Roots

In the last month or so I have posted a couple of pieces on government interference with industry. One post contained this quote from Thomas Edison:

"Any extension of the Government into business affairs -- no matter what the pretense and no matter how the extension is labeled -- will be bound to promote waste and put a curb on our prosperity and progress." --Thomas Alva Edison

The other post (Its Taxing To Make A Buck) was about GE and other companies trying to get coal fired electrical plants banned in order to profit from the ban. Now what is so ironic about all this is that Edison founded General Electric. What is even more ironic about all this is that Edison was at war with Westinghouse to determine if AC or DC distribution of electricity was to be the favored standard.

Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating current, including spreading information on fatal AC accidents, killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown, to preside over several AC-driven executions of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses. Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison's system of direct current. Edison's series of animal executions peaked with the electrocution of Topsy the Elephant. He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being "Westinghoused".

Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair. Harold P. Brown, who was at this time being secretly paid by Edison, constructed the first electric chair for the state of New York in order to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.

When the chair was first used, on August 6, 1890, the technicians on hand misjudged the voltage needed to kill the condemned prisoner, William Kemmler. The first jolt of electricity was not enough to kill Kemmler, and left him only badly injured. The procedure had to be repeated and a reporter on hand described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." George Westinghouse commented: "They would have done better using an axe."

So despite Edison's great rhetoric, I think he really meant that he was against government interference in his business. He was not against using it against his competitors.

You have to keep an eye on these boys.

We are lucky Westinghouse won the battle because the AC system was technically better. Just think of how much it would have delayed progress if Edison had been able to get a national ban on AC electrical transmission.

In a way we are faced with the same prospect. GE wants to get its cheaper competitors banned (fossil fuels) so it can profit from the sales of its higher cost production methods. They aren't doing anything unusual here. Just reverting to their roots.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Its Taxing To Make A Buck

Yes it is very taxing to make a buck. Unless you use taxing to make a buck. Then it gets easier. From Bloomberg.

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- When Senate Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, Republican Senator John Warner, the nation's largest environmental groups and General Electric Co. join forces to push a U.S. cap on global-warming emissions, it should be an unbeatable team. Not in the 110th Congress.

The alliance is running into resistance from an unlikely collection of environmental activists, big oil and coal companies, labor unions and Congress's sole socialist. Some opponents say the measure doesn't go far enough; others say complying with it would cost too much and put U.S. businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

The fight threatens to scuttle the first legislation mandating emissions cuts to be approved by a congressional subcommittee. The bill backed by California Democrat Boxer, 67, would create a potential $300 billion carbon-trading market and press the Bush administration to soften its opposition to stricter emission rules at global climate-treaty talks in Indonesia next month.

``I'm worried,'' says Ralph Izzo, chief executive officer of Newark, New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., owner of the state's largest utility. ``I think there's less than a 20 percent chance that anything will happen in this Congress on climate change.''

Izzo is among business leaders including GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt who want Congress and President George W. Bush to set federal rules for the carbon-dioxide emissions that cause global warming, so they can make business plans and start profiting from carbon trading and the sale of non-polluting technologies.

So let me see if I got this. Green energy is not profitable (enough) and so these wonderful companies want to in effect put a heavy tax on energy use in order to make their dreams of riches without effort come true. Not make things better, faster, cheaper. Nope, that is hard. Taxing the other guy out of business is easier.

I looked at such questions before in Criminals And Moralists Working Together where I looked at how all this carbon trading stuff was in part related to Enron's business model and how it seems to have influenced science.

The Brits are wise to this scam. Probably because they are already being taxed to help these industrial schemes along.

New Energy and Fuel is looking at a similar Hillary inspired scheme for automobiles.

H/T I Call BS

Cross Posted at Classical Values