Sheep oppose government-run health care
To the editor:
"Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!" George Orwell's sheep in his premonitory novel "Animal Farm" chanted their creed during town hall meetings every time the truth was told. Orwell's sheep represent the common folk who are manipulated by the greedy pigs, who represent corrupt power figures.
Today, the misled sheep are the concerned citizens who shout out scripted interruptions at Democratic town hall meetings, their fears having been encouraged by lying, power hungry, monied pharmaceutical and insurance companies who have their puppets on Capitol Hill. The power figures are the congressmen and women who cater to those companies for their own benefit.
Orwell's sheep did not understand what they were doing any more than the citizens at these town hall meetings understand what they are doing. They think that they are protesting for the public good. But in this world, as in Orwell's, "good" is in the eye of the beholder. And in this case, it is defined for them by the enemy. They just don't know it. So they continue their chant, and they help to diminish every citizen's chance for affordable, quality health care.
Citizens need to put in the effort, do the research, read both sides of the issue, learn how to see through the smokescreen of special interest, and then act. Anyone who doesn't do that is a sheep.
Nancy Feldman Maheras
LAS VEGAS
Single payer
To the editor:
If you have health insurance, and most of us do, you already have "single-payer" health care. The single payer is your insurance company. If you want to mandate that everyone has health insurance, then why have a bill of 1,000-plus pages? Just enact a one-line law. It's simple.
Government-run health care is about control. Any other reason is smoke. Because some people don't have insurance is no reason to take over an entire industry.
The government cannot run a car rebate program without mucking things up so badly that the computer system crashes. I would bet many people are going to find out after their cars are toast that they don't qualify for the rebate.
And now they want to run health care? I don't think so.
Anthony Wright
LAS VEGAS
Wacko bigots
To the editor:
In response to Ann Coulter's ludicrous attempt to plant the notion in the brains of her audience that racial profiling isn't a well-documented phenomenon and that every instance of profiling claimed is some sort of fraud (Sunday column, "Race hoaxes"):
Go to the Justice Center downtown and compare for yourself the number of minority people appearing to pay traffic fines to the proportion of minorities in the general population and you will see evidence of profiling.
It is entirely likely that there are more violations of driving without insurance and things that draw attention, such as burned out tail lights, due mainly to economic factors. But it is not even remotely likely that the number of actual infractions by minority members is reflected in the number of people from the minority community appearing at the court. Profiling is a fact of life that no one in the real world would dispute.
Ms. Coulter uses the usual illogical tactics of spinning off into what-ifs and bringing up what someone said on a "liberal" show (emphasis on the word "show"), as if that has significance. But she proves only her own ignorance and capacity for self-deception. Cases such as the Gates case or other high-profile incidents always involve too much media obfuscation. But liberals couldn't begin to make up the stuff that goes on daily nationwide, and that gets attention only when someone has the temerity to file a complaint or go public.
Even the most accomplished truth-deniers and liars cannot make the reality of reams of statistics around the nation go away. The numbers and facts are so conspicuous that it takes a real conscious effort to ignore them or cover them up. And if anyone truly wants to know the ugly truth, all they need to do is compare their own experience (assuming they are white) with that of their friends who are of a slightly darker shade. You do really have friends in the minority community that you talk with often, don't you? Isn't that what you wacko bigots always claim?
Robert B. Elliott
LAS VEGAS
True success
To the editor:
News reports indicate that many Republican leaders think that the "cash for clunkers" program is a boondoggle and a total waste of taxpayers dollars, and that it should be killed.
Does this thinking extend to the various state governments that are seeing increased sales tax dollars from the additional new car sales? It will be interesting to see if the July sales tax figures reflect the true success of this program.
Frank Maas
LAS VEGAS
