Yes – completely OUTRAGEOUS!
California energy regulators have allowed a temporary 7% – 15% electricity rate increase. This comes amid the Standard and Poors’s downgrades in bond ratings to the only step above junk status.
While the dust of the much maligned – deregulation policy still settles, Utilities are hemorrhaging billions more in cash (energy expenses) than they have been allowed to collect from customers.
While deregulation is bearing the blame it is rather a two-pronged fork that is the fulcrum for this energy crisis:
1) artificial price caps in place which do not allow the utilities to charge a market rate …
2) A policy of ‘No energy Policy’ save that of no search, no find, no production of same.
Looters masquerading as consumer advocates professed outrage at the temporary increase and referred to the current pricing structure as ‘gouging’. While one spokeswoman gleefully indicated that ‘she didn’t care if the utilities went out of business’; I would urge us all to contemplate the full measure of her wish.
When Private Utility Companies are forced out of business in California, there are only a couple of options: Let the entire state grow dark and literally grind to a halt or (more likely) have the ‘State’ step in and take over the ‘obviously failed policies of private ownership.’
Could this be the ‘shot across the bow’ for the rest of our nation? Environmentalist and Consumer Advocates lobby for legislation that disallows Private Sector Companies from producing a profit, then forces those same companies to continue to provide goods and services to those same groups based on need.
What does it signify when the ‘motor of business’ (the profit motive) is carved from the enterprise and what does it indicate about those (looters) who are willing to participate? How – in America ( you know – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness), can it be that these plunders are allowed to roam free without the public outcry and condemnation that these criminal acts demand?
