New meters have too much control

My new so-called “Smart Meter” was just installed in my Newport Beach home. Already it has changed my life: I hate it. For years electricity was “fixed-price.” For years using electricity was “fair.” Now when I turn on my stove at 5:30 p.m., I am forced to think about the “utility” I have loved all my life.

While Phil Chipman devotes his personal life to his earth-friendly electric car, he is not avoiding electricity usage. The Daily Pilot article (“WIND, powered by electricity,” July 4) elevates the fact that fossil fuels power the plants needed to provide the electric power the vehicle demands.

The new highest price for electricity is between 4 and 6 p.m. Think about it: The “Smart Meter” adds on an additional expense to food, as the regulators and electric companies have declared the dinner hour to be the most expensive time of the day.

Decades to come for families living in Orange County, the electric companies will be in charge of your family’s eating habits! Working families are the first to feel the “Smart Meter’s” bite. Next, the elderly get the “Smart Meter’s” back-of-the-hand, as they must consider their heating and air-conditioning electric bill, which is linked to the “Smart Meter,” along with their medications.

Gone is the freedom to cook dinner at “your” dining hour. Gone is the freedom of turning on an appliance at “your” laundry hour. Gone is the freedom of watching the kids come home at 4 p.m. after school and tossing their food into the oven. Here to stay is the new ugly horrible unfair “Smart Meter” dictating my life hourly as it hovers over me like an alien ship from outer space.

Carole Wade

Newport Beach

Know the writers’ philosophies

Don’t be fooled again.

I don’t have a problem with the immigrants, legal or otherwise, who have come to the U.S. for a better life. That’s what I would do in the same situation. More importantly, I believe they have been encouraged and even invited here to be taken advantage of for their cheap labor, many times by the same people who rail against them in public yet use that labor to break unions, displace local government jobs through outsource contracting, produce our food, or invite them to use our county hospitals to get federal funding, as Pete Wilson did as he was promoting Proposition 187.

That said, I believe we have another, more insidious problem here. Here is a little history. As part of a strategy, many racist organizations have people publish articles in local papers using reasoned arguments that appear to be aimed at problems such as crime and blight that usually would scapegoat whatever person or race they had it in for. All this is to gain public support for the next step, which is to get like-minded people into local, state and federal offices to further their goal of white supremacy.

Does this sound familiar, Daily Pilot? My reason for writing this is to ask people to research those who are writing all opinion pieces in your local paper and ascertain their real agenda and who these people support in our elections so none of us get fooled again. I believe we do have a border problem and we need to be vigilant about crime and blight, but we need to listen as well. We should elect people who really want to deal with the issues rather than to use the issues to further an agenda of hate.

Billy Folsom

Costa Mesa