Letters for June 17, 2004

When I envision a park, I think of lush landscaping, paths, flowers, a place to sit in the grass and enjoy a picnic—not an area where a bunch of scavenger animals are running around sniffing each other’s rears, barking and defecating in a sand pit devoid of plant life. Perhaps Reno/Sparks’ dog “parks” should be called dog pits, dog corrals or dog yards. Parks are not supposed to be ugly.

Darin Reed
Reno

Vote where it counts
Re “Spare change?” (RN&R, Letters, June 3):

Green Party members offer a lame excuse for helping elect George Bush president. Remember, if we could have won Nevada’s four electoral votes in the last election, the real president could have taken office. Al Gore cared about the environment so much he wrote a book about it, remember? More importantly, more than 10,000 people would not have lost their lives in this illegal, immoral war. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. How about Enron taking people’s retirements and their life savings and almost bankrupting the late, great state of California? President Gore would not have allowed this to go unpunished under his watch. Yeah, we owe all of these misdeeds to the Green Party’s poor choices. I hope and pray you will reconsider your choices in this upcoming, most important election and vote for the honorable John Kerry, who, as a young man, had the courage to tell his country that what it was doing in another illegal, immoral war was wrong. He helped us get out of Vietnam, and he will help us get out of Iraq.

Deborah Guy
via e-mail

Got gas?
Re “You can only blame yourself” (RN&R, Editorial and letters to the editor, June 3):

In the editorial “You can only blame yourself,” it was stated: The high cost of fuel is partially due to lack of governmental oversight. This is simply untrue. Government “oversight” does nothing but increase the costs to citizens. Later on in the same article, it was stated: “Not to point out the obvious, but if Americans actually wanted to bring down the price of gas, they would band together to force legislation to cap fuel prices.”

What? Do you really think that prices are just some arbitrary number that can be adjusted at will without dire consequences? OK, fine. Let’s cap all hamburger prices at 50 cents and Hummer prices at $10,000. Shoot, why stop there! Let’s just decree that everything be free for everyone! Apparently all we need to do this is a large enough gang (read voters bent on violating other people’s human rights), and we can vote ourselves to paradise!

As if that wasn’t enough, in a letter to the editor, “Gas Through the nose,” though John sees the market manipulations of the government as an evil, he then turns to the same governmental system to correct this injustice. Isn’t that a definition of insanity? The best thing to do about the current crisis is this: Strip away the power of the government to do any market manipulations, either through subsidy or taxation. As a side benefit, we will all regain our individual rights in the process.

Also, in the “Spare change?” letter to the editor, Anthony and Stacy have it right on the money! Vote for the person who most accurately represents you, whether or not they have a chance of winning. Those folks who talk about “spoilers"’ and such are totally irrational. If you take their theory to the next step, it would be to just have a one-party (theirs, of course) system. Then no one can “steal” the votes from their candidate. Idiocy. We need to break this Republicrat monopoly in our government, get something different and vibrant going on again, shed some light on all those cockroaches and watch them scurry trying to cover their tracks.

Michael Stedman
via e-mail

On this rock

I don’t mind religion, but what’s the deal with the Reno Festival? Turns out this thing is a bad ‘80s rock Jesus Festival, but why isn’t it called what it is? I mean, is it “Reno Fest” so as not to draw attention to the cacophony of noise that that my wife, newborn baby and I had to endure for 10 hours last Friday and Saturday night? Perhaps it is named “Reno Fest” to entice the unknowing souls of Reno, such as my friends, ready to go and picnic at the event until they understood the less complex “Jesus Fest” explanation? Who knows? Maybe both reasons are correct.

Anyway, I’m a homeowner a few houses up from the park and wasn’t too happy with the concert. I’ve decided that I’m going to visit a few churches next Sunday and play two 10-hour sessions of Black Sabbath for the congregation, for free! Maybe Jesus will come before I get the chance.

Name withheld
Reno