Teacher Unions, Obama’s Climate Czar and Public Choice

Director Bob Bowden exposes corruption and waste in public schools in the new film The Cartel.

Critics object to the potentially sweeping powers of President Obama’s “climate czar,” Carol Browner.

Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan celebrates his 90th birthday.

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1. EDUCATION

Director Bob Bowden exposes corruption and waste in public schools in the new film The Cartel.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on how the education cartel is part of an even larger threat.

“How much harm do teacher unions do? Plenty, according to the new film, The Cartel. The film purports to show ‘the educational system like we’ve never seen it before. Behind every dropout factory, we discover, lurks a powerful, entrenched, and self-serving cartel.’ In fact, the power of teachers unions is part of an even greater problem: the growing ranks of unionized government workers, a phenomenon that creates a permanent constituency favoring the growth of government — one that is well organized, motivated, and well funded.”

 

2. ENVIRONMENT

Critics object to the potentially sweeping powers of President Obama’s “climate czar,” Carol Browner.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on Browner’s political affiliations:

“The Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society has sent an interesting account of their recent meeting and release of their report, ‘From a high carbon economy to a low carbon society.’ As revealed by Steve Milloy earlier this year, Carol Browner, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration and now President Barack Obama’s ‘climate czar,’ is a long-time member of Socialist International…I guess Browner was too busy implementing many of the report’s recommendations to make it to the meeting.”

 

3. ECONOMICS

Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan celebrates his 90th birthday.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Journalism Fellow Ryan Young on Buchanan’s insights:

“James Buchanan was one of the founding fathers of public choice theory, along with Gordon Tullock and some others (Bill Niskanen, Mancur Olson, et al.). Public choice, despite the obscure name, is quite simple. It says that market behavior does not end where government begins. Politicians and other government actors are not angels. They are just as self-interested as you or I. Public choices are subject to the same incentives as private choices.Buchanan’s simple, powerful insight won him the economics Nobel in 1986.”