Exposing the rent-seeking class is nothing new for Timothy Carney. In his latest piece for the Washington Examiner, Carney discusses the record of President Obama’s choice to lead the Commerce Department.
John Bryson was CEO of Southern California Edison; he’s a director at Boeing, Disney, and electric-car maker Coda Automotive; and he’s chairman of the board at solar energy giant BrightSource. All of these businesses rely heavily on government subsidies and government protection. This is a virtue in the eyes of Obama, who said Bryson has “the expertise that will help us create new jobs and make America more competitive in the global economy.”
Bryson began his career by creating an environmental litigation group, the Natural Resources Defense Council. He parlayed this gig of suing governments and businesses into top appointments in the late 1970s from Gov. Jerry Brown. After a three-year stint as president of California’s Public Utility Commission, Bryson cashed out in 1984 to California’s largest public utility, Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison.
Edison’s CEO, Howard Allen, had handpicked Bryson, grooming him to take over the company, which he did in 1990. Running a regulated utility is pretty different from running any other sort of business: Bryson was operating a monopoly, protected by the government from competition, and with rates set by the government.
Southern California Edison didn’t need to win over customers by improving its product or lowering prices. Instead, the company’s profits depended on its ability to persuade politicians and bureaucrats to approve its rate increases — not easy, for sure, but hardly the stuff of enterprise.
Bryson’s other employers aren’t government-enforced monopolies, but they are clients of the corporate-welfare state.
