Precedent in the past

Thank you for including Mr. Glenn Hager’s recent comments on the state of broadband expansion in the State of Texas. For interested readers, there may lie precedent in the past.

It appears our state faced a similar issue almost a century ago in the rural electrification of Texas. A time when Texas Power and Light refused farmers who lived within sight of electric lines access to their power. This too was an issue that disproportionately affected rural Texans. Texans who lived much the same as their forefathers and foremothers: a pre-electric existence performing manual labor, retiring at night to the dusky light of kerosene lamps. While less than a day’s travel away in some places, their fellow citizens enjoyed the luxuries attendant to electric power: refrigeration, washing machines, radio.

It was not until the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) by executive order in 1935 and the passage of the REA bill in 1936 that the federal government allotted funds to electrify rural America. Notably, it took three further years of bureaucratic labors and a phone call with the then-president before 10th district congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson was able to turn on the lights across Texas’ most rural Hill Country in 1939.

If we might draw from this past, I agree with Mr. Hager that funding from our federal and state governments will not get us there; it will require significant initiative by our elected officials to bridge public interest with free enterprise to make rural broadband access a reality.

Richard Sherwood

Tyler

War wears on

Putin’s tragic offensive war against Ukraine wears on and on. As the Russians strive for a real battlefield victory, they have destroyed the port city of Mariupol and are trying (as of this writing) to capture the last Ukrainian holdout stronghold there, the surrounded Azovstal steel plant complex. Assuming that the Russian’s overwhelming military forces there will eventually conquer Azovstal, they will have their pyrrhic victory… and the Ukrainian’s will have their “Alamo.” The name of that steelworks will ring loud and clear now and in the future. “Remember the Azovstal!”

“Jack” Gibson

Hideaway