Michigan's state officeholders have a chance to redeem themselves.

Maybe they can't make us entirely forget last fall's budget debacle in Lansing, but they stand on the brink of doing something that's smart, bipartisan, forward-looking and job-creating. They can pass a complex package of energy bills...

He goes on to detail the things the bill "would" do.  Again, no guarantees.  But he thinks it'll create jobs.  So would any facilitation of broader competition but that's that pesky free market common sense stuff and it wouldn't fit his theme.  

He thinks it'll set Michigan up as a national leader in alternative energy policy.  Of course we just heard this week from the Governor that Michigan is way behind other states and woe is me and the sky is falling and we really need to catch up.  How being the last ones to the party and with a policy that sets it's targets well into the year 2028 stands to make Michigan a leader of anything Walsh doesn't explain.  

He thinks it'll "take care of" Michigan's energy needs for a generation or more.  Because apparently without this ultra-leftist tax hike all of the energy suppliers in the State of Michigan are going to shutter their doors and windows and leave Michigan powerless.  Or something.

But he is right about one thing.  He implies that a new energy package might make us sort of forget that they shafted consumers with a $2.4 billion tax hike last fall.  I'll give him that.  If you pass a new $8 BILLION hidden tax hike it would certainly make that old, tiny, miniscule, record breaking, biggest ever $2.4 billion Democrat tax hike one serious after thought.  

Of course that's about the best you'll get in the honesty and sincerity department on this particular FREEP column.  The thing reads like it was drafted by Liz Boyd or posted on one of the lefty blogs.  Take this little doozy, for example:

A bill that would repeal or revise Public Act 141, the 2000 law that deregulated electric power, would please DTE and CMS Energy, by allowing them to better assess future demand and finance new plants. Those plants would also create lots of jobs -- about 3,000 construction jobs and 600 or 700 high-paying permanent jobs, in DTE's case, for the nuclear plant it wants to build.

Oh, well, by all means, revise PA 141.  If it's going to allow companies to better assess future demand and finance new plants that's a good thing, right?  Why hasn't it been done already?

Because by "revise" Tom Walsh means "kill" and by "deregulated" he means "trust-busted."  PA 141 effectively ended utility monopolies in Michigan allowing competition as opposed to complete market domination by unchecked Big Energy.  Monopoly is a fun board game but in business it's not such a good thing.  Without competition there's nothing to stop a company from raising prices when and by how much they see fit.  Consumers (that's you and me and our parents and kids and friends and neighbors) lose.  Every time.  And in this particular case they're not even trying to lie about it.  Your WILL pay more.  It's in the legislation.  $8 billion just to start!

Oh but hey, they'll create "lots of jobs."  Because we couldn't "create" jobs by encouraging greater competition and further leveling the playing field with these industrial giants.  

No mention of any of that in Walsh's column.  Clearly he's OK paying an extra eight billion dollars.  Something tells me the rest of the State... not so much.  And he knows it too.  If he didn't think it was a big deal he wouldn't have stricken it from his propaganda piece.