Letters for March 12, 2020

Masking the issue

Watching Trump address the nation late last Month was truly Alice in Wonderland. After the self-congratulating was finished, we learned they have been working on this a long, long time, and we have the best experts in the world, and—then—only 22 in the U.S. had the Corona, and it’s like a bad cold. OK.

Then Pence came on, started talking about more masks coming for us all, and then, unbelievably, coughed on his hand.

Or I was hallucinating?

Lesser experts in other countries suggest that masks be used by those who already have disease to keep from infecting others. What the hell do they know, our “experts” are more experty than theirs. Nah nah.

No one spoke of sanitizing our hands frequently, but honestly I had to turn it off, as I was getting feverish coughing, and having difficulty breathing.

Craig Bergland

Reno

Primary possibilities

A political primary is a preliminary election in which the registered voters of a political party nominate candidates for office. The key word here is preliminary. The current system allows small states such as Iowa and New Hampshire (assisted by the media) to award front-runner status to the victorious candidate. From there, the candidates travel a path determined by which states want to “leap frog” the others by moving up their primary dates. Candidates are whisked across the country without any real ability to distinguish regional issues from national issues. Consequently, party platforms are determined by a make-it-up-as-you-go approach.

If the primary process were organized on a regional basis, candidates would be able to study the regional issues, campaign to confirm those issues and then receive votes based on the solutions they propose. A regional approach would also prevent a premature selection of a front runner because success in one region certainly would not guarantee success in the next region. This would also further validate the process because each state would still have a say all the way down to the end. Finally, the number of delegates awarded in each state should be determined by the percentage of votes won by each candidate.

Accordingly, the political primaries should occur between January and June of each presidential election year. Each of the six regions would be assigned a particular month. A lottery held in June of the previous year would determine which month each region holds its primaries. An example illustrates the format:

January—Southern (8): AL, AR. KY, LA, MS, TN, VA, WV

February—Southwestern (9): AZ, CA, CO, HI, NV, NM, OK, TX, UT

March—Atlantic (8): DE, DC, FL, GA, MD, NJ, NC, SC

April—New England (8): CT, ME, MA, NH, NY, PA, RI, VT,

May—Northwestern (9): AK, ID, KS, MT, ND, OR, SD, WA, WY

June—Middle West (9): IL, IA, IN, MI, MN, MO, NE, OH, WI

Joe Bialek

Cleveland, Ohio

Trashing TP

Long before the invention of toilet paper, mankind had other ways of cleaning our hind ends.

In the old days of outhouses, folks were very particular to the Sears catalogs and, after crumpling up, they apparently did a possible job. Many people in the world use water to clean themselves.

I would bet even small round pebbles will work in a pinch, as well as newspaper, and strips of cloth which can be sanitized and washed and reused.

The world is not going to end (bad pun) because we ran out of toilet paper, but rather because we have not built a sustainable civilization and world.

Craig Bergland

Reno

Moving target

RN&R has a very annoying moving add that follows a viewer around from page to page. It’s called R&R Sweet Deals. It is very distracting and totally frustrating to attempt to read an article when one consistently sees a moving object in their peripheral view. So, my remedy is to delete all the advertising which is very easy to accomplish if one is using an Apple product. That kind of defeats the purpose of advertising in your paper doesn’t it? You might want to rethink the moving distraction. Thanks for your coverage to our community!

Marigael Morris

Reno