In Maryland, individuals met in Baltimore with members of the NAACP to blast lawmakers for not heading off the coming rate hike.  Why are they not blasting lawmakers for CREATING this rate-hike in the first place?  Better yet, why are we not kicking ourselves for not keeping a closer eye on our lawmakers and preventing this kind of foolishness?

Six years ago, it was Maryland lawmakers who forced a rate-freeze on BG&E and other energy companies.  So, after six years and a huge spike in both the demand for energy and the costs of providing energy to the community, the market is about to reassert itself with a resounding THUD!

Even worse, the forced rate freeze engineered by Maryland’s General Assembly and signed by then-Governor Glendening has worsened conditions in Maryland for the coming price-correction.  The legislation enacted in 1999 was based on a whole host of assumptions, none of which, it seems, have proven to be correct.

This is what happens when governments assume they know how to positively influence markets.  Any private company would be shut down immediately, with all of its officers handcuffed and taken to secret CIA detention centers in Eastern Europe, no doubt, for doing what the Maryland GA has done.

What the Maryland GA basically said in 1999 was, “we know the future, and we can make it better.”  It reminds me of the 1992 Presidential election, when Clinton and Gore roundly criticized then-President George HW Bush for refusing to support the regulation of cable TV prices.

The President and VP repeatedly warned voters that this kind of tampering would only make matters worse.  Their solution?  Open markets up; allow greater competition, and prices would stabilize and/or drop.

Soon after Clinton won the election, a Democratic Congress passed legislation to regulate cable prices and Clinton joyfully signed on.  And cable customers were shocked to find that, in many cases, their cable rates went up, not down.

When will lawmakers learn, in a free society, with open markets influenced by literally millions of constantly fluctuating variables, the best you can do is try and keep the system honest and free of corruption, and then let consumers decide what they want and what they are willing to pay when it comes to goods and services.

The biggest problem, of course, is that lawmakers react to voters, and too many voters have no idea what is going on.  And Maryland is a perfect case in point.

Now we are angry with the GA for not figuring out how to legislate this disastrous situation…  A situation that only exists today because of bad legislation on the part of the GA in the first place!  And it is very likely that voters hailed this same legislation six years ago.

And thus completes the perfect circle of insanity.

Energy advocacy groups have been warning lawmakers for years that this legislation was going to create more problems than solutions.  A normal market would have produced two changes in the energy market, new options for conserving energy and new options for bringing energy to homes and businesses.  But none of that happened.

But let me now practice what I preach and say that the primary responsibility for this and other energy problems in the US lies, not with our local, state, or federal government, but with ourselves.  If voters were better informed (and I include myself in this group) and kept a closer eye on their elected officials, such issues would rarely arise.

Are we going to learn from all of this, contact our elected officials, and tell them to stop meddling?  Doesn’t look that way, not with voters demanding action from Congress in dealing with spiking gas prices.

Here we go again!