Candidates ignoring the concerns of seniors

For some reason, the one group in our country that was completely overlooked and ignored during both conventions was seniors. The silence regarding seniors is alarming.

For this year, in spite of rising prices and costs, our cost-of-living increase was denied.

At the conventions, especially the Democrat one, giving money to every group under the sun was the talk of the day. Free college tuition, immigration without consequence and so on. Yet many of us speculate when we will even get a meager cost-of-living increase.

We hear conversations about gasoline prices, increased insurance costs, outrageous prescription drug prices, grocery costs increasing and housing costs going up. Yet not a word about the hardship on seniors.

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are seniors yet don’t say a word about us seniors — other than asking us to send money for their campaigns and perhaps to vote for them.

Seniors are silent on all of this. Why is that? Seniors, please speak up.

Ron Hirschkind

Las Vegas

Presidential background

The July 19 letter from Robert Collins, “Hillary is it,” demands a comment. Mr. Collins lists three qualifications for a presidential candidate:

— Most qualified.

— Most experience in dealing with foreign governments.

— Best knows his/her way around Washington.

Based on Mr. Colllins’ criteria, how in the heck did Barack Obama ever get elected?

Robert Patchin

Las Vegas

Lawful orders

Kudos to former Nevada Attorney General George Chanos on his insightful but seemingly “police state” narrative about ways to avoid brutal and deadly encounters with law enforcement officers (“Simple steps to minimize trouble with police, July 29 Review-Journal).

Mr. Chanos’s commentary attributes negative outcomes in police interactions to citizens’ failure to instantaneously adhere to “lawful” commands from officers. Mr. Chanos apparently believes every police encounter with the public is “lawful,” a term he uses repeatedly in his missive. However, given his prior post, he should be keenly aware that many police interactions with the public are arbitrary and unlawful.

Mr. Chanos states that officers are human and “make mistakes,” attributing those possible lapses in judgment to the high-risk nature of their jobs. He also states that officers have families and want to come home after their shifts. So do members of the general public.

My question: What consequences should officers face for unlawful acts — stops and searches without probable cause, disrespectful verbal abuse, unjustified shootings, etc? Failure to stringently address officers’ illegal and arbitrary use of their enormous authority is, perhaps, the main factor in the growing lack of trust in policing expressed by many law-abiding citizens.

The United States is not yet a police state and police do not and should not have absolute power. As for Mr. Chanos’s advice to be respectful to police at all times, that exhortation is a two-way street. I also concur Mr. Chanos’s position that institutionalized bias in policing should not be an excuse for disobeying a lawful order.

Leon Pitt

Las Vegas