Letters to the Editor | Week of June 10-15, 2024

Fight tax increases

Texas Gov. Abbot did his best to reduce property owners’ taxes due to their slow, steady increase statewide. Property owners are hurting by this periodic continued rise several years after the last property tax increase.

For example, if your property evaluation in the year 2000 was $100,000 and today it is valued at $300,000, your property has increased 200%. Where will it end? Inflating your property does not benefit you, it benefits them, so they can collect more. It only hurts the property owner. This snail pace tax increase on property will change America. People will be less willing to own property and more willing to rent where they can more easily move anywhere in the nation they desire and not be tied to paying property taxes and staying in one place.

Now we come to contest your property increase. Should you just submit to the new increase? Of course not, you are not a sheep that follows the sheepherder. Fight it every time you get an increase.

And to believe that you own your property, it is an illusion. It is more like you are paying rent for your property and you get punished for fixing it and making it look nice. And in reality, you own nothing but the headaches that come at being a property owner; and if you fail to pay your taxes, you lose your property and out the door you go.

This young generation saw the light and is not into owning a home at all. Home ownership will become part of the past in America.

Rafael Madrigal

Pharr

Trump trial wasn’t rigged

Katy Tur, reporter, covered Donald Trump well before 2016. At the speech at Trump Tower the day after the verdict, she noted he seemed tired, disheartened. He would drop his hands to his sides as he gestured and spoke, which she opined she had never seen him do before. That action could have made his martyrdom seem all the more authentic, although he is always blameless apparently in his mind, a victim such as one in a soap opera. That level.

Blameless people often indulge in projection, whether conscious of the practice or not. A folkloric example of projection might be “the pot calling the kettle black.” The pot is unhappy with its condition so it takes comfort in calling the kettle what the pot is.

Trump “did nothing wrong” (his words). Everyone is against him (victimhood). The trial was “rigged.” How, asks Andrew Weissman, a former prosecutor. David Pecker recited in court the “catch and kill” practice for old friends like Trump (many years). So, his tabloid bought the stories and stored them in a safe so they would never be published when they could damage Trump’s campaign, and at the same time, created stories to damage his opponents and published them.

Hope Hicks’ testimony was interesting and apparently truthful. These people were insiders in the Trump orbit. Their testimony and others joined with texts, phone calls and recordings were part of the damning evidence. There exists a transcript of the trial that belies any claim that the trial was “rigged.”

Shirley Rickett

Alamo

Editor’s note: We welcome your letters and commentary. Submissions must include the writer’s full name, address and daytime telephone number for verification. Letters of 200 words or fewer will be given preference. Submissions may be edited for length, grammar and clarity. Letters may be mailed to P.O Box 3267, McAllen, Texas 78502-3267, or emailed to letters@myRGV.com.

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