Letters to the editor for Friday, Dec. 6, 2013

Financial mistakes are repeated ad nauseam

The harvest we reap today was sown some 30 years ago when a certain iconic president uttered the words, “Deficits don’t matter.” The same — who during the first two years of his presidency — sat atop the dismantling of financial regulations that had stood for 50 years as a bulwark against the kind of greed that caused the Great Depression. And look at us now.

There is a greater percentage of people actually out of work in this country today than there was during the Great Depression. Only it is not as evident now because they’re hidden, just statistics on the welfare rolls. But end public assistance altogether, put those people on the streets without means, and see the scope of the problem. I’m not proposing this. That would be fool hardy, but something needs to be done.

We’re $20 trillion in debt. Four of that accumulated in little more than the last year. We pay the interest only and that by borrowing money we can never hope to repay because there are too few people working to generate the revenue; yet, we treat this like the proverbial elephant in the room, hoping it will go away on its own. But, it’s a fool who repeats the same behaviors and expects different results.

Kelly Jones

Carson City

Deal with Iran puts our nation in peril

How quickly we forget! Does the present administration remember Pearl Harbor? Two Japanese envoys sat in Cordell Hull’s office to discuss relations with the United States while the Japanese fleet and its aircraft bombed Pearl Harbor.

We must also remember the nonaggression pacts that Hitler’s regime in Germany signed with Poland and Russia. So, now we sign on to lower sanctions with Iran and to allow them to enrich uranium. They have more oil (thanks to the U.S.) than they know what to do with.

This Episcopalian grandmother’s heart goes out to Israel and its people and to all Christian nations also!

Doris Stephens

Stagecoach