LETTERS: Kick Start avoids real funding issues

To the editor:

In response to Saturday’s article on the Nevada College Kick Start program (“Nevada kick-starts college funds for kids”), this is yet another shallow program designed to give the appearance that Nevada’s political and financial leaders care about education.

An account will generate a projected $220 by the time a Nevada kindergarten student enters college. State Treasurer Kate Marshall must be joking. For $220, a student could pay for about three college textbooks or, alternatively, a little over two credits — at a community college. That is assuming that textbook and tuition costs are the same 13 years from now as they are today. This is unlikely, since the state has continually moved to balance its higher education budget on the backs of students, via tuition increases, reduced state per-credit funding and added fees.

The Kick Start program would be laughable if not for the already tragic situation of education funding in Nevada.

GREG GRANT

LAS VEGAS

Kick Start questions

To the editor:

I just read about state Treasurer Kate Marshall rolling out a new program that will start a college savings account in the amount of $50 for each child in Nevada at the start of kindergarten (“Nevada kick-starts college funds for kids,” Saturday Review-Journal). The big selling point is that it is not tax money. The second selling point is that it will grow at a rate averaging 12 percent per year.

First of all, wasn’t the Millennium Scholarship program created under the same promise? No tax money would be spent? How much does that program cost taxpayers now, and how much did that “free money” cause tuition to go up?

And where in the world are you going to find investment grade securities that average 12 percent? If state officials can find that rate, I will pay 3 percent of the amount to get in on it. Sounds like another feel -good, pie-in-the-sky program that will wind up costing taxpayers more money and do nothing in the long run. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.

GORDON SOEDER

LAS VEGAS

Obamacare and elections

To the editor:

Some news sources are reporting that many Democrats up for re-election later this year are trying to distance themselves from the Affordable Care Act, which they previously supported when they voted to pass the bill into law. Reports say they are being advised to tell voters that they will fix the law if they are re-elected. Promising to right a wrong is not a good enough reason to be re-elected.

The ACA was a bill that, as evidenced by polling at that time, a majority of Americans opposed. There was great opposition to the bill from all the Republicans in Congress and the millions of Americans who phoned or wrote their representatives and senators. Those objections to the bill were ignored by those who voted in favor of it, thus betraying their constituents. The original bill was so large that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Now we are finding out what is in it, and it is not good.

Politicians would have learned that if they had read the bill before voting for it. Those politicians who forced this law on the American people should not get a do-over for their decision. I believe that regardless of their political affiliation, all members of Congress who voted for the Affordable Care Act do not deserve to be re-elected, and any wannabe politician who supports it should not be elected to Congress.

STEVEN G. HAYES SR.

LAS VEGAS

Wind energy just hot air

To the editor:

I love the way green energy lobbyists deny the real costs of wind and solar power to try to persuade Americans to subsidize their industries, as John Feehery did in his letter (“Wind power worthy of tax credit,” Sunday Review-Journal). Mr. Feehery says wind energy is saving consumers money on their power bills. But the numbers I have seen indicate that the contract prices for power from these installations are actually running two to three times the cost of natural gas and coal-generated power.

This means billions of dollars are added to our power bills, and thousands of permanent jobs are lost, hardly a savings for consumers. And no matter how many of these plants are built, the power companies must still build and maintain fossil fuel plants to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

Green power technology is an economic albatross, and we will be paying for it for a long time.

TOM KELLER

HENDERSON