Bush’s Agenda

* Once again your claims of impartiality are shattered on the rocks of your bias. “Energy, Economy Top Bush’s List During D.C. Visit” and “Bush, Fed: Can They Get Along?” (Dec. 19) label President-elect George W. Bush’s proposed tax cut as, respectively, “huge” and “massive.” This reflexive parroting of the Democratic Party line is simply front-page editorializing. Your claims of nonbias in your reporting remind me of the old saying: “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.”

DUNCAN MURRAY

Temple City

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Re “Despite Attacks, Bush Remains Firm on Tax Cut,” Dec. 18: It’s odd that Bush continues to tout his $1.3-trillion tax cut even though polls show most Americans are against it. It’s odder still that he keeps emphasizing that he campaigned on the tax cut. After all, most of us voted against him.

ROGER TANSEY

West Hollywood

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How can you trust the capabilities of Bush, who had two “failed companies” in his resume, to make such wide assumptions about the impact of a sweeping tax cut? Sure, I’d like a tax cut, but realistically, I’d also like to see some middle-of-the-road decisions that everyone can benefit from.

MAE NIKAIDO

Laguna Beach

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Bush gets into office largely fueled by big oil interests and immediately starts beating the drum on the looming “energy crisis,” a crisis that he and his team seem determined to convince us of, if not create. According to your Dec. 19 article, Bush’s transition spokesman Ari Fleischer “suggested that the new administration would look skeptically on any effort to pin the problem on price gouging by the energy industry.”

Meanwhile, Kaiser Aluminum decides that its main product is not aluminum but power and lays off workers in order to devote its resources to remarketing federally subsidized power at a $500-million profit (“Power Sales to California Heat Tempers in Northwest,” Dec. 19). What a surprise. The not-so-subliminal “rat” in Bush’s agenda is coming out of the cupboard.

LINDA L. CORDEIRO

Los Angeles

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As someone who has worked in the natural gas industry for 36 years, I’ve been warning family and friends since Bill Clinton and Al Gore were reelected in 1996 that soaring energy prices were inevitable. Those of us who remember the Carter administration can recall the long lines, high prices and endless waits for a tank of gas. If utilities had not been benevolent, regulated monopolies back then, similar shortages would have occurred with electricity and natural gas. Along came deregulation, which was not a bad idea in itself, and energy was thrust into the arena of supply and demand.

During the last eight years, Clinton and Gore did nothing to encourage the domestic production of energy sources; in fact, they did all they could to discourage it. The century-old Antiquities Act was used to seal up large deposits of fossil fuel, and nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams were scheduled for closure. The good news is that we are fortunate to have elected the energy team of Bush and Dick Cheney, but it will take several years for them to undo the harm of their predecessors.

JOHN F. TINTLE

Nipomo