Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to [email protected]. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    I've only now gotten around to reading some missed “Page Two”s and am amazed by the suggestion that SXSW sucks because Louis Black sucks. I have never attended South by Southwest, but I know Louis. For all I know, SXSW may indeed suck (though I doubt that), but it can't be because Louis Black sucks, because Louis Black does not suck. And even if he did suck, I don't think he could suckify SXSW all by his lonesome, at least not on purpose.

Dear Editor,
    Re: “Making 'Pregnancy Centers' Tell the Truth” [News, April 9]: Again, this just shows what hypocrites these conservative Republican tea-party types are. They are all in favor of government spending, just not on anything that might actually be of benefit to poor people. The Texas Pregnancy Care Network has one and only one function – to divert funding away from clinics and programs that actually provide medical counseling and services to poor women, including prenatal/post-natal care for those wanting to keep their babies. These are the same people who want to cut Women, Infants, and Children and other programs that would help support mothers and those children that they didn't abort. George Carlin was right – if you're preborn we'll help, but if you're preschool you're on your own.

Dear Editor,
    OK KUT, I have paid my money: now hear me roar, or at least talk louder than Mr. Aielli. While I do enjoy many aspects of the local public radio station, certain features rub me the wrong way, and it may be because I am not over 40 and obsessed with the way things were. First off, please refrain from letting Mary Gordon Spence speak into the microphone; I am utterly confused as to why you let her on the air during your annual fundraiser. She either prides herself on sounding like an idiot or is completely clueless, but either way I should not have to wake up to her ramblings. I wanted to donate my life savings to make her stop talking. On the music side of things, I do enjoy many of the older programs like Blue Monday and Twine Time but would welcome an injection of new programs that incorporated some more music from this decade, in addition to some hip-hop and punk (bad words at KUT). I know the normal contributing member is the older middle-class type but I believe many of your listeners might enjoy a set that featured some A Tribe Called Quest followed by some Social Distortion, etc. Which brings me to my last point and the one that might get me vanished from the city limits. It is time for Mr. Aielli to go. I said it. Besides not being able to hear him half the time, his frequent playing of random Norwegian operas and Italian sonnets is unacceptable. Also, I don’t need to know it's national wear your pants backward day – OK, maybe I do – but I definitely don’t need to know how handsome a singer he seems to think everyone on his playlist is … “not that there is anything wrong with that.”

Dear Editor,
    What am I missing here?
    Thus far, UT has stated two issues they have with the Cactus Cafe – finances and lack of student involvement. Students, alumni, community, and faculty quickly came together to help UT solve those problems. A nonprofit was formed, more than $23,000 raised, and a plan to meaningfully involve students in cafe operations submitted.
    Why has UT rejected “A better way forward” – a one-year pilot plan of keeping the cafe as it now exists, with student internships, better marketing, and additional fundraising as needed? Surely it makes more sense to try this simpler approach before considering multiple complicated plans that threaten to change the character and soul of the cafe?
    Come on, UT – be up-front about this. What are the real issues here? We are eager to help solve whatever problems you have with the cafe, but we need to know what they are. Otherwise, we just have to assume that somebody has arbitrarily and childishly decided they just don't like the cafe and want it gone – so there!
    It's time to fess up, folks.

Dear Editor,
    Re: "Making 'Pregnancy Centers' Tell the Truth," [News], by Jordan Smith, April 9: As Jordan Smith points out, Texas is leading the nation in teen birth rates, and Austin suffers from chronic rates of STD infections. Unfortunately, statistics and facts seem to have little influence on the actions of anti-choice extremists who will undoubtedly attack Council Member Bill Spelman and every other candidate who may disagree with their radical agenda. We, the pro-choice majority, must support candidates and policies that prioritize data before dogma. The new "crisis pregnancy centers" ordinance is a victory for consumers, especially young women. Kudos to council!
    What would happen if state money funded offices to masquerade as military recruitment centers or gun shops, only to scare clients with pictures of fatal gunshot wounds? Something tells me the "pro-life" hypocrites would suddenly become advocates for truthful marketing and consumer protections.

Dear Editor,
    I hope that the people who allocate the money for the 2010 transportation bond election will think about the people who walk for transportation in Austin.
    Some people say that Austin is a great bicycling city, but no one says anything good about Austin's treatment of pedestrians. In Austin, sidewalks and crosswalks go unbuilt, and most people are afraid to walk for transportation. Yet pedestrians here count for a large percentage of the people killed by cars. In 2008, 24 of 59 crash deaths, or 40%, were pedestrians. In 2009, 15 of 59, or 25%, of people killed by cars were pedestrians. In 2010, so far, six out of 13 people killed by cars were pedestrians. These numbers need to be considered when deciding what portion of transportation funding is spent on pedestrians.
    Austin's planners like to compare Austin to Copenhagen, Seattle, and Portland, Ore. But we're more like Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; and Riverside, Calif.; in the way we treat pedestrians. Austin's sidewalk system is due to be finished in about 200 years.
    We spend money on cars and now trains. We hear a great deal about bicycle safety and access (alas, it's mostly just talk) and next to nothing about pedestrians. And we slaughter pedestrians without ever noticing.
    The pedestrian infrastructure is the most neglected, underfunded, and deadly piece of Austin's transportation system. It badly needs bringing up to date. Pedestrians regularly pay with their lives for a transportation system that excludes them. Please remember the death numbers when deciding what portion of transportation funds to spend on sidewalks and crosswalks for people on foot.

Dear Editor,
    Re: “UT to End Football Program” [News, April 2]: Well, you all have reduced your paper to the white stuff around chicken poop. Whoever came up with this idea should go work for Nokoa. What a waste.

Dear Editor,
    Sarah Palin proves that the Tea Party is no grassroots movement, but merely a bunch of out-of-power right-wing hypocrites who are all in favor of big government when it supports their agenda of cutting the legs off the poor, working poor, and nonwhite, non-Christian people of this country. Tea-baggers say they want a return to simpler times of less government – what they mean is a return to a time before the 19th Amendment, when a woman's place was in the home – barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the stove.

Dear Editor,
    Funny how everyone is emphatic about protecting unborn fetuses, but everyone thinks that providing day care, education, health care services, food, etc. fosters irresponsibility, and poor people are just lazy. We hate public transportation, poor people, and offering jobs at a living wage. We think that God has given people (and churches) permission to scorn and judge. Everyone wants to pretend that human beings, after being given sexual desires, should simply close their legs and meditate, instead of looking at other sexual beings. If some people want to ride that merry-go-round, more power to 'em. I'm certainly not saying that no one should or could abstain, and even those of us who are pro-choice want fewer abortions.
    News flash: babies are not puppies or kittens, and social services are overwhelmed. We are a society of sociopathic narcissists who do nonprofit work to build up our résumés, and our generosity ends after we write a check, finish a project, or get a better-paying job. It may be fun to go to church and talk about irresponsibility, but so few people have adopted children, it's disgusting. If people want other people to adopt, set an example. Maybe if people wait until they're 40 to settle down and "have children," they should accept their biology and adopt. Maybe we should stop telling college-educated people that having a family drags one down and instead tell them that families are valuable parts of life. Maybe employers should recognize that people with children are generally more stable since they have a reason for stability.
    Bravo to Austin for holding hypocritical organizations liable for their lies. If someone doesn't have a household of adopted children at home, then maybe people shouldn't take that pro-lifer seriously.

Dear Editor,
    Re: “Bump in the Road for Bike Boulevard” [News, April 9]: The new city of Austin proposal for Nueces Street is a debacle. Once again, we are witnessing COA officials caving in to threats and intimidation from old-school business and development interests, once again, at the expense of ordinary people (cyclists or not) and the environment. And, the sad and ironic thing about it, as with virtually all of the previous instances, is that it is completely unnecessary.
    This latest capitulation is unnecessary because the stated goals and the means to achieve them as proposed by the League of Bicycling Voters, or some reasonable compromise thereof, would have been beneficial for both business/redevelopment interests, as well as for cyclists.
    Measures could have been taken to convert Nueces Street, instead of Rio Grande, into a real bicycle boulevard without eliminating automobile traffic and at the same time not only helping businesses survive but thrive.
    Nueces Street could have provided a shining counterexample to the myth that bicycles and automobiles are incompatible and incapable of sharing the same space, and the false choices between business/development, quality of life, and sustainability.
    As understood by most knowledgeable people in the Austin cycling community, Nueces Street would have been the better choice for a bicycle boulevard. It has a much smoother grade than Rio Grande, thus it is much more attractive to cyclists, especially new/inexperienced cyclists than a road like Rio Grande. In addition, it goes further south than Rio Grande and may eventually connect with Cesar Chavez. For cyclists, the attraction here would be the Lance Armstrong Bikeway, which runs alongside Cesar Chavez in that vicinity.
    I hope that in the coming decades, officials representing the city of Austin and its people decide to abandon their propensity toward bowing to dictates from old-school business interests under the same old threats of action by the Lege, financially damaging lawsuits, or the threat of being labeled "unfriendly to business.”

   [Editor's note: If approved as currently written, the city's plan would connect Rio Grande to the Lance Armstrong Bikeway via a new bridge over Shoal Creek.]

Dear Editor,
    Your April Fools' story on UT giving up football was excellent [“UT to End Football Program,” News, April 2]! I loved the sly references to the Cactus Cafe. Yes, just like the cafe, very few students get to use the stadium on game day, etc. All that and no “Page Two.” What a gift! How much does Mr. Black pay you to write his erratic inconsistent drivel anyway? Thanks for a great issue!