Tag: FirstEnergy

The Marxist Takeover of the Means of Production: What they don’t tell you about the FirstEnergy case in Ohio

The ongoing trial involving former FirstEnergy executives, coupled with the conviction and 20-year federal prison sentence of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, has once again thrust the so-called “Ohio nuclear bribery scandal” into the spotlight. This case, centered on House Bill 6 (HB6) and a $1.3 billion ratepayer-funded subsidy for FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants, is frequently portrayed in media and prosecutorial narratives as a straightforward story of corporate greed, bribery, and political corruption. At the same time, there is no denying that significant sums of money changed hands in ways that crossed legal and ethical lines—FirstEnergy itself admitted to criminal conduct in a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement, paying a $230 million penalty to the U.S. Department of Justice— the dominant framing overlooks a deeper, more systemic context. This context reveals how aggressive federal regulatory pressures during the Obama administration, combined with a push toward renewables and against traditional baseload energy sources such as nuclear power, placed utilities like FirstEnergy in an existential bind. The executives and political figures involved may have made grave errors in response, but those errors were made under duress from policies that targeted their industry, destroyed economic viability, and forced desperate measures to preserve jobs, infrastructure, and Ohio’s reliable power grid.

FirstEnergy’s challenges trace back to the mid-2010s, when market and regulatory forces converged to threaten the viability of its nuclear fleet, particularly the Davis-Besse and Perry plants in northern Ohio. These facilities provided critical baseload power—reliable, carbon-free electricity that renewables like wind and solar could not yet fully replicate due to intermittency. Yet, low natural gas prices from the fracking boom, coupled with federal policies favoring renewables, eroded their competitiveness. The Obama administration’s environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan (proposed in 2014 and finalized in 2015), imposed stringent carbon emission reductions on existing power plants, disproportionately affecting coal and nuclear operations that lacked the subsidies or market advantages extended to wind and solar through tax credits, production incentives, and mandates in many states.

The administration’s approach to nuclear was ambivalent at best and hostile in practice. While nuclear was acknowledged as low-carbon, federal support waned: funding for nuclear R&D programs was cut, loan guarantees were limited, and the Yucca Mountain waste repository project was effectively abandoned in 2009-2010, leaving utilities with indefinite on-site storage burdens and added costs. Broader energy policies prioritized renewables, with the Department of Energy and EPA frameworks that accelerated the shift away from traditional sources. In Ohio, this national pressure amplified local market distortions. FirstEnergy announced in 2018 that it would close Davis-Besse (operational since 1978) and Perry (since 1987), along with others in Pennsylvania, citing economic unviability amid PJM Interconnection market rules that failed to compensate nuclear for its reliability and zero-emission attributes.

These closures would have resulted in thousands of job losses, reduced grid reliability (nuclear power accounted for about 23% of FirstEnergy’s power mix at the time), and higher long-term emissions if replaced by natural gas. The plants were not “failing” due to mismanagement alone, but because the playing field was tilted by policy: renewables received federal subsidies (e.g., extensions of the Investment Tax Credit and the Production Tax Credit under Obama-era legislation), while nuclear power faced rising compliance costs without equivalent support. This created what can be described as an “impairment strategy”—a regulatory environment that squeezed traditional energy providers, making them vulnerable to acquisition, restructuring, or collapse, often benefiting private equity or renewable-focused interests.

In response, FirstEnergy sought legislative relief in Ohio. HB6, passed in 2019, provided roughly $150 million annually in subsidies (via ratepayer charges) for the nuclear plants through 2027, while also subsidizing certain coal plants and freezing or rolling back renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. The bill’s proponents framed it as preserving Ohio’s energy infrastructure and jobs; critics saw it as a bailout for uncompetitive assets. Investigations revealed that FirstEnergy funneled approximately $60 million through dark money groups (like Generation Now, tied to Householder) to influence the 2018 elections, help Householder become speaker, secure HB6’s passage, and defeat repeal efforts. Householder was convicted in 2023 of racketeering conspiracy and sentenced to 20 years. Recent trials involve former executives such as Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling, who are accused of related bribery (e.g., $4.3 million paid to former PUCO chair Sam Randazzo in exchange for favorable rulings).

The core issue is proportionality and causation. Were these actions bribery, or a panicked reaction to survival threats? Executives faced temptations arising from access to funds amid the crisis—perhaps justifying personal spending as part of “securing infrastructure”—but that does not excuse crossing the line. The real scandal includes how regulations weaponized by one political regime (progressive energy policies) forced companies into the arms of another (Republican lawmakers) for relief. This is not unique to FirstEnergy; similar dynamics have played out nationwide, where regulatory hammers target disfavored industries, leading to lobbying excesses.

Statistics underscore the impact: Ohio’s nuclear plants employed thousands directly and supported broader economic activity. Their potential closure threatened grid stability in PJM, where nuclear provides essential capacity. Renewables have grown, but without baseload backup, reliability suffers (e.g., wind curtailment). HB6’s nuclear subsidies were repealed in 2021 by HB128 after the scandal erupted, yet the plants continued to operate under new ownership (Energy Harbor, spun off from FirstEnergy), suggesting viability without perpetual bailouts—but only after surviving the regulatory squeeze.

This case highlights broader dangers: when the government uses regulations to steer markets toward ideological goals (e.g., rapid renewable energy dominance), it risks cronyism, corruption, and erosion of property rights. Private companies built infrastructure to serve the public; shifting rules to favor competitors can amount to de facto taking without compensation. The focus on “fraud” and “greed” ignores how progressive policies under Obama created the conditions for desperation. Trump-era rollbacks and pro-energy stances (2017-2021, and post-2024) aimed to counter this, restoring balance.

Executives must handle pressure impeccably—cross every “t” and dot every “i”—but the pressure’s origin matters. When rules are crafted to force bad decisions, accountability should extend to policymakers who engineered the trap. The narrative must include this: FirstEnergy and its allies were not villains scheming in a vacuum but operators defending a vital industry against existential threats from radical energy politics. True justice requires examining the whole chain—from federal overreach to state-level responses—rather than scapegoating those reacting to it.

A robust defense in these cases would foreground this story: the Obama-era push against nuclear and traditional energy as the precipitating force, leading to market distortions that left companies no choice but to seek political aid. Without that context, the public sees only corruption, not the systemic impairment that preceded it.

This is not a case about bribery but rather survival. Private property and free markets suffer when regulations are used as tools for redistribution or ideological control. Ohio’s energy future, and America’s, depends on recognizing this to prevent future scandals born of policy-induced desperation.  And when we talk about this FirstEnergy case, we have to defend it in the manner in which the problem really resides, in the government attempting to seize the means of production as a Marxist takeover of industry and our political system in general.  It is a dire situation that warrants our closest attention.

Bibliography

•  U.S. Department of Justice, “Former Ohio House Speaker Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison,” June 29, 2023.

•  Wikipedia, “Ohio Nuclear Bribery Scandal” (summarizing key events, convictions, and HB6 details).

•  Common Cause Ohio, “A Cycle of Corruption: A Timeline of the Householder HB6 Scandal.”

•  Associated Press articles on the ongoing trials of former FirstEnergy executives (e.g., February 2026 coverage).

•  Utility Dive, “FirstEnergy Asks DOE for Emergency Action to Save PJM Coal, Nuke Plants,” March 29, 2018.

•  Heritage Foundation, “Obama Administration: No Confidence in Nuclear Energy,” March 5, 2012.

•  U.S. Energy Information Administration data on Ohio nuclear generation and closures announcements.

•  Ohio Capital Journal and other sources on HB6 repeal and impacts.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Foreign Power Attacks Ohio’s Energy Grid: The Real story of corruption behind FirstEnergy, The Fed and Mike DeWine

ESG scores (Environmental Social Governance) are for business what CRT (Critical Race Theory) has been for public schools. Once parents found out what the game was in sliding CRT under the door and trying to program their children into outright Marxism using race as the mask, they became enraged and have started the process of retaking control of their public schools. Businesspeople, too are on the cusp of a similar necessity. That is why I have never accepted the FirstEnergy scandal as being what the FBI tried to paint it as. Over the summer of 2021, I watched pretty enraged at a press conference the Ohio FBI had boasting that they had received a settlement from FirstEnergy over a bribery scandal they had been investigating, which involved the Speaker of the GOP House, Larry Householder, and many others. It was a story that put Ohio in the number 1 state for corruption in the entire United States, and Governor Mike DeWine was right in the center of it. The FBI proudly bloviated that FirstEnergy settled the case with $230 million, which they indicated was an admission of guilt. The story for me was always about a much more sinister kind of corruption, one that actually points to ESG scores and environmental wacko policies that are an attack on our infrastructure in America from foreign interests. In this case, it all points back to the Party of Davos, the billionaire types who attack countries without a country of their own and seek to impose politics on those countries that bypass their elections domestically. What these finance companies like BlackRock, Blackstone, and Icahn Capital were doing to the nuclear power capability in Ohio was no different than if a country like China had attacked them with missiles and planes to take them out and destroy our power grid. And here was the FBI helping them do it. And the money for all the power leverage came straight out of the American Federal Reserve, created by Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell over a ten-year period to put money behind ESG rankings to impose climate change politics on us all.

After that FBI press conference, around December of 2021, Blackstone bought up 1 billion dollars in stock, which will put yet another activist investment board member on the Board of Directors at FirstEnergy, which will continue to direct the company toward a zero-emission world, to get their ESG scores at the targeted range. Back in 2019, when this ESG imposition was just becoming a practice, the management of FirstEnergy thought the regulatory burdens were ridiculous as these money management firms were pushing them to implement zero-emission standards. Of course, these requirements come from the United Nations, which are driven by the World Economic Forum, which sets them with Al Gore, Klaus Schwab, and the BlackRock CEO himself, Larry Fink. These are extreme left-wing wackos who wouldn’t get the time of day in a political theater, but when they tie themselves to our money, now suddenly they have all the power in the world. And it is through those methods, FirstEnergy was imposed upon through ESG scores to move their coal and nuclear plants to zero emissions by a ridiculously impossible deadline, which would essentially shut them down. FirstEnergy tried to fight back; they funneled $61 million in donations to the GOP through Larry Householder to protect them from these United Nations standards reflected in the ESG means of measurement. The GOP created House Bill 6 to roll back some of the environmental burdens that were killing companies like FirstEnergy. Suddenly the FBI was busting members of the GOP, but not these radical investment firms connected to the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. They were clearly attacking the American power grid to destroy coal and nuclear and replace them with wind and solar. 

Many of my friends in the House and Senate in Columbus wanted to distance themselves from Larry Householder as he was strung up and ran from his seat. It looked like dirty politics to me, and internal power struggles between Householder and Governor DeWine. But some of the other people who took money from FirstEnergy were never-Trumper types leftover from John Kasich, so there wasn’t much of a desire to fight to defend them in public. But the issue continued to bother me. That year of 2021, my wife and I traveled extensively in the West, everywhere from southern New Mexico and Texas to Montana all the way out to Utah and Idaho. I wanted to get away and think about some of these big things clearly. And during that trip, I saw what many truckers have been talking about, the changes to our country that were happening, with these giant wind farms, everywhere, from Iowa to Texas and everywhere in between. This wind power thing was much more advanced than I had been led to believe. In fact, at the Iowa 80 Truckstop, the largest of its kind in the world, I had a chance to see up close the trucks bringing these massive wind turbine blades to their construction sites. This was an enormous project that was going on everywhere, yet not much discussion was happening about it on the news. How was all this happening? Indeed, Americans weren’t imposing this on themselves. 

Doing a lot of research from then until now, it’s quite clear what has been happening. These wind power farms were not coming from the people of America but from energy companies and states seeking better ESG scores to stay compliant with their shareholders, like Blackstone, Icahn Capital, and of course, BlackRock. And the rate of manufacturing has been consistent with all the money the Fed has been printing through quantitative easing over the last decade, creating a dangerous asset bubble that directly contributed to the rise in power of these money management firms. The leverage and power these gained in managed resources, which allowed them to buy all these stock options, to start controlling these companies at the level of the Board of Directors, came directly from the inflated wealth the Federal Reserve created through their ZIRP policies and quantitative easing. Otherwise, BlackRock would have never had the financial leverage to impose these ESG scores on all these companies. And how convenient was it for Blackstone to buy up $1 billion in stock after the settlement story broke about FirstEnergy driving the price down. And guess who pushed FirstEnergy to settle the case, Icahn Capital. 

So as everyone can see, the story is much more sinister than an Ohio energy company trying to prevent itself from being put out of business by ESG politics that come not from the American government but from the United Nations and the Party of Davos. They sought help from the GOP-controlled House because it was their only option. But obviously, the game was rigged against them from the start. And now we see too late that the United Nations fully intends to close down all coal and nuclear power plants in the country and switch us all over to these solar and wind options. We know from California wind and solar alone is not sufficient for the power needs of our economy. But for the enemies of America, that is kind of the point. These finance companies taking control of these Boards in companies all across America over ESG scores are not on an America First agenda. They seek a zero-emission world and massive wealth redistribution from rich countries to poor ones, where they have already leveraged their financial bets. And we have been the pawns in the game because we have let this attack happen, unchecked completely. 

The actions we can take immediately is to understand how ESG policies became part of our SEC rules, at the Federal and State levels.   Because those rules are directly attacking our business infrastructure from elements outside our county.  We need to remove those ESG policies, legislatively.  From there, we need to stop our Fed from funding Wall Street so that an open door to foreign investment can flow money into the backdoor of our country and buy our political system behind our backs destroying our vote through finance and attacking the very heart of our republic without a single shot fired by military aggression.  Make no mistake about it, it’s a war just the same. 

Rich Hoffman

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