Tag: AOC

How Massive a Mistake?

When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the volumes were large-sized — around 8.5 x 11 inches, like a textbook.

When Democrats produced oversized pseudo-replicas of the 900-page policy blueprint as visual props to mock Republicans during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, they made the tomes much, much larger, as if hauled off a monastery shelf.

Why? Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow on August 19, and Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on August 20 — and others each night — sought to symbolize its “weighty” and “extreme” nature.

The giant scale of the replicas amplified the visual gag, with McMorrow quipping about it being “heavy” as she dragged it out.

That is how seriously Democrats said they were taking Project 2025.

So when Donald Trump got elected, and the document’s author, Russ Vought, took on his current position as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget on February 7 — sworn in by the left’s very noirest of bêtes noir, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — you might think that Democrats would be very careful dealing with anything Vought touched.

Like scuttling the Continuing Resolution at the beginning of the month, thereby shutting down the federal government. For lack of funding.

As covered yesterday in a Weekend Update on this site, Vought’s axe, poised to gut the EPA or Treasury, was at the ready, sharpened to make substantial and semi-permanent cuts to many departments.

The Democrats’ nightmare come true.

So, why did they blunder into it?

Smart money has it that the party, made unpopular by its far left, is now running scared of that very same far left. Senator Chuck Schumer (D.-NY), once a dealmaker, now cowers like a schoolboy before a possible 2028 challenge from AOC, the Squad’s top brand and a Bernie bro.

Democratic leadership couldn’t risk containing the political ambitions of the leftist radicals in the party.

A breathtaking moment, especially if Vought truly plies his Project 2025-branded axe. Those monastery-sized tomes, brandished like holy relics to smite Trump, a year ago, now stand as tombstones for the Democrats’ own strategy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags AOC, budget, Chuck Schumer

government transparency international affairs media and media people national politics & policies

Lying About Killing for Votes

Post author By Redactor
Post date May 13, 2025
1 Comment on Lying About Killing for Votes

Some foreign policy issues, such as regarding Israel and Palestine, are confusing enough that many of us tend to be wary of sharing our opinions.

But no matter how reticent we may be, we can agree on this: there should be no outright lying about our positions.

Mitchell Plitnick is a progressive who is willing to confront this prevarication problem forthrightly. Of the many “disheartening moments” during the last presidential campaign, “few,” he admits, “were quite as deflating as that moment when the ostensibly progressive, leading member of The Squad, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood at the podium at the Democratic National Convention and told the audience that then-Vice President Kamala Harris was ‘working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bring the hostages home.’

“We knew she was lying,” Plitnick confesses. “AOC herself knew she was lying. But it was just the message that the crowd — who were more than eager to show their support for the Democrats despite the party’s utter refusal to allow even the most conciliatory and moderate Palestinian voice to be heard — wanted to hear, and they ate it up.”

This willingness of the few to promote a blatant lie, and of the masses to believe it, might be the most disheartening thing about modern politics.

And as for the truth, how do we know Plitnick is right about the prevarications? “The utterly shameless nature of the lie has now been confirmed by no less than nine officials from Joe Biden’s administration and reported on by Israel’s own Channel 13 news program, Hamakor.…”

We, the people — pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian and otherwise — may all wish for a ceasefire.

But it’s clear that the last administration wanted nothing to do with it.

And lied about it. For votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags AOC, Gaza, Israel, war

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.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

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

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.

PDF for printing