Post-American Slaves

The local electric utility decided to get in front of the global warming tax steamroller and built one of the world's cleanest coal gasification electric generation plants. The 618mW generator is an engineering marvel producing 10 times the power with a smaller environmental footprint, produces useful agricultural byproducts instead of toxic waste and uses 10% of the water required by the plant it replaces. All good stuff.

But the construction costs are a half billion over initial estimates and it still isn't complete. Ratepayers will pay for the $3B plant through increased electric bills. The utility says that we will see a 20% rate increase phased in over the next few years. My average electric bill will increase $32 per month or roughly $384 annually. The state will rake in an additional $27 per year in sales tax as well.

I'm going to have to reduce our electric usage or cut something from our budget to pay for this increase. I haven't seen a wage increase in years, have seen my wages decline and don't expect any raises in the foreseeable future. So something has to go.

It's nice to produce cleaner energy but how are people going to pay for it? An extra $411 is a lot of money these days for most people. Folks on a fixed income will be hurt badly by this "green project". I suppose that the utility figured that congress was going to clobber us with a cap-and-trade tax so they decided they may as well tax us themselves. The state government agreed with them and approved the project. But can we afford it?

This is just another example of government, business and activists treating the people like slaves. They decide how we'll spend our money because they believe we are incapable of making good decisions.