Letters to the Editor

Resident disputes timing of trash disposal rate increase

Just read your article about the 20% increase in trash disposal rates. This is shameful during these difficult times. Fuel prices at lowest rates in years is certainly an offset to operating costs that give the company a windfall in the short term.

At a time when people are losing jobs, a 20% rise in the cost of an essential service pushed through at year end during the holidays is insensitive. I had my pay reduced by 10% this year and am grateful for the job I have. The commission should be more in touch with those they represent.

Andy Weiss

Privilege of voting is reserved for citizens

The privilege of electing our government representatives is an American citizen’s right. Non-citizens by law cannot vote as per our laws.

Citizens should have ID that should be shown when voting. After all, in most states, to get a driver’s license you have to have a birth certificate, proof of naturalization and other specific items per state requirements.

To assure only citizens vote it might mean someone else who isn’t and illegally votes will lose their right to stay here in America. Also, those who pay people to vote need to have legal actions taken against them as well. Fraud needs to have stiff enough penalties to make it not worthwhile for even the most affluent.

From our house to all – have a great 2021.

Henry Hurlbut

Nye County needs a better plan for administering COVID-19 vaccinations

So why is the vaccine now staying in containers and not going to seniors in Southern Nevada who need it? As I write this, death rates are up and Nevada ranks near the bottom of states administering the vaccine with 27% administered. Wake up America and start working on a comprehensive distribution plan! We are tired of hearing that it was the holidays; get tough and do your job.

How about administering shots the way the Las Vegas Veterans Hospital has done? First, it quickly vaccinated 925 staff. Then it set up a clinic to vaccinate the oldest and most vulnerable veterans from three states. If someone did not show up, the clinic gave the dose to another veteran on the scene. This is in contrast to states like Florida where vulnerable seniors camp out all night, or worse still, rich patrons of a nursing home and their country club cronies get the shots reserved for residents.

While Nye County is doing somewhat better, vaccinating health care personnel at the fire station with a drive through clinic and distributing some vaccine to outlying areas like Beatty and Tonopah, all of Southern Nevada needs to make a comprehensive plan to deliver the vaccine more quickly. (After all, Reno has already started vaccinating its seniors over 75).

In large cities like Las Vegas, enlist the national guard, nursing and medical students, ambulance EMTs, interns, and regular doctors, nurses, and physicians’ assistants to staff sites 24/7. For Vegas use Allegiant Stadium to deliver doses as a large city in Arizona is doing.

For Nye County, create more rural health teams by enlisting veterans and the sheriff’s auxiliary, who have health experience, and for Pahrump use locations like schools, churches, civic and veterans’ organizations, and parks to create mobile drive-through clinics.

Most of us are tired of hearing excuses that the vaccine is being held back for second doses or comes in unpredictable ways. At least get the plan in place. And when it arrives, schedule an immediate clinic.

The failure to plan to do this is putting the most vulnerable in danger. Start vaccinating the oldest first. As the vaccine is available here in Nye County, open up a clinic. Then when I show up with an ID of one over 75, no red tape, give me the vaccine.

I look forward to the day when all levels of government create a comprehensive plan based on age and vulnerability. All government resources need to mobilize to deliver the vaccine. Then perhaps by summer all who wanted the vaccine could get it.

Betty Cotner

Excessive lights on neighboring property seen as threat to quality of life

Pahrump is experiencing increasing annoying lights that interfere with circadian rhythms of people and animals. Recently a neighbor who moved into my neighborhood from another state installed a light on his barn that floods all neighboring properties with so much light that it looks like a used car parking lot in Las Vegas. Their horses never sleep at night and neighborhood dogs are now barking all night. When I walk out my back door I cannot see the sidewalk. We are senior citizens. My wife is 81 years old. A trip and fall because of this inconsiderate neighbor will eventually result in a fall and broken bones.

I also noticed intense lights on private properties that flood into streets like several on Homestead and Indole. These lights shining into city streets interfere with one’s ability to see the road. They are not street lights that point down on the road. They point directly into a driver’s eyes making it impossible to see the road.

Why are these intense lights allowed to be on all night? We can’t enjoy the stars anymore. These people should have stayed in the states they came from or move to Las Vegas, the brightest city on earth. Outdoor lights should point down onto the light owner’s property only. They should not be allowed to interfere with our quality of life.

Jean Frennette

In Washington, it really is who you know that matters

Fair-minded people agree, the riot in D.C. needs to be condemned and also should receive an honest, rather than the hypocritical evaluation of the riots that have occurred over the last eight or so months. I’m not aware of one person of power or influence who condoned them, while so many powerful and influential people ignored, denied, and sometimes justified the rioting, property destruction, burning, looting, injury, and even killing that took place all those months, unless those certain events fit a scenario desired.

After arrests, many from areas of media entertainment, and even political candidates raised money for those arrested during these riots, While other than possible friends and family, no such widespread effort for those arrests from D.C’s riots.

For some time, many people are aware of the many double standards, at least for the last four-plus years. We’ve seen a U.S. Navy sailor prosecuted and sent to prison for violating the rule of not allowing pictures to be taken on a submarine that he took to show his young daughter where he worked.

Then our secretary of state, who spent much of her adult life around classified material and was certainly well briefed on the rules and serious laws on handling classified material, determines she is above such rules and laws and uses her own personal system and even destroys incriminating evidence that confirms her arrogance toward those rules and laws and receives less than a slap on the wrist. Actually receiving protection by the most powerful people, essentially saying she didn’t mean it. It may have cost her an election but didn’t cost her any freedom, unlike the lesser serious breach of ‘rules and laws’.

Then most of us watched, open-mindedly, for more than four years all the investigations and accusations, spending millions of taxpayer dollars, time and effort from “Russian collusion”, “Ukraine” improprieties, and anything else that might stick. With much of the media hyperventilating and reaping things like “bombshell findings”, which eventually turned into a series of duds.

Without a doubt, Trump can be crude and abrasive toward many and creates some of his own problems, he certainly is not a skilled, deceitful politician who hides his intentions and cancel his vengeful intent. Because of exposing so many things, like inefficiencies and likely corruption in our government, he became too dangerous to too many who feel threatened, not work toward his removal. By doing some of these things he actually gains the support of many working people across the country having less to do with his personality and more to do with his actions, instead of the normal rhetoric that most politicians repeat. He has made some very powerful enemies who receive protections from sources he will never get. Like having a family member that strongly seems very corrupt that strong documented evidence has been slowly coming to light that even implicates the “Big Guy”. Again powerful people protect and when the change happens the investigation will be buried and forgotten. Only one side seems to pay a price for transgressions and abuses and people feel abused and used at the unfairness, it creates frustration, as we’ve been told by others.

The pandemic even elevated these feelings more, Nancy, along with others maybe should consider their second impeachment craziness, at this point in time chances are it can only ignite bad things and everyone will lose. How could such a thing be a “uniter” for the 74 million people who voted for Trump? Maybe we should examine the reasons and people that openly and covertly want to fundamentally change the country and find out exactly the change, the invasion and desire, by investigating and pitting various groups against each other?

David Jaronik

Out-of-town reader supportive of Pahrump, Nye County

Although I am not a member of your community (I live in Helena, Montana), I was curious about your valley after having read the letter published by Chris Zimmerman, Nye County GOP chairman. I value local news and national news.

I appreciate Pahrump Valley has a local paper that serves you. What is great about a local paper is you can read what’s important - events, family, lives well lived, sports (go Trojans), opinions, and more.

I enjoyed reading the local news. Each article tells a story.

While Mr. Zimmerman may mean well, his recent GOP letter has a number of inaccuracies, predictions, and misplaced anxiety. It has drawn national attention to Nye County. Reading your local paper, however, shows me your community is more complex, caring, and challenging than one man’s opinion, including, of course, my own. All the best and congratulations to the Pahrump Valley Times on its 50th anniversary.

Bill Hallinan

Unproven assertions not as reliable as hard evidence

Undoubtedly, there will be different opinions on why a mob attacked a duly constituted government on January 6,,2021. The most immediate reason is that President Trump did not accept defeat in our recent election and that he and some Republicans, including senators Cruz, Hawley, and House minority leader, McCarthy, kept broadcasting that the election was fraudulent, despite the facts that numerous courts, many of them presided over by Republican judges, denied all of president Trump’s petitions for a hearing on a fraudulent election because Trump and his associates did not produce one shred of evidence of voter fraud.

My understanding of the law is that assertions without evidence are hearsay, and that the person or persons who make unproven assertions have assumed fact without evidence.

I admit that lack of evidence does not in all cases prove the allegation to be false. However, this is our system of justice. How many times have the accused been acquitted because the prosecution could not prove its cases? There will probably never be a perfect justice system. However, believing and adhering to the legal system we have is much preferred over mob violence. Does anyone want a justice system whereby the accused would have to prove his innocence?

Finally, believing something by huge numbers of people does not always make it true. For example, masses of people used to believe the earth was flat; that the sun orbited around the earth; witchcraft; that a cure for some diseases was to drain blood from the patients; that heavier weights of the same material would fall faster to the earth than the lighter ones, these being just some examples. Our representative republic would be better served if more of us would rely on our system of justice, fact based on evidence, instead of believing hearsay put out by demagogues.

Jim Ferrell

Both parties guilty of bad behavior in Washington

The extreme leftist Democrats are idiots, they flap their lips about anything that will get them on the TV news. Recently I have seen Pelosi, Schumer and others demand that Trump be impeached or the 25th Amendment be invoked, knowing that either one of these would take more time than he has in office.

This is only part of my gripe, politicians always want to look like they’re doing something that they know has little or no chance if becoming reality. Most seem to think that they were sent to Washington to score points by bashing the other side and both sides are guilty of this behavior.

I wish that this would stop and our elected officials would spend their time doing something worthwhile for their constituents and the country.

George Cross