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The pain will pass
The choice is yours
Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review. One of the great joys of being the editor of this newspaper is that I get to communicate with all types of people. Usually, they initiate communication because I’ve written something that they disagree with, and it’s usually the straw that breaks the camel’s back. This whole newspaper is a pox on the community because I expressed a not particularly radical opinion, and their team lost the election ... or whatever. The opinion that I expressed that piqued at least one reader’s interest was that people who don’t vote have every right to complain about the results of the election. We have all kinds of rights in the country, and none of them are required. If something is mandatory, it’s not a right. I don’t lose my right to carry a gun just because I choose not to exercise my right to a speedy trial. I’m glad this election is over. I look forward to what’s going to come. I truly believe it’s become a race to the bottom for Democrats and Republicans in this country, and things are going to get worse before they get better. Do I believe this country is going to collapse? No. Have we been through this before? Yes. There are so many great things that have happened in this country in this century. We’ve recognized the individual right to have relationships with whom we choose almost across the country. We carry access to all the known information on the planet in our pockets. Some deaf people are able to hear. We’re healing people in ways that could barely be imagined in 1998. You know who thinks politics matter? People who are hurt by politics. But it takes people being hurt by politics in order for them to get involved in politics. And that means this country is going to lurch to the right and the left like a drunken senator, as business and individuals pull the country this way and the other. But you know what I see in the future? A progressive period that will make the one in the early part of the 20th century look like the ’50s.
Earlier this year a political science study found that ordinary Americans have virtually no influence over what the federal government does in the U.S. This is validated with the fact that 100 million registered voters sat out the 2012 presidential elections, discouraged and disheartened. Who decides what kind of country America should be? Washington, D.C., thinks they get to decide, which means they’ve forgotten who they work for and as such deserve nothing less than a pink slip. While politicians and their ilk are lining their pockets with power and money, two-thirds of our country sits at the edge of extinction vs. exceptionalism. Article V provides the path back to exceptionalism through cultivating a grassroots army of Americans fed up with The People vs. Capitol Hill mentality. Article V, Section 2 compels that Americans through the states have a way to rein in the federal government when it oversteps its bounds. Me vs. DC? I decide the America that I want. I choose Article V and the re-founding of Constitutional self-governance for all Americans. Tamara Colbert Dallas, Texas
—D. Brian Burghart
2012, the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 1,000 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014, the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period. The explanation for this gap is simple. In Britain, guns are rare. Only specialist firearms officers carry them; and criminals rarely have access to them.” Yes there are bad cops like there are bad people in any other profession, but I think the ever greater availability of guns in the U.S., and willingness to use them likely is the main reason for increasing police violence. Years ago, I was stopped on I-80 late at night in Oakland for speeding. It had been a long frustrating day at work, and I was pissed off. The officer asked me to step out of the car. I noticed there were several police vehicles around my car, and four officers with guns pulled. Pissed off and still thinking about work I kind of absentmindedly thought, “What the hell is wrong with these guys?” The officer asked for my registration. I reached in, pulled it from the glove box and without turning around whipped it out behind my back for him to take. All four officers recoiled and pointed their guns at me. It was then I finally thought, “This is Oakland, you idiot. These guys get shot at. Cool it!” If you think you may well get shot and killed, you act as quickly and defensively as they did. Tom Wicker Reno
Hair triggers Re “Eyes wide open” (Feature story, Oct. 16): I read your last article on police violence and thank you for publishing it, but I think there was something missing (perhaps discussed in an earlier article in the series). I think it is presented well in this article in The Economist: www.economist.com/blogs/ democracyinamerica/2014/08/ armed-police. This excerpt from the article might be surprising to your readers: “Last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In
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The more things change I suspect that Reno News & Review readers are some of the people who have benefited the most from the Obama administration’s policies but are least likely to take the time to vote. Don’t let this happen. Unemployment, the annual federal deficit, the number of uninsured
Editor/Publisher D. Brian Burghart News Editor Dennis Myers Arts Editor Brad Bynum Calendar Editor Kelley Lang Staff writer Sage Leehey Contributors Amy Alkon, Woody Barlettani, Bob Grimm, Ashley Hennefer, Sheila Leslie, Eric Marks, Dave Preston, Jessica Santina, Todd South, Brendan Trainor, Bruce Van Dyke, Allison Young
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OPINION
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
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ARTS&CULTURE
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ART OF THE STATE
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FOODFINDS
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FILM
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MUSICBEAT
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Americans, the number of U.S. combat deaths in the Middle East, the price of gasoline, and the number of domestic deaths from foreign terrorists have all fallen dramatically since President Obama was elected. So much more—like raising the minimum wage, increasing the number of construction jobs, and lowering student loan interest rates—could have happened if Republicans had not conspired to, and succeeded in, blocking legislation that would have helped millions of ordinary Americans. Despite the unrelenting noise from the right wing, corporate noise machine, the state of the nation has improved dramatically since Bush and the Republicans left the nation’s economy in a state of free fall in 2008. Ronald Schoenherr Reno
America isn’t the evil imperialtype nation that Mr. Highton tries to project it as. It’s a nation that understands the importance of promoting free societies which historically have a higher regard for human rights and rarely, if ever, go to war against one another. That’s the way to a better world for future generations, but we’ll never get there if were to afraid to jump through the ring of fire that is instability. David Flynt Reno
If we only had a brain Re “Election Endorsements (Again)” (Editorial, Oct. 30): I agreed with most of your endorsements. With a historically low approval-rated, do-nothing Congress, fresh blood could revitalize the living fossils in the halls of Congress. The senators not facing reelection will see if they don’t start doing their jobs they could find themselves being chased by a mob of angry voters or, as they call it, leading the pack. If giving the voters a choice of being chased through a graveyard at midnight on Halloween by a pack of zombies or approving how well Congress did this year, I think the zombie option would win. Remove the incumbents and let the political parties know there are no safe zones, and if they want to win elections they have to actually work to earn it. At least Zombies know what they want—brains—which is lacking in Congress. Dewey Quong Reno
Peace through war Re “Age of Empire” (Feature story, Oct. 9): This article could turn a headache into a migraine. It reads like a droll list of one-sided generalizations of America’s history in intervening in world affairs that was aiming more toward reaffirming the author’s already established views than trying to educate or enlighten anyone else. A common theme in the noninterventionist ideology, is that when America intervenes in other parts of the world, it creates instability, and often this is true. What the non-interventionist ideologue seems conveniently oblivious of, though, is that many of these places attained stability through ruthless tyranny. When you kill, torture, mutilate, or imprison people who might speak out against the human atrocities projected on them, well that does create stability for those in power; it’s a stability that sits firmly on a foundation of fear. You cannot move from that state of being to a better one without first upsetting the status quo, which of course will create instability.
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NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
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THIS WEEK
Clarification Re “Emancipation gesture” (Upfront, Nov. 6): The Nevada Museum of Art’s exhibit “The 36th Star/ Nevada’s Journey from Territory to State” closed on Nov. 2.
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MISCELLANY
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Web site www.newsreview.com Printed by Paradise Post The RN&R is printed using recycled newsprint whenever available. Editorial Policies Opinions expressed in the RN&R are those of the authors and not of Chico Community Publishing, Inc. Contact the editor for permission to reprint articles, cartoons or other portions of the paper. The RN&R is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts. All letters received become the property of the publisher. We reserve the right to print letters in condensed form.
Cover and feature story design: Brian Breneman Cover photo: Eric Marks
NOVEMBER 13, 2014
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