Tag: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Truth Squad

the squad, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lhan Omar,Ayanna Pressley,Rashida Tlaib, socialism, racism,

“I hesitate to contribute to this freak show,” Sen. John Kennedy (R‑La.) told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night.

I know the feeling.

“I don’t think President Trump is a racist,” added the senator. “I don’t think his original tweet was racist.”

While I haven’t peered into the president’s soul, I didn’t see racism in his tweet, either. But I did catch a whiff of other wrongs.

Xenophobia, for instance.

And nastiness.

I didn’t like Mr. Trump’s attempt to paint “the Squad” — Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.) — as somehow un-American or illegitimate by tweeting: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All but Rep. Omar were born here, and immigrant Omar is just as much an American citizen as was George Washington.

“Our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R‑Wyo.) rightly said. “It has to do with the content of their policies.”*

Let’s note that only two, AOC and Tlaib, have chosen the socialist label. Reps. Omar and Pressley have not, though their policy positions seem in sync.

It may be, as NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen wrote, that Trump’s tweet was designed to “flip the script,” ending the feud between the Squad and Speaker Pelosi, because “he wants the Democratic Party stuck to its progressive fringe.”

But the ends do not justify the means. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And our politics stinks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Cheney added (and I concur): “They are wrong when they pursue policies that would steal power from the American people and give that power to the government.”

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, lhan Omar, racism, Rashida Tlaib, socialism, the squad

government transparency

Transparent on Twitter?

AOC, Trump, twitter, block, blocking, free speech,

I find Twitter distasteful, annoying, even stupid. I sometimes wonder why I should care about that particular “micro-blogging” platform.

But since it is a big deal to others, I struggle to understand.*

Joining me in the struggle are our two most famous political Twitterers, President Donald Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.).

The president lost in court the other day, with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals telling him he must no longer block users on the social media platform.

Now AOC finds herself in a similar pickle. On Tuesday, a former Democratic New York Assemblyman filed a lawsuit in federal court against the popular freshman U.S. Representative for doing the same thing Trump had been doing: blocking users on Twitter based on their personal viewpoints.

The litigant surmises that AOC had blocked him “apparently because my critique of her tweets and policies have been too stinging.”

Ouch?

“Twitter is a public space,” insists this Democrat, Dov Hikind, “and all should have access to the government officials on it.”

This puts me in a pickle, too. I am all for government transparency — and I do think officials and representatives should not be completely insulated from the citizens they serve. But we don’t have a right to follow them into their bedrooms or bathrooms.

So, high-profile federal employees who in any way discuss public matters on social media should not be allowed to block Americans from seeing their posts. But take pity on the poor pols: they should be able to mute users, that is, keep others from cluttering up their social media experience.

Oddly, the lawsuit does not address this muting option.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I even use it, occasionally.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, block, blocking, Donald Trump, free speech, Trump, Twitter

incumbents partisanship

AOC Right, DCCC Wrong

“AOC is right as rain here,” I re-tweeted Sunday.

And what was the usually all-wet U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) right about?

“By stymieing primaries,” the freshman representative had tweeted at her own party’s congressional leaders and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), “you deny most voters their best chance at choosing their representative.”

On purpose.

Ocasio-Cortez refers to the recent DCCC announcement, first reported by The Intercept, that “warned political strategists and vendors … that if they support candidates mounting primary challenges against incumbent House Democrats, the party will cut them off from business.”

Isn’t the goal of the DCCC to elect as many Democrats to Congress as possible?

No.

“The core mission of the DCCC is electing House Democrats, which includes supporting and protecting incumbents,” reads a new form for party political consultants. “To that end, the DCCC will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting Member of the House Democratic Caucus.”

In short, if you want to make money, and most political professionals do, don’t dare work for a Democratic challenger against a Democratic incumbent.

“If the DCCC enacts this policy to blacklist vendors who work with challengers, we risk undermining an entire universe of potential candidates and vendors — especially women and people of color,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, another Democratic freshman who defeated an incumbent Democrat, tweeted on Saturday.

The policy has been enacted and is in full effect.

Among Washington Democrats, incumbency trumps everything … even diversity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. The National Republican Congressional Committee has long had this same total fixation — mutatis mutandis — on re-electing incumbents. In fact, the newsworthiness of this latest DCCC strong-arming of consultants seems to be only that the insider power-play is more “open” than ever before.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, campaign, democracy, Democrat, fairness, funding, incumbent

Accountability meme national politics & policies Popular

Awful Aspirations

Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, aspirations,

A funny thing happened on the way to voting on the Democrats’ Green New Deal (GND). With ‘earth in the balance,’ the proposal for fixing climate change — and so much more! — was granted its first procedural vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

It failed, 0 – 57.

Sen. Edward Markey (D‑Mass.), the Senate sponsor, along with 41 other Democrats* and independent Bernie Sanders, voted “present” to protest what he called “sabotage,” claiming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) “wants to silence your voice.”

Au contraire! McConnell longed to hear Democrats sing the bill’s praises — loud, proud, and on the record.

After the vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) absurdly made the opposite accusation: Republicans were “climate delaying … costing us lives + destroying communities.”

Meanwhile, “If the Green New Deal came up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House,” USA Today reports, “it would have trouble passing.”

“It’s a list of aspirations,” says Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who does not plan to bring it to a vote. Though Democrats want to address climate change, the speaker points out that the “bill has many things that have nothing to do with climate.”

Rep. Elaine Luria, (D‑Va.) echoes Pelosi: “[T]he Green New Deal is aspirational.” Rep. Sean Casten, (D‑Ill.) adds, “The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great.”**

But is the GND something “great” to which Americans should aspire?

Only if they yearn for government-monopolized healthcare, free college tuition, micro-management of the economy, and government providing everyone a job, except those who don’t want one … who would get a guaranteed income, regardless.

I aspire to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In the Senate, three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) joined all 53 Republicans in voting No.

** All four House co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force — Casten and Luria as well as Don Beyer, (D‑Va.) and Susan Wild, (D‑Pa.) — have come out in opposition to the GND.

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ideological culture Popular

The Ominous Linkages

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green New Deal, socialism, Greta Thunberg,

What does a 16-year-old Swedish girl have in common with a popular 29-year-old U.S. Representative?

Environmentalism and socialism.

The young woman is Greta Thunberg, who spear-headed a “global movement of schoolchildren striking to demand climate change action.” The Representative is AOC, er, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.), who last month launched her “Green New Deal.”

Sixteen-year-old Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Rep. AOC hasn’t been nominated yet, but if Barack Obama could be awarded a Nobel merely for being elected.…

But back to that linkage: the Swedish youngster was nominated by three adult members of the Socialist Left Party; AOC calls herself a socialist.*

But what’s the deeper link?

The solution, apparently: socialists want to destroy capitalism, or at least commandeer it; and environmentalists obsessed about anthropogenic global warming believe it’s caused by burning fossil fuels and by bovine flatulence — both made worse by capitalism, which has allowed the masses (not just the elites) to harness petroleum for power as well as raise gigantic herds of cattle for eating and milk-production. The direct control that socialism entails serves, say its advocates, as the only way to curtail carbon emissions.

A more likely story? Socialism would make us so much poorer that it is inconceivable that most of us would be able to afford to drive cars or eat steaks or drink milk.

Regardless of their so-called “green” policy obsessions, Ms.Thunberg and Rep. AOC are green in a more profound sense, of lack of experience — the latter because she’s young, the former because she’s a miseducated ideologue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It is also worth noting that the much of AOC’s much-ballyhooed Green New Deal has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with typical leftist social engineering.

New Green Deal, FAQ, socialism, environmentalism, global warming, climate change,

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ideological culture national politics & policies Popular too much government

Greenlighting Socialism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New Green Deal, socialism

Can we blame U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY), really?

A decade of quantitative easing, along with trillion-dollar annual deficits run up recently by congressional Republicans, have paved a debt-ridden road upon which she hopes her massive Green New Deal (GND) might glide.

We can derisively point to the now-withdrawn FAQ, which the congresswoman’s staff “accidentally” posted on the Web and sent out to reporters. It was “unfinished,” and “erroneously” said the GND would be “guaranteeing … Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.“

But of course, read the actual totalitarian-esque 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” — and tell me the silly FAQ isn’t accurate.

The GND promises to “create millions of good, high-wage jobs … provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people … and … counteract systemic injustices.” It must, of course, after wiping out tens of millions of jobs in private health insurance (2.6 million) and fossil fuels (10 million).

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been so kind as to announce he will bring the GND to a vote in the Senate. Put Senators on record. And 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 endorsed the Green New Deal resolution.

Give AOC her due. She has brought fresh young energy to old-fashioned socialism.

And leading Democrats out of the shadows.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture political economy too much government

Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 11, 2019
2 Comments on Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

“Socialism” — we all want to be sociable, right?

Last week’s anti-socialist moment was not limited to the president’s promise that America would never go socialist, as I noted this weekend there was also Panera Bread’s abandonment of its quasi-charitable Panera Cares (“pay-what-you-want”) fast food chain.

Isn’t that a bit of a strange connection? Socialism is not charity. It’s bad because it is force through and through, not because it seeks to help people.

Well, note that while Panera’s notion was the same as many socialists’, to help the poor. Panera’s method was to cajole, or “nudge,” the better-off to pay enough more to cover the costs of paying less.

Kinda like ObamaCare, but without the force.

And without the force, it failed.

What Panera management discovered is that not only is it very hard to get the message across, it is almost impossible to set up coherent incentives to successfully alter consumer behavior.

Getting incentives right is something that plagues all sorts of socialistic experiments, voluntary or coercive, within a capitalist society.

Take Finland’s recent experiment with a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

The idea of that nation’s centrist party was to take care of the unemployed beneficiaries’ basic needs so they could get back to work.

Well, those who received the basic income were happy enough receiving the moolah. Sure. But “there was no evidence from the first year of the experiment,” a report in Huffington Post admits, “that the scheme incentivized work.” Despite that, socialists in England are pushing for the UBI.

Socialism doesn’t work, and socialists would rather not work — except to advance socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political economy Popular

Re-Packaging Nonsense as Wisdom

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 23, 2019
1 Comment on Re-Packaging Nonsense as Wisdom

When committed to folly, clever people make it look wise.

An article last week in Forbes, “The Green New Deal: How We Will Pay For It Isn’t ‘A Thing’ — And Inflation Isn’t Either,” by Robert Hockett, says that “how could we pay for it?” challenges have already been answered best by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

She demands to know why only “useful ideas,” like hers, get challenged that way. “Where were the ‘pay-fors’ for Bush’s $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year’s $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires?”

Where? Here!

And anywhere there’s common sense.

Hockney has his own retort, though, retrieving from the peanut gallery of economics an idiocy called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT).

“Congress will authorize necessary spending, and Treasury will spend,” he writes. Government funds are “never ‘raised’ first” because “federal spending is what brings that money into existence.”

Look, the United States has indeed come to rely upon debt financing. But it wasn’t always the rule. More importantly, the widespread and long-term effects are where post-gold standard monetary creation gets tricky.

So are MMT advocates. Tricky, that is. What they hide are the dispersed costs, many of which we pay in higher prices.

Their main “contribution” — as stated in the National Review, of all places, yesterday — is that “When a government issues its own currency, as our federal government does, it is in a financial situation different from those of most institutions or households.”

Not really. When a household writes checks it knows will bounce, it does pretty much the same thing.

When governments rely upon debt money, someone is still getting ripped off. With government, though, it isn’t the businesses holding bad checks, it is all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. This episode of Common Sense has been corrected from the email version: the author of the Forbes article is not the painter David Hockney.

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ideological culture too much government

Worse Than Her Faux Pas

“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress,” stumbled U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.), “uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House.…”

The Daily Wire, where I encountered this particular snippet of inanity, could be caught gloating between her lines. And it is funny (amidst the fear) when politicians prove themselves ignorant, clueless, unprepared. Politicians rarely come across as masters of their subject.

But we who are subjected to their lack of mastery should worry about their substantive flubs more than their trivial technical errors.

As the newly elected solon herself had the wit to notice.

“Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-tomd [sic],” she went on, “they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make: that they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”

I am not a Republican, but I’m here to help. The only rights we “deserve” are those we can have without enslaving and exploiting others. My right to freedom requires only your duty to leave me alone, not systematically taking from others or running their lives. But a right to “healthcare”? The corresponding duties are vague and ominous, potentially limitless.

And thus oppressive.

A government big enough to give Ocasio-Cortez everything she wants is too big to leave any freedom for the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

PayGo Piffle

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, #PayGo, austerity, spending

Republicans are especially good at deficit spending. Give them control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and watch the money flow! It happened under George W. Bush, and now under President Donald Trump.

But note: the Democrats have gained control of the House of Representatives. We might see some restraint on government growth, if for no better reason than “divided government,” in which the two major parties can more effectively do damage to each other’s spending.

Nancy Pelosi, again Speaker of the House, has a monkey wrench to throw into Republican spending plans, not excluding that much-promised, little acted-upon Trump promise, “The Wall.”

It is called “PayGo,” or, in the Twittersphere, #PayGo.

Not something new (Democrats have used it before), the House rule aims to limit any new expenditures to equal cuts in old spending.

Effective? Well, in capping the deficit at a trillion dollars annually … until they vote for exceptions to the rule.

And effective enough to annoy Republicans!

And now, to rile up progressives, too.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) has made a big deal about her opposition. She has opposed Pelosi’s attempt to re-establish the rule.

Heedless of any danger that could result from further adding to the now-$22 trillion national debt, progressives scorn the idea of fiscal responsibility as “austerian,” claiming the whole idea was somehow disproven by “economic history,” in the Tweeted words of Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑Calif.).

The “real” beneficiaries would be the corporations, progs say, and that PayGo would work against the “progressive agenda” of increasing government programs without limit.

Typical political piffle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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