Like an old Berlin street whore when the Hershey Bar truck rolled by

Robbinsdale Radical points out a sucking scam posing as an analytic report from the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.

In a report that purports to be a studied projection of the effect that carbon mitigation efforts will have on utility rates, the PUC contends that South Dakota electricity customers could have their rates increased by 48 percent.

As Robbinsdale notes, the report claims to include input from all parties interested in carbon mitigation, including alternative energy and environmental groups, but it cites projections only from the coal-burning utility companies. And it makes no projections concerning the recently announced natural gas reserves.

An interesting fact contained in the faux report concerns the power actually generated in South Dakota. Coal produces 46.5 percent and hydro produces 47.6 percent.

Most of the hydro-generated power is shipped out of state. One must wonder how carbon-free South Dakota could be if it retained more of its hydro-generated power.

And one wonders how carbon free the state could be if the PUC was a real utilities commission and not just a puppet for the coal industry and its burners.