Hey! Don’t say Keller is part of the Dallas metro area

Slavery’s gains were already reversed

I wonder if the Institute for Policy Studies’ Josh Hoxie has ever heard that two wrongs don’t make a right. (April 30, 21A, “Fix nation’s racial wealth gap”)

Inveighing against the United States for its “original sin of slavery,” he never mentions the armies carrying the Stars and Stripes that ended it. Why is the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives and millions in debt to end slavery always negated?

The achievements of the 13th and 14th Amendments were gifts of the republic. The wealth created by the pox of slavery was concentrated in the South, and it was largely destroyed during emancipation. The supposed justice of reparations is a phantom.

Economic statistics I see attribute the lack of high school diplomas, teenage and out-of-wedlock births and the collapse of the family as the biggest contributors to poverty.

I can’t help but see reparations as a money grab. Would it not be profiting on the suffering of others?

Blame Democrats for other taxes

An April 17 letter writer said that he earned more income in 2018 than the previous year and blamed Republicans for his increased tax bite. I paid more on higher earnings as well, but unlike people this writer referred to, I checked my effective rate, and it is less under the current tax schedules.

He might look to see if his higher earnings triggered past stealth tax surcharges from Democrats, such as moving 85% of his Social Security into taxable income. Or, my favorite, the 3.8% Obamacare surcharge on capital gains for individuals whose modified adjusted gross income exceeds $200,000 ($250,000 for couples filing jointly, or $125,000 for spouses filing separately).

Don’t forget that higher earnings mean a bigger Medicare deduction from your Social Security check. Thank your Democrats for that.

Don’t lump us in with Dallas

I was surprised to read in the Sunday story, “Vikings rookie long snapper has Air Force duty to fulfill,” that Keller is in the Dallas area. (4C). The Associated Press reporter who wrote it apparently failed to look at a map. More disturbing is that Star-Telegram editors failed to correct such an obvious error.

Most of us who live west of Texas 360 object to being identified as Dallas-area residents. Nor do I think the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would want to be called a Dallas-area publication.

Let’s keep Keller where it is: in the Fort Worth area.

There’s a reason they mix us up

More often than not, we hear on TV and read in print instances in which people mistakenly say Dallas instead of Fort Worth. It is annoying, to say the least, when you consider that Fort Worth is the 15th-largest city in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

If Fort Worth were not so close to Dallas, assuredly the mistaken identity would not happen. After all, people know the difference between Austin and San Antonio and between San Diego and Los Angeles.

But then again, most people are not interested in geography. And to be honest, most people don’t care.

Fort Worth is not alone, though, in being mistaken for another city. South of San Francisco lies San Jose, which, despite being the larger of the two by both population and land area (the 10th-most populous city in the country), is relatively unknown because of its sister city.