1. Duke Energy is buying Progress Energy today for $13.7 billion. Progress shareholders will get 2.6 shares of Duke Energy stock for each share of Progress stock they own. The merger creates the country’s largest electric utility company. They are doing well enough to offer a rate decrease to customers this coming year. They’re also planning on building another nuclear generating plant in Florida.
2. Ashley Turton is a lobbyist for Progress Energy. Progress Energy is homequartered in Raleigh, N.C and has 2 major electric utilities that serve 3.1 million customers in the Carolinas and Florida, with about $10 billion in annual sales.
3. Ashley Turton was found dead in her car after a fire at her home’s garage very early this morning in Washington, DC. Neighbors call 911 to report the fire around 5 am. Turton was supposed to be on the way to the airport for an early flight. The southeast is socked in today by a winter snowstorm that was topped off by freezing ice, which has caused travel havoc and flight cancelations in Georgia and South Carolina. http://www.charlotteobserver.c… The most impacted cities are Columbia, S.C., Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Huntsville, Ala., Montgomery, Ala., Fayetteville, Ark., Little Rock, Ark., Jackson, Miss., and Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.
The photograph of the scene at Roll Call shows a silver BMW with its undamaged rear sticking partially out of a brick garage with black smokestains wreathing the entrance. (link can be accessed via this site http://dailycaller.com/2011/01… )
4. She was 37 years old, the wife of White House Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs, Dan Turton, and was the mother of 3 young children.
5. Ashley Turton would have been a liaison with Capitol Hill discussing the merger with legislative staff. Her husband Dan’s job was and is to push the White House’s agenda through Congress. He is described as the President’s “point man” in the short bio at the WAPO. Dan Turton used to be a lobbyist for Timmons and Company from 2003 to 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T… Long term clients of Timmons & Company include the American Petroleum Instititute (API), the American Medical Association, Northrop, Anheuser-Busch. A list of clients that Dan Turton lobbied for in 2006 is here: http://www.opensecrets.org/lob…
Before lobbying for Progress Energy, Ashley Turton was the Chief of Staff of Rep. Rosa DeLauro, (D, Connecticut -03).
6. Continuing the Six Degrees of Rahm, Rep. DeLauro and her husband, Stanley Greenberg, were giving free rent for years at their DC townhouse to Rahm Emanuel. (aprox from 2004 to at least 2009, the time of that story.
7. The MSM cable TeeVee headline news is pretty much ignoring this. Except that they are running a lot of stories about how all the flights in the coastal southeast are delayed or canceled due to the snow.
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edit. fixed state initial.
8. Tue am check of any updates on this mystery: Another view of the burned interior of the garage is here, http://www.rollcall.com/issues… along with the hypothesis that it was a “slow speed collision” with “something” as she backed the 2008 BMW out of the garage, which caused the fire. I’m just not buying this. It’s a Beemer, not a Pinto, for pete’s sake, how often do you hear about them self immolating while in reverse ?
“Neighbors describe hearing a crash followed by several popping sounds.” – WAPO http://www.washingtonpost.com/…