Rolling Blackouts in Power Crisis

Re “Rolling Blackouts Push Energy Crisis From Threat to Reality,” Jan. 18: What an incredibly stupid, dangerous and unnecessary situation we are all in because of the greed and manipulation of a few lobbyists and investors who managed to pull the wool over the eyes of a gullible Legislature. Never leave the market to handle a necessity.

How many Californians will die in traffic accidents due to blacked-out signals? Gov. Gray Davis should seize some power plants under an emergency declaration to meet immediate demand. He should let the utilities go into bankruptcy, condemn them under eminent domain, buy them up (real cheap), get the system running again, then sell them for a profit. If they want to play rough, so can the state.

CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMSON

Los Angeles

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I’m perfectly willing to do all the little household things recommended for energy conservation--lower-wattage bulbs, turning off everything that isn’t actually in use at the moment, and so on. But then I look down the way at local businesses that have been closed for the last several hours and are still blazing away with about 8 million watts of exterior display lighting each, and it does make my home efforts seem a little futile. If we’re in such a state of emergency, how about some new guidelines regarding this massive waste?

STEVE HOFFMANN

Redondo Beach

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It is absolutely asinine for this state or the nation, with all their resources and potential, to experience any kind of “crisis” in the manufacture and distribution of electric power. Some things must be regulated, and in particular, the nation’s power. Doesn’t anyone see a national security issue here? Power should be available cheaply and reliably to every home and business throughout this country. To be threatened with rolling blackouts and power interruptions, and then forced to pay for the deregulation fraud that has been perpetrated on the public, is nothing short of criminal. Deregulation and its money-hungry perpetrators are sowing the seeds of recession, from which we will all suffer--needlessly. Another bailout for big-bucks political contributors.

Face it: The real crises facing California and the U.S. are the lack of effective elected leadership and our leaders’ ongoing inattention to the country’s infrastructure needs.

LINDA SHAFFER

Moorpark

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In “Texas Power Suppliers Shun Bad Guy Label” (news analysis, Jan. 14) you quote Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay: “The system invites gaming.” How about an in-depth analysis of gaming? It would also help to know how we could be in trouble now when your Jan. 13 graph, “A Typical Day on the Grid,” showed an average winter day peaking at about 32,000 megawatts--27% less than summer’s 44,000. And how can this crisis be other than man-made when the volume of electricity traded in the power exchange has dropped by roughly 75% in the last month (Jan. 16)?

HAYWARD THOMAS

Palos Verdes Estates