Just wow. I can't understand why some feel the need to make a politician a rockstar. I mean you end up with a "me first" person....like the president. People continue to double down on being dumb.
I can’t understand the fear she strikes in the hearts of repubs, being 1/435 of a body and a freshman one at that. Shiver me timbers.
I don;t understand the fear either. There is enough things of substance to discuss and disagree about.
But a fuckin comic book? Really? If that was a Trump comic book you'd have already lost your shit and come up with another nickname.
I could give a rats ass that someone made her into a super hero comic book and yes, I’d love a Tesm Trump Treason comic book to ridicule. If only the repubs were so creative but you know, less art, more god.
The scardy cat repubs would be wiser to ignore her but you know, BOO, boogeywomen and all.
Ocasio is a page out of the Trump playbook.
She isn't your typical politician and she attacks the status quo.
That is why I liked Trump and why I like Ocasio.
What I don't like about either of them is their crazy ideas.
Well you are in quite the quandary then, eh? Crazy ideas tend to come with crazy ass people.
Birds of a feather I guess?
They strike me as the same person, on polar opposites of the spectrum. I think people will recoil from her ideas as people recoil from Trump's personality.
Polar opposites as in Trump is a total lie and she is totally authentic?
OOOOhHHHHHH!!! We can do this for days! I'll go next!
She want to save the planet and he doesn't care about it!
He wants to deregulate things and she wants more regulation!
Just wow. I can't understand why some feel the need to make a politician a rockstar. I mean you end up with a "me first" person....like the president. People continue to double down on being dumb.
I can’t understand the fear she strikes in the hearts of repubs, being 1/435 of a body and a freshman one at that. Shiver me timbers.
I don;t understand the fear either. There is enough things of substance to discuss and disagree about.
But a fuckin comic book? Really? If that was a Trump comic book you'd have already lost your shit and come up with another nickname.
I could give a rats ass that someone made her into a super hero comic book and yes, I’d love a Tesm Trump Treason comic book to ridicule. If only the repubs were so creative but you know, less art, more god.
The scardy cat repubs would be wiser to ignore her but you know, BOO, boogeywomen and all.
Ocasio is a page out of the Trump playbook.
She isn't your typical politician and she attacks the status quo.
That is why I liked Trump and why I like Ocasio.
What I don't like about either of them is their crazy ideas.
Well you are in quite the quandary then, eh? Crazy ideas tend to come with crazy ass people.
Birds of a feather I guess?
They strike me as the same person, on polar opposites of the spectrum. I think people will recoil from her ideas as people recoil from Trump's personality.
Polar opposites as in Trump is a total lie and she is totally authentic?
OOOOhHHHHHH!!! We can do this for days! I'll go next!
She want to save the planet and he doesn't care about it!
He wants to deregulate things and she wants more regulation!
Ok, ok your turn!
Wow, you got excited. I agree with your assessment, do you agree with mine?
They both take extreme positions and seem to be more concerned with the optics than the execution. They both appeal to the core of the base, and do not seem to be concerned on how to win the middle.
Just wow. I can't understand why some feel the need to make a politician a rockstar. I mean you end up with a "me first" person....like the president. People continue to double down on being dumb.
I can’t understand the fear she strikes in the hearts of repubs, being 1/435 of a body and a freshman one at that. Shiver me timbers.
I don;t understand the fear either. There is enough things of substance to discuss and disagree about.
But a fuckin comic book? Really? If that was a Trump comic book you'd have already lost your shit and come up with another nickname.
I could give a rats ass that someone made her into a super hero comic book and yes, I’d love a Tesm Trump Treason comic book to ridicule. If only the repubs were so creative but you know, less art, more god.
The scardy cat repubs would be wiser to ignore her but you know, BOO, boogeywomen and all.
Ocasio is a page out of the Trump playbook.
She isn't your typical politician and she attacks the status quo.
That is why I liked Trump and why I like Ocasio.
What I don't like about either of them is their crazy ideas.
Well you are in quite the quandary then, eh? Crazy ideas tend to come with crazy ass people.
Birds of a feather I guess?
They strike me as the same person, on polar opposites of the spectrum. I think people will recoil from her ideas as people recoil from Trump's personality.
Polar opposites as in Trump is a total lie and she is totally authentic?
Trump is a fraud, but I don't know that she is authentic. 45 days in congress is not enough time to draw that type of judgment for me.
They strike me as the same person, on polar opposites of the spectrum. I think people will recoil from her ideas as people recoil from Trump's personality.
Polar opposites as in Trump is a total lie and she is totally authentic?
OOOOhHHHHHH!!! We can do this for days! I'll go next!
She want to save the planet and he doesn't care about it!
He wants to deregulate things and she wants more regulation!
Ok, ok your turn!
Wow, you got excited. I agree with your assessment, do you agree with mine?
I have given up on Trump but have not given up on Cortez yet.
I am very critical of her but still hope that she can do some good.
What I do worry is that we try to become too socialist and spend ourselves even deeper in shit.
Massive spending already occurs in ways that are unhealthy for the country, its citizens, and the planet. A change in focus of that spending has the potential to improve the situation. That shouldn’t automatically be seen as a negative.
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
They both take extreme positions and seem to be more concerned with the optics than the execution. They both appeal to the core of the base, and do not seem to be concerned on how to win the middle.
They both take extreme positions and seem to be more concerned with the optics than the execution. They both appeal to the core of the base, and do not seem to be concerned on how to win the middle.
Agree.
Yup. Spot on. While I've expressed admiration for her enthusiasm, she goes with her gut. If she's going to propose radical ideas, she needs to have them fully fleshed out. Otherwise they'll be dismissed not only by the opposition party, but by her own party, as is currently happening. She has a bit of learning to do, and needs a good mentor, because she isn't ready to storm Washington solo. A little time coalition building, negotiating, listening, and moderating would go a long way toward getting her ideas accepted. Making bold declarations and trying to shake up her own party will get her rogue or maverick status, which may not work to her advantage.
"I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
They both take extreme positions and seem to be more concerned with the optics than the execution. They both appeal to the core of the base, and do not seem to be concerned on how to win the middle.
Agree.
Yup. Spot on. While I've expressed admiration for her enthusiasm, she goes with her gut. If she's going to propose radical ideas, she needs to have them fully fleshed out. Otherwise they'll be dismissed not only by the opposition party, but by her own party, as is currently happening. She has a bit of learning to do, and needs a good mentor, because she isn't ready to storm Washington solo. A little time coalition building, negotiating, listening, and moderating would go a long way toward getting her ideas accepted. Making bold declarations and trying to shake up her own party will get her rogue or maverick status, which may not work to her advantage.
The left complains that conservatives are “obsessing” over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, there is a reason for that: Ocasio-Cortez is driving the agenda of today’s Democratic Party — and her economic illiteracy is dangerous.
Case in point: Last week, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the tanking of a deal negotiated by her fellow Democrats in which Amazon promised to build a new headquarters in Long Island City, New York, right next to her congressional district. Amazon’s departure cost the city between 25,000 and 40,000 new jobs. Forget the tech workers whom Amazon would have employed. Gone are all the unionized construction jobs to build the headquarters, as well as thousands of jobs created by allthesmallbusinesses — restaurants, bodegas, dry cleaners and food carts — that were preparing to open or expand to serve Amazon employees. They are devastated by Amazon’s withdrawal. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Post.)
Ocasio-Cortez was not disturbed at all. “We were subsidizing those jobs,” she said. “Frankly, if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district, ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that amount of money if we wanted to.”
No, you can’t. Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to realize that New York does not have $3 billion in cash sitting around waiting to be spent on her socialist dreams. The subsidies to Amazon were tax incentives, not cash payouts. It is Amazon’s money, which New York agreed to make tax-exempt, so the company would invest it in building its new headquarters, hiring new workers and generating tens of billions in new tax revenue.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
BTW, we better not fucking ban combustible engines. I'm a car guy. I'm all for green and efficient, but I want my classic in the garage and never want to let it go. And don't get me started on self driving vehicles. If I get driven everywhere, just fucking shoot me now.
The left complains that conservatives are “obsessing” over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, there is a reason for that: Ocasio-Cortez is driving the agenda of today’s Democratic Party — and her economic illiteracy is dangerous.
Case in point: Last week, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the tanking of a deal negotiated by her fellow Democrats in which Amazon promised to build a new headquarters in Long Island City, New York, right next to her congressional district. Amazon’s departure cost the city between 25,000 and 40,000 new jobs. Forget the tech workers whom Amazon would have employed. Gone are all the unionized construction jobs to build the headquarters, as well as thousands of jobs created by allthesmallbusinesses — restaurants, bodegas, dry cleaners and food carts — that were preparing to open or expand to serve Amazon employees. They are devastated by Amazon’s withdrawal. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Post.)
Ocasio-Cortez was not disturbed at all. “We were subsidizing those jobs,” she said. “Frankly, if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district, ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that amount of money if we wanted to.”
No, you can’t. Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to realize that New York does not have $3 billion in cash sitting around waiting to be spent on her socialist dreams. The subsidies to Amazon were tax incentives, not cash payouts. It is Amazon’s money, which New York agreed to make tax-exempt, so the company would invest it in building its new headquarters, hiring new workers and generating tens of billions in new tax revenue.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
BTW, we better not fucking ban combustible engines. I'm a car guy. I'm all for green and efficient, but I want my classic in the garage and never want to let it go. And don't get me started on self driving vehicles. If I get driven everywhere, just fucking shoot me now.
Most of us will 6 feet under and self-driving vehicles will still be just a novelty. I've been hearing about electric vehicles for 30 years and they are nowhere near mainstream...
I do not own a classic, but I love classic cars. What do you have?
The left complains that conservatives are “obsessing” over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, there is a reason for that: Ocasio-Cortez is driving the agenda of today’s Democratic Party — and her economic illiteracy is dangerous.
Case in point: Last week, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the tanking of a deal negotiated by her fellow Democrats in which Amazon promised to build a new headquarters in Long Island City, New York, right next to her congressional district. Amazon’s departure cost the city between 25,000 and 40,000 new jobs. Forget the tech workers whom Amazon would have employed. Gone are all the unionized construction jobs to build the headquarters, as well as thousands of jobs created by allthesmallbusinesses — restaurants, bodegas, dry cleaners and food carts — that were preparing to open or expand to serve Amazon employees. They are devastated by Amazon’s withdrawal. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Post.)
Ocasio-Cortez was not disturbed at all. “We were subsidizing those jobs,” she said. “Frankly, if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district, ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that amount of money if we wanted to.”
No, you can’t. Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to realize that New York does not have $3 billion in cash sitting around waiting to be spent on her socialist dreams. The subsidies to Amazon were tax incentives, not cash payouts. It is Amazon’s money, which New York agreed to make tax-exempt, so the company would invest it in building its new headquarters, hiring new workers and generating tens of billions in new tax revenue.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
Personally, I'm not sure I care who a politically charged article is written by, just that the politically charged article has factual content and logical deductions. Do you disagree that the article has factual content and logical deductions?
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
Personally, I'm not sure I care who a politically charged article is written by, just that the politically charged article has factual content and logical deductions. Do you disagree that the article has factual content and logical deductions?
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
Personally, I'm not sure I care who a politically charged article is written by, just that the politically charged article has factual content and logical deductions. Do you disagree that the article has factual content and logical deductions?
Seeing who he’s worked for and thus represented, his rhetoric has a certain dog whistle appeal and I’m not sure if his content is factual. For me, it’s still that Amazon doesn’t need the grease.
AOC, Sanders, and Warren Are the Real Centrists Because They Speak for Most Americans
DO YOU KNOW what really annoys me about the media’s coverage of U.S. politics, and especially the Democratic Party?
Google the words “moderate” or “centrist” and a small group of nameswill instantly appear: Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, and, yes, Howard Schultz.
Bloomberg is considered a “centrist thought leader” (Vanity Fair). Klobuchar is the “straight-shooting pragmatist” (Time). Biden is the “quintessential centrist” (CNN) and the “last hurrah for moderate Democrats” (New York magazine). Shultz is gifted with high-profileinterviewslots to make his “centrist independent” pitch to voters.
Now Google the freshman House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s been dubbed a member of the “loony left” (Washington Post), a “progressive firebrand” (Reuters), and a “liberal bomb thrower” (New York Times).
Got that? Biden, Schultz and Co., we are told, sit firmly in the middle of American politics; Ocasio-Cortez stands far out on its fringes.
This is a brazen distortion of reality, a shameless and demonstrable lie that is repeated day after day in newspaper op-eds and cable news headlines.
“It’s easy to call what AOC is doing as far-lefty, but nothing could be farther from the truth,” Nick Hanauer, the venture capitalist and progressive activist, told MSNBC in January. “When you advocate for economic policies that benefit the broad majority of citizens, that’s true centrism. What Howard Schultz represents, the centrism that he represents, is really just trickle-down economics.”
“He is not the centrist,” continued Hanauer. “AOC is the centrist.”
Hanauer is right. And Bernie Sanders is centrist too — smeared as an “ideologue” (The Economist) and “dangerously far left” (Chicago Tribune). So too is Elizabeth Warren — dismissed as a “radical extremist” (Las Vegas Review-Journal) and a “class warrior” (Fox News).
The inconvenient truth that our lazy media elites do so much to ignore is that Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Warren are much closer in their views to the vast majority of ordinary Americans than the Bloombergs or the Bidens. They are the true centrists, the real moderates; they represent the actual political middle.
DON’T BELIEVE ME? Take Ocasio-Cortez’s signature issue: the Green New Deal. Former George W. Bush speechwriter — and torture advocate — Marc Thiessen claims that the Green New Deal will “make the Democrats unelectable in 2020.” The Economist agrees: “The bold plan could make the party unelectable in conservative-leaning states.” The Green New Deal “will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here and tell them,” a testy Diane Feinstein, the senior and supposedly “moderate” Democratic senator from California, told a bunch of kids in a viral video.
But here is the reality: The Green New Deal is extremely popular and has massive bipartisan support. A recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University found that a whopping 81 percent of voters said they either “strongly support” (40 percent) or “somewhat support” (41 percent) the Green New Deal, including 64 percent of Republicans (and even 57 percent of conservative Republicans).
What else do Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, and Sanders have in common with each other — and with the voters? They want to soak the rich. Ocasio-Cortez suggested a 70 percent marginal tax rate on incomes above $10 million — condemned by “centrist” Schultz as “un-American” but backed by a majority (51 percent) of Americans. Warren proposed a 2 percent wealth tax on assets above $50 million — slammed by “moderate” Bloomberg as Venezuelan-style socialism, but supported by 61 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Republicans. (As my colleague Jon Schwarz has demonstrated, “Americans have never, in living memory, been averse to higher taxes on the rich.”)
How about health care? The vast majority (70 percent) of voters, including a majority (52 percent) of Republicans, support a single-payer universal health care system, or Medicare for All. Six in 10 say it is “the responsibility of the federal government” to ensure that all Americans have access to health care coverage.
Debt-free and tuition-free college? A clear majority (60 percent) of the public, including a significant minority (41 percent) of Republicans, support free college “for those who meet income levels.”
A higher minimum wage? According to Pew, almost 6 in 10 (58 percent) Americans support increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to (the Sanders-recommended) $15 an hour.
Gun control? About six out of 10 (61 percent) Americans back stricter laws on gun control, according to Gallup, “the highest percentage to favor tougher firearms laws in two or more decades.” Almost all Americans (94 percent) back universal background checks on all gun sales — including almost three-quarters of National Rifle Association members.
Abortion? Support for a legal right to abortion, according to a June 2018 poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, is at an “all-time high.” Seven out of 10 Americans said they believed Roe v. Wade “should not be overturned,” including a majority (52 percent) of Republicans.
Legalizing marijuana? Two out of three Americans think marijuana should be made legal. According to a Gallup survey from October 2018, this marks “another new high in Gallup’s trend over nearly half a century.” And here’s the kicker: A majority (53 percent) of Republicans support legal marijuana too!
Mass incarceration? About nine out of 10 (91 percent) Americans say that the criminal justice system “has problems that need fixing.” About seven out of 10 (71 percent) say it is important “to reduce the prison population in America,” including a majority (52 percent) of Trump voters.
Immigration? “A record-high 75 percent of Americans,” including 65 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, told Gallup in 2018 that immigration is a “good thing for the U.S.” Six in 10 Americansoppose the construction of a wall on the southern border, while a massive 8 in 10 (81 percent) support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
How is it that labels like “centrist” and “moderate,” which common sense tells us should reflect the views of a majority of Americans, have come to be applied to those who represent minority interests and opinions?
How many political reporters are willing to tell their readers or viewers what Stanford political scientist David Broockman told Vox’s Ezra Klein in 2014: “When we say moderate what we really mean is what corporations want. Within both parties there is this tension between what the politicians who get more corporate money and tend to be part of the establishment want — that’s what we tend to call moderate — versus what the Tea Party and more liberal members want”?
The center ground — if it even exists — cannot be found on a map; it is not a fixed geographical location. You cannot get in your car, type the address in your navigation, and then drive to it.
It moves, it shifts, it reacts to events. The center of 2019 is not the center of 1999 or even 2009. You want to know where it is right now? You want to find the moderate middle? Then ignore the right-wing hacks, the conventional wisdom-mongers, and the donor class. Go check out the policy platforms of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
BTW, we better not fucking ban combustible engines. I'm a car guy. I'm all for green and efficient, but I want my classic in the garage and never want to let it go. And don't get me started on self driving vehicles. If I get driven everywhere, just fucking shoot me now.
Most of us will 6 feet under and self-driving vehicles will still be just a novelty. I've been hearing about electric vehicles for 30 years and they are nowhere near mainstream...
I do not own a classic, but I love classic cars. What do you have?
Well it's not classic in the sense you're thinking of, but it is for me. It was just easier to call a garage queen a classic. It's a 2001 E46 M3 with only 40k on it, which is quite low. It's the sweetest driving vehicle I've ever owned. I only drive it a handful of times per year. I had an E60 M5 with a V10, and while that was a beast, the M3 is a far superior driver's car. I'll never part with it.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
Personally, I'm not sure I care who a politically charged article is written by, just that the politically charged article has factual content and logical deductions. Do you disagree that the article has factual content and logical deductions?
Seeing who he’s worked for and thus represented, his rhetoric has a certain dog whistle appeal and I’m not sure if his content is factual. For me, it’s still that Amazon doesn’t need the grease.
On the 'grease', that's a valid position, but if I were a politician, I'd prefer to lose the battle (Amazon receiving special treatment), win the war (boosting the economic upside potential for the appropriate segments of the population in a riding I'm responsible for), and bring social attention to the issue(s) to see if the public can successfully threaten economic power.
On the content and the author of the article, I'm all for healthy skepticism and fact-checking.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
But here is the reality: The Green New Deal is extremely popular and has massive bipartisan support. A recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University found that a whopping 81 percent of voters said they either “strongly support” (40 percent) or “somewhat support” (41 percent) the Green New Deal, including 64 percent of Republicans (and even 57 percent of conservative Republicans).
This article is silly. I'm sorry. How many of those things is Joe Biden against? He is against green energy? Pro choice? universal healthcare? Minimum wage, gun control, the list goes on. I'm good with all of those. Moderate and centrist is emblematic of how you approach certain issues, not that you are against the liberal list that he articulated. Thiessen's argument was overstated, I think this argument is just wrong.
Thanks, dignin. That's an interesting lot to think about.
The other night, I was listening to Claire McCaskill on Bill Maher. She was explaining a campaign comment when she said something about "not being one those crazy Democrats" and Maher asked her to explain what she meant by that. She defined it as screaming in restaurants at people trying to have dinner, or posting on social media that you wish someone would assassinate the president.
I get that the media uses loaded words to define candidates. I get that Cortez, Sanders, and Warren want what I want. I just don't want to be screamed at. I don't want to be used to promote someone else's curated brand.
The thought of having to listen to Sanders bark at me for another year of my life really makes me want to tune out completely -- AND I'M ON HIS SIDE. If he can't convince me to listen to him, how do we expect a corn farmer in Kansas to do so?
Same thing with Cortez. I'm so done with her petty snipes at critics and her cutesy self-serving videos that I think she's nothing more than a narcissistic, entitled snot -- AND I'M ON HER SIDE. If she can't convince me to listen to her, how do we expect a nice church lady in Wyoming to do so?
I guess when I say we need someone who can win, I mean we need someone very good at selling progressive ideas to people who haven't already bought them. You can't blame it all on the media. I consider myself a highly critical consumer of information, and even I can't stomach Cortez, Sanders, or Warren because of they way they talk at people. I'd vote for either old crotch if they win the nomination, but I wouldn't expect to win over my church lady farmer friends, that's for sure.
Kamala Harris is pleasant to listen to. So is Elizabeth Warren. No barking at all from those two. Why is everyone paying so much attention to Bernie when these two women are so much more appealing?
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Kamala Harris is pleasant to listen to. So is Elizabeth Warren. No barking at all from those two. Why is everyone paying so much attention to Bernie when these two women are so much more appealing?
Bernie raised line 10 million in a week. Be hard not to notice.
Comments
She want to save the planet and he doesn't care about it!
He wants to deregulate things and she wants more regulation!
Ok, ok your turn!
They are both sides of the spectrum but at the same time have many similar attributes.
I am very critical of her but still hope that she can do some good.
What I do worry is that we try to become too socialist and spend ourselves even deeper in shit.
The left complains that conservatives are “obsessing” over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, there is a reason for that: Ocasio-Cortez is driving the agenda of today’s Democratic Party — and her economic illiteracy is dangerous.
Case in point: Last week, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the tanking of a deal negotiated by her fellow Democrats in which Amazon promised to build a new headquarters in Long Island City, New York, right next to her congressional district. Amazon’s departure cost the city between 25,000 and 40,000 new jobs. Forget the tech workers whom Amazon would have employed. Gone are all the unionized construction jobs to build the headquarters, as well as thousands of jobs created by all the small businesses — restaurants, bodegas, dry cleaners and food carts — that were preparing to open or expand to serve Amazon employees. They are devastated by Amazon’s withdrawal. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Post.)
Ocasio-Cortez was not disturbed at all. “We were subsidizing those jobs,” she said. “Frankly, if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district, ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that amount of money if we wanted to.”
No, you can’t. Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to realize that New York does not have $3 billion in cash sitting around waiting to be spent on her socialist dreams. The subsidies to Amazon were tax incentives, not cash payouts. It is Amazon’s money, which New York agreed to make tax-exempt, so the company would invest it in building its new headquarters, hiring new workers and generating tens of billions in new tax revenue.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio explained, the Amazon deal would have produced “$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.” Unlike Ocasio-Cortez’s imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work. With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it. Genius.
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion. There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts. Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city. But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
Sadly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She made the same kind of error in December when she tweeted, “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But, as Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Post, “DoD hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.” Once again, Ocasio-Cortez did not grasp that the Pentagon did not have a magic pile of $21 trillion in cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president. From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s train pulled into Petrograd’s Finland Station.
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy? Think she and her allies have any idea how to, as her now infamous talking points put it, upgrade or replace “every building in America” . . . or replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” . . . or connect every corner of America with high-speed rail . . . or replace all fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy sources — all in 10 years’ time? Apparently, they think we just have to find all the magic pots of cash the government is hiding.
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
Read more from Marc Thiessen’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Marc Alexander Thiessen (born January 13, 1967) is an American author, columnist, and political commentator. He writes for The Washington Postnewspaper. He served as a speechwriter for United States President George W. Bush (2004–09) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2001–06).[1
Thiessen has worked in Washington, D.C., for many years, starting with five years at Lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. He spent six years (1995–2001) on Capitol Hill as spokesman and senior policy advisor to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC).[4][5
I do not own a classic, but I love classic cars. What do you have?
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Union jobs building that is a stretch. Most of LIC was built Non-union. Not sure if they would have been involved here.
I have no idea about that 21 trillion statement though.
That's my fact check.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
AOC, Sanders, and Warren Are the Real Centrists Because They Speak for Most Americans
DO YOU KNOW what really annoys me about the media’s coverage of U.S. politics, and especially the Democratic Party?
Google the words “moderate” or “centrist” and a small group of nameswill instantly appear: Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, and, yes, Howard Schultz.
Bloomberg is considered a “centrist thought leader” (Vanity Fair). Klobuchar is the “straight-shooting pragmatist” (Time). Biden is the “quintessential centrist” (CNN) and the “last hurrah for moderate Democrats” (New York magazine). Shultz is gifted with high-profileinterview slots to make his “centrist independent” pitch to voters.
Now Google the freshman House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s been dubbed a member of the “loony left” (Washington Post), a “progressive firebrand” (Reuters), and a “liberal bomb thrower” (New York Times).
Got that? Biden, Schultz and Co., we are told, sit firmly in the middle of American politics; Ocasio-Cortez stands far out on its fringes.
This is a brazen distortion of reality, a shameless and demonstrable lie that is repeated day after day in newspaper op-eds and cable news headlines.
“It’s easy to call what AOC is doing as far-lefty, but nothing could be farther from the truth,” Nick Hanauer, the venture capitalist and progressive activist, told MSNBC in January. “When you advocate for economic policies that benefit the broad majority of citizens, that’s true centrism. What Howard Schultz represents, the centrism that he represents, is really just trickle-down economics.”
“He is not the centrist,” continued Hanauer. “AOC is the centrist.”
Hanauer is right. And Bernie Sanders is centrist too — smeared as an “ideologue” (The Economist) and “dangerously far left” (Chicago Tribune). So too is Elizabeth Warren — dismissed as a “radical extremist” (Las Vegas Review-Journal) and a “class warrior” (Fox News).
The inconvenient truth that our lazy media elites do so much to ignore is that Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Warren are much closer in their views to the vast majority of ordinary Americans than the Bloombergs or the Bidens. They are the true centrists, the real moderates; they represent the actual political middle.
DON’T BELIEVE ME? Take Ocasio-Cortez’s signature issue: the Green New Deal. Former George W. Bush speechwriter — and torture advocate — Marc Thiessen claims that the Green New Deal will “make the Democrats unelectable in 2020.” The Economist agrees: “The bold plan could make the party unelectable in conservative-leaning states.” The Green New Deal “will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here and tell them,” a testy Diane Feinstein, the senior and supposedly “moderate” Democratic senator from California, told a bunch of kids in a viral video.
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/26/democratic-party-centrism-aoc-sanders-warren/
Continued...
But here is the reality: The Green New Deal is extremely popular and has massive bipartisan support. A recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University found that a whopping 81 percent of voters said they either “strongly support” (40 percent) or “somewhat support” (41 percent) the Green New Deal, including 64 percent of Republicans (and even 57 percent of conservative Republicans).
What else do Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, and Sanders have in common with each other — and with the voters? They want to soak the rich. Ocasio-Cortez suggested a 70 percent marginal tax rate on incomes above $10 million — condemned by “centrist” Schultz as “un-American” but backed by a majority (51 percent) of Americans. Warren proposed a 2 percent wealth tax on assets above $50 million — slammed by “moderate” Bloomberg as Venezuelan-style socialism, but supported by 61 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Republicans. (As my colleague Jon Schwarz has demonstrated, “Americans have never, in living memory, been averse to higher taxes on the rich.”)
How about health care? The vast majority (70 percent) of voters, including a majority (52 percent) of Republicans, support a single-payer universal health care system, or Medicare for All. Six in 10 say it is “the responsibility of the federal government” to ensure that all Americans have access to health care coverage.
Debt-free and tuition-free college? A clear majority (60 percent) of the public, including a significant minority (41 percent) of Republicans, support free college “for those who meet income levels.”
A higher minimum wage? According to Pew, almost 6 in 10 (58 percent) Americans support increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to (the Sanders-recommended) $15 an hour.
Gun control? About six out of 10 (61 percent) Americans back stricter laws on gun control, according to Gallup, “the highest percentage to favor tougher firearms laws in two or more decades.” Almost all Americans (94 percent) back universal background checks on all gun sales — including almost three-quarters of National Rifle Association members.
Abortion? Support for a legal right to abortion, according to a June 2018 poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, is at an “all-time high.” Seven out of 10 Americans said they believed Roe v. Wade “should not be overturned,” including a majority (52 percent) of Republicans.
Legalizing marijuana? Two out of three Americans think marijuana should be made legal. According to a Gallup survey from October 2018, this marks “another new high in Gallup’s trend over nearly half a century.” And here’s the kicker: A majority (53 percent) of Republicans support legal marijuana too!
Mass incarceration? About nine out of 10 (91 percent) Americans say that the criminal justice system “has problems that need fixing.” About seven out of 10 (71 percent) say it is important “to reduce the prison population in America,” including a majority (52 percent) of Trump voters.
Immigration? “A record-high 75 percent of Americans,” including 65 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, told Gallup in 2018 that immigration is a “good thing for the U.S.” Six in 10 Americansoppose the construction of a wall on the southern border, while a massive 8 in 10 (81 percent) support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
HOW MUCH of this polling, however, is reflected in the daily news coverage of the Democrats, which seeks to pit “leftist” activists against “centrist” voters, and “liberals” against “moderates”?
How is it that labels like “centrist” and “moderate,” which common sense tells us should reflect the views of a majority of Americans, have come to be applied to those who represent minority interests and opinions?
How many political reporters are willing to tell their readers or viewers what Stanford political scientist David Broockman told Vox’s Ezra Klein in 2014: “When we say moderate what we really mean is what corporations want. Within both parties there is this tension between what the politicians who get more corporate money and tend to be part of the establishment want — that’s what we tend to call moderate — versus what the Tea Party and more liberal members want”?
It moves, it shifts, it reacts to events. The center of 2019 is not the center of 1999 or even 2009. You want to know where it is right now? You want to find the moderate middle? Then ignore the right-wing hacks, the conventional wisdom-mongers, and the donor class. Go check out the policy platforms of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
On the content and the author of the article, I'm all for healthy skepticism and fact-checking.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
The other night, I was listening to Claire McCaskill on Bill Maher. She was explaining a campaign comment when she said something about "not being one those crazy Democrats" and Maher asked her to explain what she meant by that. She defined it as screaming in restaurants at people trying to have dinner, or posting on social media that you wish someone would assassinate the president.
I get that the media uses loaded words to define candidates. I get that Cortez, Sanders, and Warren want what I want. I just don't want to be screamed at. I don't want to be used to promote someone else's curated brand.
The thought of having to listen to Sanders bark at me for another year of my life really makes me want to tune out completely -- AND I'M ON HIS SIDE. If he can't convince me to listen to him, how do we expect a corn farmer in Kansas to do so?
Same thing with Cortez. I'm so done with her petty snipes at critics and her cutesy self-serving videos that I think she's nothing more than a narcissistic, entitled snot -- AND I'M ON HER SIDE. If she can't convince me to listen to her, how do we expect a nice church lady in Wyoming to do so?
I guess when I say we need someone who can win, I mean we need someone very good at selling progressive ideas to people who haven't already bought them. You can't blame it all on the media. I consider myself a highly critical consumer of information, and even I can't stomach Cortez, Sanders, or Warren because of they way they talk at people. I'd vote for either old crotch if they win the nomination, but I wouldn't expect to win over my church lady farmer friends, that's for sure.