Letters to the editor Jan. 23

Jimmy Carter

where are you?

As I write this letter, I'm sure I speak for many senior citizens who rely on interest income to supplement their incomes.

At the present time, interest on savings is at an all-time low - less than 1 percent at most banks. At the same time, banks charge homebuyers 5 and 6 percent on mortgage loans. Something is wrong with this picture.

In 1980, I took out my first IRA, locked it in for 10 years at 14 percent. What is the difference between now and then? Where is Jimmy Carter when we need him?

LeRoy Jorgenson

Carson City

Freeway project

cost unbelievable

It's unbelievable to me to see an article for artwork for our freeways in the amount of $2 million plus. This will become the new target for graffiti artists, and we will be paying for constant cleanup also.

And, this coming at a time when state workers are being considered for yet another furlough day and no overtime during the furlough pay period.

And, our education system is being asked to sacrifice even more in the lives of our children and our future. Unbelievable.

Norma Sommers

Carson City

Avoid fool's errand

on health reform bill

Is the health care reform bill unconstitutional?

In the Jan. 13 New England Journal of Medicine, constitutional lawyer Jack Balkin writes in an article that there is no legal basis for such a claim. His points include:

1) The individual mandate would not require everyone to buy health insurance. Exclusions include those receiving Medicare, Medicaid, military families, persons with religious objections and those with employer-provided health insurance.

2) The mandate is not a mandate, but a penalty tax, which people would not have to pay if they purchased health insurance. Current law includes many such penalty taxes.

3) Decades of precedents support that Congress has the power to pass legislation that falls within the Constitution's General Welfare Clause, and the power to regulate commerce ... among the several states.

4) Some claim that the individual mandate violates the Fifth Amendment, taking property without just compensation. However, taxes levied on a large population that regulate people's behavior are not considered takings under the Constitution.

The article concludes: "To strike down the individual mandate, it would have to reject decades of precedents. It is very unlikely that there are five votes on the current court for staging such a constitutional revolution." The full article can be found at: http://healthcare

reform.nejm.org/?p=2764=TOC

One would hope that our governor, in his desperation to prop up his re-election campaign, is not serious about wasting taxpayers' money on a constitutionality lawsuit over the mandate aspect of health reform. At best that would be a fool's errand.

Jon Nowlin

Carson City

Why do so many

come here for care?

Marilee Swirczek recently wrote about a broken health system. America's health system is in better shape than Social Security. Swirczek seems to think that the government is competent to run a health care system.

Compared to the health system, Social Security is a disaster. Thomas R. Saving, a public trustee for the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds, let the secret out of the bag in an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 22, 2004. Remember, Social Security is a simple operation that taxes Americans, holds the money, and then pays it out to them after they are 67. The following figures are from that article.

"Social Security's funding gap for the next 75 years stands at $5.2 trillion. Medicare's unfunded costs come to $28 trillion, including $8.1 trillion due to the new prescription drug benefit."

Swirczek apparently thinks that a government that cannot manage a simple pension scheme is somehow fit to manage medical procedure. The reason people don't want a Socialist medical system is that it has been tried in England, Canada and other nations, and failed. Socialism doesn't work anywhere. Just because we import it to the United States, doesn't mean it will work here.

Swirczek should check the number of physicians per 100,000 citizens in the U.K. and Canada. She should ask herself why thousands of Canadians and Europeans come to the U.S. for medical care. Maybe Socialism and medicine don't mix well.

David K. Schumann

Minden