Letters to the Editor

Lights are main reason insects attracted to area

According to the May 27, 2020 article in Southern Living, “If you chance upon a murder hornet nest, make peace with your Maker, run away quickly, and call an exterminator.

Unlike other hornets, European giant hornets are active at night and attracted to lights. You may want to turn off that porch light from now on.”

Lights that shine into the sky are the greatest attractor of insects. Lights should shine down only. There is nothing in the sky that needs to be illuminated. Humans don’t walk in the sky.

If you are wondering how murder hornets and other pests migrate from Europe and other world locations, they hitch hike rides in shipping containers. Mice and rats are usually exterminated before containers are shipped but shipping containers are rarely sprayed with insecticide.

Invasive species should not be carelessly brought into the United States. New Zealand, sprays insecticide inside the passenger compartment and cargo hold before passengers disembarq and cargo is unloaded.

We know from experience that “More than 45 million grasshoppers were drawn to the bright city lights of Las Vegas in the summer of 2019, according to a study published Wednesday. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)”

What airborne pestilence will the light of Pahrump and Las Vegas, attract? The big cicada invasion of 2021 has already started in some parts of the eastern United States, and billions of these mysterious red-eyed insects known as Brood X will soon be digging their way out of the ground and flocking to trees in more than a dozen states.

Will the hatching of cicadas invade Las Vegas and the surrounding area? (Note: grasshoppers attracted to lights are currently invading Billings.

Keep the lights on and we will soon find out which insect swarm will invade. It will happen again and with greater frequency as Pahrump and Las Vegas emit more light.

More and brighter lights are being installed daily. Grasshoppers were mostly just an annoyance but the next swarm may carry the diseases mosquitos carry. According to the CDC, mosquito-borne diseases kill over 1,000,000 people per year.

Is it really worth leaving your outdoor lights on all night even if nobody is outside your house?

Fear of the dark is an irrational belief that something unreal may be hiding in the dark ready to eat you. Murder hornets are real and will sting with possible deadly consequences.

Let’s turn off the lights when we are not outdoors. Extinguishing lights will ensure dark skies so that insects and other living creatures will sleep as nature intended.

Dark skies have a purpose that humans must not interfere with or we may pay with our lives or the lives of our pets.

Jean Frenette

A two-party system is needed to maintain balance

Mitch McConnell – Obstructionist leading the Republican Party to communism and fascism.

■ McConnell states he will refuse to let President Joe Biden fill a Supreme Court seat with a Democrat. Currently SCOTUS has six right-wing and three left-wing justices. An unbalanced SCOTUS is unhealthy for the country as it is only representative of one party. A balanced court of four to five is much more representative and, thus, healthier. McConnell’s statement further indicates he would like to see more imbalance than it currently is.

■ McConnell says he is ‘100 percent’ focused on ‘stopping’ Biden’s administration. Again, this is very detrimental to our country as it creates a one-party dominant state – one where any opposition parties are allowed to exist but have no chance of gaining power or limiting the power of the dominate party.

I know what you Trumpers are thinking right now: That is fantastic; let us get rid of the Democratic party, take over SCOTUS and run this country the way we want it run.

What you do not know is exactly what you fear and claim to see, incorrectly, in the Democratic party. You are promoting communism, authoritarianism, and fascism!!!!!

Examples where we have seen one-party states are China, the Soviet Union, Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany. A one-party state is a common trait of communist Marxist-Leninist and fascism. Apparently, Trumpers are not aware of this as they continue to maintain a goal of extinguishing the Democratic Party. Should that happened, the door will be wide open for just what they fear: communism, fascism, authoritarianism and more of the like.

In other countries which have a one-party state, the ruling party suppresses other parties, without banning them.

Their power is used to prevent smaller parties from getting more votes by using election fraud, gerrymandering (Republicans have unilateral control of it in a critical number of states) and court decisions (SCOTUS).

Gee, does this sound familiar? Trumpers want to suppress the Democratic party, claiming election fraud, when in fact, the only fraud found so far has been by Republicans; the act of controlling gerrymandering; and, as McConnell wishes, complete control of SCOTUS.

I feel I have made my point completely clear. Though I know there will be those who choose to bend and twist my words (Trumpers) in their attempt to prove me wrong and, once again, prove they are right – no matter what the consequences of their blind truth – consequences I have clearly stated here.

I am not wrong and you will continue to blindly walk down your path of ignorance.

CJ Stevens

Being eco-friendly only so successful in the real world

I found Jim Ferrell’s PV Times letter of June 18, interesting on various levels. First I’m glad there are people willing to buy and hopefully advance innovation in a variety of areas when I think of things like personal phones, flat screen TVs etc., their initial cost and how they improved through time. The part I also remember is how few people across the country can really afford these things.

I remember buying my first car in 1968 after leaving the military, for $300 to get to work; it wasn’t much but it served me well for almost two years, after which I got $100 for parts. Jim did not state whether his out-the-door price included the $7,500 tax credit and I certainly don’t begrudge him or anyone else who takes any legal tax break, but it makes it apparent the more the government meddles in the free enterprise system the more it seems to benefit wealthier people, while in reality giving crumbs to those struggling.

As government gets away from its primary job (essentially being an unbiased umpire, including on the world stage for this country), instead of trying to force social behavior, evidence shows new products are invented, innovation accelerates as a general rule.

There’s an interesting book called “Apocalypse Never” by Michael Shellenberger, that admits to being a hard-core “genie”, going as far as the push to outlaw meat at one time, but was open enough to look at the big picture and how the real world works. He rightly knows by being perfectly eco-friendly, while your neighbor is cooking and heating with wood or animal dung, your air won’t be clean either, so the question is do you want to pay for them to be eco-friendly too and do you have enough resources to do it for everyone else? Many government officials seem to think so, but printing money works only so long, knowing that today my $300 car would cost about $2,500 in today’s dollars.

David Jaronik