Editor:
The Record-Courier carried an article in the Feb. 11 issue concerning two companies wanting tax abatements; one company wants to increase the size of its manufacturing plant and the other one wants to bring a new business to Meridian Park at the airport.
The one company that is going to increase the size of their plant wants sales and use tax abatement and the other company doesn't want to pay personal property tax. There are lots of us in the community that have been in business for years and have had to pay these taxes and there is no reason why these new people can't pay the same as us.
Our government officials better start understanding this is why our county and state are in the financial mess we are in. Everybody has to pay their share of the taxes in order to pay for the services the government provides for us.
Greg Lynn, you sure wouldn't have gotten my vote in the last election if I'd known you thought you had to give special tax concessions to companies to keep the Valley alive. We sure survived well before you came here.
I hope you business people who have paid your taxes all these years will be at the commissioners meeting when this comes up and express how you feel about this. We don't need businesses that don't want to pay their share of our taxes.
Jim Stratton
Minden
Editor:
It is particularly distressing to me to observe that so many of our legislators seem to have never heard of Thomas Malthus or, at the very least, fail to apply his historical observations to the current issue of diverting more water for Las Vegas. Almost 200 years ago, Malthus gave the grim hypothesis that the population (particularly the poor) would expand to the limits of the available food supply. Providing more food to the people would merely allow the population to expand until the new, higher limits were reached thus keeping the poor literally living hand to mouth, in exactly the same position that they had been before.
Now applying that prophesy to Las Vegas. Providing that city with more water, only means that it will expand its population until it has drained the resources (water) or at least reached the limit it can support. I have flown into Las Vegas numerous times only to be struck by thousands of pools, green lawns and golf courses and thousands of lots all prepared for development. Just add water and, bingo, instant people.
The real solution is not to divert Northern Nevada water to their need any more than it is to give an alcoholic another drink. All that would accomplish is add more thirsty people, and create more barren land in our state. The solution must be to cut or at least hold consumption, not increase it, and to develop alternative sources of supply.
Sam Batdorf
Gardnerville
Editor:
Congratulations to Douglas High School freshman basketball team and Coach Rollin Smokey.
After reading that the freshman team was depleted by four good players, their undefeated season is even more amazing. I attended both Carson games and was duly impressed by their teamwork, smart play, and, of course, the twin towers.
The intensity and heart displayed on the court was palpable even to us Carsonites.
Kudos Coach Smokey and the other coaches involved for bringing out the best in our youth.
Steve Sanoke
Carson City
Editor:
I am concerned that the media, our academicians, and our politicians (and oddly enough some clergy) are leading us down a destructive path. The greater majority of the latter are "social progressives" and their religion is liberalism. Abortion is their sacrament. President Obama believes in third-term abortion and even believes a surviving baby should be allowed to let die (one of two senators in the Illinois Senate to make that argument). The issue arose because a nurse found a baby thrown in a dirty linen closet and held it until it died.
Obama argued that the act burdened the mother's wish. He also argued that a man should be prosecuted for using a gun to defend his family. He is anxious to use the hoax of "Manmade Global Warming" (check the U.N. Conference in Poland December 2008 where now a total of 650 expert climatologists debunked the junk science) to strangle our industry with "cap and trade." He wants to commit billions of dollars to wind mills and solar energy (less than 2% of our current power source) and is against drilling for our oil, building nuclear power plants (which are safe and nonpolluting), building refineries, and utilizing our coal resources. He has ordered the closure of Guantanamo in one year (where will the terrorists go?), halted the military tribunals of terrorists, has restricted CIA interrogation techniques to Army regulations accorded Geneva Convention prisoners, has proposed decreasing defense spending by 10% and is promoting the largest "pork" spending bill in world history ($1.2 trillion guaranteed to mortgage your childrens' futures and rightly criticized by the Congressional Budget Office). He promised "Change" in Washington and there's hardly anyone left from the Clinton administration without a job including Hillary. Suspicious yet? The public has been treated like mushrooms and you know that adage. The presumption is that we are ignoramuses. At what point does failure to acknowledge the affront become insulting?
I have researched everything I have sent to family, friends and the Record-Courier. I have always encouraged fact checking. I've pointed out that our rights are God given and recommended reading The Declaration of Independence. Our rights are not to be abrogated by the Congress or liberals on the Supreme Court. I've emphasized a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, "The price of liberty is vigilance". Our electorate has been dumbed down by our educators (all levels) so that they are presumptuous of entitlement and have little knowledge of our true history or respect for it. In truth they've been taught to be antiamerican. E Pluribus Unum has given way to multiculturism. Our insidious enemies know that without borders, common language and culture we have no country. The "Sleeping Giant" Admiral Nagumo referenced is asleep at its peril. We are at war for our survival with two patient adversaries, radical socialists and radical Muslims. Most Americans are illadvised so we are remarkably vulnerable. You will be beaten over the head with a "Peace sign" if you dare mention this reality.
I would recommend that your readers consider reading "Obamanation" by Corsi (well documented with about 700 footnotes) and "America Alone" by Steyn (factual, humorous and scary). I think God may be losing patience with His gift, the USA. I pray for the revival of the faith, courage and prescience of our Founding Fathers. It's going to be either reveille or taps depending on public recognition of threats to our nation, both foreign and domestic, and the commitment to defend our country on all fronts.
Dick Witzig
Gardnerville
Everyone of epistolary inclination has been showering us with their opinions as they relate to our current national or worldwide problems. The problem with opinion voicing however, is that no opinion is any better than the facts upon which it is based and there is precious little supportable fact in many of the expressed opinions.
To that extent, my opinions, if any, are of no greater value than others with one notable expression. Reference is frequently made to the last depression, and these references are markedly wrong for the simple reason that reference is simple hypothesis. In other words, those expressing that reference did not live those times. I did, and let me assure you that there is absolutely no similarity in the different times for one major reason.
Currently, we are paying the price individually, in business, nationally and worldwide for living beyond our means. It is called credit, and the current conditions are the inevitable results. In the depression years for example, few people were thrown out of their homes by foreclosures simply because few people were owners of their homes. They rented. Similarly, there was not $14 trillion in credit because there were no credit cards, and people lived within their means.
In the current circumstances, other than excessive credit, the finger can be pointed in several directions including the credit living public, failure of government to do its oversight, and that does not mean trying to tell banks or businesses how to conduct their business since there is hardly a soul on Capitol Hill who could hack it in private enterprise thus leading them to become politicians which requires no special skill or talent at all.
The complaint of out-sourcing has become prominent, and largely by people who have no idea what the term means. Manufacturing sources have gone elsewhere for two major reasons: 1) multiple layers of taxation; 2) the largest excesses of organized labor. In respect of the latter, take a look at what labor has done to our three major auto manufacturers, and even now the United Auto Workers Union is hampering General Motors and Chrysler in their recovery efforts.
But put aside any reference to the Great Depression. President Hoover did not cause it, and the socialist Roosevelt did not cure it.
In fact, after eight years of FDR, unemployment doubled to 20 percent of the population, but along came my war, and it bailed the failing FDR out. The current stimulus may be even worse, but I shall be gone by then.
Vernon M. Latshaw
Gardnerville
