Another rate increase? We should be used to it by now.

​Jeffrey Tomich at the Post-Dispatch has an interesting article today on the possibility that AmerenUE and Kansas City Power & Light, the two largest electric utilities in the state, are coordinating their rate requests in order to overwhelm the watchdogs at the Office of Public Counsel.

Kevin Gunn, chairman of the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC), raised the issue after AmerenUE announced on November 28, 2011, that the company would request a rate increase. KCP&L followed suit on December 1, 2011. The PSC has eleven months to determine if a rate increase is justified, a decision that's determined in part by research performed by the Office of Public Counsel.

Tomich reports that the Public Counsel has had its budget and staff cut in recent years, and maintains that it can just barely perform its due diligence on one electric company rate increase case a year. If the two electric companies officially file their rate requests in the same tight formation as they announced their intent to do so, there's no way Public Counsel staff can bird-dog the companies properly, and we the people could take it the pocketbook -- or another painful location.

After spending a long evening reading the PSC's press releases for the past five years (available here, if you're so inclined), I've come to two conclusions.
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Kholood Eid

​Misplaced your Christmas cheer? Hop in the car and head to St. Louis Hills after sundown, because the denizens of the south city neighborhood have plenty to go around.

View a slideshow of St. Louis Hills holiday lights.

Every November to December, the 6500 block transforms into Candy Cane Lane and plays host to thousands of carloads of St. Louisans flocking to see the twinkling lights. It's sort of the perfect set-up: Buy your Douglas fir at Ted Drewes a block-and-a-half away, and then join the snaking line of idling motorists waiting their turn to marinate in the artificial glow of mass-produced Christmas wonder.

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The American Mustache Institute is asking for nominations for this year's Goulet Award honoring the nation's greatest whisker-wearer.

Named after the late mustachioed entertainer, Robert Goulet (right), the award went to Arizona Diamondback's relief pitcher Clay Zavada in 2009 and New York City cop Tim Galvin in '08.

Got someone you think is worthy of this year's Goulet?

Nominate 'em here.

It is high time the TSA get its comeuppance for  airport screening indignities.

​On March 29, 2009, Steve Bierfeldt was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated for a half-hour by the Transportation Security Administration.

Bierfeldt's apparent indiscretion occurred when he passed a metal box through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. The box, embedded in his luggage, contained cash and checks made out to Campaign for Liberty, a political organization that grew out of Rep. Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign.

What most infuriated TSA was Bierfeldt's refusal to answer their questions, as he kept asking agents whether in fact he was legally required to submit to their harassing queries.

Bierfeldt's unpleasant encounter at Lambert, which he used his Iphone to record, is one of the highlights of Please Remove Your Shoes, a documentary that opens tonight (June 30) in Washington, D.C. The 94-minute film excoriates the TSA for its wasteful and inefficient security practices.

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After 67 years as a UPI White House correspondent and then columnist, Helen Thomas at last wore out her welcome.

​Fame and notoriety has its perils. Often, when it lasts too long, one grows lazy, sloppy -- at the least, complacent. Then, judgment wanes. Foolishness is exposed. Mistakes are made.

There was the ill-timed snooze by Ken Griffrey Jr. that forced his inglorious exit from baseball. Arlen Specter's undoing was caused by his pathetic attempt to save his political hide by switching parties.

Then comes Helen Thomas, who today became the lastest victim of one who egregiously overstays their welcome. Having been a White House correspondent since the days of Camelot, Thomas, 89, abruptly " retired" today in the wake of her bizarre comments on Israel.

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No, this is not a joke.

"Wondering in the night what were the chances. We'd be sharing CPR before the night was through."

​The St. Louis area chapter of the American Red Cross yesterday fired off a press release that seemed rather humdrum at first inspection. It was a national Red Cross survey that showed that 68 percent of Americans experience some kind of summer "emergency," whether it be an insect bite, heat stroke, getting lost in the woods, breaking a bone on a hike, or enduring a more life-threatening event.

OK, fine. No big deal. Pass the peas.

It was the second paragraph of said release, though, that gave Daily RFT pause. Are you sitting down? 

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Belgian bike riders!? Ha, ha!!

​By now we all know that Gov. Jay Nixon is no fan of the Tour of Missouri and did his very best to seal its doom.

Click the screenshot below to see candidate Nixon in September 2008 mocking the bicycle race and poking fun at its participants -- in particular, Belgian riders.

The Tour, by the way, was officially canceled yesterday, a victim of budget woes and political infighting between Nixon and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a longtime booster of the race and Nixon's likely gubernatorial challenger in 2012.

Click the pic!

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Mexican drug cartels are bringing in new ultra-potency heroin. So what else is new?

​You may have seen the story the Associated Press moved the other day, a breathlessly written special report about how Mexican drug cartels are smuggling in cheap "ultra-potent" black tar heroin that's so pure it can kill an unsuspecting user in the blink of an eye.

The report suggests that the increased purity of the drug has contributed to a spike in overdose deaths across the nation -- and that the new smack is creeping into Missouri's (yes, Missouri's!) rural hinterlands.

As Exhibit A, the AP piece chronicles the unfortunate demise of a 29-year-old welder from Winfield (which it chose as the dateline) -- about a dozen miles north of O'Fallon -- who died in his sleep last year after snorting some hyper-charged heroin. Writes AP:

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Oil, oil, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

​There appears to be no limit to the ways in which the media has tried to help us all visualize the extent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

There've been reports that the amout of oil gushing into the Gulf would cover all of Manhattan, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area and the big island of Hawaii.

There have been scientific calculations -- a worst-case scenario -- that a month's worth of leaking oil could fill enough gallon milk jugs to stretch more than 11,300 miles -- or more than the distance between New York and Buenos Aires. Best-case scenario? Well, the milk jugs would only stretch from New York to Washington, D.C. Feel a little better?

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Don't know much about geometry.

​Taking a geometry class in at least one county in Alabama has to be real hoot.

Yes siree, there's a math teach at Corner High School in Jefferson County, who, God love 'em, figured the best way to instruct his students on the fine art of "parallel lines and angles" was to have the little darlings calculate the best angle to use when firing a gun at President Obama.

Give the good teacher an A for inventiveness -- or for assininity.

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