Free Republic

Last month, the Public Service Commission rejected Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.'s "smart grid" proposal. From start to finish, the whole affair demonstrated everything that is wrong with Maryland's socialized electricity industry. To begin with, BGE's plan was a dud. The whole idea of "smart grid" is to inform customers how much electricity costs in real time so that they have an incentive to use less electricity during times of peak demand (usually hot summer afternoons), when electricity is expensive to generate and transmit. There are a number of ways to achieve this price signal, but BGE chose an ill-defined,...

ANNAPOLIS -- State lawmakers voted yesterday to overturn Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s veto of the Democrats' energy plan that will postpone a 72 percent rate increase by Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. but forces customers to pay interest on the deferred charges. The company's 1.1 million residential customers will see their bills increase 15 percent on July 1 -- not the 72 percent increase to market rates set earlier this year in a wholesale electricity auction overseen by the utility-regulating Public Service Commission. However, the money customers save will still be owed to the company, and the customers will...

Maryland officials are scaring off investment in the state with such anti-business moves as the court-ordered scrutiny of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s energy rates and the law that forces Wal-Mart to pay employee health benefits, business leaders say. "Wal-Mart yesterday. BGE today. Who's next?" asked William R. Burns, spokesman for the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, which represents about 850 businesses employing more than 340,000 people statewide. He said companies are thinking twice about operating in Maryland after Baltimore Circuit Judge Albert J. Matricciani Jr. ordered the state's Public Service Commission to review the utility company's pending 72 percent rate...

ANNAPOLIS -- Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. (BGE) executives say state lawmakers are "overplaying their hand" by trying to negotiate lower electric bills with threats to block the company's multibillion-dollar merger with a Florida utility. "They understate the value of our proposal and overstate the value of their leverage," said Robert L. Gould, communications director for Constellation Energy Group Inc., the parent company of BGE. "The legislature needs to be more realistic." Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, and leaders of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly have rejected the power company's offer to phase in a 72 percent increase in...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 - In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting. The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery...