Stuff like this really, really p*sses me off.

Ephrata is one of 36 Pennsylvania boroughs classified as a municipal power supplier, meaning it can purchase electrical power from various providers and sell that power to its residents. For years, Ephrata has purchased most of its power from such providers as PPL and Houston-based Reliant Energy through multiyear contracts, allowing it to buy cheaper and keep rates lower than those found on the open market. Any profits are kept for the borough.

With the recent deregulation of the power industry, providers no longer offer contracts, forcing Ephrata to buy higher-priced power.

Deregulation was supposed to have the opposite effect. Deregulation was supposed to lowe prices.

Deregulation of the power industry in Pennsylvania has been a *&$#! scam, and should be reversed.

But no! See, this is your free market at work! Why should providers be forced to offer contracts to municipalities like Ephrata? The providers can sell to whom they want for what they want! It’s better for their shareholders!

Ephrata power users? Let them eat cake - or power their homes with it.

So now we get the pathetic spectacle Ephrata desperately hoping to buy its own “generation capacity” in Ohio, but Pennsylvania law, according to the story, doesn’t currently allow that. Sen. Mike Brubaker has sponsored a bill to lift the restriction.

Meanwhile, in the most serious economic downturn in years, how are these residents supposed to pay their electric bills? But if they can’t, it’s the municipality itself that suffers. Because you can’t blame any one power supplier! Free market, baby!

I’d really like to see the likes of Limbaugh defend this, because this is what they defend, day after day, with their advocacy of a laissez-faire market that works exactly like this.

Regulation is bad! So just burn candles, dry all your clothes on the line in the middle of winter and bust up the furniture for fuel - because the alternative is “socialism.”

And heat.