The Republican controlled House Public Utilities Committee voted 18-13 today, allied with the Obama administration and special interest groups and against North Carolina’s electricity costumers, to defeat the rollback of the state’s renewable portfolio standard. The bill they shot down in committee would have reduced the amount of high cost renewable power that customers are forced to use from 12.5% to 6%. For principled conservatives the passage of this bill  should have been a no brainer. But as Ayn Rand famously said “check your premises.”