LETTERS: Enforce traffic laws to raise money

To the editor:

I have a simple solution to get more funding and more police officers for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department without instituting a tax of any kind. Let the department actually earn the money by putting officers to work enforcing the current traffic laws. Every day, I constantly see drivers talking and texting on their cellphones, dangerously running red lights, turning right on a red traffic light without stopping, passing stopped school buses, traveling at excessive speeds and almost never coming to a full stop at a stop sign. What I almost never see is an actual police officer pulling someone over to write a traffic citation.

With 3,000 officers in the department, I can’t believe that each and every one of them is constantly busy responding to criminal situations. Since the Police Department cannot use cameras to enforce traffic laws, take some of these officers, position them at various intersections and start writing citations. Their coffers should be full within a month. Let the people who actually break the law pay to enforce the law. This will make our streets and our people safer, and the Police Department can use the money to hire more officers.

RICHARD PALYO

HENDERSON

One Jesse Helms plenty

To the editor:

How can Sen. Ted Cruz, a Hispanic-American from Texas, make a statement that the United States Senate needs 100 more people like Jesse Helms? Mr. Helms was a senator from North Carolina who was the only one to vote no on making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday. He targeted women, the lesbian-gay community and people of color, including Hispanic-Americans.

Is that the type of person Sen. Cruz really wants in office, or was he just trying to please a particular audience? I was hoping Sean Hannity of Fox News would have a special with his black conservative friends to find out how they feel about comments from a possible presidential candidate of the Tea Party movement. Mr. Hannity did have Sen. Cruz on his show, but all they did was tell the same old lies about how ObamaCare will destroy the country.

LLOYD ST. JAMES

HENDERSON

Skinny networks

To the editor:

Thursday’s Review-Journal editorial did a good job of exposing the false guarantee by President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party minions that ObamaCare would not force you to change doctors (“ObamaCare will tighten doctor pools”). As the editorial stated, in an attempt to keep down prices, insurance companies are creating new “skinny network” plans with a greatly reduced list of providers.

One way to look at it is they are screening out high-cost doctors and hospitals; in other words, these skinny plans will be filled with low bidders. Remember Dr. Dipak Desai and his low-bid colonoscopy mill? Many patients were exposed to hepatitis, and two of those patients have died. Dr. Desai was once dropped by a health plan for quality concerns, but later reinstated because he offered low prices.

It appears we can now anticipate entire networks of these low-bidding medical providers.

Keep in mind that 50 percent of doctors graduated in the bottom half of their medical school class.

JOHN M. McGRAIL

LAS VEGAS

Taxed enough already

To the editor:

A writer recently praised Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles fees, local sales taxes and our property taxes, when compared with other states. But when does it stop? The Clark County Commission just approved a gas tax increase, the Police Department still wants more, and every other faction is after an increase on property taxes.

I don’t care what Pennsylvanians pay in property taxes. Why are such comparisons even made? When was the last time Bangladesh had a property tax increase? Or a new tax for their police department? This is exactly the kind of thinking government wants people to embrace so that complete apathy can set in.

This country’s founders came here because they were tired of oppression. For those who say the United States is still the best country in the world, they’re right, but it should be better. The Constitution is constantly degraded. More and more subjection is around the corner unless our thinking changes.

KIPP ALTEMARA

LAS VEGAS