Cameras a viable option on local roads

To the editor:

In response to the faulty reasoning presented by letter writer Wayne P. Brotherton Sr. regarding the operation of traffic cameras for speed limit and intersection violations ("Candid camera," Sept. 29):

To say the posted speed limit is flawed because 85 percent of drivers choose to ignore it is akin to saying the terrain is flawed where thousands of lemmings race to their deaths at cliff's edge. C'mon, Mr. Brotherton, we both know posted speed limits are fair, and they are safe. It is the drivers who think they should set the pace above the limit who are unsafe.

Until Metro police officers can give up their obsession with street bums and start enforcing traffic laws, the operation of traffic cameras sounds like a good idea. Especially when those judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers included in the 85 percent above are caught on film.

The important thing to remember is that it is not an inalienable right to drive on our streets, but a privilege. If only more people would keep that in mind, there wold be no need for traffic cameras.

larry poteet

LAS VEGAS

Unfair tax?

To the editor:

So the casino industry is complaining about how unfair it is to target them for a tax increase (Tuesday Review-Journal)? Well, the gaming companies were stumbling over each other to get in the Detroit market, which has a gaming tax of around 30 percent. They also were jumping over each other to open casinos in the Macau (China) market, which has a tax rate near 40 percent. Now that the citizens of this great state are proposing a 3 percentage-point gaming tax increase they call it "unfair"?

These casinos are posting double-digit profits. They have consistently won more than $1 billion monthly over the past 24 months or so and they are still crying that they are being targeted unfairly for an increase in their tax?

Their stock prices are the highest I have seem them in the past seven years. If they were paying their fair share to begin with, the talk of a tax increase would not be so frequent and, when a tax increase is proposed, they could say that they were unfairly targeted. But as long as they are paying double digits in gaming taxes in other states and other countries and are still expanding their operations in those other markets, I have a hard time believing that tax brackets are unfair to them.

It's time to hold them accountable and have a comparable, but fair, gaming tax here as well.

Mehran Soudbakhsh

LAS VEGAS

War games

To the editor:

Sherman R. Frederick, publisher of the Review-Journal, and his ink-stained trolls who toil on the Opinion pages, are at it again.

These preposterous, prickly, pimples on the derriere of democracy are blaming Harry Reid and Social Security for bankrupting the country ("Spiraling toward bankruptcy," Sept. 26 editorial). A distant Republican vice president once referred to their ilk as "nattering nabobs of negativity." It was humorous then, but not so much now as the body count grows.

Of course the bankruptcy couldn't be because of George W. Bush and his $1 billion-a-day private war. Good old Mr. Bush, who took and inherited a surplus and borrowed and spent it into a record deficit playing war games with our children. Like Ronald Reagan, like Daddy, Mr. Bush just likes to spend.

The ink-stained wretches label Harry the "undertaker" when he's merely reporting that the real "undertakers" -- Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- have no clothes and, almost 4,000 of our children have no lives.

james j. begley

LAS VEGAS

Small price

To the editor:

Save the children? Not only should our government not expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, it should probably be eliminated.

If we truly care for our children, we would not leave them a country that is riddled in debt. If we truly care for our children, we would not leave them a country that is knee-deep in socialism. If we truly care for our children, we would teach them that if and when they decide to have children they will be responsible for the health and welfare of those children.

It is truly a slap in the face of every parent who makes the sacrifices that are necessary to provide for their children to be burdened with the health and welfare of someone else's child. Ask yourselves who you think our lawmakers are truly most concerned about. Is it our children, or the big check writers of the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the many medical associations?

Living in a free country requires that we be responsible for ourselves and our actions. This is a very small price to pay.

will nabhan

LAS VEGAS