‘Free-market’ notions of GOP endanger us all

To the editor:

Among GOP presidential hopefuls, and many in Congress, there seems to be an obsession with eliminating all government regulations. If you'd like a sneak peek at what life would be like in GOP Land, take a look at the widespread death and destruction resulting from earthquakes in Turkey or Haiti.

In such countries, either building codes don't exist or corrupt officials are so easily bought off that enforcement of such codes never occurs. Contrast that with quake-prone areas of the United States such as California, where there are relatively few fatalities or fallen buildings after quakes because of strictly enforced building codes.

The anarchistic, anti-government, "free-market" notions of the GOP could undo such safeguards, not to mention compromise the safety of our cars, aircraft, medicine, food, air and water.

So, in the next election, voters should be careful what they ask for, because they just might get it.

Steve Davis

Reno

Delicate balance

To the editor:

Thanks to Review-Journal reporter Trevon Milliard for sensitively capturing the experience of the Miller family living in the aftermath of their son Joe's suicide ("Parents promote suicide prevention in wake of son's death," Sunday Review-Journal).

But I want to correct a reference made to my warning against talking too much to teens about a classmate's suicide.

On the contrary, research is clear that talking to teens or adults, under the right circumstances, about suicide does not increase their risk for a completed suicide. It is also clear that classmates and faculty need the opportunity to grieve a student's death, and they need to know there are alternative coping mechanisms.

It is post-vention decisions about memorials and remembrance events that can impact the delicate balance of safety and support after a suicide death. As Carl Miller pointed out, "It has to be talked about." We have to get suicide out into the light of a caring community and save the lives of at-risk individuals who communicate invitations for help.

Linda L. Flatt

Las Vegas

The writer is a suicide prevention trainer and networking facilitator with the Nevada Office of Suicide Prevention.

Loan fiasco

To the editor:

Your Saturday editorial -- "The bubble to burst?" -- on student loans left out the good stuff. This is almost exactly like the mortgage crisis, but the private education industry got bailed out before the bubble burst -- these loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

The education industry, like the mortgage industry, sold these loans to people totally incapable of assessing the risk or obtaining the benefits promised. The government provided liberal subsidies to the industry, driving up the price of education to everyone with no oversight of the outcome.

Now, after creating the problem, government entities are talking about withholding passports or taking other measures in case of non-payment from these hapless, jobless former students. They can't even escape hounding for the rest of their life by leaving the country.

If an individual had designed this scheme it would be prosecuted as fraud. But, as with the mortgage bubble, which was 200 times larger than the 1989 savings and loan scandal that sent 2,000 people to prison, no one went to prison and no one will go there, and no federal employee or congressman will go there for education lending fraud.

And media outlets will continue printing these little news bites after all the damage is done.

Nick Markwardt

Las Vegas