Letters for March 14, 2002

Regarding Ms. Bachman’s praise of the northwest Reno Wal-Mart, $5 cereal and stores with lousy inventories. Don’t you have a car?

I get in my car and drive five minutes to the east to Wal-Mart and Winco. All the traffic, congestion, the ugly mass of parked cars, lights, the ugly store and the idiots are over there—not in my back yard.

John Fisher
Reno

Death as punishment
Re “Executions Don’t Heal” [RN&R News, Feb. 28]:

Read your article and noted one aspect of the death penalty that you did not address. About once a month there is a prison escape by one or more murderers. I read several years ago that in Arizona, I believe, several convicted murderers escaped. In the course of their attempt to remain free, they killed six additional people. What were the authorities going to do—put them in jail for the rest of their lives for the additional murders? Why wouldn’t they kill again if it benefited their plans? How do we protect the prison staff if a murderer kills a guard, and we have no greater punishment to hand down than the punishment he has already received? “Closure” for the families is not the main purpose of the death penalty.

Bill Smart
Sparks

P-Dub’s getting love
Re “Show Some Love” [RN&R Musicbeat, Feb. 28]:

I am a little confused by your recent article on P-Dub. His CD is sold at almost every local CD store. He has a feature in this local paper, and he is playing at Lawlor Events Center. I also noticed his song is being played on KWNZ, a local radio station. And I have it on good authority that his CDs sell quite well here in Reno. How much more hometown support do you want? A lot of recording artists in Reno put out their own music, book their own shows, and they’ve been doing it a lot longer than P-Dub, with little support from their hometown.

Jim Williams
via fax

This is Reno, P-Dub
Re “Show Some Love” [RN&R Musicbeat, Feb. 28]:

In response to local rapper P-Dub’s claims that Reno does not support its own, I’d like to point out some things: 1) Local artists can only sell so many units in a certain area. Reno is no Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, so expectations of thousands of sales are unrealistic. 2) How can you claim that you have no support when you are getting rotation on local radio and have your album for sale in every local record store? Perhaps the reason P-Dub is not reaching the desired level of fame is because of the product. Recycled keyboard beats and clichéd rhymes can only go so far before a listener becomes uninterested.

Greg Anderson
via fax

In Cahill’s defense

Re “Cahill’s Ethics” [RN&R Letters, March 7]:

As a longtime Northern Nevada Democrat, I agree with Susan Nunes on one point. The Democratic Party could support candidates more aggressively. But to disparage someone willing to sacrifice her time and personal finances to run for the party and imply that Cahill is inexperienced and ineffective is slander.

Cahill did not run the campaign out of her classroom; she ran it out of her home. Nor did she engage in partisan politics with her students. The only thing she shared with them was the process. Nunes claims this is “baloney,” but I suggest she visit Cahill’s classroom and compare it to others before again disparaging Cahill’s character. The students chose to participate, with their parents’ approval, because they were curious about how government works.

Overcrowded classrooms where already overextended teachers are forced to focus on test preparation are hard-pressed to inspire student curiosity. The resulting boredom does not engender the kind of democratic involvement we ideally expect our schools to produce.

Cahill is exactly the kind of person I want as my representative because of her stand on educational issues and women’s rights. I want my representative to be in touch with those they serve. As a classroom teacher, Cahill represents the Northern Nevada Congressional District by working with and for the community and the seeds of our future.

Launie Gardner
Reno