LETTERS: Electric car subsidies not nearly as wasteful as other incentives

To the editor:

In its continuing effort to pretend to care about the American taxpayer and pretend to fight against government waste, the Review-Journal’s editorial staff wrote a blistering piece attacking government tax incentives and other subsidies given to electric car drivers (“Electric crazy carnival,” June 21 Review-Journal). It’s written as if gas-powered cars and oil companies have never seen a dime in taxpayer subsidies.

Fiscal conservatives are a shameless bunch when it comes to lining up for taxpayer handouts — for wars, corporate welfare, religious indoctrination and the never-ending ineffectual war on drugs, just to name a few. Conservatives only hate subsidies that help out the poor, middle class or the environment. Our government lost more than a trillion taxpayer dollars on failed wars in the Middle East meant to keep the “cheap” supply of oil. Imagine if that sum was tacked on to the cost of gasoline at the pump?

On top of that, the U.S. government has given billions of dollars in permanent subsidies to oil and car companies, yet just now, the Review-Journal decides to put its foot down and stop the tiny subsidy for electric cars? And if those arguments aren’t ridiculous enough, one of the editorial’s biggest complaints falls flat: electric car owners don’t pay the gas tax for road upkeep. Wow. Far more money is lost by carpooling and people who use the bus than the 1,500 or so electric car drivers in Nevada. Is the Review-Journal going to complain about that too?

If no one ever sets a foot on the highway, we still pay for it because everything we use is brought to us via the highway system, and that little charge is passed on to everything we buy from the highway users.

DAVID KLAMANN

LAS VEGAS

Region’s water woes

To the editor:

A headline on Page 10B of the June 27 Review-Journal touted, “Artificial turf takes root in Las Vegas,” while another headline on Page 1D stated, “Pool maintenance made easy.” With water consumption in Las Vegas topping the news lately, am I the only one who sees the irony here?

ALICE HOCKING

BOULDER CITY

Gay marriage ruling

To the editor:

So the U.S. Supreme Court finally made gay marriage legal. It’s the law of the land, giving recourse to all who are being discriminated against by those who won’t bake cakes or provide flower arrangements or candlesticks or whatever (“Right to wed OK’d,” June 27 Review-Journal). Personally, I don’t care who you marry or who you’re sleeping with, as long as you’re consenting adults.

That being said, we might not live happily ever after. Arguing on behalf of the government for gay marriage, the solicitor general was asked by one of the chief justices if legalizing gay marriage would have any effect on the tax-exempt status of any religious institutions not supporting gay marriage. His answer was, “It could be an issue.”

I don’t understand why the federal government is involved in any marriage; anyone should be able to make a legal contract with anyone they choose, with regard to almost anything. So for about 1.6 percent of the population, we’re officially going to tear down the Bill of Rights, starting with the First Amendment, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Maybe in the not too distant future we can just burn that dusty old Constitution, along with a lot of other old books no longer relevant today. President Barack Obama was right when he said prior to his inauguration, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Or later when his wife, Michelle Obama, said, “Barack knows … we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history.”

Happily ever after? I think not.

DAVID JARONIK

PAHRUMP

GOP on climate change

To the editor:

Rich Lowry, in his column on Pope France (“Pope gets religion on climate change,” June 26 Review-Journal), claims that the pronouncements by the pope are beyond his expertise. As opposed to what? A statement from a Republican? Almost all statements that are obviously anti-science from Republicans?

Sen. James Inhofe carried a snowball onto the senate floor and stated that “63 percent of the weathercasters said that any global warming that occurs is a result of natural variation and not human activities.” He thereby demonstrating that he is so technically illiterate that he doesn’t know the difference between a weathercaster and a climatologist, and is so arrogant that he does not need to actually check if the two words mean something different. Then he said, “I ask the chair, you know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonal, Mr. President, catch this.”

Which is kind of like saying, “Hey, I just ate, and I am full, so there must be no hunger in the world.”

I could produce hundreds more examples of such scientifically ignorant politicians and pundits such as Mr. Lowry. I think it highly likely that none of them ever passed a course in statistics or upper-division physics, or could understand, let alone solve, a differential equation. But they all claim to be able to understand climate science. Unlike the pope, they claim that they are smarter than the 97 percent of the scientists who have devoted their lives to studying this topic and who do have the expertise to understand it. The pope is at least smart enough to defer to their qualified opinions, rather than ranting about conspiracies.

As to our wonderful technologies that have brought us our current successes, no one disputes that. But it took government, not the free market, to give us rivers that did not catch fire and air that is not toxic. It was also government that gave us airbags and high-mileage cars that did not poison the air we breathe.

DOUG NUSBAUM

LAS VEGAS