Brief Thoughts on the OWS Movement

Republished from my piece published today on the Young Americans for Liberty blog.

The frustration of the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement in their call to end corporate corruption and societal inequality is valid. Sadly, several solutions to the problem that have been presented are disastrous because they ask the wrong question. Instead of asking if big businesses and the Federal Reserve have screwed the American people (the answer to which is undoubtably yes, as Glen Greenwald of Salon outlines), they should probe deeper.

A better question to ask would be:  How did big businesses, the Federal Reserve, and the federal government cause the financial crisis, and how can it be kept from happening again? Some in the OWS movement will place the blame on capitalism and free enterprise. Yet these activists will miss the mark.

The culprit of this crisis is big government regulations, which no longer act as an impartial referee and permit some big businesses to succeed while others fail. The culprit is a distorted tax code, which enables certain companies to evade taxes. The culprit is departments and agencies that are not transparent and accountable to the people.

These big government policies caused the financial crisis.  Tim Carney, the senior political columnist of the Washington Examiner, has written extensively on the mechanisms that big government employs to assist its favored corporations. Solving the mess requires a government restrained and unable to create loopholes. Only then can the government respect the individual, the world’s smallest minority, to ensure equal treatment under the law.

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Money, Votes, and Climate Change

Alec Weisman

Who were the winners and losers from the passage of California Assembly Bill 32 and the failure of Proposition 23. These were some of the important questions that I asked as I dove into a final paper for my ENVR 120: Global Warming class.

Brief Background

AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is a California “law that designates the California Air Resources Board (ARB) to develop and enforce regulations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the state of California to 1990 levels by 2020. All 47 Democrats in the California Assembly voted yes in support of AB 32, and all 33 Republicans voted no in opposition to AB 32.

Proposition 23 was the attempt to suspend AB 32 until California’s unemployment rate had dropped to 5.5% or less for four consecutive quarters. It was nicknamed the California Jobs Initiative by supporters and the Dirty Energy Proposition by opponents. In addition, Proposition 23 lost by a vote of 38.5% in favor and 61.5% in opposition

Assembly Bill 32 and Proposition 23 are a classic example of industry vs. industry, with the more politically popular using big government to give it special incentives or drive competition out of the market.

Some of the key findings: