Letters for February 15, 2007

Bad manners
I am appalled at Assemblyman Ty Cobb’s utter lack of civility in casting the only “nay” vote against the election of Speaker Barbara Buckley. Cobb’s immaturity got the best of him as he broke decades of traditional comity between the parties in the election of the Speaker.

Cobb’s grandstanding may achieve more than getting his name in the headlines. His ultra-partisanship threatens to make our Nevada Legislature more like the Congress in Washington, D.C., with all of its bickering, backstabbing and paralysis. This might be to Cobb’s personal gain—but Nevada will lose.

He should be ashamed.

Bob Fulkerson
Reno

Bush’s oil connection
Re “Profit numbers can be deceiving” (Right Hook, Feb. 8):

Your resident right-wing propagandist Mike Lafferty implies that oil prices and profits account for a natural inflationary increase over the past 100 years, but we all know this is ridiculous. I distinctly remember paying $1.26 a gallon for gasoline in Reno during the last year of the Clinton Administration, and the price here then was (as it is now) one of the highest in the nation. Today, regular unleaded is $2.62 at the “cheap” stations in Reno, and we all remember paying way more than 3 bucks a gallon last summer. So the price of gas has more than doubled just since the Cheney-Bush regime took control.

Likewise, my heating bills have more than doubled in the past four years, and for no apparent reason other than greed. I’m all in favor of conservation, but truth be known, there is a virtually unlimited supply of natural gas, new gas fields are being discovered all the time, and (unlike oil) Mother Nature is making more every day. So it’s not a matter of supply, it’s just a matter of gouging the consumer because they can. The oil and gas companies have gotten a free ride and so much more under the current administration.

It seems every time some “liberal” wants money to be spent on silly things like health care, education, transportation, protecting the environment, alternative energy research or border security, the answer from Congress and the White House is always, “That costs too much. We can’t afford it.” But when oil companies posting record profits ask for billions of dollars in government subsidies, or when the wealthiest of Americans want a tax cut, or when we want to wage war on an oil-rich nation that never attacked us, somehow we can afford that.

S. W. Davis
Reno

Bush looks toward Iran
Now Bush is trying to talk us into going to war against Iran. This is the same guy who lied and misled many people into believing that Iraq had WMD, that Iraq was behind 9/11, that Iraq was an imminent threat to us, and that a war in Iraq would be fairly quick and cheap. Does Bush really think we’re so gullible as to believe the boy who cried wolf again?

Considering the endless bloodbath Bush created in Iraq, should we entrust him to take us into war with the much larger and more powerful Iran? For the sake of our country and our over-stretched military, I hope not.

If we have a problem with Iran, we should negotiate like adults and get others from that region involved, rather than throwing another childish tantrum of war.

Are we ready to impeach Bush and Cheney yet? I am.

Doug Long
Rio Rancho, NM