PUBLIC FORUM : HOW RESIDENTS CAN FIGHT DWP RATE HIKES.

Every problem has a solution, and the problem at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, with respect to the unofficially proposed rate increases on residential electrical users, has one, too.

When deregulation sets in and your rates are increased, I would urge all DWP ``customers'' to leave the DWP, and then it will see how important these big industrial and commercial customers are. Can the DWP stay afloat with only them at the pumps?

Public utilities should not be used to raise tax revenues.

With respect to the $100 million per year that the DWP funnels into the city's general fund: This is simply money gouged from the utility user, and the true rates should be lower anyway.

If the government wants to raise revenue based on electricity use, let it send users a separate tax bill telling them that they are going to pay X amount of dollars per kilowatt of electricity used.

They should take a vote on this tax because the government of the people may choose not to impose an electrical-use tax on themselves.

- Andrew Levinson

Thousand Oaks 

Handguns for rich only?

It seems that our limousine-liberal U.S. senator, Barbara Boxer of the Hollywood left, will not put aside her mindless and snooty efforts to disallow Californians the right to own low-priced handguns.

I refer to a recent news item from one of our radio talk shows in which Boxer stated with all the automatic authority that her elective office could muster that low-priced handguns are too unsafe for Americans to own.

As usual, she was short on specifics, such as brand names and the particular range of ``low prices'' of these handguns - probably because she doesn't actually know of any.

Apparently, it is perfectly all right with Boxer for her wealthy campaign-contributing limousine-liberal friends, who can afford to buy the most expensive handguns for their personal and home protection, to own handguns, but that those people of modest income in her constituency should, for some reason, be prohibited from owning firearms of their affordable price range - whatever that is.

First of all, as a gun fancier, let me tell you that a gun's price does not determine whether the weapon is ``safe'' or dependable. It's the excellence of the workmanship in its construction at the factory. Make no mistake; regardless of its retail value, any handgun in the possession of an idiot can be an ``unsafe'' weapon, whether the owner lives in a trailer park or is a successful Hollywood movie producer.

- Warren V. Geeting

North Hills

Saving Prop. 209

The Constitution of the United States, in Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 2, says in part, ``the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and such regulations as Congress shall make.''

In ``Understanding the Constitution'' by Corwin & Peltason, the authors point out that in 1868 Congress passed a law that prevented the U.S. Supreme Court from deciding on the constitutionality of the Reconstruction laws, even though the court already had heard the case and was considering its decision.

That was 129 years ago. I know of no other example of Congress using this authority.

It seems to me that the proponents of the California Civil Rights Initiative should be leaning on this Republican Congress to use the authority to legalize and finalize Proposition 209 that James Madison and associates gave it, instead of endless editorials attacking Judge Thelton Henderson, whose biased views will never be changed.

- William Benassi

Rosamond

Rehabilitate drug users

Here's How to empty our jails in one easy lesson:

When a person is arrested for using drugs, he should be sentenced to a lockdown facility with doctors and counselors - no jail.

If he is a drug dealer, he should do hard time in jail. Millions are spent on housing drug addicts in jails. This money should go to rehabilitating the drug addict into a useful person. Money going to build new jails should go to new rehabilitating facilities and we won't need jails and as many police officers.

Money going to Colombian farmers not to grow coca - and they continue to grow it - should go to rehabilitate drug addicts and make useful citizens out of them.

- Joseph Carnes

Tujunga

WWII black heroes

``WWII blacks finally saluted for heroic acts,'' Daily News, Jan. 14, from The New York Times, tells of long-overdue Medals of Honor awarded to black soldiers. But when writer James Bennet states ``their courage and ability derided by white officers . . .'' I feel I must counter with another view.

This is the voice of a white airman, Leroy W. Newby, lieutenant, 15th Air Force, 460th Bombardment Group, who wrote ``Target Ploesti: View from a Bombsight.'' Newby describes the Checker Tails, ``the famous Negro fighter group'' as ``perhaps the best fighter group in the Air Corps'' and tells of his boyhood admiration for the great players of the Negro Baseball Leagues and their hang-loose style. Later on, he is thrilled to meet ``some of the Negro flying officers from the Checker Tail fighter squadron . . . These were real fighter pilots I was talking to, and I was like a kid outside a ballpark, talking to a big league baseball player.''

Certainly racism exists. But all white men did not deride the fighting ability of black men. Let's remember that as well.

- Nancy Martsch

Sherman Oaks

Booze and bucks

Why is the alcoholic beverage industry getting off so lightly, while its sister killer industry has become ``our nation's corporate pariah,'' asked Jim and Ed Gogeks in their hard-hitting article, ``Like tobacco firms, alcohol industry relies on addiction,'' (Opinions, Jan. 14).

After all, it is our 15-to-24 age group that is self-destructing through motor vehicle crashes, homicides and suicides. Those are the leading causes of death and injury in that age group, and are alcohol-related in most instances.

There are no germs here, just intoxicating beer, wine and liquor, mixed with bamboozled lifestyles, pushed by a booze-saturated multimedia culture, hellbent on profits over people.

The booze industry eludes accountability because of the protection its segments enjoy through lavish use of money, pumped into the campaign coffers of politicians at all levels of government. Alcohol money is just another sort of mother's milk drunk by power-driven office holders, unpressured by unaware constituencies.

What is needed by voters making informed judgments is the publishing of who got how much from what alcohol-industry source in the past session of the Legislature and in the Congress.

Just as alcohol is no respecter of persons in its intoxicating effects, so is alcohol money no respecter of party affiliation in its corrupting influence on the protection of the ``public safety, welfare, health, peace and morals'' and ``to promote temperance in the use and consumption of alcoholic beverages'' - the stated purposes of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act of California.

- Ray Chavira

Board member

National Latino Council

on Alcohol and Tobacco

Palmdale

Less government better

I would suggest that anyone who believes that the answer to all of our problems is more government control over our lives stop reading this letter. I am only addressing those who think you can manage your life better than the government.

According to the Jan. 1 Daily News, our state Legislature passed 1,288 bills in 1996. Of those, 114 were vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson. When you add to this the 984 bills that were passed in 1995, you have a total of nearly 2,300 bills in a two-year period.

I don't know about anyone else, but it would seem to me that it is beyond belief that as citizens we would require this many new laws to govern our lives unless we are heading down the road to socialism.

Back in the '50s, when I first moved to California, we had a part-time Legislature, which probably didn't enact 100 bills a year. These people were making only about $5,500 a year, so maybe it wasn't necessary for them to show their importance by bringing so many bills to the floor.

In contrast, today's legislators are making in excess of $70,000 a year. Therefore, they need to prove they are doing something to earn their money.

I believe we could do quite well with a part-time Legislature, along with fewer laws taking away more of our rights as individuals, and also saving taxpayers money.

- Jack Shaw

Harbor City

Feminists turn backs on Jones

Joe Gelman's Jan. 19 Viewpoint article, ``Feminists: I know Paula can count on you, right?'' is as on target as a laser-guided bomb from an F-117 stealth fighter.

The failure of ``feminists'' to support Paula Jones in her accusations against Clinton provides a clear view of what the ``feminists'' like NOW are really all about. They should rename their outfit ``The National Organization of Liberal Women''; it would better reflect their true agenda. If the less than 500,000-member NOW were a little more consistent in supporting all women who are the victims of sexual harassment, NOW just might increase its membership and gain some respectability in the process.

It is intellectually dishonest for ``feminists'' not to support Jones with the same intensity that they supported Anita Hill. You can only wonder at the support Jones would be receiving if her accusations had been made against George Bush or Bob Dole.

- Dwight D. Van Horn

Saugus