LETTERS: No more biased editorials, please

Biased editorials

Could the Review-Journal please stop with the bogeyman propaganda? The editorial bemoaning the loss of restaurant jobs in Seattle is the latest example ("Maximum pain," Aug. 17 Review-Journal). A better headline might have been "Maximum whine."

How many times does your Koch brothers-funded source, the American Enterprise Institute, need to have its work discredited before you stop citing it? Is it possible that the Review-Journal will ever adopt a more balanced approach, or at least give its readers two sides of a story and let readers reach their own conclusions?

These biased editorials based on questionable data are a disservice to your readers — except those who aren't really interested in facts and are only looking for something to validate their views. Please try to upgrade the quality and standards of your work.

Michael Dimmick

Las Vegas

EPA criticism

The Clean Air Act has been one of the most successful pieces of federal legislation in Nevada's history. Our air is so much cleaner than it was when the law was passed 45 years ago. The editorial criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency ("New ozone rule toxic to the economy," Aug. 16 Review-Journal) showed a lack of understanding of the law.

Under Section 109 of the law — signed in 1970 by President Richard Nixon and most recently reauthorized and signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans — the EPA is required to re-evaluate air quality standards every five years. The EPA is also required to vet its review to an independent scientific committee. The EPA is doing what the law is requiring it to do — EPA officials are abiding by their constitutional duty to uphold the law. Finger-pointing at the EPA as the root cause is misdirected.

What the Review-Journal editorial board should focus on is reauthorization of the law to meet conditions that were not envisioned when the law was enacted and amended. As a Democrat and one who has spent a career in the air quality arena, I oddly believe in many of the concepts espoused by the Review-Journal, but not by the mechanisms suggested. Rather, the focus should be on changing the law. To blame the EPA for following the law is akin to blaming the Nevada Highway Patrol for writing speeding tickets.

With air quality, we are down to diminishing returns, and to say that we should reach a zero-risk threshold is inconsistent with other risks we face in our day-to-day activities. But change can only happen if the law is amended. After 25 years, it is time to do so.

Mel Zeldin

North Las Vegas

Flying with babies

I'm sure Glenn Cook was expecting one or two responses to his column about babies on planes ("Biggest babies on planes are grown-ups," Aug. 16 Review-Journal). Here's mine: Mr. Cook should stick with politics.

He whines about "annoying, entitled, anti-child grown-ups" who don't enjoy being locked in an airplane with the noisy children of other passengers. A more self-aware person might entertain the possibility that it is actually those adults who bring their children onto the planes who are the annoying and entitled ones. There will always be situations where this is unavoidable for those parents, but that is not the subject of his column.

Mr. Cook sarcastically declares, as a defense, "Yeah, heaven forbid children see some of the world they'll inherit and connect with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents." Mr. Cook is surely an educated person and must understand that 1-, 2- and 3-year-olds, and certainly older, are not yet capable of understanding whatever he thinks they might learn on a trip of any sort. He should ask himself how many profound experiences he remembers from when he was 2 years old.

Is Mr. Cook really trying to convince us that he is taking his child on trips for the child's benefit? I'm inclined to think it's only to his benefit, because, frankly, nothing else is possible. He also asks us to remember who is going to be paying for our Social Security and Medicare benefits in the future. That is about as weak as arguments get, because that child is going to be paying whether she happens to be on that flight or not.

I am in the same political camp as Mr. Cook, but he now appears to be another parent who believes his child is just the most charming, delightful creature ever born and that anyone graced with that child's presence should be perfectly happy, even in the cramped quarters of an airliner. Someone with his job should be more open to reality.

Bill Wyszczelski

Las Vegas