Letters to the editor

I’m being swallowed by alien taxesOh no, it has got my toe,Oh gee, it’s up to my knee,Oh heck, it’s up to my neck,Oh golly, it has swallowed my body.When upon my employees it did strike, I figured it couldn’t take another bite,But alas, as you can see,It then got a hold of me.It got my house, property, monthly deposits, quarterly deposits, yearly,941, FUTA, employment, unemployment, Social Security, withholding,Medicare, adjusted and others in-between,All of these left me feeling green.Every tax it did acclaim,There was no way I could win at their game.Personal body taxes it then tried.I thought I owned me until I died,But you can see that isn’t so,And then I cried, “Please let me go.”“Let you go,” taxes just laughs,“Now you pay your inheritance tax.”From the grave I ask what’s that?That’s what you’ve already paid taxes on all your days,Your house, your car, your business still pays.Let’s see, anything else we can get you for,Before your loved ones can deplore,“Please, let us have what you shouldn’t take away,”Ah! You poor souls, you must pay and pay and some day say,“We came across the ocean blue,To protest the King’s taxes which grew and grew.This was a better land they saidThat was, until taxes swallowed my head.Betty BrinsonCarson CityWriter gives opinion about media biasI find Guy Farmer’s effort to explain the role of “the media” in his commentary from Jan. 13 both interesting and disturbing. As a former journalism major, city editor and radio broadcaster, I fear that journalism has sunk to new lows, often presenting news with a particular bias. Cory Farley’s statement that “News pages, though, are still held for what used to be called ‘straight reporting,’ a reflection of reality,” is no longer true.Nearly every major “news” article in this and most newspapers carries a byline, meaning it can contain the bias of the writer. This practice is common today, but it wasn’t always that way. Farmer and Farley are old enough to remember when “straight reporting” meant just that — who, what, when, where and how — without the insertion of a reporter’s bias, usually expressed in an opinion as to why the subject is news.Bias is a subtle thing and often not easily detected by the reading or listening public. Taking quotations out of context is a common form of inserting bias into today’s news, but it’s permitted and even encouraged by editors and publishers with a particular bias toward a given subject.Most news articles appear to be “straight reporting” because they don’t show a photo of the author or use a different typeface, but when there’s a byline they can contain a reporter’s bias, often a particular leaning acquired during his or her formal education.Bottom line, readers should always beware. Look for just the facts.Bob BallouMindenGOP needs to right the ship We get it. Our Republican party has drifted away from its core values. Our governor ran as a conservative, but morphed into a tax raiser, installing Obamacare and handing out driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Our last two presidential nominees were wimps.Many conservatives, frustrated with party “RINOs,” have gone nonpartisan or third party. Some of the party base have sat on their hands rather than vote for namby-pamby moderates. I don’t blame them.Now the architects of the socialist gulag are trying to divide and conquer the Republican party with the help of party moderates. If conservatives get involved at the grassroots and command a majority in the primaries, the party of Reagan’s freedom agenda will nominate small government candidates and start winning elections.Republican Tea Partiers need every conservative to join the only party that actually gets candidates elected, now more than ever.Lynn MuzzyMinden