Letters to the Editor

Both political parties are full of it states reader

I do not care what party you are from, you are full of crap.

We do not need higher taxes and/or socialism. We need freedom!

Thank you,

Linda Oliver

Neighborhood watch program successful at deterring crime

As more residents move into our town, the chance of being victimized by crime increases. The most effective way to combat crime is for neighbors to watch out for one another.

The Nye County Neighborhood Watch is a Sheriff’s Auxiliary program which includes two Facebook sites. The Nye County Facebook site consists of 5,500 members and the Pahrump Nevada site has 4,000 members. The members are concerned with the safety of residents of this valley. Whenever an accident, fire, burglary or any other incident is witnessed by a member it is posted on these sites after being reported to 911 and is distributed instantly to all members. Therefore, the two Facebook sites are an excellent method for local information. These are community sites, thus no swearing, advertising or ranting are tolerated.

As coordinator of the Nye County Neighborhood Watch it is my job to encourage members to look out for one another. I have drills on the Facebook sites for members to go outside and look around sometimes using astronomy or sunsets. I encourage cameras to be used as visual evidence. The night owl project requests members that are up all night to take a look outside.

Information is key to reducing crime here in Nye County and at a time that there is an insane movement to defund the police it is necessary to support and assist our peacekeepers any way possible. The Neighborhood Watch program is a successful program in deterring crime.

Edward Underhill,

Nye County Neighborhood Watch coordinator,

Sheriff’s Auxiliary

KGB-style vaccinations should be enforced says a politician in the Midwest

Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.) says Democrats want to “knock down your door KGB-style to force people to get vaccinated.” (Washington Post, “Patience has worn thin,” 7-23-21)

Rep. Smith apparently has little understanding of what “KGB-style” really means. It is not the same as advertising a vaccination program for smallpox, polio, measles, or covid-19, undertaken to save young people’s lives and hopes for the future.

Actually, America has taken the opposite of a KGB approach. Party leaders Biden and Trump are both refusing to criticize the unvaccinated. Both power brokers are on board with the post-World War II libertarian current in American life that says people should not be forced or shamed to change behavior.

Just one problem. This airy little bit of philosophy goes against the grain of our 245-year-old criminal justice system, whereby we absolutely do force people to clean up behavior, at pain of actual punishment.

Autocrats are happy to torpedo criminal and public health accountability because they want the American people to decline to hold them accountable when they themselves do wrong while in power. When they fail to follow the Constitution or the statutory law, they hope to be supported by the huge and growing underclass of unprosecuted and unvaccinated Americans they have treated so softly.

Sincerely,

Kimball Shinkoskey

Julie Butler

There are some who think the US Constitution not worth preserving anymore

Nor should it be, and I’m not talking about what’s being called “public service,” which has predominantly moved into the realm of “personal service” for many at public expense. During the days of celebrating our nation’s independence, there were many troubling statements by many in influential and leadership positions that also trickled down to the students of higher learning institutions.

At this time, a general attitude seems to be growing that we may eventually find very destructive. This attitude seems to have found its way into the leadership of our military. The U.S. military has been traditionally an apolitical institution regardless of the commander-in-chief’. Even during the time of the trouble in Vietnam, where many of us personally questioned the goals and tactics of our civilian and military leadership directed us, we all did our duty regardless.

Generally, many of the negative statements made recently essentially tell us and most of the world “our founding was on a false ideal”, and is not worth preserving.

Even students in institutions of higher learning have seemed to adopt this premise, saying they do not believe there is anything very special about us and the U.S. Constitution; some actually plan on going to that more ‘utopic’ place after graduating, but were unable to say exactly where that was but was sure there was such a place.

Sadly when enough younger people have this idea and also parents of younger children also adopt these thoughts, there will be few willing to really “serve” and risk life and limb to defend such a perceived country. It is easy to look at history with today’s eyes, criticize all the later proven wrong thoughts and actions. It is much more difficult to try to figure out all the thoughts and influences at those times to understand some of the challenges of those times.

In 1859 the much celebrated (even today) Charles Darin’s first book was called, “On the Origin of Spies by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races”. Does anyone really doubt what he was inferring?

In our founding documents, we find the words, “in order to form a more perfect union”. It doesn’t say we have a more perfect union, only that it is a goal and should be worked toward, though being human we will never totally achieve, it is nonetheless a worthy goal.

David Jaronik

Administration’s policies, school curriculum concerning

As I read the July 2 letter to the editor submitted by Ms. Stevens somehow I get the sense, that for whatever reason, she feels deeply that the Republican party is bent on putting the United States on the road to socialism, communism, fascism, authoritarianism, etc., and thereby sending the country to “Hell in a Handbasket”.

I’m only a high school graduate, but I thought the U.S. was doing all right under Trump’s Republican administration. Taxes went down, Income went up, employment went up and unemployment went down. Heavy sanctions were placed on Iran, North Korea, China and Russia; are these accomplishments all bad? If so I urge you to explain WHY?

Admittedly, Trump at times was rude, crude and socially repugnant, but in many cases he got positive results. Examples? For the first time in NATO’s history, many more NATO members actually started paying 2% of their nation’s GDP toward NATO’s common defense! Amazing, eh? His administration rebuilt our armed forces after eight years of neglect by the Obama administration while “Building the Wall” that actually slowed down the entry of Illegal immigrants (called “undocumented immigrants now) and drugs from entering the U.S. Illegally! Funny how well that worked, isn’t it? Then he got Mexico to hold prospective immigrants from entering the U.S. until their applications were processed. Was that so bad? Remember it was the Trump administration that oversaw the Development of Covid-19 vaccines in the unheard of time frame of under a year. Was that bad too? President Biden mentioned once that he “inherited a mess” when he took office. Remember that?

President Biden actually campaigned on easing immigration controls, including a moratorium on deportations, an end to former President Donald Trump’s “Wait in Mexico” policy for asylum-seekers and halting construction of the border wall. Those statements gave migrants good reason to believe it would be easier to get into the United States if he were elected, and now of course hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (prospective future Democratic voters?) have entered the U.S.! How’s that working out? What percentage of the immigrants (legal or illegal) entering the U.S. on a daily basis have Covid-19? Or have been exposed to Covid-19? Have ANY of them been vaccinated? Where do the illegal immigrants go that are never caught? Who knows?

It seems like the president’s decision to throw VP Harris “under the bus” by putting her in charge of solving the border crisis isn’t working out real well either, is it? He created the problem, then decided it was somebody else’s problem. Now that’s a classy move for an experienced politician! (For whatever it’s worth, in my personal opinion, I don’t think the present administration wants the border crisis solved). Why? Ask the president, he seems to have all the answers.

Another of Present Biden’s infamous decisions was to allow biological males who “identify” as females to participate in collegiate female events like sports. A week ago the national news reported yet another male who “identified” as a female entered a female’s shower room and disrobed. Cool, eh? He canceled a U.S. oil pipeline, thereby upsetting Canada and terminating many good-paying jobs and putting yet more laborers out of work while simultaneously dropping sanctions on Russia and thereby allowing the completion of an oil pipeline from Russia into Northern Europe! How in hell does that make sense?

Are you even just a little concerned that our schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with programs like critical race theory and woke theory and the 1619 program while U.S. schoolchildren score lower than many other countries in benchmarks such as math and science. According to the Business Insider report in 2018, the U.S. public education worldwide ranking was 38th in math scores and 24th in science. President Biden has now stated he will not interfere with the teachers’ unions in this regard. (Maybe he values the union votes too much to upset them, you think?)

You began your informative letter by stating Senate Minority Leader McConnell was an “obstructionist” because he refused to let President Biden fill a vacant Supreme Court seat with a Democrat. Currently there are no vacant seats on the SCOTUS. But he did refuse to let President Obama fill a vacant SCOTUS seat after Judge Scalia died.

Incidentally, the first time the “nuclear option” was invoked was on Nov. 21, 2013 when a Democratic Senate led by Harry Reid (D-NV) used the procedure to eliminate the 60-vote rule for presidential nominations (other than nominations to the Supreme Court).

Other than inflation and burgeoning welfare, the biggest problem I see for you and I, and 300-plus millions of other U.S. citizens is this: At some point whoever is making the decisions in D.C. (Obama? Soros? The “Gang of Four?) is going to get tired of Biden mumbling erratically and get rid of him. Then what? VP Harris gets promoted? Good grief! After her, who’s next in line? Pelosi! Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Ray Waldhauser