Republicans Raise Your Prices, Bail Out Unprofitable Electricity Companies

By Jack Ternan

Do you think you should pay more for electricity so that large Republican donors can stay in business? Your state government does.

In 2007, TXU was purchased in a $45 billion leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Goldman Sachs, and other New York investors and was renamed Energy Future Holdings (EFH). EFH bet on coal powering our future. Unfortunately, the company now faces bankruptcy because cheap natural gas has rendered coal power plants unprofitable.

Fortunately for EFH, Republican leaders believe free market discipline only applies to the middle class and the poor. Rather than letting polluting plants close at a loss to Goldman Sachs, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas recently voted to raise the price cap on wholesale electricity by 50 percent. Starting in August, electricity generators will be able to charge $4,500 per megawatt hour instead of $3,000. According to the Texas Industrial Energy Consumers’ assessment, this change will cost consumers an additional $4.5-$4.7 billion per year on electricity costs.

According to PUC Commissioner Kenneth Anderson, who abstained from voting, increasing prices this summer will allow power companies to “cart away money, not in wheelbarrows, but in Mack Trucks.”

EFH knows how to grease the wheels of Republican government. Its affiliated PACs have given more than $6.3 million to lawmakers between October 2007 and May 2012. My opponent, Ken Paxton, has received more than $7,000 from them. Buying politicians is cheap compared to facing the consequences of bad business decisions, and this latest Republican bailout will ensure that Texas’ pay to play politics continues.

So what does this latest outrage mean for you?

It means that fixed contract you’ve signed with your retail electricity provider might not be “fixed.” It means that by 2013, when the price cap is expected to be between $7,500 and $9,000, you’ll be dishing out more money for electricity than you ever have before. And it means that you will be bailing out New York bankers who pollute your air while you do it.

The misplaced priorities of the Republican leadership are evil. Republican officials are willing to fleece you upwards of $4.5 billion ($9 billion over two years) to bail out EFH and its out-of-state owners. At the same time, they claim to be completely unable to find the $5.4 billion (over two years) needed to avoid firing teachers, closing schools, and cutting financial aid to college students. Here in Texas Senate District 8, we need leaders that will stand up for the priorities of all Texans, not out-of-state donors.

Jack Ternan is the Democratic Candidate for Senate District 8. To email Jack - click here.

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4 1776.
The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

NPR: Reading The Declaration Of Independence Aloud

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Happy Birthday America!

Musician Keb Mo visited the White House earlier this year and performed a rendition of "America the Beautiful". Enjoy some great scenes of America and the President set to this classic song - in celebration of Independence Day.