Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The Green New Deal Threatens to Derail Colorado’s Economy

Oil and gas rigs have been popping up all across Colorado in recent years, as have jobs working the rigs. Colorado’s total oil production is valued at more than $9.9 billion for 2018—an estimated 62 percent higher than 2017, according to the University of Colorado Boulder’s most recent study of the state’s economy. The value of the state’s natural gas production in 2018 was estimated at $5.3 billion. Employment in the Colorado oil and gas industry has grown by more than 23 percent since 2016, now accounting for around 25,700 jobs. This year it is expected to grow another 4.8 percent. But now, the Green New Deal, proposed Thursday by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), is threatening the state’s energy boom. The plan calls for the U.S. to completely abandon the use of fossil fuels over the next ten years. That would not just derail Colorado’s natural resource and mining sector but also the many businesses and jobs that have grown up to serve the energy boom. “Unexpected economic and political factors can change the trajectory of Colorado’s NRM employment outlook abruptly,” the University of Colorado Boulder study warned. Across the United States, the Green New Deal could threaten such extreme economic disruption that it could put into play states once considered safe for Democrats. That is especially true of Colorado, which accounts for almost 5 percent of the total crude oil produced in the United States and has far more to lose from the Green New Deal than places like New York and Massachusetts. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 48.1 percent of Colorado’s votes. Donald Trump won just 43.1 percent. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson took 5.1 percent. A Democrat candidate who embraced a plan that would certainly eliminate 25,000 oil and gas extraction jobs and likely another untold number of jobs indirectly related to the sector could create a political, as well as an economic, earthquake. Of course, the Green New Deal would also create jobs, according to its proponents. But while Colorado’s oil and natural gas jobs cannot be located outside of the state, there is no guarantee the new green jobs would be created there. Making matters worse, wind and solar energy farms can be operated with a far thinner workforce, which means that even if the Green New Deal’s new energy were produced in Colorado, it would employ far fewer workers. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) is reportedly considering a presidential bid. This puts him in a political bind: support the Green New Deal program popular with the base of the national party or stand by his state’s economic interest. His office did not respond to a request for comment. Although natural resource drilling and mining employ just 1 percent of the Colorado workforce, the sector pulls above its weight calls in economic impact because the jobs generate some of the highest per worker income levels in the state. Average pay in the sector is 146 percent of the state average. The damage will go beyond just oil and natural gas. Coal jobs too would be killed off. According to a 2015 National Mining Association survey, the coal industry contributed $1.9 billion to Colorado’s economy and directly employed 3,723 workers, plus 12,977 indirect and induced jobs. In the United States, factories that produce equipment for mining and drilling have boomed in recent years on the backs of the technological innovations that have made the U.S. one of the world’s largest energy producers. These factories and the investments in them would go to waste in a Green New Deal that made fossil fuels obsolete or illegal. Investment in Colorado’s traditional energy sector would dry up. Whether investors burned by a government that turned against fossil fuels would willingly support investment in Green-New-Deal-favored energy projects is a risk—and certainly a risk for Colorado’s economy. Ocasio-Cortez portrays the Green New Deal as offering Americans a tremendous opportunity. And no doubt a new national program of green investment, subsidized by cheap government financing, would create many new wealthy entrepreneurs. But it also threatens jobs that Americans already have and depend upon for their livelihoods. Colorado, because it has such a high concentration of good jobs extracting fossil fuels, is one of the states that would be hit the hardest.

Agreed..  Thanks to John Carney for that sobering analysis.  All of us who are tax-paying voters here in the great state of Colorado need to keep this in mind in November of next year when we go to the polls..

Delingpole: Green New Deal Is a Revamped Communist Manifesto

A few years ago at the height of the global warming scare I wrote a book which set out to answer one of the key questions of our time: if climate change isn’t really a problem why do so many people act as though it is? The answer, I discovered, is that environmentalism is just a fashionable mask for the usual leftist obsessions with state control and wealth redistribution. That’s why I called the book Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. Not everyone who believes in man-made climate change is a full on Commie. Some are merely useful idiots. But whatever reason people may have for supporting the scam – greed, stupidity, virtue-signalling, idiot leftist teachers – the net result is the same: bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation, lower standards of living. Exactly like you’d get under communism, in fact. So color me completely unshocked by the Green New Deal. It looks like a revamped Communist Manifesto because that’s exactly what it is. If implemented, the size of government would increase to levels never before seen in a Western economy. The state’s control of everything from wage levels to how businesses are run to your personal freedoms would be total. There’s no mention of gulags or political prisoners or secret police but of course those would inevitably follow because how else would the state have a hope of enforcing measures which freedom loving Americans would naturally resist? The only surprise about the Green New Deal for me is that its proponents are so brazen about their plans.

Indeed..  For more of this outstanding op/ed from James Delingpole, click on the text above.  He really nails it.

‘Democratic Socialist’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fined by New York for Failing to Provide Workers’ Comp

“Democratic socialist” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been fined by the State of New York for failing to carry workers’ compensation insurance for a month during her congressional campaign last year. The New York Daily News reported Thursday: “The employer did not have the required workers’ compensation coverage from March 31, 2018, to April 30, 2018, and was issued a final penalty of $1,500, which was paid,” state Workers Compensation Board spokeswoman Melissa Stewart said. “This coverage is vital to ensuring workers are protected for on-the-job injuries.” “Hypocrisy at its finest,” said state GOP spokeswoman Jessica Proud. “The so-called champion of workers, when given her own responsibility, is not following the law. It’s unbelievable.” Ocasio-Cortez has styled herself as a champion of workers’ rights — against greedy employers: In recent days, she has been championing the cause of the 800,000 federal workers whose paychecks will be delayed because of the partial government shutdown — though the president has said they will be paid afterwards, and the Senate passed legislation unanimously on Thursday to ensure that.

HAHAHA!!  One word…Karma.  AOC is the gift that keeps on giving.  She’s such a spectacular hypocrite, and yet she’s too stoooopid to even know.     🙂

Analysis: If Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ succeeds in 2019 it will be the most radical plan offered in decades

Incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., pledged to voters she would be a far-left outsider who would push her party toward adopting “democratic socialist” policies, including universal health care and free college tuition. So far, she has kept her promise. Ocasio-Cortez has been calling for the creation of “Green New Deal” legislation, which would eliminate much of the United States’ fossil-fuel consumption. So far, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., and 40 House Democrats have said they support the proposal. Although the broad talking points of the plan have been circulating for months, it wasn’t until recently that Ocasio-Cortez provided any details of her proposal. On December 3, according to The Atlantic, Ocasio-Cortez spoke at a town hall led by Sanders and declared, “This is going to be the New Deal, the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil-rights movement of our generation.” The specifics have still not been worked out, but what we know so far about her plan is that it would have catastrophic economic consequences, dramatically increase America’s already skyrocketing debt, and transform the United States into a European-style socialist nation. (And no, these are not exaggerations.) In a draft resolution to create a House select committee that would be responsible for writing the Green New Deal legislation, Ocasio-Cortez outlines the primary goals of her plan. Among them, Ocasio-Cortez proposes eliminating all fossil-fuel-powered electricity, closing every coal and natural gas power plant in the country, thus destroying the hundreds of thousands of jobs related to these businesses. Even more stunning, all this would occur by 2030, just 10 years after Ocasio-Cortez expects the legislation to be completed. In its place, nearly all energy would be produced by renewable sources of power, especially wind and solar. This goal would create massive amounts of economic harm. Although economists have yet to provide an analysis of Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to eliminate all fossil fuels, other studies have found less-extreme policies would be absolutely devastating. A study published in October 2018 by Capital Alpha Partners on behalf of the Institute for Energy Research found a national tax on carbon dioxide would cost the U.S. economy $4.21 trillion to $5.98 trillion, depending on the tax level chosen, in just the first 10 years of the tax scheme. By 2040, as much as $12.32 trillion would be lost. Nearly one-quarter of the country’s GDP, relative to what it would otherwise be, could be lost as a result of a nationwide carbon-dioxide tax. And this far left-wing plan is nowhere near as radical as Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. Not only would Ocasio-Cortez’s plan destroy trillions of dollars in wealth, but it would also be virtually impossible to achieve. When the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, renewable electricity generation relies on fossil-fuel power to keep the lights on. Currently, the only way to have a 100 percent renewable-energy-powered electric grid would be for Americans to live without power when renewables aren’t producing enough energy. Among many other problems, that means there would be no stable electricity sources for hospitals and other essential services. Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t merely want to destroy the existing energy industry, the plan also requires “upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety” and “eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure.” Ocasio-Cortez’s draft resolution also proposes the elimination of “greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries.” The radical nature of these proposals cannot be understated. “Upgrading every residential and industrial building”—not just to make them more energy efficient, but also to improve “comfort and safety”—would cost untold trillions of dollars and insert the government into nearly every home and business in the country. Further, banning fossil fuels from all agricultural, manufacturing, and transportation would dramatically increase the cost of every product in the United States and make it difficult for American businesses to export products at reasonable prices. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would also establish other extremely expensive government programs that would greatly expand the power and influence of the federal government. One such program would “assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.” Additionally, she says the Green New Deal legislation should include “additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism.” How does Ocasio-Cortez propose to pay for these many trillion-dollar programs? By raising taxes, creating new “public banks,” and running up the national debt. In a “Frequently Asked Questions” section of Ocasio-Cortez’s draft resolution, she claims the way to fund her far-reaching proposals is to use the “same ways that we paid for the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs, the same ways we paid for World War II and many other wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments, new public banks can be created (as in WWII) to extend credit and a combination of various taxation tools (including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes) can be employed.” New reports indicate the House Democratic Party leadership has said it has decided not to create Ocasio-Cortez’s committee—for now. But supporters of the plan aren’t giving up. They say they are going to continue pushing for these policies until they are transformed into legislation. Together, Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals would effectively eliminate fossil fuels from most of society, destroy millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of wealth, require “upgrading” every home and business in America, create a national federal jobs-guarantee program, impose single-payer health care (costing trillions more), establish a new system of publicly owned banks, run up the national debt by countless trillions of dollars, and move the United States closer than ever to socialism. If we don’t stop it, it will destroy our economy for a whole generation of Americans.

Agreed…  If that doesn’t scare the living hell outta you, then you need to have your head examined.  Consider this your Read of the Day.  If you read anything here at The Daily Buzz today, then READ THIS!  Then, pass it along to all of your friends and family members…especially those millennials who like Alexandria or Bernie.  Thanks to Justin Haskins for that terrifyingly eye-opening op/ed.  Justin is senior editor at the Henry Dearborn Institute for Liberty. Haskins is also the executive editor and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute.

Timpf: How Ocasio-Cortez Makes the Case against Socialism

On Wednesday, it was reported that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign had spent $4,000 on Uber rides — despite the fact that the self-described Democratic socialist herself had previously decried the company on Twitter: “NYC’s fourth driver suicide. Yellow cab drivers are in financial ruin due to the unregulated expansion of Uber. What was a living wage job now pays under minimum.” This is, of course, nothing short of hypocrisy. If you really thought a company was so bad, you’d probably make sure your campaign didn’t use it. If you really thought something was a problem, you probably wouldn’t give that problem $4,000. What’s more, if you were really concerned about the plight of NYC taxi drivers, you might, you know, give them some business, instead of giving your business to the very company you’d criticized for ruining them. What we have with this revelation is just another example of how Ocasio-Cortez’s time in the spotlight has made an argument against socialism, instead of for it. Her words may say that the heavily regulated taxi companies are better, but her actions say that she prefers Uber — a service that is only possible because of the thing she stands most opposed to: capitalism. Now, this is not the first time that something like this has happened. As Investor’s Business Daily notes, Ocasio-Cortez seemed to make an argument against herself again last week when she expressed her sadness over the closing of a restaurant where she used to work. In her post about the good times that she’d had there, she failed to mention that the reason it was closing was because it could not comply with New York City’s soon-to-be-implemented $15 per hour minimum wage. Perhaps unknowingly, she had expressed regret over something that had been caused by the very sort of policy she supports. Then there is, of course, the repeated and complete breakdown of her positions whenever they are evaluated through the lens of reality and facts. On August 7, she stated flatly that the “upper-middle class does not exist anymore in America” — undoubtedly an argument for a socialist-style redistribution of wealth — when the reality is that the upper-middle class has actually grown under our capitalist system in the last few decades. The very next day, she claimed that “Medicare for all is actually much more, is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now,” when the reality is that her plan would actually “raise government expenditures by $32.6 trillion over 10 years,” according to a fact check of her comments by the Washington Post. What’s more, her recent interview with Trevor Noah proved that many of her positions come from a foundation of a complete misunderstanding of the facts. As my colleague Charles Cooke notes, that interview “revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defense spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about ‘private equity’ firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park.” Many people might be tempted to see the rise of Ocasio-Cortez, and particularly her popularity in the media, to be some sort of sign that her version of socialism might actually be viable in this country. Anyone who is actually paying attention, however, would see that the opposite is true. At almost every turn, the spotlight on Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist ideals has shown how completely infeasible they are, and how often they are rooted in false information and misunderstanding. No one should know this better than Ocasio-Cortez herself. After all, if you look at her actions instead of her words, it seems that even she herself understands the benefits of capitalism — and her campaign has the Uber bill to prove it.

Alexandria is such a spectacular hypocrite…  But, hey..  She makes for fun tv because she’s a complete idiot.  And, she’s too scared to debate people like Ben Shapiro and others who would mop the floor with her.  Thanks to millennial reporter Katherine “Kat” Timpf for sharing this piece with us.

Socialist Darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Called For Tax Cuts When She Was Running A Business, Now Wants To Raise Taxes To Fund Her Radical Agenda

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the upstart Democratic Socialist who shocked the political world in the June primary when she defeated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York, once advocated for tax cuts when she was running a business of her own, uncovered news reports from 2012 reveal. Ocasio-Cortez, 28, is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that calls for the abolishment of capitalism and argues that “private corporate property is not only wrong, but also nonsensical.” Her campaign platform calls for instituting a single-payer health care system, a federal jobs guarantee and housing as a human right, radical and expensive policies she says will be funded through raising taxes on corporations and high-income Americans. But Ocasio-Cortez appeared to have a different outlook on capitalism and taxes in 2012 when she was running a business of her own, Brook Avenue Press, an incorporated publishing firm for children’s books set in the Bronx. As a business owner, she came out in support of a bill that would provide tax deductions for business start-up costs, arguing that taxes directly impacted her business profits. “You don’t really make a profit in your first year,” Ocasio-Cortez told the now-defunct DNAinfo when she was 22. “To get taxed on top of that is a real whammy.” Ocasio-Cortez was then a member of the Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, a city-sponsored business hub that attracted dozens of entrepreneurs trying to get their businesses off the ground. “You see a huge return on your investment here,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Daily News of her involvement with the Business Incubator. “People pay $500 an hour for consulting that we get for free by the water cooler.” During her time in the business world, the self-proclaimed socialist tweeted out multiple articles by Paul Graham, an English-born entrepreneur and venture capitalist. She even gave entrepreneurial talks at Boston University, her alma mater, where she touted her partnership with the Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator designing “entrepreneurial curricula for those interested in launching their own enterprises.” Her primary interests were in “entrepreneurship and developing innovated, healthy, enterprising communities for generations to come,” according to her speaker page on Boston University’s website. Ocasio-Cortez’s talk of the values of entrepreneurship, profits and lower taxes in 2012 are antithetical to the values she now espouses as a member of the DSA, an organization that marches the streets calling for the abolishment of profit. Ocasio-Cortez now rails against laws that cut taxes for businesses, such as the tax reform bill signed into law in December, which has been widely praised by small businesses. She claims the tax savings produced by the bill could have paid for health care and free public college for every American. The enterprising capitalist-turned-socialist is now being touted by high-ranking Democrats as the future of the party.

Just think about it..  Alexandria, who is now outted as a total hypocrite and fraud, is the “future of the Democratic Party” according to the DNC Chairman, Tom Perez.  That means, the Dems are openly against abolishing borders, abolishing profit, and abolishing jails, among other things.  Stop, and actually think about that.  Wow..   If there was ever a reason to vote Republican, its the thought that an open socialist like Alexandria will probably be in Congress in 2019.