Letters to the editor 11-23

Fight Medicare cuts
As a military retiree with Medicare and your voting constituent, I urge you initiate and support any legislation that will amend or repeal the Sustained Growth Rate (SGR) formula of Medicare Law.
The SGR formula mandates a 10 percent cut in physician reimbursements on Jan. 1, 2009. As the Congress does not work weekends and takes off early for Thanksgiving and Christmas, you have less than 20 days to stop these cuts; if left unchecked —the next nine years —the scheduled cuts would total approximately 40 percent; during this same period physician costs are expected to increase 20 percent.
Since 2002, the Congress has merely blocked the cuts for one year at a time, and has usually authorized a small percentage increase of reimbursements. The correct action of the Congress should be to amend or repeal the SGR provision.
A recent survey by the American Medical Association of nearly 9,000 doctors shows that if the payment cuts take effect:
• 60 percent of doctors will limit new Medicare patients;
• 70 percent will defer purchase of needed information technology in 2008;
• 50 percent will reduce their staff; and
• 14 percent will stop treating patients entirely.
Tricare reimbursement rates are indexed as a fraction of the Medicare Allowable Amount. Thus, these SGR cuts will impact all military retirees and their families whether they are under age 65 with Basic Tricare or 65+ with Medicare+TFL (Tricare for Life). In far too many areas of the United States, there are already regions where no physicians will accept Tricare.
Based on the above dismal statistics, these “black holes” will continue to increase in size and number.
So much for the promise of free lifetime health care for military retirees and their families.
Please do all within your power to stop the cuts in Medicare reimbursements scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2009.
WALTER WILLSON
Carson City

Sign viewed as threat to president
On Veterans Day at about 11 a.m. I saw a person standing at the corner of the state Capitol. He was about 300 feet from the ongoing Wackenhut labor protest.
He held a sign that said in part, “George Bush Thin the Herd.” This sign is a violation of 18 USC Sec. 871 Threatening the President of the U.S.
Please come back and do it again as I would like the pleasure of placing you under citizens arrest until the sheriff can take you into custody.
President Bush isn’t my favorite character but nobody has a right to do what I saw you do. I think you need some jail time to think about what it means to be an American.
LARRY LESH
Minden

More needs to be done to battle meth
It’s well known in the community that there is a meth problem. As a former student at a nearby high school, I feel like more needs to be done in preventing the youngsters in the community from getting their hands on this life-destroying drug.
Carson City Sheriff’s Sgt. Darrin Sloan says that, “Dealers are targeting a younger crowd.” One of the newest forms of meth, referred to as “strawberry quick,” is being cooked up, and the frightening part is that it looks identical to the hot pink rock candy kids make for science projects.
I am asking for parents to get more involved in their child’s life, go for walks together, have family dinners together, or just have designated times each week to spend with them. These little changes can make huge differences.
The surrounding high schools associate the local high school as the school with the most meth heads, and that all the girls there are skinny because they are tweakers. The community needs to stop these accusations from being made and stand up together to fight these stereotypes. I am asking for neighbors to be aware of what is taking place next door. I am asking the schools to push harder for awareness of the dangers of meth and how one hit is all it takes to get addicted.
I am asking employers to drug test their employees, or at least look out for the well-being of their employees. I am asking the community as a whole to pursue harsher punishments for first time offenses related to possession, use, or distribution of methamphetamine.
I am asking for current meth abusers to seek help and face their addiction.
Drugs like meth affect the community as a whole, however, it’s as a whole that the fight against meth will prevail.
ALYSSA COFANO
Gardnerville

Redevelopment Authority needs to be investigated
Open letter to the mayor and the Carson City Board of Supervisors regarding The Compliance Audit Report of the Redevelopment Authority and the Office of Business Development dated Nov. 3, 2008:
“The primary objective of this audit was to insure that each are functioning in an effective, efficient and economic manner and compliant with policies and procedures as defined internally and externally to the operation.”
As a business owner in the redevelopment project area, number one, I would submit to you that the findings of this audit clearly cite numerous violations of NRS 279. The development director and his staff should be held accountable for the blatant disregard for public funds and lack of due diligence. He should be fired for the gross negligence and dereliction of duty.
The findings of this audit run the gamut from no bid contracts, vendors without a license, a church requesting $86,634 “as soon as possible” when in fact “no incentive application was located.”
Or how about Daddy Dicks Tavern? Designs fees ($26,189.50) for this project at the “personal discretion of the development director, while no application for these funds could be located.”
“No file to review.”
“No verification could be made that the work performed was for this project.”
The Board of Supervisors should call for a grand jury investigation of the Redevelopment Authority, which is well justified based upon the findings of this compliance audit report.
CLARK RUSSELL
owner Carson Station Hotel and Casino

State lottery could ease budget woes
Everyone complains about state budgets, layoffs, cutbacks, no raises, school budgets, etc. etc. etc.
And the only solution is that we as retirees or workers for the counties and state must assume the brunt of it all because they can’t find a concrete answer.
Excuse me, but if gaming would quit putting the pressure on our politicians and we finally had a state lottery maybe we can answer most of the woes that our politicians are complaining about.
They need to keep their hands in their own pockets and not be swayed by gaming lobbyists and let us bring in millions from the population and visitors who would play the lottery. Seems funny that we are about the only state that doesn’t have a lottery.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could offset all the complaints from the big wigs and get them to listen to the simple solutions and calculate just how must money the state would bring in through a state run lottery. Let’s face it, Nevada has had legal gambling as well as legal prostitution for decades, but we can’t get off our rears and use another easy way to bring in the well- needed revenue to make the state green again.
Gaming thinks that they will be hurt by a state lottery.
Give me a break. There only interest is to suck in every penny they can without any regards to the rest of us.
The worst that could happen is the state and the people would benefit from it.
Gee wouldn’t that be a change? I’ll buy a ticket when it happens, but I won’t hold my breath.
ROGER HARTLEY
Carson City

Government should not manage nature
We really have to wonder about a federal agency that takes it upon itself to “manage” our wild horses. Who gave them the right to do such a thing?
Now they are running out of money so they want to sell them or kill them? Who gave them the authority? Probably a committee somewhere that is out of touch.
Why do bureaucrats think they can manage better than mother nature? These are beautiful “wild” animals and they live and die according to many conditions — but none of those conditions should be imposed on them by man.
Quit trying to domesticate them and handle them. They should be left alone and protected from the government’s meddling ways. BLM took it upon themselves to do this — then dug themselves a financial hole that they are trying to get out of. Do the right thing and open the pens you have them in and let them run free as God intended.
STEVE AND JAN ROSE
Carson City
Gov. Sarah Palin made us proud
Dear Sarah Palin,
In this liar’s moment, when a few cloaked cowards are blaming you for the trouncing the Republican Party suffered on Nov. 4, I wish to recommend to you the greatest bit of advice that one human being has ever offered to another: “…never breathe a word about your loss.”
Do not let yourself be goaded into fighting with faceless accusers to whom the media has granted the sanctuary of anonymity. That is the response of dignity and sovereignty that this cowardly act of traducement calls for.
Before you joined the Republican ticket, the energy of our party was about as animated as spilt molasses on a flat surface. But when you walked onto that stage in Dayton, Ohio, introduced yourself and had your say — you lit us afire with the enthusiasm to go out and fight for the ideas and ideals of conservative principles. From our first meeting in August to Nov. 4, you presented the case for the Republican presidency better, by far, than most other “leading” Republicans — inclusive of John McCain.
If we, the foot soldiers of the Republican Party, are owed an apology for our defeat, it is not you who owe us. You did us — and your fellow Alaskans — proud. Pay no mind to your cowardly detractors, rather, remember us who celebrated you at all of your Sarah Palin rallies.
At the end of this four year presidential reign, when the race for the political leadership of America starts anew, be assured that your return will be much more welcome that your clandestine accusers.
ORLIS TRONE
Fernley

Smashing pumpkins is a waste of food
I was more than appalled — I was outraged when I saw the article Nov. 15 in the Nevada Appeal with the Presbyterian Church teaching the youth to smash pumpkins.
We are a “land of plenty” – let’s keep wasting food and resources until there is nothing left.
How wonderful that we have so much food that we couldn’t have asked families in need to come pick them up so they could make pumpkin pies, cookies, cake, soups and baked seeds, cinnamon slices and a whole array of foods that can be made from pumpkins.
I grew up in a family of seven kids. We would have been thankful to have had even one pumpkin for Thanksgiving. But let’s try not to think about starving people across our nation and in other countries eating dirt to stay alive. Lets just go on the way we have been “wasting” until there is nothing left.
Wake up people! We are in dire economic distress. Wasting food is a sin.
BETTY BRINSON
Carson City

Gun owners should be afraid of Obama
If you support the right to own firearms ... you should be terrified. Despite Obama’s, falsely, declaring that he supports the “...Individual right to own firearms” (in fact, door-to-door, Obama-campaigners actually carried a prepared flier that was full of double-talk, intentional-misstatements, and flat-out lies, supporting this false claim)... Obama’s, blatant, over-riding, anti-gun-ownership (anti-Second Amendment) position is simply a fact. Obama has, during the course of his entire political-career, repeatedly supported, virtually, every-single anti-gun action that has ever been proposed. These “reasonable,” and “common-sense” (his words), laws and policies have actually included bans on virtually all handguns (including “bans” that have been declared to be flatly-unconstitutional), the banning, of, common, semi-automatic civilian firearms (by bogusly calling them “assault weapons”), insanely-high taxes and fees on ammunition and commerce, the support of numerous ownership restrictions, and, all manner of government “registration” schemes (designed, solely, to make it as difficult, and expensive, as possible to “legally” own a firearm).
And, there is Obama’s choice of Joseph Biden (the Senator with the single worst, decades-long, anti-gun reputation) as his vice president. These two are even using entirely bogus “organizations” (that, despite their gun-owner friendly sounding names, after a little research, are quickly shown to be nothing more than, tiny, political front-organizations for, extremist, anti-gun groups). And, both politicians have repeatedly been caught deceptively equating common-firearms with such military weapons as “bazookas” and “flame-throwers.” Furthermore, both Obama and Biden, keep asserting that the Second Amendment is somehow related to “hunting” or “sports-shooting.” It isn’t. It’s about the citizen’s “inalienable right” to defend themselves. In short, it is obvious that Obama and Biden believes that our “Founding Fathers” ... millions of law-abiding American gun-owners ... and the U.S. Constitution, are just, flat-out, wrong. And, both Obama and Biden have flatly stated that they do, fully-intend to begin putting this anti-gun philosophy into legislative-practice, as soon as possible.
RAIFE L. EDWARDS
Carson City