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Letters to the editor of the Pahrump Valley Times

Thank you for support at difficult time

I want to express my heartfelt thanks for all the food, cards, flowers, work and support that our friends and family have given me during this difficult time of Jeff’s passing.

I sincerely appreciate it.

Deanna Pomeji

Should VEA replace the board of directors?

There is a group of VEA customers that seem to be intent on replacing the board of directors. The question is, should that board be replaced. I believe that the present and past boards have done a good job in managing our electric company. So why try to create an entirely new one?

If you look at the operational success of VEA and the rate structure for residential electricity, you will find that our rates are entirely within industry standards. After a little research I have found that electric rates vary greatly from state to state. Some states are paying as little as 9 cents per KWH while others are paying as much as 32 cents per KWH. The average throughout the country is right at 13 cents per KWH. So the new VEA rate of 11.956 cents per KWH looks pretty good.

Take into consideration that the area served by VEA is physically large, ie, it requires a lot of infrastructure (service lines and equipment) to serve a physical area that is very large and a population that is relatively small. This would increase operating expenses over a company that serves a densely populated area.

While our board of directors has not always made the perfect decision, they have generally made good decisions. If you think you can find a “perfect” board of directors you don’t have a grasp on reality.

Perhaps the board’s decisions not to incrementally increase rates very little and very slowly over the past years has been a mistake. By putting off that “dreaded” rate increase they have placed themselves in a position of having to put in an approximately 8 percent increase all at once. Perhaps incremental increases of 1 percent over the past years (when called for) would have been easier to take for those customers who are excessively sensitive to rate increases.

Charles Kostelaz

Maybe some wish the town board was still here

I wish that if someone was going to write a letter to the editor that they knew what they are talking about. Henry Hurlbut attacked Dr. Tom Waters for wanting to re-establish the town board. He stated that it would require a large tax hike for it to happen.

First of all, the town board has never had any power to re-establish any taxes. They have never had any power to establish any taxes of any kind. They had nothing to do with taxes. The county, state, and federal officials are the only ones that had the power to raise or establish taxes.

Second of all, the town board were and always have been unpaid volunteer positions. They did not get paid at all. The only cost to do with the town board was the electric for lights and heat or air conditioning when they meet.

However the county commissioners are a paid position and they got a raise for the extra work that they took on when they took over the town board jobs. So let’s get the facts straight. Town board unpaid position, county commissioners paid. Town board meet more often to do town work. Now they are paid and do town work a few days a month. So we now pay more for much less. Way to go.

Instead of replacing the town board we should have kept them and thanked them for the work they did for free. Well that is not really true either. After all they spent their own money to get elected and their own money and time to go and do the job they did. But that is not what happened is it? Instead, we got rid of them and blamed them for things that they had no power over and said that they were raising taxes that they could not have done.

I doubt that they would come back and do it again. After all, we would just repeat history and blame them for all the things that they could not and did not do.

Michael D. Lighty

Proposed gun bill is about power not safety

All mass shootings have one thing in common, and it’s not lax gun laws, it is that virtually all mass shootings occur in “Gun Free Zones”, so it seems that if the intent is to affect mass shootings then we should get rid of “Gun Free Zones.”

This is not a gun safety bill, it is an anti-gun bill. This bill allows for gun registries, the first step to confiscation and finally, government tyranny.

You see the Second Amendment was put in the Constitution to prevent a government tyranny such as the one the founders were experiencing at that time, not for self-defense against bad guys, but protection from our own government.

You all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the Nevada Constitution. This bill breaks that oath and if passed will cost us taxpayers millions in lawsuits as many of the things in this bill have already been adjudicated and found unconstitutional, as is SB143, which you passed in the fastest run through the Legislature I have ever seen.

Again, this is not about gun safety, it is about power. It is about control. A disarmed citizen is not a citizen at all, he is a serf.

This will not stop criminals or the mentally ill. This is an attempt to take our God-given rights away and cannot be allowed.

Again, what part of “Shall not be infringed’ is so hard to understand?

Hal Greene,

NCRCC treasurer and legislative committee chairman

Editor’s note: this letter reflects comments the writer provided at the 2019 Nevada Legislature in Carson City

Opinion from the Nevada Republican Assembly

Last month, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford decided he could represent all of Nevada when he joined a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency to fund a border wall he has promised to build dating back to his presidential campaign. According to Ford, “President Trump cannot side-step our Constitution for a political ploy,”

According to the Washington Post, there have been 30 national emergencies declared in recent years. There are 28 currently active. During their presidencies, Obama declared 12 and Bush declared 13 of these emergencies. Some of them have had to do with the Sudanese government, the Western Balkans, Albanians in Macedonia and Zimbabwe. All protections for people of these countries. To our knowledge, there has never been a suit to stop a president’s declaration of a national emergency.

In all actuality, Trump’s declaration of emergency isn’t for a wall; the emergency is that we have a dysfunctional Congress, whose House refuses to work with the president. Democrat members of Congress and even past Democrat presidents including Obama, have all wanted to secure our southern border with a wall. But now that Trump finally wants to protect the American people, rather than spending most of our defense dollars overseas for other countries’ protection, the hypocrites in Congress come out in force against him.

It’s particularly unconscionable for Ford to have signed on with this suit, considering the recent murders by an illegal alien, of Jerry and Sherri David, and Connie Coontz and Sophia Renken. If a stronger, more secure border wall had been in place, the murder of these four innocent people, in three separate incidents, may very well not have happened. The Angel Families in this country would agree.

For those who say there’s not an emergency, Border Patrol agents and property owners along the border would disagree. Just one sector is getting 1,000 illegal entries a day. That’s 7,000 a week! How is this NOT an emergency? In just 2018, there were 266,000 criminal record arrests at the border, 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, 25,000 burglaries, 4,000 kidnappings, and 4,000 violent murders, committed by illegals who were trying to sneak into our country.

The incarceration rates for illegals is THREE TIMES as that for American citizens. Do we really want our tax dollars spent on putting these illegals in prison here? Wouldn’t it be better if they just NEVER got over the border to commit crimes here? EVERY crime committed by an illegal, is one that should have NEVER happened.

Who gave Aaron Ford the right to speak for Nevadans? He does NOT speak for us! His action tells Nevadans and the rest of America, that he cares more for illegal aliens than U.S. citizens.

Sincerely,

Juanita Cox,

President, Nevada Republican Assembly

Dr. William Tarbell,

President, Washoe County Chapter of the Nevada Republican Assembly

Disregard for human life is crime against God

Vice President Pence’s recent visit to honor Jewish Holocaust victims at Auschwitz reminded me about America’s still ongoing inhumanity and disrespect for human life.

We are shocked about how Nazi Germany, under Hitler, became so inhumane that they murdered millions of God’s elect-Jewish people, trying to exterminate them. They displayed total disregard for human life in this horrific crime against God and humanity.

And we should also be alarmed that Iranian leaders want to “kill all Jews and annihilate Israel.” They have been fed hate toward God’s chosen nation for so long that they say it is “legal and acceptable” to exterminate them.

They sure do not know that God said He would bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse Israel. With such hate they only curse themselves.

A society which believes in killing innocent human beings is a morally sick society. God’s just Commandments were edged in stone by God’s fiery finger, and given to Moses, to create a just and orderly nation/world, and so that Israel would be a blessing to the world.

After more than 400 years in captivity in Egypt, God kept His promise to Abraham, and gave the land of Canaan as inheritance to Jacob/Israel, one of Abraham descendants.

The people in that land had become morally corrupt and God passed judgment upon them to cleanse the land. Parents were spilling their children’s blood by throwing them into the fire in worship of idols.

In the last several decades America has gone so far away from God that it is now even more corrupt, than Nazi Germany and Canaan. Respect for God, and for His God-given human life, is sorely missing. Individual and national judgment is coming. Time to repent!

Manuel Ybarra, Jr. Coalgate, OK

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