Teacher safety net not an entitlement

Retired teacher Joanna Boyd’s Sunday letter, “Sick pay,” is a perfect example of how government safety nets are viewed as entitlements.

Sick pay is not vacation pay or it would be so named. Teachers are entitled to sick pay when they are too sick (or contagious) to carry out their duties. This is a taxpayer-paid safety net to ensure that teachers do not suffer financial hardship for acts of nature beyond their control. It is taxpayer generosity that teachers receive anything for unused sick leave upon retirement.

Perhaps if the retirement gift were eliminated, Ms. Boyd would understand that sick pay is a safety net, not an entitlement and would be saved the angst of thinking that the gift was too small. Perhaps if the retirement gift were eliminated, Clark County would have more money to put back into the classroom for students.

As a retired teacher, I am thankful for the gift from God that I was not sick and had the opportunity to use every day possible to contribute to the lives of children. I am also thankful for the taxpayer-paid safety net I was afforded throughout my career and for the gift of dollars paid at retirement for my unused portion.

Eileen Warren

Henderson

Government benefits

I am tired of all the Review-Journal editorials demanding transparency regarding the retirement benefits of PERS pension recipients who worked for every dime of their paychecks (“Arrogant disdain,” July 13 editorial).

What about transparency for other recipients of public monies? Specifically, welfare recipients who never worked for a penny of their benefits.

How about making public a list of all Nevada welfare recipients and what they gross every year in payouts — and not on some government obscure PDF file that only a computer programmer could find.

I don’t expect the ACLU to jump on this one.

Virgil L. Swartwood

Las Vegas

Natural rights

A recent Review-Journal letter writer suggested we should “update” the Second Amendment. It is sad that so many otherwise educated and informed people are so misguided and misinformed on this point and our history.

We are a Republic. The rights in the Bill of Rights are not “granted” by the government. They are natural rights that existed even before these documents were written. Your opinion and my opinion mean nothing. They do not negate even one of these rights under any circumstances short of a constitutional amendment.

That is the mechanism for change, nothing else. Not a vote in Congress. Not an executive order. That our nation has elected to ignore this document is not a valid argument in favor of one’s opinion.

There is ample evidence of support for the Second Amendment throughout our founding as a means to always maintain an armed militia made up of all able-bodied citizens to protect against enemies “both foreign and domestic.” Underline “domestic.” Even after we created our own standing army, the Founders knew well that a disarmed populace would be helpless against tyrants and wrote extensively on the subject.

An armed populace, however, could always overthrow a tyrant at any time. Even a tyrant in control of our military.

Finally, the fallacy that fewer firearms will make us safer is illogical. I suggest the examples of Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., where firearms are essentially banned — in complete violation of our rights — yet they have the absolute highest number of criminal firearm deaths and injuries in the nation.

I believe Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. I rest my case.

The citations in support of the above are scattered throughout the writings of our Founders which, thank God, are very clear. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller case supported this view even now in the 21st century.

Steve Lowe

Las Vegas