Letters to the Editor 7/17

Strength of this country is small businesses

To Nevada Legislature: Every small business must budget. How dare you decrease our budgets to increase yours.

In the waning economy, small businesses are barely holding on. Homes, jobs and human dignity are at stake. With this rushed bill, you doubled the small business tax without proper representation. This I find grossly arrogant. To add insult to injury, we are threatened with a $100 fine if not paid on your time schedule.

President Obama stated the auto industry is the backbone of America. I have news for the president and you: Small businesses have always been the backbone of this nation. You're penalizing the small businesses and I find your actions unconscionable, a bit of insanity, or somewhat pixilated.

Thousands of small businesses will not forget this usury next election. I would like to thank the four legislators who had the courage of their convictions and sensitivity to the small businessman with their nay votes. Please, no political excuses. There is no explanation for double taxation.

Susan Mitchell

Carson City

Reduce the whining in sports columns

I have read a lot of Darrell Moody's columns and I must say he complains and whines a lot. The most recent was about Carson City Little League, Aces Ballpark/foul balls and about Nick Fazekas.

Now, Nick's part was surprisingly good, but the one that got me was the Aces Ballpark. He says they need to put up a net 8 to 10 feet high from foul pole to foul pole to prevent injury for fans who don't pay attention. Are you kidding me? In the whole entire history of baseball I have never seen nets being put up. That's a long history Darrell and a lot of foul balls have gone into the crowds and they still have yet to put up nets.

I don't know about you, Darrell, but I have never been to a ballpark that has nets from foul pole to foul pole. This isn't hockey. We baseball fans don't go to a game to sit in a cage. If you have been to a park that has nets from foul pole to foul pole, you let me know. If Aces Ballpark was to put up those nets, it would be the laughing stock of baseball parks.

Darrell, I would like to see one of your columns consist of something that doesn't include whining.

Chris Graham

Carson City

Paslov wrong about true perpetrators of Holocaust

There is a hideous calumny in Eugene Paslov's recent column "The anatomy of hate." He states, "A few of these people (the six million exterminated in the Holocaust) were murdered by Nazis, but most of the slaughter was perpetrated by average Christian German and Polish citizens, people like you and me."

However, when you search for a list of principal Holocaust perpetrators, you find the architects of the Final Solution - top Nazis like Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann. Next are the SS and extermination camp and Einsatzgruppe commanders. Fanatical Nazi officials and members of SS Death head units were not your average Christian Germans.

The extermination process employed 5,000 plus Trawnikis (Ukrainian, Latvian and Lithuanian national "volunteers") recruited and trained as death camp guards and staff. Among the unwilling were the Sonderkommandos, Jewish inmates selected for the grisly job of removing bodies from gas chambers and operating crematoriums. They were systematically murdered every few months and replaced by other Jews whose lives were extended briefly. None were "perpetrators" despite their direct involvement in the horrendous business of exterminating six million people.

Paslov is dead wrong in his statement that a relatively few of the victims were killed by the Nazis. True, it took relatively few SS to run extermination camps such as Belzec. In 1942 a mere two dozen SS supervised the murder of 434,000 Jews there in 10 months. Yes, the dirty work was carried out by the Trawnikis and others; but we must not lose sight of the fact that the true perpetrators "of the slaughter" were the Nazis.

Joseph Beben

Carson City

Go ahead, make me a liar Sen. Ensign

Sen. John Ensign: I get a "public option" for health care because I was in Vietnam. It works very well, and gives me some choices that my wife, children and grandchildren do not have - especially the choice to tell insurance companies that I do not want to pay their unconscionable tax.

My friends and family get an earful about American politicians (Republicans and Democrats alike): You are all servants of the insurance industry, willing and eager to sacrifice the lives and health of ordinary Americans for the profits of that industry.

For the sake of those who are not rich or influential, I wish you would make me a liar. Just as you know that raising money for national defense cannot be privatized, you should know that raising money for health care should be socialized.

I claim that you are a hypocrite to call taxes for war necessary or virtuous, and taxes for health care unnecessary or evil. Make me a liar!

Bradford Merrill

Carson City