Basically, in this country, corruption is driving everything

After using LESS POWER, we still got a PRICE HIKE, this shit exponentially hurts

When a company commits bribery that corporation should be dissolved! People involved in the bribes shall go to jail.

When i get off the phone with my electric company, they always say thanks for being a customer. I always say, I don't have a choice!

I can’t understand how a public need like utilities can be legally operated by for-profit corporations. Especially since consumers are given no choice as to who provides this service.

My monthly electric bill is more fees that actual electric usage.

My electric company recently pled guilty to 80 counts of manslaughter! Was fined a few million dollars, posted profits of over 1 billion last year. It was also the basis of the movie Erin Brockovich, about when they poisoned a bunch of small towns! Yeah they've been approved for about 32% in rate increases over the past year and a half or so...... Basically, we have to pay for the legally required maintenance they didn't do for like 40 years that was directly responsible for a bunch of wildfires. One of which wiped a town off the map and brought about the whole "your company murdered 80 people via negligence" suit I was talking about. PG&E folks! One of the worst corporations in a country full of openly evil corporations!

3 months ago my bill was 160. Following month it was 316 (highest to that point). Most recent bill I have gotten is 456.70. projected next bill is $700. I have a modest home and keep my heat on 68. It's criminal.

This is what privatization gives you .these are private companies with no competition. And they are out to make profit off of us

Yup, got a bill for $690 last night (ONE MONTH) and this was with us away for an entire week. This is getting insane.

We need TERM LIMITS, folks. We have to take corruption seriously.

Public utilities should not be for profit !!!

The fact that these companies can become publicly traded on Wall Street is the root of all the problems. Once you make them beholden to shareholders and profits before anything else, it’s going to escalate corruption very fast!!

FirstEnergy owns the stadium I live next to in PA. It was originally named Reading Municipal-Memorial Stadium before corporate sponsorship changed it to its creatively named First Energy Stadium. They also exclusively own the Electrical training at our Community College. The amount of corruption that we allow into our homes, education, and communities is shameful. Our state and federal governments are not only complicit but are directly involved. Private interest groups own the country. Not the people.

It’s crazy that private corporations can charge us for the energy that should be part of the common wealth

Just the fact that one woman was a lobbyist for the energy company and then becomes the commissioner... That should be considered corruption itself

PUBLIC services shouldn't be PRIVATE companies ☠ More accurately: PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE shouldn't be owned by PRIVATE COMPANIES.

Before my mom passed away. Labcorp was pushing to eliminate secondary testing for blood and urine samples. They claim that their machines that chronically break down from extended use can give perfect results the first time. Labcorp along with Quest Labs are constantly working employees to death and attempting break ethical boundaries associated with medical testing for cancer and STD’s. My mom’s greatest fear was giving someone a false positive and then they irrationally take their life. My mom constantly pushed back against corporate and their desire to eliminate secondary testing. But dont take my word for it. Everyone at labcorp hates the company.

The water poisoning of a few years ago was paid for by the citizens of West Virginia. That was one of the first moments i realized that moving here was a huge mistake 😢

I had a over $500 bill one month. Continental Divide Electric new mexico Its crazy. HELP!!!! I reported to my governor. They don't care they are in the pockets of big Electric with nice donation check😢

Every year I use a little bit less energy but my bill keeps going up significantly.

I am on a public, not for profit utility owned by the county, so we don't usually have to deal with these problems. I would suggest everyone start pushing their local city and county governments to switch to public utilities.

Same here in independence MO, when I first moved in my bill was around $150ish fast forward 6 years and it's almost $700. My utility company has been investigated for fraud. Taking bribes, but it all just got swept under the rug and nobody hears anything about it anymore.

I was talking with my father a few months back about the skyrocketing electric bills down here in our area of South Fl. We have a nuclear power plant, beachside that's maybe 30 miles from where my parents live, but apparently, our plant sends power up to Georgia, or the Carolinas, and then we have to pay to have power sent back to us from up there. Really made no sense at all to me.

The commission sitting on the board and all the executives of the energy company need to go to jail for a long time. Also we need to own the company not Wallstreet. And last we need to recoup the excess payments.

Bill went from $130 to $340. My neighbors are seeing over $400. For a 1000 sq apartment in the midwest, this is insane

I’m on the board of a small town-owned electric utility. Our rates are 30% less than neighboring towns, 100% non GHG emitting power supply, under grounded many of our lines so outages are rare and power is restored quickly. Since 1891 we have been run by the community to serve the community. Providing clean, reliable and affordable electricity is possible but it must be in service to the local community, not a for profit monopoly.

The worst part is there’s nothing we can do. The levels of bureaucracy are insurmountable. Plus most of these are unelected officials appointed by their currupt daddies.

Now, I wanna investigate my own local energy utility. The rates are absolutely bonkers.

me when my small 2 bed apartment gets $250+ electric bills

I live in hot and humid Louisiana. I got tired putting $$ into my central air/heat and bought 3 window units and a smaller one for my guest bedroom. I know this is not the issue of this video😬but I am saving SOOOO much $$ with these window units! Highest bill in August was $115 when it used to be in the $300’s!!! I send automatic $85/month in the summer and $50/month in colder months and always carry a credit. Thank goodness we have mild winters bc it does get cold but that’s why I have sweatpants! I’m so sorry for these people being ripped off so badly, I don’t know what I would do! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I looked at the breakdown of My rural electric bill and it shows that half of my electric bill was for FUEL charges, their charging us for fuel half of our bill is for fuel now multiply that by how many people have a power bill, there's no way their using that much fuel a month.

As an Ohioan, this boils by blood. The corruption is so deep, we should be seeing DeWine getting prosecuted and it looks like similar things are happening down in our South East neighbor as well. Such blatant corruption should be harshly punished, but will it?

All electric companies in Texas have cut solar power buyback rates by 75% if you own rooftop solar panels 😢

made it less than 20 seconds into your video and was like "I bet this'll be about those scumbags at First Energy." and BAM! FIRST ENERGY! They're a bunch of bastards.

In England we have private utilities which were once in public ownership. The difference between the two is we now have fat cat CEOs earning millions in them and sky-high tariffs to pay for them (and their shareholders).

This is not a free market. You have only 1 choice of provider. They should have never been allowed to be on the stock market as that has always led to higher prices and less quality. Regulation only works if the government has laws with teeth and that becomes impossible when they are lobbying/bribing these governments to weaken those laws. When the fines are less than the company made doing illegal activity why wouldn't they keep breaking the law? Dominion energy in Utah also needs to be investigated. They have continued to jack up gas prices year over year without our government batting an eye at it.

The electric company don't even check the house meter. They just estimate because there is never snow tracks in the winter going to the meter.

I live in CA. We bought a 9.6 kW solar system with 5.9 average peak hours of sunlight available for the year, each day. Our system, having 24, 400W panels, at as low as 80% efficiency (contract says 95% but of course the installer and seller are now out of business) should be producing nearly 17,000 kWh per year. It’s not even producing 13,000 kWh. Our Tru-up (what we owe based on the gap between usage vs production) is over $4,000 per year. Our system was over $50,000. Such horse$***.

All energy companies should be CO-OPs working to serve the people. Electricity is an essential modern service and should be made at the lowest possible cost to the people and for zero profit.

I live in San Diego. Our power industry has been an absolute $hit show since it was deregulated in 1996.

Most of the public service commissioners are taking money from the various utilities and approving the rate increases. The system is corrupt. We need to change the public service commission appointment process, audit the electric utilities.

I am impressed with this journalism. Keep up the good work.

There should be no such thing as a privately owned utility. They should all be publicly owned.

State owned non-profit energy companies are needed. Eminent Domain these guys for 50c on the $, as backpay for gouging customers

The last bit about the contract we don't really think about is pretty big to me. It aligns a lot with some other kinda invisible (or social) contracts that are being broken, police with the public, politicians with their electorate, the intolerant asking for tolerance for their intolerance. Its not a firm contract, it's a cease fire, a peace treaty. If that treaty is broken, how many incidents will it take before the citizens demand the private companies out and these public services become public controlled again?

The blatant corruption is disgusting. That spokesperson should be looking for a new job.

You can’t have a situation where the government grants monopolies to private companies unless they are strictly regulated for public use rather than for wealthy investors.

Omg! This video could not have come at a better time! I just paid $345.15 for 1 month of service for my 900sq ft cozy little house. I keep the heat set at 66 degrees. We've had a mild winter here so I've turned it off a lot this year, but still got a huge bill. Wtf is going on with AEP??

When these companies pushed for deregulation the promised it would eliminate the utility's monopolies, increase competition, lower costs, and improve service.

I'm in CA. Our electricity bill has been huge. Lights only on a few hours at night. No TV except on weekends. Fridge, oven, air set on 78-82% , and still a big bill. And we have solar panels. So we got solar battery and more panels. Last week we were off grid 2 days, fully running everything in our house and still fed the grid the extra. This summer I will be able to stay cool in my home and not get hit with a scorching electricity bill.

I can't understand how Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures allow rate payers to have the burden of bribes and fines and not the shareholder's equity.

Time to look into who is taking the bribes from these big companies and who issues the bribes. Publish those names and let the people decide what happens.

I sold residential solar in Arizona for 4 years and I cannot tell you just how crooked the utility companies are. In the Metro Phoenix area it's either SRP or APS and if you're with one, that's the one you got. They have strict control over their territory and do not allow you to switch. The two main utilities are managed by the AZ Corporation Commission but is heavily influenced by campaign ads, misinformation and contributions by the utility companies, so those elected to the commission are essentially paid shills and do what the utility companies want. It's a true anti-trust racket but hasn't really been regulated. They're so corrupt that APS developed their own residential solar program that is similar to other companies offers except it only results in a bill credit of like $50-$100 a month even though other companies can save way more. APS actually loses money on their solar systems but it locks in those houses for decades so they don't lose "as much" as losing all the power demand from that house from other companies.

Good work ~call these people out and hold them accountable-- they should be forced to PAY BACK their customers

I live in Wisconsin and have been harassed for 17 years now. WE ENERGY wants my property and I refuse to sell so WE ENERGY has been making my life as miserable as they can so I would move. WE ENERGY owns the cops which are corrupt. Everything is being covered up. WE ENERGY was able to expand in 2007 and they just keep wanting to expand buying all the property around them. From 2010 to 2013 I was harassed 24/7 for 3 solid years. I was not able to sleep. From the extreme anxiety I now have a twisted colon. I was to the point of almost committing suicide because I couldn't handle the extreme harassing noise. I finally went to see a doctor who put me on anxiety and depression pills for years. The utility companies are pure EVIL. I to this very day am harassed. My parents built this home that I lived at since I was 5 years old. WE ENERGY burns coal by the lake next to Lake Michigan and I just don't understand why they need all the property they have bought. They will never say. I think WE ENERGY is buying as much property as they can and then resell it for a profit. This is just what I think.

Only one in seven people get their power from publicly owned utilities. The rest of us are subject to the whims of profiteering, deferred maintenance, and lack of any control over where power comes from. Public utility customers PAY LESS AND HAVE BETTER SERVICE UPTIME, as well as having a voice in grid sourcing.

Public utilities should be publicly owned, not in the stock market sense, but in the co-op sense. Their purpose is to provide what has become a critical service, and to abuse the people who depend on this service to put money into the pockets of shareholders should not be legal.

I live in Ohio, known for it's corrupt electric service negotiations complete with kickbacks.

My brother is a civil engineer that specialized in hydrology and water projects. One of his projects was to work with the watershed on a major dam that provides power for a major city--it usually actually provides about 70% of power for that city. He gave me a tour of the damn once and showed me the 4 hydro generators of which only three were running. I asked him if the fourth was under maintenance and he said no, they only ever run 3 because if they ran all 4 power generators it would drop the cost of energy below what the private power cartels could compete with. So basically the PUD fixes prices because giving you too cheap of power would hurt the private cartels over charging you for power. ... Deep in the rabbit hole: as a physicist I can tell you there are several versions of functional fusion that you will never see because the most corrupt assholes on earth are the energy/technology cartels.

That's happening in MT with Northwestern Energy, too. They've requesting a 25%+ increase in rates, which is coming on the heels of previous rate request just a few years ago. Meanwhile, they've been working for the last 6 years to repeatedly attempt to get the state Legislature to pass bills that would do an end run around both consumers and the PSC to pass on additional increases to the customer via legislation, all in an attempt to get us to prop up their coal interests. Additionally they've been behind legislative attempts to decrease solar energy investment, lower payments to solar panel owners, and fight other green initiatives. We're a heavily Republican controlled state right now and most of them appear to be working for NWE rather than their constituents.

Excellent journalism 👏 👌

Pretty sure PG&E is still on federal probation for mass murder.(Paradise, CA fire)I think they filled bankruptcy and then continued to raise rates to make the customers pay for the payouts.

Householder was the state representative for Ohio's 72nd district and was a two-time Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. He is a member of the Republican Party

You could be talking about Georgia Power just as much as First Energy. Georgia Power has been building new reactors at Vogtle since 2009. They are already are 7 years behind the scheduled completion date. To make matters worse, they got permission from our own PSC to front load rate payers paying for all of these delays and overruns. The project is 7 years late (and counting) and 17 billion over budget which rate payers are having to cover, while investors still get their returns. No monopoly utility should have to appease investors who are more than willing to squeeze rate payers. Our PSC is an elected position, yet because people often seem to vote against their own interests (for people with an R after their name) rather than know WHAT it is they are voting for. The Georgia PSC has repeatedly given Georgia Power what they want. They have made home solar hard to do and in fact tag another $30 per month to homes with solar and don't pay market rates for extra power home solar generates, because of...fairness??? Until people wake up to the fact that your own PSC makes decisions that will affect your day to day, nothing will change.

i'm lucky to be in an area with a municipal power utility, and hearing stories like this makes me appreciate that a lot more - everyone deserves to know their bill money is going to an organization that represents their interests and their needs

Meanwhile in Mexico it's 10$/month to power a 2200ft² brick home-where it snows on occasion and gets hot in the summer. Still capitalism but this public service is regulated in particular. Difference in greed and corruption.

My electric bill went from $32. $127. That's 396.75% in 3 years!!!

That dude's mullet is awesome. Professional in the front party in the back.

Love the content, but beyond that…. Your editing/script/use and choice of b-Roll are really well done. Timing is tight and it flows. Bravo.

Remember, not a single holdings company cares about a single customer. They're buying utility companies as fast as they can. And they barely reinvest in their infrastructure. Connecticut proves it. Anyone with Wallingford electric rarely has outages and pays less than anyone nearby.

Going solar off grid is my mission in life. Now that solar and battery storage is getting more affordable, it begins to make sense.

We had a chance in Maine to implement Pine Tree Power (a citizen-operated utility alternative) and it failed at the ballot. Super disappointed in the folks around me.

Thank you for bringing attention to this issue. A very professional but entertaining video.

This is why I'm so grateful to live in a town where we have municipal electricity and municipal fiber internet (One of the best in the country, by the way). My electric and internet costs are very reasonable and the service is impeccable.

Nationalize the energy companies and suddenly energy become cheaper. No outrageous CEO and executive pay, no millions in stadium naming rights, no more millions in lobbying, and no more investors over customers. Energy and water should be under the government control, taking the profit out and saving the customers billions.

Time for a Class Action Lawsuit. Call Erin Brokovich. She's still in the business of going after these companies.

I work in the german utilites sector, and while our system is far from perfect, we did manage to get rid of the natural oligopoly for energy suppliers. What we did was to break up those big energy companies into seperate entities, one "supplier" who buys and sells energy to consumers, and one "distributor" who is in charge of the physical grid and largely the distribution of custumer data. Now new suppliers can enter the market and the distributors can't discriminate between their "sister company" and competitors, because the communication and the rules for market entry are highly regulated. While this approach brought a bulk of regulation and some inefficiencies, at least we can freely choose between different suppliers. I have to say though, making the utilities sector public makes a lot of sense. Privatisation of public infrastructure was a big trend here in the 90's and today we have a railway system that is worse than it was 20 years ago, just to name one example.

They should have paid the 200mil fine AND the board of directors should have faced criminal charges. If a company does something illegal then the people in charge of that company should go to jail. Why isn't this a thing?

The taxpayers can buy this company using imminent domain and then cost control it as a public utility

It's the same here in California. Our Governor along with the CPUC have given PG&E everything they wanted. We're retired and on a fixed income as well but everyone we know, young included are having a challenging time as well. Then there's the insurance companies, doesn't matter if home, vehicle or health....well, their right there with the electric companies no matter where you live. The future is looking a bit bleak for many people.....remember to breathe

Thanks for keeping it boring! People are distracted by the world's problems and how big they are which makes them often forget they can make a change locally!

Greed is destroying our great country

I live in a 650 square foot apartment in the Portland area in Oregon. My bill more than doubled when the rates went up. Half of my bill is fees. Not the actual electricity I'm using, but fees based on my kwph usage. I can't afford it. And this is after I got a 25% reduction on what I thought was my entire bill, but is actually only on the actual energy usage. That discount is due to my very low income status. The company I get electricity from, which I have no ability to change due to service areas and because the apartment complex I live in uses whatever company they use. You can't change it. This is ridiculous. We need renewable, green energy. If I hadn't gotten help from a non-profit, I'd have had to heat only one room and stayed in there foe weeks at a time due to the weather. We had ice for a week. Non-profits don't exist to subsidize corrupt utility companies who squeeze profits out of the poor even if they freeze or succumb to heat exhaustion. Another example of the government letting corporations put profit above people. We need a straight up revolution. So many people refusing to pay bills or going off grid if they can. We need the necessities of life like energy, clean water, etc. to be managed by the state at zero profit. And we need corporate lobbyists banned, and people taking bribes in any form prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Write your mayors, governers, congressmen. F*ck this.

Love everything More Perfect Union does! My only request, spend more time on solutions. Preferably a direct relation, 10% problem, 90% solutions. The only way we can fix all of these problems is to spend more time on solutions. Besides when you spend more time on the problems, you feel weighted down. When you spend more time on solutions, the weight feels lifted.

Dude. YOU are my favorite reporter out of just about anyone and everyone else. Maybe it's the mullet? Maybe its the clear sense that you're genuine. IDK -but plz keep it up

Nebraska has not for profit publicly owned electric utilities and they have the same problems. My local utility pays huge sums of money to lobbyists. Why would a publicly owned not for profit utility hire lobbyists ???

All these companies should be public

Electricity is privately owned. It is a public necessity it should never be privately owned. Just removing the profit motive should reduce prices immediately by 20%...It should be a public utility, never a private company where profit has to be their FIRST priority.

I’m in Texas. I keep my thermostat at 55° in winter; 85° in summer, for my leaky old farmhouse. My bills average $130/mon due to a “delivery fee” recently added that almost doubles my bill. When we got freezing weather recently, I raised the thermostat to 70° for about ten days and got smacked with a giant bill of almost $400! It’s criminal, or should be! I’m in the process of renovating and a priority is to get as close to off-grid as I’m legally allowed.

Californian here. Don't ask us about PG&E. It's the most hated company in the entire state.

Why is your electric bill so high ? - 1) Profits over people 2) absolute power corrupting absolutely 3) greed. S-S-D-D 🙄🙄🙄🙄

This is so much more sophisticated than my state. In FL they just outright buy the governor with campaign contributions (read: bribes) and lay back while preferential legislation rains down on them.

Thank you for all your hard work and research.

Screw the penalty, start putting the people in charge in jail!

It's time to take the power back!

Remember that dude a couple elections back that was in a democratic primary... He was named McMillian, I think. He was pushing, "The Rent Is Too Damn High" Party.

I just need a giant hamster wheel to create my own energy.

CRIMINAL !!!!!

I don’t understand why our utilities are so expensive. I have relatives who live in Lexington & Georgetown,Ky. The electricity bill is usually around $50-60 dollars per month year round. We live on a few acres and have a small Doublewide and our electric bill was $600 dollars for this month. Why?