Nothing risky about wearing a helmet

I read Tuesday’s letter by J. Collier and couldn’t agree more about all the various intrusive laws that invite police abuse. But there is one statement about motorcycle riding I must comment on.

There seems to be a myth that a full-face helmet will restrict a rider’s vision and somehow lead to an increased risk of an accident. In 1978, UCLA professor Harry Hurt found that 89 percent of accidents involved a car turning left into the path of a motorcyclist.

Of the remaining 11 percent, more than half of those were due to the rider not looking both ways before entering an intersection. One second before a T-bone accident, both vehicles will be more than 100 feet apart, so you need to look ahead.

It was also found that the peripheral vision in full-face helmets was equal to wearing a pair of goggles. A proper full-face helmet will also filter out wind noise.

When I ride, I wear every piece of gear I have, but I choose to. If someone wants to be Gary Busey, I say have at it.

Tom Grossmann

Las Vegas

Nice work

To the editor:

Bravo to the district attorney and the Henderson Police Department for not giving John Coggs a free pass for soliciting an undercover police officer for prostitution (“Henderson police lieutenant now a sergeant after his arrest,” April 8 Review-Journal).

Now please tell me where I go to sign up for a job that would give me six months of paid vacation when charges against me are investigated, as in this situation.

Thank God they are keeping Coggs on the force so we can rest easy knowing a man with a broken moral compass is protecting us.

STAN OLSON

LAS VEGAS

Ruining us

To the editor:

A Tuesday news ticker caption read: “Geithner says no risk U.S. will lose AAA rating.” This came after Standard & Poor’s issued a negative outlook for the United States government.

I wish Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would stop deceiving the American people. He must have learned this tactic while he was at Goldman Sachs.

With our insurmountable $14.3 trillion national debt, the U.S. credit rating should be in the “junk” category. The worst is yet to come. Just this week, Brazil, Russia, India and China were proposing to trash the dollar.

It is lamentable that our politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) have succeeded in ruining our country over the past three decades. Back in 1976, our national debt was $1 trillion.

I am praying for a white knight or a third political party to straighten this country out. Perhaps Michelle Bachmann may do just that.

Alfonso Tiu

Henderson

Re-thinking taxes

To the editor:

I believe for the good of the state of Nevada, we might need to re-think the “no new taxes” philosophy. We cannot balance the state’s budget on the backs of education and social services.

To burden teachers with less salary, less benefits, less retirement, the fear of being fired for reasons that are just ridiculous, and more students is to reduce teachers to the role of temporary “hired man.” To burden our state with a future work force of under-educated children is unfair to them and the state.

The monies needed to produce an adequate education for children today and in the future may require new taxes. You cannot go to the gas station and be prepared to pay 1976 prices, and neither can you educate the masses with larger classes, teachers who have moved on to the private sector and less teaching equipment.

Perhaps we need to re-think “no new taxes” or re-think our method of taxation. Something does need to change, or the state of Nevada is going to be at the bottom of the barrel — in our work force of the future, in being able to create jobs, as well as our living conditions.

Patricia Sethaler

Spring Creek

Hall of Shamer

To the editor:

The Review-Journal’s Wednesday story of longtime Senate power broker Bill Raggio’s induction into the Nevada Senate Hall of Fame (which he created) is a primer on exactly what’s wrong with politics today.

Instead of citizen legislators giving up a few precious years of their personal, private lives to dedicate themselves to solving what’s really wrong in our communities, we have lifelong politicians such as Mr. Raggio, who served in the Senate for nearly 40 years before retiring in January.

These are windbags and demagogues whose allegiance to special interests and pet causes compel them to spend their careers regulating other people’s lives and spending other people’s money. The more time they occupy these positions of unearned power, the more inflated their egos and sense of self-importance become.

Bill Raggio is a Republican In Name Only who should have been broomed out of office 15 years ago. For his support of the buffoon of a U.S. senator we are again stuck with — Harry Reid — and his denigration of the grass-roots tea party movement, induction into the Hall of Shame is surely more befitting.

Welcome back to the real world, Mr. Raggio.

Brien Christoffersen

Henderson