On sex addiction; L.A.’s budget; and the death penalty in California.

What’s missing is character

Re “Cheaters run on overdrive,” Column, April 10

At a time when so much is being made of sexual addiction, I want to make one salient point: Sexual addiction may be caused by excitement and adrenaline. It does not, however, cause poor choices.

We all have something we used to call character, and we either choose to live by our principles or let our instincts run wild. This has been the challenging choice for addicts for more than 50 years. It isn’t new.

But today, “My sex addiction made me do it” has become the equivalent of “The dog ate my homework.” Nobody wants to grow up, and sex feels good. That being said, can’t we do better?

Dee Gregory

Los Angeles

The writer is an addictions counselor.

Sandy Banks and psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld have it right that what motivates the likes of Tiger Woods, Jesse James and John Edwards to cheat on their attractive wives is an overweening sense of power and entitlement, not their active sex drives.

To put it more succinctly, in sex -- as in politics and war -- power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Tom Tugend

Sherman Oaks

Following the money in L.A.

Re “Villaraigosa backs off on plan for furloughs,” April 9

Is there anyone in city government whose word is worth anything anymore?

Last week, the city controller projected that the treasury would go belly up before June 30. The mayor was ready to shut down city departments two days a week, and the Department of Water and Power was reneging on

its pledge to transfer $73.5 million to the treasury, almost ensuring that Los Angeles would end the fiscal year out of balance.

But it all changed a few days later. The $200-million-plus deficit has all but gone away, the mayor tells us, because tax revenues are up.

I no longer believe anything that comes out of City Hall. This city is too big not to fail. If the idea of Valley secession were to make it to the ballot again, I would vote yes.

Gary R. Levine

West Hills

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Re “Attention Cirque du L.A. ringmasters: Do your jobs,” Column, April 11

Steve Lopez is right on. My wife and I live in Northridge. Two years ago, our summer DWP bill was around $850 for two months. Last summer, it shot up to $1,300 for about the same water and electricity usage.

Now the DWP needs more money. Right!

Lopez brings up the fact that the city recently gave DWP workers and managers a sweetheart deal of raises and bonuses. Other city departments are faced with early retirements, furloughs and layoffs, but not the DWP.

Thanks for the article, and please keep the pressure on.

Howard Mathews

Northridge

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The problem L.A. politicians have is the same as every politician in the world has ever had: They have contracted the political Ebola virus. There is no cure, only prevention. When health workers rush to Africa to contain the dreaded Ebola virus, they wear protective suits that cover them from head to toe.

Honest people entering politics need the protective suit of accountability to safeguard them from PEV from the moment they are affected, er, elected.

Jon Johannessen

Venice

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Lopez repeats the mantra that government must “figure out how to live within [its] means.”

Today, of course, there is no choice but to squeeze government services and employees, even when that results in teacher layoffs and closed parks and libraries.

But this mantra was intoned even during the boom years. It is time to ask whose “means” we are talking about: The straitened circumstances of the average taxpayer, or the resources of the wealthy, whose slice of the economic pie has grown dramatically over the past few decades?

For years we have been told that reducing taxes on the rich benefits the country. If mass insecurity and a frayed social fabric are signs of well-being, then the benefits are obvious.

Grace Bertalot

Anaheim

Our crowded death row

Re “Worse than Texas,” Editorial, April 10

The Times’ editorial board needs to read its own news reports.

On Nov. 11, 2009, the paper reported: “California has the nation’s largest death row population, with 685 sentenced to die by lethal injection. Yet only 13 executions have been carried out since capital punishment resumed in 1977, and none of the condemned have been put to death since a moratorium was imposed nearly four years ago. Five times as many death row inmates -- 71 -- have died over that same period of natural causes, suicide or inside violence.”

The reason the death penalty has failed to deter murder is obvious: The state rarely conducts executions.

Don Evans

Canoga Park

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Kudos for your thoughtful editorial. California has nearly 700 people on death row. The governor could save billions over the next several years if he commuted all these sentences to permanent incarceration.

The innocent could live and fight their cause; the guilty wouldn’t cost taxpayers huge amounts of money to house them separately; and we wouldn’t be building new facilities to kill them.

Alice Smith

Palo Alto

Web regulation

Re “Keep the Internet open,” Editorial, April 9

Your editorial is right that the decision of whether to regulate the Internet, and how, now belongs in Congress, the legitimate legislative branch of government.

Unfortunately, you go on to suggest that “it wouldn’t be far-fetched” for the Federal Communications Commission to attempt the jurisdictional alchemy of “reclassifying” broadband Internet service. Yet, as you point out, the Internet is vastly more sophisticated than an old-fashioned telephone system. Most Americans would find the idea of labeling the Internet a telephone system to regulate it far-fetched.

If Congress chooses not to act, that should be taken as evidence that the American people are happy with the Internet as it is, not used as an excuse for the FCC to invent vast new authority to act without Congress.

Phil Kerpen

Arlington, Va.

The writer is vice president of policy at Americans for Prosperity.

Mines’ damage

Re “Updating our view of miners,” Opinion, April 11

While I have much respect for Homer Hickam, he neglects to mention a salient aspect of the mining industry in West Virginia.

No doubt West Virginia still features many “old villages set within the hollows of scenic, forested hills redolent of aromatic pine.” But these towns are increasingly surrounded by the results of mountaintop-removal mining: mountains blasted clean of their forests, hollows choked with mining sludge and streams irrevocably polluted by waste runoff. Hickam’s charming West Virginia mountain village is an endangered species.

If Hickam is indeed going to create a reality show based on “miners as they are today,” he should show West Virginia as it is today: a place where woodsy mountain glens are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Sarah Tamor

Santa Monica

O.C.’s ‘values’

Re “ ‘L.A.’ used as an epithet in an O.C. contest,” April 11

There they go again, those conservative white men so contemptuous of anyone who isn’t them. Whether slurring gays, using racist terms or referring to any left-of-center municipality as “The People’s Republic of . . . ,” they have nothing productive to bring to either dialogue or government.

Whose “values” should be supported: Orange County, which filed for bankruptcy? Orange County, whose last sheriff was convicted of a felony?

They can’t lead, and they won’t follow, so they should just get out of the way.

Alice P. Neuhauser

Manhattan Beach

Wandering eyes

Re “Distracted drivers won’t get off easy,” April 9

It’s time we stopped laying all the blame on the distracted driver and started looking at the distractions: the billboard industry, which depends on its ability to induce drivers to get their eyes off the road, or the Amber Alert, which attempts to incite a “hue and cry” among motorists.

How about flashing and scrolling signs with such vital information as “Is this trip necessary” or advice that cellphone use is a distraction?

You can spot a driver using a cellphone but not one ogling a billboard bikini, so why not go after the source?

Errol Miller

Chino