I live in a mostly rural state and our power is a co-op. We do great and pay WAY less than most people who have a company charging them. They even laid fiber internet so we no longer have to deal with Comcast and Charter. Honestly, it's been a win-win across the board for us. I'd HIGHLY suggest kicking the corporate assholes to the curb people.
So my question then is, being a rural area I imagine the people lean heavily Republican, do the people now side with democrats, who are the champions of delivering better services at lower prices to consumers? Or are they so caught up in pointless culture wars to recognize that they are living in a liberal utopia?
Excellent point. This is called nationalism, and I agree. I'm from Canada and we have many services, like healthcare, that are run for the public good ... but companies from the US and around the world are constantly trying to take these services over then run them purely for profit extraction. Sadly, this is the world we live in, where profit is paramount.
The issue is that the state regulators are allowing these fees there. My electric company is owned by a private company. They have fair pricing and all increases are scrutinied and public. Private utility companies live insid each states frame work... main needs to kick some people out of office because thats rediculous.
Purple state and everyone politically is after the same goal. That Right Wing Tucker Carlson guy of all people did an “exclusive” hit piece against CMP , and promoted Pine Tree Power. Thats how you know even republicans are on board.
maybe things have changed in recent years but maine was never actually purple. the only red in maine is gun rights and thats because its a place where wild animals can screw alot of things up.
Who is going to generate your electric then? The state? Name one thing that the government controls that works better. Bloated government pensions, in efficient labor and excessive costs under a state system will make it all even MORE expensive. Government has no benefit to make things cost/benefit efficient, infact it's to opposite. When the government brought out Obama care, medical costs doubled then went up from there.
People outside of Maine need to know…CMP wanted to run a line through Maine from Canada to Massachusetts. The deal was made through backdoor ways and we passed a law to stop it from happening. Maine was receiving almost nothing for this pipeline. No benefits (maybe in our politicians pockets, but nothing to help the people who are already paying some of the highest electric in the country. We had to vote to stop this line and they fought it, but Mainers won and the line was not allowed. So all of a sudden our electricity prices went up as much as 100%. And CMP decided they were going to hurt and pressure the people. Then all of a sudden our electricity went down a bit and the line was allowed to go through. No votes. Just more fat pockets for someone. There isn’t some special something going on that’s revolutionary. There is something going on that is shady.
I heard all about it and it infuriated me as well. Corporations should NOT even be ALLOWED to punish people financially for not getting their way. Our Gov is the largest problem, they're regulating Nothing, and just stuffing their own pockets. Oh and FUCK CMP, one of the most vile evil companies IN the US.
Gee - if only the government permitted more than one power company to compete for your business at a time. It's almost as if a single-operator doesn't have to abide by market forces.
I lived in Fairport, NY where the town owned their electric company. Rates were cheap and service was great. This works. Globalists hate the idea so you know it's a good thing.
Omg I lived in Greece , East blvd, and Irondequoit. Loved Fairport and wanted to live there but didn’t have the cash. I am so glad you guys have been able to maintain your power coop. Fairport was beautiful every Christmas . I’ll never forget that
I live in Massachusetts and my electric bill is $250/month with Unitil. My brother lives one town over and has a town owned power company. His electric bill is like $90/month. We both consume about the same amount of electricity.
@ I have had solar panels for ten years. I am a net producer, I produce more than I use and send surplus to the grid. I pay for my power through a power purchase agreement with Tesla at a greatly reduced rate. I pay nothing to my utility and have a large credit balance. One day I will buy out my system from Tesla. Solar panels are very common here.
CPS here in Texas. Abbott helped the grid owners instead of sanctions towards the companies that caused over 200 deaths here after the Tx freeze. Helped them and gave them perks. Let's also mention billionaires were made because of their monopoly and the storm.
Let's not forget all of the "power conservation notices" that went out to us lowly consumers to "reduce our energy use" because of the increasingly hot summer weather. Any bets on if the like of Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the giant power-sucking stadium in Arlington that's always kept at like 75F) got those notices for their corporate vanity projects?
Abbott and his cronies are so mired in petrochemical revenues they will be the last to embrace cleaner energy sources. Ironically, much of Texas is moving to solar and wind energy, to the benefit of the grid. T. Boone Pickens, an oil tycoon, saw the future and helped make it happen.
But I heard that the free market system pushed innovation. Capitalism made for-profit companies were more efficient than the government. Yeah I figured out that wasn't the truth when I was 8 years old. The city of Atlanta privatized its water and for the next 2 months the tap water tasted like Sprite... It was the extra fluoride used to cut purification costs. Luckily the city Atlanta has never tried to privatize again. Government-funded innovation has led Atlanta to return 80% of the water it takes back its source. That's probably why I don't drink Sprite or tap water to this day.
I was having a hard time paying the bills, until I sold the title to my toilets - now I am on a pay-per-flush plan and spent all the money from the sale on Monster Energy drinks. I think I made an excellent financial decision and I no longer am responsible for cleaning it... but I still do since I can't wait for an appointment to get it clean.
Actually it's not a necessity I currently been living without electricity for 5 years now yeah I use solar to get on the internet but I don't need the internet or electricity I just choose to keep a small part of it around but I could do without it honestly society has gotten weak people Don't understand that all you really need in life is land water and food Nothing else matters bc everything else kills the world and its people on it just that simple 😊
@@brentx1940I'm glad you've found something that works for you. I'm going to have some air conditioning for me. If I could afford solar, and a battery system, I'd love to go off grid, but currently I can't afford that.
As a current employee of an investor owned utility, I can comfortably say this would be the best outcome. All investor owned utilities should converted into consumer co-ops, bar none. Tens of billions annually would be redirected to improving utility infrastructure.
As a current employee of a state-owned utility while I agree that a user/citizen owned model is better I'm a bit concerned about what they're promising and what their focus is given the state of generation in Maine. With a bit of poking around you can find that Main imports a quarter of its power, Quebec likely being the big seller there. Of their in-state power there's roughly a quarter from hydro, natural gas, wind and biomass ( in order highest to lowest ). Additionally you can find that since 2000 Maine generates about half the power they used to. Alone this might paint a picture of the state coasting off into the sunset off existing infrastructure with negligible population growth an aging population and likely some de-industrialization, not an exciting prospect but a functional one. Then you get to the clean energy bit and suddenly the infrastructure debt that was a serious issue but manageable just flies out the window and problems that were perhaps manageable before become a real problem. With their existing grid size they at an absolute minimum need to replace a quarter of their generation and unfortunately it's one of the more flexible parts, it's about 1.7 GW which for a comparable type of clean power ( dispatchable ) you're looking at tens of billions of dollars for either hydro or nuclear. Mainers may dislike their private utilities for skimming off a few hundreds of millions but it's just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the big picture challenges facing electric utilities that want to play a positive role in climate change. On top of that electricity isn't all energy but all energy needs to clean up, transportation and heating being the big ones that will have to move onto the grid and for Canada at least it's expected we'll need 2-3 times more generation capacity to keep up with load. This hits Maine in two ways, one is that it adds a huge challenge in expanding generation within the state and it ramps up the competition ( and thus price ) for Hydro-Quebec's exported power which is already a huge part of Maine's consumption. Already Quebec's average price obtained for export power has gone from 4.4 cents/kWh to 7.6 cents/kWh and nothing I've seen in the US northeast suggests that that price is going to decline for decades, quite the opposite. On top of that Maine is also making it challenging for transmission to be built through its state. I'm all for getting the state of Maine taking charge of its utility, I have very severe doubts that it will live up to the pricing and reliability promises its making as the cost-cutting they're proposing limits their capacity to actually build anything on the generation side which is where the vast majority of the US North-East infrastructure debt lies. Companies ripping people off is just a small part of the challenges in the electricity sector, my 2 cents /kWh.
Investor owned utilities are the worst! It's a Monopoly masquerading as capitalism. The public takes all the risks and pays all the debts. Investors just walk away with the guaranteed cash.
Utilities should be required to be run as a not for profit business, No overpaid CEO's, no bonuses, no shareholders, no pensions, just 401k like the rest of us.
Thank God for the people of Maine! I support them 100%. First the utilities of Maine, next We The People, need to take back control of our own country! We need to take back America from the corrupt politicians, THE RED ONES AND THE BLUE ONES!
My utility is owned by its customers and many are in Florida. Utilities should never be owned by for profit corporations where the customers are always screwed.
We did that here, Hydro Quebec has a monopoly( anyone making power has to sell excess to hydro, not sure for how much , I m not a power producer haha) , this give us an average price of 0.078 / kwh or 78 $ CAN a month for 1000 kwh.
If you want to know how the government handles insurance, just look at how they handle the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. You know, Social Security.
Some states allow voter referendums, where voters can sign a petition and if they get enough signatures then the proposal goes on a statewide ballot and gets voted up or down by all the citizens. The Red state that I live in does not allow referendums because our politicians don't care what we think or what we want. Our politicians got elected, so now they think they know what's best for us.
Many years ago America's electrical systems were run in a similar fashion. Then some bright guys got the idea they could convince Americans that Private Ownership could bring down prices. Measures were put on the ballot all over the Country, and almost all electrical systems were sold to private companies. Then... Gee... prices went through the roof. Gosh. Didn't see that coming. WE NEED TO MAKE ALL ELECTRIC COMPANIES CO-OPS AGAIN.
Same goes for prisons. "It will be so much cheaper for the tax payers for the private companies to operate the prisons". Now we get fines for not having enough people locked up and deny parole to people because we can't afford to not have enough bunks filled. They also have no interest in rehabilitation because repeat 'customers' are more profitable than turning people who screwed up into productive members of society.
Yep. It's called being bamboozled - the greedy gluttons have convinced our government to sell out to corporation's - heck, even America it's self is a corporation, 501C3 religious entities too (most people don't know that)..... #AlecExposed
I live in Maine and we got our bill this December and it was $899. 12/2024. The month before was $799. We have 5-7 day power outages at times. Last February, we had a bill for $1200.
Fabulous! I used to belong to a public owned electric company, each year we'd get back a check for the extra they had in profits. I hope to see this in all states sooner rather than later.
I work for one and love what I do :) so great to give all our excess revenue straight back to the community, through low rates, energy efficiency projects, reliability projects, more transmission + cleaner energy mix. Our customers get a direct say and directly demand these priorities, and we see them through. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth, is the stranglehold many IOUs have simply by owning resources that should be a public right. They get richer and more powerful and can continue to consolidate that power through lobbying, having shittier standards for their power and maintenance of their equipment, paying their people poorly, etc. All while seeing 0 consequences bc there's not enough public backlash nor enough competition on the market.
There are various different ways that they can be set up, around here we don't get checks, but if they do have leftovers, it winds up offsetting against any future rate increases. We have public utilities covering electricity, gas and water service and for the most part it works out quite well. The things we don't have like public internet access are a hot mess though and far more expensive than can be justified compared with what it costs in other countries. Even if you account for the rural parts of the region.
20 million in ads alone, eh? Thats alot of scratch that could have gone to improve services. I believe investor owned utilities suck at managing money wisely.
They maximize profit and their stock price over ratepayers or reliability. "Deregulation" has been a disaster for everyone but Wall Street. Reregulate them now AND enforce antitrust laws.
CMP rep was in Saintjohnsville NY yesterday. It seems that they do there homework and hit the little guys . Giving numbers around $200 year per acre with 25 year lease . Farms that sold all the cows seem to be jumping at it . Plans are for solar . Just taking what they can get .
I don't know if you have noticed but the democrats are in charge of our state and they hate the thought of people getting cheap energy. I just hope if this passes we don't end up trading one bad thing for another.
I said it back when they let the utilities to go private that it was a bad idea but it was big money that lobied to get their hands on the locked in customers and your state representatives got too much money from the lobieist to care about their constituents
I have a Rural Electric Membership Cooperative or REMC. These have been around for a long time in the Mid-West. At the end of the year we get a profit sharing check, granted it is usually just enough to buy a 6 pack of good beer. In twenty years only once has the power been out for more than a day.
I believe in public ownership of all public service utilities; because if you do not own them, in time they will own you. - Tom Johnson, Mayor of Cleveland, from 1901 to 1909.
Muni Power and Light - the light on the Lake! (Thinking of another Cleveland mayor....) I cheered them from Cincinnati for years - just a tiny shred of Ohio pride available, not much. Oh well, you work with what you have. Yea Cleveland, and yea John Glenn!
As a Maine resident, It's very interesting to finally hear some positive coverage on pine tree power. I haven't looked too far into it myself but I've been bombarded with negative press about pine tree power, but I always have an immediate distrust of negative campaigns like this, all you gotta do is look up the campaign spending and its shocking, opposition campaigns have spent $27 million compared to only $800k for the supporting campaign. Our governor also just came out in opposition of pine tree power, I wonder why..💰💰👎
Thought the same only negative press and nothing explaining why voting no benefits you is a red flag, I doubt the majority of Maine voters are smart enough to understand this though. And will vote for whatever the tv told them to.
How about taking things into your own hands rather than being dependent just stuck deciding between which corporate entity will screw you less? *BIOGAS* is the answer. Maine is not very population-dense and is filled with forest. With seasonal foliage alone, there is more than enough organic material literally everywhere all over the ground for everyone living there to collect every fall and use with a biogas digester to generate gas for heating and running generators. Air compressor with a line-filter plus some old helium or propane tanks from the junkyard and you can store the gas long-term too.
Ask these questions. What happens to the Maine PUC? Why are we not taking over the MPUC? What impact on production(or generation) does PTP have? Will PTP have to pay the inflated prices for solar that the Governor has mandated?
As a Mainer I respect this very much. Im spreading this to family and friends who hopefully will spread it to theirs and get this out to afew more Mainers. Always loved our ability to take matters into our own hands and ill support it anyday.
And of course it failed miserably LOL because Mainers Like to b**** about their problems without ever doing anything about it and that's why things never change because most people in this state are a bunch of stodgy old folks who are set in their ways. B**** about this and b**** about that. It's just like all those idiots up in the county who complain about how there aren't enough young people to take over the labor but don't want anyone from "away" moving up there.
As a Maine resident; we have generators on everything up here, homes, businesses, infrastructure, all over the place. We loose power all the time up here. Unfortunately this was LARGELY voted down.
Yo I've been trying to get more people on this for years, almost every state omnibus is corrupt af and approves rate increases even when wholesale fuel costs drop like a rock. The corporations are acting in insane and cruel ways and our governments are beyond corrupt and haven't been helpful. This is freaking awesome!!
The solution here is NOT to exchange one corporate entity for another. The solution is to take matters into your own hands. Invest in a decent natural-gas generator, setup a biogas digester on your property, collect all of the decaying organic material you can find (lawn-clippings/fall-foliage/etc.) to fill the digester, get a cheap air compressor with a coupler for pressurized tanks and an inline filter/gas-purifier, pick up some old helium/propane/etc. canisters/tanks from your local junkyard, let the anaerobic microbes get to work breaking down the organic material into methane, compress through filter/purifier into canisters/tanks, and then never pay a utility bill again. If your heat is currently oil, then conversion to biogas is a bit more complicated, and you may be better off just trying to find local restaurants/mechanics/etc. with excess waste oil you can have for free and filter it really well then just burn that, but biogas is still great for generating electricity which is the primary concern here anyways.
@@MikeJones-mf2rt I'm sorry but this is unhinged. Not every individual can set up the entire industrial revolution for themselves to merely survive, most people are trapped as tenants for one, making any of this completely impossible, they pay these corporations or they get a bullet to the head from the local police. We simply can't all live in a collapsed disaster society where all the institutions are impossible to interact with for anybody but the upper classes. We had laws in place that kept power bills reasonable - we still do, but corporate ad money, repeals of laws regarding local news funding, and corruption of local omnibus regulators work together to ensure that rate increases kept getting passed even as wholesale prices stagnated and even as they fell. This is criminal behavior. We can hunt down and end a handful of criminals and then *everyone* once again has fair prices for power, and right now building new unsubsidized renewable capacity is literally cheaper than keeping heavily subsidized coal plants running. I don't know why so many conservatives/libertarians and the like just assume corruption is literally impossible to fix, that it's somehow core to reality or good - it's not, it's an evil we can easily defeat.
I like this approach to utilities. Not only should we apply this initiative to electricity, but also to gas and telecommunications, both of which are known for the outrageous rates that people have to contend with. Of course, the corporations are going to churn out their over-the-top propaganda to convince people to reject the idea, as it is something that is actually for the people, instead of sustaining one's profits. It also doesn't help that we already know that there will be politicians that will reject the idea because it's, "socialism". No matter what these enemies of progress say, the people must vote for something that is more beneficial to the interests of all, instead of a few.
@@thedude5040 You DO realize how much natural gas the US is shipping to europe right? Like TEN TIMES what it was ten years ago. You really going to try to sell the shit that the US doesn't have enough natural gas? In point of fact right now is the FIRST time since the sixties that power production has equalled consumption, which means prices should be lower and there should NEVER be outages, because usage has been static since the year 2000. THis happens in EVERY privatized industry because like gas, the money and profit is NOT in supply and demand but in SPECULATION. And to make money in speculation you have to actually have variables. If you went to the horse races and every week was the same horse who you know run at the same speed then tere would be no gambling. And thats essentially what speculation is. Go watch "Enron, Smartest guys in the room" to see how it played out AS California's energy market was deregulated. Most stable system in the world becaome one of the worst in under a year.
@mikearchibald744 hey slow down kid and reread. Where did I ever say we didn't have enough natural gas or coal? What we don't have enough of is burners to burn the coal and natural gas then convert that heat into electricity
I wish the best for Maine. I hope they vote yes and this model is successful for them to show the rest of the nation how power should be provided in todays America.
Where I live we have part of the area a Corporation provides the power and in my area a Coop is providing the power. In the Coop all of the customers are the shareholders. The areas where the corporation is the provider they have had rolling blackouts but not in the Coop areas.
British Columbia, Quebec Canada as well as Tennessee all have the lowest KW/h rates in North America, all because they have Gov't and publicly owned utilities. Not a coincidence.
@@ThisIsATireFire interesting. THat's pretty low for an avg. COngrats. State ownership, cheap gas and cheap coal prices sure must help. Washington, although not Hydro powered appears to be a beacon for other sates to emulate
@@ThisIsATireFire Amazing! The internet was citing coal as the main reason for cheap WA power. That many Hydro power stations would make it very cheap indeed. May your state be a beacon on how to create affordable energy for the people.
A quebecois commenting here, our province nationalized most electricity producing companies decades ago and uses its monopoly to promote strategic investments and exports. No system is perfect, but at least revenues stay in the province and contribute to our public healthcare and education systems among others. And with electric cars sales at almost 15%, we'll send less money to the Middle East and keep it here. Good luck to Maine.
I'm sorry but the phrase "my province nationalized" always makes me giggle. No they didn't. They consolidated, nationalized would be ALL of our provinces.
"we'll send less money to the middle east and keep it here".... maybe you guys could have bought oil from Alberta so you wouldnt be sending money to the middle east. Sorta funny that Quebec talks about all these nice social programs they have while taking in $14 billion a year in equalization payments while Alberta gets nothing back. You guys refuse to actually do anything that could take in large amounts of revenue since that would take away from equalization payments. So maybe Maine can do the same thing. Just complain enough till they get special treatment and become a welfare state that the rest of the country pays for.
My state of Queensland Australia has always owned its electricity system. It’s building the charging network for electric cars, so the money which used to go overseas for fuel now stays in the state. If Mayne can get back control of their electricity utility everyone will benefit. Sometimes governments can be more efficient than businesses and also save consumers money.
Private is often good at the rapid growth part of development, but once you get to sustaining existing infrastructure, investors still demand the kind of returns you only get from growth.
It's also an issue of natural monopolies. Big infrastructure services like water, gas, electricity, trains, etc. can not provide a competitive private business model, simply because one company won't just build all that infrastructure again for choices.
It really doesn't need to be a public entity that runs things, it just needs to be a not-for-profit. If there is no profit motive all of that money is forced to be invested back into the service. At that point it doesn't really matter what kind of ownership it has.
@lshwadchuck5643 Maine used to have hundreds of small hydroelectric plants all over the state. In the name of "going green" they were all decommissioned, in favor of for profit solar and wind farms. Now a really odd thing has happened less than half the solar farms are active. Most took the subsidies to build them then immediately went out of business. So we have former farm fields, turned eyesore, that are not producing any power for the grid. I know of 3 places where in 2024 they cut down hundred plus acres of trees so some construction company can cash in on Fed and State $$$ to build solar farm (that will never actually sell any power). Because solar has to be sold directly to the customer not to CMP. The Power Company wants reliable power supply (you know like hydro) not on off maybe power depending on the weather.
@@lshwadchuck5643 i moved to Maine 6 yrs ago. First year my summer bill was $120-$150 Winter was $40-$50. This year summer was $350-400 winter is $185-200.
This sounds like something I was told about water supplies in Nashua NH. It went private and prices skyrocketed. Wanna fix it quick? Pass a law that every time the power goes down, you don't have to pay that month's bill.
It has been shown all over the world for decades that when utilities (electric, gas, water, sewer) along with highways and things like parking meters are privatized, costs go up substantially while improvements and service goes down.
There are different models, but a lot of that has to do with the way the privatization is handled. There commonly aren't a lot of restrictions or tools put into place to ensure that price gouging doesn't result.
That’s pretty damn cool! Please keep us posted! This is exactly why we need ballot initiatives in all states if the federal and state governments are to busy being bought off by the corporations we the people will bypass them and take democracy into our own hands!
In Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, there is Garkane Energy Cooperative which is a consumer cooperative that pays back the surplus every year. It's great! Consumer and Worker cooperatives need more love. Mutualism FTW!
Coming from Texas, our energy grid is telling us they can't handle the load when it's too hot or too cold... I've always believed that anything that is a natural monopoly should never be privatized in the notion of a market because there is no competition...
These aren't natural monopolies. These are government enforced monopolies. A natural monopoly is Google where anyone could go and use Bing, but very few do. These are monopolies created by government not allowing others to lay their own wires or pipes due to the thinking it would be wasteful and they do not want a million wires being layered everywhere. Those are legitimate concerns, but that still leaves the problem that they are for-profit. Government backed monopolies should not be for-profit.
@@williammcfarlane6153 I went and look, I fail to see how that changes my response. A natural monopoly is one that due to size is able to out compete competition. Utilities therefore are not natural monopolies because it is illegal to compete. Do you understand the difference?
Electric Cooperatives have helped light up the plains states... Electricity was under provided in the wide open West due to the lower profits because of the higher cost to lay more line. Coops help their members get what they need, not because it's super profitable, but because the need it.
There are some things that capitalism isn't good for. I don't want my water service to be provided by a for-profit company. And it seems like for-profit electricity is more expensive than not-for-profit electricity. Who knew?!
@@stevechance150I would argue that capitalism itself is not particularly good for anything; not that work for gains is bad but rather any means of instituionalizing in a profit centric manner will always lead to a reduction of creativity (or risk) in the marketplace, shady practices, and labor theft if not flat out attempts at creating new loopholes for bringing back serfdom (see "greedflation"). And I would argue that state ran economies would suffer simular fates, although with diffrent tragectories.
@@AnonymousAnarchist2I like what SpaceX is doing. I used to be a big fan of Elon but his actions lately have been questionable. The reusable rockets (especially the Starship) are game changers. No other company on earth will be able to compete with SpaceX.
@@stevechance150 Capitalism, despite its flaws, has historically encouraged competition and innovation. However, it may not do so as effectively as it once did. The problem with some alternative systems is that they can incentivize minimal effort for similar or even greater rewards in terms of effort and reward ratio. In my opinion, worker cooperatives (co-ops) represent a promising option within a capitalist economy.
@@IL_Bgentyl I am obviously a big fan of cooperatives, both worker and consumer, but I would say that they are not a realistic alternative within capitalism due to private property's gearing for capital bias. Firstly private property necessarily gives control to Capital owners not workers, so it's dependent on a certain level of the benevolent action in spite of the market rather than incentivised by the market. Financing for cooperative enterprises is also difficult as there is an incongruity with the type of business plans that normal banks usually receive. Meaning that cooperatives usually have to set up cooperative forms of financing for the benefit of cooperative enterprises. This can mean getting funds from a credit union or establishing a cooperative that takes in funds from other cooperatives to help build more cooperatives like the Valley Alliance Of Worker Cooperatives (VAWC). This is why the establishment of social ownership in the abolishment of private property is important to the overall goal of Cooperativism. Here is a short piece on what I mean. ruclips.net/video/gyJrwe8LDYQ/видео.htmlsi=8FPXo6pM7vFdmgdW
Up here in Quebec we nationalized our electric grid in 1944. Our rates are the lowest in north America and hydro-QC generates billions in revenues for the state.
Hydroelectricity is the only thing underwriting your low energy bills. And the greens are at war with hydroelectricity. Quebec Hydro is resisting outside calls for more dam building, and they may soon force you to rip out your resistance electric heat and replace it with heat pumps to save on capacity.
@@gregorymalchuk272 heat pumps are a number of times more efficient than resistance heaters is almost all cases...and in cases where they aren't, every heat pump system I've ever seen (including ones down here in the notoriously cold Texas) is backed up by...an electric resistance heater. OOPS! Did your right-wing owners completely fail to mention that in their talking points? I wonder why...
@@TheViktorofgilead Low cost hydro would be passed down to various degrees regardless. But even regulated, vertically integrated public utilities (which prefer nuclear, hydro, and coal) are still for profit companies.
@@CyphDragon Heat pumps can work, but your comment isn't even a reply to my comment. My comment stated that Quebec Hydro is going to start jacking up electricity rates to force you to convert from ultra reliable resistance electric to heat pumps with high capital costs and high repair costs.
Maine CHOSE to go with Privatized Utilities because they didn’t want to pay the upfront cost (TAXES) to build the Utilities. You didn’t hear them complain for the previous 50 Years when Electricity was DIRT CHEAP! Also, the price of Electricity in the Northeastern US States has risen directly in conjunction with the Price of Natural Gas. Easy to blame corporate greed. How about Tax Payer Short Sightedness!!!
Agreed, these companies usually have a government enforced local monopolies. When that is the case it should not be run by for-profit businesses. I don't really care if it is public or private, but it should be not-for-profit.
I have the position that if it is a natural monopoly, then it should be publicly owned and operated. Spreading out the pain through taxes does a lot to mitigate the cost, even though most of us aren't really aware of it - especially as US governments like to privatize everything. But yes, election of boards should still be done by voters in the area. Our local hospital is owned by the city and we elect the board members. It's easily the best hospital I've ever been hospitalized in. The only way it could be improved would be if the nurses were unionized (fucking Right to be Fired AKA Right to Work state). And we don't even have to worry about Mercy swooping in and buying out our hospital and forcing us to go to Des Moines for ER services (like they did to Newton's Skiff Memorial Hospital).
I'm originally from Maine but I now live right over the border in NH (I can see Maine across the river in my backyard), and I get bombarded with the Versant-front ads. Groups with names like "Concerned Citizens Committee" or something like that keep running ads that feed on general distrust of government (as the lady mentions about 9 min into this video, Maine is pretty "purple" but I'd add that it has a strong Libertarian-ish streak, especially as you move north and/or east of Augusta) to claim that Pine Tree Power is a government takeover that will cause power bills to spike... and it's like... they're already spiking right now.
Always be careful when you see names like "Concerned Citizens" or "Protect the Children"! Red flag for BS from some faction that wants you to get angry and not think too hard...
Vermont Electric Coop another example. But when he brought on the climate cultist with her wildfire and other BS, makes you wonder how much the climate cult is involved. If they have your way, electricity prices will skyrocket and reliability will be non existent.
State run utilities used to be the way we kept those companies working in the interest of the public. *The problem began with sell offs and public private partnerships with multi state, then international companies.* Good luck, Maine! Good luck, Pine Tree!
Former Mayor of Cleveland Dennis Kucinich lost his job over his refusal to privatize Cleveland Public Power (Municipal Light). It has since been regarded as a good decision.
International companies owned at the root by government entities! I mean, there were just two words spoken that tell us the entire problem. Qatar and Calgary.
Why are foreign entities, even from ally nations, allowed to own parts of our utilities? How is this a thing we are okay with? Just like foreign nations buying land... this should never have been allowed. I need to know where to go to join or start a cause to end this in my area.
It’s quite simple, really. Neoliberal economics caused this problem. Been that way for nearly forty years: profits over people. And it’s going to get to even more extremes over the next four years (or maybe more). Make America Great Again indeed.
Same as mine from an investor-owned utility. I keep the temperature set at 73deg 24×7×365 no matter if its 110 or, -10deg outside or if I am home or not.
Every time a nationalization happens, energy production collapses. We're seeing it now in Venezuela. In the Soviet Union, electricity cost 93 cents per kWh, double the cost of the other most expensive electricity on earth.
@@gregorymalchuk272 This isn't a large enough portion of the US for that to be a risk and with the exception of Texas and Hawaii the rest of the states have some sort of connection to a power grid outside their area where they can buy electricity if they aren't generating enough. Plus, from what I can tell, the residents aren't getting the service that they paid for as it is.
In the UK Thatcher privatised the water system in 1989. Look at the UK now, raw sewage is being dumped in rivers and the ocean. In the past 10 years, the companies have paid out £13.4bn in dividends and directors' pay has soared.
Insulate your attic, seal up holes, and get energy efficient windows. My power bill in Georgia was $80 per month and that was with running the AC 24-7. It can be done but NOBODY wants to make the effort.
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 I can see that being a problem, but at least we have voting rights and oversight powers over our government. They are accountable to us in ways that corporations are not. The status quo already uses "the market" to dictate "what is to be available to you," often in ways that are monopolistic or antithetical to the greater good. I don't think nationalizing is perfect, but I think it beats the status quo by a long shot.
@@jackh3242 Have you considered that nationalizing industries would put those industries under the control of unelected bureaucrats who would have no reason to make anything better, and if the Trump Presidency has shown us anything, it is that it is nearly impossible to sack incompetent bureaucrats, because of how easily they can claim their dismissal was political in nature. Indeed, I would argue that we should bring back patronage in this regard.
When we got our solar panel system in 2013. We were sending $4000 to PG&E every year. That money just evaporated into the hands of PG&E shareholders. By getting solar panels, that $4000 per year paid for the solar panel system in 4 years. I’m not posting this comment as a proponent of solar power, the post is just to demonstrate that it was a purely financial decision to invest in my electricity supply instead of just consuming the supply.
uh, Electricity, Water, and even Telephone are called 'Public' Utilities because when I was a kid ALL UTILITIES were owned by the Public. That was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's doing. Edison was out of hand, water was unsafe, Bell was even more expensive than Edison with most communities having Party Lines (phones sharing a phone number). So, what happened? GREED. Politicians were bribed to sell the Public Utilities to private persons. Folks said NO DONT DO THAT! but.... bribe money has more rights than actual citizens.
Already a member of an energy co-op where I live (rural area). Just a couple miles away is a private utility company's coverage area. Our power is more reliable and less expensive than the private utility's. Been a member since moving to this area 22 yrs ago. A matter of luck, really, as it depends on location. People living in the private utility's area are rural too, just in the "wrong" location.
I'm a Maine resident and so grateful to see this video🙏. The corporate utilities up here started saturating social media and TV with attack ads to defeat the initiative last winter, so it's obvious they don't want their cash cow (i.e., Maine electric customers) to vote for the initiative. CMP is horrible. They cannot keep power on even in minor storms, and they've raised their rates enormously in the past year. Like many people who can afford to, we have solar panels. Most of the year we are net generators and only pay a connection fee. It jumped from about $13.61 to almost $22.00 this summer. Maine is going to renewable energy, so the power grid up here needs to plan how to incorporate many smaller generators of electricity. CMP has been woefully inadequate in maintaining the grid, not invested in upgrades, and simply pulled profits stolen from its customers out. They're crooks, and the corporate overlords aren't even American. They're owned by Quatar billionaires(!). Talk about ridiculous and against our national interests! I've forwarded this video to many people up here and contacted those who are sponsoring the ballot initiative to volunteer to help get this passed. Fingers crossed that it will. Mainers deserve a decent utility and reliable power at reasonable cost. We don't have it under the current system.
I agree that CMP is a bunch of crooks but if government is in control of the grid that means the democrats are in control of the grid. I haven't noticed a lot of responsible behavior from this group in recent years and suspect they will want to purchase only the most expensive power available. So in the end we may be better off but not by much.
I started watching this because people in my region gripe about how high our utility bills are, so when that one gentleman mentioned his bill being the the $200+ range... 😳 I almost choked on my coffee, that's about double what we pay. But we're part of an energy co-op like they were talking about near the end of the video. So yeah, a project like Pine Tree Power could drastically improve rates in that region.
I lived for 9 years in Southern Delaware and we had the Delaware Electric Co-op as our power provider. They were excellent and way cheaper than Delmarva Power was and way cheaper than PECO in the Philadelphia area where I now live.
There is a public utility commission, usually appointed by politicians. They approve rates and usually permit new plants. Look at that body. Too cozy with someone.
I live in Jacksonville and we have not seen the same power bill jump as the rest of the country. This is thanks to our power company JEA. JEA is a publicly owned utility. It basically part of the city government and it answers to the voters in Duval county. It makes money but that money mostly goes back in to the company or the city budget. Pushing your local government to replace private utilities with publicly owned ones is another great option
In Jacksonville, Fl, one of the reasons the Republican favorite to win the Mayor race lost was because he had ties to a scheme to sell our city owned power company.
Sounds like our SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District). Unfortunately, we (the next city over) tried to join SMUD, but they didn’t approve us. So we’re stuck with PG&E.
My concern is simple. I like this idea a lot, but I'd like some ideas on how we can spread it in our own states. Petitions are fine, but have basically no power. And there don't appear to be options in other states similar to Pine Tree Power. If we could be told how Pine Tree Power started this (besides just mentioning the bonds) then we could start our own initiatives similar to Pine Tree Power, and ideally, send a message to PTP to work with them and co-ordinate efforts across the country. I think that'd be a lot better for us all.
Go off-grid. I’m near Jackman. When I need electricity, I run off of three truck batteries. I heat with wood, cook same way and with kerosene. I can use kerosene lamps to conserve on batteries. I have bottled spring water and a composting toilet. It’s not for everyone, but it works for me.
With soulless corporations that always put money and production ahead of people and corrupt govts that only care about filling their own pockets and pensions. With morals and ethics lacking, there is no system that will benefit the people.
When will their greed and our anger clash? At some point this has got to end and my guess it isn't going to be pretty for the people who are ripping us off.
I think their greed and our anger does clash. On a daily basis. Every story we hear of people in mental health crisis being brutalized by police who have been called in to make someone's capital space more pleasant is an example of that clash. When we lash out, or run out of patience and discipline, and fall short of the demands of the rich we are punished for the small prick we inflict upon their margins. Their punitive measures are well in place and clash with every single inevitable moment of vulnerability. So I don't think it's just that we're not angry enough. We're not organized enough, and therefore not powerful enough. Yet.
@@prismwing Great point. It is only a matter of time before people get organized. But how this all pans out is another matter. Clearly how we are living now is not working. We have got to change.
It doesn't though, a great example of this can be seen in Call of Duty fans. Originally there was DLC, people warned of P2W and being sold content deliberately left out. Paying for new weapons were introduced and the games became less stable. Then Loot Boxes came, while people spoke up and eventually the boxes left... things which originally costed 2$ now costed 20$ and the games were less stable still while reselling left out and reused content more and more. Despite as bad as Loot Boxes were Season Pass has driven people to wanting Loot Boxes back. Despite this it is still making stupid amounts of money and able to ignore complaints due to this all while making things progressively worse and worse to make more money.
Strange to hear about these problems. Here in Norway power companies have always been publicly owned, both by municipalities and the sentral government
@techtutorvideos aren't you only allowed to apply to jobs that have a shortage of available candidates in Norway? There's like a short list of jobs you can get a work visa for if you're not in the eu
In the US, it depends where you are, around here the city owns the electric company and while rates have been going up a lot, it's mostly to fund modernization efforts and deal with the dams that are being torn down to help rehabilitate the fisheries.
Come to Michigan Pine Tree🙏🏼💙👍🏼! DTE is owned by shareholders here. Meaning Wall Street not Main Street . It is really disturbing that they can run ads lying to the customers. It should be fraud and liable in court👎🏼. Great news for you Maine🌎☀️💙
Fortunately, Los Angeles has it's own public utility, owned and managed by the city. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has some issues, as any large agency does, but generally they do a great job of providing both water and electricity to the city.
I moved to Maine last year and was baffled having come from the notoriously awful Con Edison in Southern California to the even worse CMP. My husband and I have blackouts at least once a month, sometimes weekly. If measure 3 doesn't pass I will be so furious.
@@markarca6360 No, he wouldnt. He was ruthless in business and made a lot of money. More likely, he would be impressed with their expansion and monetization of the system Nikola helped him create.
Here in California the PG&E raised their rates 30% in June of this year!! They just raised their rates again beginnning December by 14% basically 50% this year!! My mortgage is $550 my electric bill is $750- a month
Enmax is owned by the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and was created out of a city-owned utility that only provided service there. It was a product of Alberta's disastrous electricity deregulation of 25 years ago. Alberta now has the third highest electricity rates in the country; only the territories of NWT and Nunavut are higher.
It’s mind boggling how most places in the US have private power companies. In East Tennessee (where I grew up) we have electric Co-Ops and all of our power is generated by TVA (governmental agency) in the form of hydroelectric dams and 1 coal plant that is on track to close and one nuclear power plant.
Maine here last month 157.00. One person working days. With gas heat. How i. Gone 6 hours a day. So watching TV and cooking cost 157.00 jeez and this is a year old.
My state, alaska, never privatized. We are consumer Cooperative owned regulated by the state. We get little mini credits as debts are retired. No one is making millions of dollars walking on glass floors.
PG&E in California might be the worst. Their poor infrastructure causes dozens of fires every summer/fall and yet they charge us double every year to collect more profit and make no upgrades to the infrastructure
How about we make sure that any investors have no connection to any government at all? How about Maine's utilities be taken by force from Qatar and Calgary and sold cheap to a Maine entrepreneur? Then let the entrepreneur get creative on making power more plentiful, cheaper, and reliable?
Rural Fl here. I have a 2br mobile, not great insulation or windows and doors. I have not paid a hundred dollar electric bill in years. I am in a co-op and I tell everyone moving here to only move in a WREC area because Fl Pub Utility and Duke will charge twice as much and take 3× longer for repairs. Locally owned and operated is the way to go. Too bad govs and greed have ruined that.
It's disgraceful that we as a society have allowed the rot that pushes people to such extremes to fester to the point that it has just to get anyone to acknowledge that the current model of societal structure is not sustainable. Edit: typo
I live in a mostly rural state and our power is a co-op. We do great and pay WAY less than most people who have a company charging them. They even laid fiber internet so we no longer have to deal with Comcast and Charter. Honestly, it's been a win-win across the board for us. I'd HIGHLY suggest kicking the corporate assholes to the curb people.
What state if I may ask?
Co-op owned fiber internet is extremely cool and novel holy crap, where is that?
you do better because your electricity depends mainly on hydroelectric power...am I correct ? Are you in the southeastern area of the country ?
So my question then is, being a rural area I imagine the people lean heavily Republican, do the people now side with democrats, who are the champions of delivering better services at lower prices to consumers? Or are they so caught up in pointless culture wars to recognize that they are living in a liberal utopia?
What is fiber internet
Utilities should NOT be owned by multi national Corporations. Its a national security issue.
When you frame it like that, you suddenly convince a whole bunch more people why switching to a nonprofit co-op utility system is a good idea lol
@@goldenstarmusic1689Because those are tue only two options?
Excellent point. This is called nationalism, and I agree. I'm from Canada and we have many services, like healthcare, that are run for the public good ... but companies from the US and around the world are constantly trying to take these services over then run them purely for profit extraction. Sadly, this is the world we live in, where profit is paramount.
The issue is that the state regulators are allowing these fees there. My electric company is owned by a private company. They have fair pricing and all increases are scrutinied and public. Private utility companies live insid each states frame work... main needs to kick some people out of office because thats rediculous.
Ideally, you should have your own power generation. If not continuously, then at least as a backup.
Purple state or no, kicking out greedy corporations and taking responsibility for your state's own energy is something anyone can get on board with.
Purple state and everyone politically is after the same goal.
That Right Wing Tucker Carlson guy of all people did an “exclusive” hit piece against CMP , and promoted Pine Tree Power. Thats how you know even republicans are on board.
maybe things have changed in recent years but maine was never actually purple. the only red in maine is gun rights and thats because its a place where wild animals can screw alot of things up.
Until you fuck it up. Which Maine will.
Who is going to generate your electric then? The state? Name one thing that the government controls that works better. Bloated government pensions, in efficient labor and excessive costs under a state system will make it all even MORE expensive. Government has no benefit to make things cost/benefit efficient, infact it's to opposite. When the government brought out Obama care, medical costs doubled then went up from there.
It's Democrats that love outsourcing.
People outside of Maine need to know…CMP wanted to run a line through Maine from Canada to Massachusetts. The deal was made through backdoor ways and we passed a law to stop it from happening. Maine was receiving almost nothing for this pipeline. No benefits (maybe in our politicians pockets, but nothing to help the people who are already paying some of the highest electric in the country. We had to vote to stop this line and they fought it, but Mainers won and the line was not allowed. So all of a sudden our electricity prices went up as much as 100%. And CMP decided they were going to hurt and pressure the people. Then all of a sudden our electricity went down a bit and the line was allowed to go through. No votes. Just more fat pockets for someone. There isn’t some special something going on that’s revolutionary. There is something going on that is shady.
STOP paying taxes forever once and for all
I heard all about it and it infuriated me as well. Corporations should NOT even be ALLOWED to punish people financially for not getting their way. Our Gov is the largest problem, they're regulating Nothing, and just stuffing their own pockets. Oh and FUCK CMP, one of the most vile evil companies IN the US.
Gee - if only the government permitted more than one power company to compete for your business at a time. It's almost as if a single-operator doesn't have to abide by market forces.
Disgusting! I’m sorry. (Massachusetts resident )
I lived in Fairport, NY where the town owned their electric company. Rates were cheap and service was great. This works. Globalists hate the idea so you know it's a good thing.
That’s my attitude, if the corporate establishment hates it it’s for me.
Omg I lived in Greece , East blvd, and Irondequoit. Loved Fairport and wanted to live there but didn’t have the cash. I am so glad you guys have been able to maintain your power coop. Fairport was beautiful every Christmas . I’ll never forget that
I live in Massachusetts and my electric bill is $250/month with Unitil. My brother lives one town over and has a town owned power company. His electric bill is like $90/month. We both consume about the same amount of electricity.
@ I have had solar panels for ten years. I am a net producer, I produce more than I use and send surplus to the grid. I pay for my power through a power purchase agreement with Tesla at a greatly reduced rate. I pay nothing to my utility and have a large credit balance. One day I will buy out my system from Tesla. Solar panels are very common here.
I live in Fairport, NY too. 87% of our electric energy comes from hydro power. The generating plant was financed in the 1930's by the Town via bonds.
CPS here in Texas. Abbott helped the grid owners instead of sanctions towards the companies that caused over 200 deaths here after the Tx freeze. Helped them and gave them perks. Let's also mention billionaires were made because of their monopoly and the storm.
Let's not forget all of the "power conservation notices" that went out to us lowly consumers to "reduce our energy use" because of the increasingly hot summer weather. Any bets on if the like of Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the giant power-sucking stadium in Arlington that's always kept at like 75F) got those notices for their corporate vanity projects?
Stop being morons. There is more than enough energy in Texas if yall would build more natural gas or coal or nuclear power plants
My prayers go out to sane Texans like you guys ❤
Abbott and his cronies are so mired in petrochemical revenues they will be the last to embrace cleaner energy sources. Ironically, much of Texas is moving to solar and wind energy, to the benefit of the grid. T. Boone Pickens, an oil tycoon, saw the future and helped make it happen.
@@nstark1066 dear blind person. Texas is reaching a saturation point. More solar will not solve the pinch points
It makes no sense for a society to let a for-profit company hold them hostage over a basic necessity.
Yes. Like water. Food. transportation. medical care. Education.
Just noting.
But I heard that the free market system pushed innovation. Capitalism made for-profit companies were more efficient than the government.
Yeah I figured out that wasn't the truth when I was 8 years old. The city of Atlanta privatized its water and for the next 2 months the tap water tasted like Sprite... It was the extra fluoride used to cut purification costs. Luckily the city Atlanta has never tried to privatize again. Government-funded innovation has led Atlanta to return 80% of the water it takes back its source.
That's probably why I don't drink Sprite or tap water to this day.
I was having a hard time paying the bills, until I sold the title to my toilets - now I am on a pay-per-flush plan and spent all the money from the sale on Monster Energy drinks. I think I made an excellent financial decision and I no longer am responsible for cleaning it... but I still do since I can't wait for an appointment to get it clean.
Actually it's not a necessity I currently been living without electricity for 5 years now yeah I use solar to get on the internet but I don't need the internet or electricity I just choose to keep a small part of it around but I could do without it honestly society has gotten weak people Don't understand that all you really need in life is land water and food Nothing else matters bc everything else kills the world and its people on it just that simple 😊
@@brentx1940I'm glad you've found something that works for you. I'm going to have some air conditioning for me. If I could afford solar, and a battery system, I'd love to go off grid, but currently I can't afford that.
As a current employee of an investor owned utility, I can comfortably say this would be the best outcome. All investor owned utilities should converted into consumer co-ops, bar none. Tens of billions annually would be redirected to improving utility infrastructure.
As a current employee of a state-owned utility while I agree that a user/citizen owned model is better I'm a bit concerned about what they're promising and what their focus is given the state of generation in Maine.
With a bit of poking around you can find that Main imports a quarter of its power, Quebec likely being the big seller there. Of their in-state power there's roughly a quarter from hydro, natural gas, wind and biomass ( in order highest to lowest ). Additionally you can find that since 2000 Maine generates about half the power they used to. Alone this might paint a picture of the state coasting off into the sunset off existing infrastructure with negligible population growth an aging population and likely some de-industrialization, not an exciting prospect but a functional one.
Then you get to the clean energy bit and suddenly the infrastructure debt that was a serious issue but manageable just flies out the window and problems that were perhaps manageable before become a real problem. With their existing grid size they at an absolute minimum need to replace a quarter of their generation and unfortunately it's one of the more flexible parts, it's about 1.7 GW which for a comparable type of clean power ( dispatchable ) you're looking at tens of billions of dollars for either hydro or nuclear. Mainers may dislike their private utilities for skimming off a few hundreds of millions but it's just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the big picture challenges facing electric utilities that want to play a positive role in climate change.
On top of that electricity isn't all energy but all energy needs to clean up, transportation and heating being the big ones that will have to move onto the grid and for Canada at least it's expected we'll need 2-3 times more generation capacity to keep up with load. This hits Maine in two ways, one is that it adds a huge challenge in expanding generation within the state and it ramps up the competition ( and thus price ) for Hydro-Quebec's exported power which is already a huge part of Maine's consumption. Already Quebec's average price obtained for export power has gone from 4.4 cents/kWh to 7.6 cents/kWh and nothing I've seen in the US northeast suggests that that price is going to decline for decades, quite the opposite. On top of that Maine is also making it challenging for transmission to be built through its state.
I'm all for getting the state of Maine taking charge of its utility, I have very severe doubts that it will live up to the pricing and reliability promises its making as the cost-cutting they're proposing limits their capacity to actually build anything on the generation side which is where the vast majority of the US North-East infrastructure debt lies. Companies ripping people off is just a small part of the challenges in the electricity sector, my 2 cents /kWh.
Yes, and we need the improvement.
Investor owned utilities are the worst! It's a Monopoly masquerading as capitalism. The public takes all the risks and pays all the debts. Investors just walk away with the guaranteed cash.
@@AmurTigerthanks for the insight
20% of America needs energy to live
Utilities should be required to be run as a not for profit business, No overpaid CEO's, no bonuses, no shareholders, no pensions, just 401k like the rest of us.
Hmmm, agree, except for the pensions. Nothing wrong with giving workers a retirement plan. Now, no big nest eggs for the executives.
Thank God for the people of Maine! I support them 100%. First the utilities of Maine, next We The People, need to take back control of our own country! We need to take back America from the corrupt politicians, THE RED ONES AND THE BLUE ONES!
My utility is owned by its customers and many are in Florida. Utilities should never be owned by for profit corporations where the customers are always screwed.
sadly the fear mongering worked and voters said no to Pine Tree Power.
It's time people get united nationwide and take control over utilities and insurance companies ❤
Nation wide is on your side
Think broader, think further
We did that here, Hydro Quebec has a monopoly( anyone making power has to sell excess to hydro, not sure for how much , I m not a power producer haha) , this give us an average price of 0.078 / kwh or 78 $ CAN a month for 1000 kwh.
Who are you going to blame then, the government?
If you want to know how the government handles insurance, just look at how they handle the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. You know, Social Security.
I really want to see projects like Pine Tree Power succeed nationwide, but I fear they'll be sabotaged by corporate lobbying.
Some states allow voter referendums, where voters can sign a petition and if they get enough signatures then the proposal goes on a statewide ballot and gets voted up or down by all the citizens. The Red state that I live in does not allow referendums because our politicians don't care what we think or what we want. Our politicians got elected, so now they think they know what's best for us.
Or even worse...
I got that Feeling as well…
@@stevechance150let me guess. Texas?
Just remember if Pine Tree fails Maine taxpayers will have to foot the bill.
Many years ago America's electrical systems were run in a similar fashion. Then some bright guys got the idea they could convince Americans that Private Ownership could bring down prices. Measures were put on the ballot all over the Country, and almost all electrical systems were sold to private companies. Then... Gee... prices went through the roof. Gosh. Didn't see that coming. WE NEED TO MAKE ALL ELECTRIC COMPANIES CO-OPS AGAIN.
Same goes for prisons. "It will be so much cheaper for the tax payers for the private companies to operate the prisons". Now we get fines for not having enough people locked up and deny parole to people because we can't afford to not have enough bunks filled. They also have no interest in rehabilitation because repeat 'customers' are more profitable than turning people who screwed up into productive members of society.
Yep. It's called being bamboozled - the greedy gluttons have convinced our government to sell out to corporation's - heck, even America it's self is a corporation, 501C3 religious entities too (most people don't know that).....
#AlecExposed
Or maybe even just making all electricity publicly owned in this country.
@@TheSnowQueen_369how do you accomplish that without theft?
_"Many years ago America's electrical systems were run in a similar fashion."_
And they were a shitshow.
So great to see this video! But it's been a year. How did the vote go?
it was resounededly defeated sadly.
I live in Maine and we got our bill this December and it was $899. 12/2024. The month before was $799. We have 5-7 day power outages at times. Last February, we had a bill for $1200.
It’s VERY STUPID for you to use ELECTRICITY to heat your house!!!!
@@Tryp-j9d what's really stupid is your lack of education
come pay to heat my house another way with your vast intelligence
Fabulous! I used to belong to a public owned electric company, each year we'd get back a check for the extra they had in profits. I hope to see this in all states sooner rather than later.
I work for one and love what I do :) so great to give all our excess revenue straight back to the community, through low rates, energy efficiency projects, reliability projects, more transmission + cleaner energy mix. Our customers get a direct say and directly demand these priorities, and we see them through. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth, is the stranglehold many IOUs have simply by owning resources that should be a public right. They get richer and more powerful and can continue to consolidate that power through lobbying, having shittier standards for their power and maintenance of their equipment, paying their people poorly, etc. All while seeing 0 consequences bc there's not enough public backlash nor enough competition on the market.
There are various different ways that they can be set up, around here we don't get checks, but if they do have leftovers, it winds up offsetting against any future rate increases. We have public utilities covering electricity, gas and water service and for the most part it works out quite well. The things we don't have like public internet access are a hot mess though and far more expensive than can be justified compared with what it costs in other countries. Even if you account for the rural parts of the region.
@@Algormortis9 What state are you in?
Same here in Alabama.
20 million in ads alone, eh? Thats alot of scratch that could have gone to improve services. I believe investor owned utilities suck at managing money wisely.
No, its the opposite. They are very good at managing money for their own pockets at the expense of customers
They maximize profit and their stock price over ratepayers or reliability. "Deregulation" has been a disaster for everyone but Wall Street. Reregulate them now AND enforce antitrust laws.
Live in Maine, CMP is putting on a full court press against this stuff. Hopefully people see through it
How is this polling right now?
I do brother, over in Downeast and spreading the word about Pine Tree.
CMP rep was in Saintjohnsville NY yesterday. It seems that they do there homework and hit the little guys . Giving numbers around $200 year per acre with 25 year lease . Farms that sold all the cows seem to be jumping at it . Plans are for solar . Just taking what they can get .
I don't know if you have noticed but the democrats are in charge of our state and they hate the thought of people getting cheap energy. I just hope if this passes we don't end up trading one bad thing for another.
I said it back when they let the utilities to go private that it was a bad idea but it was big money that lobied to get their hands on the locked in customers and your state representatives got too much money from the lobieist to care about their constituents
I have a Rural Electric Membership Cooperative or REMC. These have been around for a long time in the Mid-West. At the end of the year we get a profit sharing check, granted it is usually just enough to buy a 6 pack of good beer. In twenty years only once has the power been out for more than a day.
I believe in public ownership of all public service utilities;
because if you do not own them, in time they will own you.
- Tom Johnson, Mayor of Cleveland, from 1901 to 1909.
Muni Power and Light - the light on the Lake! (Thinking of another Cleveland mayor....)
I cheered them from Cincinnati for years - just a tiny shred of Ohio pride available, not much. Oh well, you work with what you have. Yea Cleveland, and yea John Glenn!
As a Maine resident, It's very interesting to finally hear some positive coverage on pine tree power. I haven't looked too far into it myself but I've been bombarded with negative press about pine tree power, but I always have an immediate distrust of negative campaigns like this, all you gotta do is look up the campaign spending and its shocking, opposition campaigns have spent $27 million compared to only $800k for the supporting campaign. Our governor also just came out in opposition of pine tree power, I wonder why..💰💰👎
she is bought and paid for just like snow and the rest of them...
Thought the same only negative press and nothing explaining why voting no benefits you is a red flag, I doubt the majority of Maine voters are smart enough to understand this though. And will vote for whatever the tv told them to.
How about taking things into your own hands rather than being dependent just stuck deciding between which corporate entity will screw you less? *BIOGAS* is the answer. Maine is not very population-dense and is filled with forest. With seasonal foliage alone, there is more than enough organic material literally everywhere all over the ground for everyone living there to collect every fall and use with a biogas digester to generate gas for heating and running generators. Air compressor with a line-filter plus some old helium or propane tanks from the junkyard and you can store the gas long-term too.
Ask these questions. What happens to the Maine PUC? Why are we not taking over the MPUC? What impact on production(or generation) does PTP have? Will PTP have to pay the inflated prices for solar that the Governor has mandated?
@@PJMCG19 good questions. What happens to people who have solar and given credit on there bills?
As a Mainer I respect this very much. Im spreading this to family and friends who hopefully will spread it to theirs and get this out to afew more Mainers. Always loved our ability to take matters into our own hands and ill support it anyday.
So sad this failed.
And of course it failed miserably LOL because Mainers Like to b**** about their problems without ever doing anything about it and that's why things never change because most people in this state are a bunch of stodgy old folks who are set in their ways. B**** about this and b**** about that. It's just like all those idiots up in the county who complain about how there aren't enough young people to take over the labor but don't want anyone from "away" moving up there.
As a Maine resident; we have generators on everything up here, homes, businesses, infrastructure, all over the place. We loose power all the time up here. Unfortunately this was LARGELY voted down.
Yo I've been trying to get more people on this for years, almost every state omnibus is corrupt af and approves rate increases even when wholesale fuel costs drop like a rock. The corporations are acting in insane and cruel ways and our governments are beyond corrupt and haven't been helpful. This is freaking awesome!!
The solution here is NOT to exchange one corporate entity for another. The solution is to take matters into your own hands. Invest in a decent natural-gas generator, setup a biogas digester on your property, collect all of the decaying organic material you can find (lawn-clippings/fall-foliage/etc.) to fill the digester, get a cheap air compressor with a coupler for pressurized tanks and an inline filter/gas-purifier, pick up some old helium/propane/etc. canisters/tanks from your local junkyard, let the anaerobic microbes get to work breaking down the organic material into methane, compress through filter/purifier into canisters/tanks, and then never pay a utility bill again.
If your heat is currently oil, then conversion to biogas is a bit more complicated, and you may be better off just trying to find local restaurants/mechanics/etc. with excess waste oil you can have for free and filter it really well then just burn that, but biogas is still great for generating electricity which is the primary concern here anyways.
@@MikeJones-mf2rt I'm sorry but this is unhinged. Not every individual can set up the entire industrial revolution for themselves to merely survive, most people are trapped as tenants for one, making any of this completely impossible, they pay these corporations or they get a bullet to the head from the local police. We simply can't all live in a collapsed disaster society where all the institutions are impossible to interact with for anybody but the upper classes.
We had laws in place that kept power bills reasonable - we still do, but corporate ad money, repeals of laws regarding local news funding, and corruption of local omnibus regulators work together to ensure that rate increases kept getting passed even as wholesale prices stagnated and even as they fell. This is criminal behavior. We can hunt down and end a handful of criminals and then *everyone* once again has fair prices for power, and right now building new unsubsidized renewable capacity is literally cheaper than keeping heavily subsidized coal plants running. I don't know why so many conservatives/libertarians and the like just assume corruption is literally impossible to fix, that it's somehow core to reality or good - it's not, it's an evil we can easily defeat.
I like this approach to utilities. Not only should we apply this initiative to electricity, but also to gas and telecommunications, both of which are known for the outrageous rates that people have to contend with.
Of course, the corporations are going to churn out their over-the-top propaganda to convince people to reject the idea, as it is something that is actually for the people, instead of sustaining one's profits. It also doesn't help that we already know that there will be politicians that will reject the idea because it's, "socialism". No matter what these enemies of progress say, the people must vote for something that is more beneficial to the interests of all, instead of a few.
We have cheap electric rates in the US. If you want more reliable power build more coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants
@@thedude5040the corruptocrats want the money flowing into THEIR pockets.
@@thedude5040 You DO realize how much natural gas the US is shipping to europe right? Like TEN TIMES what it was ten years ago. You really going to try to sell the shit that the US doesn't have enough natural gas?
In point of fact right now is the FIRST time since the sixties that power production has equalled consumption, which means prices should be lower and there should NEVER be outages, because usage has been static since the year 2000.
THis happens in EVERY privatized industry because like gas, the money and profit is NOT in supply and demand but in SPECULATION. And to make money in speculation you have to actually have variables. If you went to the horse races and every week was the same horse who you know run at the same speed then tere would be no gambling. And thats essentially what speculation is.
Go watch "Enron, Smartest guys in the room" to see how it played out AS California's energy market was deregulated. Most stable system in the world becaome one of the worst in under a year.
@mikearchibald744 hey slow down kid and reread. Where did I ever say we didn't have enough natural gas or coal? What we don't have enough of is burners to burn the coal and natural gas then convert that heat into electricity
Probably a good idea for railroads too and while Amtrak kind of does that the tracks it runs on are owned by private freight railroads
I wish the best for Maine. I hope they vote yes and this model is successful for them to show the rest of the nation how power should be provided in todays America.
their govenor is trying to stop it
Electric cars and heat pumps are unsustainable with current rates in Maine
Where I live we have part of the area a Corporation provides the power and in my area a Coop is providing the power. In the Coop all of the customers are the shareholders. The areas where the corporation is the provider they have had rolling blackouts but not in the Coop areas.
British Columbia, Quebec Canada as well as Tennessee all have the lowest KW/h rates in North America, all because they have Gov't and publicly owned utilities. Not a coincidence.
Um, Tennessee residential rates are 12 cents /kWh. Moses Lake, WA is 4.85 cents/kWh.
Same story here in New Brunswick. Certainly not because of how well run it is, thats for sure:)
@@ThisIsATireFire interesting. THat's pretty low for an avg. COngrats. State ownership, cheap gas and cheap coal prices sure must help. Washington, although not Hydro powered appears to be a beacon for other sates to emulate
@dvd3553 WA is hydro powered though. 34 hydroelectric dams if I counted correctly.
@@ThisIsATireFire Amazing! The internet was citing coal as the main reason for cheap WA power. That many Hydro power stations would make it very cheap indeed. May your state be a beacon on how to create affordable energy for the people.
A quebecois commenting here, our province nationalized most electricity producing companies decades ago and uses its monopoly to promote strategic investments and exports. No system is perfect, but at least revenues stay in the province and contribute to our public healthcare and education systems among others. And with electric cars sales at almost 15%, we'll send less money to the Middle East and keep it here. Good luck to Maine.
I'm sorry but the phrase "my province nationalized" always makes me giggle. No they didn't. They consolidated, nationalized would be ALL of our provinces.
Quebec (K-Bec) considers itself to be a separate (National) entity. So a natural mistake by Monsieur/Madame Fparent! :) @@Fenthule
"we'll send less money to the middle east and keep it here".... maybe you guys could have bought oil from Alberta so you wouldnt be sending money to the middle east. Sorta funny that Quebec talks about all these nice social programs they have while taking in $14 billion a year in equalization payments while Alberta gets nothing back. You guys refuse to actually do anything that could take in large amounts of revenue since that would take away from equalization payments. So maybe Maine can do the same thing. Just complain enough till they get special treatment and become a welfare state that the rest of the country pays for.
Since we have a bunch of democrats in charge of our state that is probably what will happen.@@pin65371
@@pin65371 are you actually complaining as an Albertan sitting on all the oil?
My state of Queensland Australia has always owned its electricity system.
It’s building the charging network for electric cars, so the money which used to go overseas for fuel now stays in the state.
If Mayne can get back control of their electricity utility everyone will benefit.
Sometimes governments can be more efficient than businesses and also save consumers money.
Private is often good at the rapid growth part of development, but once you get to sustaining existing infrastructure, investors still demand the kind of returns you only get from growth.
A municipal owned utility never needs to run at a profit.
It's also an issue of natural monopolies. Big infrastructure services like water, gas, electricity, trains, etc. can not provide a competitive private business model, simply because one company won't just build all that infrastructure again for choices.
It really doesn't need to be a public entity that runs things, it just needs to be a not-for-profit. If there is no profit motive all of that money is forced to be invested back into the service. At that point it doesn't really matter what kind of ownership it has.
1 yr update, the Pinetree power ballot initiative failed. Power bills still going up. Another rate hike approved by the state. Yay!
Thanks. I was looking for this. I saw a video about a huge offshore wind project for Maine's power. I didn't get who was funding it.
@lshwadchuck5643 Maine used to have hundreds of small hydroelectric plants all over the state. In the name of "going green" they were all decommissioned, in favor of for profit solar and wind farms. Now a really odd thing has happened less than half the solar farms are active. Most took the subsidies to build them then immediately went out of business. So we have former farm fields, turned eyesore, that are not producing any power for the grid. I know of 3 places where in 2024 they cut down hundred plus acres of trees so some construction company can cash in on Fed and State $$$ to build solar farm (that will never actually sell any power). Because solar has to be sold directly to the customer not to CMP. The Power Company wants reliable power supply (you know like hydro) not on off maybe power depending on the weather.
@@Jonathan-hx6oy Thanks for the insight. The bills sound horrendous compared with the bills I get as a senior in Ontario.
@@lshwadchuck5643 i moved to Maine 6 yrs ago. First year my summer bill was $120-$150 Winter was $40-$50. This year summer was $350-400 winter is $185-200.
This sounds like something I was told about water supplies in Nashua NH. It went private and prices skyrocketed. Wanna fix it quick? Pass a law that every time the power goes down, you don't have to pay that month's bill.
It has been shown all over the world for decades that when utilities (electric, gas, water, sewer) along with highways and things like parking meters are privatized, costs go up substantially while improvements and service goes down.
There are different models, but a lot of that has to do with the way the privatization is handled. There commonly aren't a lot of restrictions or tools put into place to ensure that price gouging doesn't result.
That’s pretty damn cool! Please keep us posted! This is exactly why we need ballot initiatives in all states if the federal and state governments are to busy being bought off by the corporations we the people will bypass them and take democracy into our own hands!
sadly a lot of red states noticed that and made it a lot harder to get ballot initiatives passed
In Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, there is Garkane Energy Cooperative which is a consumer cooperative that pays back the surplus every year. It's great! Consumer and Worker cooperatives need more love. Mutualism FTW!
Trying to have Solar power in the middle of winter has consequences
All utilities should be owned and operated locally. Also, a ton of power is going to servers/electronics.. probably need to cut some of that crap out.
Coming from Texas, our energy grid is telling us they can't handle the load when it's too hot or too cold...
I've always believed that anything that is a natural monopoly should never be privatized in the notion of a market because there is no competition...
These aren't natural monopolies. These are government enforced monopolies. A natural monopoly is Google where anyone could go and use Bing, but very few do. These are monopolies created by government not allowing others to lay their own wires or pipes due to the thinking it would be wasteful and they do not want a million wires being layered everywhere. Those are legitimate concerns, but that still leaves the problem that they are for-profit. Government backed monopolies should not be for-profit.
@evancombs5159
Go look up the definition of natural monopolies then maybe you could have dressed my statement through a thoughtful discourse... 🤦♂️
@@williammcfarlane6153 I went and look, I fail to see how that changes my response. A natural monopoly is one that due to size is able to out compete competition. Utilities therefore are not natural monopolies because it is illegal to compete. Do you understand the difference?
Electric Cooperatives have helped light up the plains states... Electricity was under provided in the wide open West due to the lower profits because of the higher cost to lay more line. Coops help their members get what they need, not because it's super profitable, but because the need it.
There are some things that capitalism isn't good for. I don't want my water service to be provided by a for-profit company. And it seems like for-profit electricity is more expensive than not-for-profit electricity. Who knew?!
@@stevechance150I would argue that capitalism itself is not particularly good for anything; not that work for gains is bad but rather any means of instituionalizing in a profit centric manner will always lead to a reduction of creativity (or risk) in the marketplace, shady practices, and labor theft if not flat out attempts at creating new loopholes for bringing back serfdom (see "greedflation").
And I would argue that state ran economies would suffer simular fates, although with diffrent tragectories.
@@AnonymousAnarchist2I like what SpaceX is doing. I used to be a big fan of Elon but his actions lately have been questionable. The reusable rockets (especially the Starship) are game changers. No other company on earth will be able to compete with SpaceX.
@@stevechance150 Capitalism, despite its flaws, has historically encouraged competition and innovation. However, it may not do so as effectively as it once did. The problem with some alternative systems is that they can incentivize minimal effort for similar or even greater rewards in terms of effort and reward ratio. In my opinion, worker cooperatives (co-ops) represent a promising option within a capitalist economy.
@@IL_Bgentyl I am obviously a big fan of cooperatives, both worker and consumer, but I would say that they are not a realistic alternative within capitalism due to private property's gearing for capital bias. Firstly private property necessarily gives control to Capital owners not workers, so it's dependent on a certain level of the benevolent action in spite of the market rather than incentivised by the market.
Financing for cooperative enterprises is also difficult as there is an incongruity with the type of business plans that normal banks usually receive. Meaning that cooperatives usually have to set up cooperative forms of financing for the benefit of cooperative enterprises. This can mean getting funds from a credit union or establishing a cooperative that takes in funds from other cooperatives to help build more cooperatives like the Valley Alliance Of Worker Cooperatives (VAWC). This is why the establishment of social ownership in the abolishment of private property is important to the overall goal of Cooperativism. Here is a short piece on what I mean.
ruclips.net/video/gyJrwe8LDYQ/видео.htmlsi=8FPXo6pM7vFdmgdW
Up here in Quebec we nationalized our electric grid in 1944. Our rates are the lowest in north America and hydro-QC generates billions in revenues for the state.
Hydroelectricity is the only thing underwriting your low energy bills. And the greens are at war with hydroelectricity. Quebec Hydro is resisting outside calls for more dam building, and they may soon force you to rip out your resistance electric heat and replace it with heat pumps to save on capacity.
@@gregorymalchuk272those low cost hydropower savings would not be passed along if a capitalist owned the plant, so hydropower is not the only factor.
@@gregorymalchuk272 heat pumps are a number of times more efficient than resistance heaters is almost all cases...and in cases where they aren't, every heat pump system I've ever seen (including ones down here in the notoriously cold Texas) is backed up by...an electric resistance heater. OOPS! Did your right-wing owners completely fail to mention that in their talking points? I wonder why...
@@TheViktorofgilead Low cost hydro would be passed down to various degrees regardless. But even regulated, vertically integrated public utilities (which prefer nuclear, hydro, and coal) are still for profit companies.
@@CyphDragon Heat pumps can work, but your comment isn't even a reply to my comment. My comment stated that Quebec Hydro is going to start jacking up electricity rates to force you to convert from ultra reliable resistance electric to heat pumps with high capital costs and high repair costs.
Can we get an update? How did the vote go? My hubby and I are looking at Maine for retirement so this may be a big factor in that decision.
It was voted down. The state deemed it unaffordable
Maine CHOSE to go with Privatized Utilities because they didn’t want to pay the upfront cost (TAXES) to build the Utilities. You didn’t hear them complain for the previous 50 Years when Electricity was DIRT CHEAP! Also, the price of Electricity in the Northeastern US States has risen directly in conjunction with the Price of Natural Gas. Easy to blame corporate greed. How about Tax Payer Short Sightedness!!!
All utilities should be public-owned. It's the only reasonable thing to do.
You own nothing if you have no money. The capitalism owns you instead. Meat to harvest!
Agreed, these companies usually have a government enforced local monopolies. When that is the case it should not be run by for-profit businesses. I don't really care if it is public or private, but it should be not-for-profit.
I have the position that if it is a natural monopoly, then it should be publicly owned and operated. Spreading out the pain through taxes does a lot to mitigate the cost, even though most of us aren't really aware of it - especially as US governments like to privatize everything.
But yes, election of boards should still be done by voters in the area. Our local hospital is owned by the city and we elect the board members. It's easily the best hospital I've ever been hospitalized in. The only way it could be improved would be if the nurses were unionized (fucking Right to be Fired AKA Right to Work state). And we don't even have to worry about Mercy swooping in and buying out our hospital and forcing us to go to Des Moines for ER services (like they did to Newton's Skiff Memorial Hospital).
or how about we let a bunch of companies all compete for our dollars.....instead of passing a law to appoint one company
@@007kingifrit That’s not how electricity grids work, my friend.
I'm originally from Maine but I now live right over the border in NH (I can see Maine across the river in my backyard), and I get bombarded with the Versant-front ads. Groups with names like "Concerned Citizens Committee" or something like that keep running ads that feed on general distrust of government (as the lady mentions about 9 min into this video, Maine is pretty "purple" but I'd add that it has a strong Libertarian-ish streak, especially as you move north and/or east of Augusta) to claim that Pine Tree Power is a government takeover that will cause power bills to spike... and it's like... they're already spiking right now.
Always be careful when you see names like "Concerned Citizens" or "Protect the Children"! Red flag for BS from some faction that wants you to get angry and not think too hard...
Vermont Electric Coop another example. But when he brought on the climate cultist with her wildfire and other BS, makes you wonder how much the climate cult is involved. If they have your way, electricity prices will skyrocket and reliability will be non existent.
State run utilities used to be the way we kept those companies working in the interest of the public. *The problem began with sell offs and public private partnerships with multi state, then international companies.*
Good luck, Maine! Good luck, Pine Tree!
Former Mayor of Cleveland Dennis Kucinich lost his job over his refusal to privatize Cleveland Public Power (Municipal Light). It has since been regarded as a good decision.
International companies owned at the root by government entities! I mean, there were just two words spoken that tell us the entire problem. Qatar and Calgary.
Most privately owned public utilities are owned by shareholders. Any one can buy their shares and earn their share of the dividends.
Non-profit co-ops sound quite reasonable.
CMP’s parent company sent $4billion dollars in profits in 2022 back to Spain, taking $4bn out of Maines economy all while rates are skyrocketing
State of Nebraska has public power and its awesome. OPPD & NPPD does a fantastic job communicating with its customers.
Why are foreign entities, even from ally nations, allowed to own parts of our utilities? How is this a thing we are okay with? Just like foreign nations buying land... this should never have been allowed. I need to know where to go to join or start a cause to end this in my area.
The same reason that Rupert Murdoch was allowed to own a media conglomerate, corruption.
Well American businesses doing that worldwide . That is called Free Market.
It’s quite simple, really. Neoliberal economics caused this problem. Been that way for nearly forty years: profits over people. And it’s going to get to even more extremes over the next four years (or maybe more). Make America Great Again indeed.
Thanks to the TVA, my electric company is a cooperative, electric bill has been around 120 a month on average
Same as mine from an investor-owned utility. I keep the temperature set at 73deg 24×7×365 no matter if its 110 or, -10deg outside or if I am home or not.
I live in northern Maine and I’m in an area where power is still provided by Versant. I pay an absurd amount of money each month.
We should do this everywhere, in every state and we should do the same with broadband access.
All utilities should be community owned and controlled. They should be public goods, our common goods
Literally seizing the means of (energy) production!
that's how it should be....
Every time a nationalization happens, energy production collapses. We're seeing it now in Venezuela. In the Soviet Union, electricity cost 93 cents per kWh, double the cost of the other most expensive electricity on earth.
@gregorymalchuk272 uneducated public czars are worse than regulated corporations.
@@gregorymalchuk272 This isn't a large enough portion of the US for that to be a risk and with the exception of Texas and Hawaii the rest of the states have some sort of connection to a power grid outside their area where they can buy electricity if they aren't generating enough.
Plus, from what I can tell, the residents aren't getting the service that they paid for as it is.
In the UK Thatcher privatised the water system in 1989. Look at the UK now, raw sewage is being dumped in rivers and the ocean. In the past 10 years, the companies have paid out £13.4bn in dividends and directors' pay has soared.
Insulate your attic, seal up holes, and get energy efficient windows. My power bill in Georgia was $80 per month and that was with running the AC 24-7. It can be done but NOBODY wants to make the effort.
The profit motive should be removed from so many areas of society, especially utilities. We should nationalize as much as we can.
This is NOT nationalization- it's localization. Nationalization is the practical opposite of local co-ops.
So you want some bureaucrat to decide what is to be available to you, and if you don't like it, you have no right to take matters into your own hands?
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 I can see that being a problem, but at least we have voting rights and oversight powers over our government. They are accountable to us in ways that corporations are not. The status quo already uses "the market" to dictate "what is to be available to you," often in ways that are monopolistic or antithetical to the greater good.
I don't think nationalizing is perfect, but I think it beats the status quo by a long shot.
@@jackh3242 Have you considered that nationalizing industries would put those industries under the control of unelected bureaucrats who would have no reason to make anything better, and if the Trump Presidency has shown us anything, it is that it is nearly impossible to sack incompetent bureaucrats, because of how easily they can claim their dismissal was political in nature. Indeed, I would argue that we should bring back patronage in this regard.
Energy Crisis = we took ratepayer money and gave it to shareholders instead of upgrading and maintaining the system.
Arrest the CEOs.
When we got our solar panel system in 2013. We were sending $4000 to PG&E every year. That money just evaporated into the hands of PG&E shareholders. By getting solar panels, that $4000 per year paid for the solar panel system in 4 years. I’m not posting this comment as a proponent of solar power, the post is just to demonstrate that it was a purely financial decision to invest in my electricity supply instead of just consuming the supply.
uh, Electricity, Water, and even Telephone are called 'Public' Utilities because when I was a kid ALL UTILITIES were owned by the Public. That was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's doing. Edison was out of hand, water was unsafe, Bell was even more expensive than Edison with most communities having Party Lines (phones sharing a phone number). So, what happened? GREED. Politicians were bribed to sell the Public Utilities to private persons. Folks said NO DONT DO THAT! but.... bribe money has more rights than actual citizens.
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you? These companies sound really old. When did we have fully publicly owned utilities?
Here in Nebraska we have 100% public-owned power by law. My bill last month was $135. In months where I dont have to run the AC, it is like $70.
Nice!
I really hope this works out for us. These scummy corpos need a wake up call that we're through being gouged
They had a wake up call. They price gouged on purpose. The citizens need a wake up call to start putting up a fight against shit like this.
Already a member of an energy co-op where I live (rural area). Just a couple miles away is a private utility company's coverage area. Our power is more reliable and less expensive than the private utility's. Been a member since moving to this area 22 yrs ago. A matter of luck, really, as it depends on location. People living in the private utility's area are rural too, just in the "wrong" location.
In my city, we have a local public power utility. We have the lowest rates in CT. Excess profit taking is happening on every level of our society.
I'm a Maine resident and so grateful to see this video🙏.
The corporate utilities up here started saturating social media and TV with attack ads to defeat the initiative last winter, so it's obvious they don't want their cash cow (i.e., Maine electric customers) to vote for the initiative.
CMP is horrible. They cannot keep power on even in minor storms, and they've raised their rates enormously in the past year. Like many people who can afford to, we have solar panels. Most of the year we are net generators and only pay a connection fee. It jumped from about $13.61 to almost $22.00 this summer.
Maine is going to renewable energy, so the power grid up here needs to plan how to incorporate many smaller generators of electricity. CMP has been woefully inadequate in maintaining the grid, not invested in upgrades, and simply pulled profits stolen from its customers out. They're crooks, and the corporate overlords aren't even American. They're owned by Quatar billionaires(!). Talk about ridiculous and against our national interests!
I've forwarded this video to many people up here and contacted those who are sponsoring the ballot initiative to volunteer to help get this passed. Fingers crossed that it will. Mainers deserve a decent utility and reliable power at reasonable cost. We don't have it under the current system.
I’m all for Solar but 1:1 net metering is not sustainable. It’s heavily subsidized by all the other rate payers.
I agree that CMP is a bunch of crooks but if government is in control of the grid that means the democrats are in control of the grid. I haven't noticed a lot of responsible behavior from this group in recent years and suspect they will want to purchase only the most expensive power available. So in the end we may be better off but not by much.
Good explanation. How did the vote go? This video was made a year ago.
I started watching this because people in my region gripe about how high our utility bills are, so when that one gentleman mentioned his bill being the the $200+ range...
😳 I almost choked on my coffee, that's about double what we pay.
But we're part of an energy co-op like they were talking about near the end of the video. So yeah, a project like Pine Tree Power could drastically improve rates in that region.
“Extracting wealth” is exactly it.
I lived for 9 years in Southern Delaware and we had the Delaware Electric Co-op as our power provider. They were excellent and way cheaper than Delmarva Power was and way cheaper than PECO in the Philadelphia area where I now live.
There is a public utility commission, usually appointed by politicians. They approve rates and usually permit new plants. Look at that body. Too cozy with someone.
I live in Jacksonville and we have not seen the same power bill jump as the rest of the country. This is thanks to our power company JEA. JEA is a publicly owned utility. It basically part of the city government and it answers to the voters in Duval county. It makes money but that money mostly goes back in to the company or the city budget.
Pushing your local government to replace private utilities with publicly owned ones is another great option
In Jacksonville, Fl, one of the reasons the Republican favorite to win the Mayor race lost was because he had ties to a scheme to sell our city owned power company.
Sounds like our SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility
District). Unfortunately, we (the next city over) tried to join SMUD, but they didn’t approve us. So we’re stuck with PG&E.
My concern is simple. I like this idea a lot, but I'd like some ideas on how we can spread it in our own states. Petitions are fine, but have basically no power. And there don't appear to be options in other states similar to Pine Tree Power. If we could be told how Pine Tree Power started this (besides just mentioning the bonds) then we could start our own initiatives similar to Pine Tree Power, and ideally, send a message to PTP to work with them and co-ordinate efforts across the country. I think that'd be a lot better for us all.
The best way to do that is to help Pine Tree Power become a success.
Go off-grid. I’m near Jackman. When I need electricity, I run off of three truck batteries. I heat with wood, cook same way and with kerosene. I can use kerosene lamps to conserve on batteries. I have bottled spring water and a composting toilet. It’s not for everyone, but it works for me.
With soulless corporations that always put money and production ahead of people and corrupt govts that only care about filling their own pockets and pensions. With morals and ethics lacking, there is no system that will benefit the people.
When will their greed and our anger clash? At some point this has got to end and my guess it isn't going to be pretty for the people who are ripping us off.
I think their greed and our anger does clash. On a daily basis. Every story we hear of people in mental health crisis being brutalized by police who have been called in to make someone's capital space more pleasant is an example of that clash. When we lash out, or run out of patience and discipline, and fall short of the demands of the rich we are punished for the small prick we inflict upon their margins. Their punitive measures are well in place and clash with every single inevitable moment of vulnerability.
So I don't think it's just that we're not angry enough. We're not organized enough, and therefore not powerful enough. Yet.
@@prismwing Great point. It is only a matter of time before people get organized. But how this all pans out is another matter. Clearly how we are living now is not working. We have got to change.
It doesn't though, a great example of this can be seen in Call of Duty fans.
Originally there was DLC, people warned of P2W and being sold content deliberately left out. Paying for new weapons were introduced and the games became less stable.
Then Loot Boxes came, while people spoke up and eventually the boxes left... things which originally costed 2$ now costed 20$ and the games were less stable still while reselling left out and reused content more and more. Despite as bad as Loot Boxes were Season Pass has driven people to wanting Loot Boxes back.
Despite this it is still making stupid amounts of money and able to ignore complaints due to this all while making things progressively worse and worse to make more money.
Strange to hear about these problems. Here in Norway power companies have always been publicly owned, both by municipalities and the sentral government
I would move to Norway in a second if I could! I have a friend with family there and she says just about everything is better there.
I've never lived anywhere where you don't have multiple options for electric companies that offer competitive rates.
@techtutorvideos aren't you only allowed to apply to jobs that have a shortage of available candidates in Norway? There's like a short list of jobs you can get a work visa for if you're not in the eu
Or am I thinking of denmark
In the US, it depends where you are, around here the city owns the electric company and while rates have been going up a lot, it's mostly to fund modernization efforts and deal with the dams that are being torn down to help rehabilitate the fisheries.
People helping people, not billionaires getting richer.
The scare tactics worked. Maine residents voted this down.
Come to Michigan Pine Tree🙏🏼💙👍🏼! DTE is owned by shareholders here. Meaning Wall Street not Main Street . It is really disturbing that they can run ads lying to the customers. It should be fraud and liable in court👎🏼. Great news for you Maine🌎☀️💙
Workers of America United!
I hope this works and Mainers vote it in
It’s time for the people to take control over their lives instead of just blindly trusting our officials. Thank you for this informative video.
Fortunately, Los Angeles has it's own public utility, owned and managed by the city. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has some issues, as any large agency does, but generally they do a great job of providing both water and electricity to the city.
I live in Maine and pray this passes.
Me too!
It failed because people are dumb 😢
It failed because people in Maine suck LOL. All a bunch of stodgy old people who want to b**** about everything but then never want change
I moved to Maine last year and was baffled having come from the notoriously awful Con Edison in Southern California to the even worse CMP. My husband and I have blackouts at least once a month, sometimes weekly. If measure 3 doesn't pass I will be so furious.
Thomas Edison will be infuriated at these conmen if he was alive today.
@@markarca6360 No, he wouldnt. He was ruthless in business and made a lot of money. More likely, he would be impressed with their expansion and monetization of the system Nikola helped him create.
I’ll be pissed if Maines people don’t seize this opportunity
Here in California the PG&E raised their rates 30% in June of this year!! They just raised their rates again beginnning December by 14% basically 50% this year!! My mortgage is $550 my electric bill is $750- a month
Enmax is owned by the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and was created out of a city-owned utility that only provided service there. It was a product of Alberta's disastrous electricity deregulation of 25 years ago. Alberta now has the third highest electricity rates in the country; only the territories of NWT and Nunavut are higher.
Me in Poland genuinely shocked how many basic things are “for profit” in USA
Your Next
@traybern ...as an American I can only laugh at how wrong you are.
I've been saying that energy should be publicly owned but we have a lot of heads to bust first
It’s mind boggling how most places in the US have private power companies. In East Tennessee (where I grew up) we have electric Co-Ops and all of our power is generated by TVA (governmental agency) in the form of hydroelectric dams and 1 coal plant that is on track to close and one nuclear power plant.
Maine here last month 157.00. One person working days. With gas heat. How i. Gone 6 hours a day. So watching TV and cooking cost 157.00 jeez and this is a year old.
My state, alaska, never privatized. We are consumer Cooperative owned regulated by the state. We get little mini credits as debts are retired. No one is making millions of dollars walking on glass floors.
PG&E in California might be the worst. Their poor infrastructure causes dozens of fires every summer/fall and yet they charge us double every year to collect more profit and make no upgrades to the infrastructure
I agree it’s time for the government to step in ours is over 400 we are being extorted
How about we make sure that any investors have no connection to any government at all? How about Maine's utilities be taken by force from Qatar and Calgary and sold cheap to a Maine entrepreneur? Then let the entrepreneur get creative on making power more plentiful, cheaper, and reliable?
This is incredible! I wish them the best of luck!
Rural Fl here. I have a 2br mobile, not great insulation or windows and doors. I have not paid a hundred dollar electric bill in years. I am in a co-op and I tell everyone moving here to only move in a WREC area because Fl Pub Utility and Duke will charge twice as much and take 3× longer for repairs. Locally owned and operated is the way to go. Too bad govs and greed have ruined that.
We need a lot more Luigi's...
It's disgraceful that we as a society have allowed the rot that pushes people to such extremes to fester to the point that it has just to get anyone to acknowledge that the current model of societal structure is not sustainable.
Edit: typo
Utilities, medical services, internet, all should be nationalized.
Maybe you should move to Venezuela id you like socialism so much..
It's obvious you never had to rely on Medicare before. Nationalization guarantees nothing.
Venuzuela would be a great place to live if the US weren't funding coups there, and levying heavy sanctions on them.
Big Pharma funds the political campaigns of the politicians that legislate how Medicare operates.
There are never any downsides to central planning, nope. It will usher in the one true utopia.