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Green, With Envy
An end to industrial civilization, but like in a totally pro-union way.
If this week’s Green New Deal boomlet was politically significant, it wasn’t just because a legislative newcomer elected by 110,318 voters in Queens and the Bronx proposed a government program to renovate or replace every building in the country within ten years, abolish internal-combustion-engine cars and commercial air travel, shut down all conventional utility generation without building nuclear, phase out flatulent cows, support persons “unwilling” to work, print new paper money to pay for it all, and on and on. New York City voters have elected radical mavericks to Congress before and will do so again.
No, the more interesting part of the story was the number of more senior politicians who chose to enable and promote this foolery. That would include Sen. Edward Markey, the veteran Massachusetts Democrat who stood alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at her announcement. And it would definitely include Sens. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand, all presidential candidates who took to Twitter to endorse the initiative.
The boosters did not, let it be noted, include Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is nobody’s fool and has an important institution to run. “’The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?'” Pelosi said in an interview just before the announcement.
The ensuing public discussion revealed points of view that I hardly remembered still existed, such as this, from a former Democratic Senate economist:
Q: Can we afford a #GreenNewDeal?
A: Yes. The federal government can afford to buy whatever is for sale in its own currency.
Which in turn drew this perfect response from Marc Goldwein:
Q. Can you microwave a metal fork?
A. Yes. The microwave is big enough to fit the fork, and will turn on with the fork in it if you hit the start button.
Large sectors of the left commentariat either withheld critical comment entirely, or relegated it to paragraphs far down in pieces that otherwise took the plan Very Seriously. An exception was Jon Chait , who called the Green New Deal strategy “at best grossly undercooked, and at worst fatally misconceived.”
For the rest of us, incredulous reactions were more front and center, especially as to practicality. For example, one of the more popular planks — high-speed rail — is not exactly new, having been green-lighted by California voters more than ten years ago. In a state entirely controlled by Democrats, it has faced what one reporter calls “numerous lawsuits, huge delays, cost-overruns, [and] mismanagement,” and is “nowhere near being done.” A proposal for a maglev line to link Baltimore and Washington is finding tough going in liberal, environmentalist Maryland, in part because there’s seen as being nothing in it politically for poorer communities it would run through on its way between the two cities. And you guessed it: the Green New Deal scheme contemplates much more procedural complication of the sort that tends to slow or stop projects, including a leading role in decision processes for “front-line” marginalized communities, new veto rights for representatives of indigenous groups, and so forth.
One important dividing line here, it seems to me, is between those on both sides of the political aisle who acknowledge that policy involves unwelcome tradeoffs between different goods and those who are unwilling to make any such acknowledgment. The latter group tend to explain political opposition to their plans as arising from some combination of malice and ignorance, since who would knowingly oppose steps that have only benefits and no costs? Bernie Sanders has always favored rhetoric implicitly denying tradeoffs, and he has plenty of company on the Republican side.
Every politician who rushed to endorse the Green New Deal slogan — whether before the filling in of details about what it meant, or afterward — ought to be held to account by voters.
Published in Environment
Probably works better than: Look, folks, it was an impossible situation. As simple politician, all I know is what’s worked for a while, i.e., “run left (D)/right (R) in primary; tack center in General. And spew semi-plausible nonsense throughout.” Now along comes a dewey-eyed dimwit not running for President talking bold on something that has zip chance of going beyond bold talk. This gets traction amongst the hoi polloi in my party and suddenly I’m looking at a two ways to be staring at the sides of the abyss, going down. Damn it, it’s an unsolvable problem. So cut me a break here. All I want to do is say I’ll do whatever 50+ % of you think you want me to do. You know that! At the very least give me the sympathy you’d give to a steelworker laid off by [fill in villain].
Netflix Pays Record Sum For Movie About Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/09/netflix-ocasio-cortez-movie/ via @dailycaller
I wouldn’t have thought that AOC was such a fan of Atlas Shrugged. She wants to return to a world where the government elites all ride around in trains, while the rest of us warm our hands huddled around campfires, saying who is John Galt. Dagney Taggart call your office.
Just remember what a very mild form of this kind of government control (Obamacare) and spending (the Stimulus) did for Democrat majorities around the country. Kim Strassel in the WSJ is right that AOC is a gift to Republican politicians.
The original New Deal was about what government could offer you. The Green New Deal is about what you are going to have to sacrifice for government’s new rules.
To preclude any claim of faked webpages, here is the real archived AOC Green New Deal page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190207191119/https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/blog-posts/green-new-deal-faq
…
This socialist scheme reveals in its own words the red origins and aims of the Green movement. Instead of greedy capitalists oppressing wage slaves, evil polluters are killing everyone, those at the top of the intersectional pyramid hit hardest.
This is as funny as a heart attack, more precisely, as funny as the mass murders by starvation perpetrated by Stalin and Mao, when they took similar steps to seize total control and break independent farmers, among others.
These, plus Venezuela, must be put before the public in every medium. President Trump needs to unleash the Treasure and Commerce Departments to target the billions plundered by the Chavez and Maduro families. Show that AOC and crew are really about looting the country for themselves.
I like this idea.
The wealth tax is interrelated with the Green scheme, and as Steven Hayward of PowerLine points out:
Dems Squirm as Graham Calls for a Vote on the Green New Deal
Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Spartacus Booker have all come out in favor of this guff. Get a vote on the record.
Senator Graham, I take back every wisecrack I ever made at your expense.
Fools. Voting on seizing assets as if it’s a good idea means that governance in this country went haywire decades ago.
Why is the government running out of money?
Why does no debt to GDP figure ever improve anywhere?
That’s the issue.
Amen!
That author is a total leftist hack, too.
Lindsey Graham 2.0 is pretty lit.
Who? Moran?
The guy that wrote the article. He’s literally a washed up academic economist. He will say anything to keep Bloomberg happy.
Oh, that guy. I was just going for Graham’s tweet. That was just a bonus.
En fuego, baby.
“Lindsey, what is good in life?”
“To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of Nancy Pelosi.”
If there was any justice, not one of these people would get re-elected.
I love myself some Lindsay Graham 2.0
.
I’ve extended my comments to an OP: Green New Deal: Serious as a Mass Famine
For the past few days I’ve been thinking of this idiocy as I’ve watched a major construction project come through my ranch here in TX. There is a new pipeline going from West TX to the Gulf Coast and it is going through my property here in Buffalo, TX. We’ve had at least 7 industrial excavators with buckets and grapples, 2 industrial tree-fellers, 2 gigantic mulchers, hundreds of deliveries by 18-wheelers of road timbers, hundreds of 18-wheelers to pick up the mulch, twice daily diesel fuel tankers, etc., etc.. And we have not even got to the pipeline part – this is just clearing the access – and these are the implements that are working on only a 30 mile part of the pipeline for which a small part of our ranch is the staging area. I wonder how these clowns think anything like this can get done without fossil fuels. And yes, I am a proud member of the fossil fuel industry – I worked as a geologist for XOM in our drilling operations and am happy to have found oil on 4 continents.
Apparently they have already started that climb, with AOC’s lawyer saying she never said this, that was fake news. It has been taken down from the site, etc.
A young man was walking along the beach when he spotted an interesting object. To his surprise, it was a lamp and upon rubbing it, a genie appeared. The young man’s first wish was for a bridge across the Pacific Ocean as he was not fond of flying. The genie was dumbfounded – “Are you kidding me? Are you serious? Try another wish.”
“OK, explain women (or just AOC) to me.”
“You want that bridge 2 lanes or 4?”
As long as he stays Version 2.0, I’m happy!
In case you had any doubts that the Green New Deal rollout was a fiasco, here comes the conservatives-pounce coverage
And The Onion:
https://politics.theonion.com/nancy-pelosi-signals-support-for-environmental-causes-b-1832437461
The reaction of Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, was just getting started.