The electric bill -- and OUR electric bills

Howdy and happy Thursday. As you know, our Legislature is in its annual session and is doing all sorts of interesting things. One of them, which has not gotten a lot of attention yet but will, is a massive energy bill that's moving through the House and Senate. This will probably be the topic of my Sunday column. Without question, this bill will result in higher electric rates for Floridians.

I'm talking about Senate Bill 1544 and comparable versions of it in the House. Right off the bat, let me tell you, this is bill is a monster. Once again, the Legislature is throwing dozens of different topics into a single, colossal measure so that there's not much chance of the public figuring out what's in it. This is a lousy way to make public policy, but that doesn't stop the Legislature.

As I read it, there are three general subject areas in this bill:

* Provisions letting electric companies charge customers more money, and charge them in advance for big-ticket items such as major transmission lines. This is sort of "the other shoe dropping'' -- the electric companies previously won the right to charge customers in advance for power plants; now they're getting the same ability for transmission. That is not just a little add-on, either: Progress Energy Florida figures its transmission costs connected with its proposed nuke at $3-billion.

* Provisions making it easier for companies to site their transmission lines and other facilities, especially across public-owned land. Both the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Transportation would fork over public rights-of-way if the Public Service Commission determined the facilities were needed. Furthermore, citizen opponents would be restricted in their ability to oppose transmission facilities, and it would be harder if not impossible for opponents to propose alternative routes.

* A variety of green ideas, some of which are enthusiastically embraced by environmentalists. Electric companies would have to make sure at least a small percentage of their load growth would be provided by alternative sources. They would get tax credits for solar and other renewable efforts (although I am curious as to how tightly that would be audited). Florida would move toward a "cap and trade" system in which overall emissions would be reduced, but companies could swap their individual "allowances" among themselves. On the micro level, deed restrictions could not be used to block solar collectors, condos would be able install them more easily, and homeowners would not be punished with a higher tax assessment for installing them. The state also will review its building codes and study whether, in the long run, to "decouple" electric rates from actual volume of usage -- in other words, companies would no longer have an incentive to sell as much juice as possible.

Really, these are three separate subject areas, and you could argue that there should be a bill on cost recovery, a bill on siting procedures, and a bill on environmental impact. Instead, electric lobbyists are making sure they'll all crammed into the same "train," so they will get what they want. Don't forget that the electrics made big political contributions in advance of this cycle, not the least of which was Florida Power & Light's cool $1-million donated to Gov. Charlie Crist's campaign to get Amendment 1 passed.

What can citizens do if they don't like it? It is late in the game, but not too late to call or e-mail your legislator to express concern. The bills are not in their final form and can still be changed.

Comments

Howard,

This is indeed a dastardly bill in the power it gives to utilities to site work without citizen purview, in some cases. I just met with Progress Energy with some other environmental advocates about the Levy County Nuclear Power Plant proposal and their HUGE transmission line proposal to send out that power if the plant is built. AND WE DISCUSSED THIS BILL........... Just with this line proposal, they told me AGAIN that they will try to use existing power line corridors as much as possible. AND GUESS WHAT.........MANY of our preserves (including Brooker Creek Preserve) and wild life managements areas CONTAIN EXISTENT CORRIDORS, and are VERY much under consideration for the final route. Please give your readers all pertinent info in your column as to whom to contact and SCREAM at to stop this bill in it's tracks. This is ANOTHER do-over, no doubt. If they want YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD for some construction, in this bill they can CONDEMN under eminent domain as far as I read the bill...the pre- charges on funding the lines.....well, you did a good job of defining the nasties. State, wake-up, this is ANOTHER attempt to keep citizens out of the loop and SILENCED in regards to determining their own futures and the future and WAY in which our state grows............

Lorraine

[Karl Nurse]

Howard,

The problem in talking about future electric costs is that EVERY option will cost us more than current costs.
The underlying need is to compare choices and their $ cost and impacts.
Almost all efforts at efficiency are measured separately from the cost of
generating additional power. There is
a huge amount of low hanging fruit to
increase efficiency in most buildings
and future construction. This can push
back the needs for additional power a
good number of years.

Howard this subject on electric costs is very dear to my heart.
I know that if there was maybe 4 ounces of brains in the whole Florida legislature they would look into producing power from sugar cane like they do in "Venezuela" and "India".
We have the perfect climate, and miles of everglades where sugar thrives.
Sugar is 100% alchohol.
Corn is 18%.
So when a senator from Florida supports making ethanol in Iowa they are playing with the wrong toys.
One letter I sent to different politico's got responses that were downright idiotic.
Actually this process could almost be accomplished by refubishing existing incinerators we already have.
This is just another example of, Big money in control of our lives.

Go after them Howard, you're the only one over there who has the stones to seek the truth.

[Chris]

As is usually the case with media, they tell us the story but give us no info on how to do anything. Well is anyone surprised that the government wants to give the electric industry the power to oversee pricing? Give me a break. Insurance companies, gas stations, hospitals, car dealers, cable companies, etc . . . They all charge whatever the hell they want. And the government lets them because it means more tax revenue. The more they charge the more they tax. Simple math any idiot can follow. Now that we have reached a recession we are seeing the government stumble over its own feet to keep from losing their precious tax dollars. This decade will be one to remember, it will be awesome!

[powell]

Florida Power has done very little to promote conservation before building a new power plant. Where are the free bulbs to replace our energy hogging incandescent ones? Insistence that industries exchange their antiquated equipment with energy efficient equipment? Lobby for requirement of energy efficient household appliances? Encourage use of sodium rather than mercury outdoor lighting?

Remember, power Company's CEO's bonuses are based on increased profits (read consumption for power companies). Conservation has worked in California power industry. Let it work here.

[Allan]

April 5, 2008: Here's my solution: Expropriate, without indemnificaiton or compensation, Progress Energy and all the bit power companies and utilities. Make electric and other power free to everyone; it's 2008. We're supposed to have a civilization, not a society based on sucking the vast majority of us dry so a handful of owners can make out like thieves. Neither Dems nor Reps will support this, so make a fighting party of workers that will fight for this. And labor unions: get out of the business of supporting enemies of workers, and get out of your organizations the bureaucrats who support this bloodsucking, labor-hating, boss-ruled capitalist system, and turn your labor organizations into real LABOR organizations that fight for the MAJORITY, THAT IS, US, LABOR. Organize all labor that's unorganized. Make a 30-hour work week at no loss in pay. Make a 75 dollar per hour minimum wage. Make free quality health care for all, not the fake "health insurance" of capitalist Dems. Make a socialist planned economy governed from below by elected councils of workers as the real kind of governmental organs. Expropriate all major banks, industries, corporations, and put them all under cooperative ownership and collective ownership administered from below by the working people of town and country. Why have socialism for the rich, as in the Bear Stearns bail-out and bail-outs of big business generally? Let's have socialism for the majority of us, and let the rich go to work like the rest of us.

[Allan]

April 5, 2008: In my last post, I typed "bit" power companies when I intended to type "big" power companies.

[jackie]

Says a lot for Crist and the Legislature. They certainly can be bought Florida's lawmakers stink.

[Observer]

If Allen is so in love with socialism, perhaps he should go to Cuba. If everything is free, who is going to pay for it? What a fairyland.

Yes, lets give everyone free electricity so that they have NO incentive to conserve.

I am in awe of the brilliance on the blogs.

[Allan]

April 10, 2008: On Observer's snotty remark. Hmmmmm.... let's see. Observer attacks what he calls "socialism." But I did not hear Observer attack the George Bush-Treasury Secretary-Federal Reserve-J.P. Morgan-Chase plan to bail out Bear Stearns at taxpayer expense. Hmmmmm..... sounds like a kind of socialism to me, but instead of socialism for the rest of us, sounds like socialism for the rich to me.

Then, of course, there is the fact that the biggest corporations, banks, industries in America, roughly since 1975, have been operating by literally indebting their own companies so that if their total corporate debt is added up, it amounts not to the 10 trillion just amassed under Bush and Cheney, but about 30 to 40 trillion amassed under all bipartisan Republican and Democratic administrations since 1975 (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush One, Clinton, Bush Two). Hmmmmm.... sounds like "debt-based" "socialism" to me, but once again, socialism for the rich.

I wonder what Observer is going to do when the contemporary capitalistic economic crisis, which, all the bourgeois punditocracy to the contrary notwithstanding is not merely about the subprime mortgage crisis, but is much deeper than that, and has a heck of a lot to do with this enormous 30 to 40 trillion dollar debt amassed by banking and corporate capitalist America -- what is Observer going to do when suddenly the Titanic of the American capitalist economy sinks, and with it, Observer and the rest of us. Does Observer think that the Republican and Democratic solutions of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is a "solution" to these issues?

And on Cuba. Cuba is not socialist. They have a state expropriated economy, however. State expropriation does not equal socialism. Nor does state central planning equal socialism. Socialism is a classless and stateless international society. And nobody's ever had that. But, on the other hand, I notice that Cuba, one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere (in part, due to the imperialistic act of war called a U.S. embargo, that all administrations from Democrat Kennedy through Democrat Johnson, Republican Nixon, Republican Ford, Democrat Carter, Republican Reagan, Republican Bush One, Democrat Clinton, Republican Bush Two, have kept on that country, a country that has done nothing to the people of this country at all), has still, based on their state expropriated economy, been able to provide free maternity care to mothers, free health care to children and babies, free education to their people, a guarantee of employment to the people of their country, a basic economic and income "floor" under their population, a guarantee of housing for their people (while, I notice, the psychopathic and sociopathic St. Pete City Council and sociopathic and psychopathic St. Pete City Government in 2007 sent a lynch mob of box cutter-wielding city officials in to destroy the personal possessions of homeless people and, more recently, sent the same lynch mob in to literally, sort of like Adolph Hitler's Nazis did with the personal possessions of the Jews they murdered later on, confiscate the personal possessions of homeless people here in St. Pete).

I also remember that in 1962-1963, after the right-wing extremist McCarthyite and white racist Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed up by gay-hating, but cross-dressing, right-wing demented psycho, J. Edgar Hoover, framed him up, courageous Monroe, North Carolina black NAACP head and activist, Robert F. Williams, who had organized armed self-defense of black people against Ku Klux Klan racist terrorism in Monroe, North Carolina, was literally forced to flee the U.S. by the liberal Democratic administration of Cuban Revolution-hating president Jack Kennedy, after which Cuba provided political asylum to Williams. Read the book, "Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power," by by Southern white liberal historian Timothy B. Tyson, and the earlier book on Williams, "Black Crusader: A Biography of Robert F. Williams," by Robert Cohen, for more details on the malignant, rotten, and evil bipartisan persecution of Robert Williams by both Democrats and Republicans in this country for Williams' having done nothing but courageously organize self-defense against right-wing white fascist Ku Klux Klan terrorism in Monroe, North Carolina, and in a determined fashion, organize for the pursuit of integration which was, in the 1950s, doing nothing but trying to make real and fulfill the actual law under the 1954 Brown v. Board of Ed. decision. At least Cuba gave Williams asylum from the bipartisan right-wing totalitarian governing racist coalition in this country. I'd say, Cuba did right by the cause of anti-racism in that matter, while the bipartisan Demopublican and Republicrat white racist machinery of capitalist class exploitation and imperialist colonialism did quite wrong in that situation.

But again, Cuba is not socialist, because simply statifying and expropriating big capitalist exploiters of labor (major banking, industry, transportation, communication, the major means of production) is not in and of itself "socialist."

It is, however, a measure of self-defense of the mass of a people against being looted by big so-called "private" thieves who, however, when their potential bankruptcy literally threatens to bring down the entire international financial order of international capitalism, are suddenly bailed out by a capitalist government in league with another big capitalist private banking firm.

Again, that certainly sounds like a kind of "nationalization" of Bear Sterns' debts.

And guess who will pay for that, Observer?

You will. I will. And so will everybody else on this site, and everybody in America.

You pro-private capitalists are silly billies. You love being looted and sucked dry when it's done by a handful of banking and corporate thieves, but the concept of actually taking away their ability to loot and suck you dry by expropriating the private sector, then actually putting to work the produced wealth of labor to create free health care, rebuild the levees which were overflowed in New Orleans resulting in the dragging of who knows how many innocent people out to sea, rebuild the unsafe airplanes which are now being grounded because they're being found to have all kinds of safety problems, rebuild the coal mines that collapsed and killed coal miners in Crandall and Sago, rebuild the highways, rebuild those steampipes like the one that exploded earlier this year in Manhattan, New York due to decades of non-maintenance, make education free for all from kindergarten through Ph.D., slash rents in this country and give all those big unused condos and office buildings to the homeless so they finally at least have someplace in which to live, cancel the mortgage debts to the banks of the poorest and working class homeowners in this country so they can actually live in their homes and own them outright rather than all these largely poor white, black, Latino, and other impoverished over very low-income homeowners being driven out of their homes, as they are now, or having their neighborhoods redlined -- that is, the concept of actually building up the country and making it better and of labor (those who produce all wealth) actually getting back something substantive for labor's efforts eludes and escapes you.

And what's idiotic about your diatribes against what you idiotically mislabel "socialism" is, this country is the richest country on earth, with enormous science, technology, industry, and capacity. But it's all daily looted by something akin to one tenth of one percent who own most of the assets -- the banks, corporations, mines, mills, factories -- and live off the profits produced by the enormous majority. And you call that situation of centralized capital and centralized wealth "capitalism" and "private enterprise" when, in fact, the old days of genuine "free" or "private enterprise" are gone. What you have today is, imperialist monopoly capitalism with a handful atop the pyramid, owning it, looting it, sucking it dry, and everybody else working for them.

The last time this country was truly a free enterprise country was between 1820 and 1850, when you could actually speak of a plethora of small and diverse enterprises, small profit-making farms, small profit-making businesses, as the "core" of the economy. But since the industrial revolution of 1863-1901, all major wealth in this country has been centralized. Sure, there's lots of small businesses. But they don't have the real clout. The real clout is held, and has been held since the end of the industrial revolution of 1863-1901, by the tiny handful of monopoly capitalists, the interlocking directorates of the biggest banks and corporations in America.

That's centralized capital, centralized wealth, a centralized economy. And all the government does is, rationalize it, follow along after it, tweak it now and then, and insure it doesn't fall apart.

Lately, the old Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush Two-Greenspan ideology of "monetarism" seems to have come on hard times, hasn't it. The big boys have suddenly realized, the chickens are coming home to roost. The problem is, when the chickens come home to roost in American imperial monopoly capitalism, it ain't the big boys who hurt; rather, it's the rest of us.

So go on, silly billies and ignoramuses. Go ahead and blithely wander along in your ideologically brainwashed and stupefied hatred for what you ignorantly call "socialism," and continue rationalizing the centralized economic system you still idiotically think is "free enterprise" when, in reality, it's centralized and regulated state capitalism overseen by a capitalist government.

When the debt comes due, and it's coming due very soon, buddy boys, you petit-bourgeois, just as us poor and working class types, will have to pay a lot of it as will we.

And then, I wonder where all your whitewashes of this rotting, decaying centralized capitalist system will have gotten you.

Not far, I would suspect.

Have a nice day!

[Robert Carl Cohen]

BLACK CRUSADER - 2008 Illustrated edition
A Biography of Robert Franklin Williams, leading advocate of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
498 Pages - B&W Photos
Kirkus Reviews: "The education of one Black man you should not miss, and certainly cannot dismiss."

Is available now as a warning to those who, spurred on by irresponsible calls for violence by Fox News, may be contemplating interfering with the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.
www.radfilms.com

[Robert Carl Cohen]

BLACK CRUSADER - 2008 Illustrated edition
A Biography of Robert Franklin Williams, leading advocate of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
498 Pages - B&W Photos
Kirkus Reviews: "The education of one Black man you should not miss, and certainly cannot dismiss."

Is available now as a warning to those who, spurred on by irresponsible calls for violence by Fox News, may be contemplating interfering with the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.
www.radfilms.com

[Robert Carl Cohen]

BLACK CRUSADER - 2008 Illustrated edition
A Biography of Robert Franklin Williams, leading advocate of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
498 Pages - B&W Photos
Kirkus Reviews: "The education of one Black man you should not miss, and certainly cannot dismiss."

Is available now as a warning to those who, spurred on by irresponsible calls for violence by Fox News, may be contemplating interfering with the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.
www.radfilms.com

[Robert Carl Cohen]

BLACK CRUSADER - 2008 Illustrated edition
A Biography of Robert Franklin Williams, leading advocate of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
498 Pages - B&W Photos
Kirkus Reviews: "The education of one Black man you should not miss, and certainly cannot dismiss."

Is available now as a warning to those who, spurred on by irresponsible calls for violence by Fox News, may be contemplating interfering with the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.
www.radfilms.com

[Chris Jenkins]

Yo, Trox, someone want to shut off that spambot?