LETTERS: Numbers provide clear election choices

To the editor:

Since President Barack Obama took the helm of this great nation, median household income has dropped by more than $2,000 per year (from $54,059 to $51,939). We have the highest percentage of Americans ever on food stamps and Social Security disability, and a job participation rate at its lowest level since 1978. And our Obama-nominated Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen, recently stated, “By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near the highest levels in the past 100 years.”

Ms. Yellen went on to state her concern about stagnant incomes, the number of part-time workers and those who have completely given up on finding a full-time job. What a record. No wonder Democrats are declaring themselves, well, not Democrats and distancing themselves from the president despite 90 percent of them having voted for all his policies. “Vote for me,” the candidates say. “Even though I am listed as a Democrat, I am not one, and please forget my voting record. If re-elected I will change my ways.”

Right. How many people will fall for this? If you like the economic track record that Ms. Yellen said has benefited the top 10 percent of wage earners and hammered the other 90 percent, vote Democrat. If you think that our spending policies are out of control, that individual responsibility needs a boost and that the government should get off our back, vote Republican. The choice is clear.

JOHN SEVERSON

HENDERSON

Margins tax

To the editor:

An article about the first day of early voting included in a jump headline, “Small-business owners voting against margins tax.” (“Convenience, importance big for early voters,” Oct. 19 Review-Journal). Two men claiming to be small-business owners justifies that headline?

The article states that the margins tax proposed by Question 3 — The Education Initiative — will be on large businesses, but the opinions expressed by three voters show that the millions of dollars spent portraying small businesses as victims has been money well-spent. Perhaps the 87 percent of small businesses in Nevada not impacted by the tax will benefit from the largest 13 percent paying it. If the larger businesses raise prices to offset their contribution to our schools, then smaller business prices would become more competitive.

The opponents of the tax have also consistently ignored the benefits of hiring more teachers and paying teachers more. When the Clark County School District eliminated 1,000 teaching positions, $35 million was drained from the Las Vegas economy. Protecting the corporate profits of Wal-Mart, Exxon, Target, McDonald’s and so on does nothing to help our small businesses. Teachers and their families buy cupcakes, hire landscapers, get haircuts and so on. That money would have almost all gone directly into our economy and in many cases would have been spent at small businesses.

The wealth gap did not get to where it is today because America is crippling small businesses; it got that way because huge corporations are crippling small businesses. Who pays the most when Nevada finally demands that businesses relinquish their top-three ranking in smallest contributions to the funding of their state? Big businesses will pay the lion’s share, and big businesses are fighting hardest to maintain the largest class sizes and some of the worst per-pupil funding in the country.

The Education Initiative exists because wealthy people in Nevada — and more importantly outside of Nevada — have thwarted every alternative for 54 years. How about a 1 percent margins tax on businesses that gross more than $2 million? A 0.5 percent tax on those that gross more than $5 million? The opposition could have saved millions of dollars by just providing an alternative.

JEREMY M. CHRISTENSEN

LAS VEGAS

Lottery for Nevada

To the editor:

An interesting brief in the Oct. 20 Review-Journal reported that annual lottery ticket sales in California topped $5 billion for the first time. How much of that money came from Nevada residents who drove to California to buy tickets because the casinos won’t allow us to have a lottery here?

TIM HICKS

NORTH LAS VEGAS