Letters to the editor

Douglas resident chimes in on Carson StreetAfter reading all the letters regarding the negatives of reducing lanes on Carson Street, I find myself wondering who the elected officials are listening to. Surely it’s not the people who elected them.The businesses at the north end of town will suffer because people don’t want to go out of their way to use a freeway that is not complete. The feeder road was not designed to handle the traffic that now uses it and surely won’t handle the additional load. All the main medical offices and hospital are at the north end. Seniors rely on these and shouldn’t be on the freeway. Now you bring this column by Sue Newberry. She says it slows down traffic and there are less accidents. I wasn’t aware we had a problem with these. Does she really know how slow traffic will get when you put in parallel parking? Why not tear down some old, unused buildings and make a parking lot? Officials are only listening to business owners who might find even less customers if they change the road. I for one would never go downtown in the traffic mess you are about to create. Do we have lobbyist in Carson City? Can’t we find a better cause to use this money on? Should we really spend this money just to see if it works, as Sue Newberry says in her article? The council is there to serve us, not special interests.Dan BabbMindenTime to learn from our own historyIn her Jan. 16 op-ed, Wilma Counts posed this question: “Why can’t we raise the age for Social Security benefits? When Social Security was established, the upper level of longevity for Americans was 65. Today, it is a decade higher.”If Wilma had consulted the Social Security website, she might have learned that life expectancy for a 65-year-old male rose 2.6 years in the half century from 1940 to 1990, from 12.7 years to 15.3 years. And even though we no longer torture our bodies near as much with tobacco or hard liquor, changes in the American diet have resulted in far higher levels of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, dementia and depression. Far from wanting to work past age 65, more than 70 percent of Americans now feel the need to take their Social Security early. But the simple fact is that we could significantly extend our longevity and working lives by adopting a nutritionally complete diet similar to that eaten by our founding fathers, many of whom lived to ripe old ages, e.g., Thomas Jefferson to 83, Benjamin Franklin to 84, James Madison to 85 and John Adams to 90. Isn’t it time we learned from our own history?Rich DunnCarson City