LETTERS: Reporter Myers lived life to the fullest
To the editor:
I saw the headline about Laura Myers’ passing, and it took my breath away (“What a journalist ought to be,” Saturday Review-Journal). That’s partly because, as noted in the article, Ms. Myers never brought up her illness — certainly not the two times I had the chance to work with her at our Western Governors’ Association meetings.
But mostly, it was because Ms. Myers was someone I immediately admired for her straight-ahead style and down-to-earth nature. I spent more than 25 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers, and I can tell when obituaries about a colleague are inflated and when they’re heartfelt. Clearly, the latter applies to Ms. Myers. It was a wonderful tribute, and I hope that Ms. Myers’ family will know that her fan club was a big one, perhaps inclusive of just about everyone who had the privilege to meet her.
And to those who would rightly say her passing came far too soon, I would remind them of a New Orleans native, when asked by a reporter if he was worried by news that the city’s citizens had the shortest life expectancy in the country. “Well, I guess we do live shorter lives,” he said, “but we live more in those years than other people.” Ms. Myers certainly lived more than most in her years, too.
JOE RASSENFOSS
DENVER
The writer is communications director for the Western Governors’ Association.
Regulating Uber
To the editor:
Regarding Steve Sebelius’ column, “Vetoing this veto!” (June 14 Review-Journal):
I totally agree with his comments after reading an earlier article about the Nevada Transportation Authority. The authority plans to write new regulations to go along with the bill that was passed and signed by the governor, allowing Uber and Lyft to operate legally (“Process for developing Uber regulations begins this week,” June 9 Review-Journal).
Authority chairman Andrew MacKay sounds just ecstatic about the prospects of writing new regulations and having meetings to justify his paycheck. “This is a big deal; it’s huge,” he said. One can almost see him in eager anticipation of writing a bunch of regulations for what should be a simple process.
JAMES M. MAGNUSON
LAS VEGAS
Energy costs
To the editor:
If you make energy more expensive, you raise expenses for restaurants. After labor and food costs, one of the major expenses a restaurant owner faces is energy. The costs of heating and air conditioning, refrigeration and running grills, fryers, ovens and dishwashers for many hours a day can add up. It’s too bad some elected officials in Washington, D.C., don’t understand these economics.
The Obama administration wants to raise costs for energy companies, portraying them as big businesses that can simply absorb higher taxes without affecting the rest of our economy. But we all know that higher costs eventually are passed along to consumers. There are thousands of restaurants in Nevada, employing tens of thousands of people. Their livelihoods are threatened when energy policies affect the economic growth of our cities and communities.
And it isn’t just restaurants that would face higher energy costs. We all fill our gas tanks and heat and cool our homes, businesses, schools and government offices. It is foolish to think that we can target one industry such as energy with new burdens and not hurt our economy. Instead, we need comprehensive reforms that don’t treat one industry different than others. We all share in the pain of higher energy costs.
JEFF ECKER
LAS VEGAS
Racial self-identification
To the editor:
The recent media blitz over the racial self-identification of Rachel Dolezal has created a firestorm (“Controversy swirls over ethnicity of Spokane’s NAACP president,” June 14 Review-Journal). This topic has been one of controversy since the concept was formulated, and for whose benefit? The concept was first brought to this country by the Europeans to distinguish white people as superior to other groups.
Race has no biological significance. All human beings are Homo sapiens and cannot be subdivided into neat categories, e.g. black, white, Asian, etc. Ms. Dolezal is within her rights to defy the racial title if she believes this, and she is being unfairly ostracized for doing so.
American culture insists that all people identify themselves in a racial category. The one-drop rule and other designations are unnatural and inconsistent with science. We are born in a culture that nurtures and supports the concept of race in order to support a hierarchical identification system. The Genome Project determined that all humans are 99.9 percent alike, and any dissimilarity is due to cultural differences.
One positive outcome of the Dolezal debacle is that the discussion of race has moved to center stage — where the dialogue should continue. There are privileges granted to some groups based solely on their racial identity and not on any meaningful or significant attributes. Breaking out of one’s racial category is anathema to an entrenched and misguided concept that’s long overdue for an overhaul.
BRUCE E. MCLEOD JR.
LAS VEGAS
