Letters to the Editor for May 7

Why is there a discrepancy in Assembly Bills?

If you retired from state of Nevada employment before Jan. 1, 1994, you will, under the new Public Employees' Benefits Program, receive a monthly subsidy from the state of $150.

If, however, you retired Jan. 1, 1994, or after, your monthly subsidy will be up to $200.

Why the discrepancy between subsidies? They should be the same.

Two Assembly bills, AB562 and AB563, deal with these subsidies, and have been referred to the Ways and Means Committee. No date has been set for a hearing, so there may be time to call, email or visit your legislators, to ask for an explanation for the $50 difference in subsidy figures, and request an equitable distribution of these funds.

Eleanor Kobe

Carson City

K-12 systems, government have a lot in common

What do our K-12 educational systems, by and large, and our federally controlled economy have in common? Decades of decline.

What else do our K-12 educational systems and our federal government have in common? Both have handled their respective illegal immigration problems very poorly over the decades. Educators chose social concerns over educating, and our federal government chose not to resolve illegal immigration problems, period.

Both entities also suffer from the bottomless money pit syndrome, and are capable of making mistakes. Actually, many of our state governments have these same beliefs.

There are, however, five states, referred to as the energy states, which have weathered decades of economic reduction very well, the names of which elude me at the moment.

In any event, Nevada, with all its renewable energies, could have been named the sixth state long ago. What overwhelming ideology has driven our state and federal governments and our K-12 educational systems mad with the desire to ruin, rather than improve our country?

What kind of federal brain trust deemed it necessary to spend more while removing trillions of revenue dollars from the economy?

Over the last 40 years, there has been one level of government that has remained silent, while the federal government systematically destroyed our economy. That would be the governors at convention, a powerful entity, to be sure.

Unfortunately, they chose silence over action, as did many of the people, over the last four decades.

Ron Wood

Dayton