Anne Pramaggiore Commonwealth Edison CEO Sentenced

Current Events Domestic United States Politics
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The sentencing of former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore is to our time what the trial of Michael Milken was to the previous generation and before that to the General Electric case of 1961. (See “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” in Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.) 

When a government agent or employee or elected official requires a bribe, the respondent is only acting in self-defense. The government agent holds the gun. In this case, it was Illinois house representative and Speaker of that state house, Michael J. Madigan. 

After her sentencing, Anne Pramaggiore issued this statement through her publicist, Mark Herr Communications. We, here, of course, note the mixed-premise defense, but the basic fact remains that the case itself and now the sentencing was met with overwhelming silence within the Objectivist community. I am on email lists for both ARI and Atlas Society. I found this only because as a reader of the Associated Press, rather than the usual headings, I scroll down and click Press Releases.  Just now, I went to both sites and searched for “Pramaggiore” and nothing came back. 

 

Quote

 

Mark Herr Communications Issues Statement Regarding the Sentencing of Anne Pramaggiore

Jul 21, 2025 2:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Mark Herr Communications Issues Statement Regarding the Sentencing of Anne Pramaggiore

CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore, the only female CEO in the company’s history, who turned around a failing electric utility and turned it into one of the country’s best while cutting rates four times and reducing outages to historic lows, released the following statement today through a spokesman, Mark Herr Communications:

Statement:

We are disappointed by the sentence imposed today. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the sentence– two years in prison – with the federal Probation Department’s recommendation of no jail time and probation.

The sentence is even harder to fathom when the bribery charges were vacated by the Court after the Supreme Court ruled in Snyder and the Government did not seek to retry those counts. With no bribery conviction, the sentence rests solely on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act allegations. There is nothing foreign or corrupt about the facts here.

In February when President Trump paused FCPA enforcement, he said the law “has been systematically, and to a steadily increasing degree, stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States.”

That has happened here. Ms. Pramaggiore faces jail despite the documents at issue being true. Chicago is not a foreign jurisdiction.

Ms. Pramaggiore, a civic leader, trailblazing electric utilities executive, the only female CEO in Commonwealth Edison’s history – and an innocent woman – will appeal the verdict and sentence to the Seventh Circuit and, if necessary, to the Supreme Court.

Contacts Media: Mark Herr; [email protected]; 203-517-8957

 

Thanks,

Mike Marotta

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In order to bring this to the attention of both the ARI and the Atlas Society, I am sending them each a donation along with the press release and a some other material. There is not much more to be said in a cover letter. The facts speak. 

Thanks,

Mike M.

 

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Followup on the case.

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There is no substantive difference between ComEd and let’s say EDF (Electricity de France, a company officially and openly owned by the French state). They operate the same way, they both depend on legislative approval for everything they do. The only difference is that the people of Illinois want to pretend that their electricity supplier is private, while the French do not.

Should I, as a defender of capitalism, care if the chief of EDF got caught bribing a legislator? Should I defend him as “a business leader forced to bribe the government to get something good done”? I don’t think anyone would say that I should, because he’s not a business leader. He’s no doubt a very competent bureaucrat, EDF is probably the most impressive energy supplier on Earth, but he’s no businessman. And this woman is clearly a competent bureaucrat as well, what she was trying to do is good … but she’s no business leader either.

She was trying to get approval from the legislature, to allow her state controlled monopoly to raise electricity rates in order to modernize the system. And she resorted to bribery, to get that approval. It’s not really our job to take sides. We should let the socialists sort it out. It’s their system, let them run it as they wish.

I should also add that if you do want to run your own business, compete on the open market against fellow capitalists, not have to run to bureaucrats for help of permission to raise your prices, etc. … you can in fact do that. There are many industries which are plenty free enough to do that in. The industry this woman chose is not one of them, and it’s quite safe to bet that her decision to work in this specific, state run industry is a reflection of her values.

So let’s not defend her, she’s nothing like us. She’s one of the socialists. By choice. This is the system she chose … because this is the system she felt at home in. Let’s let her, and the people like her, sort the issue out amongst themselves. I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’ll call one of her political buddies and they’ll get her out of this jam far more effectively than we ever could.

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@stansfield123 – My engineering career was with Commonwealth Edison in the Nuclear Generating Division. It is very much a private business, with shareholders, board of directors, CFO, President, CEO. It is the private company making the entrepreneurial decisions and accomplishing operations. They are simply conducting business within the regulations of State and Federal government on electrical utilities and regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are a privately owned company and open to failure. After building and operating 12 nuclear reactors, which they as a private corporation decided to do, they also made the private-corporation decision to not build any more. I was approached once in the company by a man whose office was tasked with lobbying for favorable regulatory legislation. He was soliciting donations from employees towards sustaining that office and its mission. I think I declined. I don’t know much about those things or why his office was seeking employee donations. (He probably told me, but I just forgot.) Full disclosure, my private pension comes ultimately from this electricity company. The capital investment for such companies is enormous. They are government sanctioned monopolies, which is why there is State regulation on rates, as I have understood it. There are private associations of citizens who lobby consistently against the interests of these utilities, and everywhere in the country there are private associations lobbying against all generation of electricity by nuclear reactions (for heat to make the steam for the turbine to spin the generator). Michael is correct to raise notice of this case as an issue of relation between government and a private firm. Additionally, on the conception that the CEO of such a company is merely a bureaucrat, I would suggest googling the career path of this woman. The rest of us were also not simply bureaucrats, though we had to fill out and sign off on a lot of regulation-related paper. We made and distributed electricity.

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1 hour ago, stansfield123 said:

There is no substantive difference between ComEd and let’s say EDF (Electricity de France, a company officially and openly owned by the French state). They operate the same way, they both depend on legislative approval for everything they do.

Over a dozen years ago, Barack Hussein Obama mentioned that “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that”. We can then equally condemn Amazon because it uses government-built roads to deliver goods, government supplied of regulated electricity to power its warehouses and data-centers, government-supplied or regulated internet wires to engage in online enterprise, hell the entire Internet is a big government project created by government-supplied education. Actually, Obama plagiarized that line of propaganda from Elizabeth Warren. He didn’t build it. Nor did she, let’s trace this line of “thinking” back to Karl Marx.

All insurance companies are government-regulated: therefore they are “the same as government-run”. The same with power, water, communications, gas, health, groceries… the tentacles of the octopus are everywhere, we must just submit to Lord Cthulhu.

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1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

@stansfield123 – My engineering career was with Commonwealth Edison in the Nuclear Generating Division. It is very much a private business, with shareholders, board of directors, CFO, President, CEO. It is the private company making the entrepreneurial decisions and accomplishing operations. They are simply conducting business within the regulations of State and Federal government on electrical utilities and regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are a privately owned company and open to failure. After building and operating 12 nuclear reactors, which they as a private corporation decided to do, they also made the private-corporation decision to not build any more. I was approached once in the company by a man whose office was tasked with lobbying for favorable regulatory legislation. He was soliciting donations from employees towards sustaining that office and its mission. I think I declined. I don’t know much about those things or why his office was seeking employee donations. (He probably told me, but I just forgot.) Full disclosure, my private pension comes ultimately from this electricity company. The capital investment for such companies is enormous. They are government sanctioned monopolies, which is why there is State regulation on rates, as I have understood it. There are private associations of citizens who lobby consistently against the interests of these utilities, and everywhere in the country there are private associations lobbying against all generation of electricity by nuclear reactions (for heat to make the steam for the turbine to spin the generator). Michael is correct to raise notice of this case as an issue of relation between government and a private firm. Additionally, on the conception that the CEO of such a company is merely a bureaucrat, I would suggest googling the career path of this woman. The rest of us were also not simply bureaucrats, though we had to fill out and sign off on a lot of regulation-related paper. We made and distributed electricity.

If you take out the word “private” from your comment, that comment will then apply to Electricite de France, all the same. They have a corporate structure, build nuclear reactors, have a lot of internal freedom to manage their system, and they’re MOST DEFINITELY open to failure. Government owned companies fail all the time. More often than private ones.

But none of that matters, because none of that is the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. The essential difference is the government sanctioned monopoly part. A government sanctioned monopoly is where capitalism ends, and socialism begins, because capitalism is about freedom to choose, and a government sanctioned monopoly removes choice. It removes the company’s ability to select its role in the economy, and it removes the customers’ ability to choose who they buy electricity from.

If you run a government sanctioned monopoly, you’re not a businessman. You’re not successful because you proved yourself superior to your competitors, and were chosen by your customers. You are successful because you lobbied the government to make you so, and force you onto your customers.

Not just that, but you are permanently entrenched in your position. You’re not even as capitalist as a government contractor (like a private prison, or a defense contractor, or the company hired to collect the trash in a city, etc.). Those guys still have to prove their worth when they compete for bids, occasionally. You don’t even have to do that, you’re permanently entrenched. You’re an institution. Like an elementary school: there to do the job, no matter how well or poorly you do it.

When, in Nazi Germany, Hitler took over the economy, he didn’t confiscate the companies. He merely started telling them what to do. When that happened, capitalism died. Those companies were still generating profits for their owners, those owners still managed the day to day details, etc. But that wasn’t capitalism. It wasn’t a mix of capitalism and socialism, either. It was pure socialism, because those companies became entrenched in their roles. Competition and choice died, and capitalism died with it. Fully.

Similarly, in Atlas Shrugged’s America, capitalism fully ended with the proposition that froze every company in place. That proposition didn’t confiscate companies, it merely entrenched them into their current role. That’s how the economy went from a mix of capitalism and socialism to 100% socialism.

ComEd is precisely one such company. Doesn’t mean the owners don’t have to run it anymore. Doesn’t mean it can’t fail. Doesn’t mean it can’t generate a profit. It just means that it is entrenched into a role, by government decree. That everyone involved has lost the ability to choose who they interact with economically. The choice has been made for them, and has been fixed in place forever.

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47 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:

 We can then equally condemn Amazon

I have no reason to condemn Amazon. I have no reason to ever even think of Amazon. If I don’t like Amazon, I can simply choose not to deal with them.

But I have every reason to think about my electricity supplier … because they’re horrible, and I don’t have the option to switch to another one. Yet. My country is actually in the process of liberalizing the industry enough to have multiple suppliers to choose from. Still heavily regulated, and they’ll be sharing a grid of course, so I don’t know how real of a competition it will be, but I will at least have something the residents of Chicago do not: some kind of choice. The sweet, sweet ability to tell someone to fuck off.

When the day comes, perhaps I’ll put that fuck off in writing, and post a picture, so that you guys can feel the sweet pleasure of firing your electricity supplier vicariously, through me.

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55 minutes ago, stansfield123 said:

I have no reason to condemn Amazon. I have no reason to ever even think of Amazon. If I don’t like Amazon, I can simply choose not to deal with them.

But I have every reason to think about my electricity supplier … because they’re horrible, and I don’t have the option to switch to another one.

I guess you are saying that you don’t have access to AEP, Champion, Clearview, Constellation NewEnergy, Direct Energy, ILG&E, MC Squared, Public Power, ResCom, Spark, or Inspire. Most people in Chicago have a choice, but maybe you’re in some unlucky zone where no company wants to operate. Except ComEd, which is forced to operate.

Your whine is misdirected, it’s not the company that is the problem, it is the legislature which now and then grants an exclusive right to operate to a particular company. We have that problem with trash, that the county granted an exclusive right to contract for residential pick-up to one company. It used to be that the government directly ran various utilities, when they discovered that they sucked as a utility provider they made the minimum change possible – sub-contracting the exclusive right to operate to the highest bidder.

You may not have a personal reason to condemn Amazon, what matters is that many people hate Amazon for one reason or another, and eventually the government is going to destroy the company because it is “too big”. People say that “they have no choice” because Amazon is excellent at what it does and therefore people flock to Amazon, making it challenging for any competitor to do as well. You might go with Walmart or Target as an alternative to Amazon, or Home Depot for other items, but there isn’t any company who has managed to do as well as Amazon for as many things. Hard to remember the days when there were just an online bookstore.

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3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I guess you are saying

Please stop guessing what I’m saying. All my online posts and comments become instantly available to everyone with access to the Internet. No guessing required.

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24 minutes ago, stansfield123 said:

Please stop guessing what I’m saying.

Then please start being explicit in what you say, and don’t make irrelevant comments that require us to make reasonable guesses as to why you would say what you said. Alternatively, please stop lying about whether you have a choice.

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20 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

Then please start being explicit in what you say

I suspect that the reason why you’re guessing is that you haven’t actually read my comments in this thread. Certainly not all of them.

It’s cool, I do that too sometimes. It’s a bad habit. But then I don’t just double down and keep insulting the person I misunderstood. I fix the error, or I just move on.

Unfortunately, it has become clear to me that you lost the ability of self-discipline, at some point in your life. That’s why I will now take advantage of the board feature which helps me avoid future interactions with you, and leave you to your inner rage.

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2 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

the board feature

I totally understand: when someone points out your errors, it can be unbearable if your only tool of cognition is emotional reaction. I hope you can tame your rage.

 

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… and the discussion spirals into ad hominem. 

Yesterday, I received an email acknowledgment from The Atlas Society.

More later,

Michael

PS: I recently read that Baby Boomers sign online messages as if they were letters of the Post Office Era. When I sent those letters to the Objectivist in California, I thought of the old saying from the days of 3-cent first class postage: “Coast to coast for a penny a day.” I said to myself that I sure hoped this would not take that long.