Letters to the editor for Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013

Adopt from a shelter and save 2 pets’ lives

Don’t shop, adopt. Buying from pet stores and puppy mills supports breeding of animals in poor conditions with very little medical care. The factory-style breeding systems puts earnings before the well-being of the animals.

Why pay high dollar for an animal that was brought into the world in such unacceptable conditions? Puppy mills have the priority of increasing profits; therefore, the health of the animal is overlooked. Puppies can be mistreated and malnourished.

Rather than supporting the bad habits of puppy mills and the pet stores that support them, adoption is much more rewarding. By adopting a pet, one is saving two lives: the life of the animal adopted and the life of another animal that can now be rescued. Along with adopting a new best friend comes fruitful feelings of saving a life and getting a healthy new pet, not to mention saving money.

Millions of cats and dogs are euthanized each year due to the limited space in shelters and the low number of pets being adopted. With more people adopting pets from shelter, it will lower the amount of homeless animals and animals being euthanized in shelters. Save a life, and adopt a new best friend.

Shawna Grady

Carson City

Repeating God’s law involves truth, not bias

My Aug. 8 comment that only God has the right to take life (referencing abortion in particular), and indicating the Fifth Commandment caused Charles Lawson, in his Aug. 14 column for the Fernley-Dayton Courier, to assert: “Not so, if you read the Bible without your bias interfering ...” in which he said the Fifth Commandment is “thou shalt not murder.”

Repeating God’s law does not involve bias! Lawson should read Exodus, Chap. 20, verse 13. Thou shalt not kill, translated from the Latin Vulgate which St. Jerome, in the Fourth Century procured from the Jewish people with whom he went to live in order to understand their language before making the translation into Latin!

Regarding his comment that there is no restriction against ridding society of the defective souls that murder, maim and torture other human beings, since my main point referenced abortion, I can’t imagine a baby planning any such actions!

True, man has a right to the first law of nature which is self-preservation. It is also true that if one gets out a dictionary, one will find, aside from a specific incident, to kill is to murder and to murder is to kill!

Mary Santomauro

Stagecoach

State shouldn’t grovel for federal handouts

According to your front page article on Sept. 13, the U.S. Labor Department is awarding $8.8 million to three of our Northern Nevada colleges to support programs that will train workers for employment in manufacturing, mining and clean energy fields. Sounds wonderful, much needed and no doubt a wonderful cause, so we all should be grateful for the benevolence of our Washington, D.C., benefactors. Or should we?

According to the Tax Foundation, Nevada receives back in benefits only about 65 percent of the amount the federal government collects from our state’s taxpayers. It puzzles me that we don’t finally wake up and insist that our members of Congress get the federal government out of the business of making us grovel for federal money to do what we can do just as well or better at less expense if left on our own. That applies to job training, education, health care, housing, and the host of other areas best identified as needing assistance and administered at our state and local levels.

And, in case our political leaders haven’t noticed, the federal government is going broke. Maybe the first place to start to get our national house in order is to get the Washington, D.C., politicians and bureaucrats out of trying to run our daily lives.

Raymond Kechely

Carson City

‘Scoop’ Jackson would support Obamacare

Damning President Obama because of Obama­care is certainly not unique to Guy Farmer among Appeal commentators, but Mr. Farmer’s recent column unfavorably comparing Obama to his hero, “Scoop” Jackson, deserves a response.

According to Farmer, “Obama is treading a narrow constitutional line with his free-spending, big government agenda,” plus Farmer doesn’t think “a majority of Americans favor Obama’s income redistribution schemes.” If what Farmer means is that Obama’s fault lies in wanting to use government to make the lives of its ordinary citizens — as opposed to the elite — better, then I contend that the late senator from Washington state would have likely favored Obamacare.

As Farmer says, Jackson was liberal on social issues and conservative on defense and national security. Liberals of his day advocated strongly for the welfare of the average American and believed that government should use its power to make people’s lives better. That is, it was essential that government needed to take an active role in providing benefits and protections necessary to assure that a good life was possible for the common man.

At the time, organized labor spearheaded the fight for benefits such as Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, and so forth, and Sen. Jackson not only supported these programs but was frequently a leader in the Senate. According to the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education, Jackson had the most perfect voting record for labor in the U.S. Senate.

So, as Mr. Farmer says, “where are the Scoop Jacksons when we really need them?”

Carl Meier

Minden

Let Middle East be destroyed from within

An open letter to all military units: refuse to take part if Obama decides to put us in another war (which will happen — no matter if just a limited strike).

Let the Middle East destroy themselves, which they are doing. They have had many opportunities to become better people, but they obviously like the status quo! Countries who do not value human life, which I’m sad to admit the USA is also becoming (abortion, euthanasia, atheism) will eventually be doomed.

Remember WWII when there were ads everywhere, “loose lips sink ships!” Now under the Obama’s administration, we advertise our every move as to when, where, what weapons we’ll use. Really smart, right? But it does prove how unqualified the current president is at being president. How did he get elected?

Carmelita Raney

Dayton