Posted on 10/05/2021 11:45:10 PM PDT by blueplum
...This year, DTE cut electricity to Owens and thousands more in Michigan, despite receiving a $220m bailout made available through Cares Act tax changes during the pandemic.
Nor is DTE alone: a new analysis of 16 large electric utilities found they collectively received a $1.25bn bailout, but still cut power to nearly 1 million struggling customers in the US between February 2020 and June 2021.
...The companies received enough funding to forgive their customers’ debt hundreds of times over, but instead many handed out executive bonuses and increased shareholder dividends: DTE bumped investor payouts from $714m to nearly $800m over the last two years, while its CEO received a $2.3m pay increase in 2020.
Lobbying records show that companies also dispatched lobbyists to secure beneficial Cares Act tax-code changes while opposing legislation that would have protected struggling customers – NextEra, which received $41m in Cares benefits, spent $5.6m lobbying against consumer protections and other legislation.
Some utilities also sought sharp rate increases even as they took in public money....
...Six companies were behind about 94% of the shutoffs: NextEra Energy (parent of Florida Power & Light and others), Duke Energy, Southern Company, Dominion Energy, Exelon and DTE Energy. NextEra alone accounted for nearly half of the shutoffs.
Meanwhile, Duke Energy and DTE Energy together received $845m, or about 75% of the identified bailout, but still cut power at least 203,000 times. They could have forgiven their customers’ unpaid bills more than 150 times, the report notes....
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
See, if the government controlled the electricity, this wouldn’t happen. /s
They are doing the same thing in China, intentionally cutting back, shutting down non-elites to move them into privation and controlled slavery. Coming to your home town....
The container ships off the coasts - supply chain cuts, harder to move food. They want to control every morsel of food, every mg of medicine, every dollar you get until you are a slave.
It is crap like this from big companies and their greedy management that lead to consumer outrage and justified over regulation. They reap what they sow.
Like Paul Harvey would say so often, “Self-government without self-regulation will not work.”
Can nobody ever just do the right things? Must they always be grabbing for more any way they can get it? People are pigs and just no damn good.
Die, corporate scum, etc., etc.
Monopoly. Playing with our hard-earned money. Utilities are local monopolies.
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