Letters to the editor for Saturday, June 21, 2014

Taxing flagpole un-American

I heard a rumor about tax roles for a flagpole in your front yard and before going ahead with my buying and installing I just spoke with Dave Dawley the assessor for Carson City. If I installed a flagpole in my front yard to fly the American flag, it would be assessed onto my property tax per a Nevada state law.

I am shocked to find this out. As a U.S. citizen that has voted every year since turning 21, I find this going against my rights as a U.S. citizen to be assessed for flying a U.S. flag. My taxes are already high enough and go up every year. I will not do this now, and I feel I am being robbed of a Constitutional right afforded me.

This added tax needs to be stopped. We are losing more rights as every day passes, and it is not right, and it is not American. This is no longer a free country when you are taxed for an 18 to 20 foot flagpole in your front yard on your yearly assessed property tax.

Ronald Feldstein

Carson City

Don’t support Bundy or BLM

Mr. Chuck Smith, I see you have drank the Kool-Aid with your comments concerning Mr. Bundy, the BLM and the militias that were involved in the cattle roundup in Southern Nevada.

I ask you who showed up with the armed SWAT team for the roundup? Free people went there to give a verbal protest (free speech). The BLM gunmen rounded up the protesters and corralled them in a “free speech area.” It seems that these armed thugs were intent on silencing these folks’ right to free speech and to try and keep them away from the media. Well, that backfired when the so-called militias showed up and confronted the BLM SWAT gunmen.

As you say, thankfully someone in the BLM had the sense to end the fracas. I do not support Mr. Bundy in his refusal to pay his BLM lease, but I do not support the BLM either. The proper way for the BLM to have handled this situation was to have the court levy a lien against Mr. Bundy’s cattle and collect payment due at the time the cattle were sold.

Gino Venaglia

Stagecoach