Tea at Trianon: Maryland’s Energy Crisis Is a Choice

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Maryland’s Energy Crisis Is a Choice

From Brian Chisholm:

Maryland’s soaring electricity bills are not a mystery, an accident, or an unavoidable act of nature. They are the predictable result of deliberate policy choices and Maryland families are being forced to pay the bill.
A new fifty-state analysis from Energy Bad Boys exposes a widening divide in American electricity prices. In 2011, average prices in Democratic-led states were reportedly 44% higher than in Republican-led states. By 2025, that gap had widened to 61%. Since 2018, prices in blue states rose 43%, compared with 22% in red states.
That does not prove that party control alone determines a state’s electric bill. Geography, fuel mix, weather, infrastructure, taxes, and market structure all matter. But the pattern is too large and too consistent to ignore: states that prematurely close dependable power plants, restrict natural-gas infrastructure, and impose increasingly aggressive mandates tend to make electricity scarcer and more expensive.
Maryland is a case study in what happens when political ambition outruns engineering and economics. (Read more.)