Associations can help protect property owners

To the editor:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, those who support Senate Bill 362 should review the photograph on the front page of the Nevada section of the March 31 Review-Journal, above the article, "Where others see trash, he sees dollar signs."

If state Sen. Mike Schneider lived next to that house, he would understand the need for homeowner associations and for rules and regulations and a Board of Directors to enforce these documents. Instead, Mr. Schneider chooses not to reside in an association, but is willing to submit legislation that he doesn’t understand.

Mr. Schneider never listens to the 98 percent of homeowners who live in associations and are happy with their communities. He chooses to listen to residents such as Steve Sisolak, a member of the state Board of Regents, who should know better, and who received a fine because his guest broke the rules. I hope this was an oversight on Mr. Sisolak’s part, because you would think that he would have read his rules and regulations before moving into the association that governs where he resides.

I live in an association, and I read the documents prior to purchasing my home. I believe in the rules and regulations and the board’s right to enforce. It keeps my neighborhood neat, clean and eliminates major problems.

However, it appears that in Mr. Sisolak’s case and with many other homeowners who fail to read the regulations prior to purchasing their home, the same comment can be made:

"The rules are made for the other homeowners, not me. Because I failed to read the documents before buying, and I have been fined, I will take my complaint to state Sen. Schneider, who will help me because I couldn’t help myself."

Thomas B. Krasky

LAS VEGAS

Free ride

To the editor:

Roads, since post-revolutionary times, have been one of the primary public services that citizens have expected from their government. We pay for them together, and we use them together. They should remain free to the user and paid for from taxes and general fees imposed by state and local governments.

Toll roads to me are a serious quality-of-life issue. The lack of toll roads was one of the attractions for me in moving to the West. When I moved here six years ago from Baltimore, I encountered toll roads and bridges driving west to Kansas and, then, blissfully free and open roads and bridges from there to here.

I am more than willing to pay a higher tax at the pump on gasoline or a higher vehicle registration fee to finance roads, though I believe a higher gasoline tax best targets users based on the amount of driving.

Please, let’s keep our roads free.

Bruce Mason

LAS VEGAS

Iraq games

To the editor:

Publisher Sherman Frederick wrote a good commentary last Sunday, but I’ll say plainly what he didn’t: Sen. Harry Reid is arguably the Senate’s most prolific and transparent liar, whose only concern relative to our troops is to use them as pawns to pry the Republicans out of the White House in 2008.

Sen. Reid has a lot of company: for instance, the majority of the Democratic Party and a handful of spineless Republicans, who are equally as treacherous at betraying the boots on the ground overseas who fight for the rest of us sitting here at home.

President Bush himself is no slouch in the betrayal department. How can a president wage a war to prevent terrorism at home, while consistently refusing to protect our national borders from penetration by the very same terrorists? Why does the president encourage the huge burden of economic stress incurred from the daily horde of illegal immigrants? How can the president direct "free" trade agreements that are not equally "fair" for American business, or allow our loss of sovereignty through quietly arranged and congressionally unapproved agreements with Canada and Mexico?

Why would anyone give a good damn how many U.S. attorneys are summarily fired when the Justice Department itself imprisons Border Patrol agents pursuing the legitimate course of their jobs, and then admits to arranging false testimony to get these agents convicted, while cutting sweetheart deals with the very same drug smugglers the Border Patrol agents were sworn to protect us from?

Obviously, the economic welfare of the president’s business patrons is worth far more than the lives of innocent Border Patrol agents — just as the White House is far more valuable to the Democratic Party than are the lives of our fighting men, whom they have undermined and back-stabbed for the entirety of the Iraqi military operation.

Do the majority of Americans really embrace policies of Democratic appeasement and cowering before our enemies and want America out of Iraq? Or do they want a legitimate war against terrorism and its sponsors, fought solely to be won — without the opportunistic ransom of a White House by politicians whose life’s work is re-election and pork?

The pollsters never ask that question.

Maybe America is too dumbed down for an intelligent answer.

Certainly, the politicians think so.

K.D. Adams

LAS VEGAS

Electoral College

To the editor:

As a compassionate conservative, I could feel the warmth and sincerity of R. Gill’s April 1 letter, "Electoral College bill makes sense."

As stated, "Assembly Bill 384 would give Nevada’s electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote in the United States." If "it is time for a paradigm shift," as R. Gill asserts, then let the will of the people prevail with AB384.

After all, R. Gill notes, "Electing a president is a national issue, as opposed to electing your state senators or congressmen. The president represents a national interest, not a state interest. Therefore electing a president who wins the majority vote of the United States is logical." That makes sense, right?

Not so fast, skippy.

Assembly Bill 384 calls for a radical transformation that, in time, can turn this nation from a republican form of government to a pure democracy — one state at a time.

Your assistant editorial page editor, Vin Suprynowicz, gives the best analogy of democracy: "A pack of wolves and one lamb voting on where the next dinner will come from."

If that is the course we are to go, all because of a close presidential election in 2000, then let’s not just limit this to presidential elections. Oh no, we can also apply this to other national issues like … oh, say, the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository some 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

As I recall, the majority of states (the wolves) would love to shove a nuclear waste repository on us (the lamb) like a suppository.

After all, as R. Gill opines, "We need to start looking at ourselves as citizens of one country with one large boundary and not as citizens of individual states."

Please beware of what you ask for. You may just get it!

Mark Wilson

HENDERSON