Tag: solar power

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

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Liberals are Too Stupid to Hurt You: But they are also too stupid to know better

It’s time to admit something to ourselves that might sound harsh initially, but if you want to solve the problem, you have to identify the root cause. And that is that liberals, all liberals, are pretty stupid and that the rights they are fighting for are to make the rest of the world as dumb as they are, which of course, is detrimental to the causes of the human race. Liberals are dumb people, and what is worse than any of that, they are too dumb not to know how dumb they really are. Because they lack the ability to think, reason, and build their lives constructively, they always think they are the smartest people in the room. And through the disguises of collectivism, where they hide their stupidity behind a wall of mass opinion and popular sentiment, they complete a ruse that is mostly designed for themselves to provide the illusion that they have intelligence. Yet, the essence of their movement, of all that they stand for, is that they are fighting for the right to be stupid and to make the rest of the world that way, so they aren’t exposed as insufficient for a proper existence. When you have to talk to them, liberals are about as stupid as a typical animal, barely able to find food for themselves while they are awake as they plot and scheme the world around them to have more time to sleep. They aren’t about living life; they stand for turning the mind off with drugs, mindless entertainment, and overly sexualized lifestyles that an average horny dog might partake in while humping the leg of everyone who steps into their home. Liberals are gross, barbaric, and have nothing to offer the intellect of a long history of human endeavor and are not only detriments to themselves but to all, they come in contact with.

The Biden speech in Philadelphia is just one example of this stupidity. Someone in the White House and representative of the Democrat Party thought it would be a good idea to put a senile old man in front of a building draped in red, with military figures in the background, and that the optics would be beneficial to them in some way. These are the same idiots who have hampered California with insufficient electrical power because they are worshiping the god of Climate Change these days and are imposing their solar panels and wind turbans that barely work on the people. Then they want further to impose electric cars on that much-reduced power grid only to tell people to turn off their air conditioners during 100-degree days to save energy that they artificially imposed on themselves as a sacrifice to their stupid religion. Or the optics of storming Mike Lindell in a Hardee’s drive-thru to attempt to scare Trump supporters with the terror of the administrative state because he is an “election skeptic.” Only a dumb person would look at the 2020 election and not see the obvious election fraud that Democrats and globalists worldwide pushed to implement with Covid restrictions and the strategy of their Great Reset. You’d have to be really stupid to say there was no election fraud. But to insist that people like Mike Lindell accept the liberal premise that 2+2 is five or some other absurdity, the harassment by the FBI against their rival political party continues to escalate as we get closer to the midterms. Who thinks that is a good idea except for very dumb people who obviously don’t know better? Well, the same idiots who signed off on that Biden speech, knowing full well how it would look, how it would sound, but they did it anyway, thinking they were going to get an A on their paper as judged by the media, which is about as dumb as they are. 

The truth of that Biden speech in Philly, where so much election fraud did occur during the 2020 election and is at the center of many investigations as to how nearly a million votes were dumped into the system after election day, taking a massive Trump lead and shaving it away until the brain dead Biden and his corrupt, criminal family was put into the White House by people obviously not part of the American voting system, you’d have to be a complete idiot not to see the problem. And there just aren’t enough dumb people who are willing to buy the stupidity to allow the Democrat Party to seize power in the way they have and not to question it. But because people generally play by the rules, they accepted Biden as the president and looked to the next election for an opportunity to fix things. But the dumb people of liberalism sought to implement all their insane ideas within just a few months of gaining that power. You see, this is why we have the kind of Republic form of government that we do have. Our government isn’t designed to go fast. It is designed to put on the brakes so that government can’t grow too big too fast and destroy free enterprise, which is the real miracle of all economic growth, unleashing the imagination of free people for the benefit of all life on planet earth. Liberals want to micromanage everything so that they aren’t exposed to the genuine stupidity of their lifestyles, and their lack of intellect can be hidden behind the mirage of mass society. In their minds, if everyone is dumb, they will never be exposed for their lack of knowledge. And life would go on happily ever after. 

But that is why everything they do presents a Hellish existence, much like the optics of the Biden speech in Philly came across. The truth is that they thought the Biden speech was going to be a hit, and they were perplexed afterward that it wasn’t. Just as they are in everything they do, from energy policy to currency evaluation. I think Biden started the war in Ukraine because of the United Nations’ goals to defeat nationalism worldwide, but it has only strengthened populist movements everywhere. Russia has the upper hand over Europe and is most poised to crush the Desecrators of Davos, who are a much more significant threat in the world than the Russians are by a lot. Speaking of Russians, we just learned that the FBI had a Russian spy on their payroll, and they used him to advance their phony Russia story to attempt a coup against Trump. Only stupid people would look at all these actions and their involvement on January 6th to try to create bad optics for Trump in the wake of a stolen election, which they helped to steal to put their guy Biden in the White House and think that they’d get away with it because they thought the rest of the world was as dumb as they were. They thought the fear of force would take even smart minds and force them to turn off their intelligence long enough to complete their ruse to the world. Instead, we ended up seeing a bunch of losers who children would laugh at as ridiculous on an old Flintstones rerun. They are dumb as rocks, which might insult the rocks. The goal of all liberalism is to hide their natural stupidity because only dumb people would even associate with such a cast of characters. And to do that, they must maintain the illusion that they are the smartest people in the room but attempt to dumb down the rest of the world literally. But, it hasn’t worked, and most people, voters particularly, see what’s going on, and they aren’t going along with it, which is why there is much panic and a show of force by liberals now. Their Liberal World Order is falling apart. Smart people knew it always would. The dumb people are perplexed now as to why. 

Rich Hoffman

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