Letters for September 2, 2004

Your new conservative columnist, Mike Lafferty, makes some intelligent, valid points. He is confusing me. Please fire him.

Troy Elizares
Reno

Out of balance
Re “More taxes won’t create jobs,” (RN&R, Right Hook, Aug. 26):

As a long-time reader of the RN&R, I notice it is headed the same way as most of the rest of the media—right, where the money is. While I can’t blame you (I once worked for a small newspaper chain as technical manager and understood that the news hole was secondary to the ads), it is a shame that Reno is slowly but surely losing its neutral and/or progressive voice.

Tom Del Carlo
via e-mail

Out of the box
Re “Follow the hypocrisy,” (RN&R, Right Hook, Aug. 12):

Now I’m about as liberal as the next guy, but this “Right Hook” so-called conservative column makes me wonder.

On this issue, I can’t figure what the liberal viewpoint would be, but if this is conservative when it comes to Charter Cable’s grip on Reno and the City Council that sealed the deal, sign me up.

I realize the point of the column was criticism of the council’s move to give Charter the 15-year contract (bad move for all the reasons Lafferty spelled out), but I couldn’t pass up the chance to throw some tangential fuel on the fire.

Charter Cable is the epitome of awful customer service. After requesting discontinuation of my service, it took four increasingly urgent menacing bills from them followed by phone calls from me before anyone could actually sever the ties. Hopefully today’s phone call will be the end of my saga, but we all know there are others out there going through similar torment.

No offense to the poor individuals who answer the phones if they were doing their job as they should, but somewhere in the Charter bureaucracy, the system failed, and by extension, the city failed its citizens by keeping Charter around with service like this.

If I ever entertained thoughts of reconnecting cable, they died through this process.

Name withheld
Reno

Won’t waste my time voting
Re “Eat my vegetables,” (RN&R, Editor’s note, Aug. 26):

This week, you ran your 41st Reason to Vote. All 41 were negated by two words in Diedre Pike’s column “Third parties—surviving the wind damage.” Those words, in reference to us who would rather see a Green or a Libertarian in the White House rather than a Demican or a Republicrat were “but realistically.” Realistically, so long as the electorate prefers to vote for “a winner” rather than according to the consideration of who would be best for the country as a whole, there will be no change. And the Demicans and the Republicrats will continue to talk about third parties “spoiling” the election.

I have held my nose and participated in nine presidential elections, meekly going along with the big two. In 2000, I stopped holding my nose and voted third party, only to be told over and over that I wasted my vote, that I spoiled the election for the big two, that I should have voted for a winner.

Did my vote count? No, it didn’t, it wasn’t even reported by the media in the initial returns the day after the election. Am I going to vote this year? No! First, it’s a waste of effort. Second, if I vote my conscience, I’ll have to listen to another four years of media and pundit bitching. Third, if I vote Republicrat or Demican, I’ll not be able to salve my conscience. Fourth, the propositions? Makes no difference how any of us vote on those. If something doesn’t suit the agenda of the legislature or the Supreme Court, the latter will find some excuse, any old possible lame excuse, to void it—see the fiasco a year ago, raised by our attempt to change the basic ground rules the legislature operates under—and require a two thirds majority on any new taxes.

Robert Leavitt
Sun Valley

A slow boat
Re “Swift boat veteran visits Reno,” (RN&R, News, Aug. 26):

As a veteran, I applaud Sen. John McCain denouncing the anti-Kerry ads about Kerry’s Vietnam service. McCain, a victim of similar campaign slander, called the ads “dishonest and dishonorable.” No one can find Bush’s service records, but the bottom line is Kerry was in Vietnam, Bush wasn’t.

In my eight years of service, I never saw medals awarded without great scrutiny by fellow servicemen. Any question of merit would have been raised at the time, not decades later. What a dirty game!

Patrick Flanagan, Sr.
Reno