Cleaning Up America's Biggest Industry
This exclusive 7-part series features never-before-published insights from my research for Power Corrupts: Cleaning Up America's Biggest Industry (Bloomsbury, June 2025). Think of this newsletter as your preview of a much larger investigation—over five weeks, you'll get key stories that document utility corruption cases spanning decades and states.
CORRUPTION IS GROWING IN THE POWER SECTOR as modern technologies challenge monopolies and their outmoded generators. Threatened electric utilities, in turn, gun for taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded subsidies, which they increasingly seek through fraud-filled schemes.
In Power Corrupts: Cleaning Up America’s Biggest Industry, Richard Munson reports on such billion-dollar scandals and reveals how bribery-obtained bailouts have become a drag on the economy, a threat to the rule of law, and a barrier to tackling climate change. To block such racketeering and enhance innovation, Munson calls for increased transparency and ethics in the energy sector.
“That odd smell is not your imagination. Dick Munson’s timely and gripping story documents electric utilities that rotted from the head. In eight states, journalists and law enforcement uncovered shocking public corruption, from loathsome bribery to putrid political thuggery. This plague has already bent our polity, cheated customers out of billions of dollars, distorted energy markets, and sullied a critical industry. Restoring trust will need active citizens to insist on transparent regulation that supports honest leaders and banishes crooks. ‘Clean power’ is a powerful part of keeping the lights on, not just in our homes but in our democracy.”
“Power Corrupts shreds the country club camouflage that masks unscrupulous, often illegal, activities in the C‑Suites of many of America’s leading electric utilities. It also describes how utility regulatory commissions evolved from guard dogs into lapdogs. If you are curious about why your utility bills are skyrocketing, read this book!”
“Power Corrupts documents how for-profit electric utilities have infected government with deceit, fraud, and graft. It is essential reading to understand why our energy system is failing to deliver for American consumers.”
Cleaning Up America's Biggest Industry
