PUBLIC FORUM WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

Our current electricity power situation is a disgrace. In the 1970s, I owned a gas station during the gas crisis. For public safety, the government severely limited my profit margin. Why would electricity be any different? Has anyone ever heard of a public utility or anyone being allowed to raise their rates by 5,000 percent to 8,000 percent?

Could it be because these people have donated thousands of dollars to our elected officials? Has anyone considered the long-range effect of this situation by allowing a few people to become billionaires at the expense of everyone else in California? I also believe that if these people get by with this, it will spread to the rest of the country.

- Jerry Hays

Studio City

Quick fix

Want to get this power shortage nonsense straightened up fast? Starting tomorrow morning, all elected state officials, from the governor down to each member of the Legislature, will have $1,000 deducted from their salaries for each day there is a blackout anywhere in the state. They should have the problem fixed by sundown.

- J. Donald Adams 

Sylmar

Believe this

I believe the power crisis is real. Sure I do. I also believe that all politicians are honest, moral and put the people's interests above their own. I believe in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and the Great Pumpkin.

I believe that pigs can fly, eagles can swim and the Clippers will win the NBA championship this year. And I believe I'm gonna do my best to vote out every single incumbent I possibly can in future elections, because we are all getting hosed.

- Greg Garnet

Canoga Park

What's not to like?

In answer to Sion Colvin's letter of March 20, where has he been for the past eight years? President Clinton did an extremely good job of managing the country - lowest unemployment in history, more millionaires, more home ownership and peaceful prosperity.

Colvin may have suffered through his own failures, but the country as a whole has not. Thank you, Bill Clinton.

- Stanley Gold 

Van Nuys

The list goes on

It is getting toward election day, April 10. As a public service, it's about time to reprint the names of those running for office, starting with the city councilman who spent $40,000 of the taxpayers' money on a Cadillac for himself, on down to all those who took expensive taxpayer-paid vacations.

Don't forget those that voted for the $170 million Belmont toxic center, and to expand the Sunshine Canyon garbage dump, and those who voted to give pay raises to school administrators at the expense of schoolrooms, learning materials, textbooks, libraries, etc. The list is too long, just print part of it.

- Barbara Noonan

Sylmar

Enough, already

Re ``Too many people'' by Dan Stein (Viewpoint, March 18):

The dire overpopulation warnings issued at the ``Collapse of Complex Societies'' conference, held last month in San Francisco by respected historians and archeologists, propels a sense of imminent urgency to Stein's well-taken point that our political leaders (from Washington, D.C., down to our L.A. mayoral candidates) must stop dreaming of various ``multiregional'' growth management schemes alone, ones that are predesigned to shoehorn ever more millions of migrant people into the U.S., many of whom freely head straight for our own ``Greater'' Los Angeles.

Instead, politicians should wake up and return us to our more sensibly moderate pre-1965 immigration levels (2,300,000 annually, at most).

- Harvey Pearson

Los Feliz

Team sports

``Where they stand'' (March 18), was excellent. But the leading mayoral candidates, all of whom want to improve the LAUSD, must speak out on a vital health and education question: What will they do to restart physical education for 11th- and 12th-graders and restart team sports for small students, all of whom pay taxes for both proven programs that help thousands avoid overweight, headaches, depression, diabetes, drugs and quitting school?

- Duke Russell

Hollywood

Must be nice

Thousands of patients die each year because of doctors' carelessness. A normal wait at a local emergency room is a couple of hours. To see a doctor, a sick person often has to wait, and has to wait another half an hour or so on the appointment day because three or more patients are scheduled for each time slot. Yet when Dick Cheney felt ``a couple of twinges'' in his chest, he walked into a hospital, saw a doctor, and received some surgery treatment for his heart from a dozen doctors.

People must wonder how come their HMOs do not have caring doctors similar to those who treated Cheney recently.

- Julian T. Nguyen

Reseda

Little difference

Re ``An outdated myth'' (Public Forum, Feb. 5):

It is not the so-called ``corporate Republicans'' who now control the media, it is the global elite, who control both political parties. The Republican agenda is exactly the same as the Democratic agenda (i.e. big government, free trade, international socialism, Balkanization of our land, loss of right to bear arms, etc.)

There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, and America was not founded as a democracy, it is a republic. A republic is the rule of constitutional law, a democracy is the rule of man, which leads to mob rule. Modern Americans are so ignorant they fail to see that they'll vote themselves into slavery under an international ruling elite.

- Eric Ellefson

Newhall

Reagan remembered

Regarding Thomas Sowell's delusional Feb. 9 column:

Among those in this country with any regard for integrity and veracity, Ronald Reagan is known as the ``Lyin' King,'' a king whose administration was so corrupt that more members of his Cabinet were indicted and convicted than the members of all the Cabinets of all the presidents who preceded him. A king who - unlike Clinton - actually subverted the Constitution and handed control of U.S. foreign policy to a select handful of sleazy gun-runners and bagmen, a king who blithely scattered S&L largess to con men and cronies, and who amiably put all our grandchildren into debt for life.

He also made stupidity, greed and smirking arrogance the cornerstone of the American political edifice.

- John Carver 

Chatsworth

Police work schedules

The Daily News is right in saying (``Safety first,'' Editorial, March 20) that any changes in police officers' work schedules need to reflect public safety concerns and not just officer morale. When council members Mike Feuer, Mark Ridley-Thomas and I introduced a motion and held a press conference to discuss an independent study of all options for a compressed work schedule, the importance of keeping enough officers on the street to ensure public safety was the first thing we emphasized.

The need for an independent study is clear. The Police Protective League is pressuring for a compressed work schedule and citing studies of how it works well in other cities. Chief Bernard Parks, on the other hand, quotes Police Department statistics showing the difficulty of compressing work schedules while keeping enough officers on patrol throughout the day. Both of them can't be right; before the City Council can consider any adjusting of work hours, it needs to know if it can be done consistent with a proper level of public safety.

As authors of the motion, none of us has a preconceived idea about whether to adopt compressed schedules or, if we do, which version is best. A good, unbiased and professional analysis of the options is what we desire, and we're content to let the results speak for themselves.

- Cindy Miscikowski 

Councilwoman

Los Angeles