An alternative to seniority-based layoffs
To the editor:
Your Saturday editorial, "Handing out pink slips," did not go far enough.
As every taxpayer here in Clark County knows, the existing government union employee contracts, both city and county, are unsustainable. The coffers are empty and the treasury is nearly bankrupt. So who knows how these government employee union contracts are negotiated and what is in them? I don't, and you can bet that most taxpayers here don't either.
Who does the negotiation for the government (taxpayers), and why can't we see the offers and counter-offers? It's my money, it's your money, it's taxpayer money.
I can't negotiate these contracts, but if I could, then here is one option I would demand to be included in every contract.
Just like private employers have had an "at will" option for centuries, all government employee union contracts would contain a revenue reduction adjustment clause. If city or county annual revenues decline by some reasonable predetermined amount, like 1 or 2 percent, then prior to any layoffs all employees, including those in the union, would be given the option to take a percentage pay and or benefit cut (opt-in) and therefore be exempt from firing. All others would remain in the layoff pool.
This option would take precedent over the "last hired, first fired" union seniority rule. If, in the event that the salary reduction option is oversubscribed, the city or county could either reduce the percentage reduction across the board or the seniority rule would apply, in that the lower-seniority union employees who volunteered for the reduction would have their pay reduced first.
Richard Rychtarik
Las Vegas
Who are the villains?
To the editor:
I really had to laugh after reading Friday's Associated Press article about our country's failed drug war.
The Bible-thumping nanny staters and cop prohibitionists got just what they feared most with this war against our own people. The drug war itself is much worse than the drugs it aims to curtail. The waste of vast amounts of money, resources and the horribly negative effects this war has had on innocent citizens and recreational drug users is what is really criminal.
To think of how much better all those hundreds of billions of dollars could have been spent leads one to think that our government, elected officials and our police are truly deranged and have no ability for cognitive reasoning. Legalizing, regulating and taxing drugs would come close to ending our current Great Recession almost overnight. And think of how many teachers could be hired and how many true addicts could be helped instead of continuing to criminalize a vast underground society of users, dealers, gangs and narco-states.
All those billions of dollars could also buy a lot of medical insurance.
By enabling these vast sums of wealth to flow into Mexican drug syndicates, we will one day wake up to find that we will be fighting a real war against our neighbor to the south. And the soldiers of this new narco-state will be much better armed than the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Of course, the cops and nanny staters will continue to desperately cling to the trough of prohibition, overflowing with taxpayer dollars, keeping the bogus illusion alive. How sad and how stupid.
Our politicians deserve what they vote for. All they seem to embrace are body bags and nonviolent citizens rotting in dungeons.
Who are the real villains in this never-ending war?
J.D. Collier
Henderson
What goes around ...
To the editor:
Don't fret, fellow patriots. The issues of illegal immigration, border security and high taxes shall soon be a thing of the past.
The direction that President Obama and this spendthrift Congress are taking the country, with skyrocketing debt and atrocious spending with resultant high taxes, will cause inflation to rise to levels that will make Jimmy Carter blush like a 13-year-old schoolgirl.
This record inflation will devalue the dollar below the Mexican peso, and all illegal aliens will go home.
Then Americans will migrate in droves to Mexico for those high-paying peso jobs. Let's hope the Mexican government takes as good care of us as we did of Mexican illegals.
Mexico will then finish building that border fence in Arizona -- to keep us out.
Douglas Kuehl
Henderson
Protest Mexico
To the editor:
Now that we have seen and heard all the pros and cons on how to deal with the illegals in the United States, I have just one question for the protesters:
Why are you not protesting Mexico, where the government has done nothing -- ever -- to make life better for its people so they don't have to risk their lives invading their neighbors to the north?
HANS BOHN
LAS VEGAS
