RTC chief’s pay raise a bargain
To the editor:
In response to the Review-Journal’s Sunday editorial, “More for us!”:
I don’t know if Regional Transportation Commission General Manager Jacob Snow deserves his 7 percent merit pay increase or his new base salary of $229,000 per year — the editorial failed to cite the RTC’s salary range, how long Mr. Snow has worked for the RTC and how many employees he manages, or indicate how highly he was evaluated by his superiors.
As implied by the editorial, maybe the mayor and the county commissioners are all just a bunch of free-spending good ol’ boys who reward their own even in the face of a fiscal downturn. Maybe state judges and the Las Vegas City Council are also ripping off the public purse via their exorbitant salaries.
What I suspect, however, is that if both Mr. Snow and our esteemed local judges had chosen to work in the private sector, instead of draining our local government coffers, they would be receiving raises, bonuses and stock options worth hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of the paltry $15,000 to $30,000 raises they got.
What about the impending recession and downturn in the stock market? Among professionals such as doctors, lawyers and many highly compensated white-collar workers, there’s been no downturn — 2007 was another very profitable, banner year. Look at the mind-boggling, quarter-billion-dollar severance packages paid to Home Depot’s Bob Nardelli, Citibank’s Chuck Prince and other failed chief executive officers even in the face of 35 to 50 percent declines in the value of the underlying company stock.
Mr. Snow’s salary and severance package sound like a bargain to me.
Jeffrey M. Shear
NORTH LAS VEGAS
Kosovo independence
To the editor:
Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia. Serbs are violently opposed because they celebrate the battle of Kosovo in 1386 against the Turks, when they lost their freedom and became the slaves of the Ottoman empire for the next 420-plus years.
Celebrate? Do the French “celebrate” Hitler’s entry in Paris in 1940? Do the Japanese “celebrate” their unconditional surrender to the United States? It takes a really twisted mind to “celebrate” such a defeat and to submit the more than 90 percent of Kosovars to merciless Serbian domination for it. Ten years after that historic defeat, the Serbian mercenaries in service to the Ottoman sultan were decisive in the defeat of the Christian armies in the battle of Nicopolis in 1396.
How to explain these historic facts to a Western mind?
Marc Jeric
LAS VEGAS
Bring the troops home
To the editor:
In this election year, much has been said about bringing the military home from Iraq.
Actually, I believe everyone wants the troops to come home, but in different ways.
Some want the troops to come home with heads hanging low, discouraged, disgraced, humiliated and defeated. Others want the troops to come home standing tall and proud, energized, confident and victorious.
The question is: How do you want the troops to come home? Your answer should tell you a lot about yourself.
VERLON BERKEMEYER
NORTH LAS VEGAS
Shooting range
To the editor:
I wish the residents near the planned Sheep Mountain gun range would be honest in their protest (Feb. 14 Review-Journal). If they had been in the valley for any time and been reading more than USA Today and listening to local news rather than MSNBC, they would have been aware for the past decade of the gun range under construction, thanks to their own Sen. Harry Reid’s initiative.
The truth of the matter is that many of these protests are the result of the post-gun-control-Brady-Bill generation. They simply have an almost feminine horror of guns. They see all gun owners and shooting enthusiasts as wild-eyed, beer-guzzling, right-wing extremists.
And I must admit they have powerful friends, including people in the news media. Now that the powers-that-be have effectively outlawed any target shooting on any public land in Clark County, gun ranges are all shooting sportsmen and women and their families have to go to.
These protesters could cut the shooters some slack, but it is the same old confrontation between gun people and gun haters, and it has nothing to do with a lack of information from the developer of their neighborhood (who, not surprisingly, is unavailable for comment) or the county government officials who have been more than forthcoming with information and progress reports in the local news media.
KENT RISCHLING
LAS VEGAS
