"Extremist groups" with "fancy San Francisco environmental lawyers" are launching a "full frontal assault" on you and I and this great state.
If her own adjectives and nouns are true it's truly a blessing that we have Public Service Commission President twinkle Cavanaugh fighting on our side.
Or is that the story? As a growing number of voices in state media outlets are noticing, Cavanaugh's stand in the electrical power company's door appears to be a little less about protecting the "public" whose collective name is in her title, and a little more about protecting the record-profiteering utilities companies of Alabama.
Commissioner Terry Dunn, a Republican as are the other two PSC members, asked his colleagues for hearings to review the rate structures for utilities companies like Alabama Power Company; Alabama gas Corporation and Mobile gas Service Corporation. \0x2028 He also had the audacity to suggest a review every six years.
Cavanaugh, elected in November 2012 along with Roy Moore as the final two triumphs in the Republicans' statewide office take- over, and Jeremy Oden, the third commissioner, rejected the suggestion, even before Dunn had actually filed his motion.
Cavanaugh put on a show about fighting to save the 5,000 coal industry jobs Alabamians need and leaving rates flat through the end of 2014 at least.
Oden said hearings would just be "lawyers talking to lawyers."
Companies are entitled togetbetweena13and14.5 percent return on their equity, far more than many other of the same type companies in America, and even larger than many companies in other industries ever sniff.
Meanwhile, Dunn has said it's been decades since the rates were set, with Birmingham News columnist, John Archibald, noting that it was around the time of Bear Bryant's funeral.
Cavanaugh, as well as lawyers and lobbyists for groups like JobKeeper Alliance, a coal industry group, called Dunn and his staff Obamaphiles who wouldn't stop until they had handed over Alabama's jobs and children on a platter to the communists and tree huggers.
There were online campaigns full of smear literature against Dunn and his assistants, including a vicious post from Cavanaugh herself.
Multiple reports say Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, a Republican from Auburn, even told Dunn he was "taking his job too seriously."
Perhaps he's just doing his job how it should be done. Natural gas rates have been dramatically decreasing in recent years (38 percent says Henry Hub terminal), while surprisingly, Alagasco rates have gone up (20 percent notes Archibald).
The News' Ben Raines produced a study showing that between 2006 and 2011 Alabama Power sold electricity that it created cheap ($1 billion less than what Georgia Power would have spent) for more than any- one else would dream of ($1.5 billion more than what Georgia Power could have sold it for).
In 2010, Alabama customers paid Alagasco and Mobile gas two times what their counterparts in Mississippi did.
A handful of business leaders, particularly in heavier industries like steel manufacturing and coal companies, have spoken out against any possible review, saying it would mess up a system that is already working fine, bringing the un- wanted environmentalists (still unnamed and in the shadows) to the forefront of some litigation warfare. While there are almost certainly better avenues for the legislature to explore about who should arbitrate or litigate any rates, the review system in place now was almost utilized by a state officeholder looking out for what is right and
What is his job.\0x2028 The rate reviews are about fairness, from a variety of angles. Companies should not be allowed and endorsed by the state to run up huge profits they don't deserve and couldn't get in a fair market.
Even on and nearer to campus, we are affected by a seemingly pointless Montgomery political dance. Students, whether from Birmingham or Atlanta or Seoul, are paying these rates after all, month after month that we live here.
So why not have the rates reviewed, see where that lands us and stop the ridiculous and paranoid unpartisan name-calling?
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