Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday that Michigan is "a backwater" in promoting renewable energy such as wind power, and called on lawmakers to quickly approve legislation requiring the state to generate 10% of its electric power from renewable sources by 2015...

She said Michigan is losing out on thousands of jobs from companies that manufacture wind turbines because it lacks an RPS, which would help ensure their investments are profitable.

Executives of wind power companies told her, she said, that they would not consider Michigan for business without having an RPS in place.

In all the articles in all the newspapers across the world wide web you'll find lots of statements about these companies saying they won't consider Michigan without this RPS.  No where does one of them state that they would build a plant here if we did have one.  But that's really a secondary issue.  If I was trying to sell this sort of earth-shaking tax hike I'd try to find every pseudo-halfway-maybe-potential job I could find too.

In their verve and excitement to yank another $8 billion out of the private sector and away from job makers the Governor and Andy Dillon are falling back on what they know.  Bigger government.  Just set a semi-mandate and tax people to pay for it and things are bound to get better.  It's not like the free market has ever worked before.  And hey, while you're at it, lets just burn competition to the ground.  Monopolize everything!  Who'd have figured Granholm and Dillon as the State's loudest advocates for Big Energy.  Way to attempt to line fat corporate pockets with tax dollars, Madame Governor.  Not that you'll be able to get away with it all that easily.  According to the Detroit News:

Utility competitors and consumer groups oppose that part of the package, saying it would return a monopoly to the utilities and drive up electric rates.

Direct Energy, a Houston-based energy company that wants to enter the Michigan market, opposes legislation that would reregulate utilities here. It favors three Senate bills that would encourage competition for residential customers, set up a competitive bidding process for meeting Michigan's future energy needs and give consumers monetary credits for any new generation plant fees they pay.

"The debate, so far, is focused on the wrong thing," said Tanya Paslawski, Direct Energy's government and regulatory affairs manager. "It should be focused on how to make the market best for customers."

And that's half the shame of it.  Alternative energy is a fantastic idea and it's something worth pursuing.  Full steam ahead.  A free and open market, a variety of incentives, consumer choice... these are the economic tools that changed the world and made this the most prosperous nation in the history of civilization.  But Michigan Democrats want to toss us back to the 1800s with unchecked monopolies running the show.  No thanks.

Wasn't breaking monopolies and looking out for the small business supposed to be the prevue of the Democrat party?  I mean, isn't that the way they've fashioned themselves these last fifty, sixty years?  Is it all talk?  

It's rare that conservatives get to play the populists in the press but here we are.  Democrats in Michigan attempting to soak the little guy with an $8 billion hidden tax hike while killing small businesses and allowing Big Energy an uncontested monopoly with zero specific results required.  

Jennifer Granholm and House Democrats.  Doing 19th century robber barons proud since 2003.