Harry Reid’s energy ideology is the ‘status quo’

To the editor:

Harry Reid, "Senator Silliness" of Nevada, is desperate, again trying to regain his footing after delivering the lowest congressional approval rating in American history and equally bad numbers at home. Now he wants to give the power industry a multibillion-dollar, taxpayer-subsidized near freebie to build new "clean energy" power lines (Sunday letter to the editor).

This is the same guy who killed hundreds of high-paying union jobs with his meddling in new coal-fired power plant construction for our northern counties, yet has no problem draining every drop of their water for Las Vegas, either. Sen. Reid is nothing, if not always inconsistent.

Remember Sen. Reid when you pay your utility bills, because he holds a lion's share of the responsibility for what you're paying. Remember, too, that this meddling requires Sierra Pacific and Nevada Power to utilize the national grid at astronomical prices when power generation is in short supply right here at home. Also remember the tens of thousands of utility industry dollars the Reid family has pocketed all these years they've fed at the public trough.

Public utilities, being state-regulated monopolies, already have authorization and provisions to set aside ratepayer monies for capital improvements, including transmission lines, in all 50 states. This, coupled with the fact that with current technology, you would need 600 square miles of solar panels to equal the energy output of a single nuclear power plant, make his proposed giveaway even more infuriating. So his goal of producing 10 percent of the nation's electricity with solar power would decorate thousands of square miles with hundreds of thousands of solar panels, wind turbines and such -- if they could even get past the regulatory hurdles, and that's a pretty big if. No, Sen. Reid, the better option would be to come up with a solid program to cover every single roof in the sun belt with solar paneling and forgo the massive solar and wind farming and hundreds of miles of transmission lines your silly plan entails. Imagine someday a Las Vegas Strip with hotels that may get the majority of their power from their own, privately owned solar panels on their own property.

Environmentalists are largely economic terrorists and also intractable absolutists; they will never agree to anything where digging and construction will be necessary, so let's get this transmission line idea to the trash heap before it goes any further.

It borders on sin in Nevada that our state, which enjoys more than 300 days of full sunshine per year, is not at the global forefront of the manufacture and installation of photovoltaic solar panels. Tiny, compact, and highly urbanized Europe is going to the rooftops over solar farms, and we should, too. Like it or not, we as a nation have an insatiable thirst for more and more energy, and that means everything is on the table. We will be building new power plants, nuclear plants, and drilling everywhere, too. Hopefully, we'll also find an economic way to liquefy hydrogen, the cleanest of all fuels, and the most abundant element in the universe in inexhaustible supply right here in our oceans.

Along with all of that, Congress should be figuring out a way to offer tax credits and incentives for individual residential, apartment complex and commercial conversions to solar paneling, not giving the power giants a multibillion-dollar election year near-freebie. Sen. Reid calls his plan "investing smartly," which proves this man has never made a payroll, created a single job or held a job in the private sector, the real world.

Your way Sen. Reid, is the real "tired, old way" of doing things. Your intransigence and failure to compromise to effect good energy policies during your years and years in Congress is the real problem. You are the status quo, and you are just as responsible, if not more so as majority leader, for the current situation.

Mike Zahara

LAS VEGAS

Mental health cuts

To the editor:

I would like to address a recurrent theme in the majority of your editorials and letters to the editor regarding the state budget crisis.

State workers are repeatedly conceptualized as being privileged, overpaid and unwilling to adhere to the same work standards as the private sector. While I cannot comment on all state programs, I do have some familiarity with the public mental health system. The adults, children and families who are served in the public mental health system are those with the least amount of resources (i.e., uninsured and Medicaid recipients), and they tend to have the highest levels of pathology. As a result, those served in this system require a comprehensive array of mental health services, which include case management, individual and family therapy, psychiatric care and more intensive outpatient services, such as day treatment or partial hospitalization.

The adult public mental health system focuses primarily on individuals who meet the eligibility criteria for severe and persistent mental illness, and the children's system serves those who meet eligibility criteria for severe emotional disturbance and their families. The combination of the highly intense and comprehensive services and a relatively chronic course results in a work experience that can be characterized as an extremely high-demand, stressful job with what would appear to be extremely low rewards.

The ongoing dialogue in your editorial pages supports the notion that the private sector can provide higher-quality services in a more cost-efficient manner. However, many private, for-profit outpatient programs do not have the staff size necessary to provide the type of comprehensive services that are required for this population. In addition, this population is not traditionally targeted by these agencies due to their lack of resources. Thus, public mental health workers provide quality, comprehensive services to a population that many private, for-profit outpatient agencies are ill-equipped and unwilling to serve.

I would also like to contribute something that has been sorely missing in this ongoing debate. The dialogue has focused primarily on whether state workers will be able to keep their jobs during this financial crisis. However, there has been no discussion about those who will be most affected by these cuts -- the adults, children and families who are served by these systems. More importantly, there has been no discussion on how we as a community will be prepared to cope with the ramifications of these disruptions in services.

For example, the Review-Journal has clearly documented the problems of chronically mentally ill individuals crowding our emergency rooms, and the various problems that plague our children in the child welfare system. These issues will only be exacerbated due to these disruptions in service.

I understand that Nevada is experiencing a significant financial crisis, and that cuts are probably necessary and inevitable. However, any discussion of cuts that disrupt the delivery of services to Nevada's most vulnerable populations without concurrently discussing the potential ramifications in client health and in our community is irresponsible.

Richard Yao

LAS VEGAS

What about layoffs?

To the editor:

Cutting the budgets of state agencies was a difficult project for our Legislature. When they cut the budgets of many state agencies, would not it follow that less workers would be needed?

Of course, many of the cuts came to projects that were farmed out and accomplished by the private sector, but many of them were state programs that require the labor of the employees in each individual state agency. Fewer projects require fewer workers.

Remember the old cartoon of the state workers, with one worker operating a shovel and three others supervising? Now there won't even be one shovel; rather, they all can remain at home base and drink coffee.

Loyalty to a work force of state employees in slack economic times is admirable, but is certainly not cost-effective.

Dennis Larounis

PIOCHE