In an acknowledgement of PGW's duty to serve the common good and inability of the company to cover costs, the statement asked for City Council to draw from the city's $100 million budget surplus to protect its citizens.   PGW estimated that the cost to the City would be approximately $3 million in additional funds to cover vulnerable citizens.  

The KWRU raises the key question: "Doesn't the city have a social obligation to help and protect its citizens?" I say, "Yes! "   Unfortunately, however, we live in a time where the government actively works in the interest of the business community, instead of average citizens.   For those of you who are reading this and saying, "Yeah. those Republicans are messing things up," I'm sorry to inform you that this is a bipartisan affair. Act 201 is the product of Governor Rendell's Democratic administration.

When Rendell took office as mayor in 1992, the City of Philadelphia was in a deep $250 million dollar deficit and in a state of fiscal chaos. Rendell carried out a wide scale privatization of Philadelphia's public services, including privatizing over 45 institutions. The situation of PGW is the continuation of Rendell's neoliberal economic strategy.

When most people hear the word "neoliberal," their response is "neo-what?"   Essentially, neoliberal economics applies a combination of policies-- including free market economics, deregulation, privatization, attacks on unions and living wages, and a reduction of funding for many social programs and the outright elimination of many others- to stimulate growth in the economy. This bipartisan strategy for growing the economy is great for the wealthy, but poor and working families are reeling from its impact. For these families, neoliberalism means the destruction of public school systems, the dismantling of public health infrastructure, increasing numbers of uninsured people, the destruction of the welfare state, the elimination of public housing and the selling off of institutions, such as public utilities, held in the common good to corporations.  

It is clear that forces that wish to open the natural gas industry to privatization and speculation are waging a war of ideas.   The forces behind Act 201 want us to believe that "the common good" means protecting paying consumers from higher bills rather than keeping people from freezing to death.   The energy industry and its investors operate with few, if any, humanistic considerations.   When one reads their industry reports, it is fairly easy to identify that they know the consequences for poor and working families.

Buried deep in a little-known report en titled Reauthorizing LIHEAP: Meeting the Energy Needs of the Poor in an Era of Welfare Reform and Utility Restructuring , a n ad hoc group including the American Gas Association, American Public Power Association, Campaign to Keep America Warm, Edison Electric Institute, National Energy Assistance Directors Association, and National Fuel Funds Network, stated that "t here may be an inherent conflict between the development of a wholly competitive energy marketplace and the social obligation to serve the poor."  

Some public officials are looking to privatize PGW and open it to the competitive energy market as the solution to the heating crisis.   Last summer, PA House leader John Perzel (R) and Philadelphia City Councilman and Chair of the Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities Michael Nutter (D) called for privatization.   Evidently, the problem of those without heat isn't a human problem but a problem of profits. A private company wouldn't have a problem withholding heating to non-paying customers.

As we can see, talking about real people who are hurting isn't going to work to get PGW to the corporate auction block. While this country may seem like its going crazy, most of us still find it jarring to allow people to go without heat in the winter.   The public relations effort of the gas and other utility companies, including PGW, has focused on dehumanizing the poor as "deadbeats" leaching off the "good customer."   By glossing over the plight of those without heat and appealing solely to customers' personal financial self-interest, the "Responsible Utility Customer Protection Act" sounds like the government working for the people rather than at the behest of the utility companies.   It is quite the opposite.

This is only a symptom of a larger crisis looming in America's future.   We see increasing costs in every aspect of our lives– health insurance premiums, gas prices, heating gas rates, electrical bills, housing costs, and more without any substantial increase in our paychecks.    This means one thing: most of us are going to be broke in the very near future, if we aren't already.   Whether we want to admit it or not, being broke is being poor.  

There are going to be a whole lot more poor people of every race and creed in America. Poverty isn't about people being bad or making bad choices.   It is about having corrupt and decadent social systems that make people unfathomably rich at the expense of the rest of us.   It is about convincing us to think that we have no right to a government that guarantees that we live in a fair, democratic, and egalitarian society in which we take care of each other. We need to force this government to guarantee a future where all of our children have heat when they sleep at night, food to eat, health insurance, good schools and all the things necessary to live a meaningful life.  

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