Maura Healey’s chilling kilowatt-hour crusade

Here’s all you need to remember whenever you hear Gov. Maura Healey demagoging about “affordability” in energy prices.

In Massachusetts, the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity averages 30.5 cents – second in the continental US to California’s 33.6 cents per hour.

In Florida, the average cost of a kilowatt hour is less than half what it is here – 15 cents.

To repeat: Cost of a kilowatt hour of power in Florida is 15 cents, in Massachusetts 30.5 cents.

These stats are from the Wall Street Journal last week.

"These stats are from the Wall Street Journal last week."

The rates are even lower in Nebraska (13.8 cents), Tennessee (13.7 cents) and Utah (13.1 cents).

Of course Maura wants to blame everything on Donald J. Trump. She’s a one-trick pony. But the fact is, all 50 states have the same president that Massachusetts does.

So there must be some other factors in play for the catastrophic mess that Massachusetts has become. And on the cost-of-living side, one of those factors is all these phony-baloney surcharges on Bay State utility bills, to supposedly save the planet.

About 10 such “green” charges are listed monthly on most residential utility bills in Massachusetts. They are outrageous, but the Democrats lecture us that they are essential – dare I say it, existential in nature.

Or they were existential, until Maura Healy figured that perhaps, just maybe, having the second-highest electricity rates in the nation might be a problem for her on Nov. 3.

So suddenly, the Renewable Target program – which I think is listed on some bills as the “renewable energy charge” – is going to be temporarily halted.

For three months. Attention polar bears – you’re on your own for 90 days starting Jan. 1!

Ditto, bike lanes.

The no-nonsense gals in the Healey administration say this three-month vacation from saving the planet will save the ratepayers of Massachusetts $80 million.

Which is good, but on the other hand, I thought all these programs were… existential. How can they be suddenly stopped, and then re-started? What about the rain forests?

And if the planet can sustain the loss of $80 million in what are in fact taxes, what about all the other surcharges listed on our bills?

Here are some of the other add-ons listed on a recent Eversource bill in a Boston suburb:

Distribution Charge.

Transition Charge.

Transmission Charge.

Net Meter Recovery Surcharge.

Revenue Decoupling Charge.

Distributed Solar Charge.

Energy Efficiency Charge.

Electric Vehicle Charge.

If Massachusetts can do away with the “Renewable Target Program Charge” and the world doesn’t come to an end, why cut all the rest of this nonsense which just goes to take care of otherwise unemployable Democrats like the undersecretary of decarbonization and resilience, or the late, unlamented Office of Green Affordability in the City of Boston.

If doing away with Renewable Energy Charges for three months saves rate payers $80 million, then how much could getting rid of them ALL save taxpayers?

If you go to the mass.gov website, the one-party state lists even more “factors” on your monthly utility bills, among them:

Advanced metered infrastructure (AMI) factor, attorney general consultant expense factor, basic service adjustment factor, capitol cost adjustment factor, grid modernization factor, pension/post-retirement benefits other than pension (PBOP) adjustment factor, residential assistance adjustment factor, revenue decoupling charge, storm fund replenishment factor and exogenous storm fund factor, vegetation management factor….

When you consider that morass of red tape, over regulation and rampant shiftless hackery afflicting the productive citizenry, it’s amazing that Massachusetts’ utility rates are only double that of the states in Free America.

The problem for Massachusetts is that the Biden error, er, era, has never in fact ended here. There has never been any significant pushback against the 2021-25 insanity.

Look at the audit. The Democrats don’t care what 72 percent of the people voted for. Consider Maura’s appalling, outrageous appointments – Lamar Cook, Gabrielle Wolohojian, Monica Tibbitts-Nutt, etc.

For Maura, having Trump back in office has been a boon. She retains full power to screw up everything, and then gets to blame every disaster on Trump.

As H.L. Mencken wrote a century ago:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The imaginary hobgoblin for Maura and the Democrats used to be climate change. Now, the bill for that breathtaking lie comes due. But fortunately for them, they’ve got another hobgoblin to blame – Donald J. Trump.

Maura doesn’t care, obviously. She bragged about stopping the two natural-gas pipelines before she publicly denied stopping the two natural-gas pipelines. She was against the gas-tax suspension before she was for the gas-tax suspension. She was for renewable energy surcharges before….

All I know is that electricity costs twice as much in Massachusetts than in Florida. That’s a fact.

You and I know it, but most voters still don’t.

Mike Minogue – call your office!