Whatever you think of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s undergraduate politics, you have to admit the former Bronx bartender has more charisma than all the Democratic presidential candidates put together.
At Bernie Sanders’ packed rallies in Iowa and New Hampshire, she always stole the show.
Tapping the 30-year-old Democratic Socialist as his sidekick after his heart attack in October was the smartest thing he’s done. She has sent his poll numbers soaring and helps “Bernie Bros” feel they are part of a dynamic millennial movement, not the last gasp of a worn out 78-year-old socialist.
Wednesday, when AOC appeared on ABC’s “The View,” her star power shone brighter than her sequined dress.
She was there to laud Sanders as a fighter for “people like us . . . working families . . . He wants a political revolution at the ballot box.”
But AOC also is using Sanders as a vehicle for the most dangerous idea to hit those unsuspecting working families: the Green New Deal.
Her pet project, which she launched in February 2019, a month after assuming office, is a multitrillion-dollar, zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions plan aimed at redistributing wealth and radically transforming the American economy.
Her former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, admitted last year, in a conversation reported by The Washington Post, that the Green New Deal “wasn’t originally a climate thing at all, [but] a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
Now Sanders has adopted it as the centerpiece of his climate agenda, and the other candidates aren’t far behind.
In just 12 months, what was an unthinkably extreme restructure of the American economy has moved into the mainstream of Democratic policy.
That’s quite some achievement for the fresh-faced freshman representative.
“This is our World War II,” she said. “We call for a national, social industrial and economic mobilization not seen since World War II . . . It’s inevitable that we can use the transition to 100 percent renewable energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social and racial justice in America.”
Danger, Will Robinson.
Sanders and the other Democratic candidates are on board because they say climate change is an “existential crisis.” They promise to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, lock the country into zero emissions by 2045 (Tom Steyer) or 2050 (Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg), close down fossil-fuel industries and endorse some form of carbon tax which will jack up energy bills for every American. So much for “working families.”
Bloomberg, new to the stage, has ruled out the Green New Deal as a vote-killer (no kidding), but has previously called for a carbon tax and bankrolled efforts to shut down fossil fuel plants.
Even if you buy the climate-apocalypse claim, anyone who reads the Paris agreement, from which President Trump wisely extracted us, would see the true agenda in its preamble. It is a grab bag of social causes, including “climate justice,” “efforts to eradicate poverty,” “the rights of indigenous peoples, migrants . . . gender equality, empowerment of women” and “intergenerational equity.”
This is a social-engineering project which has nothing to do with fresh air or clean water and everything to do with controlling how we live.
Its guiding principle is “equity,” which is another word for the disastrous socialist goal of “equality of outcome,” achieved by a massive wealth transfer from rich to poor nations.
And even if every nation, including China, were to abide by the Paris agreement, Earth’s temperature would be reduced by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers. At a cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion a year.
It doesn’t matter how charismatic the salesman, the Green New Deal is a fraud.
Mike buys his backers
Here’s a glimpse of what Michael Bloomberg’s billions buy.
Last week, when the tiny technocrat was fending off accusations of sexism, racism and downright heartlessness, endorsements flooded in from women and people of color.
One was from Georgia Rep. Lucy Kay McBath, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus: “Mike Bloomberg is the kind of fighter we need in the White House . . . I’m proud to stand with him in this race.”
Job well done. But turns out Bloomberg spent $115 million to elect McBath and 20 other Democrats in 2018.
He boasted about it in December: “I supported . . . 21 winning candidates in the mid-terms. One of them was Lucy McBath . . . I got to know Lucy through an organization I helped found called Everytown for Gun Safety.”
And therein lies a legal problem, according to Adam Laxalt, outside counsel for public ethics watchdog Americans for Public Trust, which last week filed complaints against McBath and two other Democrats with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Federal Election Commission.
McBath was the paid national spokesperson for Everytown when she filed to run for Congress on March 5, 2018, says Laxalt. One week later, she appeared on CNN both as spokesperson for Everytown and a candidate. Wearing two hats is a breach of FEC “coordinated communication” rules which require a 120-day “cooling off” period between roles.
In April 2018, McBath took a “leave of absence” from Everytown, which subsequently endorsed her and spent more than $4 million on her campaign, money the APT alleges constitutes illegal campaign contributions.
“The law is there because if you could coordinate a congressional candidate with a group with unlimited [funds], then federal spending limits would not exist,” says Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general. “Everytown spent more than anyone [else] in that race so that’s a huge benefit to her campaign . . . “I know of no other examples where someone has gone from an outside dark-money group into a congressional race in the same cycle.”
Laxalt says the breach is “especially alarming” because McBath sits on the House Judiciary Committee with oversight over the Justice Department.
McBath’s Republican incumbent rival Karen Handel, who lost her seat by just 1 percent, is still sore: “What Lucy neglects to mention is that she is bought and paid for by Michael Bloomberg and Democrat special interests,” she tweeted after McBath endorsed Bloomberg.
A billionaire with such political influence is the very definition of an oligarch.