If Duke Energy was listening to the citizens gathered at High Point’s City Hall last night, they sure got a burning earful! Over one hundred private citizens turned out to express their extreme displeasure with Duke Energy’s attempt to return a profit to their investors at the expense of North Carolina rate payers in the midst of a serious economic downturn.

“I’d rather be robbed at gunpoint than ball point” one Duke Energy customer stated. The same individual went on to express his grave dissatisfaction with Duke’s self-interested initiative to raise electricity rates, even as many residents were trying “to make a dollar out of fifty cents” and choosing between “eating or heating”.

While individuals were noticeably upset by the proposed rate hike, their comments were thoughtful and many well researched – one speaker even going so far as to review his Duke Energy bills and statements for the last several years to demonstrate a trend in rising charges by the utility giant and another providing a cogent economic analysis of the many free-market failures and contradictions of NC’s electricity market and Duke Energy’s business model.

At least 10 activists from the Occupy Greensboro movement attended the event, holding the proposed rate increase up as another example of affluent corporate overreach and greed paid for at the expense of most Americans.

At least 3 television news crews, 1 NPR reporter and three Piedmont newspapers were on hand for the event.

Read more about the event at the web sites below:

• Fox News 8
• News & Record
• WXII 12
• News & Record
• News & Observer
• Daily Motion
• WFDD