LETTERS: Warring parties can’t get work done

To the editor:

It is a good thing to have a choice between differing philosophies, but it is nothing short of detrimental to have two warring parties who view any attempt at compromise as high treason. The fact that Chuck Muth would rather a Democrat win than a moderate Republican is quite telling of the situation our country is in (“Muth tenaciously aims to steer GOP to right in Nevada,” Nov. 11 Review-Journal).

The greatest threat to our nation is not the deficit, not al-Qaida, not even Obamacare (like it or hate it.) No, it is the growing gulf that divides American from American, left from right. Our politicians are representative of the political atmosphere. The inability to have or outright refusal of any dialogue between the two is the greatest threat this country has ever faced. On top of that, we now have outright witch hunts within the parties to block legislators who are willing to work for the people and not purely for the party.

If we continue down this road, we can only expect things to get worse. Stagnation is the word of the day — our lawmakers must agree on something in order for anything to happen. While our nation crumbles, people such as Mr. Muth use all of their power to polarize the political arena even more and stop any bipartisan dialogue before it starts.

We need our moderates. It is through them that any hope of a better tomorrow exists. With less extremism within the parties, we just might be able to put our labels aside and put our heads together to fix the myriad problems our nation faces.

OSIE TURNER

LAS VEGAS

Property taxes

To the editor:

Regarding Tuesday’s article on property taxes (“Mayors push to amend caps”), any property tax increase talk strikes me as looking for a quick fix to the much deeper and longer-term structural problems in Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas — problems that closely mirrors the national picture. What our city leaders truly must focus attention on are the same challenges that our nation’s leaders must deal with: job creation, increasing incomes and the full restoration of housing values.

A quick property tax fix is not what is needed at all, especially when many existing homeowners are still living in homes they bought during the boom, and have seen their full down payments wiped out and their home values hovering at no greater than 50 percent of the initial purchase prices. Increasing the property tax burden would be shortsighted and would have a chilling effect on the housing market’s recovery. Increased property taxes would have the same effect as increased mortgage interest rates, which would be to dampen the demand for houses and threaten another housing market slump.

We must not risk that. The mayors should, I believe, focus on recruiting businesses into the area, increasing jobs and incomes, and creating conditions which stimulate greater demand for housing and continued recovery in our home values. When home values are increasing, consumer outlays increase, as do tax revenues.

BOB JACK

NORTH LAS VEGAS

Fair tax a fix-all

To the editor:

Everyone knows what a stupid idea Obamacare was. Before the federal government goes off on another lame mission, maybe it should just stop and think for a moment about what the consequences of its actions will be for the American people.

Considering the deficit spending that contributes to the national debt, and all the social issues such as immigration reform and welfare reform that are also hot topics, why not just take care of all of it with one act instead of trying to argue through each issue independently?

The fair tax would take care of immigration reform, health insurance for virtually everybody and the national debt. Why would the government not do something to help the citizens of the United States?

NICHOLAS P. GARTNER

HENDERSON