Read the bill? What a childish approach
To the editor:
Once again, the Review-Journal takes the childish approach to the health care debate (Saturday editorial, "Read the bill"). The paper wants Sen. Tom Coburn to try to delay passage of the health care bill by reading it aloud.
We have always heard that the Senate, unlike the House, is the greatest deliberative political body in the world. Yet, Sen. Coburn and the Review-Journal want to play childish games, and in effect fake a tantrum on the floor of the Senate, accomplishing absolutely nothing.
If Sen. Coburn or the Republicans -- or the Review-Journal, for that matter -- tried to help pass some or any health care legislation during the eight Bush years, I would be amenable to these infantile tactics. But somehow, the Republicans, conservatives and the Review-Journal were silent, allowing health care to become the disaster it is now.
Somehow, I don't think the reading of the bill will accomplish anything other than making America see how non-deliberative the Republican side of the Senate is, and how the Review-Journal's editorial answer to everything is to attack everything Obama and play silly schoolyard games.
It's time the Review-Journal becomes serious about political discourse in this state, and helps to really fix this nation's problems instead of constantly attacking everything and anything Mr. Obama tries to do.
Steve Metz
HENDERSON
Don't blame unions
To the editor:
Glenn Cook must surely be the most brilliant comedian ever -- two paragraphs into his Sunday column, I couldn't stop laughing. "Greedy unions" killed the automobile and airline industries? That's a good one.
Is Mr. Cook to young to remember the AMC Spirit, Chrysler Cordoba, Chevy Vega or Ford Tempo? The UAW may have been greedy, but they're not the ones who decided on the cut-rate engineering solutions that the paying public rejected. There is no finer example of how mismanagement at U.S. automakers did them in than Saturn. GM's own executives actively sabotaged Saturn in favor of other divisions, a monument to shortsightedness.
As for the airlines, some of the big carriers pushing for deregulation got their wish in 1978. Unfortunately, some of these executives failed to read about David and Goliath, thus never saw the likes of regional carriers Southwest Airlines and others defeating them.
In an effort to maintain market share, airlines engaged in cut-throat price wars and many union and non-union airlines went belly up. Some unions even took pay cuts to keep their companies alive but to no avail.
So does Mr. Cook honestly think these companies went belly up because some UAW worker didn't bolt the wheels on the cars properly or pilots didn't fly fast enough? Sadly for all employees, both management and labor, failure at the executive level caused the demise of once-profitable companies.
Of course, I could be wrong, as it's my understanding that Napoleon's men were asking for a 36-hour work week just before Waterloo.
Tom Grossmann
LAS VEGAS
Road to ruin
To the editor:
After reading his Nov. 19 letter, I totally agree with Bryon Watkins, who ridiculed conservatives for their criticism of Barack Obama. After all, why would anyone believe Mr. Obama is a socialist? Because he surrounds himself with, and associates with, avowed communists and socialist radicals? He wants to socialize medical care? He wants to redistribute the wealth?
Only a dummy would believe these are socialist tendencies.
As for those mean old Tea Party-attending, average Americans who love freedom, they don't want those infected with the syndrome taking them down the road of social and economic ruin by creating the United Socialist States of America.
JIM JENNEK
LAS VEGAS
Electric idea
To the editor:
The Monday editorial "The time is right: Let investors, not taxpayers, fund electric car research" tells only half the story. It is true that transforming our transportation system will cost money -- but a fraction of the money we are hemorrhaging every day to feed our current addiction to oil.
Between 2001 and 2008, the average retail price of gasoline increased from $1.46 to $3.27, costing typical households $2,115 a year in increased fuel expenses. That increase in the cost of living essentially wiped out the benefits of the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 for the typical American family. In 2008 alone, the United States sent $388 billion -- 56 percent of our total trade deficit -- overseas to pay to import crude oil and petroleum products. Every American recession over the past 35 years has been preceded by -- or occurred concurrently with -- an oil price spike.
It would be ideal if there were a free market solution to these economic threats. But there is no free market for oil. Far from it: At least 78 percent of global oil and gas reserves are held by national oil companies that are either fully or partially controlled by foreign governments whose interests often have more to do with geopolitical considerations than free market principles.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Today, American families are paying dearly for our current dependence on oil. It's time to lift this crushing burden off of the U.S. economy and American taxpayers.
Robbie Diamond
WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE WRITER IS PRESIDENT OF THE ELECTRIFICATION COALITION, A NONPARTISAN, NONPROFIT GROUP OF BUSINESS LEADERS COMMITTED TO PROMOTING POLICIES AND ACTIONS THAT FACILITATE THE DEPLOYMENT OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES.
