in some kind of experiment, when in fact current scientific data suggests that there is a biological cause for transgenderism.

This is not “social engineering,” it is real people experiencing gender issues on a very personal level. Equal treatment is every American’s birthright.

I am a Texas-born and I vote. And as a woman, I do not need Kolkhorst or this bill to “protect” me in the bathroom.

Trustees in a bar

Six members of the Arlington school board recently appeared in a Facebook post and accompanying photograph. They attended the re-election campaign kick-off party for trustee Bowie Hogg at Legal Draft Beer Co.

Board member John Hibbs was not in the photograph.

Unfortunately, the photograph linked our school board and our children and beer. Legal Draft sells beer; no food. It is a bar.

Alcohol and its advertisement are prohibited on AISD properties. Alcohol ads are prohibited on clothing and personal items on AISD properties.

An applicant to AISD, with a recent Facebook pic in a prominent bar, would likely not be hired. An AISD teacher would likely be fired for booking an AISD event at a bar.

Yet a school board event was held at a bar?

Everyone understands that image weighs heavily in public education. So in what universe is this venue acceptable?

And why is there a difference between what is expected of teachers and what is expected of school board members in social interaction standards and social media use?

Six AISD board members just lost my support. They also lost my vote.

Mental healthcare

I agree that mental healthcare in Texas would benefit greatly by allowing certain psychologists to prescribe from a limited formulary. (“One way to help mental healthcare,” March 2)

But to best protect the public, I think those psychologists must be strictly limited to doctors graduated by American Psychological Association-accredited, Department of Psychology scientist-practitioner model, clinical psychology Ph.D. programs only.

Psychiatry’s objection to prescription authority for these specified psychologists is nothing more than mere turf warfare.

TrumpCare

The actions proposed by Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP House on TrumpCare are mean-spirited and full of hate.

The AMA, AARP and almost all hospitals oppose the plan.

Is the GOP willing to hurt people and make more Americans die to keep their ill conceived promise without making anything better?”

This story was originally published March 10, 2017 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Homeless camps; bathroom bill; trustees in a bar; mental healthcare; TrumpCare."