During his most destructively productive years, Hanssen was, in essence, a Gorbachev subcontractor, yet today, the erstwhile Soviet leader is wined, dined and lauded in the United States where he receives hefty speaking fees for spouting his pro-Marxist line on university campuses, at business gatherings and elsewhere. In 1992, while Hanssen was allegedly betraying his country, Gorbachev was awarded the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award tendered by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. It seems that Sen. John Burton has now authored a new Senate bill allowing the state to own power plants and acquire facilities to carry electricity throughout the state. It cannot be blamed entirely on the Democrats. The Republicans are just as culpable.
Electricity is simply electrons traveling through a wire.
We can all see what has happened. The PUC allowed the wholesalers free rein on their prices but kept a cap on the rates charged to the public because it knew that the ratepayers couldn't pay such exorbitant prices and, politically, it wouldn't fly. The parent company isn't losing anything at all. Now, Gov. Gray Davis, instead of simply ordering the PUC to regulate the wholesalers under Section 216 of the Public Utilities Code and requesting the Legislature to repeal the 1996 legislation, is embarking on the politically idiotic exercise of putting the state in the electrical business, which will only last temporarily. The ratepayers will, in the long run, be stuck with the obscene cost of the entire fiasco.