Cynicism isn’t helpful. The U.S. was a democracy and now that’s in jeopardy. To pretend that an imperfect democracy is equivalent to the electoral autocracy we seem to be headed for is disingenuous and betrays the many substantiative freedoms we enjoyed under the former.

Yep. Pretty smart to take the financial hit for a short time and gather free publicity for it while trying to save a declining franchise.

They do until they don’t. Hitler came to power with the support of the brownshirts and then turned on them during the night of the long knives while shifting his rhetoric from the working class to the middle class.

But yeah, I take your point. Trump definitely doesn’t mind if his followers instigate political violence against his opponents.

Transmission providers don’t build much new line for other reasons… It’s hard, for example, to get utilities, environmental groups, landowners, and regulators from multiple jurisdictions to agree on things. This idea that providers would build more if there was just a bit more demand on the system (instead of simply pocketing the tariff increase) is fanciful. Moreover, that demand would simply generate more headwinds for renewables, who actually need transmission.

So utilities (presumably transmission providers who have a government-granted territorial monopoly, mind you) are complaining about not getting tariff on those behind the meter megawatts?

It seems like an alternate way to spin this story is that Big Tech is making agreements that avoid putting load on the nation’s aging and overloaded transmission infrastructure, which would be a good thing.

Not that I’m endorsing them per se. Electricity pricing and policy is complicated, and increased demand will directly or indirectly increase consumer prices (though long term it could lower them or even help fund nuclear renaissance). But it just seems like another case of big companies being crybabies when they think it might help them get their way.