The Power Company Is Ripping You Off
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post from One of The Newest Members Of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... and about damn time, too.)
Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where there truly are strange things happening every day.
We begin in several states, starting in South Carolina, where the Post and Courier ran down a scam employed by power companies there, as well as across these United States.
Over the past decade, state legislatures across the country rewrote rule books for how power companies pay for new power plants, shifting financial risks away from electric companies to you and everyone else. This rule change ignited a bonfire of risky spending - $40 billion so far on new power plants and upgrades, a Post and Courier investigation found. Flush with your cash, utilities tried to build plants with unproven technology; they launched projects with unfinished designs and unrealistic budgets; they misled regulators and the public with schedules that promised bogus completion dates; they hid damning reports from investors and the public; they tried to silence critics and whistleblowers.
Just when you think there can’t be any more evidence that the basic business model for American corporations is fraud, somebody new steps up with a new method of making your money their money. And, as the years have gone by, they’ve gotten increasingly shameless about it.
Then, when delays and cost overruns couldn’t be ignored, they asked state regulators to charge you more for their failures. And what happened to these high-stakes gamblers? Over the past five years, executive teams of six utilities that bet on these plants won $520 million in salaries, bonuses and other personal compensation, the newspaper found.
At the top, the paper provides an estimate that it should take you 24 minutes to read this. (I don’t know when that became a thing, but OK.) Use all 24 minutes. It’s more than worth your time. The power companies have boatloads of money which they are not shy about raining down on state legislators and state regulators. However, you apparently can buy the Georgia regulators with a smoked ham.
In Georgia, electric industry lobbyists ply commissioners with expensive meals and send them smoked hams for Christmas, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found. Between 2014 and 2016, Georgia Power bought commission staffers and contractors more than 200 meals and refreshments, a review by the Energy and Policy Institute found. Most were small meals, though earlier this year, Georgia Power lobbyists spent $7,700 to feed commissioners and staff at a single dinner at the Lake Oconee Ritz-Carlton. In 2012, a commissioner asked a lobbyist to pave the way for his granddaughter to sing the national anthem at an Atlanta Braves game.
And people think that whole Kaepernick thing is about disrespect for the anthem. How about using it - and your child - as part of an alleged bribery scheme. The whole thing is an amazing saga from our new age of completely unaccountable and covert legalized influence peddling. Also, dammit, support local reporting.
Remember when John Kasich was the moderate, sensible choice in the Republican primaries? There were two things about Kasich that were elided in the rush to find someone (anyone!) in his party that could be wedged into the box labelled Not Insane. One, he is a lifelong advocate for the Balanced Budget Amendment, aka The Worst Idea In American Politics. The other is that he is something of an anti-choice fanatic, which came to the fore again this week when Ohio passed a new anti-choice law of the kind that already was declared unconstitutional when Indiana tried it three months ago. From Reuters:
Lawmakers voted 20-12 in favor of the law, which criminalizes abortion if the physician has knowledge that the procedure is being sought due to a diagnosis of Down syndrome, a genetic disorder caused when abnormal cell division results in an extra full or partial copy of chromosome 21. Doctors would lose their medical licenses in the state and face a fourth-degree felony charge under the law if they were to perform an abortion with that knowledge. Mothers would not face criminal charges.
Note that last part. Mothers will not face criminal charges because most of the people pushing these laws know that, if you didn’t make that concession, you’d get about .01 percent of the women’s vote for the next five decades. The law also pretty much turns doctors into an arm of a state’s law-enforcement apparatus. If Kasich signs this patently unconstitutional measure, people should remember it in 2020.
We move on to Wisconsin, where the state government has found an entirely new way to make a mess. Remember when everyone was investigating Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage this particular Midwest subsidiary? There was a metric fckton of evidence collected to the effect that Walker and his people would steal soup if given the opportunity, but, ultimately, because of a combination of willful blindness and political monopoly, not much ever came of it.
Now, though, as the AP tells us, Walker’s running buddies in the state government, especially Attorney General Scott Schimmel and the leaders in Walker’s pet legislature, are coming for some get-back.
The calls for Elections administrator Michael Haas and Ethics administrator Brian Bell to resign come in the wake of an attorney general's report critical of how evidence collected in a now-closed investigation into Republican Gov. Scott Walker's campaign was handled. Attorney General Brad Schimel, also a Republican, recommended last week that nine people involved in the probe be held in contempt over how they handled evidence. Haas and Bell were not among those nine. But Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in separate letters sent late Thursday to Bell and Haas that due to "concerns over partisan influence remaining" from the now-shuttered Government Accountability Board they should resign. "You have lost the confidence of our caucuses to be an impartial administrator," Vos and Fitzgerald wrote. Fitzgerald said Friday that if they refused to resign, he would schedule an up or down vote on their confirmation next month in the Senate. While the law is not clear on what rejection of their confirmation would mean, it would at the very least increase pressure on the boards to bow to the will of the Senate, which is controlled 19-13 by Republicans.
Bear in mind. The two guys that these flying monkeys are after had nothing to do with the investigation in question, so it’s hard not to conclude that this is a signal from the state’s Republicans that you investigate their shenanigans at your peril. And this in a state where most of the good government initiatives were born.
And we conclude, as is our wont, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Reindeer Games Back Judge Friedman of the Plains brings us the tale of a University of Oklahoma regent who would like you to know that he doesn’t hate gay people, even though they are doomed to roast in hell forever. And also, equivalence! From the Tulsa World:
Humphreys’ remarks were made during the KFOR program “Flashpoint,” aired Sunday, during which Humphreys, state Rep. Emily Virgin, D-Norman, and host Kevin Ogle discussed the pending resignation of U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and accusations of sexual improprieties against Franken and other public figures. When Virgin said she was pleased that her party had essentially expelled Franken and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., because of inappropriate behavior, Humphreys said, “And yet you defend Barney Frank.” Frank, a former congressman from Massachusetts, is openly gay. Asked by Ogle and Virgin to explain why he brought Frank into the conversation, Humphreys said, “Barney Frank is - homosexuality, is it right or wrong? It’s not relative. There’s a right and wrong. “If (everything’s) OK, then it’s OK for everybody and it’s OK for men to sleep with little boys,” Humphreys said.
Can they all just once and for all go off to some weekend seminar on an island somewhere and learn about the concept of “consent” in all contexts? They can feel free to stay on the island for as long as they want.
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.
You Might Also Like
