Americans are blaming the wrong part of their electric bill

High-voltage electric transmission towers and power lines across an open landscape

(This article was written by Joe Barton and appeared in the Washington Times. Americans are blaming the wrong part of their electric bill)

In Texas, the company that sends your electricity bill is not the same one that generates or delivers your power. These are separate companies. Generators produce the power, regulated utilities deliver it and retail providers sell it to you.

This setup is important because when prices go up, people often blame the wrong part of the system. Many also hold the unsupported belief that electric rates are rising quickly due to data center demand.

It’s true that there is rising demand for power, but prices are rising in specific regions where lack of supply is a problem.

While demand has increased, supply has remained flat in regions such as the Northeast, which nearly 58 million people call home, and power producers there prefer it that way.

A recent analysis by Charles River Associates underscores the point. Across most of the country, electricity prices have been relatively stable and the narrative of runaway electricity prices is largely driven by a smaller group of states — concentrated in California, the Northeast and parts of the mid-Atlantic.

This PJM Interconnection region, which includes states such as Pennsylvania and Maryland, is a great example to follow. Unlike Texas, the main issue in PJM is not confusion about roles. Instead, it is a deeper problem: Utilities in many PJM states are largely not allowed to build or own power plants, even if that could lower costs and improve reliability.

Utilities must buy power through PJM’s marginal price auctions. These auctions set prices based on the most expensive unit required to meet demand. This means all power is priced at the highest cost, even if cheaper options are available. Consumers end up paying that price set by individual power plant companies.

It’s important to note that utilities do not profit from these increases. Purchased power costs are passed onto customers without any markup. The companies that send your monthly bills are not the ones making money from higher wholesale prices.

Instead, the system is producing exactly what it was designed to produce: higher prices when supply is tight. That’s the wrong way to do things if you ask me.

This is where comparisons to Texas are instructive. The ERCOT market, which serves most of Texas, is also a competitive system. But it operates differently.

Texas regulators have made policy decisions that prioritize ensuring sufficient supply, even if that means higher upfront costs or stronger price signals to incentivize investment. The result is a system that, while not perfect, has largely served consumers well by maintaining a closer balance between supply and demand.

In PJM, the situation is different. Supply growth has not kept up with rising demand, even though the region has grown steadily for years. Market rules have stopped utilities from building new power plants in places such as Pennsylvania, while older plants have closed.

Independent power producers have not replaced them, even though they have made record profits. These power plant owners know that the current structure rewards scarcity instead of new supply.

Utility-owned generation can often provide power more cheaply than purchasing it through volatile wholesale markets. In fact, allowing utilities to build generation can act as a hedge against independent power plant owners backed with private capital – not taxpayer oversight – that keep power supply low and prices high.

It introduces another source of supply, increases competition and reduces dependence on price spikes to trigger investment.

The goal is not to get rid of independent power producers, which are important to the energy system. Instead, we should aim for a level playing field where both utilities and independent generators can compete to build the power plants needed to meet demand.

This will result in greater electricity supply and help reduce prices in the PJM region, unlike the situation we’re experiencing today.

Electricity demand is growing, which shows economic strength, not a problem. The real challenge is making sure supply keeps up. When it does not, prices increase and consumers end up paying more.

In Congress, I supported all efforts to let companies that know what they are doing build more to meet the demand my constituents needed to build their own businesses and American dream.

If state policymakers want to stabilize prices, they should stop limiting who can build power and focus on bringing more supply online. And if American families are the ones footing the bill, then the source of their power should be the cheapest option in a truly competitive market.

Joe Barton is a Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank. He is a former Republican member of Congress representing Texas who served as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from 2004 to 2007.

35% Approval and a Midterm Disaster is NOT What America Voted For

President Ronald Reagan, whose approval rating fell to 35 percent after the 1982 midterm losses

A tough and realistic conversation for the short-sighted

Happy Monday, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve been on the road for 9 days and am a bit worn down. I’m not my chipper self today, and I’m going to open your week with a bit of shockwave for needed perspective, accountability, and hopefully, direction.

Simply put, when Americans voted for a political revolution and won, they didn’t vote for a 35% approval rating and they sure as hell didn’t come out in droves just so the Republican Party could get shellacked in the very next midterms. They were told about America’s decline, viewed that fateful quadrennial presidential election as a last ditch effort to reverse course peacefully in America, and responded with a popular vote win that featured Republican presidential victories in:

  • Arizona
  • Michigan
  • Nevada
  • Pennsylvania
  • Wisconsin

…and blowouts in Texas, Florida, and Ohio. This unrelenting base was ready to crawl over shattered glass and gas station bathrooms to vote for a man who became the oldest president of all time upon inauguration. That old man could have enjoyed his fame in retirement, but chose to step into a toxic arena and wear every label, accusation, and slander imaginable and even survived an assassin’s bullet.

To imagine that this man would be underwater and through uncontrollable world events struggle to deliver the full economic revival he promised his working-class base just two years later, and on the verge of losing midterms, is utterly unimaginable, unpalatable, and unacceptable to the people who believed in him.

Thirty-five percent approval.

In the celebratory aftermath of his victory and the rip-roaring fast start of the administration, no one would pencil in a 12% loss to Democrats in the House popular vote, and a loss of 26 seats, along with key gubernatorial races in must-win states. Seeing the base fray at the seams was not what I’d have envisioned watching such a political revolution unfold just two years earlier.

My assumption is that you had no idea I was talking about President Ronald Reagan’s administration and the beating the Republicans received in 1982.

Yes, indeed – at the start of 1983, right after the Democrats cleaned House, President Reagan held a 35% approval rating.

This was back before we had 900 different polls using different methodologies to produce heavily propagandized results, so a 35% approval rating hurts a lot more than the fabricated ones encircling President Trump’s administration these days. Reagan was widely thought to be a one-term president in the making at the same point in his administration as we find ourselves into Trump 2.0’s administration.

Likewise, vultures are circling today – forecasting doom in 2028 despite Republicans performing extremely well in voter registration bearing down on a midterm that, according to 92 years of history, favors Democrats, and the rapid emergence of the DSA faction of the Democrat Party.

“2028 GE: Polling Average by @RacetotheWH — Harris: 47.5% (+4.9), Vance: 42.6% — Buttigieg: 42.2% (+1.2), Vance: 41.0% — Vance: 42.0% (+1.3), Newsom: 40.7% — Vance: 42.8% (+5.2), AOC: 37.6%. Kamala Harris has led JD Vance in every single poll in 2025/26.” — InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022), August 9, 2026

Three-time Trump voters perpetuate online conversations 24/7 spreading negative energy (“blackpilling”) and convincing those on the fence that the fight isn’t worth fighting and exists only to be lost. Now let me tell you how we got here, how we get out, and what mindset shift must occur if there is to be a freer future obtained through peaceful means.

TALKING SENSE IN AN AGE OF POLITICAL ILLITERACY

I. Information War

Humanity is in a tough spot. We have access to more information than any people to have ever existed before. In past ages, iconic libraries would burn, and with them, hundreds of years of human learning and experience would go up in flames. Now, any idiot with a phone can look up the molecular composition of dust floating in an asteroid belt millions of miles from earth.

Unfortunately, despite all this information, the human brain reverts to a hypnotized state when confronted with fake news, polling, and agendas. No matter how many elections in a row we get clearly biased and rigged polling, the next round of pro-Democrat polling is right around the corner. Here’s the polling from the 2020 Senate race in Maine, which Susan Collins won by almost 9 points:

Paid influencers then post negative stories, because they get 40% more engagement than factual or positive ones, and the algorithms – like wind in sails – do the rest of the work.

“Trump lied”

“Israel owns the GOP”

“You shouldn’t vote this election to show them how you feel”

We think we are smart, and indeed, the internet did aid in the Great Awakening and allow a man like Donald Trump to be elected president. But people no longer read, write, and express original thoughts. Try handing your teenagers a book for a car ride activity, and you’ll get my point. We think we are winning the battlefield of ideas, but in truth we are insular, outsource our thinking, and are led around like sheep to slaughter.

That brings us to Point II:

II. Only One Trump

Remember when I explained why Trump was so fond of Lindsey Graham, a guy who was weak on immigration and hawkish on foreign policy?

A lot of that has to do with getting the job done on budgets. Then there’s also the reality of the political system, which selects incumbents most of the time based on the following cycle, which repeats:

  • Money buys advertising, staff, and voters
  • Incumbency brings money and name recognition
  • Money and name recognition bring reelection

When there’s a legitimately vulnerable incumbent, he or she often survives because eight different grassroots candidates throw hats in the ring and audition like “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the most conservative of them all?”

As such, you have 53 Republican senators, minus Cornyn, Tillis, Murkowski, and sometimes Curtis, Cassidy, and Collins. We get conservative voters not turning out in what they view to be pointless primaries, allowing for places like Knox County, Tennessee, to have liberal idiots in charge of education. Simply put, we don’t have other Trumps, and because there are no (or few) other Trumps out there to do the people’s work, the Uniparty maintains a degree of control and can then focus on deflecting executive actions.

I suppose Trump could go bulldozer mode, but then the ideological purists would condemn his actions as those of a dictator. The United States government was designed to change slowly, and in this sense, it isn’t working fast enough to save the country politically. This brings me to my final point:

III. Short-Sighted Strategies Fail

But what if the Democrats win the midterms?

What if they do? I mean, 92 years of history show me that the president’s party loses seats in the U.S. House 20 out of 23 times since 1934. This year, believe it or not, affords one of the highest chances of president-party success since the dawn of the New Deal era, and it’s entirely owed to redistricting. Republicans aren’t going to win the Congressional popular vote, but they may be able to pull an inside straight depending on how they do in these 24 seats:

I am in it to win it, and I want Republicans to retain and expand majorities; however, I fail in my capacity as an advisor if I push anything less than truth, or lie to my friends about seats they, or even a resurrected George Washington, can’t win. If Democrats win the House, which I would give them 60/40 odds to do today, then there will be pain. There will be committees formed and inquiries ordered, and crappy people assigned important positions of influence and power. They will drag their political enemies in front of cameras and excoriate them, and unlike Republicans, deal out legitimate consequences.

And in doing so, they will remind America why they can’t be trusted with power, why voter registration constantly moves against them, and exactly why they should forget the early struggles of the Trump 47 administration that aren’t really the fault of his policies. Economic ships take a long time to turn around, global enemies left unaddressed for 5 decades don’t simply leave power in a span of months, and the enemy wants to win, too.

Like we Christians say on Easter: Satan thought he had it won on Friday, but Sunday is coming.

The 2030 census is coming. The emergence of the DSA is already coming. The truth will win out, but only if the people who desire to see it in real, living color in our lives get off their dead asses, log off the internet, and get busy building the relationships that matter and pushing the good people they know to take over school boards, counties, and beyond. There are no more Trumps. You must be the new Trumps, or provide aid to those who stand for what is right.

The focus on the short-term is killing us. Building a long-term juggernaut will bring dividends for generations and bring new life to a Republican Party that can truly be used as a force for good, as it once was.

The Happy End to the Story

As we all know, Saint Reagan made a remarkable recovery.

Today, he’s remembered as one of our greatest presidents, even though he wasn’t perfect, and left behind some policy-related damages that still hurt us today, such as those related to illegal immigration and amnesty in a 1986 scam he fell for. The Republicans went on to win 89 of a possible 100 states between the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections, achieving the only three-election streak by the same party since the end of World War II – a feat still unmatched today.

We find ourselves today on the precipice of knowing what the 2026 midterms hold in store. Republicans will bounce back from a negative outcome, perhaps even with a better and more engaged response than they do from a miraculous hold of both majorities. As for your peace of mind and sense of direction – that relies on your willingness to invest in long-term outcomes rather than temporary and fleeting dopamine hits in the form of social media whining and immediate demand for positive election results without the tough work getting done beforehand.

History doesn’t always repeat, but it very often rhymes!

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

Making Policy: Marxist Rainbows and Mob Shock Troops

The Karl Marx Monument in Chemnitz, Germany

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the Gatestone Institute. Making Policy: Marxist Rainbows and Mob Shock Troops)

Ever since the time of Karl Marx, communists and their socialist brethren assumed that the envy of financial success would attract the proletariat to carry out a workers’ revolution in the rich countries of the West. It turned out, however, that even the poor would like to be rich.

In America, instead of locking up the wealthy or stealing their money, the poor tried to figure out how to get rich themselves.

Given America’s economic liberty, nearly every day, a typical American worker likely hears of some ordinary guy inventing some gizmo or figuring out how to sell millions of the same thing — and meanwhile getting wealthy.

So, how to lead a revolution if not with the workers rebelling against the rich, or in the language of today, the “oligarchs” and “billionaires”?

In 1984, Reverend Jessie Jackson created the “Rainbow Coalition.” The poor were of different races, so Jackson wanted all races to be included in this pursuit of prosperity. Years prior, the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong had recommended that the communists in the USA exploit racial — not class or economic — identity to win elections. Mao might have reasoned that in the US, since as people of certain races were historically oppressed and slavery was exhibit #1, the white majority could be classed as “oppressors.” Add up everyone else, include women, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, and you easily win the “oppressed” majority sweepstakes.

Race-hustling is big business. The four Reverends — Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan — made it clear: No colonialists, imperialists or Zionists allowed, and that meant white people. Jackson himself led demonstrations highlighting that Western “white” civilization “had to go.” In short, only the “right” kinds of races, ethnicities, cultures and genders were allowed in the “Rainbow.”

Unfortunately, Sharpton, Joy Reid and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani today have fertile ground with which to spread racial division.

In 1965, twenty years before Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition,” the US markedly changed its immigration laws. One lead advocate was Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Key sponsors Emanuel Celler (D-NY) and Phil Hart (D-MI) vehemently argued — explicitly — that the legislation was not seeking to change the racial demography or ethnic makeup of the country or “America’s western European heritage.”

In fact, nevertheless, that was exactly what the 1965 bill was designed to do — and its sponsors knew it. The demography of America had to change. Following the new law, the very American constitutional system that was deemed “oppressive” was out.

Now, some 70 years later, the transformation is well underway. 56 million people, or 16% of the US population, are now foreign-born. Ten to twenty million more may be here illegally. Not coincidentally, the “Democratic Socialists of America” winning primaries and elections around the nation are almost entirely foreign-born immigrants or first-generation descendants of newcomers, some even originally illegal aliens.

Many also come from nations that are economic and political failures, often totalitarian, some Marxist. As Dave Portnoy, CEO of Barstool Sports, put it:

“How we’ve gotten to socialism is somehow seen as this thing that’s gonna fix the United States, and by the way, the people who are saying it have all migrated from countries that are disasters to come to the United States!”

To escape Marxism, they bring it with them, then want to establish it here in America.

Those following in the footsteps of Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition” pushed for the “right” kind of immigration: “people of color.” The assumption appears to be that people from failed third-world nations are largely poor, so that they are probably socialist in their political outlook: expecting to get the free health care, food stamps, housing subsidies and in-state tuition offered by America, irrespective of whether they arrive as illegal aliens or come through legal immigration channels.

Note that the race, ethnicity and gender of all “people of color” are inherited characteristics: none has any connection to merit. Once proclaimed to be part of the oppressed, you are in that class forever, unable to escape.

Conversely, once described as part of the oppressor class — white and successful — you also can never exit it. You are stuck for eternity, unless you are an exempted billionaire such as George Soros or a multi-millionaire such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or Representative Ro Khanna. They get a special dispensation.

The oppressed — including the immigrant or alien class, legal or illegal — can be expanded forever, never to be depleted. Note that Mamdani’s “ethnic map” of New York excluded the Italians, Irish and Jews — all white, even as it was was careful to highlight people such as Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, as part of the newly arrived oppressed class who are promised more and more free stuff— housing, medical care, groceries and education. The Democratic Socialists of America even call for a 32-hour workweek, while still being paid for 40 hours.

As for immigration, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va) proclaimed that once you get by the border patrol or customs, the US owes you amnesty, citizenship — but most importantly, the right to vote. That is apparently what is meant by reforming — actually abolishing — ICE. If we are lucky, we might get to keep some border patrol elements “for show.”

The meaning, then, of US citizenship — as well as the idea of America and its constitution — would be abolished. The US Constitution would be shredded and the entire notion of checks and balances discarded, replaced by the tyranny of a straight-up majority or “mob rule.” There would be no president, no Senate, no Supreme Court and certainly no Electoral College. Marchers in the street might demand “No justice, no peace,” just as the “turbas divinas” or “divine mobs” (civilian paramilitary shock troops of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega) did, where street violence becomes law — as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer might have hoped when he called for violence against Supreme Court justices:

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Not only would the constitutional system of checks and balances and limited powers disappear, but also all notions of accomplishment and merit. In the US, medical students and doctors are being promoted and chosen due to their ethnic, racial or gender characteristics, all of which are inherited and not “achieved,” unless, as Ward Churchill or Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, you “falsely appropriate acquisition” to be part of the class of the oppressed. Many of these “Democratic Socialists” now want to defund not only the police and border patrol but also the Department of Defense. In short, they are announcing that they would like to turn the country over to criminals, drug dealers, traffickers and conquerors. No prisons, no borders, no accountability. It is much easier that way to take over a country. You create chaos, then rush in heroically with promises to fix it — the old “you are the arsonist and firefighter” two-step.

In this new society, merit is dismissed as a result of “white privilege” rather than as a measure or value of accomplishment. Only skin color or ethnicity has merit. Even medical schools in America have been valuing race as a measure of medical competency, leading to its explicit prohibition last year.

As merit goes out the window, education test scores are not needed. School choice is demonized. Catholic schools? More “white privilege.” The Smithsonian Institute published a 3rd to 12th grade school study guide that complains, “Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.”

Measurements of teaching are not based on whether the students end up knowing anything, but only if the right ideological content is taught by the “right” kind of instructor who is of the “right” race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

The entire “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) fraud is part of this clever campaign to remake America into another China or Cuba by using race and ethnicity as the lever.

The story of America that needs telling is, for instance, its extraordinary campaign to end slavery, and to extend freedom and liberty to billions of people worldwide.

That the US inherited slavery is what the noxious “1619 Project” missed, so they could sell slavery as a permanent “oppressor” brand on our Founders.

The first legislative act of the 14th US state, Vermont, was to abolish slavery. Why does no one in the US ever protest the slavery that persists in the rest of the planet?

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

August 2026 Voter Registration by Party Updates for Key 2026 and 2028 Battlegrounds

Voter registration by party chart for key 2026 and 2028 battleground states

My monthly update capturing true approval ratings from 7 critical states in the most fireproof analytical model there is.

Author’s Note: For a summary of why voter registration by party is so important, and to understand the importance of these states and why each were selected for this recurring study, please see the March 2025 summary.

Last month’s report can be found here.

FLORIDA

Net Shift Since July: R+14,082

  • Florida Democrats can’t catch a break. They added 24,463 new party members in the run-up to primaries this month and still got smoked by a net 14,082 (more than June) by the GOP. Republicans have now widened their lead by a net of 429,717 since the November 2024 election, a truly astounding performance. If you don’t ever want to live under Democrats, move to Florida.
  • Florida’s drift is predictive for Pennsylvania and Michigan since 1952, portending good things for future GOP campaigns in both of those battlegrounds in the next presidential election. Florida appears to be emerging as the premier GOP superstate, passing Texas (although not in order of importance by electoral votes and House seats).
  • Races to watch: FL-14 (leaner), FL-22 (leaner), FL-25 (decisive)

IOWA

Net Shift Since July: D+583

  • After a big gain in June directly tied to primaries, it’s back to a grind, although a small gain for Democrats on paper. Iowa has a bigger GOP registration advantage by raw count than it did in November 2024, but slightly left as a percentage thanks to a larger count of registered voters.
  • Iowa is worth tracking because it has a valid correlation to the shifts in Wisconsin and Minnesota, which cannot be precisely tracked by party registration. Furthermore, Iowa has two extremely competitive House seats that must be watched closely, and now a gubernatorial contest looking tight.
  • Races to watch: IA-1 (decisive), IA-3 (decisive), U.S. Senate, Governor

PENNSYLVANIA

Net Shift Since July: D+7,079 Total, R+34,722 Active

  • Democrats put up an overall gain similar to their June pickup, suggesting they have active voter registration efforts underway in the urban areas; however, a voter roll purge annihilated more than half of what active voter registration lead remained for Democrats. Was this prompted by the big exposé in New Jersey, and a purge of non-citizens perhaps?
  • I’m certainly happy to see the overall lead get close to a tie, but Democrat gains in the overall roll suggest a mixed bag ahead of midterms. I think the Democrat lurch to DSA-driven is going to prevent Pennsylvania from making a serious move back to blue.
  • Races to watch: PA-1 (leaner), PA-7 (decisive), PA-8 (decisive), PA-10 (decisive)

NORTH CAROLINA

Net Shift Since July: D+136 Total, D+3,611 Active

  • The overall voter roll has a lot less volatility (D+136) than in Pennsylvania, which makes me think Democrats have two vastly different operations going on in those states; however, the Democrats had a nice gain in active registrations, which could just be efforts to reactivate existing registrations rather than finding entirely new voters.
  • With former Democrat Governor Roy Cooper running for U.S. Senate, Republicans need all the help they can get. I consider the GOP-held seat in North Carolina the most likely to flip to Democrats in 2026, with Michael Whatley the Republican nominee.
  • Races to watch: NC-1 (leaner), U.S. Senate

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Net Shift Since July: R+4,085

  • New Hampshire’s first update in three months is out, and it’s a big gain for the GOP. This is a product of voter roll maintenance (we’ll still take it), which is down 57,486 since last update.
  • The Granite State remains the most likely Republican flip for the 2028 presidential election.
  • Races to watch: NH-1 (leaner), U.S. Senate

ARIZONA

Net Shift Since July: D+8,005

  • It’s been a while since I’ve updated Arizona, but the Secretary of State’s numbers dropped last month, so I’ve captured them here. Democrats have made up +8,005 registrations in the last few months, mostly out of Maricopa County.
  • Arizona’s statewide offices are up for grabs this year, and the Democrats have a real shot at flipping the legislature for the first time since the 1960s, so the battle for voter registration looms large. I have a strong suspicion that the GOP is having membership issues with the Mormon church, also evident in Utah – and not good for the 2026 midterm outlook. I remain optimistic long-term for Arizona, but the GOP needs to get serious on its urban strategy.
  • Races to watch: AZ-1 (decisive), AZ-6 (decisive), all statewide offices

NEVADA

Net Shift Since July: D+1,335

  • Democrats expanded their lead by another 1,335 last month, but that was three times lower than June, which points to recent gains being tied to primaries. As expected, last month was powered by Clark County – but also by voter roll maintenance in red counties. Washoe County was mostly a push, and is a better representation of the balance of power than any other county.
  • Races to watch: NV-3 (leaner), all statewide offices

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.