Main Street Dollars

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Somewhere on most phone bills, wireless or landline, sits a line usually labeled “Universal Service” or “Regulatory Recovery Fee.” Few people know what funds it or who runs it. The Federal Communications Commission just opened a formal review of exactly that question, asking whether the company that administers the multibillion-dollar universal service program, and spent…

Mortgage rates rose to 6.71 percent, higher than a year ago, and the 15-year loan reached 6.04 percent

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in Housing & Rent

Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage survey, released September 3, 2026, put the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.71 percent, and the 15-year fixed-rate loan at 6.04 percent. Both numbers are higher than the week before, and both are higher than where rates sat a year ago. For anyone house-hunting or trying to time a refinance, the…

Rhode Island held a utility to a 9.275 percent profit rate

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in Utilities & Energy

Buried inside a much larger utility rate order is a single percentage that shapes what every Rhode Island Energy customer pays for years to come: 9.275 percent. That’s the annual return regulators say Rhode Island Energy is allowed to earn on the equity portion of its investment in the state’s electric and gas delivery system,…

One state just ordered a separate rate class for power users above 20 megawatts

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in Utilities & Energy

Rhode Island regulators have told the state’s dominant utility to build an entirely new pricing category for its biggest electricity customers, the kind of scale a data center or a large industrial plant represents, and to have it ready before the year ends. It’s a narrow, technical directive buried inside a much bigger rate case,…

Rhode Island regulators are sending more than $170 million back to utility customers, with credits starting in October

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in Utilities & Energy

More than $170 million in bill credits are about to move through Rhode Island Energy’s electric and gas accounts, and the first ones land with the bills customers get this October. The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission closed out the company’s base rate case on August 21, 2026, and Rhode Island Energy confirmed four days…

Wheat costs a quarter more at the farm, yet bread and cereal are forecast to rise at their normal pace

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Wheat prices at the farm gate have jumped sharply this summer, and the reason is a shrinking harvest. USDA’s Economic Research Service says farm-level wheat prices climbed more than 9 percent in a single month and are now running roughly a quarter above where they stood a year ago. Despite that spike, the agency’s own…

Vegetable prices paid to farms fell 29 percent in a single month, and produce relief usually lands within two

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Farm-level vegetable prices just posted their sharpest one-month drop of the year, and USDA’s own numbers suggest the produce aisle tends to start feeling that kind of move within a month or two. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, prices paid to farms for fresh vegetables fell 29.4 percent from June…

California diesel passed $7.21 a gallon, $1.62 above the national average

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California’s price for on-highway diesel fuel crossed $7.20 a gallon last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly survey, the highest of any state in the country and more than a dollar sixty above the national average. Most households don’t buy diesel directly, but the fuel that moves trucks, freight and delivery vehicles…

West Coast drivers are paying $5.21 a gallon while the Gulf Coast pays $3.62

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Drivers on the West Coast are paying close to a dollar sixty more per gallon than drivers on the Gulf Coast, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest weekly survey. The gap isn’t a fluke of one bad week; it’s the widest split of any two regions EIA tracks, and it actually grew last…

Gasoline fell 25 cents in Colorado and 18 cents in Ohio last week while the national average barely moved

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