ID at the polls? What’s next, a literacy test?

I was totally amazed to read that your Wednesday editorial on voter ID laws. You compared our constitutional right to vote to getting a driver’s license or renting a movie at Blockbuster. What were you thinking? Or were you even thinking?

Believe it or not, the right to vote is actually written in the Constitution. Getting a driver’s license is a privilege.

What will you support next? How about a literacy test for voters? Or maybe a religious test? I generally skim over most of the nonsense printed as editorials in the Review-Journal, but this is going too far.

Steve M. Watkins

LAS VEGAS

 

Ludicrous screed

To the editor:

Your Wednesday editorial castigating Sen. Harry Reid as a spend-crazed liberal who is mortgaging America’s future would be laughable were it not for the fact that it was penned by the same scribes who have been oddly silent about the half-trillion dollars spent to date by their attention-deficit president on his various wars around the globe.

That the editorial ran on the same day Defense Secretary Robert Gates happened to stop by Congress and let them know that he will need another couple of hundred billion next year to spread George Bush’s pixie dust of liberty across the world is so ironic that even the attention-addled editors may not need an explanation of why it is so.

And so, despite the fact that most Americans (seven out of 10 according to the latest polls) are literally scratching off the days until this catastrophic administration passes into the dust bin of history, the dutiful editors of the Review-Journal stand firm against the hordes of liberal spenders such as Sen. Reid, yet remain silent as the Boy King of Pennsylvania Avenue spends his way into fiscal infamy.

If your goal in writing this ludicrous screed was to reaffirm why no one of power pays much attention to your editorials then, as someone once said, "Mission accomplished."

P.J. Levine

HENDERSON

 

School daze

To the editor:

I want to thank Jim Day for expressing what is going on at Columbia University under the current leadership (Wednesday editorial cartoon). As a graduate and retired Marine Corps officer, I have watched what use to be a great school, Columbia, sink to the standards of a liberal cesspool.

Gerry Brodeur

LAS VEGAS

 

Tax burden

To the editor:

Mac Frank’s Wednesday letter is a disgraceful example of the ignorance abounding these days. Taxation is not theft. It is a necessary function of government.

We are a state heavily dependent on gaming. The corporations that make billions in our city are dependent on the infrastructure that our tax dollars support. They need employees who have been educated by our school system and our higher education system. They need goods transported on the roads. They need security provided by the police. The examples continue, but everyone, including the corporations, enjoy the privileges of our society and therefore should be willing to pay for them.

Mel Grimes

HENDERSON

 

Student numbers

To the editor:

Do the lower-than-expected numbers in the Clark County School District’s enrollment include the students who will be forced to stay in school until they are 18 (Review-Journal, Tuesday)? If the numbers don’t, that should help make up for the loss of revenue. If the numbers do include those students, that will help keep the revenue loss from being even worse.

Did the people behind raising the compulsory attendance age know these numbers were coming out? Or are these two developments just a coincidence?

RON GEARHART

LAS VEGAS

 

Heath care burden

To the editor:

If you need another reason to want universal health care besides the 47 million uninsured, consider the GM strike. General Motors pays heavily to provide health care for its employees and retirees — last year it cost them $4.8 billion. This cost is one reason why GM spends some $73.26 an hour in wages and benefits, while Toyota spends only about $48 per worker.

Taking this heavy burden off GM and our other companies would free them to concentrate on producing their products. If we don’t provide some kind of universal health care, it will place many of our corporations in financial danger.

Richard J. Mundy

LAS VEGAS

 

Bad odds

To the editor:

Just how far are we going to let the casinos go in their quest to take as much money as they can from Mr. Joe America?

Every month the casinos report record profits, and the only ones benefiting from that are the shareholders. A local slot magazine can show you in their tables how the casinos have continuously lowered the payback on all the slot machines over the past few years. Good luck trying to find a full-pay video poker machine on the Strip.

The same holds true for blackjack. When they wanted to show a bigger profit they lowered the odds to 6-to-5 and raised the minimum bets.

The next time you are enjoying a cheap buffet on the Strip — oops, that’s gone, too — tell your casino host you deserve a better deal.

I think we should all band together and try to get someone to build a casino called the Dump. We will get the mob to run it and ask them to go back 20 years to good gambling, good food and no frills. Leave the ultra-luxury places to the people who can afford it and don’t mind losing.

Bob Kay

HENDERSON

 

Candid camera

To the editor:

In the late 1970s, we passed a bond initiative to synchronize and coordinate the traffic signals in the Las Vegas Valley. As you can see, that did not happen.

The chaos presents the perfect opportunity for politicians, other government employees and the traffic camera companies to reap vast amounts of money. We have seen what happens in Las Vegas government when large amounts of cash are offered.

Another issue: Who is the accuser? How may I cross-examine the traffic camera?

To Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick and others who have demonstrated a "Carrie Nation" obsession with the "revenue enhancing" traffic cameras: How much money shall you garner from the traffic camera operations? We need look no further than the Transportation Committee meeting of May 1995 (transcript available on the state Web site) to see how dependent the state of Nevada became on the revenue generated by the "energy conservation 55 mph speed limit" for 22 years.

If 85 percent of the traffic is traveling at a speed higher than the posted speed limit, then the posted speed limit is flawed. The 85 percent incudes judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, lawyers, all the way down to us "lackeys." There is a requirement that traffic engineering surveys be performed for the posting of permanent and temporary speed limits in the state of Nevada. Not one survey has been done anywhere in the state.

Make no mistake, the call is for the operation of traffic cameras for speed limit and intersection violations. And you shall pay, and pay dearly, for these cameras.

WAYNE P. BROTHERTON SR.

AMARGOSA VALLEY