We need guidelines for theater patrons

To the editor:

Hooray, Steve Sebelius. Thank you, thank you for your Wednesday column, "Welcome to the theater, now shut up!" Maybe we need to print guidelines on the back of theater brochures to instruct audiences on how to behave.

To the list of annoying patrons, please add Ms. or Mr. Can't Wait To Share This Gossip With You. And Ms. or Mr. Let Me Tell You (And Everyone Around Us) This Funny Joke. I ask you: Could it wait?

I witnessed the same rude behavior at a high school graduation ceremony. The yelling and hooting was so loud that the name of the next person being honored could not be heard. I tried to be charitable and assume the parents and friends were so astonished that little Johnny or Janie actually made it through high school that they couldn't contain themselves.

Thanks again, Mr. Sebelius. You made my day.

Darlien C. Breeze

Las Vegas

People's money

To the editor:

In his Tuesday column, Steve Sebelius states that a federal budget "merely" sets limits on spending bills.

Am I missing something here? Is our tremendous debt continuing to spiral out of control because there aren't any spending limits? Is this why the Harry Reid-controlled Senate refuses to submit a budget, thereby having to set these limits?

By using the term "merely," it would seem Mr. Sebelius trivializes the necessity of setting limits in order to control and contain costs that continue to grow exponentially every year. My family and millions of other families in our great country have to set budgets for ourselves in order to survive in this terrible economy, while members of the Senate seem to feel they have no obligation to do the same with the people's money, even though they are required to do so by law.

Gary Echols

Las Vegas

Going broke

To the editor:

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote: "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." He was right. Just look how they're spending our money in Washington. The waste, foolishness and graft would make your hair stand on end.

Get the trillionistas out of Washington, D.C., before we all go broke.

Glen B. Dunning

Las Vegas

Made up

To the editor:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has confided to a few Senate colleagues and friends that because of health problems, he will be resigning his Senate seat shortly after the November elections. He also suggested that he is very dissatisfied with President Obama's plan to strengthen the economy, and that the president is unwilling to listen to those with far more experience in such matters.

Sen. Reid went on to criticize the Obama family for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on expensive vacations at the same time that the president criticizes the wealthy for allegedly failing to pay their "fair share" of taxes, even though the wealthiest 10 percent of the population pay more than 70 percent of taxes collected by the federal government. Sen. Reid says this sends conflicting messages to the voters.

Just like Sen. Reid's unverified statement that Mitt Romney has paid no federal income tax for 10 years, I must confess that I don't know whether the news about his plans to retire or his criticisms of President Obama are true.

George E. Meese

Henderson

Social Security fine

To the editor:

The Review-Journal has recently published articles warning about serious troubles with Social Security. The most recent - by Stephen Ohlemacher of The Associated Press - is largely based on comments by a public trustee of the program who is identified as a Republican.

The article presents a narrative of ever-increasing debt loads until finally it arrives at "$134 trillion spread out over 75 years." This type of number, and this type of article, presents a false picture and, frankly, is meant to scare readers and to drive them toward those who would privatize the program.

First, understand that two of the major criticisms of the program are incorrect. The Baby Boom retirees will be gone by 2060. Thereafter, the low birth rate in place since the 1970s will reduce the benefit load. And as immigrants establish themselves, the ratio of workers contributing FICA payments to retirees receiving benefits will stabilize.

Though few realize it, Social Security already contains an automatic built-in trigger to restore it to balance if it should ever have insufficient assets to cover scheduled benefits. Under the law, if at any point in the future the Social Security Trust Fund has insufficient revenue to cover the costs of benefits, those benefits will be automatically reduced, without any action by Congress.

The Alan Greenspan-led commission in 1983 caused everyone's payroll tax to increase in anticipation of the demographic bump now underway. However, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go insurance program which, in a fundamental sense, does not need a trust fund when demographics and the economy remain stable.

There is no need to "fix" Social Security now in a depressed economy. There is certainly no need to be frightened by an inappropriate use of a "present value" calculation by a news organization.

Douglas Rusta

Henderson

Name game

To the editor:

It's beyond time for all the members of the "Let's rename McCarran International Airport" club to get out of their little crystal palace worlds and look at the real world.

Do any of these people realize that there's an economic depression here? Don't they have anything better to do than to waste taxpayer money on some fantasy scheme that they think will benefit Las Vegas? All the renaming of McCarran will do is waste taxpayer money with nothing returned.

Visitors could care less what the name of the airport is. They book a flight to Las Vegas, not McCarran. They search for deals to Las Vegas, not McCarran.

The renamers need to stop wasting taxpayer money on fool ideas and start being responsible with that money.

Daniel Zaveson

Las Vegas