Michael Shear had a must-read story in Monday's Post about how Dominion Virginia Power throws around cash to get its way in Richmond - a lot of cash:
The company gave almost $560,000 to candidates in 2006 and has given about $3.8 million since 1996[...]In addition, several lawmakers own more than $250,000 worth of Dominion stock, which hit a new high Friday after the House committee approved the legislation [discussed below].
Let me pause and remind you where Dominion's money comes from - from you and me, since Dominion is the monopoly that controls our electricity supply. Yes, electricity was supposed to be deregulated in Virginia, but that turned out to be a miserable failure. No one could compete with Dominion. Of course that deregulation law was the product of prodigious lobbying by...Dominion Virginia Power.
So now that Virginia has to clean up the mess left by a failed deregulation process orchestrated by Dominion, who better to trust to clean up that mess than...Dominion!
Our heroic monopoly's initial proposal was to deregulate itself further by stripping the State Corporation Commission (SCC) of virtually all authority to set electricity rates.
Enter our equally heroic Republican Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell, to save Dominion from itself by making this latest act of highway robbery look like a gift to the ratepayers. (That's the type of thing politicians are good at.) So the latest proposal - fiercely opposed by environmental and consumer groups - would prevent the SCC from lowering rates below a certain point, but - here's the political trick - if Dominion gets a windfall profit, then customers supposedly will get some kind of a little rebate back.
As SCC commissioner Theodore V. Morrison puts it: "If you want to have rates going up higher than they ought to be, take this bill." Unfortunately, our lawmakers, their pockets bursting from the cash Dominion has been stuffing in there, appear to be doing just that. The House Commerce and Labor Committee just voted 18-1 to send Dominion's bill to the full House.
Here's the kicker: Dominion says it needs more profit so that it can build more coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, so that it can, um...make even more profit. Of course, by building more fossil fuel-fired plants and once again avoiding any serious legal obligations to use renewable power or promote conservation, it will be furthering global climate change, but that's a problem for government to solve.
The same government that is controlled by corporations like...Dominion Virginia Power!
Speaking of Dominion's poor environmental record, something that everyone should be aware of is Dominion's plan to build a 40-mile stretch of 15 story industrial high-voltage transmission lines across the Piedmont and Blue Ridge. My organization, Virginians for Sensible Energy Policies (VSEP), is demanding that Dominion and its Directors cease with this plan and seek energy alternatives instead. T
he fact is that Dominion and its Directors have yet to prove that Virginia will need the additional electricity, despite their predictions of blackouts. The line overloads that Dominion is predicting aren't due to growth in Virginia but because Dominion wants to ship electricity from dirty coal-fired plants in the Midwest, through Virginia and up to the Northeast. This is purely for profit and Dominion will finance this plan using ratepayers' money. I would urge everyone to check my organization's website and help us, "Tell Dominion No Power Towers!" Thanks.
So in addition to having to do business with a monopoly, and having that monopoly control my government, I'm also expected to lobby for them to give them even more money and power?
Keep up the good work -- just because they have a monopoly on our electrical power doesn't mean we have to allow them a monopoly on our political power.