Letters to the editor (published Jan. 27)

Failure to yield can have serious consequences

I am writing today to ask the community to please slow down and obey traffic signs. Are we all in such a rush that we are going to risk accidents with other Nevadans? My near-miss collision with a white vehicle Jan. 25 was at the on-ramp to Highway 395 South on College Parkway. The sign says yield. The 2010 Nevada Driver's Handbook states that, "Yield signs mean the same as stop signs except you may proceed without coming to a full stop, if it is safe to do so. You must slow down as you come to the intersection and give the right of way to pedestrians and through traffic." The driver that almost hit me did not yield.

This is reprehensible. What if my infant daughter had been in the car with me? This woman was going very fast - my daughter would have surely been injured. I honked loudly and she gave me a dirty look, like I was the one that was wrong. Those of us who were on that on-ramp today are very lucky. If she had hit me, I would have crashed into the truck on my left side and the car behind me would've also been struck.

I hope my letter is taken to heart by all of the drivers out there. Please remember that a 5,000-pound car plus failure to yield and speeding can and will cause a serious, if not fatal, accident.

Denise M. Becker

Carson City

Move cancer research forward to next level

As an oncology nurse of more than 30 years, and a cancer patient/survivor advocate, I listened to President Obama's State of the Union address this week and hoped to hear that federal funding for cancer research would be a priority. I heard him say that "we'll invest in biomedical research" and will be closely watching to see how this promise is kept.

I had the privilege of meeting with Nevada state legislators in Washington, D.C., this past September as the American Cancer Society Congressional District 2 Cancer Action Network Lead. My message to them was very simple: without increases in federal funds for cancer research, the many advances we have made in cancer biology leading to improved treatments will become stagnant. Millions of cancer survivors are alive and living with/after cancer because of research.

Just as President Obama stated when speaking about the beginning of the space race "the science wasn't there yet, NASA didn't even exist" we are on the brink of exciting breakthroughs in understanding what makes cancer tick.

Congress must come together and act on the issue of making sure federal funding for cancer research moves forward, not in a holding pattern. Every citizen has the opportunity to engage legislators: local, state and federal. Make a phone call, write a letter, be a voice for those fighting cancer and urge legislators to increase federal research monies for cancer. Help eliminate this dread disease.

Carla Brutico

Minden

Adding services that pay sales tax is good idea

In the Jan. 14 Appeal, Chuck Muth comes on like gangbusters, proposing a sales tax on services as a way to broaden our tax base while remaining revenue neutral.

I don't know where Chuck has been for the past 28 years, but this has been kicked around in several legislative sessions, ever since I was the first person to sponsor it in the Nevada Assembly way back in 1983.

We only have two choices to significantly broaden our tax base in Nevada: a state income tax or a sales tax on services. Take your choice. My 1983 assembly bill proposed cutting our sales tax rate in half and adding in all services except medical and funeral - revenue neutral.

The trial lawyers screamed like stuck pigs, as did the barbers and beauticians. In spite of that, I could have passed the bill through the Assembly had not the Democrat-controlled Senate succumbed to the pressure and would have no part of it.

Adding services into sales taxes is a damned good idea, and it is not progressive as the cry babies claim. Affluent people use far more services than do others. Our national economy is now more of a service economy than a goods economy.

Washington state has managed to get along without a state income tax, only because it includes most services in its 10 percent sales tax base. Beware of those crying for exemptions. Creeping tax exemptions are the main culprits that sooner or later cripple tax revenues.

Bob Thomas

Carson City