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 mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    It would appear that the life of a Chronicle "film critic" is not all happy tweets and LOLbats. In last issue's reader letters there was actually an attack on Marc Savlov's cinematic critical perspective from the position that he doesn't appreciate the less sophisticated things in life, and that he is no doubt some kind of "effete snob" or maybe a "liberal elitist" and in fact a "nattering nabob" of yadda, yadda, yadda [“Postmarks,” July 13].
    Be that as it may, and considering that I respect the out and proud, all-American anti-intellectualism of the respondent, my first instinct would be to assail Savlov's critiques from the other end of the spectrum given his glowing review and recommendation of puerile Dadaist hokum like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter [Film Listings, June 22] a couple weeks ago. My own humble opinion was that his film writing consistently demonstrates subadult preferences and the editorial note appended to the letter in question confirmed those suspicions. Consequently, I began to entertain fantasies that he be strapped to a theatre seat with his eyelids stapled open – Clockwork Orange style – and be forced to watch Eric Rohmer movies until his head explodes.
    Now as much as I hate, even for a second, to come off sounding like some kind of arthouse snob, I would like to suggest that a steady diet of comic books might not be the most intellectually or emotionally challenging pastime to engage in, especially for someone charged with cinematic analysis in a nominally "alternative/progressive" publication. I'm not going to claim that I don't read and enjoy the comics, but I also read and enjoy Slavoj Žižek and like to challenge my own culturally induced arrested development with Wong Kar-wai and Krzysztof Penderecki. Sometimes you have to exercise your brain as you would exercise your body to avoid becoming a corpulent polyp. To do less would be leaning perilously close to going "full retard," and we all know what a famous movie character once said about that (not to mention the fact that the planet has serious problems which demand all of our immediate attention).
    I urge both Savlov and his detractor to consider that it might be mentally (and socially) deleterious to be frittering away the precious years of one's life obsessing over material the bulk of which is primarily intended for people under the age of 18. Life well spent? Only in cartoons, baby.

Dear Editor,
    If our officials are going to junket [“City Officials Jet Off to England,” News, July 6], they’d be much better off going to Portugal, which decriminalized marijuana, cocaine, and heroin more than a decade ago. No, drug-related problems haven’t vanished there. Yes, the violence and cost of endless police work and incarceration associated with illegal drug sales have vanished. Judging from the articles in the July 13 edition – 12th and Chicon [“Working 'The Corner,'” and Jovita's [“Jovita's Defendant Not a Dealer, Lawyer Says” – illegal drug dealing is a much more pressing problem than Formula One planning. Of course, spending time in a dingy Portuguese drug rehab clinic isn’t nearly as much fun as attending an F1 race.

   [Editor's note: Portugal has not fully decriminalized drugs. In 2001, possession of less than 10 days supply was reduced from a criminal to an administrative offense, heard before an addiction panel similar to the drug courts in Travis County. However, drug possession, production, trafficking, and dealing are still illegal.]

Dear Editor,
    So, now the suits running the show over at KUT 90.5FM have decided to buy themselves a whole new radio station to play with! According to an article on RadioInsight.com (dated July 7), and finally up on KUT's website on July 11, KUT has asked the UT Board of Regents to approve a $6 million purchase of KXBT 98.9FM. According to RadioInsight, if approved, KUT would shift all of its music programming to the new frequency and broadcast as KUTX. The original KUT 90.5FM would become an all news and talk format. The vote was supposed to happen on July 11 but, according to KUT's website, the regents tabled the vote because "the Chancellor said his office has received some questions about this proposal.” Questions indeed … in fact I have a couple myself. First, per the article, a $250,000 fee will be paid to Public Radio Capital for brokering the deal, with the money coming out of "local funds.” Will this come out of money pledged by listeners during fundraisers or the money drive in May? Second, considering all the talk during pledge drives about KUT being "your station,” shouldn't station members have been informed of the pending purchase and been allowed to voice their opinions? Or was it going to be like a $6 million surprise party, only with station members footing the bill?

Dear Editor,
    Regarding the review of Fully Committed [The Arts, July 13]: I read the baffling review of Zach Theatre's Fully Committed and wondered if Elizabeth Cobbe saw the same show I did. I saw the show off-Broadway in New York several years ago and was anxious to see it again – and was not disappointed. My reaction, along with the rest of the audience, was every bit as enthusiastic about Zach's production, which I consider to be witty, clever, and well-acted and directed. Perhaps the reviewer should see the show again when she is not in such a sour mood.

Dear Editor,
    If you have been paying attention to news about health care in Texas, you will have noticed that Gov. Perry and his Legislature banned all the Planned Parenthood clinics from providing care for folks in the Medicaid Women's Health Program. This resulted in a loss of 90% of the funding for the program, since federal law says all qualified providers must be included. This week Gov. Perry has rejected expansion of Medicaid in Texas, which was expected to send back to Texas (our taxes, you know) $13 billion in federal monies beginning in 2014, if it had been accepted.
    I say, this is a man who is governor of and for the rich folks in Texas, and all those who do not care that millions of Texans do not, and now will not, have health insurance. Further, I say that these are impeachable offenses. They will cause thousands of premature deaths from lack of access to primary care and preventive services, as well as a dramatic increase in premature births and perinatal mortality (infants and mothers) due to lack of access to early and ongoing prenatal care. It's time we had a governor who makes the caring decision, not the smug, callous, "macho" decision, for all of us who are proud to call Texas our home.

Dear Editor,
    I see that a bunch of well-fed white guys who live in … uhm … ”large” houses feel victimized because they think their large houses should get preferential, entitled, lower electric rates rather than progressive rates that everybody else pays for. Typical 1% mentality. They want an “independent board” to govern the people-owned utility, the better for them to manipulate to get lower electric rates than everybody else, I suppose. Even though every government from Congress to the city are wholly owned subsidiaries of Wall Street Nuclear Meltdown Cartel Capitalism anyway.
    These white guys are like the for-profit “nonprofit” charter school victims of discrimination because they don’t get their turn at the taxpayers’ trough like those bullies, the public schools do.
    My heart just bleeds. A tear winds its way down my right cheek. A violin sings.
    Meanwhile, where are the opponents to this example of corpoROTification and profitization (not privatization) scheme to take over the people-owned electric utility?
    None to be found.
    The Neville Chamberlain/Vichy Democrats like state Sen. Kirk Watson and Mayor Lee Leffingwell – he's supposedly nonpartisan – are both willing collaborators in this scheme to let the 1% control the people-owned electric utility and give special, entitled, favored nonprogressive electric rates to the well-fed white guys in “large” houses. Watson and Leffingwell are willing collaborators and unindicted co-conspirators in this sleazy project.
    And where are the other Neville Chamberlain/Vichy Democrats like U. S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, or the so-called “Democratic” state legislators?” Democratic state Rep. Mark Strama, I know, is off spokes-personing for and coddling the way-profitable standardized testing industry and probably doesn’t have enough time to do anything else anyway.
    Are there any real Democrats left in this town? Or have they all become Neville Chamberlain/Vichy Democrats? That’s right, Vichy Democrats. Worse than Obama in the first term, they punt on first down and surrender at the end of the first quarter. They cave instantly. What good are they?
    The people-owned electric utility needs to stay people-owned and people-governed. Meanwhile, a people-owned and people-governed municipal bank would be nice for the people, for a change.

Dear Editor,
    It has been reported lately that the maximum wholesale price (cap) was raised before calculations were finished on what effect it would have on retail prices. Prices to be paid by millions of Texans. This seems grossly imprudent.
    In fact, raising the maximum wholesale price to $4,500/MWh from $3,000/MWh doesn't sound right under any circumstance when the average price during 2011 was about $53/MWh. The cap was usable for 17 hours during 2011(17 out of 8,720 hours).
    The Public Utilities Commission is planning an even richer increase to $9,000/MWh in May of next year. The reason given for these increases is to inspire power companies to build plants so that we would be sure to have a surplus, a reserve margin of electric power available.
    Any new power plant started now would not be online until Spring of 2014 at the earliest.
    Something is wrong here. When the new plants add their power to our ERCOT grid, the desired reserve margin will be maintained and there will not be any further shortages. The rich $9,000 price would never be used.
    However, between now and then our current power companies could have an opportunity to manipulate and reduce the reserve margin that we have currently. They could build their profits to the extreme, using the new higher prices paid when the low margin predicts a shortage. There is no question then as to what would happen with retail prices.
    The fix. Do not raise the cap! Don’t wait to build the reserve margin in 2014 We can build and maintain the reserve margin now by offering desirable bonuses to our existing power companies when they add to their generating capacity, improve their efficiency, and work together scheduling maintenance downtimes to maintain the desired reserve margin.