Pay up or you’re not welcome in Nevada
To the editor:
Memo to any small business owner with, say, six employees and $250,000 in payroll costs -- no matter what your profit margin -- who has qualms about paying an additional $1,200 in taxes: You're not the kind of business Assemblyman Tick Segerblom wants around ("Session concludes with cuts," Sunday Review-Journal). So if you were thinking about moving to Nevada, stay away. And, by inference, if you're already here, it's time to lay off your employees and hit the road.
I wonder if Mr. Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, feels the same way about all of us self-employed independent contractors -- musicians, maids, landscapers, valets and handymen, among others -- who already pay double the Social Security and double the Medicare taxes?
It would seem so. After all, this year he voted to double to $200 our yearly "business license" in order to make a living.
I hate to seem ungrateful, but I am. And the next time he or any of his cronies issue their pious platitudes about "protecting working families" -- probably next election season -- I will remember. I hope a lot of other people will, too, because I'm not sure we can afford too much more of Mr. Segerblom's "protection."
Bob Ashman
LAS VEGAS
Spring board
To the editor:
I just read your Sunday article "Money preserves Springs," and I am appalled. More than $180 million has been spent by the Las Vegas Valley Water District to build and subsidize this project to date. This does not include the $9 million to $10 million that will be needed in each future year to continue to subsidize this project.
Pat Mulroy, general manager of the water district, is happy that roughly 32,000 local schoolchildren took free field trips to the Springs Preserve, but in fact these trips were not free. The taxpayers paid for the buses, the gasoline, the drivers, the insurance and the teachers who chaperoned these students.
The users of water in Las Vegas have paid for every penny of the subsidy payments for the Springs Preserve. The worst part is that if we actually do conserve more water, the water district increases our fees to offset the loss of income that comes from the conservation. No matter what the Las Vegas Valley Water District does, we the consumers are forced to pay and pay for the waste and misuse of funds in the district.
I for one believe that it is time to shut down the Springs Preserve, which has never met its projected quotas, and save money for the consumer/users of water in this valley.
We don't need the Springs Preserve any more than we need the Las Vegas Valley Water District's advertising for more conservation. What we need is an audit of the books of the water district and the firing of unneeded and unwanted employees who dream up these wasteful projects.
Bob Dubin
LAS VEGAS
Clean energy
To the editor:
The Associated Press just ran a major story saying Congress is abandoning President Obama's clean energy jobs campaign promises. The current energy bill wouldn't require any more clean energy than is already in the works.
This is bad news for Nevada. We need clean energy subsides to lure more businesses to Southern Nevada. This new industry could make Nevada as wealthy in the 2000s as gaming made us in the 1900s.
For the sake of Nevada's economy, we need our representatives in Congress to fight to fix the energy bill.
Lauren Beattie
LAS VEGAS
Free care
To the editor:
Geoff Schumacher ("Reform American health care now," Friday Review-Journal) believes health care should be declared a "right" and, as a right, be provided by the federal government.
It is the job of government to secure our rights from enemies, foreign and domestic, to our constitutional system, not to provide the people with everything to which they have a "right." The Second Amendment contains the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." I don't think anyone believes that this confers an obligation on the government to provide arms to everyone.
Maybe we should impose the right to free health care right here in Nevada. Then, when the rest of the states see how well it works here, they will all want to copy us.
I won't hold my breath.
Donald Darling
LAS VEGAS
Old Vegas
To the editor:
Mike Weatherford's Sunday article on the funeral of the great sax player Sam Butera brought back many happy memories of the Las Vegas of yesteryear. I was a craps dealer at the old Sahara during the 1950s when Sam played (along with Keely Smith and Louis Prima) in the lounge. The dice table where I was assigned was just across from the lounge, and my crew and I listened to the group nightly. (No, I don't recall any pit bosses complaining they were too loud.)
One thing that never failed to happen nightly when the star appearing in the Casbah Theater show broke: Prima would always say to Sam, "Heah-they-come, Sam, heah-they-come, blow man, blow!" And many of the crowd from the Casbah flowed right into the lounge to catch their show.
Man, to relive those wonderful years just one more time.
Vic Vickrey
LAS VEGAS
