Davis Plays Shell Game With Energy Bonds

Re “Davis Faces Budget Cuts, Report Says,” May 10: Lawmakers say that the worst alternative to growing budget woes is a tax increase. They are playing the biggest shell game ever. What in the world do they think paying for ill-conceived utility bonds will be if not a massive tax increase? These are not real bonds. These are taxes imposed on utility bills to repay the state for its insane energy policy, which has bankrupted a major utility and has brought what is really the worst alternative, rolling blackouts. This almost makes a loyal Democrat want to vote Republican in the next election.

Steve Oppenheimer

Northridge

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It is amazing that your May 9 editorial (“Politics Deepens a Crisis”) deflects the reality of the California energy crisis. The Republicans are not responsible for the current electricity shortfall in our state. Our Democratic-controlled Legislature and Senate and the powerful environmental lobby are solely responsible for the mess we are in. You bash the Republicans in the state Assembly for trying to find a less expensive alternative than the $13-billion Democrat-proposed plan to sell bonds. Our future generations will pay for this horrendous debacle.

Instead of The Times playing politics and fanning the flames, your journalism should stick to the facts and leave the politics to the politicians. Building responsible infrastructure in the form of new power plants in a state booming from the economic surge and population growth was and is the right public policy and plan for our state.

Bill Taraschi

Yorba Linda

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When Robert Scheer writes (“Cheney’s an Oaf on Conservation,” Commentary, May 8) that “to ignore scientific breakthroughs on energy conservation is to lie to the American people,” he is missing a very important fact. That is that the American people have ignored energy conservation and will probably continue to do so until it hits them in the wallet. His bitter attack on Vice President Cheney for stating the obvious has little merit. Unless Scheer uses a manual typewriter, lit by a candle in a room without air-conditioning, he is a part of the energy crisis.

Jake Gerhardt

Hollywood

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Someday there will come a happy time when we would no more put political mastodons like George W. Bush and Cheney in the White House than we would bring back hydraulic mining, 12-hour workdays for children in textile factories and whaling.

Michael Fawcett

Los Osos

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I propose a new statewide initiative. Resolved: All lawmakers, whether in or out of office, who voted or lobbied for electrical deregulation will be required to stand in intersections during blackouts directing traffic.

John Nachreiner

Redondo Beach

Regarding your editorial advocating caps on wholesale electricity prices (“Power Shifts to Congress,” May 10): We tried that in the 1970s with gasoline prices. Those caps turned a temporary supply shortage into a major crisis that led to rationing and long lines at the pumps. Let’s not do that again. Price controls inevitably make matters worse; they discourage increases in supply while encouraging consumption. The answer is to let market forces work. Although prices will rise initially, the higher prices will induce consumers to conserve and suppliers to produce. Supply and demand will come into balance, prices will decline and the problem will soon go away.

James Hyde Forbes

Palos Verdes Estates