Letters for October 4, 2012
Bull’s-eye
When businesses in Nevada have to pay sales tax, they must send the forms and checks to Arizona for payment processing. Likewise, the city of Reno Alarm Fee (for having a home or business burglar alarm) must be sent to Colorado. Our Truckee Meadows Water Authority bill payments are sent to Texas, and payments to Waste Management go to Arizona. Nevada has the highest unemployment in the nation. I can’t believe that government agencies and local utilities can’t find Nevadans to process their payments so that the money gets pumped back into the local economy, instead of “outsourcing” these jobs to other states.
Steve Davis
Reno
No hard feelings
Hey, how are you? The ads that you have at the end of your newspaper about the massage parlors: Do you know you are promoting Human Trafficking. I know you’re getting money from theses ads. Here is the main issue: Many of these massage parlors are a part of the human trafficking business where many Southeast Asian women are being tortured and raped. These women, trapped in the massage parlors, never see daylight in their lives. I hope that you could remove these ads from your newspaper. Also, please stop helping the massage parlors. I hope that you and I will some day put an end to these massage parlors for what they are doing these to the women. Please no hard feelings.
Hue Yang
Sacramento, Calif.
Editor’s note: We’re good, Hue. Just a note to tell you that you might have more success if you direct your energies toward media outlets that actually run the kind of massage ads you’re talking about.
Inspiration
Re “Life in transition” (Feature story, Sept. 27):
You are such a wonderful person, Kris. I am so proud of you for being open about who you are. You set a great example for anyone who is struggling with their [gender and] sexuality, and even to those who are not. By telling your story, you are giving them hope. Always remember that your bravery is helping others!
April MaximoReno
I remember
Re “Jewel” (Arts & Culture, Sept. 27):
A personal (and not necessarily relevant) memory of Aug. 15, 1987: I covered the opening ceremony for the Great Basin National Park for KTVN television in Reno. I awoke late in Ely and the convoy ferrying Sen. Paul Laxalt and the other VIPs to the park had already departed. Not to worry. I had ridden my BMW motorcycle to the event. At speeds substantially in excess of 55 miles an hour, I overtook the VIP convoy on the narrow mountain road leading to the GBNP. Anxious to get video of the convoy’s arrival, I blew past the five or six cars at approximately 87 miles an hour. (This was 25 years before the establishment of Homeland Security, lest you wonder why I didn’t end up as a bullet riddled corpse alongside the road.) When the VIPs arrived, we (including Sen. Laxalt and a couple of highway patrolmen) chuckled about the outlaw nature of riding a motorcycle at [high] speed. More importantly, I had unfettered access to the important people. Less an interview than a chat, Sen. Laxalt and I talked about our mutual affection for the Great Basin. Laxalt’s father was a shepherd in the Sierra and the Great Basin when he first immigrated to Nevada. (Legally?) Lots of warmth and smiles on that day. A little of Nevada’s beauty got exposed to the nation. And some politicians were revealed as human beings without a lot of ideological or political crap attached. Good Day. Good news story.
Larry Wissbeck
Paonia, Colo.
Cassandra says
Re “Legendary problem” (News, Sept. 27):
Who buys at retail from bricks-and-mortar stores anymore? People may “shop” there—fondle the merch, try it out or try it on—then go home, log on to Amazon, etc., to purchase tax-free and have delivered to their door. Y’all are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic when you argue for sales tax from Big Retail. Future taxable consumer spending is grocery, gasoline, restaurant and services. Learn to live on the revenue produced from that spending. Quit hanging all your hopes and dreams on The Next Big Thing.
Walt WeberCentralia
Go to the head of the class
Re “The man who would be president” (Feature story, Sept. 13):
I have been thinking about coming up with a report card of sorts so that I can focus on my views of the issues and then do the same for each of the candidates and also make notes on their public statements, the debates, etc., concerning their consistency (and mine) toward the issues and the presentations. For whatever reason, I just wouldn’t sit down and list the issues. Thanks to you and this interview, I now have a starting point from which I can make my list and once started, I can go back to the Constitution to more fully develop the report card. The report card won’t be the only thing on which I base my decision, but it surely will help me elucidate the positions of the candidates and focus on mine as well.
Joann Phillips
Reno
Editor’s note: Assuming all the technological stars align, if you’ll come to our website, www.newsreview.com/reno beginning Oct. 5, we’ll be able to help you out with candidate comparisons.
What he said
Re “Apples and Melons” (Letters to the Editor, Sept. 27):
Valerie P. Cohen bases a series of gratuitous attacks and insults on her equivocation of a man writing a review on bras (with his wife as tester) with the statements of Rep. Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape.” While I suggest the two incidents are quite dissimilar, I would rather like to call into question the idea that rape is in any way a “female-only” concern. I am not stating that only women are raped, but rather I am saying that any reasonable and significant concern is one that is not simply shared by the affected group, but should be a concern to all. I reject the idea, whether posited by the left or the right, that there is a “private language” of experience or concerns. I tend to follow Ludwig Wittgenstein’s suggestion that there is no “private language” that can be only known to a particular person or group. That is that any proposition that can be held by someone, the salient features of such can be communicated to any other person given enough context. There are no reasonable and significant experiences or concerns held by any group which cannot or should not be understood, or should not be a concern to any other group of people. If one was to hold that there was such a “private language” of concerns; why would one necessarily hold, for example that “all women” would then share in that “private language”? Why not posit that some groups of women may not share in that “private language,” down to the ridiculous extreme that each person does in fact speak their own “private language.”
It should be clear that morality is a choice that not all people decide to follow. I believe that morality is not based upon that we are all the same, or even that we all deserve respect; but that our default attitude towards each other is based upon the idea that we should treat each other with civility and with allowance for each person’s right to self-determination and that all reasonable and significant concerns are the concerns of us all. Our duty to each other is well represented by the saying attributed to Martin Niemoller in the statement, “First they came for …”
That said, I think it is absurd that Ms. Cohen would posit that rape is a female-only concern. To be unconcerned with another’s reasonable and significant concerns is the root of evil and the beginning of one’s rationalization of horror visited upon each other.
Brian Hancock
Reno