LETTERS: Public employees’ salaries, benefits should mirror private sector

To the editor:

State Sen. Tick Segerblom was given a whopping three-plus columns of letters to the editor so he could pander to the public employee unions (“NPRI’s divisive study of Nevada PERS overlooks bulk of recipients,” Feb. 7 Review-Journal). The Review-Journal lets politicians have all the space they want to voice their opinions, while limiting us little people to a few hundred words. That’s wrong.

I disagree with Sen. Segerblom’s long dissertation and assessment of the study that clearly shined light on the Nevada Public Employees Retirement System. He shunned the study, saying it’s not credible. What do you think any lawmaker is going to say when they are beholden to the public employee unions to stay in office?

The study on the state pensions, which was reported in the Review-Journal, was accurate. However, it appears that Sen. Segerblom wants to spin the study so as to put the system and its members in a better light. The Review-Journal and other media outlets have been reporting the facts for years on how PERS is broken and how public employees game the system to inflate their retirement and pensions, at the expense of taxpayers.

For years, Democratic politicians in this state have given public employees everything they ask for, with the high salaries, cost-of-living raises, bonuses, merit increases, pension spiking and all the freebies done behind closed doors, away from the taxpayers’ eyes.

Some of these public employees are making three and four times the annual salary of the average, hard-working person in the private sector earns. And that person doesn’t get cost-of-living raises, bonuses and free or near-free health care, and certainly can’t retire on 75 percent, 90 percent or more than what they were making while on the job.

Sen. Segerblom says the report on PERS is propaganda and that we should work on a living wage and retirement security for all Nevadans. He still doesn’t get it. What he should have said is that we will bring the salaries and retirements of all public employees in line with what a person makes in the private sector.

BRADLEY KUHNS

LAS VEGAS

End free education?

To the editor:

Speaking as a former first-grade teacher, I can say that there is no amount of funding, classroom improvements or technical additions that will benefit any student who does not do his homework. You can provide all the necessary elements for a child’s education, but if neither the child nor his parents embrace the educational opportunity, then those elements are of no value, as is evident in Nevada’s K-12 system.

Therefore, I am opposed to the $882 million Gov. Brian Sandoval is proposing for education. It is the same failed logic that President Barack Obama has with making community college free of tuition. The president doesn’t seem to realize that we have free high school, and that has not worked. So what makes him think that free community college will?

I saw an ad in The Wall Street Journal stating that free trading won’t make you a bettor investor. Likewise, free school does not make you a better student. There are many free tutorials on the Internet on just about any subject, but one needs to want to have the information and do the homework.

Make the parents pay for the educations, and perhaps then they would be more interested in the homework and the outcome. Free education might not be the best answer, and certainly giving more dollars to the cause of free education is not a good decision.

MARIE-ANTOINETTE ARIENT

LAS VEGAS

Animal shelter contract

To the editor:

Regarding the article on the animal shelter (“Groups fight over animal shelter,” March 2 Review-Journal), it is ludicrous to award any entity a 20-year contract. What is the motivation for the Lied Animal Foundation to improve during years one through 19?

The Animal Foundation has proved time and time again that it is incompetent and unable to stop the senseless killing of adoptable pets. A 42 percent kill rate is completely unacceptable. Yet here we go again with our esteemed Clark County commissioners forging ahead and awarding stupidity. It raises suspicion that there is more to this than meets the eye.

There is absolutely no reason to award even one more day to the Animal Foundation unless someone is receiving kickbacks. Let us not forget Dario Herrera, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Lance Malone and Erin Kenny. Please, people, get involved.

The voiceless pets need your help more than ever. It is time to put the homeless pets first and do the right thing: award the contract to No Kill Las Vegas.

CANDACE ALLEN-PERKINS

NORTH LAS VEGAS

Old warmongers

To the editor:

To all those who are so anxious to see another ground war in the Middle East, I say that I expect you will all be found in line at the recruiting office. It is quite easy to send young people to die in a senseless war, as long as you can sit it front of your TV and watch them die for your cause.

This applies to both Republicans and Democrats, although I would guess most of those clamoring for more war are of the GOP stripe, like Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsay Graham, who never saw a war they didn’t like as long as it was the young ones who died in it.

It is a great act of cowardice to sit behind at a rich old age and let the poor and young do the fighting and dying. But evidently, that is what most Republicans believe in.

DANIEL OLIVIER

BULLHEAD CITY, ARIZ.