Letters

The home front

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Happy New Year! I know that we’re a week into 2016, but Brian wrote this column last week, so I didn’t get a chance to wish you lovely people the best for the upcoming year. So, happy New Year, peeps. May your health maintain, your heads be clear, and your cups runneth over. Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends.

As a born and bred Renoite, one of the things I like most about the holidays around here is meeting up with pals who grew up here but have moved away and now only come back to visit for the holidays. I’ve had several nice old school encounters, some planned and some happenstance, over the last few weeks, which has been really nice, and there’s one comment that every single old friend and acquaintance has made: “Reno has really changed a lot in the last couple of years, hasn’t it?”

Now, back around, say, 2009, when we locals would hear a comment like that, it was usually a diss of some sort—a dig on the tumbleweeds blowing through downtown. But this year, the comment was praise—surprise about the vibrant nightlife or eclectic food scene.

Reno has changed. It’s hard to find parking around midtown during peak hours. You need to make reservations for many of the city’s best restaurants—even on weeknights. Small things, but telling.

Even ex-Renoites who left in a blaze of burning bridges, blasting “Thunder Road”— “it’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win”—were heard to remark, “you know, maybe I could see myself living here again.”

But let’s not get too optimistic. Currently, Nevada is often mentioned in the national news as the home state of Cliven Bundy.

—Brad Bynum bradb@newsreview.com

Deflationist

The only way to save Social Security and revive the economy from the ground up, since top-down stimulus is not working, is to abolish the minimum wage completely on the condition that from that moment forward all labor be “on the books” and that additional IRS and FBI agents be hired to enforce that rule. This will replenish Social Security and bring an end to the underground economy and all its criminal associations, which are many.

No one is forced to work for a wage he finds inadequate. This is not workfare. This is an opportunity for work for all, like older people who don’t enjoy being idle, homeless persons, those recovering from long illnesses, and the young who want to be self-reliant. This is not a training wage scheme. This is the absence of a government dictate which has caused corruption, deep poverty and mental retardation since 1938.

In this way, dependence on social services, charities, food banks will be reduced, as will property crimes, gang activity, drugs, suicide, family discord, bullying and on and on.

Small business will revive, and because much more money will be in circulation in the lower half of the economy, at the street level there will be a trickle-up effect on the economy overall.

This would be deflationary. The world appears divided into inflationists and deflationists. By its policies, the Federal Reserve wants the dollar to be devalued by over 50 percent every 20 years. Deflationists want the dollar to maintain its value, and by so doing, increase in value in time. For those who do not own financial instruments, deflation is nirvana. Inflationists want to ban case so they can control expectations.

No one forced Ishmael onto that boat or forced him to sign up, but by his experience he grew. Growth must from now on be qualitative rather than quantitative. But that would be deflationary. Wall Street sharks and their political friends must not lay a hand on the Social Security retirement of any age group. Richard Lang Reno

Agenda alert

Re “Return the extremists to the fringes” (Left Foot Forward, Dec. 24, 2015):

It really is sad that you use News & Review for your political agenda. That fact of the matter is that you can not regulate evil. No matter how you try. But what you are suggesting is a slow illumination of the Second Amendment. So, either you are not educated in historical facts or you have an agenda.

Disarming law-abiding citizens is clearly not the right path if you believe what the Second Amendment stands for. I would concede to your logic if the war on drugs was working—which it’s not. You see, when you suggest things like you do, you really make a thriving black market, so in reality we will be making more criminals who will be rich and powerful. Yay! China has a police state, and guess what? They have mass attacks, too. But the attackers use knives. So you really can’t stop the horror!

Alan Roney Reno

Self-serving politicians

Re “Liberals should learn from pot regulation” (Let Freedom Ring, July 30, 2015):

While I agree with Brendan Trainor’s premise that government can screw up policy implementation, I choose to not agree that all government participation in economic strategic planning is bad. Yes, Nevada has had numerous missteps rolling out the medical marijuana dispensaries, but does that really mean that they can do nothing well? What is the alternative to some degree of government oversight, a free-for-all? Government’s role is to establish the rules of the game so people and the environment are not ruined by endless greed. Do they get too heavy-handed on occasion? Of course.

But do you really want lead in your paint and air, mercury in your drinking water, or BP dumping millions of gallons to toxic sludge in our front yard? I don’t think so. I do not trust business or the market place to always make the best long-term choices. That is what government should do. A key issue is the people in government often forget the people they impact. The long delays in opening the medical marijuana dispensaries were inexcusable and resulted in many people suffering pain longer than was necessary.

The state claims it took over two years to implement the law because they wanted to get it right. Well, they did not get it right (see Clark County) because they were more focused on legal technicalities and dollar considerations than the patients. Greater responsiveness to the voters’ needs would have sped things up. Victor Morin Reno

Different reason

Re “Under pressure” (News,, Dec. 31, 2015):

Dennis Myers stated, “In 2014, Democratic lethargy and low turnout gave Republicans their most sweeping victory in Nevada since 1890.” I suggest that Democrats got their butts stomped from coast to coast and county to county because citizens were fed up with liberal, Democratic policy. The results were so bad that Harry Reid said, no more. No more Senate majority leader.

In Nevada, new attorney general Adam Laxalt was given no chance to win before the election, yet did. R.L. Bell Reno

Erik Holland

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