Can we blame U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY), really?
Being ambitious and bold are not usually considered bad things. And her most ambitious, boldest proposal is not exactly without precedent. A decade of quantitative easing, along with trillion-dollar annual deficits run up recently by congressional Republicans, have laid the debt-ridden tracks upon which she hopes her massive Green New Deal will glide.
Oh, sure, we can derisively point to the now-withdrawn FAQ, which the congresswoman’s staff “accidentally” posted onto the Web and sent out to reporters. Keep your balance near those computer keyboards, folks.
Remember, those answers to a ton of questions about this complete re-making of the economy and society as a whole were “unfinished,” and “erroneously” said things, such as that the Green New Deal (GND) would be “guaranteeing … Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.”
Cut the green congresswoman some slack?
Slack or no, a reading of the actual totalitarian-esque not-yet-withdrawn House Resolution — calling for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era” and labeling it “a historic opportunity” — makes it all clear. You cannot tell me that silly FAQ wasn’t spot on.
Timing wasn’t helpful to Ocasio-Cortez’s rollout of the GND, either. Who knew that, days after the GND offered to Americans the notion that high-speed train travel could be a human (almost religious) right, deepest blue-state Governor Gavin Newsom stopped California’s high-speed train projects in their tracks, looking at costs and declaring, “Let’s be real.”
Nonetheless, the Green New Deal enthusiastically promises to “create millions of good, high-wage jobs … provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people … and … counteract systemic injustices.”
But what about after lunch?
The GND must produce a plethora of new positions in its trumpeted new Green economy, of course, after wiping out millions of jobsin private health insurance (500,000) and the fossil fuel industry (10 million) and who knows where else.
Meanwhile, more than 100 Democrats in Congress, including four declared presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker (D‑N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D‑N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D‑Calif.), and Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.) — have rushed in to endorse the Green New Deal resolution for Uber-unlimited government.
The Republican reaction provides a different kind of comedy. Kindly old Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announcedthat he will generously bring the GND to a vote in the U.S. Senate, helping Ocasio-Cortez in the upper house — and putting Senate sponsor Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and all other senators squarely on the record. Just as it should be.
Has Sen. McConnell turned over a new green leaf? Or is the Senate’s “Napping Turtle” merely maniacally morphing the GND from a harmless progressive virtue-signaling prop into a weaponized boomerang to bop Dems in their too-Bolshevikian behinds? The comeuppance would come, according to this rationale, when the public realizes just how humongously big Big Government would be if only Democrats were voting.
So let’s vote.
“I’m going to stand up for Ocasio-Cortez,” announced Sean Hannity on his Fox News program, responding to charges the GND wasn’t serious. “I think she’s probably the most honest extreme radical democratic socialist in the country, in that she’s saying what they have wanted to do, incrementally, for years.”
Give AOC her due. Just when Big Brother most needed a facelift, she has brought fresh young energy to tired, old-fashioned socialism.
And leading Democrats out of the shadows.
Paul Jacob, Townhall, February 17, 2019