If you want to cut, look at military
To the editor:
The press should be held accountable for the way they just parrot Washington speak. Whatever happened to in-depth reporting? Twenty percent of the U.S. budget goes directly to the military. The press should ask: Who designated the United States the policeman of the world?
We have more than 800 bases around the world, including one downtown in Seoul, South Korea. Are they really necessary?
It costs $10,000 per square foot to paint a stealth bomber — and our K-12 education is terrible. A gallon of gas costs more than $400 in Kabul, Afghanistan and people file bankruptcy for health care.
It is the press that should hold Washington’s feet to the fire and subvert the lobbyists. The founding fathers wanted it that way.
Art Guterding
Henderson
Job creation
To the editor:
I continue to be amazed at how willing people are to believe everything they read, especially if it supports their point of view.
The Review-Journal’s Monday editorial quotes an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Arthur Laffer in which he points out that Ronald Reagan slashed regulations, lifted price controls and cut income tax rates. Mr. Laffer goes on to claim that President Reagan created 21 million jobs in the eight years he was in office and that no one had created that many jobs in the past 20 years.
However, the very same Wall Street Journal printed an article in January 2009 showing the job creation of every president since Harry Truman. That chart shows that Bill Clinton is the all-time leader in job creation with 23.1 million jobs created, for an average of 2.9 million jobs created per year for eight years. Ronald Reagan was second with 16 million jobs, not 21 million.
Interestingly enough, though not surprising, is that George Bush came in dead last in jobs created per year in office, with only 375,000 jobs created per year. And this is from a president who also slashed regulations and cut income tax rates. But that doesn’t support the Review-Journal’s point of view, does it?
Richard Pratt
Las Vegas
Hurtful Republicans
To the editor:
What happened to the focus on jobs? What happened to getting the government off the backs of the American people? Instead, the Republican House majority puts forward legislation that would cost many thousands of jobs and undermine women’s health.
House Speaker John Boehner’s response to the fact that, under the GOP spending blueprint, thousands of federal employees would lose their jobs, citizens would find it more difficult to gain access to benefits they have paid for and are entitled to? “So be it.”
It seems he’s more concerned about protecting the interests of the wealthy individuals and industries whose lobbyists surround him than making sure the economy keeps advancing.
In the meantime, social conservatives are having a field day with advancing a moral agenda that has nothing to do with either the federal deficit or jobs — although their efforts could well hurt both. Stripping federal funds from organizations such as Planned Parenthood, because it uses private, not government, money to provide women with safe, legal abortions, will deny millions of women access to basic health care, including the kind of care necessary to ensure women’s reproductive health and prenatal care to ensure happy, healthy families.
The result of this will be higher levels of emergency hospital care for both mothers and children, much of which may have to be picked up by — guess who? — the taxpayers.
It appears that the only “backs” the Republican majority is concerned about that are those of their friends in industry. Their budget would severely cut both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration — the agencies who do the most to protect the American people from those who would put others at risk in the interest of profits. Once again, the affect on the deficit is clearly negative:
More people sick, more people unable to pay for their health care, more expense that taxpayers must pick up.
I’m used to short-sighted, hypocritical politicians. But the Republicans in Congress are setting a new standard.
Mark Kaswan
Henderson
On Wisconsin
To the editor:
Shouts of strongly held beliefs by ill-informed teenagers never fail to roll my eyes. Such was the case when I saw the Review-Journal’s photo Thursday of youngsters hoisting signs in Wisconsin to protest the proposed elimination of public-employee unions in that state.
One sign, held by a student, read, “Attacking teachers attacks my future.” To which I could only say to myself, “If you only knew.” Specifically, if you only knew that teacher unions actually hurt more than help your future by protecting lousy teachers, you might put down the sign and get back to class. Or if you only knew that unions are the most prominent reason the once-mighty U.S. manufacturing base shriveled to nothingness as industry after industry fled overseas to escape union strangleholds, you might grow up to be a responsible voter.
The fact is that unions choke the effectiveness and efficiency out of everything they touch, including public services. I applaud Wisconsin. It was the first state to allow public-employee unions, and now it’s become the first to fully realize their inexorable corrosive influence. On, Wisconsin.
Mike Richmond
Las Vegas
Right path
To the editor:
Alexander Cockburn’s Thursday column on Ronald Reagan was a terrible disservice to your readers. Mr Cockburn couldn’t even get Reagan’s presidential number right. Reagan was the 40th president, not the 38th. Reagan set the country on the right path. It’s sad that Bush 41 had to follow him.
Bruce Gunderson
Las Vegas
