AB 32 Feeds CA Aristocratic Socialists

FEB. 9, 2012

By CHRISS STREET

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ Brundtland Report. It defined Sustainable Development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

But aristocratic socialists have corrupted the sustainable development movement into a vehicle to achieve vast administrative power for themselves.  California’s AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, sold as a way to achieve Sustainable Development, will fail at meeting the needs of the present generation and debt accumulation will consign future generations to a life as debt slaves.

Through the early 1980s, Latin American socialist economies powered growth by quadrupling their indebtedness from $75 billion to $315 billion.  Aristocrats controlling these governments, while the poor had no voice in these loan matters. Nor did the poor benefit from them as most of the loan proceeds were siphoned off to benefit the aristocrats and their crony amigos.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the U.S. economy had suffered a decade of stagflation (stagnation plus inflation), turning our Midwest manufacturing base into the Rust Belt.  Reagan was determined to regain international economic dominance by reasserting our Founding Fathers’ demand for limited government and maximum personal liberty.  Reagan viscerally believed what John Adams wrote, “The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

Reagan’s relentless focus overcame the bipartisan drumbeat to continue the socialist expansion of the money supply to promote growth.  He then leveraged monetary restraint with the largest income tax cut in American history to power the American economy to sustained growth with low inflation.

The inflated prices of raw material exports that Latin American socialists relied upon to pay their inflated debts plunged by 40 percent.  Mexico, Brazil and Argentina became insolvent, as per capita GDP fell by 9 percent between 1980 and 1985 and 50 percent of their people fell into poverty.

Austerity

In desperation, Latin nations turned to the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund as lender-of-last-resort.  But IMF support came with mandatory demands for austerity budget cuts, public industry privatizations and the elimination of trade barriers to shrink socialist power.  By 1987, the capitalist U.S. economy was the world’s growth engine and a tidal wave of foreign investment was pouring into capitalist-friendly Latin economies.  World socialism was in a shambles as the Soviet Union disintegrated and China embraced the market economy.  The release of the Brundtland Report was seen as recognition of the burgeoning capitalist globalized economy.

By 1992, memories of the pain of the Latin American Debt Crisis were fading.  Aristocrats repackaged socialist plans to again usurp economic power into Agenda 21 and introduced this socialist manifesto at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Agenda 21 envisioned bestowing the UN, government bureaucracies and major interest groups the power to suspend the rights of property under law regarding all global, national and local human economic and social interaction that might affect the environment.  Agenda 21’s four main pillars of action were:

1. Combating poverty, promoting health, making consumption sustainable;

2. Assuring atmospheric protection, protecting fragile environments, conserving biodiversity, preventing pollution and regulating biotechnology;

3. Strengthening the roles of children, youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, workers and indigenous peoples;

4. Through science, technology transfer, education, international financial mechanisms.

The End of Democracy

California’s aristocratic socialists embedded Agenda 21 into AB32. The law supposedly was designed to fight man-made climate change by establishing a comprehensive program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sources throughout the state.  But its real goal was bestow on California’s aristocratic socialists control of the California economy free from the burden of voter input.

This new financial clout comes at a favorable time, given California’s socialist politicians have run up the largest state debt in the country at $265 billion, the largest unfunded pension liability at United States at approximately $568 billion, and a current general-fund budget deficit of $9 billion.

There is no Reaganesque figure in California able to battle the state’s entrenched socialists into supporting limited government and maximum personal liberty.  According to a 2009 study, the economic impact of AB 32’s cap-and-trade and regulatory features will be like an economic tax of destroyed.

California’s aristocratic socialists control the AB 32 bureaucracies. Poor taxpayers have no voice in AB 32’s decision makings, nor will they benefit from what is increasingly seen as junk science. There are plenty of new resources to sustain aristocrats and their crony amigos.

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