Utilities Lobbying to Raise Your Energy Bills

It's no secret that when you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul is enthusiastically supportive. Sometimes the whole idea was Paul's to begin with. Like with carbon dioxide cap-and-trade, cooked up by Enron and BP in the mid-'90s, joined by entities like utility Niagara Mohawk Power (I was in the room), and now run with by all manner of rent-seekers including GE and Goldman Sachs and Al Gore but mostly driven by electric utilities. Including those like Duke Energy run by a fellow who took Ken Lay's philosophy with him when he moved on from his post as Enron executive vice president.

These utilities now poor-mouth that they're just seeking to make the best of a bad, 'inevitable' situation. One that wouldn't exist but for them. Principally, Duke Energy, Exelon, and PG&E among other leading lights hoping to make Obama's vision of 'necessary skyrocketing electricity rates' -- not all of which increase goes to the state, of course -- into reality.