Power Dilemma Needs Bipartisanship

I’m a California Republican, but I find myself, lamentably, cheering Bill Richardson (Commentary, Feb. 26) as he urges the president I voted for to respond in a meaningful way to our state’s electricity crisis. There are a lot of Republicans in the land of Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson who know, as Richardson points out, that free-market ideology should leave off when disaster looms for the world’s sixth largest economy.

I also find myself supporting Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s efforts to impose a temporary federal price cap on electricity until--and only until--enough electricity starts flowing into the West’s power lines to make the market viable again.

It would be a wonderful display of bipartisanship for President Bush to support these efforts (but insist on ironclad sunset provisions), which will have the effect of making the rest of the nation safe for deregulation. This would advance free-market ideology by fixing the market where it’s broken before it advances further.

JEROME L. AMANTE

Irvine

* What a mess this state has got itself into with its meddling with the electricity supply. What the devil is the government doing trying to manipulate our electricity service? What is next, our gas supply or our gasoline? They claim they deregulated electricity. But they set the final selling price. What deregulation is that? Then when the system is still out of whack they blame everybody but themselves. By their regulations they create a shortage and then scream blue murder when the price goes up! Gouging suppliers, they say; dumb politicians, we say.

Where have they been? Studying economics in the Soviet Union? This is nothing new, governments do it all the time. Gov. Gray Davis should get state government out of the electricity business. But he will not, because governments hate free markets; they just must fiddle with them.

FRANK W. BUNKELL

Glendale