LETTERS: NV Energy shouldn’t be responsible for flipping solar hamburgers

To the editor:

Let me see if I understand the net-metering controversy, using an analogy. McDonald’s sells hamburgers, but rooftop solar owners thought they could make hamburgers cheaper and save money. So these owners went and got a heavily taxpayer-subsidized rooftop solar system and began making solar hamburgers.

Now on occasion, they make more solar hamburgers than they can use, and since they can’t store solar hamburgers, they want McDonald’s to sell their excess hamburgers and pay the owners the full retail price. When the sun goes down and the rooftop owners can no longer can make solar hamburgers, they want McDonald’s to give them back their hamburgers.

Net metering was meant as an incentive to help the taxpayer-subsidized solar industry get started. Customers who placed solar panels on their homes did so to generate their own electric power to save money, and they were basically told that NV Energy would act as their battery if they produced more electric power than they used.

NV Energy buys electric power it doesn’t produce at the wholesale price, not retail. Which brings up another issue: Since NV Energy must sell what is produced by solar homes, is this not income to the solar homes? Shouldn’t it be reported as income to the IRS? After all, rooftop solar owners want to be considered a mini electric company when they have excess power to sell.

When and if I go solar, I’ll have a Tesla home battery on my system to store excess power, and I’ll use NV Energy only when my system has exhausted its output.

RICHARD PHILLIPS

NORTH LAS VEGAS

All teachers needed

To the editor

I do not understand how the Review-Journal could publish the letter from Thresia Pierce about noncitizen teachers when it contains obvious falsehoods (“Noncitizen teachers,” June 20). Has she ever tried teaching a room of 100 students? It would be impossible to teach or learn anything.

Ms. Pierce claims, “There is no country in the world that would permit a United States citizen teacher to set foot in their country’s classrooms,” which is either a blatant or uninformed lie. Most countries will allow a person with a valid teaching license from any U.S. state to teach in their schools. Often it just requires a degree and not even a license.

I have taught in several countries and been invited to lecture in several others, based on my own education and life experience. A qualified teacher is a qualified teacher anywhere and is desperately needed everywhere. One should understand the facts before commenting.

ROBERT STANELLE

LAS VEGAS

Charleston shooting

To the editor:

Regarding the horrible murder of nine people at a South Carolina church (“Fatalities reported in attack on Charleston church,” June 18 Review-Journal):

President Barack Obama, left-wing wannabe presidents and Michael Bloomberg-backed groups are blaming firearms. Of course. Never let a disgusting event like this go to waste.

The shooter apparently passed his background check. Do background checks help stop crime? This coward took advantage of a gun-free zone. Did that zone keep the victims safe? Associates apparently knew he was a racist wacko. Did anybody say anything?

The anti-gun groups instead use their twisted logic that only disarming law-abiding Americans will stop these incidents. The government will protect you. Actually, we know few of the real facts in the shooting and probably never will. The known facts show that gun-control laws don’t prevent murders.

BOB IRWIN

LAS VEGAS

The writer is owner of The Gun Store.

Law-abiding gun owners

To the editor:

It’s too bad none of the congregants in the Charleston, S.C., church had a concealed carry permit and were carrying when a gunman opened fire there June 17. If that had been the case, it’s a safe bet that half of the victims would be alive. (“Fatalities reported in attack on Charleston church,” June 18 Review-Journal).

When are gun-control proponents, from President Barack Obama on down, going to realize that depriving law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment right won’t stop senseless murders? Strict anti-gun laws exist in Chicago and New York, yet that doesn’t stop criminals and crazy people from acquiring handguns, AK-47s and AR-15s, as evidenced by the carnage in the two cities.

In Charleston, nothing could have erased from the mind of this murdering maniac that these churchgoers needed to die. The only chance of survival for some of the victims would have been if the killer died first. Since no policeman was present, killing the shooter could have been accomplished by a law-abiding, armed congregant.

Many of you will laugh at my comments, maintaining that the Charleston church is not the O.K. Corral and that we don’t have shootouts at a church. But many more than one adult and one 5-year-old girl survived the O.K. Corral. Unfortunately, it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.

LEV SCHNEIDERMAN

LAS VEGAS