The vast majority of this article deals with the CA electricity crisis and deregulation of other utilities.

The electrical crisis is predicated on deregualtion of the generation and transmission industries...all legislation enabling this was signed by Clinton or the state governments...yet the author seems to think its all President-Select Bush's fault (presumably because he refused to bail them out)

Further...the states had to opt in...CA structured their dereg plan poorly...with the thought...I'm sure...that allowing out of state suppliers to compete would help them get away with to little generation capability on their own.

So the author bashes conservatives for something that a whole lot of liberals had their hand in...

I happen to agree, though...that essential home utilites (gas, power, water, sewage) should stay regulated monopolies...because of the massive capital required to establish these industries...there will never be true competition...the only thing electricity deregulation created was another layer in industry. Brokers. Like Enron.

In some cases the market does better. Utilities are, by nature, capital intensive and >should< be operated as a monopoly.

One of the other problems in CA was that they deregulated on certain sectors...and basically denied the suppliers the ability to pass on most of the cost increases...which meant that the public had no incentive to stop using until it actually >was< a crisis.

The CA deregulation is a shining example of how NOT to do things.