LETTERS: Cabdrivers get bad rap in Uber battle
To the editor:
Why does the Review-Journal lean so heavily toward letters to the editor touting Uber and debasing our local taxi drivers?
When I had cancer, I was treated at the VA hospital in San Diego once a week for two months. It was a fearsome and emotionally draining experience for me and my wife. When we needed a cab to get to the airport, we called a taxi company two hours before we actually needed to be picked up. The dispatcher asked us what time we needed the taxi, and where we wanted to go. The taxi was on time, every time. At times the drivers were even a little early and waited a few minutes for us to check on last-minute details at home.
Uber is a pirate outfit bent on troublemaking. Amber Buzan’s Dec. 6 letter tells me that she has not done her homework on state and federal restrictions on carrying passengers for hire (“Sad to see Uber go,” Dec. 6 Review-Journal). There is nothing wrong, of course, with driving someone to a doctor’s appointment, but if money changes hands, that’s a different ball of wax.
Before we moved to Las Vegas, we were tourists and came here a few times. Never did a local taxi driver give us the grand tour before delivering us to our hotel. Those people who think they are being scammed by local cabdrivers have fallen prey to urban legend, or have friends who drive for Uber. We should look at the fact that most tourists come here more than once. Why would they come here repeatedly if they were getting ripped off by errant Las Vegas cabdrivers?
JIM ARMBRUST
LAS VEGAS
Protesters want justice
To the editor:
It’s really bothering me that many people don’t understand what’s going on in America with the protests against police brutality. More specifically, they don’t understand why people are protesting, and even more disturbing is all the vitriol being directed at the protesters.
It’s really quite simple: the protests are about justice.
I see many people bringing up instances where a black person kills a white person, and they ask, “Where are the protests?” This is a false equivalency. Just continue reading the article on such an incident, and you will learn that the person responsible for the murder was arrested, charged and sentenced to prison. Justice was served. The victim’s family received justice.
The difference in these police cases is that the officers involved are not being held accountable. They are not even so much as being charged with a crime so they can have their day in court. Justice was not served. The victim’s family did not receive justice. All the people want is for the officers to have their day in court, so a jury of their peers can decide if the officers are guilty or not. That is justice.
Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to ask that every American, including officers of the law, be treated equally under the law? Is it really so horrible that people demand equality in a nation that has hailed itself as the freest in the world?
JOHN GUZMAN
LAS VEGAS
Sharpton dulls message
To the editor:
I read with much cynicism the front-page article on President Barack Obama, police and minority communities (“Obama aims to calm waters,” Dec. 2 Review-Journal). If the president is trying to calm the waters and really means it when he says he is “deeply invested” in seeking solutions to build trust between police and minority communities, then he needs to start with those confidants with whom he sits down to talk.
I’m not a cynic by nature, but when President Obama allows the race-baiting, riot-enhancing provocateur Al Sharpton to be part of any meetings regarding racially charged protests of any nature, I cannot believe the president is acting in the best interests of the American people. Mr. Sharpton has long been a muckraking MSNBC commentator and protest agitator of the first order.
Yet he sits in the inner circle of President Obama? Mr. President, if you want us to believe your sincerity, dump Mr. Sharpton to the curb.
GEORGE PUCINE
LAS VEGAS
