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| AOC is a member of the Dem Socialists of America. i.e. a Socialist |
My annotated take on the Post's chief news editor, Yonden Lhatoo's article today. His words indented italic.
What a breath of fresh air and dose of extra energy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is.
i.e. she's cute.
It's been barely a month since she took up her new job as the representative for New York's 14th district, and the youngest woman in history to be elected to the US Congress is making waves – just waves right now, but hopefully a tsunami some day.
This week, the 29-year-old upstart from the Bronx took just three minutes at a House Oversight Committee hearing to educate Americans on the sorry state of their campaign finance system, and how it's broken and wide open to rampant abuse.
Role-playing the "bad guy" in an impromptu "Corruption Game" with ethics experts, Ocasio-Cortez, in a series of lightning-round questions, exposed the non-existence of regulations to prevent lawmakers from being fully funded and controlled by big corporations and other vested interests.Lhatoo clearly didn't see the rest of the clip which showed the Chairman of the Oversight Committee pointing out the ways AOC had misrepresented regulations in her "bad guy" travesty.
"So I and every member of this body are being held to a higher ethical standard than the president of the United States," she concluded, effectively calling out Donald Trump over his dodgy business dealings and refusal to release his tax returns as well as his failure to keep his much-hyped campaign promise to "drain the swamp".
This is the case for every president, not just Trump. Just as members of the House cannot be charged with libel.
It's not hard to see why this millennial arriviste is ruffling the feathers of crusty curmudgeons in Washington's halls of power. They can roll their eyes and harrumph at her all they want over her lack of experience and gravitas, but she's starting to make them uncomfortable because of her popularity and potential to rock the foundations of the ivory towers they are ensconced in.
A tsunami of ad hominem!
Small wonder that the billionaires who make up the 1 per cent sitting on 40 per cent of America's wealth are nervous about Ocasio-Cortez's proposal to ramp up taxes for the filthy rich, and the fat-cat politicians in their pockets find her "dangerous".
The 1% is not "sitting" on their money. This is probably the biggest misconception about wealth on the Left. They seem to think that people make money by cheating people then proceed to wallow around on a pile of hundred dollar notes like Scrooge McDuck. People make money by providing something other people want to pay for. When they've made more than they need they invest in other things. Or give it away like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and the more than 400 other rich folks who have signed a pledge to give away 90% of their wealth.
Also: this 1% pay 70% of America's taxes. The bottom 30% pay no taxes at all and get a raft of welfare payments (food stamps, housing subsidies, etc).
Under her "Green New Deal" plan, she wants to raise the marginal tax rate on income above US$10 million up to 70 per cent and use the money to pay for drastic cuts to carbon dioxide emissions.
It's unclear how she thinks the government will make a better job of this than the private sector. Since Trump pulled out of the Paris Accord the US has reduced emissions more than any other country in the world. This has been done by the private sector and moved to natural gas replacing coal.
Also: has Lhatoo read the GND? It's a farrago of nonsense, one crazy unattainable target after another. Some highlights: do away with air travel, retrofit every single building in America, guaranteed jobs for all who want them and guaranteed income for those that don't want to work, [LATER: There's some dispute on this; probably ref to Universal Basic Income, but iac appears that publication of it was a mistake], open borders, declare all illegal immigrants legal and abolish the ICE. Oh, and free health care and free education. The costs of this are estimated around 100 Trillion, at least, 25 times the total annual budget.
Go figure that.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is one of the luminaries in the field who like the idea. He has dismissed "the constant effort to portray her as flaky and ignorant", pointing out: "She's just saying what good economists say."
Krugman is a "luminary" who has consistency got things wrong. He said Trump wouldn't win. Then that the stock market would tank. And then that the economy could not grow more than 3%. Way to predict, Paul! Not.
AOC is not saying what "good economists say", unless the "good economists" are Modern Money Theorists, which SCMP columnist Tom Holland tore apart recently.
Another Nobel laureate and leading public finance expert, Peter Diamond, has argued the case for an even higher optimal tax rate of 73 per cent.
Ocasio-Cortez is not alone on Capitol Hill. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren floated an even more radical and popular idea last month to impose a wealth tax on every American with a net worth of more than US$50 million. And her party colleague, Bernie Sanders, proposed to upend the intergenerational transfer of wealth by restoring top marginal tax rates on inheritances to 1970s levels for America's billionaires.
Sure. And some who want a 90% rate. Ams some like Farhad Manjoo who even want to expropriate all wealth from anyone with more than a billion dollars. Why stop there? 100 million is also way more than an individual needs. Or $10 million? Think the slippery slope is irrelevant? Have a look at VAT and consumption taxes all round the world. It's a one way ratchet.
So how does the Washington establishment fight back against the reformists? By reverting to good old McCarthy-era scare tactics and labelling them as "socialists" who will reduce America to another basket case like Venezuela. That's why Trump made it a point to declare in his State of the Nation address: "America will never be a socialist country."
The thing is, nobody is trying to establish a Communist People's Republic of America. They're only pushing for a fair system with a moral code.
And that's all Chávez and Maduro ever pushed for: "a fair system with a moral code". Nationalise, confiscate, redistribute. See how that works for you.
"I'm not saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett are immoral, but a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don't have access to public health is wrong," Ocasio-Cortez explained.The same lament applies to this part of the world – even more so because our billionaires are known to share less than their American counterparts.
This is nothing more than the car-keying attitude to wealth. When you see a nice car, do you think it would be nice to have one of those someday — as has been the attitude in Hong Kong — or do you run the key down the side to ruin the paint — as they do so often in Britain. Lhatoo would rather key the car, it seems.
Long live the revolution – if it ever arrives.
Like tsunamis, revolutions rarely end well.
