Teacher’s math leaves much to be desired

Barbara Radecki, who complains about teacher pay, needs to “do the math” for herself (Saturday letter). If she pays $65 per hour for auto service, does she think that all goes to the mechanic?

The shop owner has to pay rent and utilities. Perhaps some advertising. Of course, there’s outrageous insurance premiums for the overly ambitious lawyers out there. Then there is the investment of a few hundred thousand dollars for shop equipment, machinery and tools.

The individual mechanic also spends tens of thousands of dollars for tools. And let’s not forget the office workers who answer the phones, write the repair orders, etc. Don’t get me started on all the regulatory requirements. Where does she think the owner gets the funds to tie up in inventory?

When she goes to work, someone else (the taxpayers) pays all of her overhead, office and janitorial staff and equipment.

That is the crux of the problem. Most civil “servants” have no idea what it takes to run a successful business. If times are tough, the private sector cannot send armed collectors to shake down the customers for more loot.

Robert Raider

Henderson

Rewarding polluters

To the editor:

Your Thursday editorial, “Soaking up green,” got the story wrong. Incentives for green energy merely balance a playing field that remains tilted toward dirty and dangerous energy sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear reactors.

American taxpayers have been subsidizing corporations that pollute their air and their water for a century. A report I co-authored, Green Scissors 2010, identified more than $96 billion in potential savings to taxpayers over the next five years that could be achieved by eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuels industry — and this does not include the additional savings we could achieve if we canceled the $10 billion tax break BP is going to claim as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

It is no surprise that the CEO of Exelon, a utility heavily invested in fossil fuels and nuclear reactors, is asking Congress to maintain the status quo; the current system rewards polluters with billions of dollars in subsidies.

Dirty energy appears so cheap not only because it is heavily subsidized, but also because its market cost does not reflect the true costs to society. Increased health care, environmental and other costs — called “externalities” by economists — are left for taxpayers to pay.

Instead of handing money to dirty industries, the just thing to do would be to make polluters pay for the damage that they are causing by putting a fee on pollution.

Benjamin Schreiber

Washington, D.C.

The writer is a climate and energy tax analyst for Friends of the Earth, national environmental organization.

Old hippie

To the editor:

Recent attacks on the public-sector unions in Wisconsin (and in Iowa, Ohio and Indiana) were only a matter of time. The U.S. Supreme Court decision elevating corporations to the level of personhood has been followed, predictably enough, by increased corporate campaign donations to elect conservative, pro-business Republican politicians, who give tax cuts to the richest Americans and blame union members for resulting state deficits — all in order to break the unions that traditionally support the Democratic Party, which supports them.

I’m a proud, progressive, liberal, yellow-dog-Democrat, and I’ve had just about enough. The direction this country is taking is the road to hell, as far as I’m concerned. If we allow these inhumane, anti-American, union-busting attacks by politicians such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to go unanswered, we will deserve what we get: rule by a minority bunch of know-nothing tea-baggers who can only parrot their “cut the deficit” mantra ad nauseam.

I have had quite enough tea, thank you. There’s enough spark in this old hippie yet to march on a capital or two.

I want my country back. If the Founding Fathers had been content with an oligarchy, they would have stayed in England. I support my union brothers and sisters all over this country, and my walking shoes are laced up.

Helen O’Reilly

Las Vegas

Great article

To the editor:

I was startled at the scope, compassion and thoroughness of Paul Harasim’s Sunday article, “Treatment for autism rewarding.” Mr. Harasim summarized current research on the effectiveness of early intensive therapy for autistic children, told affecting stories of affected children and parents and clearly outlined the economics: spend one tax dollar “on autism treatment this year; you save seven dollars in three or four years. But public officials don’t often look very far ahead to the good treatment will do.”

With more articles such as Mr. Harasim’s, maybe the level of conversation in Carson City about the evils of taxes can be raised from its current sound-bite sloganeering to an evidence-based understanding of reality facing the state and its children.

Jack Sawyer

Las Vegas