It should be dismissed regardless of one's political stance because the author is making poor arguments and primarily appealing to emotions. I'm disappointed to learn he's a legal ethicist. There's trashy left wing blogs for confirmation bias junk food, I know them when I see them, I call them what they are, and I wouldn't post them here unless it was to make a joke.
or at least a sub-forum, kind of like the PG-13 sub-forum in the Hangout. Given her provocative dancing, that's probably appropriate.
AOC's Green New Deal is Powered by Unicorns http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/07/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-green-new-deal-powered-unicorns/ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ Is Powered By Unicorns Even if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s fever dream were technologically feasible, the burden of funding it would land on the middle class as well as the uber-wealthy. By Warren Henry JANUARY 7, 2019 The idea that conservatives are generally upset over a video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez imitating the dance scene from “The Breakfast Club” may be a textbook example of fake news. In contrast, her proposal for a “Green New Deal” is real news, but fake policy. In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, the darling of democratic socialism proposed eliminating carbon emissions within 12 years. Ocasio-Cortez has previously avoided specifying how she would pay for her “Green New Deal.” The “Frequently Asked Questions” section accompanying her draft resolution claims it could be funded in the “same ways that we paid for the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs, the same ways we paid for World War II and many other wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments, new public banks can be created (as in WWII) to extend credit and a combination of various taxation tools (including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes) can be employed.” The war metaphor is among the classics of collectivism. Ocasio-Cortez now falls back on the comforting myth that everything is affordable by soaking the rich with higher income taxes. She told Anderson Cooper that “once you get to, like, the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.” Ocasio-Cortez half-concedes her plan is a fantasy: “It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now. What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?” In a nutshell (where Ocasio-Cortez is dwelling, policy-wise), the problem is that our technological capacities are not quite what they are in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. According to Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research: “One hundred percent renewable energy defies the laws of physics. It would be impossible to achieve.” There is no Tony Stark here with an Arc Reactor for everyone. Instead, we have Elon Musk, sparking up like Bob Marley after years of government subsidies. For an idea of how detached Ocasio-Cortez is from reality, consider that we get only 17 percent of our energy from renewables. As Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute, notes, setting entirely unrealistic goals undermines the credibility of any effort to address climate change. Vox’s David Roberts, who is as green as the Hulk and usually as angry regarding the status quo on our environment, summarizes the Green New Deal as follows: “Ocasio-Cortez’s plan actually calls for decarbonizing not just electricity but the entire US economy in 10 years, which is almost certainly impossible absent radical reductions in Americans’ energy consumption, something like imposed austerity — and nobody thinks Americans are that scared of climate change. Even decarbonizing the economy by 2050 … is an extraordinarily daunting challenge, involving hundreds of discrete policy problems, each facing their own dilemmas and entrenched interests.” Given that not even leprechauns are as green as Ocasio-Cortez, it almost seems like piling on to mention the math. But the pot at the end of AOC’s rainbow is more likely to be filled with Lucky Charms than gold. The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein estimates that raising the marginal tax rate to between 60 and 70 percent on incomes above $10 million might raise as much as $720 billion dollars in a decade. Stein also acknowledged that “[t]he real number is probably smaller than that, because wealthy Americans would probably find ways around paying this much-higher tax.” That concession is probably a vast understatement. It is fairly well-established that as marginal tax rates rise, the income taxpayers report goes down. Moreover, according to physicist Christopher Clack, who has studied rapid deployments of renewables, the cost of building out generating capacity by itself would cost trillions, not billions. In short, even if the golden geese of capitalism were to continue laying eggs in Ocasio-Cortez’s command-and-control economy, there will not be enough to make her statist omelet. Even if Ocasio-Cortez’s fever dream were technologically feasible, the burden of funding it would land on the middle class as well as the uber-wealthy. France discovered this the hard way, as the government’s magical thinking on carbon taxes and rapid conversion to solar and wind sparked middle-class street riots, which continued this past weekend. Such are the predictable results of what Roberts refers to as “something like imposed austerity.” Ocasio-Cortez’s colleagues know this. Rep. John Yarmuth (D), the new House Budget Committee chairman, recently referred to the Green New Deal as “probably something that is totally impossible to do” and that “nobody could afford.” Similarly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s planned “Select Committee on the Climate Crisis” is not directed to draft Green New Deal legislation and lacks subpoena and deposition power. It is weaker than a similar committee formed a decade ago. As Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman put it, “This committee, if it turns out that the rumors about it are true, sounds about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.” This is not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has tried to pass off a fairy tale as a white paper. She recently claimed the $32 trillion cost of a Medicare-for-all plan could be funded by curbing fraud at the Pentagon. Not even PolitiFact could make that math work, given that our nation has not spent $32 trillion on defense since its founding. Blue states like Vermont, California, and New York cannot get the single-payer math to work either. Yet the reaction from Very Serious People is not to ask Ocasio-Cortez when she plans to stop snorting the pixie dust, or to remind her she is not the representative for Neverland. In the world of Very Serious People, the idea of Mexico funding a border wall is fantastical, but the idea of going carbon-free in a decade is visionary. The Green New Deal will sound far more plausible when democratic socialists figure out a way to burn the unicorn flatulence generated in promoting it. Warren Henry is the nom de plume of an attorney practicing in the State of Illinois.
She's the Tippy Tops https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/shes-the-tippy-tops.php SHE’S THE TIPPY TOPS POSTED ON JANUARY 7, 2019 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, DEMOCRATS, SOCIALISM When it comes to the state of the art on the left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is (to borrow an expression) the tippy tops. She is an idiot’s idiot with a little girl voice that gives expressive form to her thoughts and dreams. If only she were given absolute power, she could produce the kind of rapid change (to borrow another expression) that has reduced Venezuela to poverty and starvation. 60 Minutes featured AOC in its lead segment last night. The segment is posted here (both video and, thankfully, transcript). Quotable quote: “I think there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” Here we get to the heart of the matter: We are in the realm of Imagine. She has no idea (and Anderson Cooper seems to think that electric cars are powered by cotton candy). Cooper only takes up the angle that lies at the heart of every socialist utopia: In 1960 the top marginal federal income tax rate actually reached 91 percent on income over $200,000 (for single filers) or $400,000 (for married filers). AOC could present her proposal as a modest reform that falls short of the tax levels of the Eisenhower years. Or perhaps AOC would be inspired by the history. Superimposing New York state and local income taxes on top of the 1960 federal rates we could achieve a level of taxation exceeding 100 percent and get serious about encouraging the appropriate “contribution” from the rich. Socialists like AOC never do tell us what our “fair share” is or how they determine it. I would like to know what my “fair share” is. I think I have been paying more than my “fair share” for a long time, but I would like to know so I can have some peace of mind that they will leave me alone when I get there. But we will never get there. They never tell us what our “fair share” is because it is 100 percent. We deserve nothing. We have no right to fruit of our own labor. The want it all. As we will recall next month when we celebrate the anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, they offer “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.” Of course, as Lincoln explained their reasoning — see AOC — it is for our own good. They always bestride the necks of the people, not because they want to, but because we are better off for being ridden.
AOC is a very interesting social barometer. First, she cannot accomplish everything that she wants to and she is overly ambitious, if not entirely honest. What is so funny is the response to her...... the left tends to say nothing, or the more extreme left defender her policies. The right suddenly is interested in fact checking her and writing OP ED pieces about how what she wants to do is not feasible........ even though they have largely supported a man in the White House that is ten times as bad, and has actual power to destroy people. AOC gets attention for many reasons...... she is young, she is female, she is a minority, she is very attractive, she has unshakable confidence and charisma and she really gets "it" in the same way that Trump does. Their tactics are different but the root of the techniques isn't any different. I will say one thing I find a little distressing....... the right keeps referring to imagery of her being a little girl. That isn't right. Let's see what the future holds......... she is an extremist.
You left out that she is an extremist and she is incredibly dumb. Those are 2 of the main reasons she gets attention.
It's all about the math not working for this anonymous Republican. Sorry you clowns don't get to cite math anymore after the last 3-30 years.
Actually she's not an extremist and that is what scares Republicans. Health care for all, not using government policy solely to boost the plutocracy, and not turning the planet into a smoking, ruined hellhole are mainstream ideas, not extremist ideas.
It's amazing how I see all these detractors and research their background and just see positions held by these frat boys through pay to play and nepotism with no actual education on the matters they discuss . Here is a prime example. In that article, they quote Thomas Pyle as saying that AOC's proposal "breaks the law of physics". Here is this guy's work experience and education background: "Previously, Pyle was the founder of his own consulting firm, Pyle Consulting, Inc., an active public affairs consulting firm with a wide range of private and not-for-profit customers. Prior to starting his own firm, Pyle served as vice president of the Rhoads Group in Washington, DC where he represented and advised a variety of association and corporate clients in meeting their strategic public policy goals and priorities. Additionally, he also served as director of federal affairs for a major integrated manufacturing and services company focusing on energy, environment, regulatory and transportation issues. Before coming to the private sector, Pyle held numerous positions on Capitol Hill including serving a policy analyst for the Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the Congressional Western Caucus, as well as other legislative staff positions. Pyle holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Southern California" So a political science degree holder who is a career lobbyist is making claims about "breaking the law of physics". These guys arent policy experts. They are pay to play frat boys who are trying to extract as much money from the DC lobbying revolving door. I see zero worth in these people's comments.
Another corollary of the AOC fear permeating the OsTrigoverse - - Republicans used to tell themselves a acomforting tale about how left-leaning young folks would grow out of it, because they would take some share of the ever-expanding american pie, move to the suburbs as they got older, etc etc, and start seeing things from a more GOP friendly vantage point. That's not going to happen anymore, for a number of reasons, but mostly becasuse the American pie has been devoured by the plutocracy, among other things, so the hate and fear is a lot more intense now.
The last thing the GOP establishment wants is for someone like AOC to start mainstreaming conversation about tax hikes for the 1% so it totally makes sense that they’d want to counter any Green New Deal proposals ASAP. The impressive thing that AOC is doing now which is very much what Trump did in 15/16 is turning that attention into more attention on the issue she’s wanting to talk about by getting inside the heads of Republicans like Trump did with Democrats and the media. The attention the right wing is giving her could absolutely backfire in 2021 and beyond. Only the issues AOC is bringing to light are actual issues that aren't fabricated like Mexicans bringing rapists to the US. Climate Change economics and reversing the tax givaways the 1% give to themselves through politicians like Paul Ryan and Donald Trump... are popular issues if they are debated correctly. AOC is doing what Trump did to us two years before he got elected. Its just that her issues are real issues. I'd say "Don't fall into the same trap we did with Trump" but I actually care about these issues like Climate Change Economic Policy so GO FOR IT!! More AOC threads please.
