Price Gouging Drains Tax Reductions Dry

Re “Bush Energy Stance Begins to Worry Some in GOP,” May 10: The congressional Republicans are very slow to react: The citizens of California have worried and have lived in a crisis situation for more than three months now--a death knell for the California economy?

Where are the congressional Republicans lately? The promised tax reduction is becoming a fantasy or mirage, since the calculated annual benefits of $300 to $700 per family are erased or wiped out by the continued greedy and excessive increases by corporations close to President Bush’s heart (price increases for gasoline, natural gas, electricity and pharmaceuticals have recently been announced). Thus we end up paying out more than any tax-reduction benefit to be received, while Bush makes his corporate friends happy by his inaction and his lack of care and protection of the American family and the consumer.

Olga R. Marcus

Torrance

Texas Democratic Rep. Ralph M. Hall destroys credence in the idea that all Texans want to bleed California with unconscionable, soaring energy wholesale prices. He said he would have supported a House subcommittee measure that would have protected consumers from the gouging prices that reached $2,000 for a megawatt-hour on May 9 (and power suppliers would have been ensured of rational profits), but California Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) and George Radanovich (R-Mariposa) voted against controlling energy prices and Hall followed these rascals.

The wholesale price for electricity early last year was $30 a megawatt-hour and the sky appears to be the limit this year. When the retail price lid is removed throughout the state early next year and the misery comes into full effect, Californians will have a long memory and a short fuse to unresponsive politicians who sided with the power suppliers who wreaked havoc on the Golden State.

Joseph Ruiz

City of Industry

Oil companies are reporting record earnings. Gasoline prices are at an all-time high and still rising. Two Texas oilmen are running the country. Coincidence?

Marvin Haas

Banning

It appears that with deregulation, privatization, etc., we have helped create an OPEC-like consortium arrayed against us in our search for the electricity solution.

Paul Dergarabedian Sr.

Mission Viejo