We can’t do worse than country’s current leadership
To the editor:
I was encouraged by reading Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick's column in Sunday's Review-Journal ("Obama's woe: Pelosi, Reid, Frank 'n' Dodd").
If the current cast of characters within the Democratic Party is as egotistical, inexperienced, vindictive and stupid as Mr. Frederick states, the people of the United States of America and the rest of the world can be hopeful. Kudos to the majority of thinking Americans, who have rejected the failures of the cast of characters who have led our country the past eight years. While I hope they can correct all the problems, any improvement by the incoming cast of characters will certainly be more than welcome.
This group may not be the best we got, but we pray it will be better, less deceitful, more law-abiding and more mindful of our environment than the outgoing government "uber alles."
Lou Schloss
LAS VEGAS
Outrageous waste
To the editor:
A large dump truck with the logo "Clark County School District" got me thinking. Just how many items in the schools budget aren't directly related to education? Is there a fleet of heavy equipment that duplicates the city and county Public Works departments? What about private contractors for such work?
And why does the district need its own police force? Isn't Metro good enough?
It is natural for all things to grow to maturity, but when it comes to government agencies, it never stops, especially when salaries are based on the size of the budget and number of underlings.
Forget about closing schools and firing teachers. Just get rid of the outrageous waste.
Dennis Krum
LAS VEGAS
Tuition increases
To the editor:
Chancellor Jim Rogers' idea to raise tuition 25 percent is a terrible idea for a couple of reasons ("Tuition hike tallied," Monday Review-Journal).
First, if you owned a shoe store and you were faced with a payroll shortage, would you raise the price of shoes to solve your problem? I don't think telling the customers that they've been getting a bargain all along would do very much to make the price hike acceptable. Mr. Rogers and the Board of Regents must realize that a large hike is going to cost them some customers and they won't realize a 25 percent benefit.
Second, this proposed hike smacks of a bureaucracy taking the easy way out. Reduce salaries, decrease administration and increase class sizes if you must, but we should keep faith with the basic idea that UNLV is here to serve the citizens of the state, not vice versa.
Attempting to make the customer pay for the business's refusal to adapt to the current business climate is a dumb idea and downright cowardly. If Mr. Rogers and the regents don't understand their jobs or just won't do them, let's get some people who will.
Gerald Duncan
LAS VEGAS
Bring back winning
To the editor:
For decades, the conservatives have taunted that reducing the rate of taxation can result in government revenues increasing. This strategy could also be applied to Las Vegas visitors and gambling, thus resulting in more guests and providing a timely reversal to the gaming industry's financial ills.
If players felt they could actually win, then hotel room occupancy might increase.
In years past, the wonderful high spirit of Las Vegas included the sound of constantly exploding jackpots paying off all over the Strip. In years past, when leaving Las Vegas, we also left behind our entire budget. We enjoyed witnessing between two and six $1,000 jackpots every day that we played the slots.
The challenge? Create an environment different from "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas" and bring back what has been missing: People returning home while shouting with joy over what they won while being entertained in Vegas. Such people are now on the endangered species list.
Those who give shall receive.
HENRY D. MILLER
HENDERSON
Suggested savings
To the editor:
Two priorities for easing the economic crisis should be to withdraw our troops from Iraq and to dramatically decrease funding for NASA.
A withdrawal from Iraq will no doubt make Iran stronger, but that's President Bush's legacy; we must live with the results of his mistake.
Scientists at NASA should not feel that America has given up on their mission, but at this point most people could care less about our place in the universe. A program should be developed that allows NASA scientists and engineers to teach for three to five years in local schools if they want to keep their jobs. They can look at it as taking their message straight to the young people who will decide their future funding.
Those responsible for keeping the planet from being hit by an asteroid should be kept on and fully funded, as should those who monitor the effects of climate change. But funding for more Mars rovers and such is not justifiable at this point.
I say this as one keenly interested in the questions at issue: Whether Mars supports life or once supported life is an answer that can wait for a better economy.
WILLIAM R. FOUTS
LAS VEGAS
Ignorant and stupid
To the editor:
Neil Smith's Nov. 21 commentary ("The true crimes of Sarah Palin") epitomizes the conservative tactic of stirring up of the working classes and brainwashing them to think the only true American is one who can handle a rifle, hunt, fish, clean and cut up wild game. At the same time, they disdain intelligence, knowledge, civility and anything else not cherished in the backwoods and farms of the nation.
These morons actually believe it is bad to speak good English, read newspapers and be generally well-educated mainly because good English-speaking, well-read and well-educated right-wing nuts have taken over the Republican Party and glorified just the opposite of those things in order to get the votes of the ignorant and stupid.
Evidently it is OK for a conservative to go to an Ivy League school, live in a hotel on the East Coast and write books, among other so-called liberal faults as described to the ignoramus class. What is really surprising is the ignoramus class has gotten where it is today mainly through the ideas and advocacy of these hotel dwellers. If left to the whims of the right-wing hotel dwellers (and writers), they would not be earning near the wages they do, but most of them would be starving and freezing outside factory gates waiting for some worker inside to drop dead so one of them could maybe get his 50-cent-an-hour, 14-hour-a-day job.
The right-wing purveyors of the old trickle-down theory took a licking in the recent election because the working classes decided that all the supply-side rhetoric and pseudo patriotism and warmongering in the world could not trump a decent, well-paid job with good, safe working conditions and a solid retirement. These workers knew this all along but were sidetracked and deceived by all the warmongering, patriotic, religious and cultural rhetoric along with a continuing roll of the racial drums, and they threw all these things out and voted for a black liberal with a foreign name. It was about time, I say.
It seems that once again liberalism and New Deal-ism is going to have to bail out conservatism and capitalism.
DAN OLIVIER
BULLHEAD CITY, ARIZ.
Travel hypocrisy
To the editor:
Congressional Democrats berated auto executives for traveling to Washington, D.C., in corporate aircraft, yet ignored the fact that when Nancy Pelosi emerged as House speaker, she petitioned the government for a larger jet aircraft to transport her from Washington to her California home on a nearly weekly basis.
Walter McCullough
LAS VEGAS
