Economic fixes must include small businesses
To the editor:
As new political leadership in Washington, D.C., and Carson City contemplate solutions for rebuilding our economy I hope they will not overlook the positive contributions to be made by our small businesses. The 25 million small businesses in this country make up 52 percent of the private sector work force and create 75 percent of all new jobs. Small businesses provide the best opportunity for individual wealth creation and they anchor our communities.
Federal and state programs should be introduced to foster small business growth with reasonable access to capital, affordable health insurance, and common sense tax and regulatory policies. Further, there must be real protection for small businesses and consumers from the inherent predatory abuses that result when market concentration runs unchecked, as it has for the past few decades.
STEVE FERNLUND
LAS VEGAS
Dark world
To the editor:
I usually take columnist Vin Suprynowicz’s essays with a large grain of salt, knowing beforehand his peculiar ideas about what makes this country run are almost always antithetical to mine.
Sometimes, however, it seems that he really goes off the deep end on subjects such as public schooling (propaganda camps for the young, he calls them), and more recently the threat of “communist sympathizers” and — horror of horrors — “socialists” permeating our society.
His Sunday column really seemed to plumb the depths of Mr. Suprynowicz’s fantasies about the social holocaust he expects to ensue from the election of one of his bogeymen, a “socialist” and a “sympathizer,” as well. To hear him tell it, Barack Obama is the reincarnation of the Rosenbergs.
I feel nothing but sorrow for a man who seems doomed to live a life where he thinks nothing good will ever happen and everything is going to hell in a handbasket. I have been around for more than 72 years and have seen a lot come and go, and nothing has ever been as bad as Mr. Suprynowicz likes to paint it.
Again, I feel sorry for the man who lives in such a dark world.
Don Shirley
LAS VEGAS
Can’t lose
To the editor:
Vin Suprynowicz can take solace in the fact that socialists can never, ever triumph.
1) Socialists come in all stripes. However, their predominant color is yellow. They are incapable of accepting the fact that their notions of propriety are contrary to the tenets of human survival. That in turn means they cannot accept things as they are or even as they can be. This is an internal cowardice that precludes their achieving a state of affairs with which they can be content.
2) Therefore, they cannot stand opposition. Not in any form whatsoever. So to oppose socialism is to deny socialists anything other than ephemeral victory.
3) Therefore to resist is to endure. Final answer.
Having said that much, I must now add that resistance could be a bit more astute than it often is. Men of courage need to realize one thing: Socialism does not spring from poverty, but from prosperity. Prosperity comes about because homo sapiens seeks comfort over discomfort.
Once certain levels of comfort are in fact at hand, notions of utopia creep in. Because socialism cloaks itself in utopian robes, it becomes attractive to many. Destroy that illusion and you have got the SOBs on the ropes.
But in attacking the illusion, one must avoid the asceticism of the Pelagian Heresy, and that ain’t easy.
We have got our work cut out for us, to be sure. However, we cannot lose. Please remember that.
Dave Hanley
LAS VEGAS
GOP recipe
To the editor:
J.C. Watts is prescribing the exact wrong formula for the Republican Party’s problems (Review-Journal, Nov. 9).
I’m an independent voter who supports strong national defense, fiscal responsibility and individual rights (including Second Amendment rights). But I did not vote Republican in 2008 precisely because of their alliance with the Religious Right.
Americans still want small government. In my home “swing” state of Colorado, voters rejected three tax increases to provide more social programs “for the children.” But they also resoundingly rejected the anti-abortion Amendment 48 (which would declare a fertilized egg a legal “person”) and defeated pro-life conservative Republicans Marilyn Musgrave and Bob Schaffer.
If Republicans reaffirmed the principles of limited government and separation of church and state, then I’d be happy to support them again. But if they stay in bed with the Religious Right, they will continue to alienate many independent voters and lose elections. And deservedly so.
PAUL HSIEH
SEDALIA, CO.
