Letters to the Editor

Hopefully we will come to other side a better people

“Listen to the experts” has been the repeated narrative for some time now, particularly by many in the political realm and a large number of their supporting factions. Let’s look at their waffling and stances that changed in direct opposition to early stances, from including the experts, “this virus is like the flu”, “closing down travel from infected areas is not necessary”, “masks don’t help at all”, “come join us, enjoy all the festivities and food celebrating the Chinese New Year” on both coasts.

Granted, early on, little was known about this virus, but certain things were realized about it early on too, with the most important thing being who died and who didn’t from it. It became quite clear the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, and a combination of the two were at the greatest risk. There were few cases of outlying exceptions but those were less than getting hit by a bus.

This is no different than luck, good or bad or divine intervention, like when I wasn’t exactly where I was supposed to be during a rocket attack in Vietnam at a given moment.

I fit in at least one category of the risk groups, took all the experts’ precautions advice, and still got hit by that COVID bus, so I’m aware of how serious it can be, but I also remember what it’s like to feel somewhat physically impervious to such things as being sick when you have obligations and responsibilities, like feeding a family.

Any cognitive adult owes others a degree of respect for the safety of others around them, but those who feel at risk also need to realize they have a degree of responsibility for themselves too which they actually can control. We shouldn’t turn into the old man yelling at the kids playing ball, “stay off my grass!” And the latest “expert” flip-flop is three feet social distancing is fine. I pray we come out the other side of this a better people but fear many of our leaders are going to make it a very difficult road to do so.

David Jaronik

Speed limit laws should be enforced with more ticketing

We moved to Pahrump almost 18 years ago and were pleasantly surprised how friendly the folks were and the management of the town was to make you feel like you were part of the community. So what has changed? Well we have had several meetings with the sheriff’s office, Nye County traffic folks requesting that enforcement of the speed limit be enforced on Mt. Charleston Drive, both north and south of Calvada Blvd.

The street has turned into a thoroughfare for commercial traffic vehicles, and the school buses exceed the speed limit with the children aboard. Speeds have been recorded as high as 105 miles per hour and it doesn’t matter what time of day, the 35 mph is ignored, especially on weekends. I have pointed to the 35 mph sign and have been responded to by a hand signal which I’m not sure identifies the legal number of their parents or their IQ.

We have had one young man killed walking home from school and just recently a young girl walking her dog, was killed on Fontana Street just up from our home.

When some of the sheriff’s children attended the school on Wilson, there was always an officer ticketing violators. We have had a fire hydrant broken off, a senior lady’s fence run down by a careless driver and several incidents between speeding drivers and residents on this street.

The sheriff’s office knows our problem and but we rarely see them here and they in fact speed through here as well and they are not in pursuit. We need to display by saturated ticketing so the word will spread to those who ignore traffic signs. The worse thing that could happen would be writer’s cramps for the sheriffs doing their job. Knowing there is a problem and the sheriff’s office not doing anything about it, is a reflection on our Nye County sheriff!

W.R. Owens

Residents give shout-out to sheriff for speedy response

A shout-out to Nye County Sheriff’s Department and our chief of police! Our security alarm went off at 3 a.m. last night and we were out of town. I received the call and ADT sent the police to our home. Within 10 minutes three officers arrived and found everything in order. I cannot express how grateful we were for their prompt response and grateful our home had not been compromised.

Please can we stop being disrespectful to our police departments. All this talk of defunding does nothing more than incapacitate the entire police department and it’s going to hurt people. When they start reducing the police departments’ budgets and redistributing those funds toward “essential social services”, you’re not going to see anyone from HUD, a representative from educational department,, mental health care or any youth service showing up at your property at 3 a.m. to check on you or your property.

If we don’t stay vigilant on this matter of defunding and our Second Amendment rights, we’re going to find ourselves with minimal police protection and no guns to protect ourselves. We the citizens need our fully funded police departments and the services they provide.

Mary Greenspan Blackwill

Passing of new bill will mean changes in voting process

I believe the public needs to know what the Democratic Congress of the United States are promoting with their new bill HR1. This bill will make the U.S. Congress in charge of the congressional elections, in place of the states. 2. Any challenge to HR1 can only be filed in District court for the District of Columbia by only one attorney. 3. Mandates automatic voter registration in all 50 states for anyone who gives their information to a government agency. 4. Does away with signature requirements for absentee ballots and make states accept ballots given within 10 days after election day. 5. Would make it illegal to verify addresses of voters or to remove ineligible voters. 6. States must get approval from federal government to make any changes to voting rules. 7. States will not be allowed to require ID for voting. 8. Ensures that illegal immigrants can vote. 9. Allows same day voter registration. 10. Allows 16-year-olds to vote and requires states to encourage this. 11. Prohibits the publication of misleading information about elections. (Of course this is according to someone’s idea of what is misleading.) 12. Legalizes nationwide mail-in voting without photo ID. 13. Legalizes nationwide early mail-in voting. 14. Any designated person can turn in absentee ballots. 15. Requires colleges and universities to hire campus vote coordinators. 16. Mandates that states make absentee voter boxes available for 45 days within an election. 17. There can be no campaign dollars for covering ads on the internet. There are many more parts to this bill and you could look them up on line if interested.

Each one of us should decide if HR1 is appropriate, and what this will do for our elections.

To me it looks like a scheme to get the Democrats in office and keep them there with no Republican representation and voids U.S citizenship..

Judy Pendleton

Good, bad, and ugly are present in today’s society

I see that a biological (trans) male has been allowed to win the Miss Silver State USA pageant. Some questions: What kind of people deny reality and make believe that obvious disorders like transsexuality are not disorders? What kind of people put the disordered feelings of transgenders above the feelings of decent, moral, normal females who don’t want to share their restrooms and showers with biological males who believe they are female? What kind of people let disordered feelings trump science, logic, natural law, and morality?

What kind of people deny the obvious scientific fact that there are only two human genders: heterosexual males and females? What kind of people want to normalize all sorts of sexual and gender disorders? (Sane people want to fix physical and psychological disorders, not irrationally make believe they are not disorders.)

What kind of people put heterophobic homosexuals on the same level as normal heterosexuals? What kind of people offend millions of Blacks by putting them on the same level as the sexually aberrant, by comparing involuntary skin color with voluntary aberrant behaviors? What kind of people want to let biological (trans) males compete against normal females in sports?

What kind of people have values so upside-down, backward, and corrupt that they actually believe it’s OK to discriminate against, legally persecute, and make criminals out of decent, moral businesspeople (e.g., bakers, photographers) who merely don’t want to cater to heterophobic homosexuals?

As an article in Psychology Today once noted: “people with mental disorders so easily rise to positions of power” (Steve Taylor, “In the Seat of Pathocracy,” Nov./Dec. 2019, p. 28). It’s a long story why that is the case, but it’s time we faced the fact that the extremists and fanatics running the liberal movement are very probably psychologically disordered people.

Wayne Lela

Renewable energy and applications will continue to expand

It is too late to stop or slow renewable energy and all its related benefits. The train has already left the station. General Motors recently announced that all of Europe would be running on electric cars within the next 10 years, and is currently changing its production platforms to accomplish this task. TESLA, a manufacturer of electric vehicles and batteries, has completely changed the economic landscape in nearby Reno, having created thousands of new high-paying jobs. Coal mining lost 58% of its jobs between 1980 and 2015. In 2018, 2.4 million new jobs were created in clean renewable energy while only half that many were created in fossil fuel. Renewable energy is already cost-competitive with fossil fuel, and RE is rapidly becoming less expensive while fossil fuel costs have risen, and will continue to rise due to less supply and added costs like fracking. Even here in Pahrump, groundbreaking for storage of energy was recently announced. Moreover, RE will be better for our health because our air will get cleaner.

The benefits to consumers from RE and its related uses are going to be breathtaking. But first we need to recognize the difference on sources of electricity. For, example, if we purchase an electric vehicle, or EV, and use electricity from a coal-powered generator, then our contribution to reducing greenhouse gases are not as much when compared to RE generation. I understand that our local power is purchased on the open market, usually at the lowest cost per provider. Roughly, in the U.S. overall, 40% of our energy comes from natural gas, cleaner than coal or diesel, but still polluting. Coal is the source for about 20%, nuclear about 20%, and renewables, including wind and hydropower, about 20%. About 40% of our energy, consisting of nuclear and renewables, is clean. Clearly there is a need to increase RE generation. And we are. However, our benefits with what we now have are going to be overwhelming.

The EVs will not only tremendously help to clean the air, the savings for consumers will allow them to take their in laws out to our finest restaurants, help parents to save more for their children’s education, and have more money left for housing. An economic boom is about to happen. For example, in 2018, research at the University of Michigan revealed that EVs cost less than 12% to operate when compared with fossil fuel-powered vehicles. The average operating cost for one year for an EV was $485 compared $ 1,117 for gasoline powdered cars. The average fueling cost savings per year with an EV is $800 to $1,000 per year. Owners of EVs over lifetime, will save on average $ 4,600 on repair and maintenance. The aforementioned should not be difficult for us to understand when we compare all the moving parts of a combustion engine to an electric motor. For example, I used an electric motor in my business for over 30 years with no repair nor maintenance costs.

I predict that the aforementioned is going to happen sooner than most of us realize. The genie is out of the bottle. No man, politician, or interests of dirty oil, can stop the tide of improved health and financial benefits about to happen. All our governments, federal, state, counties, and cities, will soon be replacing their vehicles with EVs. This by itself is huge. Likely, General Motors will begin to deliver from its new fleet of EVs this year. Soon, you are going to see EVs in our parking lots. Thanks somewhat to Biden, our pockets will be stuffed with the new COVID money to buy new EVs. We may have to wait awhile on back-orders, but the EVs with better lifestyles are coming.

Jim Ferrell

Presenting ID not a problem at voting polls says reader

I just read the article by Steve Sibelius titled “Democratic election bill would make it easier to vote in Nevada in the March 26, 2021 edition of the Pahrump Valley Times.

From what I read Sibelius is anti-I.D. when it comes to voting. I am a senior and I disagree with him. Let’s be honest about showing identification. I voted in person. When I arrived I was directed to a voting machine. It did not work. I was moved to another machine. I submitted my vote and it appeared to take. When I tried to print it would not do so. I never got a printout of what I submitted. I don’t know if my vote was counted or not. I could not tell from the service the Nevada secretary of states signed onto for checking your ballot. My point is simple. When you have malfunctions of equipment, it causes one to question the integrity of the vote. If we have equipment malfunctions, we certainly can have malfunctions with paper ballots.

We saw the pile of undeliverable mail ballots thrown on the ground by the mailbox of several different apartment complexes by the mail persons. We also saw the number of deceased who voted in Nevada. All of this was courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

As a senior, I must show my government issued I.D. regularly. I do not have a problem with that. I must present my driver’s license in order to renew it. I must present my driver’s license, Medicare and insurance cards for medical treatment and hospitalization. I must present my driver’s license to TSA when I fly. And, if the airlines have their way - I will have to present a vaccine passport. If you gamble, you have to show your driver’s license to obtain a casino rewards card. When you write a check not only must you present a government photo ID but you must also provide your telephone number. To receive state or federal aid, you need identification. To obtain utility and water service requires identification. There are all sorts of people who manage to do this - from the rich to the poor. To obtain a passport you have to show who you are with plenty of documentation. What exactly makes voting any different?

No, I do not buy for one split second that it is a burden for some people to present a government photo I.D. Election dates are established. If anything, I can see people volunteering to help those who don’t have an I.D. obtain one well in advance of the election. That would be a great party initiative. I do not believe it is up to our government to make special rules to accommodate those without an I.D. If I have to have one - so do they.

Ballot harvesting is a dream come true for the Democrats. It is bogus and just another way to cheat. I can understand if each party wants to vet party members to collect ballots from senior homes and other locations but only if the collectors of the ballots are provided with party credentials and no fail chain of custody is in place. But the collectors of these ballots should be credentialed with a required photo badge that cannot be duplicated or altered and it must be worn at the time of collection.

For those that have recently or in recent years moved to our county I welcome you and your choice to join us. For some of you, I do not understand why you want to recreate what you fled, I have read about a few cities and counties in Oregon that seceded and joined Idaho. I thought a long time about this. I know there has been a long standing effort for Nevada’s rural counties to secede and become their own state. I am not opposed to this but I am concerned that our total population may not be enough for us to sustain without a heavy increase in taxes to be self-supporting. Personally, I think what the Oregon cities did was brilliant. It would not require boundaries to touch. Think about it - most rural counties across America are red. If rural counties were to leave their blue states and join the red states - that might create a positive dynamic in our country. It might also change the number of U.S. representatives. It requires research and it is something we should look into.

Sheila Geesa

Unfortunately, new gun laws won’t stop mass shootings

Here we go again, politicians and their gun control, which has never been defined for me. The way I see it, the only control over a gun is from the person holding it. Let me be clear, I am as appalled as anybody over these recent mass

shootings, but the legislators are all over the news with their latest rhetoric about how we can prevent them. Let’s look at the facts, in spite of all the laws that have been passed over many years, they have not and cannot stop these shootings. Why not, first, we have the second amendment, to ban the ownership of guns, it would have to be overturned by another amendment and that is not going to happen. Most of the politicians seem to think that background checks are the answer, we already have them in place, which is OK, but criminals don’t acquire guns from legitimate gun dealers, they steal them, buy them from a private party, or from other criminals who probably stole them. In a recent interview several legislators were being interviewed about the gun problem, they obviously new nothing about guns, didn’t know that the civilian AR15 is not the same as the military version which is fully automatic and that any semi-automatic hunting rifle can be fired as rapidly as the AR15, also they didn’t know what ammo they used, not that it matters, but it just proves that they are gun illiterate. Finally, it is estimated that there are over 300 million guns in the possession of civilians in this county so, the guns are out there and the demented people that commit these egregious shootings are out there. The bottom line is, anybody in this county can get a gun, legally or illegally and sadly no amount of new legislation can stop it.

George Cross

Politicians exploiting media when promoting gun control

The current news is dominated by the recent mass shooting in Denver in which 10 people were killed. Events like these are horrendous tragedies, and shouldn’t happen.

I wish I knew how to prevent them, but I don’t know if they even can be prevented. But I do know that gun control laws are ineffective and counterproductive. They are punitive to law-abiding citizens who have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Criminals don’t obey laws; that’s what makes them criminals.

What really disgusts me is how politicians exploit these events as excuses to come out of the woodwork and get face time on TV to promote their agendas. Completely predictably, a horde of them are out promoting “tougher” gun control laws.

A problem is that these laws only apply to new gun sales through licensed dealers. They do not address the 300 million guns currently floating around the country, most of which are not registered anywhere.

It’s interesting that most or all of the guns used in these mass shootings were purchased legally from dealers by people who passed background checks.

And then there’s Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic representative from Colorado where the last shooting took place. She’s exploiting the assaults on Asian-Americans as leverage to try to force President Biden to nominate an Asian-American to a cabinet position for the sake of diversity. She’s threatening to indiscriminately vote against any caucasian who is nominated for any cabinet position if Biden doesn’t give her what she wants.

Can someone please explain to me what part of this is OK? It’s racist blackmail and blatantly unconstitutional. Government posts should be filled based on qualifications, not race or diversity. Fortunately, Ms. Duckworth has backed down and is no longer playing this game.

What is wrong with these people? Does an opportunity for political exploitation eclipse the interests of their constituents? Unfortunately yes.

The actions and agendas of candidates should be carefully considered when election time comes around. We all need to get out and vote in an informed manner, and vote people who are exploiting their position for personal agenda and/or gain out of office.

David G. Alexander