MAILBAG - Aug. 23, 2001

I’m responding to the “AES still not powered up” article (Aug. 9). I

am writing to Gov. Gray Davis concerning this issue asking that he use

his office to put pressure on this corporation. We ask that the

California Energy Commission require AES Corp. to sell only in

California, especially our area, and that they clean up their plant. They

should be required to do that before they do anything else.

A.J. SPIEGAL

Huntington Beach

With pollution should come energyMy understanding was that AES was

granted quick approval on their plant without the proper verification in

order to provide energy to California. If the purpose of them bringing up

those plants is to sell energy to other states, then as far as I’m

concerned why should we be subjecting ourselves to more pollution for

something that’s not even going to benefit us locally. We never should

have bypassed all of those steps if we were going to be letting them sell

the stuff elsewhere.

MARYLOU SCHOFFSTALL

Huntington Beach

Tax money needed for schools

What a shame that the Independent is now doing its best to convince

our citizens that they are overtaxed (editorial cartoon, Aug. 9.) What

with our schools falling apart and the “Me Generation” voters blocking

every attempt to put our local schools on par with the rest of the

nation, we now have the Independent backing the anti-tax group -- despite

the fact that the majority of Huntington Beach voters voted to get our

schools repaired.

Our “Me Generation” voters are the very same ones in the 1980s that

reduced California school funding per student to where it was down to the

level of poor states like Mississippiand Louisiana. For years we were

almost dead last in our nation in school funding per student. On top of

that, the “Me Generation” continually blamed the teachers for doing a bad

job of educating our children despite the fact that the classes were so

large that no teacher, however talented, could handle it and that student

books were scarce, and when available, were often out of date.

I guess the only hope for young families with children in Huntington

Beach who want good schools is that the selfish “Me Generation” will

finally die off -- but that may take awhile.

JAMES R. GALLAGHER

Huntington Beach

EDITOR’S NOTE: As we’ve stated before, the opinions stated by our

cartoonist, like opinions of letter writers and or columns, does not

necessarily reflect the opinion of the Independent or the paper’s

editorial board.