As much as you paid in Detroit during the winter months, we pay the same during the summer months in Austin. This year, summer heat there started in June and just last week lowered below the 100 degree high mark. It is too humid for low cost "swamp coolers" to be effective like they are in New Mexico and Arizona. Every objection you make is due to "what it costs you" not how it affects everyone. That speaks volumes.
Jeezus you guys have low reading comprehension. I use my case as an example of what middle class families are paying in Detroit....even if they "shut out the lights" and turn down the thermostat. In other words.....high energy bills are not just a function of middle class families being wasteful and reckless and making poor choices. They are an example of being grabbed by the financial balls by essential services offered up in a monopolistic fashion.
Who is grabbing you by the balls? Nobody is making money on that deal.....that is the cost of providing the services that you have elected to use. DTE is a heavily regulated utility whose rates/profits are established by an agency of the state government. The pitiful profit margin they are allowed to realize is barely enough to keep the lights on and reinvest to keep their massive capital infrastructure safe, functional and current.....
Regardless of the profit.....the expense of home energy is a financial vice grip for lower income families and should be left out of any 9-9-9 discussions. That's my point and yet.....it seems as if no one here can stomach giving the middle class a break....even if it is a tax break.
I think that we could stomach a tax exemption for a limited amount of home heating for the indigent and lower income folks...or at least the logic behind it. What we can't stomach is hyperbole.
That's all I have been talking about here....leaving costs that weigh heavily upon the middle class out of the 9-9-9 discussion. And yet....when I bring it up I start a whole combustion of discourse from the right side. No wonder this country is in such a mess politically. Just like your party you guys are like circling hungry sharks just hoping someone with any ideas not on the far right drops into the water to be devoured. That's why you cannot and will not nominate an electable nominee to beat a very vulnerable Obama.