Red tape and waiting for all? No thanks

To the editor:

I disagree with veteran Jim Hyder and his optimism regarding socialized medicine (Tuesday letter to the editor).

I also am a veteran and a member of the VA system. I rate this system as fair to average. My physician assistant tries to give me the best service she can, but she is always running up against a bureaucracy that is either overworked, underfunded or inept.

Case in point: After X-rays and an MRI, I was referred to the VA in Las Vegas with an ASAP. I got an appointment two weeks later, where I was told I needed surgery -- they would let me know when. I called two weeks later and was told they were working on it. I called again two weeks later and was told, sorry, I had dropped through the cracks. I called every two weeks for three months. My PA called also, until we finally gave up. Still have the problem and the pain, but am trying to get by.

She has been ordering pain pills, and guess what? She has to fight the bureaucracy again.

A single-payer system? No way do I want my family subjected to this kind of service.

Myron Bishop

PAHRUMP

Tip earners

To the editor:

Really, now, are we supposed to feel sorry for all those dealers, cocktail waitresses, valet parking attendants and bell hops who allegedly are suffering financially during the recession because of reduced tip income ("As tips shrink, economy sinks," Sunday Review-Journal)?

These workers, mostly high school graduates, ought to be counting their lucky stars that they're making annual wages that far exceed the annual wage of the average worker in Las Vegas.

In a recent article, a UNLV gaming professor said that dealers at high-end hotels make $50,000 to $80,000 a year. But it was made public by the Review-Journal earlier this year that Wynn Las Vegas casino dealers, still complaining about forced sharing of tips with management, average nearly $100,000 annually. So, we can assume that the good professor's estimates about dealer income are conservative at best.

And how much do cocktail waitresses, bell hops and valet parking attendants make in casino settings? A lot more than the Average Joe, that's for sure. A career cocktail waitress at a high-end hotel once told me that, even during difficult times, she makes six figures -- easily.

The point? These tip earners, though seeing fewer dollars during the recession, are not going to the poor house anytime soon. Yet Karen Gordon, quoted by the Review-Journal on the tip issue, seems to imply that tips should not go down during these hard economic times.

Is this woman crazy? If the customers have experienced wage cuts during the recession, then they're going to leave fewer tips in their wake. Isn't that how it works in our economy?

Besides that, tips are not a requirement -- something that the spoiled tip earners of Las Vegas seem to have forgotten.

Andrew Sheridan

LAS VEGAS

Blaming teachers

To the editor:

Apparently, the culprit behind our city's epidemic academic failures is obvious to the media: blame the teachers! ("School district fails to meet 'No Child' goal," Friday Review-Journal)

Why didn't you headline it "Local students fail to meet 'No Child' goal," since they're the ones who actually failed the tests? Or how about, "Local parents fail to meet 'No Child' goal," since they're the ones who have failed to raise more studious children?

Where are the headlines that say, "Doctors fail to meet heart disease goal" or "Clergy fails to meet Sabbath keeping goal?" Aren't those professions also responsible for the private choices of their constituencies, or is it only teachers who magically control what other people do with the tools and information they offer?

Jamie Huston

NORTH LAS VEGAS

Pedal to the metal

To the editor:

In response to your Monday editorial, "Time to 'throttle back'":

"Problem is, the Democrats are even worse" when it comes to running up big deficits, your editorial said.

This, unfortunately, smacks of an inability to do contextual analysis. The cure is always more expensive than the prevention.

Because the Bush administration literally ran the American economy to the ground, whoever took over from President Bush would have blown the federal budget to keep the economy from going into a free fall.

Recall that the main economic problem during the waning days of Bush II was that nobody was buying, nobody was investing, nobody was hiring. In such a scenario, the government had to step in to do the buying, to do the investing, to do the hiring.

People and corporations are still not buying, not investing, not employing more Americans. Throttling back would be a prescription for disaster.

Cesar F. Lumba

LAS VEGAS