Possible Electric Rate Increases

        Austin Energy is strongly considering on adding a twenty two to thirty dollar fee to the monthly bills of residential customers. This has come about as a result of the various drawbacks that come with using power plants, such as nuclear waste and air pollution. In other words, Austin Energy has decided that it needs to promote energy conservation. Although Austin Energy is planning on adding the flat twenty two to thirty dollar fee it is also proposing to reduce the rates for customers who use small amounts of electricity. Those in favor of this fee argue that the fee is necessary in order to encourage customers to conserve energy. Those that are against implementing the fee argue that the fee will have the exact opposite effect by giving customers less incentive to conserve energy than if Austin Energy were to simply charge customers increasing rates for increasing amounts of electricity.

         I am not in favor of implementing the fee. If Austin Energy implements the flat fee and reduces the rates for customers who use little electricity then the customers who are already conserving energy will still have to pay more than usual as a result they are basically being punished for the extra consumption of those certain customers who use larger amounts of electricity. Since the fee will apply to everyone there will be relatively no incentive for customers to conserve energy. The best solution would be to simply charge more to customers who use a large amount of electricity and less to those who use little electricity. Now this brings up another problem. What is a large amount of electricity? According to the Chairman of a split Electric Utility Commission Phillip Schmandt, which advises the council, no home will see its electric bill rise more than twenty dollars unless it uses more than 1,500 kilowatt-hours a month. So it appears the Electric Utility Commission has decided that anything above 1,500 kilowatt-hours a month is a large amount of electricity. This seems like a reasonable number as according to the U.S.Energy Information Administration, “the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,896 kWh, an average of 908 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month.”

        And of course another huge problem the fee will certainly result in is a large number of angry customers, which is exactly what Austin Energy does not need when it is “under pressure to sell more electricity—and to sell less of it.”

A Perry Presidency

        Rachel Farris is currently a writer for The Huffington Post who has spoken about social media and communications at UT, LBJ School of Public Affairs, and St. Edward’s University. On August 17 Rachel Farris posted a blog, “What a Rick Perry Presidency Would Look Like for Women”, on her website in which she argues that if Rick Perry were to become President it would result in the restriction of people’s rights, more specifically women’s rights. After reading the title of Farris’s post it appears that her intended audience is women, after reading her entire post it becomes clear as water that women are her intended audience as she repeatedly references laws that directly affect women or their children.

         Farris jokes that Perry’s first order of business would be to create a department that would oversee “approved contraceptive devices under Perry’s watchful eye”, among the top being abstinence. Farris brings up an unnamed 2005 study that found teens in Texas were actually having more sex after undergoing an abstinence program. She goes on to say that even with this study Rick Perry currently stands by the practice not because he has any studies backing him up but because according to an interview with the Texas Tribune, “from my own personal life.” Rachel Farris then brings up a piece of legislation Perry declared an emergency legislation under which Texas’s law requires mandatory transvaginal sonograms for women who are eight to ten weeks pregnant and seeking abortions. She then goes on to joke that “President” Perry’s version of the bill would include an amendment to play Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” during the procedure. Farris wraps her post up by criticizing how Rick Perry is trying to protect unborn children yet Texas leads the nation in the percentage of children without health insurance.

        I found Rachel Farris’s post to be entertaining yet at the same time a bit disturbing. She criticizes Rick Perry by mocking him yet she provides hard evidence in the form of quotes from Perry and articles about legislations supported by him. I would certainly recommend this article to anyone as it provides entertainment while bringing up some interesting points as well.