EDITORIAL: Raise gaming tax to hire more cops
Having read the Friday Review-Journal article regarding a proposed sales tax increase to hire more police officers for the resort corridor and downtown, I can’t help but ask: Why is a sales-tax increase always the solution when it comes to hiring additional officers?
Our economy is pretty much totally reliant on tourism. The safety of those tourists is paramount to our continued success and growth. Since these additional officers will protect our tourism-reliant gaming areas, why not increase the gaming tax to provide for them?
The current 6.75 percent gaming tax has barely moved in decades while the sales tax rate in Clark County has more than doubled in the past 50 years. I would think that Gaming Inc. could afford a small increase in the tax rate given that the big players are more than willing to pony up 25 percent to 50 percent of their gaming revenue in other states.
Bob Huggins
Las Vegas
History lesson
On Sunday, your new, ultra right-wing columnist Wayne Allyn Root wrote that Barack Obama is “the worst president ever.” Since he obviously was living outside the United States between 2001-2008, let me relate the highlights from those years under President George Bush.
The worst terrorist attack in U.S. history took place on Sept. 11, 2001, and more than 3,000 people died.
In 2003, we invaded Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. The current Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is quoted as saying that he would have liked to have fired the whole Bush administration over the handling of the Iraq war. Thousands of soldiers died in that war and occupation, tens of thousands were wounded, and more than $1 trillion was spent. The carnage caused by that invasion continues today. For what?
In 2006, the housing market collapsed, and the worst recession in U.S. history started. It was the first time I ever heard the term “underwater mortgage.”
During the Bush years, we had the worst job growth since we began keeping records, with only 3.3 million new jobs in eight years. Bill Clinton created 23 million jobs in eight years and Barack Obama more than 9 million so far.
In 2008, Mr. Bush signed the TARP bill, authorizing spending up to $700 billion to bail out American financial institutions. That was the failing economy that Mr. Obama inherited. We all saw what happened to the stock market and our retirement accounts between 2001 and 2008. How are you doing today?
So I hope this information helps Mr. Root catch up on what he missed and leads him to rethink his opinion of who was the worst American president.
M.J. Ralbovsky
Las Vegas
Intentionally outrageous
Words cannot express my horror at the offensiveness of Wayne Allyn Root’s columns. They are intentionally inflammable and outrageous. They are not fit for any thinking person to read. This would be true even if you placed them on the opinion pages, which you didn’t.
It’s disgraceful that I cannot read my newspaper without being subjected to such malignant writing.
Susan Casey
North Las Vegas
Who’s who?
In response to the Review-Journal’s Saturday story on Harry Reid calling Donald Trump a “con artist”: I grew up hearing that “it takes one to know one.” And I still believe it today.
Jeralyn Elsasser
Las Vegas
