Big government assures bigger failure

To the editor:

We’ve been told by the liberal left about all of the wonderful attributes of massive government. All our needs would be met through the beneficence of this wonderful expansive government.

What we’ve gotten is something far different. We have a Justice Department that decides which laws to enforce and which to ignore. That same Justice Department is involved in covert action against people it believes are against its political positions. The department digs through personal emails (even those of family members) and files fraudulent warrants in the court system to further its subversive goals.

We’ve got an executive branch that also decides which laws to enforce (such as with immigration) and uses executive orders to end-run the legislative process. We have government agencies such as the IRS breathing down the necks of groups due to those groups taking positions that are not in favor of the current administration.

We have a legislative branch that passed the most overreaching and politically motivated piece of legislation (ObamaCare) through trickery and a bending of the legislative process. That legislation will undoubtedly be seen in the years to come to have been passed purely to bolster the voting bloc of the Democratic Party, while inflicting enormous damage to the economy.

These events are the result of the citizens of this country investing their freedom bit by bit to the new royalty class in America, the politicians. It’s said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. There are no better examples of that arrogance of power than what we are seeing from this administration.

This is a lesson for us all. Either we demand our rights back, or they will quickly cease to exist. Unless the people of this country make drastic changes in the next two elections, we can all be assured that our freedoms will be an ideal buried in the past.

JOSEPH SCHILLMOELLER

LAS VEGAS

A lottery for schools

To the editor:

The issue of students not achieving the minimum standard for being a productive citizen in our society is a multifaceted problem. Money isn’t the answer. However, the money problem in our school districts could be fixed with a simple enactment: a lottery. Then dedicate at least 75 percent of a state’s lottery proceeds directly to the school budget. Keep the funding at its present level, with increases tied only to inflation.

LLOYD BENNETT

LAS VEGAS

Student loans

To the editor:

Rep. Joe Heck’s defense of the Smarter Solutions for Students Act is another example of the House Republicans’ attack on maintaining social and economic opportunity for struggling Americans (“Taking politics out of student loans,” Wednesday Review-Journal). He takes great pride in saving taxpayers $4 billion over the next decade, but feels no concern about that $4 billion being put on the backs of a generation of college students.

The politics of subsidizing student loans is actually increasing access to and decreasing the burden of a college education, the gateway to upward mobility for millions of young Americans. As future taxpayers, they will pay back those subsidies. In an ideally progressive tax system, the more successful will pay a greater share. The core Republican objection to this concept of fairness is the true wellspring of this legislation.

Rep. Heck’s tortured double-speak about decreasing rates, when he acknowledges the act would immediately raise rates by over 30 percent, is the height of political sophistry. If he is concerned about the irresponsibility of passing temporary extensions, then make the current rates permanent. That would certainly ensure that, as Rep. Heck stated, “students can be assured that their rates will be consistent over extended periods of time.”

Rep. Heck shows Orwellian gall by cloaking his political agenda of protecting the wealthy as “working in Congress to ease the burden on students” or as something that “takes the politics out of student loan interest rates.”

IRA KLEIMAN

HENDERSON