Ocasio-Cortez paying those “unwilling to work” in Green New Deal FAQs was an admission, not a mistake
Those FAQs put progressive meat on the bare bones of the legislative Resolution, and was an admission of the policy goals of those behind the GND.
The Democrat Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by at least four leading Democrat presidential candidates (Harris, Warren, Booker, Gillibrand) is a grab-bag of longstanding left-wing policy dreams to nationalize the economy and healthcare, and redistribute wealth, with fighting ‘climate change’ just the latest pretext.
Among the many, many crazy proposals was “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.”
That wording was not in the proposed Resolution, but was in a Frequently Asked Questions document distributed to journalists and posted on the official congressional website of the co-sponsor and driving force behind the GND, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
[Highlighting added]
Paying people “unwilling to work” received a lot of conservative media and political attention because the concept confirms the belief that progressive policies are an invitation to freeloading.
A furious media and social media debate was sparked Friday night when my colleague, Cornell Law School Professor Robert Hockett, appeared on Tucker Carlson and denied that AOC had proposed paying people unwilling to work.
A Media Matters writer, in a highly deceptive tweet that went viral, used Hockett’s appearance to claim Hockett had debunked “all the conservative media lies straight to [Carlson’s] face.” Ocasio-Cortez retweeted that tweet.
[Image via Daily Caller]
Hockett conceded that he was in the wrong in an email to The Daily Caller News Foundation on Saturday.
“It appears there was more than one document being discussed yesterday, only one of which I had heard about with any definiteness by last evening after a long day of media appearances – namely, the one referred to by the Congresswoman in her tweet,” he wrote. “I regret that we seem unknowingly to have ended up speaking about different documents for a minute during our longer and otherwise ‘on-the-same-page’ conversation last night.”
While many are accusing Hockett of deliberately lying about it, I don’t believe that’s so. From my interactions with him, if he says there was confusion during the interview, I accept that.
The issue of Hockett and the Tucker interview is a distraction. The fact is that Ocasio-Cortez put the FAQ with the “unwilling to work” language on her official website.
Her Chief of Staff claims that it was a mistake to post it on the website, and that the FAQ was just a draft:
Ocasio-Cortez followed up with her own tweet mentioning numerous versions and fakes:
Considering that the language in question was on an official document on her official website and distributed to the media, I agree that AOC and her supporters are deliberately trying to confuse the issue to obscure the policy preference to pay those unwilling to work:
I’m now watching this very carefully b/c it’s becoming a master study in how, when you are wrong, the best option is to spread so much misinformation that normal people find it exhausting to try to figure out the truth.
This is a good example of political gaslighting:
For all the talk about how Trump is “gaslighting America,” it’s rather hilarious that the media & AOC’s clapping-seal allies on Twitter, are willing to go along w/the patently obvious gaslighting lie that the Green New Deal document we spent an ENTIRE DAY clowning on wasn’t hers.
No, you simpering fools, it’s not a mystery: it was published by AOC’s office on her website and also sent by AOC’s representatives to NPR, among other things. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
But why gaslight the policy of paying those unwilling to work. Why portray it as some sort of clerical error? This excuse reminds me of Michael Kinsley’s definition of a “political gaffe“:
“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”
In the Green New Deal FAQ originally posted to Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional website, Ocasio-Cortez told the truth about her view and the New Green Deal ultimate goal of paying those “unwilling to work.”
Paying those unwilling to work, through Guaranteed Basic Income, has been a centerpiece of progressive policy for many years, and for at least the past year has been part of Ocasio-Cortez’s policy goals.
In a July 2018 speech at Netroots Nation (the gathering of far left bloggers, journalists and politicians), Ocasio-Cortez specifically mentions “universal basic income” (at 00:25 in video) as a policy goal:
Ocasio-Cortez’s mention of universal basic income at Netroots was in sync with her developing policy platform, as she acknowledged in this April 2018 tweet:
In December 2018, the universal basic income was noted in this article at Quartz as a unique feature of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal platform (emphasis added):
Newly elected US congress member and rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned for office on an ambitious climate-change platform which she also calls a Green New Deal. The plan has gained attention and supporters over the last month, and is becoming a main talking point among Democrats who are looking for a meaningful agenda for the party over the next decade. Ocasio-Cortez envisions the federal government leading efforts to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions by investing in renewable energy infrastructure, improving the efficiency of residential and industrial buildings, and constructing an energy-efficient electricity grid.
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal[ *] however, involves taking on not only climate change, but also poverty and inequality. To achieve the Green New Deal’s goals, the government would need to hire millions of people. Ocasio-Cortez sees this as an opportunity to transform the economy. The Green New Deal would include training and education for workers, as well as a federal job-guarantee program. Further, all investments would be focused on low-income communities. Presenting climate-change mitigation as a jobs program, rather than an economy killer, may be politically savvy.
As if all that wasn’t ambitious enough, the Green New Deal would also include “basic income programs, universal healthcare programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor-market flexibility, and entrepreneurism.” It is basically everything liberals desire and more. Supporters defend the need for these welfare programs as ways to alleviate the disruption that would be caused by the elimination of fossil fuel-supported jobs. With a universal basic income and government-guaranteed health care, losing your oil-industry gig wouldn’t be as bad.
[* Note: The link in the Quartz article now redirects to the draft legislative proposal, away from the original link to AOC’s campaign website.]
The draft legislative proposal (pdf.) to which the Ocasio-Cortez campaign website now redirects, included basic income guarantees:
“include additional measures such as basic income programs …”
[Highlighting added]
Universal basic income was tried in Finland, and Ontario, Canada, but failed, was proposed in Stockton, CA, and is under consideration in Chicago. It has widespread support in California tech circles, and is part of the official platform of California Democrats.
What this record shows us is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez including payments to those “unwilling to work” in her Frequently Asked Questions about the Green New Deal was not a mistake, it was an admission of the policy goals of those behind the Green New Deal.
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[Some wording changes were made to this post, and content added, after initial publication.]
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Comments
What we can all hope for is that like Romneycare in MA, that aoc’s nonsense be tried in one city or state so that the results can be viewed by all for the failure that it will become!
Chicago of all places is about to roll out a pilot where they will pay 1,000 people $1,000/month of UBI. A million a month doesn’t sound like much but given that Chicago and, for that matter, the entire state of IL are on the verge of bankruptcy it does seem rather odd.
AOC already has that covered. Just print up and use with Chicago dollars, and you’ll end up paying them exactly what they’re worth.
We already have California, which has extended medicaid to illegal aliens.
“Paying people “unwilling to work” received a lot of conservative media and political attention because the concept confirms the belief that progressive policies are an invitation to freeloading.”
Progressives want to destroy the single best anti poverty program in the last 100 years. They want to destroy the single best program to solve the income inequity problem.
Its called “Ending Welfare As We Know It”
Imagine what will happen if people south of the border think they can get an even cushier free ride. We will need a row of machine gun nests on both south and north borders. A new gold rush on a scale never seen before.
The idea of helping children sounds good in principle. The problem is that it ignored human nature. Welfare as we know it has been an unmitigated disaster.
We give people money expecting them to do well by their children, then the don’t. So, in addition to paying for them to have children, we also have to pay staggering social costs dealing with poorly raised children who then become criminals.
No new babies should be produced while someone is on welfare. A condition of receiving welfare should be an implantable birth control.
Unfortunately, in many communities, welfare has become a multi-generational way of life.
I worked with a chick who at the age of 35 had her first job. She’d already spit out 4 kids (and her 16 year-old daughter was pregnant), and lived off of the taxpayers for 19 years, minimum. This was the days of actual paychecks, and we were all standing around as the boss handed them out, and as she opened hers I though she was going to faint; a black girl completely drained of color. “Oh my God, look at how much they took out in taxes…” Someone piped up,”Who do you thinks been paying your bills all these years.”
I’ll never forget it. Ever.
Somebody should tell the Honorable AOC about how much money is in private retirement accounts. And suggest she could redistribute it to millions of more-deserving people.
Don’t worry, that is most certainly part of the plan. They just won’t be publicizing it at this point
That plan has already been proposed, under the guise of “improving the safety of retirement accounts”. To wit, requiring the replacement of your retirement account’s assets with Federal bonds.
It would trigger a revolution. Might be a good excuse to have one, the need is growing daily.
Make NO mistake; this GND nonsense is nothing but a naked Marxist power and wealth grab. In addition to the line about those unwilling to work, there is a plethora of other SJW nonsense in there including guarantees for a family living wage, high quality health care, housing and mumbo-jumbo that amounts to justification for reparations. This would amount to a full-on government take over of the entire US economy. This proposal and the loons backing it need to be stomped into a mud-hole.
“take over of the entire US economy.”
More like destroy the entire economy.
I’d just point out that the very conservative Milton Friedman championed the negative income tax.
The devil is in the details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
Don’t we already have that at the Federal level in the form of the EITC?
Milton Friedman was not a classic conservative. He was a self described libertarian, and a very conflicted one at that.
To understand Friedman, who was a brilliant monetary economist, one has to look at ALL of his positions on all issues over his lifetime. A good example of his conflicted nature was his simultaneously espoused belief that a military draft should not be imposed, while at the same time he readily acknowledged that mandatory military training and enrollment in military reserves would be advantageous. Friedman was a brilliant man, in certain areas, but each of his policy positions have to be examined independently and in context.
Already covered; what taxes they pay gets returned at the end of the year, and usually much, much more with the advent of the EITC.
Friedman proposed the negative income tax as a complete replacement for all welfare; instead of having dozens of programs, each with its own rules and bureaucracy, just have one simple program, administered by the same IRS that already does the same work anyway.
It would save the taxpayer a fortune in administrative costs, and you wouldn’t have some people managing to qualify for every program and getting large amounts while others less skilled at it, or who don’t qualify for anything, fall through the cracks. And you eliminate the cases where someone is capable of earning something, but can’t afford to because they’d lose more in welfare than they’d earn from the job.
EITC is not it, because it requires a minimum earned income in order to qualify.
If I can get paid for being unwilling to work, can I set my own salary?
I would self-identify as a Fortune 500 CEO.
You must not have read page 6 of the plan; being a CEO is going to be strictly verboten.
No. The point is to give you enough to provide for the bare necessities but not enough for you to afford luxuries.
Paying those “unwilling to work” is nothing but the first step towards the establishment of modern day slavery.
Is aoc pulling a Borat on the democrats? LARPing as a socialist dunce, seeing who will take the bait? It’s hard to believe anyone would be that stupid in real life. The democrats better figure it out and fast, because if they keep endorsing her ideas like the gnd, they’re in for a rude awakening.
“Is aoc pulling a Borat on the democrats?”
No. She totally believes every word she utters, today. Tomorrow she’ll say something else, perhaps contradicting herself, and she’ll believe every word she utters with every fiber in her soul, then. Rinse and repeat.
Interesting, the picture has muted lipstick. Somehow like this time we are to take her seriously and not objectify her youthful beauty. Unfortunately, time is not kind to women in general, and leftist women in particular. When will AOC have bizarre tats and piercings, to show her solidarity with some victim group?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnSIMDjBykI&feature=youtu.be
My Fair Lady – Undeserving Poor
And so we have the grand game of make-believe and moral dress-up, in which Field Marshal Sandy rallies her troops on Twitter in the service of a half-organized bouquet of slogans and prejudices that no mentally normal adult — and there are still a few of those around — takes quite seriously. The purported goal of the great national deployment isn’t the point — the deployment itself is. It is an excuse for a great deal of noise and running in circles and excitation and displays of Very High Moral Seriousness that is its own reason for being. Sandy’s war is not a struggle over the future of Earth — it is only a struggle over the future of Sandy, and all the other Sandys out there in the great vast wilds of America, waiting tables at TGI Friday’s or grinding away in the obscurity of some master’s program in women’s studies, sure that however things were supposed to turn out, they weren’t supposed to turn out like this, a mess of loneliness and pointlessness, all dressed up for battle with nowhere to go and no comfort but Netflix and Facebook and Twitter, little fixes of dopamine just strong enough and frequent enough to keep the addicts upright and sedated enough that they do not begin asking the really difficult questions and demanding answers.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal/
You’ll want to read the whole, beautiful thing to get the full import of that last paragraph.
Netflix, FB and TWTR with an occasional Tinder swipe thrown in…
Well said!
On the Fox Tucker Carlson show Friday night, Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor and an Ocasio Cortez advisor straight-up lied about the Green New Deal that was posted on her own website and then blamed what was on the AOC website as a fake republican smear campaign.
Just who is this fellow professor Robert Hockett? He seems to be very comfortable intentionally lying.
The Professor covered this – he is one of his Cornell Law colleagues.
The key is the next sentence:
Don’t get distracted – he is credible, and the Professor believes he made an honest mistake. Focus on what AOC has done, and is doing.
She is the venomous snake in the grass, the wolf in proverbial sheep’s clothing.
So “unwilling to work” was just a draft copy’s unfortunate phrasing of a policy AOC and her ilk haven’t actually disavowed?
Nice jacket… when did she win The Masters?
No but she does deserve a participation trophy
It’s by design. Green movement. Green Party. The color for Marxism used to be RED. RED now means “eeeevvvvviiiillllllllll Republicans!” No, the new color of Marxism is GREEN.
She chose that “statement jacket” to do just that – make a statement: to align herself, both directly and indirectly, with the Marxists, her fellow travelers, the useful idiots like her who believe that socialism, that Marxism, could ever have any other outcome than it has whenever, wherever it’s tried. Venezuela, Cuba, China, North Korea, USSR, Eastern Europe (Yugoslavia and Romania, Hungary and Poland….etc.)
She is a walking marketing campaign. She needs to be STOPPED before more people are duped.
And what else is green the color of?
Somewhere there is a “what’s the par on this hole” joke.
So I see two extreme possibilities, she is either trolling the left to see who follows along, or trolling the right to see how we roll out the opposition. Wait, make that three. She is just bat-shit crazy. The never ascribe to malice approach supports the third, I guess.
Sadly, I think it is far worse – I think she believes it, that what she says is all correct.
That is the danger she poses….she believes the lies and propaganda.
Reminds me of Tokyo Rose or Axis Sally. Mouthpieces who gladly go along….because they believe what they say.
As long as the media covers for her, no one will realize how vapid and ignorant she is.
Very dangerous.
“Sadly, I think it is far worse – I think she believes it, that what she says is all correct.”
Absolutely. She has previously claimed that while she might be factually wrong, she has the moral high ground, so she is “right”.
The evergreen quote from C.S. Lewis comes to mind: “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
And from the movie Serenity:
The Operative : It’s worse than you know.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds : It usually is.
Hon, do these glasses make my brain look bigger?
Can I just mention that this lady is slick and has a great PR/marketing team…which should be both countered HARD by Republicans AND copied, in that branding, iconography, and knowing your “clients” is key to success.
Notice that little logo on her stationary? Someone who was whining about the high cost of property/rent in DC has already spent tax money on that logo….. Her brochures are slick, glossy, very “professional” looking, as is her wardrobe, which means a LOT to millennials and those who are up-and-coming (“how do I look?!” “how do I come across to you?!”).
This lady has a PR team and a 5-10 year plan. Count on it. And–more importantly: she needs to be taken DOWN so that whatever budding foothold she may have is nipped. Now.
You give her far to much credit, amigo! Do you really think she is so gifted? Is a piece of driftwood gifted that makes it’s way to Trump’s Mar-A-Lago beach as Ivanaka’s kids are walking by, that they pick it up and hand it to grandad where he then uses it a desk adornment?
This young lady is only a pretty and smiling charmer, that is all. The rest is a wave on current in a wind.
As you yourself wrote on a another reply on this: “As long as the media covers for her, no one will realize how vapid and ignorant she is.” She is not a genius, only charminly empty.
Copper. The first mirrors man made were brightly polished copper. Copper reflects well ! Perhaps a hollow orb of polished copper was considered by the confused to be magical. It is indeed a charm to the eye. But hollow. A pure vein of exposed copper, as any rock hound knows, is green !
So too she represents the charming Eve, post bite of the primordial tree, well, able, like copper, to conduct the emptiness of charm. And of course the waves she rides are the mass media’s, including as it does so well today, Higher Academia, in it’s final highest tide ever attempt.
This had better include retroactive pay for endless hours of endless summers spent surfing and lounging on the beach in my youth.
I dare you to find someone with a slack ethic like mine at the time.
I have proof, too. Pictures, or punched time cards if you will, of a fit yet idle lad, a swarthy Slavic brown (with Teutonic highlights), braised and baked to perfection.
If I am not recompensed for my tireless efforts …
I might as well have worked a summer job! Is this really America?
LukeHandCool (whose slack ethic was, in a shocking coup d’etat, replaced by a soul-crushing work ethic upon conscription into the new family business at age 15, working seven days a week, even when school was in session, rendering him an unrecognizable, pale, uncooked pastry shell of his former self, toiling away in the gloomy landscape of endless winter)
I always love reading your posts, and your witty sign-off!!
Awww, thanks, DINORightMarie. I love reading your posts, too.
And thank you for the image now in my head. Of Professor Jacobson wincing as he reads your comment, an exasperated Archie Bunker look on his face as he rolls his eyes and mutters to himself,
“Oh, Jeez. Don’t encourage him.”
It replaced the little skit that popped into my head when I read the professor’s post and he mentioned Robert Hockett was his colleague.
A very simple skit. If Bill Jacobson were a surfer … how he’d greet his colleague in the faculty lounge after seeing Prof. Hockett on Tucker:
“Duuude … Duuude … I mean, Duuude … come on … I mean … seriously Dude? … Dude … seriously??”
Read in between the lines and you know exactly what I mean. I’d love to be a fly on that wall.
Get a room you two.
I’m unwilling to work alright but the problem with doing nothing is you never know if you’ve done enough.
Sorry, but no one goes on national TV and doesn’t know what document they’re referring to; and then he has the nerve to say that this was some kind of conspiracy by Republicans to post a false document. What is going on at Cornell Law School that this is what is on their faculty?
The Chinese Communist Party Is Setting Up Cells at Universities Across America:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/18/the-chinese-communist-party-is-setting-up-cells-at-universities-across-america-china-students-beijing-surveillance/
What is the difference between “Federal Jobs Guarantee” and “Universal Basic Income”? The average federal bureaucrat works one hour per month (not kidding).
The Democrats were once the party of “The Working Man”. Today, they are the party of “The Non-working Man”, the bums, layabouts and parasites of the left.
And let’s not forget the GOPe, who are the bums, layabouts and parasites – and backstabbers – of the right.
I noticed in the picture posted with your article not one of those communists are wearing an American flag pin.
Not surprised in the least. They can’t win using the truth so lies are put out as truth, and the ignorant swallow.
The mask slipped a bit. They really meant the unable or unwilling to work. The adults in the DNC (if you can call them that) had to reel her in.
The further left AOC goes, the further down the crapper she brings the dems.
Normal GOPe would never call her out. PDJT will without hesitation.
Now all we have to do is fight the media as well.
I am still trying to understand their “logic” that tells them that people who are unwilling to work are more deserving than I for the money I work very hard to earn. In what world do people work to earn a wage, but have less of a claim for that wage than those who refuse to work at all?
Cleetus;
The ‘logic’ is that the person you dump the Free$#!+ on usually votes for you.
Socialists are pretty much like any other politician. They want that cushy seat on the .gov gravy train and the power that goes along with it. They’re -sometimes- just more open with their plan on how they’re going to buy votes.
“…their “logic” that tells them that people who are unwilling to work are more deserving than I …”
If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on the support of Paul.
I really think it’s that simple. Bought Votes.
Just realized I reiterated you Miles…
don’t those who are unwilling to work fart?
at least with cows we can have ice cream and pizza
A guaranteed federal job doesn’t seem much different from a guaranteed income, for if the job is truly “guaranteed” then presumably you can’t be fired just because you never show up for work (let alone never actually do anything productive if you do).
So Hockett gets his information from Twitter and not from AOC’s own website. Perhaps he is holding the “we were hacked” excuse as a backup plan.
A furious media and social media debate was sparked Friday night when my colleague…
Things must be interesting in the Cornell Law School coffee lounge… hmmmmm I wish Prof. Jacobson had shared some more personal insight into this person Robert Hockett..
Darn his sense of propriety.
Since the claim is made that one has a liar as a “colleague”, is there not also — in addition to the public notice of it made herein this article by the complaintant — is there not also at least now two seperate duties of official procedural rebuke that must be (as a “professional”, that is) initiated by the complaintant is such cases? That is to say, that as a “professional” one has a duty, a dread obligation, to uphold the integrity and honor of one’s profession, and to protect it from the behaviour of cads, oafs and scoundrels, not to mention liars.
There one should officially initiate the professional process of rebuke, here at least in two venues; one: the professoriate, via either or both the college or whatever professional association the professors belong to; and two: the courts, for the fellow is a lawyer, no?
It is unwise to continue in the association of liars and scoundrels, especially as a close associate in a profession where integrity and honesty must be the rule.
Therefore it may become necessary, if the professtional rebuke procedures fail to rebuke in adequate manner appropriate to the case at hand, then a good professional must — to keep hs own honor — resign the company, the collegium for it is has become corrupted to a level that is unacceptable, no?
This is the way I have lived my own life and career.
Mr. Jacobson writes: “While many are accusing Hockett of deliberately lying about it, I don’t believe that’s so. From my interactions with him, if he says there was confusion during the interview, I accept that.”
Okay, so my premises in prior post are frogged (knitting term).