Letters to the Editor of the Pahrump Valley Times

Democrat wonders how governor was elected

As I sit and watch what the Democratic Party is doing to this great country, I am sickened by what is going on. As a registered Democrat for 65 years, I am so ashamed.

We have a governor who was elected by a culinary union that is over 55 percent minority employees and mostly located in two locations in this state, Las Vegas and Reno. He only won by 5,000 votes, which his party could harvest that many votes in a few days. I really wonder how many of these are legally in this great country. Harry Reid was elected several times by them and possibly the ones in the North Las Vegas cemetery.

You met in the middle of the night to pass an illegal voting bill to reassure your election. Does it not bother you people that your hatred of Donald Trump is destroying this great country? We are on the verge of a revolution. I sent all of my guns to my son in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I wish now that I had not done that.

My only hope is that Trump is re-elected and we can get our country back from you radicals. God bless America and I pray for our country every day.

Stacy Riney

Is voting by mail an opportunity for fraud?

The first time I voted, it was by mail, it was in the Democratic primary in 1968, after turning 21 in Vietnam. I voted for Bobby Kennedy before he was assassinated. I don’t recall all the details of getting registered, but I do remember it was called an “absentee ballot,” which every state has in some form to give those with legitimate reason for being unable to be in their voting precinct at election time, or may even have physical reasons.

This gave the states election administration to verify the potential voter’s legal and simple qualifications to be eligible to cast a ballot. Today, many are conflating “absentee” voting with “voting by mail,” which, as presented, are in two different categories. What so many are proposing is just sending ballot (to everyone in some cases) from their state’s voter rolls, which have proven in most places shamefully out of date and even laughably inaccurate, with people that have moved, many that have died, pets as registered voters (sometimes even dead ones), cartoon characters, historical figures, and other fraudulent “registered voters.”

By massive mailing of ballots, it creates a serious opportunity for unscrupulous people to take advantage of pitfalls with little risk of being exposed.

David Jaronik

Proposed amendment will not help horses, burros

Recently, Representative Titus and several others championed an amendment to H.R. 7608 requiring the Bureau of Land Management to utilize $11,000,000 of its budget for managing free-roaming horses and burros to implement PZP, reversible fertility control. We believe this to be a misplaced priority use of taxpayer dollars for horse and burro population control. PZP is not a cost-effective, nor effective tool for population control for BLM herd management areas (HMAs) on our vast public lands.

This is especially true in Nevada where over 50% of the horses and burros reside, where HMAs are on average 300-400% over appropriate management level (AML), causing our public land heath to decline at an ever increasing rate, negatively impacting the health of our wildlife and FRHB. Currently FRHB populations double in 3-5 years, increasing by more than 10,000 horses annually. The result is severe damage to fragile western ecosystems upon which millions of other creatures depend.

PZP is a temporary form of birth control that must be administered annually. Successful application of PZP over time has only occurred in a couple of small, discreet areas where FRHB are easier to find, catch, and identify the individual mares needing the booster and where volunteers could be recruited to assist such an intensive process. Almost all HMAs in Nevada are of vast acreages where PZP is not remotely practical. Tens of thousands of mares would need to be captured annually on millions of acres merely to slow population growth. Annual roundups of the tremendous requisite numbers of mares would be cost-prohibitive, ineffective and inhumane.

The PZP approach neither reduces roundups nor achieves AML on impacted public lands. In the process, hundreds of millions of dollars would be added to the long-term costs of managing FRHB, while failing to bring populations to levels that restore and sustain land viability.

What we do support is immediate funding to fulfill the promise of long-term population control devices. Some have been rigorously tested and are near ready to go, such as the IUD, the 5-year shot, and the long-term shot used in Australia on the brumbies. To ensure the long-term health and well-being of FRHB, we support, at a minimum, the 5-year shot for younger mares and the IUD for older mares, which could otherwise be impregnated every year until their death.

By funding alternative types of control suitable to the reality of our vast lands and vast numbers of FRHB, we encourage innovation, competition and wise use of taxpayer dollars for cost and management effective population control methods. Birth control should play a role in the long-term management of FRHB but it cannot displace the need for rapidly bringing FRHB populations down to AML to sustain native wildlife, FRHB and their habitats. We urge a realistic proposal reflecting this reasonable, workable and humane approach, not this amendment.

Rebekah Stetson