Miners can advertise where they please
March 24, 2013 - 1:05 am
To the editor:
The Nevada mining industry and Jim Rogers, the owner of local television Channel 3, are feuding over taxation of mining. Channel 3 wants the mining companies to pay more taxes and the miners disagree. Mr. Rogers has voiced his opinion and the miners don’t like it, as is their right. So mining advertising dollars have been pulled from Channel 3.
This is a normal and proper response and not a wrong thing to do, just business. Mr. Rogers has puffed up and run a series of assorted commentaries over the air to strike back. He has used the station as his personal weapon. The accusation made is that the Nevada mining industry is “blackmailing” Channel 3 by simply pulling advertising money.
This is a false accusation. Mr. Rogers states that extortion is being committed. Hogwash. All blackmail is extortion, but there is neither blackmail in this case, nor extortion.
Blackmail is a specific form of extortion wherein a criminal threat is made to expose the victim’s dirty laundry of some sort, real or imaginary, to improperly gain in one way or another. The miners have not done this. Any entity is properly and lawfully able to stop advertising on an antagonistic television station if it wishes. This is not a wrongful act.
Pouting Mr. Rogers has made himself look foolish in the eyes of educated people.
PAUL MILLER
PAHRUMP
Tough line of work
To the editor:
I guess that Luis Solano, the inmate who died at the county jail recently while being held on charges of cocaine trafficking, chose the wrong line of “work.”
The picture that was published a week ago shows him and one of his many children in front of a really nice Mercedes. He should’ve become an “aspiring rap artist” and then he could have driven down to the welfare office in a Maserati or a Bentley.
His family must be on welfare, because he didn’t hold down any kind of a regular job, and there are six or seven kids with another on the way. A “loving, devoted family man” really should’ve had a better vehicle to transport his troops in.
CHUCK NICKLE
HENDERSON
No decency
To the editor:
After reading the news about Hawthorne, I was completely turned off by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s comments suggesting the sequester cuts were tied into this horrible accident.
The families of the seven Marines haven’t had time to claim their bodies before they can grieve and have burial services and here’s Harry using them as political ammo when no one knows what happened yet.
Being honorable and classy are not words I would use to describe Harry, but to be fair, he’s not flying solo on integrity issues. While he’s certainly a prominent example of what’s wrong with our system, they seem to be everywhere.
I realize it’s a total pipe dream, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to enhance our election laws with the requirements that anyone who is money-grubbing, power seeking, with no sense of decency, decorum and honesty, need not apply? Once you get into office, you must live by the same laws and rules that you impose upon us, replacing the current system of corruption and special rights.
What a wonderful fantasy!
STEVEN HIZA
LAS VEGAS
Marijuana
To the editor:
I just read an article in the Review-Journal that the Nevada politicians are considering legalizing marijuana. Do our politicians have any brains inside their heads? We already have a big problem with drivers under the influence of alcohol getting into accidents and in most cases killing themselves and innocent people. And now they want to legalize marijuana? What are they thinking?
Oh I’m sorry, they don’t think. I’m sure someone or a group has paid these politicians to push this law. To all our politicians, please consider the repercussions of passing a law legalizing marijuana. Please don’t do it.
MIGUEL REYES
LAS VEGAS
Printing the ‘f-word’
To the editor:
In your March 19 edition, I read the first comment on the printing of the “f-word” in your March 12 story, in which the Review-Journal quoted an e-mail from former Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey, using that word to characterize the kind of idiots he believes the city of Henderson has for elected officials.
The most surprising element of this comment was that it came from a reader and not the editor or publisher. I find it unbelievable that no one on the staff of the Review-Journal felt it in any way necessary to apologize to the subscribers and readers for this (I hope) mistake.
The letter spoke of waiting to see if anyone else was disturbed. I’m still waiting to see if the staff, the professionals who do this for a living were disturbed. Do you mean to tell me that it didn’t really matter that your newspaper made such a terrible gaffe? No big deal?
I hope you hold yourself to a slightly higher standard than that. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Not for letting it happen, as mistakes are sometimes made, but for sweeping it under the rug and not taking any ownership of it. I’m appalled.
TIM TODD
HENDERSON
Food section
To the editor:
I have been a subscriber to the Review-Journal for 20 years. I have to say that I’m in complete agreement with Mary Carter’s letter concerning the food section, “Taste of the Town.” First the health inspections were taken away, and now the “Taste of the Town” column is down to almost nothing. I really looked forward to seeing what those in our community were searching for in hometown favorites.
I love my print paper, but am really considering dropping it in light of your new “lack of coverage.” Maybe I’ll just stick to my Wall Street Journal.
KATHY CURRIN
LAS VEGAS
Flight from the dollar
To the editor:
The stock markets are booming, reaching new all-time highs daily. Our Democrats, socialists, communists, eco-Nazis, and other liberals and progressives praise Obama’s economic policies for that event.
Not so, my friends: it is a panic flight from the paper dollar which is soon destined for a catastrophic fall in value.
The coming and inevitable inflation in at least double digits will follow this irresponsible printing of six trillion paper dollars, with five trillions more in the coming four years of the same or even worse monetary policy to come.
The private banks that constitute the Federal Reserve System will surely face an inevitable and total bankruptcy while holding all those trillions of almost worthless government bonds, paying only 1 percent interest.
MARC JERIC
LAS VEGAS
Apply to military, police
To the editor:
As the Second Amendment was created by our Founding Fathers to prevent a tyrannical government takeover, we see the gun control advocates chipping away at the edges of it in an effort to eventually delete it.
If the citizens were prevented from acquiring the same weapons as our government (police, military) then it wouldn’t be a fair fight. If those gun control advocates pass laws restricting what types of weapons are allowable to the citizens, then it must make the law equally applicable to the government! I won’t hold my breath for that.
R.A. SALTER
HENDERSON