True deregulation

The reference to California's "disastrous 5-year experiment with deregulation" in Sunday's story "$10 billion gamble" ignores the Jan. 25 observation by your columnist Thomas Sowell that this experiment "can hardly be called deregulation without twisting the meaning of the word beyond recognition."

A true deregulation, as Libertarians have been calling for, would clearly have resulted in the power industry enjoying the same free-market success that every other unregulated industry has.

Bradley Bobbs
Van Nuys