The Green New Deal has always rested on deception. Ocasio-Cortez and her backers have argued that we are facing catastrophic emergency and that if we don't act immediately the looming devastation will be unavoidable. But at the same time, the plan is a wish list of ideas that American socialists would be pushing regardless of the climate issue, and they are in no way necessary to address the global emergency: free college, more union jobs, free healthcare for all, economic security, and "guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States."
The resolution on the Green New Deal, by the way, was co-sponsored by six 2020 presidential candidates: Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar.
Ocasio-Cortez and her allies are of course free to make the case for why the U.S. should move toward a socialist economy. But they don't get to use the pretext of a global emergency to do so. You can make a case that scientists have warned of disastrous consequences without action to curb carbon emissions, and try to shame those who are blocking action. But it's another thing to define "serious action on climate change" as requiring people to embrace AOC's economic vision." Byron York
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It doesn't get better this. The clown admits that what he and AOC want is to kill capitalism and create a commend economy. pl
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/aocs-chief-of-staff-just-killed-the-green-new-deal
“free college, more union jobs, free healthcare for all, economic security, and guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security”
These are all points aimed at and/or achieved throughout the last 50 years in many western Europe countries. None of these countries had or has “commend economy”.
I find that BTB (i.e. “Bucky the Bartender”) is fulfilling the role she was auditioned and selected to play by Justice Democrats (i.e. George Soros Inc.). She is a virtual air head but dutifully regurgitates the lines she is being fed by her masters. By the way, Justice Dems also sponsored Omar and Pressley – – two other stalwart members of the Libtard Party.
I looked up “socialism” and the definition that came up is; “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
What AOC and company sounds like proposing is a “Scandinavian social welfare state”. You can argue whether it’s feasible or good for the US but the last time I saw pure socialism was just before the Soviet Union imploded (not counting the Hermit Kingdom).
Well, now I feel better about never having gotten around to reading the Green New Deal document.
It wasn’t from personal “lack of diligence”. It was for personal “conservation of time”.
b
Most of us here do not wish to submit to government in the way you Europeans have.
B,
These guys want to almost instantly destroy $trillions in equity and wages in the healthcare, energy sectors and other sectors, as well as eliminate the growing dominance of the US in energy production. This isn’t just changing the US economy. It is destroying it – and for what? Most Americans enjoy great prosperity and freedom. And the hope that something better emerges from the ashes? Sometimes I think these people aren’t just goofy, but are actual paid enemies of America.
But this revelation by doofus Chakrabarti is most certainly the last nail in the coffin for the democrat party, which was already doing a great job of alienating every day Americans. Trump is going to win in a landslide.
Beware socialists bearing planet-saving schemes? At least Marx and Engels were honest in their manifesto.
This revelation of what many already suspected will do untold harm to those scientists genuinely trying to warn us of the impact of anthropogenic climate change. The very last thing these people need is people like AOC and her band of subversive revolutionaries hijacking the issue for their political ends. If I were a climate scientist, I’d be real pissed right now. The GND just became the poster child for the conspiracy theories of ‘climate change deniers’. That’s quite an achievement Congresswoman.
The problem is in many sectors of our economy which are controlled by cartels, we already have a command economy – but commanded by the cartel owners. Ask any farmer on Monsanto’s system or Butterballs system- as examples- the farmer is tied to the corporation as a sharecropper : he must buy all his work inputs from the corporation ; operate exactly according to their procedures ; and he can only sell into a cartelized market where he is a price taker. Yes there are still independents but they have to get big to survive . And a competent farmer in the corporate systèm will make a good living – he will be, as a colleague who started out as a farm boy but got a good job with a huge processor : “farmers are the bottom of the food chain”.
The cartels command via capturing the agencies which are supposed to regulate them and run them to the benefit of their profits. Why else are prescription drugs in the USA the most expensive in the world? Because the pharmaceutical cartel commands it!
Marx said capitalism would destroy itself and this systematic corruption of the government , which is supposed to work for all citizens, in order to benefit the profits of the very few, will do just that. Do these corporatists (they are Not capitalists! Greedy rent-.seekers, rather) not see the consequences of their unregulated greed? Do they want to prove Marx right? So they can have another airplane?
Command economies do not work, whoever’s doing the commanding. Except in wartime.
“’Do you guys think of it as a climate thing’ Chakrabarti continued. ‘Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.’”
Chakrabarti’s point is a bit more subtle than you present. In his view, the climate problems that are emerging are a function of how the economy is organized and if you want to avoid a potentially existential crisis, you need, at minimum, to re-think how the economy is organized.
I think his point is not that the “Green New Deal” is a sham, but rather that economic reform and a sustainable environmental dispensation are inextricably linked.
Is he right? I’m not sure. But it also appears there are issues with the current economic assumptions that need to be addressed. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/21/death-of-neoliberalism-crisis-in-western-politics
Let’s see what happens . . . .
All of them have more of a “command economy” than the United States and none have created the wealth that the US has since 1980 and most cannot sustain these things (to the degree they have achieved them) under current conditions.
The more valid issue is that Scandinavian Socialism, when it worked, required a level of local control and decentralization that AOC and Sanders do not appear to be advocating for.
If you want to make the US into the image and likeness of another state, you might want to understand that model first.
How’s the EU economy doing, need a couple million hard working Mexicans? You don’t have that diversity yet so better get Merkel to “shake a leg” before she’s voted out of office.
Has anyone announced their candidacy in her congressional district yet?
Unfortunately Capitalism is doing a fine job of killing itself, as finance has mutated from the efficient transfer of value, to the manufacture of money as an end itself. Bankers used to understand they served a function to society, in order to have the degrees of control they have(try getting a loan, if you think otherwise). Now its just matter of growing the money supply, in order to have more chips in the casino.
It appears the threat of “climate change” is what the left sees as the reason everyone will agree to give the government more control of the economy, so they have no qualms about repeatedly pushing that reason, as ridiculous as it is.
It sort of reminds me of Paul Wolfowitz’ statement about WMDs and the lead up to the Iraq War in 2003. He said that the WMD reason was the one everyone could agree on, so they pushed that reason hard and heavy, no matter what the intel said.
I guess when you want something bad enough, you can’t let the truth get in the way.
Ray, Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of The Justice Democrats,
is now on CNN as a contributor. She’s articulate & attractive so likely
she’ll get a lot more air time spewing The J.D’s current version of the
old Frankfurt School propaganda
Well if that true. Congrats your more versed then he is. You said it more intelligently and more explianitive then he did.
Pat
Haven’t you all your life been a member of one of the largest socialized system of the world, the U.S. military? It offers cradle to grave socialism for its members and their families who submit to their government in a far more obedient way than most Europeans would do.
It is curious how that fits to a quasi libertarian view of economic issues.
“The clown admits that what he and AOC want is to kill capitalism and create a commend economy.”
Sorry, true capitalism – as opposed to oligarchic crony-capitalism – died long ago in the US, largely murdered in its sleep by the right with the aid of the fake left. As for your understandable objections to a ‘command economy’, what would you call the FOMC deciding the price of the most important commodity in any supposedly capitalist economy (i.e., money)? The US is already ruled by a monetary Gosplan subservient to a cabal of kleptocrats. Perhaps it’s simply time for a change, despite the undoubted flaws in what AOC and her ilk are proposing and how they are promoting it.
b
My submission to the monastic socialism necessary to run the military was a personal sacrifice that I do not want to see for my society as a whole.
John Minehan
“it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all”. I can’t imagine a less subtle admission that the “Green” credentials were simply added as the excuse chosen to scare an electorate into voting for the GND’s socialist agenda.
If we do need to save the World, I’m sure as hell the solution will come from an approach where we put the problem first, not the solution.
Well said, sir. What too few in society realize is that the real sacrifice of those who serve is less that some of them lose their lives but that all of them choose to surrender a significant degree of their freedom. Most people who say, “thank you for your service” have no idea what they are thanking the serviceman for.
When I was a young college student long ago, every basic economics textbook had a section explaining how an agriculture system of small self-directed farmers was grossly superior to the Soviet corporatization of collective farms, how it produced incredible surpluses while communist countries could barely feed themselves, how millions of independent decisions produced results superior to those of any centralized plan. Today we have an agriculture nearly as centralized (though not nearly as coercive) as the collective farms. We still produce surpluses on demand, so of course the story is that this, rather than independent decision making, represents the glory of free-market capitalism.
The official story was always a bit of a con. Our congressman had the (to me) remarkable ability to modulate seamlessly from deploring socialist systems of choosing winners and losers into proclaiming the absolute necessity of agricultural price supports. Subsidizing production beyond demand of course had nothing to do with the marvelous efficiency that created incredible quantities of milk, cheese, and wheat.
Today the independent farmers have lost control (and in many cases abandoned the farms). The official story glorifies the success of free market capitalism while going light on the free market part of the concept. Official stories always celebrate the participants who have the power. That is not to say that the official story is wrong, exactly, only that it is biased and that we can’t just accept the biases at face value. Infringements on the concept of free markets may be deplorable, but they are also part and parcel of the system that we have. A little honesty about that would go a long ways toward clarifying the possible solutions to some problems.
Appeals to absolute principals are generally a path to disaster. Human affairs are run with compromises that steer between bad effects of one absolute principle and equally bad effects of the opposite (often equally plausible) absolute principle. Aristotle made that case 2500 years ago, and all of history since has confirmed him.
I used to be in climate science. This is a vast multi-disciplinary field and no one in it comes close to understanding the full body of knowledge of ALL constituent sub-fields, radiative transfer, stratospheric chemistry, ocean dynamics, etc, and the critical details on how they are implemented into numerical models. You work in your area and trust that everyone who is working in the other areas is on the trail of truth.
I overheard two colleagues discussing some climatic observational data that conflicted with ‘the narrative’. One said something like “It doesn’t matter if we are wrong, the economic/political changes we are pushing need to be implemented ANYWAY.” They were quite willing to be Ahmed Chalabi ‘heroes in error’. It was a red pill moment.
Please note that most climate scientists are on the trail of truth. We just cannot assume that any given individual is and if someone is pushing radical societal transformation, look for ulterior motive, especially money. The internationalist financialists (globalists) stand to gain the most, but their Marxist handmaidens in the academy are more than happy to cooperate for a slice of the pie as long as the destruction of Western Civilization is the result.
The climate IS changing. (So what? The climate is ALWAYS changing.) Climate change as a threat to Western Civilization is not even in the noise compared to the deeply hostile and utterly unassimilable hordes now flooding into the West. Climate change is a Ben Franklin stage 3 area of study along with “painting, poetry, and music.” Our forebears let the wrong people into our civilization, so we are back to stage 1. God help us all.
https://foundersquotes.com/founding-fathers-quote/i-must-study-politics-and-war-that-my-sons-may-have-liberty-to-study-mathematics-and-philosophy/
Sir – the disciplined self-sacrifice of the warrior is essential to the survival of any civilization. Hedonistic hothouse flowers are useless in any existential struggle. If the people become soft and weak, they will lose to the hard and hungry men.
I should add that the disciplined self-sacrifice of men is required to defend civilization, speaking as a gentle man, not a warrior other than as an effort of will.
It wouldn’t matter.
As Pelosi said, a glass of water could win as a Democrat in that district.
If anything, she would be primaried by someone even more looney than her.
Equating Communism and socialism is not helpful because the two are wildly different.
Communism rejects the notion of price signals in the economy – regarding it and things such as competition as “wasteful”. Socialism does nothing of the sort.
It may however be that AOC. and her compatriots are Communists, not socialists, if they suggest that all prices and wages need to be dictated.
I am a believer in free markets, but some markets, by their very nature, aren’t – and the best solution to that problem is Government with a big stick. Then there is the question of public goods, monopolists and rentiers.
To put that another way, don’t talk to me about “market forces” applied to heart attack or stroke victims.
I need to challenge that a bit. Personal sacrifice might get you into such a life, but I have a hard time believing that it would get you through an entire military career. I have never personally known an example of that. Career soldiers either start with a reasonably compatible set of values or they adopt them. If you chose to live in the military for twenty-plus years, then I have to suppose that your values are reasonably compatible with a socialist ethic. Military people never call it that (in the US), but for me that is what it is.
You go where you are told, do what you are told, and are provided for in ways far exceeding what is available to other citizens. You can’t leave at will. The leverage that you are able to obtain comes via the very sort of “political” maneuvering that constitutes the bedrock of criticism of Socialist programs. I am not saying that any of this is wrong or unnecessary, only that it is not free agents competing in a free market. It is what most people mean by “socialist” these days.
How does this matter? Mostly it doesn’t. What I am calling “socialist” values do not imply a “Socialist” ideology. (Democratic socialists don’t seem to have a “Socialist” ideology either.) They are similar to other human values with a greater emphasis on the individual’s participation in larger organizations. Sometimes they do matter, usually when someone holds one set of values for things he knows about and asserts quite different values for things are not part of his own experience. An example is retired military raging against proposed “socialist” features in a health care that they have never participated in. Their health care is as “socialist” as it gets. Their opposition seems to me to be motivated by pure tribalism.
MP98,
Let me clarify. Has anyone announced their candidacy in her congressional district as a Democrat? She deserves a primary challenger.
fredw
Have you ever been in the military? I think not. You are yet another jealous son of a b—h who begrudges the soldier compensation for a life of sacrifice about which you really know very little. Do professional soldiers accept the logic of their code pf sacrifice? They do. BTW, most retired officers do extremely well in business after retirement. The exceptions are typically people who were not very good at soldiering either and who cling to the government’s teat as consultants after they leave service.
walrus
You know very well that Communism is just one of the more extreme forms of Socialism. What is being espoused now by the Left in the US is not Scandinavian style socialism. It is the abolition of our present social and economic norms and the imposition of an SJW dictatorship.
You do have a way with words. Another comment that makes me wish for a “like” button. I appreciate the elegant and concise expression of the thought.
b,
No, absolutely no Western European country has been “guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage” for all its citizens. How could the state fulfill such a guarantee, anyways?
Also, “free college” and “free healthcare for all” have to be paid for by the state’s tax income if it is not paid for directly by fees or through health insurance.
The Socialist command economies of Eastern Europe had job guarantees, but they worked a little bit differently from how AOC and her bunch of Millennial Socialists imagine it in their naive fantasies: Usually citizens had a right to get a job and not be unemployed – but at the same time everyone also had an *OBLIGATION* to work. Refusing to work was considered severely anti-social behavior and triggered punishments or re-education efforts by the authoritarian state.
That’s a totally different concept from the Green New Deal, which foolishly promises “economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work.”
This makes me think of today’s Dilbert comic:
https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1150417167390654464
Wouldn’t surprise me. The genocidal Cambodian Pol Pot regime we’re all starry eyed SJW types.
Walrus,
the terminology can be tricky: according to the original ideologues of Communism, it is a classless system of a society in which private property is also abolished. Therefore, there is no “economy” as you think of it in Communism, and thus also no price signals for anything. And no markets. And money does not exist, either. I don’t think that can work in any way, but that’s what the Communists believe.
Socialism was considered a kind of stepping stone on the way to the Communist utopia, as implemented in the Soviet Union, aka USSR, “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”.
Practically speaking, the Warsaw Pact countries were all authoritarian dictatorships with command-and-control economies and, in some cases, some meaningless veneers of Western-style parliamentary democracy, for instance the “German Democratic Republic”, where I was born.
Based on the statement you wrote, what you probably prefer is some kind of democratic political system with a social market economy and political mechanisms to break up monopolies, cartels and the likes. Note that even the Scandinavian countries, which are often misunderstood as “Socialist”, are in fact just democratic social market economies with very high levels of taxation and redistribution and social services provided by the government.
fredw,
“…are provided for in ways far exceeding what is available to other citizens.” … “Their health care is as “socialist” as it gets.”
You obviously were never in the enlisted ranks.
Walrus –
While I appreciate the hyperbole, Pol Pot’s heroes were Stalin and Mao, Those two were hardly SJWs.
Walrus,
the funny thing is that Pol Pot would have quite possibly executed a person like AOC on the Killing Fields for something that in his specific flavour of Communist ideology was called “urban degeneracy”.
Recall that the Khmer Rouge evacuated (!) the Cambodian capital city after they had conquered it and resettled (well, it was more like a death march) almost all of its inhabitants into the countryside, where they lived in agricultural communes and were forced to work in farming. All the spoils of the modern urban consumer society were completely alien and repugnant to the Khmer Rouge, which had a strange blend of Maoist and isolationist ideology with an almost manical focus on rural agriculture.
Interestingly, the Khmer Rouge were a lot more popular among Western European Communist extremists than among the Warsaw Pact governments, who viewed them as unreliable and quite insane. The Communists in the West really struggled to understand why Socialist brother country Vietnam, which had just defeated the USA in the Vietnam War, subsequently intervened in Cambodia and kicked the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh. They even coined the term “Socialist Imperialists” to denounce the dastardly acts of the Vietnamese against fellow Communist Cambodia.
Do these SJW self-ascribed progressive “Socialists” really understand what they wish for while they chisel away democratic standards and mechanisms of the market economy? I seriously doubt it.
fred
Do officers have better health care? Smaller stitches?
“You obviously were never in the enlisted ranks.”
You obviously are given to asserting things without the support of actual knowledge. I served in the 494th MI battalion in Can Tho and later at CMIC in Saigon. Where were you stationed?
In what way does their health care differ from “socialist” services. They go to doctors chosen for them and provided without payment. “Single payer” is the epitome of free market practice by comparison. I am not saying that they do not deserve it, only calling it what it is.
Col.,
Nope, but you do get a marginally better bedside manner.
I know I’m late to the fray, but there is a lot of good discussion here. The new found shock about what the Green New Deal entails is amusing. The whole resolution is just a little over two thousand words even with all the “whereas” and “therefore” language. It’s written quite plainly with no hidden meanings. Chakrabarti had this to say about the recent outrage.
“They finally got us! The #GreenNewDeal is a plan to solve climate change AND reverse wealth inequality by proactively building the new energy economy in America. That means building solar panels, bullet trains, electric cars, batteries, new smart grids, and so much more.
If only we had talked about it right there on the first page of the Green New Deal resolution…”
I see it as no more a command economy that our current picking of economic winners and losers through regulations, subsidies and mandates. I feel the call for “guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage” and “providing all people of the United States with economic security” is a reach, but that’s been in the GND from the beginning.
I agree with Walrus that equating communism with socialism is not helpful. Communism relies on a vanguard party to rule without interference from other factions. The CPSU, the CCP, the nazi party, Pol Pot and other totalitarians have more in common with our push for a unitary executive. They use socialist rhetoric and even democratic rhetoric to convince the people of their legitimacy to rule just as those pushing for a unitary executive claim they alone speak for the American people. The commies are bad people, not because they’re socialists, but because they are totalitarians.
Fred, officers and enlisted are seen and treated by the same medics, PAs and doctors. I never got a better bed in a hospital ward because I was an officer. In the field, medical care is treated in the same way as chow. The enlisted get fed and treated before the officers.
Well said. Wish I could ssteal thisss
TTG
The NSDAP was a mass membership party.
Is it just me, or is the EU even more of a dead-man-walking at this point than the US? Mira, I know payoffs and blackmail run the world, but if the EU gets any more spineless, it will have to be swept up with a squeegee and a dust pan.
Only it’s clearly not a plan to solve climate change, at least no more than it’s a plan to solve world hunger, cure cancer or anything else. It is an ideological statement that socialism is better for Americans/mankind and it should have been left at that.
The GND Resolution starts with its justification: “Whereas the October 2018 report entitled ‘Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that..”
And Chakrabarti now says: “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?”.
This revelation shows that the GND’s sponsors are emphatically not serious about preventing dangerous climate change, they are simply ideologues who, like so may others, chose climate change as a marketing tool. Chakrabarti has at a stroke demolished the GND’s “green” credentials, its rationale and thus its credibility. His statement was at best stupid and at worst potentially catastrophic. The man is a idiot, AOC should fire him.
TTG,
There is no “new found shock”, McConnell had the thing up for a vote in the Senate last year. I believe Senator Schumer called the bill a sham; which must have been rather insulting to Senator Markey of Massachussets who sponsored the thing.
Steal away! My interest is in the thoughts, not the credit. If these thoughts can help someone see more clearly, use them with my blessing.
Fred, then what was the Washington Examiner’s outrage over this unexpected disclosure? Clearly they did not read the thing. AOC should have written the thing as a tweet. Seems most Americans can’t maintain concentration beyond 280 characters… SQUIRREL!
Maybe so. But I would add the following:
that the flagship of climate change, little Miss Climate,
better known as Greta Thunberg, is set for a visit to the US.
And if the reception of her at Davos etc is any indication,
then one can only imagine what media frenzy and circus to expect.
IOW: to be continued.
TTG,
When the XO says you aren’t going to the hospital you are going to sea you go to sea and are treated by the onboard medic not the PA or doctor at the naval hospital ashore. Needs of the service and all that. Personal gripe having watched such a thing play out for a training op that left a submariner with 2 ruptured ear drums and disqualified for further submarine service. As I told Pat I understand and aree to all that and the differential is marginally better bedside manner.
fredw,
You don’t get treatment just because you exist. It is a benifit of active service.
TTG,
Their “shock” is an effort to drive internet traffic to their website.
I am late to the discussion. But I have to say that I am surprised always when Americans look to European countries and admire their socialized systems as being wonderful. Wasn’t there a reason we fought to separate ourselves from those systems, though then they were not as pronounced perhaps?
My background in English and American literature always makes me retreat to my Emerson and his ideas in regard to “self-reliance.” I think of Thoreau in his little cabin at Walden Pond as he tried to “live deliberately.”
I think of my parents, who were not at all wealthy, paying for whatever health insurance program they could afford for us, though as the children of immigrants they had not had health insurance. They had depended on country doctors who often agreed to be paid in produce from the farm. I saw the pride (and a little jealousy) in my mother’s comments when she saw what my college medical insurance policy covered when I won a full-tuition/fees scholarship. She knew my health insurance was far better then hers and my father’s.
The opportunities our country provides for each person who wants to work for his or her goals are what are important far more than anything that we get from the government.
And I should add that though we were far from wealthy and probably closer to lower middle class, I felt rich because of the opportunities I could see in my future.
We need to work hard to provide more opportunities rather than to give benefits through taxes.