PUBLIC FORUM : STOP GUZZLING GAS.

I'll bet that the oil companies are still ``suffering'' from the gas-out day last week. They probably enjoyed the day off, knowing that they would completely make up the loss in a few days. A more effective protest would be to reduce the amount of gas consumption: For one day, try car pooling, using public transportation, walking, bicycling, etc. Better yet, trade in your gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle for a vehicle with high mileage per gallon.

We hear that there is no real shortage of gasoline in the world today. But what about five years from now? Still plenty? OK, how about 20 or 50 years from now? There is only a finite amount of fossil fuel stored in the earth. At the current consumption rate, sooner or later we will begin to run out. It makes more sense to conserve now than to wait until serious shortages force drastic conservation measures.

Everyone who drives a gas-guzzling SUV should feel an extra pinch for the excessive amount of fuel consumed and for the excessive pollution emitted.

- Jay Shapiro

Sylmar

Why all the fuss?

Why all the the fuss about the high gasoline prices? Every year at this time they go up. My husband died nine years ago, and I still remember hearing him say, ``Let's go look at some gas stations and see which ones are cheaper.'' And I told him: ``Frank, forget it. You would pay $5 a gallon. You sure won't walk, and they raise the price every year around this time as a lot of folks go on vacations; that's why.''

- Thelma Kreutter

Newhall

Taxes, not gas

I've been amused by your articles on soaring gas prices and the public's outcry about these increases, which resulted in a gas-out boycott.

Tuesday was Tax Freedom Day. That's the day that the average wage earner stops working to earn money for government taxes and begins to earn money for himself or herself.

That's about 36 percent of our earnings for various forms of taxes. Yet, with a few exceptions, I don't hear or read about any outcry to reduce taxes. We should get our priorities straight and concentrate on the major expenses first.

- David T. Sakai

North Hills

Hero problem

For those who ponder what recently happened in Yugoslavia, it seems that our men and women in uniform have a new option: Become instant heroes. How? It's very simple. First they must get themselves captured. Then, after a politician arranges their release, they will be guaranteed a red-carpet welcome. The military will salute them and hand out medals. Relatives will be flown to embrace them. Military bands will strike up patriotic tunes. Even the president of the United States will make a special trip to congratulate them. And then they will be called heroes.

Of surviving soldiers who fought in wars for the United States, the vast majority lived in frozen foxholes within yards of the enemy in War World II, defended hills in the Korean War or slogged through jungles in Vietnam while under fire from enemy snipers. They risked life and limb defending their country but never got parades or personal greetings from presidents. The fact that these three men are getting these perks for doing virtually nothing suggests that we have a real problem with hero worship in this country.

- Victor Genrich

Granada Hills

Strange thank you

In 1942, President Harry S. Truman awarded the nation's highest military honor for a foreigner to a Serb. This medal, named the Legion of Merit, was awarded to General Draza Mihailovich. Mihailovich and his Chetniks were responsible for saving more than 500 American pilots who were shot down over Yugoslavia by the Axis powers.

Where were the Kosovo Albanians? Well, the Kosovo Albanians in 1941 joined the SS Skanderbeg Division, fiercely hailing straight-arm salutes, and they ``ethnically cleansed'' Serbs out of their villages throughout Kosovo. These same fascist-Muslims were the ones shooting to kill the U.S. pilots and other Allies.

Where were the Serbs? Helping the pilots. Fifty-eight years later, the United States government thanks the Serbs by bombing Yugoslavia and obliterating everything in sight?

- George Bozic

Valencia

What's fair about it

So Councilwoman Laura Chick feels that the $13 brush inspection fee is a fair way to protect the people of Los Angeles (Daily News, May 4). Is it fair for the owners of a lot that is 50 feet by 150 feet and entirely covered by a house, concrete or ground cover to pay the same as owners of a 2-acre plot up in the hills and surrounded by dry brush?

Thirty-seven years ago, I built my house on one of the very few vacant lots in this area of Woodland Hills. There was no brush around then, and there is no brush around now. There was a little oat grass growing on the lot. Each year, for those 37 years, I have received a threatening letter from the city, stating that if I didn't clean up the brush they would do it and bill me. To my knowledge, there never has been and does not need to be a brush inspection in this built-up area of small lots.

A brush inspection fee is just one more underhanded, illegal way of raising taxes, prohibited by Proposition 13.

- Les Parker

Woodland Hills

It won't happen here

Jim Avery (Public Forum, May 11) thinks that if we ``legalize'' guns, ``we can all go around shooting each other.'' Avery needs to refresh his understanding of the Bill of Rights. Guns already are legal, and ownership of guns is protected by the Second Amendment.

What Avery calls legalizing guns, I assume, is actually ``shall issue'' legislation to require that law-abiding citizens be issued permits to carry concealed guns. Far from promoting a Wild West scenario where buckaroos go about shooting one another, such legislation has resulted in a reduction in violent crime in every state that has adopted it. So far, 31 states, or 62 percent of the total, have adopted such legislation without any adverse consequence.

Here in the People's Republic of California, with a Democrat-controlled Legislature and a Democrat governor, Avery may rest assured that guns will not be what he regards as ``legalized.'' On the contrary, he can look forward to an unending stream of pernicious attacks on the Constitution, designed to harass law-abiding gun owners and doing nothing whatever to address violent crime.

- James F. Glass

Chatsworth

Loaded answer

Thomas Sowell (``Media one-sided on guns,'' April 30) is without a doubt the wisest pundit ever to push a pen. Since Sowell claims that John Lott of the University of Chicago proved that crime is deterred through the arming of law-abiding citizens, the answer is crystal clear. Every morning at all the schools in the country, each student is issued a complimentary firearm and required to keep a list. At the end of the school day, all guns are turned in along with lists of all the times each student brandished a piece that day to deter someone else from using one. Finally, no one has a competitive advantage, all because of the singular genius of Thomas Sowell. What a guy.

- Jeff Everson

Woodland Hills

Good idea

Now that Knott's Berry Farm has let everyone in their park for a nickel for Cinco de Mayo, will they do the same for the rest of us on the Fourth of July?

- Ed Garfalo

Valencia

You asked for it

I have been waiting with bated breath for someone to complain regarding the ``business'' trips by our very business-minded council. Why complain? If I recall, early in April we had an election wherein there was opportunity to elect new council. Voters are like sheep. Put the same ones back in. Don't give someone else a chance to do a better job.

Re-electing the same council members gave them the green light: Go ahead, have fun, take trips, especially as the citizens' expense; we don't mind. It seems to me the public - the voters - will never learn.

The vacations were to be expected. It has been done in the past. When the votes were cast in early April, that was the green light: Go ahead, have fun, travel.

- Lillian Hansen

Tujunga

Make them accountable

``The Power Trip'' editorial (May 5) scolds Los Angeles City Council members for vacations and for missing two to 21 weeks of council meetings in addition to a two-month ``vacation'' of no scheduled council meetings. The media might curb failures to attend council meetings and resulting lacks of a quorum by publishing a monthly list of absences and reasons for those absences.

Why aren't certain attendance standards required for a mayor? A mayor never has to face the public. Why shouldn't the mayor appear once monthly before the council to present an agenda? Finally, the Los Angeles Charter should call for council members to be fined when they fail to come to a meeting, causing lack of a quorum.

- Joan Taylor

Los Angeles

Add two more

In recent weeks, we have read about our City Council members receiving their $107,000 salary per year, taking junkets (supposedly on behalf of the city), not attending council meetings, taking extended personal vacations, ad infinitum. The bottom line, as reported, is that they collect their salaries simply by being in office.

Well, who in the private sector doesn't get paid just because he has a job - even if he doesn't work at it or even show up for work?

And now there is a proposal on the June 8 ballot to add more members to the City Council - more who would be paid that huge salary just because they will be in office. Well, I say no. Enough is enough.

- Margie Barron

Van Nuys

Boring chases

Is there anyone besides me who is getting very tired of long, boring car chases taking the whole hour of most evening news broadcasts when there are many more newsworthy events going on now?

- Jerry Toles

Saugus