Comments on ‘Green New Deal’
‘This isn’t just radical socialism, this is madness’
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (February 7, 2019) – Today, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) released the outline of the “Green New Deal.” The resolution calls for the United States to embark on a 10-year “economic mobilization” with the goal to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.” The plan would shut down virtually all coal, oil, and natural gas electric plants, eliminating millions of jobs in the process; spend unspecified billions on new “zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing” and green public transit projects, and it would eliminate as many gasoline-powered vehicles “as is technologically feasible.”
The plan would also require “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency,” the creation of a federal universal college education program, and it would guarantee “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
The following statements from energy and environment experts at The Heartland Institute — a free-market think tank — may be used for attribution.
“Extreme. That’s the only way to describe the socialist Green New Deal. With its failure in Venezuela, Ocasio-Cortez, Markey and their fellow democrats have picked a bad time to force socialism here in our country. Rest assured, The Heartland Institute will continue to lead the opposition to this socialist green dream.”
Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D.
President
The Heartland Institute
thuelskamp@heartland.org
312/377-4000
Dr. Huelskamp represented Kansas’ 1st District in the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.
“It is no coincidence that the radical socialist freshman congresswoman from New York has made the Green New Deal her top priority. In addition to bankrupting our energy economy, the Green New Deal would impose the very same programs that destroyed Venezuela, transforming the Latin American nation from a wealthy, relatively free society into a poverty-stricken totalitarian dictatorship.
“This Venezuelan model is what Ocasio-Cortez and other socialist Democrats dream for America. They realize that a contrived climate crisis provides their best opportunity to amass the power to do so.”
Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
“Justifying the need for the Green New Deal on the alarmist and unscientific reports by the International Panel on Climate Change would turn America into a socialist state because of a lie.
“Despite what this resolution states, human activity is not the ‘dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century.’ Sea levels are not rising at a dangerous and accelerated rate. Storms, droughts, and wildfires are not more frequent, nor are they more severe than in even recent history. And the truth is that the United States, by embracing market-driven forces in energy production, is seeing carbon dioxide emissions fall while that of our more-socialist friends overseas is on the rise.
“In a way, the socialist Green New Deal and the IPCC are a perfect match. Both peddle fantasy and not fact.”
Jay Lehr
Science Director
The Heartland Institute
“There are numerous socialist policies mandated under the Green New Deal that would harm tens of millions Americans and drive up the national debt to unsustainable heights. Just some of those policies include single-payer health care, a national tuition-free college program, a promise to provide every American with ‘healthy food,’ a national basic income program, a universal promise for housing and ‘economic security,’ and a plan to ‘upgrade’ every single building in the country, including every American’s home. This isn’t just radical socialism, this is madness.”
Justin Haskins
Executive Editor
The Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is a 35-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.
Is she promising a paradise for parasites?
Since she’s promising “Economic security for all who are … unwilling to work” I’d say the answer to your question is an unequivocal yes.
Nancy Pelosi proudly calls it a “safety net”.
Green New Deal: ‘This isn’t just radical socialism, this is madness’
Socialism is madness! Radical socialism is stupid insanity.
The United States has been trending towards socialism since FDR, but the concept is the antithesis of the American Dream and the hugely successful American Experiment. It could not be presented openly and honestly to the American people. Instead, it has been introduced slowly and incrementally, using H. L. Mencken’s endless series of imaginary hobgoblins.
While the Green New Deal is being universally condemned on this site, it is being universally praised on many other sites, and defended as plausible in the mainstream. The American people are buying into the Big Lie, and the cycle of human progress is about to turn into its next ‘dark’ phase, if it hasn’t already.
From the Renaissance to the present, the human condition has been steadily improving, but instead of celebration, there is a growing desire to condemn and trash all of our progress for irrational fears and pipe dreams. It is a cancerous thought that has been growing for 100 years, and now infects many of the worlds dominant institutions, political movements and a growing percentage of the population. The resistance is loosing ground and the momentum towards the darkness is getting stronger.
The biggest threat to a free and prosperous people will always be their fear and distrust for their freedom and prosperity.
Follow the yellow brick road and behind the curtain you will find The (Not) Federal (but private) Reserve. They made government BIG and We The People POOR. Big government will always run out of other people’s money. If you don’t abolish that cancer it will kill the body.
You can’t pay a ‘New Green Deal’ in worthless dollars not even taxing the rich 100%.
It goes back a lot further than FDR. The elites have been wanting to run the rest of the country for their own benefit going all the way back to the founding fathers.
You mean the money changers (not) federal (but private) reserve of the temple elites
For the Green New Deal : Agent Orange Cortez ….
The so hated rich 1 % will pay for it. Remember all high ranking democrats belong to this so hated 1 %. Pelosi will love it.
For those who don’t want to read the full resolution (available at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729033/Green-New-Deal-FINAL.pdf ), here is a link to a concise summary of it:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729035/Green-New-Deal-FAQ.pdf
For amusement, I will just point out the following from the first response under the summary’s FAQ:
“Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases.
Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that
calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy.
Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it –
this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. We
do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast
as possible. We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years
because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and
airplanes that fast, . . .”
(yes, that is a verbatim quote . . . can you believe it???)
Yeah, it will be tough to build highways across the world’s oceans within the next 10 years. I will leave it others to address that most critical issue (on the same level of eliminating airplanes) of eliminating farting cows.
I am afraid all those statements in the article are assertions, not evidence evaluation.
Let us look at a few possibilities:
1. Universal health coverage.
No American wishing not to be called a psychopathic and pathological liar can refute voluminous evidence that universal healthcare programmes in Western Europe consume less of GDP than Americans spent using their primitive HMO system. You lot sacrifice the basics for 50 million people so the top 5-10 million can have perfection. Simple economics says that if you spend less of GDP on health through universal coverage and single bulk purchaser drug cost savings, you Americans will have more money to spend on other things. Shameful….
You can rant, scream and squeal all you like. Go look at European systems and how much cheaper they are. The rich can top themselves up, they already do anyway.
2. You can rant and rave about energy, but if you build houses properly, domesticq energy usage can be markedly reduced. Modern glassware is a better insulator than masonry and the best glassware can now generate electricity. Commercial skyscrapers can become power stations. The technology exists and will improve. Designing houses to be energy neutral is well established in Europe. It may require different approaches in some parts of US, but costs of home energy can be radically reduced. More healthy homes means lower health bills. Healthier infants. More happiness, which all you Americans are told to pursue.
Healthy homes are the bulwark of healthy societies. Each state has different climate, so may need different approaches. But making the most important place in society healthy, warm and hospitable should be priority one for every sane society.
Those two I would say are achievable in ten years. The building sector and health cover. It is a good start.
Removing oil from private auto transportation I reckon may take considerably longer. The challenge is the electricity generation issue. Replacing every gas station with rapid rechargers capable of keeping 200 million vehicles on the road will not happen quickly. To me, a reasonable ten year goal would be creating recharge technology capable of national scaling. I do not see it being possible to replace petrol cars in ten years. People will not tolerate willy nilly installations failing regularly. They will expect seamless transitions, like landlines to mobile phones. Capital investment ceilings for extra electricity generation suggest it will take a few decades.
Similar arguments with airlines. Safety requirements suggest very conservative approaches to new technology introduction and people will not stop flying to kiss AOC’s ass. I would be very surprised to see elimination of oil from airlines before 2050, maybe not before 2100.
Public transportation using renewables allows for more discrete roll out. Pilot projects can occur, be rigorously tested and then scaled when operating issues are ironed out. Within ten years, several flagship projects could be in pilot phase testing. Rapid airport-city centre shuttles. High speed rail routes. Electric greyhound buses being trialled on discrete routes. Local bus and tram services using electric. Commuter railways.
You might roll out three dozen projects by 2030, with widespread uptake by 2050.
There are energy implications to work out. But they are not insurmountable.
The guaranteed wages, holidays and pensions is nothing to do with being Green. That is pure socialism which can occur in any generation, green technology or coal. It is domestic economics, not energy policy. And as democrats are not in power, I would suggest they need a Democratic President to get such proposals onto the statute books.
Constructive argument rather than insults is probably the way to engage in arguments.
Oil will run out one day, so the arguments about replacement are more to do with timing than necessity…
I hope this froth is not all about demanding to steal all the Venezuelan oil…..
I would like to remind you that the US is a bankrupt nation and that a worthless fiat currency can’t do miracles.
1. Is this why rich Europeans and Candians flock to the USA for their health care?
2. Anything built by the government order fails and falls. Leave it to the capitalist building industry to define the demand, and to satisfy in the way that customers prefer.
I heard on the radio today (Hannity) about a Canadian who had exhausted his medical options in Canada and has decided to travel to the U.S. to get the medical care he needs. He’s not traveling because of costs, but because of lack of availability for what he needs.
Perhaps the U.S. does spend more money on health care than European countries but a lot of that has to do with the implementation of Obamacare which drastically increased health care costs.
A free market health care plan like Trump is going to implement will be much cheaper and much more available than what we have now or what the Europeans have now.
That which the government funds, it controls. I don’t want government bureaucrats deciding what kind of health care I can have or deserve. In the US, if I need/want an MRI, I can get one in a few days. In countries with “free” medicine, the wait is week or months, if ever. They can simply deny you if they don’t think it’s required. And it’s not usually doctors that are making these decisions. I recently had to have a bad tooth extracted. I only had to wait a couple of days to get into the dentist. My aunt in Toronto had to wait 3 weeks, in pain the entire time. She said after one week she would have been willing to pay out of pocket to get it done sooner, but no, that is illegal in Canada. Tooth pain is one of the worst pains there is, but that’s not considered an emergency there. No think you, you can keep your government run health care.
Rhys, I see that you prefer to believe comfortable lies:
1) Anyone who has actually studied the issue has concluded that government provided health care is both more expensive and provides lower levels of care compared to private health care.
2) Yes well built homes will use less energy. And everyone loves mom and apple pie.
The question, and one that always trips up you socialists is how much do you pay for how much improvement. Like all socialists, you seem to believe that anything from government has no cost.
Anyone who believes that we can rebuild every building in the country in just 10 years is a total moron.
Not only are you a moron, you’re a hypocrite.
Well, now, Mr. Jaggar, I wonder how much you know about State health care in the United Kingdom. Not a lot, I suspect. I do. I worked as a surgeon in the NHS for 23 years and before that as a trainee, of course. Note that the UK system uses a slightly modified version of the single payer model, proposed under this speculative green deal. Now let me tell you how that model is working in Britain today. It is a rapidly failing and utterly inadequate service, highly bureaucratic and micromanaged by the British Government.
There is no freedom of action for clinicians and patient choice is a carefully fostered myth. Primary care doctors are no longer on call at nights or weekends. Accident and Emergency Departments are in a disastrous state. Ambulance staff are tied up for hours with patients who are lying on trolleys in A & E department corridors.
Primary care physicians may only prescribe from a restricted list of drugs approved by local bodies called Community Care Groups (I refer to them as Communist Care Groups.) These groups have no accountability except a financial duty to the Department of Health. They will not enter into correspondence with doctors or their patients.
And now let me tell you of my experiences and those of my family and friends over the last year or so. My daughter developed acute appendicitis, correctly diagnosed by me. She spent over 5 hours in A & E, was initially told she couldn’t have appendicitis as her blood tests showed no evidence of infection (he was looking at another patient’s results), waited half a day for a CT scan, was cancelled for theatre twice and finally operated almost 48 hours after presentation.
A friend who was our village pharmacist died of advanced lung cancer, the tumour having been missed on an incompetently reported CT scan two years prior to diagnosis. Another friend went into acute atrial fibrillation during a cardiac procedure, was transferred to the base hospital, sent to A & E “by mistake “ and spent five hours, as you guessed, waiting for attention. Another family member with a new breast lump was referred electronically to the breast clinic under the NHS two week rule. As she was about to set out for the clinic, she was telephoned, told that the referral had gone to the wrong clinic (the family history clinic), in the same building, that she could not be seen and that she must go back to her primary care doctor and start the whole process again. She was finally seen at six weeks. Fortunately, the lump was benign.
Beside these events, my little problems (deprescription – a new word in NHS speak – of an effective medication, and more recently refusal of a liquid form of a drug from which I have to withdraw very slowly, and could have done with more accuracy of dose titration than by quartering tablets not designed to be broken) pale into insignificance.
Don’t misunderstand me, my dear Mr. Jaggar. There are some European systems which are much superior to the British one. They are not, however, single payer systems of the kind chosen by Aneurin Bevan in 1948, worshipped in the UK as a sort of sacred cow (by people who seem seriously to believe that the poor could not access medical care in Britain prior to 1948) even as it dies slowly and painfully, and, you will notice, proposed by Ms Ocasio-Cortez. They are generally copayment systems in which doctors are independent contractors.
However disgraceful you may think the US system (and, having briefly worked in it I am familiar with its weaknesses as well as its great strengths), the people of the USA would be insane to replace it with the current British system.
If you will allow me to ask. Where your alive in Britain in1947? I was and had been treated as a poor hospital patient before that
It left me with a profound fear of hospitals and nurses.
After 1947 we had dental care and free vaccinations for school children . My mother had the best treatment available in the 1950s at St Bartholomew’s hospital.
However I find that medical practitioners prefer richer patients even now in New Zealand where we are supposed to have a health Service. The poor cannot visit dentists.and cannot afford glasses or hearing aids. but these are private providers. So I think the services degenerate with lack of government funding and the preference of doctors for private practice.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Of course you may ask, and the answer is that I was born in 1951. I was in hospital twice as a small boy and I too found the experience frightening. (It was soon after the second admission that I decided, at 8 years old, with no real knowledge of the matter, nor any family members in medicine or indeed graduates, that I wished to be a surgeon.) The problem with care of children in hospital was a feature of the era, not the system. It was resolved in the UK thanks to the efforts of a pioneering paediatrician at the Charing Cross, Dr. Hugh Jolley, who welcomed parents to the wards and encouraged others to do so.
I was glad to learn of your mother’s good experience at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, for I trained there. It was, of course, a foundation for the poor of the City, and before the NHS those with middle incomes and above were not welcome. The parallel situation at St. Thomas’s was described by Somerset Maugham in his semiautobiographical novel, Of Human Bondage, which repays reading for anyone who wants some idea of what was and was not available to poor patients in London and in the country 120 years ago.
I am not familiar at all with the healthcare system in New Zealand. Patients in our NHS (with some exemptions such as children) pay to see a dentist and also the full cost of glasses. Those costs and prescription charges are why I refer to the NHS as a modified single payer system.
Although I believe that countries (or states, or governments) have a duty to ensure that healthcare of an acceptable standard is available to all regardless of ability to pay, my experience of the single payer model has led me to conclude that it is unsatisfactory and creates a system in which governments say what doctors may or may not do (not its only fault but a critical one.). The question of private practice in a mixed system is very complex and its effects are probably dependent on its affordability for patients (if interested, have a look at and compare the systems of healthcare today in France and Thailand.). I am now so far from the original topic and indeed the broad subject of this site that I shall stop, pausing only to note that I hope my rare contributions here may indicate that thoughtful and courteous debate is both possible and desirable.
Any energy policy proposal with Edward Markey’s name is not to be trusted. His famous tag line over the years in response to unintended energy policy mistakes has been “who could have known?” This one would be 100x times “who could have known.”
Be very afraid.
1984 should be mandatory literature.
‘We’re nuts!’ isn’t a great pitch for a Green New Deal
The 10 Most Insane Requirements Of The Green New Deal
Democrats Need an Ambitious Climate Plan. The Green New Deal Isn’t It.
The Energy 202: No ‘unanimity’ on Green New Deal, says key House Democrat
Despite Few Details And Much Doubt, The Green New Deal Generates Enthusiasm
Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ sounds like a green nightmare: Rep. Gaetz
This is the verbatim text at the start of the draft of the Green New Deal resolution being offered by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA):
“Whereas the October 2018 report entitled ‘‘Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5oC’’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that—
(1) human activity is the dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century;
(2) a changing climate is causing sea levels to rise and an increase in wildfires, severe storms, droughts, and other extreme weather events that threaten human life, healthy communities, and critical infrastructure; ”
I stopped reading the document right then and there. Several hours previously, I had finished watching Tony Heller’s great video that thoroughly rebukes such statements, available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgxgkRmsF2g&feature=youtu.be
Mr. Heller has other videos addressing similar false claims related to “climate change” that are issued by those, like the IPCC, that have their own not-so-hidden agendas.
All of this is just so idiotic!……… “the stupid it burns!”……..
so…. how/why does it guarantee a “family sustainable living wage job” when it also guarantees everything one would ever need while not having a job… why would anyone work… this is the crux of why socialism always fails they run out of other peoples money and effort to steal and spread around.. of course all the while keeping a nice fat cut for themselves and their cronies/families etc… ….. I know it is about power but it still boggles my mind how so many stupid people there are that eat these lies and claptrap up……
God help us!
Joe
Perhaps, going forward, everybody should be swore-in before making any statements about Climate Change and the Green New Deal.
Perhaps, while we are rebuilding every house, apartment, and factory in the country, we could make them all resistant to a 4MT thermonuclear device.
You may make your climate indulgence payments payable to the DNC. We will let you know later if your amount was acceptable and if your virtue signaling was sufficient. Until then you cannot rest so keep the lobbying treats coming.
It’s not like the mainstream press and the universities weren’t already populated with them.
per their press release: “The particular details arent worked out in the resolution…”
Im not overly concerned until results of the 2020 election come in.
What if I don’t want my house improved? It meets my needs perfectly, leave me alone.
We’re from the government, we know what you want and need better than you do. So get out of the way or we will have you shot.
This thing – the GND was DOA, a non-starter. Cortez is a former bartender who does know much about anything, her interviews prove that beyond any doubt. Furthermore, she stole the idea and its main points from an old Bernie Sanders’ dream. Only purpose of this fiasco was for Cortez to remain visible and appear radical and edgy. Media will soon move to another non-issue “crisis”../
I have a workable plan on how to educate this socialist nut cases, but unfortunately I don’t think even the socialists are so stupid as to agree to it…
Package up all socialists and have them live in Valenzuela for 5 years. Or Cuba. Or anywhere that is current run as a socialist paradise. Not the sorta-socialism in the EU and northern Europe, but the real socialism like in the old U.S.S.R. or China back in the 1960’s. Once there they can get a real education on how well it works and how better-off the common people are. And if they think it’s really better, they are free to STAY THERE.
Can these people balance their own check book? Honestly how do these people graduate high school and not know any better than THIS? Has public education become THAT bad? If so, time to tear it down and start over.
Great take on the Green New Deal from the Onion
https://politics.theonion.com/nancy-pelosi-signals-support-for-environmental-causes-b-1832437461
“Nancy Pelosi Signals Support For Environmental Causes By Placing Green New Deal Directly Into Recycling Bin”
After reading the text of the resolution I was torn between laughing at what is a true socialist manifesto and weeping that so many seemingly believe the Orwellian style tenet that, “Models are reality.”
How will I make money day trading oil and gas on the futures market? Will they give me the difference? Working for a living pays too little and doesn’t allow me to outperform everyone else financially without going though numerous social hoops.
LOONEY LEFT AND WACKO SOCIALISTS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER THEY HAVE NO CLUE OF THE REAL WORLD !!!
Implementing these very bad ideas will kill off hundreds of millions of people through starvation and anarchy. AOC will join a race to top Mao as the all time leading killer of humanity. Mao is followed closely by Margret Sanger who is rapidly gaining on him.
I, for one, found James Taylor’s words the most convincing. Hey, after all, that guy has seen fire, and seen rain…
Occasional Cortex and he ilk are doing everyone a favor. By opening the green progressive playbook to the later, more frightening chapters instead of the lighter falsehoods of the earlier plays, she exposes the true disaster these Soylent Greens are planning. But too early. Like the frog in the boiling water.
radical socialism IS madness