UNLV program can help many students

To the editor:

I might share Bob Dubin’s concern over UNLV’s planned First Year Experience courses (Monday letter) for freshmen had I not participated as an adjunct communication instructor in one of the school’s precursors for the program.

Mr. Durbin expresses doubt as to the rigor, content and need for the courses addressing “critical thinking, communication and multicultural or global awareness skills” noted in Richard Lake’s Review- Journal article of Nov. 21. In my role as one of the “Communities of Learning” instructors, I taught a class in public speaking for declared criminal justice majors.

My students were required to research and deliver a minimum of five speeches during the semester, with all but the “ice breaker” dealing with their career plans or substantive topics of concern to society. They were also required to explore and speak about a variety of professional associations and related potential career paths, as well as to read and respond to a common reader for both criminal justice and environmental studies majors participating in the program.

That common reader — “Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of the American Community,” by Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam — is hardly elementary reading. In it, Mr. Putnam surveys the decline of what he coined as “social capital” in American society. His premise, in plain English, is that as a result of technology and other factors, Americans are no longer joiners, but loners. They don’t join clubs, churches, parent-teacher associations, fraternal organizations or bowling leagues. As a result, they have no social capital to exchange for support in hard times.

From my perspective, UNLV’s First Year Experience responds to Mr. Putnam’s concerns with a needed effort to form supportive communities out of loners on campus, as well as to provide survival skills and an appreciation of the value of civic and social engagement in the real world of work and community life after graduation.

Dick Benoit

Las Vegas

Too generous

To the editor:

In response to Glenn Cook’s Sunday column, “Coming soon: Pension apocalypse”:

As a public employee and union member, I wanted to disagree with Mr. Cook. But I can’t. Indeed, governments have been too generous with their employees in terms of pensions and benefits. And the gulf between public and private employees is quite real and must be addressed and corrected by our so-called leaders.

When I accepted a clerk-typist position with the city of Los Angles in 1985, I don’t believe the term “pension envy” was even in the vocabulary. In 2001, I was promoted to librarian. When I retire in four years at age 55, I estimate my pension will be $60,000.

If I live another 40 years, that’s $2.4 million. Were I a private employee, I’d have pension envy!

David Tulanian

Los Angeles

Low taxes

To the editor:

In Sunday’s Viewpoints section, Geoffrey Lawrence of the Nevada Policy Research Institute puts forth a tax analysis for Nevada and attacks the left’s claim that Nevada is a low-tax state. His analysis looks at per-capita tax collection.

He appears to imply that people living in the state of Nevada have a high tax burden. But nothing could be further from the truth. His facts are completely misleading.

While it is true that per-capita tax collections are high, Nevada is a tourism state. A great deal of Nevada’s per-capita tax burden is borne by the 37 million tourists who visit here every year. This is also true in other states that have a great deal of tourism, such as Florida.

If you look at what the residents of the state of Nevada actually pay, it is near the bottom of the list and has been for decades.

Nearly every national source that does tax analysis has listed Nevada as a very favorable state to reside or do business from a tax perspective. It has been this way for decades.

Gerry Hageman

Las Vegas

Rail failure

To the editor:

Does anyone see a correlation between our failed monorail line and the apparently soon-to-be-built DesertXpress high-speed train to nowhere (Victorville, Calif.)?

Our monorail was doomed to fail from the get-go because it didn’t service McCarran International Airport and it wasn’t routed down the center median of the Strip, thereby servicing casinos and hotels on both sides of the Strip.

On the other hand, the DesertXpress, being so ardently sponsored by our own Sen. Harry Reid, is also doomed to fail unless some drastic changes are made. Until Victorville has acceptable rail connections with the California rail system, providing convenient access to Los Angeles and nearby cities, people aren’t going to rent cars in Victorville and drive to the coast (approximately a 90-minute to two-hour drive). And why would coastal residents drive to Victorville when they can drive all the way to Las Vegas in only about four hours?

I do have an interim solution that Sen. Reid and his cronies should consider: Design a system of easy ingress/egress car carriers that would transport passengers’ cars as they traveled the high-speed rails.

In closing, why do our politicians keep making the same mistakes over and over again while expecting different results? Isn’t this the definition of insanity, or is there a more sinister reason?

John J. Erlanger

Las Vegas