I am thinking now about the price of electricity. The new Republican administration in Washington is pretty clear on this: California and the West will pay the going rate, whatever.

Updated for the 21st century, the GOP platform has a whole different idea of the "public interest," it seems. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this administration sees a higher duty now. Our free market system is under attack. Government must fight the menace of creeping socialism, the toll be damned. "We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender," Dick Cheney declared. Or was that the other conservative, Winston Churchill?

Doesn't matter. The thinking is the same.

Temporary price caps on energy will do nothing for supply and demand, we're told. Of course not. Temporary price caps will only serve to temporarily cap prices.

But this is surrender, Cheney says. It will discourage the oil and gas boys back in Texas. You slice a zero off those 600% profit margins, and you're yielding ground to the creeping socialists. What possible incentive will anyone have to keep America great if the government meddles with their aspirations for unlimited profit? No, it's better that we citizens clean out our savings accounts and send them to Houston and keep free market morale up. Think of your check as a war bond.

It is no coincidence, of course, that Cheney and his understudy in the Oval Office drew the battle lines on energy, where they know the terrain.

But this is only one front in a larger war. Once he's mopped up his victory on energy, Cheney will have his hands full elsewhere in the nation. I'm sure he was shocked when he took office and opened the books on the federal budget to find just how deeply the socialists have crept into our culture. Look around, and pity the poor vice president his task to restore our free markets to their full glory before it's too late:

Milk. My heavens, did you know that the some dairy farmers have created a cartel to set their own prices? Worse, the government sets the minimum prices for the rest of them. That's not creeping socialism, that's socialism at a full gallop. I'm afraid we'll have to forego milk and cheese for a few years while Cheney straightens out this mess.

Sugar. Can you believe this? Socialists have actually crept into our candy bars and breakfast cereals. No free market for these guys. They get propped up at both ends to the tune of $1.9 billion a year. Government agents protect our borders against cheaper imported sugar. Thus our domestic growers can produce sugar here at higher prices, and the government buys and pays to store all the surplus.

Timber. Loggers are sometimes thought to be kissing cousins of the oilmen. Actually, they turned their back on the free market and went socialist a long time ago. Have you noticed, for instance, they all wear red plaid shirts? In 1998, taxpayers spent $126 million opening up roads so that the timber industry could cut down trees in national forests. This year, with government help, the industry blocked the free market import of lumber from Canada on grounds that Canada's subsidies, oh dear, were higher than ours. The result: The price of a sheet of plywood has gone up 40% in the U.S.

Fish. For years, commercial fishermen resisted government intrusion into their business--right up to the moment when they stripped too many fish from the oceans. In a free market system, they'd face bankruptcy. Instead, they're going for a socialist handouts. West Coast fishermen will soon share in a $50-million taxpayer bailout--selling their boats directly to the government if fishermen promise to stop fishing for fish that are not there.

Boeing. Sad but true, socialism has crept into our big industry too. One recent example: The Pentagon announced it would subsidize production of Boeing's C-17 cargo plane, which nobody but the Air Force seems to want. If you're an airfreight hauler and buy a C-17, the Pentagon says it will channel shipping business your way, never mind the free market system of bids.

This is just a sampler, but you can see what Cheney is up against. He might wonder why the United States hasn't collapsed entirely, instead of being well fed and prosperous by tinkering with the principles of the free market.

But that won't happen with energy, he vows. No socialist price caps for California and the West. It's time to stand up against those who think government should go meddling. It's time to let the markets work their wonder. Gather 'round your candles, friends. Listen to Dick Cheney's ringing battle cry. Or was it Churchill's? Doesn't matter: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Copyright © 2001 Los Angeles Times

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