There’s a series of ads on the media here in Michigan that I find highly amusing. If you did no investigation, as I’m sure the majority of sheeple will admit to, you would think that whatever PAC is sponsoring the ads just wants to ensure power, and provide jobs.
If, however, you do happen to do a little investigation, you find the PAC is composed of those who want to give a monopoly back to the power companies (after the conservative government fo some years ago opened the state to competition). Apparently, the power companies NEED this monopoly in order to pay for the upgrades they need, and build new plants.
I find this rather “interesting” … since I’m not aware of any other business that manages to convince the government to force the users of a service or commodity to guarantee a profit, and pay for construction or updates to their operations. If the local grocery chain decides to expand their operations, they don’t go to Lansing and convince lawmakers to grant them a monopoly and squeeze their cometitor (usually Wal-mart) out. Nope. They get to use their profits, or capital, to do the construction. And they don’t just increase the price of all commodities they sell to recoup their investment overnight, since we’d just wander down the street to do our shopping. So I can certainly see why the PACs are pushing these ads so hard, convincing the sheeple that without increasing their prices and granting them exclusive territory, we’ll be at the mercy of competition. GASP!
What happened to everything we learned about the value of competition after the AT&T breakup? If we still had them for a sole source for communications, would we have Treos, Blackberrys and iPhones? Or would be still be using rotary dial phones with party lines?
Personally, I can’t understand anyone WANTING to give these clowns another monopoly AND let them build more coal-fired plants. I think the evil greenies would get nowhere today with their anti-nuke-plant rhetoric … and that’s what the power companies should be building … long-term, cheap sources of power. Not plants that will spew more crap, require even more trains using fossil fuels to move the fuel supply to the new plants. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I’m thinking the biggest contributors to these ads are likely Peabody Coal and it’s “competitors” in the coal industry.
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