God Hates St. Louis

He apparently hates Ameren too. But not as much as I do. And not as much as half of St. Louis, after this, the third major outage in our city in six months.

Once again, the ice comes and the power goes. Thousands are plunged into the dark and the cold, as if we were still living in the 19th century, and this new-fangled "electricity" has gone out again. This month and last the beleaguered utility has been holding a series of public forums for customers to voice their opinions of Ameren's proposed rate hike. Needless to say, the responses have been overwhelmingly negative.

It is my hope that this latest storm and the resulting outages will seal Ameren's fate in the eyes of the Public Service Commission and they will make good on their threat to not only block Ameren's increase, but require them to lower their rates. I am generally opposed to government regulations, and anything that would force a private company to bow to the will of the public. But Ameren is not a private company, and as long as they refuse to compete in an open marketplace for my dollars, they will continue to feel the wrath of their customers (not to mention God's) every time the weather turns bad.