READERS REACT: TAKING ISSUE WITH TIMES’ STANDS : Note: Many letters writers support our views; many do not. In the spirit of vigorous discussion of the issues, here is a selection of letters that disagrees with us. : Alcohol Taxes: Props. 126, 134

We were deeply disappointed at your editorial urging a no vote on Prop. 134. We agree that government by initiative is not the best kind of government. Unfortunately, what we have falls so short of the best that the initiative route shows promise on the bleak playing field our elected representatives have created for us.

I would take your remotely concerned editorial writer into one of the few remaining trauma centers and have him witness a night of bloody tragedy with accident victims whose lives are ravaged by alcohol-related auto accidents--as most of those bodily injury accidents are. And I would remind that naive innocent that we have shut down most of these centers because elected officials don’t feel they are priority items, as they whine, “Where will we get the money?”

Perhaps if your spectator-writer, who can’t read the players’ numbers, would look at the proverbial writing on the wall he would see that the people are tired of under-funded systems in shambles and are determined to begin to dictate new terms for their government’s behavior. We have paraded and pleaded enough. We are mad as hell, and Prop. 134 is but a beginning.

DAN E. WEISBURD, President

California Alliance for Mentally Ill

Sacramento