We’ve seen alot of grandstanding in New Jersey from elected officials this past week in an attempt to pass the buck and shift the blame.

Phil Murphy has found his target. Instead of looking in the mirror and taking responsibility, he says that he wants to investigate PJM, the grid operator. It’s as if they want you to pay no attention to the last eight years of failed policy decisions that the Murphy Administration and BPU have made in that same time period.

Conveniently, the administration is also ignoring the impacts those decisions have had in an attempt to shift public anger onto someone else. In this case it’s PJM, who has warned for years about the need for more generation to avoid just this situation. In fact, you can see a brief timeline of the electricity capacity shortage warnings that have been coming from PJM for years that seemingly have gone ignored. The larger problem of generation and policy was summed up in this Telegraph article:

The fact is, in the analogy above the parachute hasn’t deployed and we are blaming the pilot for flying the plane we chose to jump out of.

We get it. It’s easier to try to blame someone else than take actions to actually make progress toward increasing energy generation. But this problem has been created and enabled by the whole of government approach taken by the Murphy Administration and BPU. They have actively chosen to ignore facts and warning signs from around the country and world, specifically brought to their attention, in order to keep making policy based on how they want things to be, not how they actually are.

And when the bill comes due, the truth is revealed that investing in hope doesn’t cover the increase in rates.