World aligns into two blocs over Russia’s Ukraine threat

 

Gordon L. Weil

“War is peace.”

“Freedom is slavery.”

“Ignorance is strength.”

In 1949, George Orwell wrote a cautionary story of a huge nation with these declarations as its mottos.  The novel was called “1984” and it was a somber warning of a possible future world dominated only by ruthless superpowers.

Somewhat surprisingly, the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine has pushed the world closer to a version of Orwell’s view of the future – China-Russia versus America-Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to reassert his country’s influence over neighboring nations, replacing the domination by the Soviet Union before it disintegrated in 1991, leaving Russia as its principal survivor.  Ukraine, formerly a Soviet republic, worries him as it moves away from Russian influence.

Massed Russian forces on the Russia-Ukraine border back up Putin’s demand that NATO withdraw its forces from Eastern European countries formerly under Soviet domination and keep Ukraine from joining the alliance. In return, Russia might pull troops away from the border.

By using coercive diplomacy, Putin may have thought he could boost Russian security and regain influence over Eastern Europe.  His threat of war might bring a diplomatic result.  Clearly, this would be a variation on Orwell’s “War is peace.”

He might have assumed that NATO had accepted Russia’s 2014 takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region.  Though that aggression had spurred the NATO buildup he disliked, he may have thought the alliance was now ripe to be pushed back.

NATO was created in 1949 to counter any new Soviet expansion.  It had grown somewhat slack as Russian pressure faded, but it was refocused by the Crimea invasion.  The Russian military buildup on the Ukraine border brought it fully back to life.

In effect, Putin’s policy may have backfired.  With a relatively small economy and a population increasingly acquiring a middle class lifestyle, he might be limited in launching war.  Frustrated, he turned to China, led by Xi Jinping, who shares his authoritarian views and hostility to the U.S.

The Chinese population and economy are far larger than Russia’s.  Xi could now pick up the support of his weaker and embattled neighbor. They issued a joint statement, which has been dangerously ignored.  It is the China-Russia manifesto for undermining the U.S. as a world power.

Both leaders claim they support democracy, but they say each country can have its own definition of what it means.  For them, it means one-party rule. 

China’s holding Uighurs in what amount to prison camps, supposedly for their own good, is its version of “Freedom is slavery.”  But for Xi, despite saying he supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that’s acceptable.

Orwell defined “doublethink” as the ability to hold two opposing views and believe both of them.  The China-Russia manifesto is full of it.

Apparently Xi and Putin share the belief that the seizure of Crimea has nothing to do with NATO’s current response to the current Russian build-up.   They want to keep world opinion focused on the alliance’s protective moves, not Russia’s aggression.  That’s a new twist on “Ignorance is power.”

Meanwhile, they ignore opposition in the U.S. and most of the West to Russia’s Crimea invasion plus China’s ending of Hong Kong’s democracy and threatening to take over Taiwan.

If the China-Russia manifesto, proclaiming there are “no limits” on their cooperation, means anything, the world has moved closer to the Orwellian struggle between superpowers.  This new alliance directly challenges the western concept of democracy, which requires that every election is decided by the people not by the ruling party.

Orwell’s superpowers had no agendas beyond the Party holding onto power. Democracy is intentionally messy, allowing for disagreement and change.  Yet differences between the U.S. and some European countries in dealing with Russia could produce a better policy than the uniformity of a dictatorship.

Putin may have single-handedly and unintentionally reshaped world politics.  NATO, the alliance of democratic countries aligned against aggression, has been brought back to life.  Russia, receding in superpower status, may have chosen to attach itself to China’s rising star.

The China-Russia manifesto makes a direct appeal to the leading unaligned countries. Brazil, India and Saudi Arabia all have governments leaning toward authoritarian rule.  The manifesto proposes closer relationships with countries that assert their own definitions of democracy and human rights.

The conflict, despite Russia’s saber-rattling, will play out mainly in economic competition. Will national goals be better promoted by the free enterprise that is a feature of democracy or by state economies under authoritarian parties?

The U.S. has lost much of its leadership of the West and its influence on the world economy because of weakened confidence in the dollar and a reduced commitment to NATO.  The China-Russia manifesto is a warning that time is running short to repair the damage.

Demand for ‘most qualified’ judge means ‘no Black woman’

 

Gordon L. Weil

In the celebrated movie “Casablanca,” the police chief makes a show of exclaiming that he is “shocked” to find gambling at Rick’s bar.  He orders it closed just as an officer hurriedly hands him his winnings.

That looks pretty close to Republican criticism of President Joe Biden keeping his campaign promise to nominate an African American woman to the Supreme Court.

Some Republicans suggest his intent is shocking, overlooking anything shocking about their having blocked any consideration of one of President Obama’s nominees and zipping through the review of then-President Trump’s choice of Amy Coney Barrett.  Biden’s choice will likely be confirmed under the GOP’s own short-cut rules, so posturing is the best they can do.

They assert that Biden is playing politics with the appointment instead of picking the most  qualified person available, regardless of race or sex.  Some people are likely to swallow the line that past nominees were selected purely on merit, while Biden is playing politics.

Let’s face it. The selection of Supreme Court justices has always been political.  And throughout history, Obama aside, presidents proposed and the Senate confirmed nominations heavily favoring people like themselves – white men.  In short, sex and race have always been a factor.

Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, sees it differently.  “The irony is the Supreme Court, at the very same time, is hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination and while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota," he told an interviewer.  He assumed that any Black woman nominee would have enjoyed affirmative action.

Contrast that statement with the remarks of GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.  “We’ve only had five women serve and two African American men.  So let’s make the court more like America.”  That’s affirmative action.  Graham has usually accepted the nominees of either party’s president. 

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine’s GOP senator, has said Biden’s promise to pick a Black woman, an appointment she could accept, is unusually “political.” She’s in her fifth term in the Senate and surely knows that judicial nominations are political.  In fact, she rejected Trump’s Barrett rush.  She has merely condemned Biden for being “clumsy.”   

All Supreme Court justices are lawyers.  For most of American history, the political system kept women and African Americans from becoming lawyers. The obvious result was a small pool of possible candidates to draw from, even if there were no discrimination in judicial picks.

Dean Erwin Griswold asked each female member of Harvard Law School first year classes why they were taking the place of a man.  The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of those women and, having become a lawyer, she could not get a job in a law firm.

An American Bar Association report reveals the relative standing of Blacks and women among lawyers and judges.  The numbers tell a story of racism and sexism.

Of all lawyers, 85 percent are white, while 5 percent are Black.  New lawyers are joining the profession in just about the same ratio.

Women are about 37 percent of all lawyers, while 63 percent are men. In law schools today, the division between men and women is about equal.  When Ginsburg was a law student in the 1950s, less than two percent of her classmates were women.

Appointments to the federal courts lag behind the ratio among all lawyers.  In the latest three years for which information is available, 76 percent of those named have been men and 24 percent have been women.  By race, 84 percent of the appointments have been white and 4 percent Black.   

Using the latest 30-year rate of female judicial appointments, it would take about 40 more years until the number of women and men named to federal courts were equal.  Nominations of Black judges are more difficult to forecast because of their limited numbers.

The ABA data also suggest that increases in the number of federal judicial appointments of both women and Blacks have occurred under Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and the rate has slowed under Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump.  That puts Biden’s move in historical perspective.  Elections have consequences.

Wicker forecast: “This new justice will probably not get a single Republican vote.”  Every senator should consider the merits of any nominee. But Wicker was saying that a still unnamed Black woman, whatever her record, could fail to get the support of a single GOP senator.  That’s the reverse of affirmative action.

Would such a denial of even minimal bipartisanship simply be caused by automatic Republican opposition to any Supreme Court nominee of a Democratic president? 

Or would GOP opposition amount to placing a seal of approval on a federal court system that could for many more decades feel the slowly dying grasp of the past?

Government by the people reversed by Senate refusal to act

Gordon L. Weil

In the U.S., somebody always wants to block somebody else from voting.

From the outset, people with property didn’t want average people to vote.  Whites didn’t want blacks to vote and men didn’t want women to vote.

The country is a great democratic experiment, but let’s not get carried away.  Anybody in political control was unlikely to allow others in on it.

But pressure for popular control could not be denied. African Americans got the right to vote, at first only in theory.  The popular vote replaced state legislatures in electing senators. Women gained the right to vote.  Eventually, the country moved toward a political process open to all. It took almost two centuries.

But popular democracy has begun to unravel.   Ironically, the largest turnout in history for a presidential election has unleashed the strongest efforts to turn back the rapid progress made since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

From 1933 through 1994, Democrats controlled Congress for all but two years.   To end that control, the Republicans had to take the South away from their rivals and to make it more difficult for Democrats, especially African Americans, to vote.

Opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act led many southerners to jump to the GOP.  It expanded historic Democratic efforts to limit access to voting.

While the GOP’s strategy worked, it was thwarted in 2020 by two factors – Covid-19 and Donald Trump.  The virus threatened to keep voters away from the polls, calling for finding ways to help people vote.  Trump’s possible reelection stimulated unusually strong support and even stronger opposition.

Responding to Covid-19, many states expanded mail-in voting, and developed other measures including public drop boxes and more convenient times for voting including at places remote from Election Day polling locations.

Easier access attracted more voters. Nationally, people of each party and other electoral subsets turned out in greater numbers.  While improved access did not favor Democrats, it might have been a factor for them in swing states. 

Since 2020, states under GOP control have cut back on the use of methods easing access.  Early voting dates and polling places have been reduced.  New forms of voter ID are required in some states. Texas even claimed it ran out of voter registration forms due to paper shortages. 

The 2022 congressional elections will take place in newly designed House districts.  GOP-controlled states continue to pack Democratic voters into as few districts as possible.  The Democrats have done the same in a few places, but they have fewer opportunities because they control fewer states.

House elections this year are expected to produce GOP control, caused mainly by voter suppression and the new round of redistricting.  The Supreme Court won’t touch politically driven district design. It’s even tough to get it to look at race effects.

Congressional Democrats have thus far failed to enact federal legislation overriding voter suppression.  Added to reduced voter access, in the wake of the 2020 election some Republican states have moved to control how votes are counted.  

Trump attributed his election loss to corrupt vote counting resulting partly from the use of mail-in ballots.   He complained that mail-in ballots led to vote tampering, because early counts in his favor gave way to wins by Joe Biden after the envelopes were opened.  Repeated reviews, including by Republican officials, found no evidence that Trump’s claims were true.

When he and his backers failed with those claims, they attacked the vote counters.  In Georgia, for example, Brad Raffensperger, the GOP Secretary of State, refused Trump’s request to reverse Biden’s victory.  The GOP-controlled legislature eliminated his election authority in favor of its own designees.  Similar moves occurred in at least seven other states.

The Constitution gives states power over the “times, places and manner of holding elections,” but Congress may override them.  Partisan control of elections could end up giving one party a way to decide on winners, no matter the popular vote.  Democratic efforts in Congress to require multi-party control of the process have failed, thanks to the filibuster and solid GOP opposition.

The January 6, 2021 insurrection tried to force Congress to ignore the official results of presidential elections in some states.  Congress might now amend existing law to ensure that vote counting is purely procedural, just as it has always been.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins is a leader in that effort, which would do nothing more than preserve the historical process.  She has not supported any voter protection.  Independent Sen. Angus King expresses alarm at efforts to reduce popular control.

Faced with stepped-up GOP voter suppression, Democrats need to mount massive get-out-the-vote operations and to launch legal challenges to partisan control of the election process.  The political wars this year could grow even more bitter and hard fought.

  

Divided SCOTUS decides when Congress doesn’t

 

Gordon L. Weil

The U.S. Supreme Court looks like a divided legislature.

Seven of the nine justices expressed their sharply differing opinions in two recent Covid vaccination decisions. Only Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined in the majority in both cases, and they alone refrained from making a comment.

Despite appearances, the central issue was not Covid vaccination. The rulings were about the role of the federal government and of the Court itself.  They were political, but more about personal beliefs than party affiliation.

The Court decides on what the law means, applying long-established rules of interpretation.  Justices are influenced by their views in applying those rules.  These views may go beyond partisan politics; they may be based on broader conservative or liberal ideology.

Justices making “political” decisions is nothing new.  John Marshall, the early and perhaps the most influential chief justice, favored a strong federal government. Between 1801 and 1835, his decisions always promoted this objective, aimed at influencing the young nation’s political development.

In both recent Court decisions, conservatives and liberals each expressed their political judgments.  All agreed on the serious threat to public health and the high personal cost of Covid-19, but that’s all.

In one case, six conservative justices interpreted the law narrowly, ruling that Congress had not given the Occupational Safety and Health Administration the power to require vaccinations in large companies.  They opposed an administrative agency exercising broad power without clear congressional approval.

Congress itself might have adopted such a mandate or given OSHA that explicit power. In effect, the Court found that Congress could have acted, but didn’t.  The Court has decided in major cases, like Roe v. Wade, when Congress didn’t, but this time the majority would not fill in the blank.

The three liberal dissenters had no doubt that Congress had given OSHA the necessary authority.  They concluded that the Covid crisis was so acute that the Court could interpret the law to help halt the spread of the virus.

The second case produced a majority of the three liberals, plus Roberts and Kavanaugh.  A simple majority of five controls the Court.  They ruled that federal funding for hospitals gave the government power to attach conditions, including a vaccination requirement for the medical staff. 

The conservative dissenters opposed a role for the federal government and found no authority for Congress to attach such conditions.  Kavanaugh split from his fellow conservatives and immediately came under blistering right-wing attacks for his independence.

In effect, conservative justices had turned against Marshall, the historic conservative who had promoted a strong federal government. Instead, they asserted that individual states have the power to fight the virus.

Behind its decisions, the Court wrestled with the question of whether Congress was doing its job. Its debate about what Congress meant highlights the failings of the legislative branch, which is supposed to set policy.  It’s no mistake that its powers compose the first Article of the Constitution.

In fact, Congress is not a co-equal branch; it is the first among equals.  Article III assigns the Supreme Court judicial powers, but “with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”  It can also limit presidential powers.

When it fails to pass laws addressing public issues, Congress leaves it to the president and the Court, increasing their political power.  When the justices are drawn into making major political decisions, the Court’s neutral objectivity may suffer. 

If people believe it is just another political body, its authority can be weakened.  Roberts has been trying to maintain respect for the Court as an impartial body that should stay out of politics.  His positions in the two cases might be intended to reveal his sense of judicial nonpartisanship.

Both decisions were “by the Court” and unsigned. Technically, they did not end the cases, but left the final blows to lower courts.  The Court increasingly uses such quick procedural decisions, known as its “phantom docket” to make major rulings.  Chances for careful consideration among the justices are lost.

The media reported that the result of the decisions was to limit the scope of President Joe Biden’s vaccination policy, which could have political effects on his presidency.  But it paid less attention to the implications of the decisions that went beyond his political fate or even vaccinations.

The ongoing inability of Congress to resolve issues by making tough decisions undermines the democratic system.  Much of the reason is the Senate filibuster, which halts bills by requiring 60 votes to consider them.  Only a simply majority of senators is needed to approve the lifetime appointments of new judges.

If the Court increasingly serves as the federal legislature, then the main purpose of presidential and congressional elections may come down to picking the people who pick the justices.   

Biden should reach out to Republicans, not only Manchin

Gordon L. Weil

Republicans may suffer from a political split personality.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called it a “violent terrorist attack.”

The next day, after a Fox personality humiliated him, charging, “You told that lie on purpose,” he backed off what he called his “mistake.”  He had erred, he said, because he sought to defend against Democrats and the media “trying to say that all of us are terrorists.” 

His first statement could be the voice of a deeply conservative but fair-minded Republican.  His retraction could reveal a politician fearful of offending the GOP establishment, now almost entirely taken over by former President Trump.

Cruz’s public debate with himself symbolizes the crisis of American government.  The Republican Party has undergone a major transformation, inherent in Cruz’s overnight shift, that may threaten the traditional political system.  Instead of seeking compromise, it exploits constitutional loopholes to block the Democrats.

President Biden has wasted much of the momentum of his election victory by failing to understand the Trump GOP’s unwillingness to serve as the loyal opposition.  He mistakenly gambled that, as in his early Senate days, the two parties would work within an agreed system.

Biden and most congressional Democrats concluded that his victory was a rejection of Donald Trump, which they hoped the Republicans would concede.  That could open the way to adopting new economic and social policies, including many promoted by the Democrats’ progressive wing.

Biden met with some initial success.  But, even without accepting Trump’s false election claims, Republicans mostly remained more loyal to Trump Republicanism than to the preservation on the traditional political system.  Besides, even some Democrats were wary of Biden’s most progressive proposals.

Biden has now dropped his bid for bipartisanship.  In his insurrection anniversary speech, he recast his 2022 political strategy.  No longer could he seek to win enough support to pass his most ambitious social and economic proposals.  Instead, he went on the attack.  His willingness to abandon the filibuster to fight GOP voter suppression is part of this new effort.

The unyielding Republicans have led Biden to make this year’s campaign a referendum on Trump.  The conciliatory president, who had appeared weak even to some of his supporters, became much tougher and more partisan.  His campaigning could be more like the confrontational Trump than the affable Biden.

Nothing reveals the state of the political order better than Maine.  Republican Sen. Susan Collins, once seen as a leading moderate and no friend of Trump, has become a loyal hardliner on most key issues.  She, too, shows a split political personality.

Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate who holds the Second District swing seat, advises Biden to settle for what he can get from Sen. Joe Manchin, his party’s moderate leader.  At least the president could see some of his program adopted, disappointing the progressives, but better than complete failure this year.

Collins and her GOP allies won’t yield to Biden.  With his congressional leaders, he won’t yet accept Golden’s counsel, but keeps fighting for policies they cannot pass.  The deadlock has become dangerous.  Former President Jimmy Carter, himself a Democratic moderate, worries about “losing our precious democracy.”

The time has come for Biden to change course. He needs to test whether the GOP split personality has any political value. Instead of focusing on Manchin, he should work on a moderate deal with some GOP senators not engaged in this year’s elections.

He could try calling together a small, bipartisan group of senators. If he engaged in good faith talks with a commitment to back an agreement they might reach, it would be worth seeing if progress is possible.  Members of the group would have to agree on a legislative package, stick to it and become the swing voting block by refusing to vote for anything else. 

Biden would have to make significant concessions to the GOP to get this deal. It would be far less than he wants, but probably more than he can otherwise get. 

Even a limited success could improve his leadership rating and give the Democrats a better chance of holding onto congressional control.  Without that control after this November’s election, Biden is not likely to accomplish much in the last two years of his term.

This effort could have an even broader effect. It might encourage conservative Republicans who believe their party must do more than simply block any Democratic proposal.  Rather than a new party, a new bipartisan, moderate and pragmatic coalition could be the goal.

If the democratic system is truly in danger, it could be revived by a practical effort that gives its survival a higher priority than divisive political games. 

"Quiet diplomacy' fails again; Olympic Committee backs China's genocide

Did you ever hear about “quiet diplomacy?”

Maybe not.  After all, it’s supposed to be quiet.  Also, it doesn’t work, at least not as intended.

It is meant to work when countries, facing heavy pressure, change their policies without having to make embarrassing public concessions. It fails when those applying the pressure get nothing for concessions they make to encourage a quiet deal.

The International Olympic Committee has acquired the reputation of being an historic failure in using quiet diplomacy.  It has just failed again with China, which is about to host the 2022 Winter Games.

Its first classic failure was the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin under Hitler and the Nazis.  The choice of Berlin may have been made in the hope that Germany would drop its anti-Semitic policies. Germany obliged by covering its objectionable public signage for a couple of weeks.  But American Jewish athletes were kept from competing.

The Olympics gave Nazi Germany the appearance of being an honorable member of the international community.  With these credentials, it carried out the Holocaust, the attempt to kill all European Jews, and the massacre of millions of Russians and Poles.

The IOC’s quiet diplomacy was carried out with little conviction.  It almost certainly knew it was legitimizing Hitler, which helped pave the way for Nazi genocide.  Genocide occurs when a government tries to end the existence of a group of people simply because of their membership in that group.

The IOC was not alone.  Money meant more than principle for some U.S. companies.  IBM sold Hitler equipment to identify Jews in the population. During World War II, Coca Cola stayed in business there and created a new German wartime brand called Fanta.  Ford Motors also remained.

After World War II, the United Nations was created to foster worldwide cooperation aimed at preventing any new genocidal regime, like the Nazis.  In 1948, U.N. members adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Though not a binding law, it was an agreed standard of national behavior.

The Declaration recognized that genocide was a crime against humanity. Even if it took place within the borders of a single country, the world community would have a legitimate interest in fighting it.

In 2008, the IOC sponsored the Olympic Games in China.  As a result, that country gained in prestige, shifting the world’s focus from its human rights violations to its lavish athletic show.  It made sure it could win the most gold medals.  At the same time, its control extended to foreign journalists covering the events.

Once again, instead of influencing the host country, the IOC was used.  The Committee is almost entirely financed by the proceeds of the Games, so it was enriched by the lavish show.

In 2014, Russia, with a history of oppressing minorities, hosted the Winter Games.  Like China, it won the most gold medals.  Then, it was found that many Russian athletes had doped their way to winning.  Unchecked, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2015. 

Now, the IOC has again made China the Games’ host, anticipating big profits from its choice.  To do so, it had to ignore genocide, China’s attempt to wipe out its Muslim minority by imprisonment, abortion, sterilization and “reeducation.”  Meanwhile, there’s little doubt China will again win the most golds.

The Committee no longer claims that it is pursing quiet diplomacy.  Its chairman merely asserts that as an international body, it must be politically neutral.   To repair the self-inflicted damage and possibly to save itself, it awarded the upcoming games, without competitive bidding, to France, the U.S. and Australia.

China is ramping up aggressive moves to become the dominant world power.  It builds illegal military bases on false islands in the open ocean, ends democracy in Hong Kong and threatens Taiwan.  Echoes of Berlin.  But the Games must go on. 

The American consumer has unknowingly supported its genocide.  The U.S. market has become heavily dependent on cheap Chinese products.  But last month, Congress and the president banned imports from the region where repression is taking place.  The bill was strongly opposed by some American companies.

"Many companies have already taken steps to clean up their supply chains," said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), an author of the bill. "For those who have not done that, they'll no longer be able to continue to make Americans -- every one of us, frankly -- unwitting accomplices in the atrocities, in the genocide that's being committed by the Chinese Communist Party."

President Biden has barred U.S. officials from attending the Games.  Chinese officials say that violates the Olympic spirit and they are right.  It violates the IOC’s false neutrality, its version of that spirit.

China also claims its genocide is its internal affair.  The world has heard that one before. 

What drives inflation? Electric rates rigged against consumers

Gordon L. Weil

If you pay the electric bill, you’re in for a shock.

In the electric business, it’s called “rate shock” and it occurs when rates suddenly increase to the point where some customers can’t pay their bills.

It’s here, now.  The electric business makes sure the companies who provide the fuel, produce the power and own the wires are fully compensated.  The system passes the buck and the buck stops with the customer.

Rates increase.  The reasons why reveal the anatomy of inflation. 

Can’t regulators protect customers?  That’s the theory, but it doesn’t work, because the game is rigged. An unjustified belief that the free market will set prices fairly plus well-meaning government policies that pile costs onto customers make it difficult for millions to pay their bills.

Sometimes the upward pressure on power and wires costs come together, beyond the control of regulators.  Oil and gas companies, renewable energy promoters, electric utilities and legislators can all make that happen.  Despite token representation, customers can’t stop it.

This is not only a local issue.  To be sure, Maine monthly bills are shooting up by about $40 and they will soar elsewhere in the U.S.  In England, they are forecast to climb by 56 percent. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen.  The industry was partly deregulated.  As a result, the cost of power was expected to decrease thanks to competition. The cost of the wires, then the smaller part of the bill, would remain under federal and state regulation. 

The cost of fuel used for generating power would continue to be set by the market.   That market is under the control of the fuel producers, mainly located in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, or in the American Southwest.  They try to charge all the customers can bear. Flip a switch and you’re boosting their income.

The current price jump is mainly due to an increase in the cost of fuel.  There may not be enough natural gas to meet demand.   A hot summer meant natural gas that would have gone into storage for winter went to power air conditioners. 

Also, the U.S. exports natural gas.  If we prefer to have Europe depend on American rather than Russian supplies, that comes at a cost to U.S. customers, some of whose winter gas goes overseas.  In a world market, other participants naturally jump on the upward price spiral.

The results could be serious.  With inadequate gas supplies, New England, where half the power is fueled by natural gas, faces possible rolling blackouts.  Nobody realized that regional energy policy was really set by the natural gas companies.

Renewable power sources like wind, solar, and hydro plus nuclear offer more price stability.  But they face opposition claiming they are unreliable, harm fish passage or spread radiation risk.    Even as the costs of non-fossil resources have fallen, bringing increased reliability and safety, they still struggle to gain against subsidized coal, oil and gas.

Part of the problem for renewables is the cost of transmission lines.  The resources are often sited far from main customer centers.  That means new lines must be built. When government mandates more use of wind and solar, it silently raises rates to cover the cost of new lines.

Maybe not so silently. The federal government favors renewables by offering transmission owners handsome profits on their investments.  State regulators allow lower profits for the distribution lines that deliver power locally.  No wonder utilities prefer to build high voltage lines and let residential service suffer.

An alliance has developed between the federal and state governments that adopt pro-renewables policies and the transmission owners who can increase their gains by building new lines.  The costs fall on most customers.

The biggest customers enjoy advantages that other customers don’t get.  They receive their power at high voltage and contribute little or nothing to the cost of distribution.  They are strong enough to make their own favorable deals with power suppliers.

Fuel costs, new transmission lines linked to new renewables, and better deals for bigger customers affect rates.  Electric rates also include aid for lower income customers and the costs of regulation. Electric utilities may even recover from customers their legal costs in arguing for rate increases.

Federal and state lawmakers have the power to improve this system.  When governments mandate policies, they should provide financial backing for their decisions.  Instead, they include some costs in rates that should be covered by taxes. It is easy to let customers pay more, promoting inflation.

There are a couple of positive signs.  President Biden’s proposed investment in new transmission  would come from taxpayers, and utilities could not earn a profit on it.

And consumer-owned public power, which serves 28 percent of the national market from Los Angeles, California, to Houlton, Maine, is non-profit. Its rates are lower.