LETTERS: NV Energy misleading its customers
To the editor:
Clearly, the misleading information in the full-page NV Energy advertisement running in the Review-Journal is an attempt to cause a rift between those who don’t have rooftop solar and those who have rooftop generating systems. The ad also attempts to gain sympathy for NV Energy’s move to line its own pockets with the money not spent to generate power.
Generating power using coal and natural gas, as NV Energy mostly does, costs money and creates pollution, an additional hidden cost to everyone’s pocketbook and their health. Generating power using solar, wind and geothermal energy costs less in the long run because of the reduced need to pay for the input of the continuing energy source (sun, wind, natural geothermal heat) and only for the replacement cost of the infrastructure.
When excess power is returned via net metering to the NV Energy system by a rooftop solar generator, that power is used by neighbors. It is accounted for by the meter on the neighbor’s property, the same way NV Energy-generated power is, and is paid for by the neighbor at the going NV Energy rate. That money goes to NV Energy, which spent nothing for its generation, rather than to the rooftop solar owner who funded the cost of the infrastructure.
Don’t be fooled by NV Energy’s attempt to alarm users in order to add to its profits, and be thankful that you have someone near you who will help keep stable power available during the long, hot Las Vegas summer days to come.
CHARLES PARRISH
LAS VEGAS
Social Security funding
To the editor:
As an average retiree who has been paying into Social Security since I was 14 years old, when I obtained my working papers permitting me to legally work part-time, I wish to address Megan McArdle’s column (“Where will all this money come from?” April 19 Review-Journal). Social Security was set up as a workers insurance policy similar to an IRA; yet unlike an IRA, the government was permitted to dip into our earnings.
Hence, we now have a legal Ponzi scheme eating away at the account. Accusing my generation of decimating the fund is not only a lie, but true sacrilege. It was our generation that built the fund for fellow workers who were truly unable to work and for our retirement. Our toil kept the system healthy. It was not meant for vote-buying or financing the lazy and useless. And why we must pay income tax on monies previously taxed? The 15 percent nontaxable is a myth if your total income (dividends, interest, pensions, etc.) exceeds $30,000.
Instead of listening to Ms. McArdle and others who never wore a uniform or got their hands dirty, maybe we should step back a generation or two and pick the brains of the American worker.
RICHARD SIMMS
HENDERSON
Forcing Yucca on Nevada
To the editor:
Regarding Craig Hutzler’s letter (“Yucca: Irrational fears,” April 17 Review-Journal), if he and Rep. Cresent Hardy are so gung-ho on this project and want to research it fully, why don’t they go buy property and move their families next to an already existing nuclear reactor area? Any sports book in town would give major odds against that ever happening, and I would personally bet against it.
It may be that Yucca Mountain is safe for nuclear storage, but I am scared to death of transporting it in order to do so. There is no safe way to get the waste to Yucca Mountain by truck, train or wagon. I do not want future generations to glow in the dark from an accidental spill.
Why isn’t there a plan, by the government and companies who make this waste, to store the waste locally, instead?
Stop already with shrugging your shoulders, as if this is inevitable, and your “we might as well get paid for it” attitudes. Just because we have a lot of unused beautiful desert in our state doesn’t mean we should treat it like a litter box for the whole country. Put the Yucca project to the voters of Nevada and see if it passes. Or is the government just going to try to shove it down our throats like the soccer stadium?
PATTY ROMEO
LAS VEGAS
