09/10/2026
Susquehanna County & Front Porches 2029 (Brought to You by Your Local Utility Monopoly) 🦗
Well, look on the bright side: three years from now, downtown Susquehanna is going to have plenty of free parking.
At the rate commercial and residential electric bills, food and interest rates are skyrocketing, every small business, independent kitchen, and local household in this town is going to be tapped out, burned out, or boarded up tighter than a ghost town after an apocalypse.
We run a small craft brewery right here in the middle of nowhere in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. We’re used to the usual small-town hurdles—weather, supply chain hiccups, finding good help. But nothing could have prepared us for our electric bill literally tripling.
Not a cute little percentage bump. It tripled. Not seasonal costs, but "peak hours" and "demand fees". Tripled.
And before anyone says "that's just the cost of running a business," let's talk about the elephant in the room: residential customers are dealing with the exact same highway robbery on their home bills.
Families sitting in houses right down the street are opening bills that make zero logical sense, trying to figure out how to feed their kids and keep the heat or A/C on. Apparently, utility monopolies looked at rural towns like ours—where every single dollar is fought for and community is everything—and thought, "You know what? Let's see if we can engineer a price hike that makes turning on an oven, running a draft cooler, or heating a home a luxury sport."
I honestly don’t know how this is legal, or who is sitting in some air-conditioned corporate tower in their smug little suit deciding that rural small businesses and local families should just casually absorb these kinds of math-defying spikes. You can’t hustle your way out of bills that outpace your entire monthly budget.
So, here’s our official 3-year projection for Susquehanna: zero lights on Main Street, dark houses, tumbleweeds rolling down the block, and dead silence. Crickets. 🦗
This needs to end, and we need to start a massive pushback.
To every small business owner and homeowner out there: Are your bills looking like an absolute sick joke, too? Let's start comparing notes and calling this out before we're all entirely bled dry.
To our customers and community: When you wonder why local families and favorite independent spots are struggling so hard right now, look no further than utility and supply chain overhead costs that have completely detached from reality. Support each other every single chance you get—because right now, everyone from Main Street to the front porch is in a knife fight with utility monopolies, and the deck is stacked against us.
Let's make some noise. How are families and small businesses supposed to survive this, or are we just waiting for the final lights to go out?