Subsidize Consumers, Not Power Firms

Gov. Gray Davis is now spending $57.4 million to $73.2 million per day to buy electricity (April 18). That’s about $50 to $64 a month for every man, woman and child in California. Davis could end the energy crisis with far less money than this by giving every person a few compact fluorescent lightbulbs (which use 75% less energy than incandescents). Why doesn’t he?

GERALD A. CATERINA

Huntington Beach

* The “Cash for Conservation” plan sounds like a way to benefit everyone in our state (“L.A. Plans Rebates for Cutting Back on Power,” April 18). I hope that the DWP is committed to doing its part in convincing stores than run 50 televisions all day, every day, that saving energy makes good business sense. I anticipate rolling blackouts partly because some companies ignore conservation efforts.

Perhaps a nudge from the governor’s office would make us all winners--residents and businesses.

BARBARA HUBBS

Long Beach

*

I disagree with your April 16 editorial’s characterization of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as “obstinate” and your comparing of FERC Chairman Curtis L. Hebert Jr.--an ideologue who cavalierly refuses to rein in price-gouging by energy distributors--to legendary bank robber Willie Sutton. You are entirely too kind.

California is like a once-robust, thriving young person laid low by a stab wound, who is bleeding profusely. Instead of staunching the flow of blood until the patient is stabilized, as California’s U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein proposes, President Bush and his appointees at the FERC instead insist on their cure--leeches. Slimy, insatiable, Texas-sized leeches who, by coincidence, of course, contribute megabucks to the president’s campaigns. But maybe I am being unfair to leeches.

ROSEMARY SHAHAN

Davis, Calif.