Ah, the chutzpah! FPL rate hikes not kosher, says Sun-Sentinel reader

Doncha just love those Sun-Sentinel readers?

In response to the paper's coverage of the FPL base rate hike request, reader Bronen Bello of Pompano Beach responds:

Re: "FPL seeks 30 percent increase in base rate" in your March 19 edition. I read that a primary factor in the increase is to "retain investor confidence" by providing a 12.5 percent rate of return to the company's stockholders. Where do I sign up? If the rate increase is not granted, FPL stockholders will have to settle for a measly 4.7 percent and 3.1 percent in 2010 and 2011. A cursory survey of the low rates of return currently available shows the 12.5 percent return FPL wants to soak its consumers for would make Bernie Madoff proud. The only thing standing between us and this rapacious scheme is Florida's Public Service Commission. Where is Michael Mayo when we need him?

Online, here.

Florida growth least in 60 years ... so why all the electricity, why two new nukes, why now?

Alan Farago raises a very cogent point in his contribution last week to Counter Punch, titled "The Recession, the Developers and Baseball ..."

In the halls of government in cities like Miami, where the jackhammers and cranes and cement trucks have all gone quiet, there is a palpable sense of nostalgia, broken only by hope for a new $500 million stadium or, as Florida Power and Light would have it, two new nuclear reactors costing $18 billion at least ...

Whoa! Stop right there ...

And follow with today's report from the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research showing that annual population growth in our State has now slowed to a trickle of what it was from 2000-2006:

With South Florida counties particularly hard hit, the state is expected to add an average of only 37,000 residents each year between 2008 and 2010, a drop of more than 90 percent from the annual average increase during the housing boom years of 2002 to 2006, said Stan Smith, director of UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research who led the research. The new report shows county population projections from 2008 to 2035.

Broward and Palm Beach Counties are even expected to lose population during the next two years. Stan Smith, director of UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, said that as a result of the recession in Florida ...

As economic growth slowed and the housing market cooled, annual population growth declined from an average of 395,000 between 2000 and 2006 to 331,000 between 2006 and 2007 and 127,000 in 2007 and 2008 ...

Not since the 1940s will Florida's population growth have been this slow -- that's right, the slowest population growth in 60 years!

So, why ... tell us why does FPL need to build and charge its customers at a cost of no less than $18 billion the two new nuclear reactors 6 &7 at the Turkey Point power station?!?

One rainstorm and ... 11,000 FPL Customers Without Power

Unbelievable that one rainstorm would knock out power to 11,000 FPL customers in South Florida. Not a tropical storm, not a hurricane ... just rain and wind!!!

Whatever do we pay them so much for??

Red all about it here and here and here and here ...