This Strib report. Great River Energy builds an uneconomical coal-fired power plant where the least-cost strategy for the ultra-new thing is to shut it down. And then there is my good friend Gary Gross at his letfreedomring.com blog site bemoaning all Minnesota's jobs going to North Dakota.
Jobs to North Dakota? Not to this hummer, although $30 million annually will be required to keep the mothballed half-billion thing maintained while it produces zero killowatt-hours of energy to sell. Including of course debt service as part of the annual hit. What genius is behind this?
Connect the dots as you will on your own.
I only note that Great River is a cooperative, owned and run by other cooperatives, the biggest of which is Connexus.
Cooperatives in Minnesota are a law unto themselves. They can get away with what they impose because they go unregulated by the Minnesota's Public Utility Commission. It's the law. They are exempt. So - the unbridled free market, and no shareholders to answer to since rate-payers nominally "own" their cooperatives - and things are horsed up beyond belief.
Tell that to "free market" Republicans. I even know a "free market" Republican (a Rushbobooster even) who wanted to be on the Connexus board but was stymied by an insider game of hoke-up the rules; specifically, if you've litigated against your user-owned cooperative, you are a different user than the rest - you cannot serve on the board for five years after end of litigation - and that is the way it is even if the cooperative, Connexus, wrongly and baselessly sues you. The bylaws Connexus insiders wrote, with the help of retained lawyers, makes no distinction - you can be right, you can be wrong, but you cannot be a reform candidate for the board.
If Connexus stepped on your rights, and you defended them in court, Sorry Charlie you are insufficently qualified tuna.
So go figure. Is it any wonder this SNAFU in North Dakota happened?