Del. Jill Carter joins citizen protest of BGE Rate Increases
PRESS RELEASE
FURTHER INFORMATION:Â 410-367-3939 /Â www.peopleforjillpcarter.com
Urges State and Local Leaders to Stop the BGE-Constellation Rate Hike
Baltimore, MD. Delegate Jill P. Carter, who has called for a Special Legislative Session, of the Maryland General Assembly, to prevent a massive electric utility rate increase of 48 percent, set for June 1, 2007, is urging state and local officials to take necessary actions to stop the rate hike and serve the public interest. Carter will unite with hundreds of citizens, members of a Coalition against BGE-Constellation Rate Hike, the Baltimore NAACP, and others, on:
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Time: 4pm - 6pm
Location: Constellation Energy Group Headquarters (750 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21202) Carter continues her demand for a special session, but also urges appointed interim Mayor, Sheila Dixon, to take leadership on behalf of Baltimore residents and release the funds approved last year by the City Council to study creation of a Baltimore public utility.
“It is time for Baltimore to take control over its energy supply. The residents and small businesses of this city cannot afford a massive and unfair rate increase. State and local leaders need to move beyond words and take immediate action to stop BGE-Constellation from trampling the people we represent”, Carter said. “It’s our job to use our collective power to ensure that the public interest is served, not to pad the profits of BGE-Constellation,” Carter said. “Baltimore residents need affordable energy. The city needs to conserve and develop clean energy alternatives. These critical needs of the community are in direct conflict with the profit priority of BGE-Constellation.”
The Baltimore City Council passed two resolutions in 2006 taking steps toward a Baltimore Public Utility. Resolutions: 06-0198R, July 10, 2006, and 06-016R, March 20, 2006, provided for funds for a feasibility study on developing a public electric utility. The Resolution was adopted with only one vote against it. The lone opponent was councilman Keifer Mitchell. The funds provided for in the Council resolution have yet to be released by the interim mayor, Dixon, despite being approved in July 2006.
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May 27th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Go Jill. This is not the first time that Delegate Carter was the only politician to speak out on an issue and try to shed light on a problem that will hurt the people. I heard some hack criticizing on Larry Young which is foolish because no one else is saying or doing anything at all! Where is the criticism of all those that are silent? O’Malley? Curt Anderson? Dixon? I can’t hear you! Like Bro Daron Muhammad said, where are the churches and organizations like the urban league on this? I fear, getting their grant money and favors from the governor and acting mayor, in exchange for a veil of silence. Sad. But, will anybody remember this come election time?
People, do you realize our BGE bill will be 50% more next month? I can barely afford to pay my bill now. For months, I’ve been paying the minimum amount to keep from being turned off. I can’t see how I can ever catch up. If you have bad credit or pay late with BGE, you will have a hard time getting a lower payment with a BGE alternative company.
With student loans, car, outrageous car insurance, gas, mortgage, outrageous property taxes, phone, internet, rising water bill, and now possibly a $600 or $700 BGE bill. Makes me wanna holla! And, education and homeownership are supposed to be tickets out of poverty. With these extortion fees, not for me.
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:13 am
All of this complaining about the BGE rate increase is hilarious. It is exactly the nonsense that all of MD’s socialist liberals voted for in the recent election. You wanted a lying scoundrel of a Governor who loves playing the blame game while looking the other way and that’s what you got. Now be quiet and take your poison. I hope rates shoot up past 100% of the May 31st rate by this summer. Hear’s to your soon-to-be smaller wallets. Ha!
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
just my quick thought, carroll county res, your comment is overly harsh, unhelpful and a bit mean. I don’t like O’Malley or many other politicians very much. But, I don’t think anybody actually deserves a 100% rate increase no matter who they voted for or didn’t vote for. I do think we should move beyond blame to solutions.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:31 am
The truth hurts. The majority got what they voted for. It’s that simple.
Why not propose a solution yourself instead of basically saying “somebody oughta do something about that”? I can tell you one option that will NOT work: re-regulating. Rate regulation is nothing but smoke and mirrors, with consumers getting a monthly bill that is artificially held below real energy costs. A scheme that inevitably makes consumers apathetic about saving energy. Of course, somebody has to pay the difference. That somebody ends up being MD taxpayers, through higher tax rates to pay BGE the difference, else BGE goes belly up. Do you want a workable solution that reduces energy costs in the mid and long runs? We can start by building more nuclear fission reactors. Technology has progressed by leaps and bounds since the last fission reactor was built in the US around three decades ago. Don’t like that? Well, we can tear down a lot more mountains in KY, PA, and WV and burn a lot more coal. Not great, but still way better than our attached-at-the-hip dependency on third-world countries with lunatic fringe governments. Still not good enough for you? We can certainly build a lot more oil rigs along US coastlines, throughout the Gulf of Mexico, and in Alaska’s ANWR. Don’t like that? We can always self-diminish our mental capacity and clear cut the entire Northwest in a decade or two, all while huddling around smoky wood stoves. Anybody have delusions of hydrogen power? It takes huge amounts of energy to crack water into hydrogen. That means building thousands of new nuclear fission plants around the country to supply the underlying energy to separate out enough hydrogen for our energy needs, ignoring the cost of all the new infrastructure. Then again, we could stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year fighting Stone Age murderers half way around the world and use the money saved for alternative energy research, like far more efficient solar arrays. Or better yet, use a big chunk of the money to make mining the Moon for Helium-3 a viable option. Why does that matter? Because Helium-3 is almost non-existent on Earth but present in huge concentrations on the Moon. Helium-3 is an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, which only yield a tiny fraction of the radioactive by-products compared to fission reactors. Did you know that one metric ton of Helium-3 is worth at least one trillion dollars and provides enough fuel for a fusion reactor to power a city of ten million people for at least one year? One payload full of Helium-3 on a Space Shuttle is about enough to run the entire United States power grid for one year. So there you go. I just gave you plenty of options (some viable, some not) for the short and long hauls. Now it’s your turn.
June 6th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Delegate Carter, you can address part of the problem now. Author legislation making it illegal for a MD public utility company or its owner to pay its executives obscene salaries and bonuses that are in any way traceable to consumer energy bills. How much money has Constellation Energy paid out in bonuses to its top four executives over the past 20 months? My guess is at least $120M, since the bonuses paid to those four executives in late 2005 alone totaled $78M. BGE only has 1.1M customers, meaning that every BGE customer had to cough up about $110 over the past 20 months just to cover the bonuses paid to four executives. Insane!
June 7th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Just ignore the person writing as ‘Carroll County’ — it’s clear that person doesn’t care about the people or the environment.
Heber, Karen, thank you! I’m new to Del. Carter, but she seems like someone who has both ideas and a willingness to fight for them.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Hey Bo - I interviewed Del. Carter on my internet show, “BrothaSpeak”. Check it out by going to “What I Write About” on the right sidebar and selecting “BrothaSpeak”. You’ll see that one and other shows.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
It’s great. I put it up on freestatepolitics.blogspot.com last November and just reposted it for all to see. Good work. Now, what can we do to make her mayor?
June 8th, 2007 at 12:57 am
Bo, so you casually dismiss people out of hand but contribute nothing towards solving the problem? As far as facts go, I do far more to protect the environment than the average Joe. Trust me. But that probably is of no importance to others posting here. It’s all about hollow “feel good” talk and backslapping. Proposing bold solutions and working hard towards achieving them is way off the charts for most people (not implying that’s you). But harsh reality is that few people give a darn about other people or the environment. It’s all about them, them, them. It’s about what the Gubberment can give them versus working hard themselves. Bottom line: it’s all about personal responsibility, something sadly lacking these days. That’s why nobody else here is proposing solutions. Solutions are abstract concepts they expect other people to give them for free while they sit back in their arm chair, suck down high-fat food, and complain about how the universe has not bent over backwards for them simply because they exist. So how about proposing some solutions now?
June 9th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Bo-what you can do to make Jill carter Mayor is to first contact her -district office 410-367-3939 give you name and info so the volunteer recrutor can contact you next learn as much about del carter and her issues as .last be prepared for the struggle Iam sure she has to do just that stuggle. Shes not afraid to speak the truth.and thats why this current administation hates her gust.
August 4th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Jill Carter does not need anyone cussing her out and telling her that she did not do anything in Annapolis last year. For those that do not know, some so called Progressive was upset with Del. Carter saying that she did not do anything on last years session. This is very unfair and unrealistic. She can not do everything. We need to stop this that one black politician without wealth and independence can stop big corporations. The game does not work like that.
August 4th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Haki, with the governor saying” he doesn’t support anything she is for,” realistically, how much can she do? We know all the other sheep politicians follow O’Malley in all his fraudulence. People always have to have something to say, but not many of them do much that really makes a difference toward changing anything. At least Delegate Carter is trying. To think, she has to deal with lying haters like O’Malley and even some of the people she is trying to help.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I concur Nicole, I certainly agree with your statement. I was saying that someone had the position “I learned” that somehow Del. Carter was not fighting in Annapolis this past session. I know she was, I came to Annapolis one time though we that know and see what is going on we know what Del. Carter has been doing. There was a recent article in the city paper speaking about Campaign Finance of Del. Carter as well as Frank Conaway, very interesting.