Kansas on a dead run to hand the baton to industry

1) A bill working it's way through Topeka will let utilities raise rates as they wish when they wish, then they have some weeks or months to apply to the rate commission, if it is disapproved they would have to refund the overcharge.  That's sweet, if they get in a jam or want to puff up the quarter for managers bonus then raise the rates, if they need cash this can be a source of a loan without going to the bank or Wall Street.  Don't it make ya proud to have corporations working for the publics good like that?

2) But, not all the news was good for the GOP.  A federal judge blocked a coal fired power plant here from starting construction until it files all it's papers including an environmental impact study.  The utility and the state GOP are howling mad.  They feel the permits should be applied for concurrently with the building process.   That's sweet too,  wonder if I could open a strip club and outdoor bar next to the baptist school while I work on that pesky paperwork for the permit?

Background.  This power plant was denied a permit by the former state EPA office under  Gov. K. Sebielus (D) (now Obama's secretary of Health).  The reichwinger gov (Koch) Brownback fired almost everyone in the state EPA when he got here, left a kid with a rubberstamp in the room, and they promptly approved the coal burner with no care that it blows mercury on my farm.  Since that approval it was learned the kids in the EPA office would take public or news posed inquires to the utility who would write the answers for them, see that's industry doing it cheaper than government.  Oh, they also made 1/3 of the windy state of Kansas off limits for wind energy at the request of Koch Industries who fights all forms of energy that doesn't produce smoke, cancer, or profit for them, and to slow the perception that wind would reduce the need for this power plant.