Bush’s View of Market

* Re “Bush May Keep Airline Mechanics on Job,” Feb. 11: Here is something I do not understand about the “free market” philosophy espoused by President Bush: When working people, in this case the mechanics at Northwest Airlines, attempt to exercise their right not to work, the president intervenes. He contends that the strike “could threaten the economy.” But when a group of energy companies form a domestic OPEC and put the squeeze on consumers in California and other Western states, the president maintains that the only thing he can really do is relax some environmental safeguards.

Let’s see: Federal intervention is necessary when the traveling public is inconvenienced, but when the broader population is gouged over something as basic as electricity, we must all supplicate before the laws of supply and demand. Sounds to me like the president’s vision of the market is more grounded in the prerogatives of wealth than in the sanctity of work.

PAUL RYAN

Arcadia