School Board repeating same old mistakes

To the editor:

Wednesday’s article, "Rogers scorns schools officials," concerning ex-higher education Chancellor Jim Rogers’ disdain for the School Board, the new superintendent selection process and the current condition of our K-12 system, should be mandatory reading for all concerned Clark County citizens.

As I read this article, visions of previous superintendent searches, by highly paid search firms, flashed before my eyes.

Remember in 1999, when we ended up with Carlos Garcia as superintendent of schools? Though Mr. Garcia came from a failing school district (Fresno), he was hired nevertheless. Question: Would you hire someone with a failing resume?

It’s sad that at the same time the School Board ran off Lt. Gen. Joseph Redden, who had a sterling record as former commander of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base and commandant of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

In 2006, instead of hiring Eric Nadelstern, an outstanding and innovative educator from New York, the School Board ran him off and settled for our current superintendent, Walt Rulffes.

Our illustrious School Board has a notorious record of settling for politically correct applicants, thereby sacrificing excellence to placate the special-interest groups in our community.

The kind of out-of-the-box thinker that we need to fix our broken school system will not come from the "la la land" of pedagogy, but perhaps from an innovative area of the private or military sector.

It should also be noted that many of the successful potential candidates out there, such as Mr. Rogers, are not so much motivated by high salaries but rather by the challenge of public service and to succeed at whatever they do, The idea that more pay would get better candidates is questionable at the very least considering that the top five paid school superintendents/chancellors oversee school districts that rank close to the bottom of this country’s educational morass.

Remember the movie "Groundhog Day"? Our Groundhog Day consists of having the School Board make the same mistakes over and over again.

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again but expect different results. Anyone want to apply for the strait jacket concession at the School Board?

John J. Erlanger

Las Vegas

Economics lesson?

To the editor:

Monday’s letter, "Threat of higher taxes hurting the economy," contained some false assertions that need to be cleared up.

First, the writer claims that the "[Bush] tax decreases brought more money into the government coffers — which happens every time taxes are decreased." The latter part of this statement is clearly false: if the tax rate is 0 percent, the government gets no money. So much for this naive assertion.

The second assertion I found economically suspect was embodied in the statement, "Small-business owners do not put their money under their mattresses, they invest it, increasing employment and — hopefully — profits." I agree that small-business owners don’t hide their money in their mattresses and they do seek profits, but to assume they invest to increase employment flies in the face of capitalism. After all, they’re not philanthropists, they’re business people. They invest money where it gets the highest return for the risk, be it in their own business or in an emerging economy like India or socked away in the bank.

This is the fundamental flaw in the supply-side dogma preached by the Republicans. Demand for products is what fuels business investment. You don’t increase your capacity to deliver a product just because you got a tax break. You increase capacity, and hopefully employment, to meet the demands of an unfulfilled market.

This is not to say that tax cuts are irrelevant. When consumers have more to spend, that newly created demand will conjure the market conditions investors seek. It follows that measures such as extending unemployment benefits and targeted tax cuts for the lower and middle income brackets may be our best hope for economic recovery. Luckily, this is exactly the tax policy the president and the Democrats are proposing.

Bart Atwell

Las Vegas

Control growth

To the editor:

Now is the time to implement controlled growth in Clark County. In the past, no one wanted to limit growth because of the potential for lost construction jobs. Now the recession has taken the home construction industry in Las Vegas to historic low production levels. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity to establish growth limits for Clark County.

Implementing limits will reduce future costs of infrastructure development, including that extremely expensive water rights grab and pipeline from central Nevada. In the long term, growth limits will also increase home values compared to a no-limit policy.

Some will argue that we need the construction industry to recover, but Las Vegas has shown remarkable success in re-inventing itself over the years, and I have confidence we can do so again.

Larry Brickner

Las Vegas