Bureaucracy not the answer to litter problem
To the editor:
I must respond to Jeffrey Shear and his April 15 letter about the Legislature's bottle bill (deposit fee). Mr. Shear is correct in his analysis of litter and litterers, but as is typical with liberals, he thinks a huge bureaucracy is the answer.
Wrong. We have thousands of people on welfare and we have those who are receiving unemployment checks with what seem to be unending extensions. The answer: If you want a check (welfare or otherwise) you pick up trash. You don't want to work, you don't get your money.
Our lovely city and surrounding areas would soon be pristine. End of story.
CHARLES A. ADAMS
LAS VEGAS
The children
To the editor:
The use of children for political purposes has reached disgraceful proportions. President Obama does a photo-op with eighth-graders when he should be talking with our elected officials. Teachers have their children march and carry signs to further their progressive agenda, when they should be in school teaching and/or learning.
Greed drives them to the end.
HANS BOHN
LAS VEGAS
Mob front
To the editor:
In response to John L. Smith's April 15 column on the IRS role as a "crime fighter": Just because the IRS was willing to participate in a quasi-legal effort against some mobsters does not mean the IRS is a legitimate non-mob agency. All forms of organized crime are known to make public sacrifice of their own membership for no better reason than public distraction. The only way the IRS can escape its mob affiliation is if lawmakers suddenly decide to cut all taxes to an inverse fraction of the population.
JOHN EDWARD
HENDERSON
Yucca back?
To the editor:
It is shocking to see the horrific nuclear emergency in Japan used as a vehicle for promoting Yucca Mountain. Why would a longtime Nevada resident propose that we consider the tragedy in Japan an opportunity to seek "fantastic benefits" by agreeing to have nuclear waste moved to an earthquake-prone area in our state?
Ty Cobb's commentary in the April 14 Review-Journal skews the facts in order to get to the conclusion that the United States would be safer and Nevada would be richer with commercial irradiated fuel and military high-level nuclear waste sitting at Yucca Mountain. There are indeed steps that could be taken in the United States and elsewhere to make the waste produced by nuclear energy safer, but putting highly radioactive waste on roads, rails and barges traveling thousands of miles to a location in Nevada with volcanic cones and numerous earthquake faults is not one of them.
We do have a nuclear waste problem in our country, just like every other country that uses nuclear reactors to boil water to make electricity. I readily admit that I oppose nuclear power, so my solution to the problem is to stop making it bigger. If waste is not safe at the power plant site, neither is the reactor.
Any operating nuclear power plant will have waste on site. In addition to the fuel being used in the reactor, any irradiated fuel that is removed must be stored in a fuel pool for at least five years. During that time it is too hot and radioactively dangerous to transport. Any nuclear power plant located on a seacoast will be vulnerable to what happened in Japan, such as San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in California.
The Japanese have some of the fuel that has been out of the reactor for a longer period of time in dry cask storage, which needs no electricity or human intervention to keep the waste isolated. Those facilities were not affected when the natural disaster struck. In the United States there is a campaign, which I support, to have all waste that has been in pool storage for five years or longer moved to dry casks and make those casks safer than they are now by installing berms to prevent airplane crashes or terrorist attacks.
Nuclear waste, whether it is in the process of being generated in a reactor, sitting in a spent fuel pool, in transport, or siting in storage somewhere presents a problem. Not only are there no fantastic benefits to be had by Nevada or any other state, but we cannot afford the risks. Ty Cobb tells one story to Northern Nevadans about building waste reprocessing facilities and a nuclear power plant at Yucca Mountain -- both are water intensive. Here in the South he is trying to sell us contemporary storage. The only sure thing about both plans is that the waste comes to Nevada. He urges our elected officials to "be smart enough to capitalize on the situation." I support our leaders' hard work and opposition to wasting Nevada.
JUDY TREICHEL
LAS VEGAS
The writer is executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.
Dying GOP
To the editor:
For the benefit of all Americans and not just the wealthy, we need to marginalize the Republican Party.
Demographics will determine America's future. Every year, due to immigration and higher birth rates, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians will play an ever-increasing role in future elections. The Democratic Party will gain an advantage that it will probably never relinquish.
The Republicans are destined to become a minority party forever.
ANTHONY TIDEI
LAS VEGAS
Job killers
To the editor:
Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. It seems logical then that our elected officials would put creating new jobs and expanding the economy at the high end of their priorities.
But after reading your April 6 edition, I wonder what Clark County commissioners were thinking when they voted to approve changes that govern the operation of slot machines inside taverns. Here we have a company, Dotty's, that has been very successful. One would expect that they would continue to grow. It seems this is the type of job creation the commissioners would desire, but they instead make it economically impossible for Dotty's to expand and almost ensured they may have to close some of their operations and lay people off.
Isn't that a rather unique approach to job creation?
BRYCE LEE
LAS VEGAS
