Thursday, January 09, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
LETTERS: Tax breaks for those who don't pay taxes?
To the editor:
According to Harry Reid and the Democrats, the taxpayers who pay the majority of the taxes should not get a tax break. The people who pay little or no taxes should receive the majority of the tax breaks. What's that called in plain American English? Welfare give-aways, the favorite Democratic ploy to get more votes.
I am considered "rich" by Harry Reid and the Democrats because I make a little less than $50,000 a year. I am not crying because someone who makes five times more than I do and pays three times the taxes I do will get a few hundred dollars more than I will in a refund.
People in the lower tax brackets do not own businesses or invest millions of dollars in companies that employ hundreds or thousands of employees. People in the lower tax brackets cannot and do not stimulate the economy as much as higher income taxpayers do.
Reminder, Sen. Reid: If there is no "big business" or "rich" people, there are no jobs. Socialism died a long time ago because it didn't work.
So as a "rich" taxpayer, I will gladly take any refund I get and be happy I have a job to go to every day. To all you liberal Democrats out there: If you don't pay taxes, you don't deserve a tax break.
JIM STOLFI
LAS VEGAS
Public lands
To the editor:
Kudos to Teresa Harris for her brave Jan. 6 letter, "Our public lands must be religiously neutral." High time someone steps forward and tells it like it is.
It is narrow-minded Christians such as recent letter writer Mike Miller who erroneously believe that this country is a "Christian " country founded by "Christians." The opposite is true.
Almost all of the founders were not "Christians" per se, but deists who had suffered Christian persecution in England and some on the continent. The word "Christian" does not appear in any of the
founding documents, and God does not appear in the Constitution.
These Christian zealots want religious freedom for themselves but hope to deny the right of others to be free from having government endorse religion on tax-paid public property.
Thomas Jefferson said, "Vigilance is the price of liberty" -- or words to that effect. Religious freedom, like the flag, belongs to all of us. not just to Christians and Republicans.
JAMES J. POUPARD
HENDERSON
Dividend tax
To the editor:
Regarding Monday's editorial on the Bush stimulus package, removing the tax on dividends for individual taxpayers -- as Mr. Bush proposes -- doesn't keep corporations from piling up earnings and rewards only those who have dividend income.
A more sensible proposal would be to tax corporations only on income after dividends are paid, not before. This would indeed promote paying out dividends, thus helping stockholders, and reduce corporate taxes, leading to some combination of lower prices and higher corporate earnings. This would spread the rewards to a wider group of people and give business capital markets a boost.
Corporations don't pay taxes. People eventually pay them through increased prices of goods and services and taxes on dividends.
ELWOOD ANDERSON
LAS VEGAS
Pension plan
To the editor:
The Jan. 6 editorial "Comparing teacher pay" was partially correct when it stated, "Nevada is the only state in which taxpayers pick up the entire cost of public-employee pensions and in which state workers do not participate in Social Security."
Regular state employees pay 9.75 percent into the Public Employees Retirement System. There is an option to have this paid entirely by PERS, with a concurrent 9.75 percent decrease in salary. This option, however, does not apply to teachers in the Clark County School District, employees of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and most other civil servants, who do not pay their share of PERS. They are also not employed by the state of Nevada.
Also, some states provide funds to employees' deferred compensation programs (457s). Nevada does not.
CAREN CAMPBELL
NORTH LAS VEGAS
Dirty work
To the editor:
The Review-Journal needs to stop its hackneyed habit of comparing Nevada teacher salaries to those of teachers in other states (editorial, Jan. 7). You might as well be saying the slaves in South Carolina had it much better than those living in Mississippi.
Teachers here have received about a 1 percent increase in salary per year for the past seven years, roughly a total of 7 percent. The cost of living has gone up between 40 and 50 percent in the same period. Last year, we had a 300 percent take-back on benefits. A family of four, who a year ago paid $90 per month, now pays $360 a month for health insurance (you do the math).
Most public employees in Nevada -- including police officers, clerks, county librarians -- get annual cost-of-living hikes, somewhere between 2 and 4 percent (on top of their incremental raises). Teachers do not. Hence, for the Review-Journal to lump teachers with the pool of appropriately compensated state employees, for rhetorical purposes, is simply misguided and, consequently, misleading.
Furthermore, both the National Education Association and its bastard child, the Clark County Education Association, have done less than zero in the past decade for teachers in Nevada. Any arguments they present on our behalf are about as specious as the Review-Journal's arguments against us are supercilious.
The time has come for teachers to take it to the streets and do their own dirty work. A boycott against the casino industry, with its plantation owner mentality, is the only viable option left.
CHIP MOSHER
LAS VEGAS
Pay raise
To the editor:
I read with interest the article on the salary increases given to the justices of the peace. I would like to give you a synopsis of my salary increase for 2003.
My Social Security check increased by $16.70. My Medicare premium increased $4.70. My total increase for 2003 is a big whopping $12, or $144 per year. Not to mention that my prescription co-pay has gone from $30 to $35 for pharmacy prescriptions, and from $30 to $70 for mail-order prescriptions. This does not encompass cost-of-living increases for the new year.
I think there is something very wrong with this picture. Some of the salary hikes for the justices of the peace amount to more than I make in a year. Our government needs to take a much better look at this situation.
GERRI KURTZ
LAS VEGAS
