As a Georgia Power (Southern Company subsidiary) ratepayer, this offends me. I will now vote with my dollar to punish them.
Oh wait, I can’t because it’s a fucking monopoly!
It is literally tyranny that a de-jure monopoly like this is allowed to publicly have an opinion at all, and even more so that it’s allowed to fund the broadcasting of said propaganda with money forcibly extracted from its ratepayers (who have absolutely no say in the matter, short of disconnecting from the power grid).
It’s worse than that even — the regulator that would be able to punish them, the Georgia Public Service Commission, has had its elections canceled. This leaves Republicans who are bought out by the utility in charge.
I’d never really looked into how the PSC elections worked until now and holy shit, that’s downright sadistic on multiple levels!
Let me see if I’ve got it straight:
- Candidates for PSC seats must live within particular geographic districts, but the voting for those seats is at-large (the whole state votes).
- That means that the metro Atlanta district gets both Democrat and Republican candidates (because the metro has a liberal majority, but also still has enough conservatives to put up a good fight), while the other four districts are mostly rural and much more homogeneously conservative, so whatever Democrats they scrounge up to run are less likely to be serious and competitive.
- The at-large voting means even a slim Republican statewide majority gives them all five seats. Meanwhile, although the same would be nominally true for the Democrats, the afore-mentioned weaker candidate pool in the rural districts would make it harder to achieve, even when they miraculously manage get enough turnout to win district 3. That’s because Republicans tend to just vote straight ticket, while Democrats are more likely to abstain from down-ballot races that they don’t have an informed opinion about.
That’s already 100% unjust bullshit even before considering the point you made (that they’ve slow-walked the court case for two elections running, manufacturing an excuse not to even bother holding a vote and just letting the Republicans keep serving expired terms instead).
I’m really not one to defend companies, but this is a bit of a weird take, and it makes the author sound really unfamiliar with this business sector. White papers are very common and not peer reviewed, basically they’re a glorified memo with statistics. Don’t rely on white papers for any information besides what that company is saying about itself and its experience.
For sure…but it’s being run as an ad, and people are absolutely awful at telling the difference between this kind of ad and editorial content, even when it’s plainly labeled.
So is the critique for Southern Company for writing some marketing material, or for The Atlantic for running an ad about it?
For the Atlantic for being willing to run it in a format that confuses readers, the Public Utilities Commissions in the states where the Southern Company operates for letting the Southern Company do this kind of thing with ratepayer money, and the Southern Company itself for trying to mislead people.