Leave Ted Cruz alone. He was just being a good dad with a family trip to Cancun

Cruz was looking out for his kids

The pettiness of your editorial writers has astounded us again. The only thing missing from your hit piece on Sen. Ted Cruz was calling him a bad father. (Feb. 19, 13A, “While you’re freezing in your Texas home, Sen. Ted Cruz took off for Cancun. Really.”)

Whether the Cancun trip was planned in advance or not, Cruz is guilty of nothing more than putting his children first. He was being a good dad, regardless of how the media want to portray him or his actions. I appreciate that we have a senator with family values who puts them first regardless of the political price he’s paying now.

- Carol Guarnieri, Fort Worth

Get me out of here, fast

During his 2018 reelection campaign, Sen. Ted Cruz boldly proclaimed that he was “Tough as Texas.” Perhaps for the next campaign, his slogan should be: “When the going gets tough, the tough go to Cancun.”

- Steve Mitchell, Benbrook

Failure to plan is to blame

Gov. Greg Abbott is going on TV blaming Democrats, wind turbines, Electric Reliability Council of Texas executives and you name it for Texas’ cold weather problems. Abbott and those who run ERCOT should look in the mirror.

Under deregulation, nothing was winterized and wind turbines froze in Texas while they kept going in Wyoming, Montana, Canada and countless other places. In Texas, gas lines froze, too. Now, homes all over the state are waterlogged because pipes froze and broke.

Stop the blame game and fix it.

- Carolyn Sawyer, Fort Worth

Thanks for what has gone right

A big thank-you to everyone at ERCOT and the power providers of Texas. They have prevented a total shutdown that could have lasted for months and further destabilized the fragile Texas economy.

Instead of lambasting ERCOT, we should thank it instead.

- Mauricio Duque, Fort Worth

Why we have to work together

The failure of Texas’ electric grid perfectly exemplifies why electrical service should not have been privatized. Privatization led owners to skimp on maintenance and building new capacity because it’s not profitable.

As former Republican Sen. Troy Fraser (co-sponsor of the original electric deregulation bill) stated: “If you have a gold-plated system that can handle any problem, you could potentially double the price of people’s electricity.” But if the grid were run by government, beholden to the people rather than stockholders, additional capacity could be planned well in advance and the cost would be only a few pennies more on taxes or electric bills.

- Joe Baldwin, Benbrook

Basic research pays off big

The United States’ global innovation ranking of 11th is the result of political decisions such as the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory intended for north Texas back in 1994. (Feb 16, 9A, “Global-innovation rankings have bad news for the U.S.”)

While we can’t expect politicians to understand the discoveries that result from basic research, they could appreciate the advances in technology that support the research experiments. In the case of the collider, advancements in cryogenics, superconducting and data collection and transmission systems would have been visible and measurable. The entire approach to the selection and funding of research projects needs to be improved to avoid repeating the mistake.

- Robert W. Dawson, Arlington