Chris White Tech Reporter August 06, 2020 12:44 PM ET
Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are teaming up on a proposal requiring lawmakers who introduce climate bills to consider the impact such legislation will have on black people and poor communities.
The two Democrats introduced the Climate Equity Act Thursday that would, if passed, require Congress to score future climate bills based on how much they may negatively impact poor and minority communities, The Washington Post reported. The two Democrats initially unveiled a draft of the bill in 2019, when Harris began her unsuccessful run for president, media reports show.
The equity score would be similar to the economic scores the Congressional Budget Office applies to other legislation, WaPo reported. The Climate Equity Act would also apply to regulations the Trump administration proposes in the future. (RELATED: Harris, Sanders, Warren Stay Mum On Fracking Ban Proposals After Attack Sends Oil Markets Soaring)
“COVID-19 has laid bare the realities of systemic racial, health, economic, and environmental injustices that persist in our country,” Harris said in a statement to the Post. “The environment we live in cannot be disentangled from the rest of our lives.”
The bill comes as reports indicate former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is considering Harris to be his running mate.
Biden pledged early during the presidential campaign to pick a female running mate.
The bill “is a really big deal,” Kerene Tayloe, director of federal legislative affairs at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told the Post, referring to the scoring system.
“Nothing like that has ever existed,” Tayloe added. The New York-based environmental group helped Ocasio-Cortez and Harris craft the legislation.
Harris backed the Green New Deal in 2019, which sought to aggressively cut carbon emissions over the next decade. The resolution, crafted by Ocasio-Cortez, called for “10-year national mobilizations” toward addressing climate change.
A fact sheet published alongside the proposal said the plan would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War 2.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s GND would reportedly phase out fossil fuel usage within 12 years. Studies show the plan would come with a hefty price.
Americans could be forced to pay up to $93 trillion to implement the Green New Deal over a decade, the conservative-leaning American Action Forum (AAF) noted in a study in February 2019.
Republicans in the Senate torpedoed the legislation in March 2019, while Democratic lawmakers called the vote a dog-and-pony show. The GOP defeated the proposal 57-0, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling the bill a socialistic ploy designed to kill the economy.
“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said during a September 2019 CNN town hall, although she did not embrace a fracking ban in her climate plan.
Biden has similarly declined to endorse an outright ban on fracking, though he did promise during a CNN debate in March that he would stop new fracking projects.
Because that’s not at all racist?
I read an article last night about Chicago schools declaring that when kids do go back to class this fall, if there aren’t enough seats for all the kids who want “in person” learning, children of color will be given first choice.
Portland Oregon school district had similar preference based crap.
I don’t know if it went away after it became public knowledge.
So the end result of this policy would be segregated schools again?
Maybe in hindsight the school administrators are thinking this was a good arrangement?
Black activists have been calling to re-segregate schools for years, ya know, to fight racism.
Kind of like black only dorms and student centers at many colleges?
Exactly that! Camel’s nose under the tent, first step on that slope, dipping of the toe in the water. Why were the black only colleges never integrated, only in the 80s did many of them become open enrollment schools.
Racial profiling?
Well, in South Africa, it used to be called “Separate Development” – better known these days as ‘apartheid’.
It’s the sort of blatant bigotry they’ve been justifying their entire lives.
So, the “squats” want to pass laws that harm minorities. At least they are being honest.
“Ocasio-Cortez’s GND would reportedly phase out fossil fuel usage within 12 years.”
The only way this would be remotely possible is if we went back to living in caves, and there wouldn’t be enough firewood to keep everyone fed and warm for half the year, or more. There is nothing to replace the current usage of fossil fuels and we couldn’t even build enough next gen nuclear in that time frame even if there was no time period to consult and plan even if we had unlimited budgets to build new nuclear.
So this is a dead horse already, and whipping it more won’t change the fact that this will be impossible to achieve, unless of course, their real plan is to drive us back into caves and the dark ages. This appears to be their only plan, which is to have everyone suffer equally for the ignorance of the socialist marxist progressive ideas they wish to impose on the greatest civilization of all time with all our achievements and financial success in history, which in the final analysis also benefits the very people they are supposedly trying to equalize, the Blacks.
Accusatory Occasional-Cortex does not care how many people die, killing people, lots of people, is their goal.
It seems to me that many Democrat politicians cause the death of thousands of people, and they in turn cry over those that they directly caused and blame each one on Donald Trump. For instance, it was Democrats who put sick people in nursing homes that resulted in thousands of deaths and it Democrats who refused to use medical ships meant to help COVID-19 people recover, yet Joe Biden is blaming Trump for what the Democrats did.
They kill and impoverish people, then use their death and poverty to further their politics.
Back in Feb/Mar, when Trump closed the border to Chinese visitors Dementia Joe declared the move to be unwarranted and racist.
Today Biden is condemning Trump for not doing more, sooner.
Meanwhile, the media just nods their head in agreement.
so did Pelosi and many of the big Democrat talking heads. Then they realised that prolonging and worsening the corona virus episode was where the political capital lay.
“They kill and impoverish people” Precisely what the left always does throughout history. Oh, and lie.
She is an apologist for marxism…. more than 100 million murdered by Stalin and Mao in the 20th Century obviously was not enough for her power crazed ambitions. The fact that marxism is not as dirty as word as naziism is a stain on the West post WWII. Not only did we not excise this cancer after the fall of the nazis but we allowed it to gestate in N American universities where the decamped Frankfurt School and their miserable Critical Theory was given a home. That initiated the long march through the institutions. Every marxist apologise should be shamed for the obscenity they support and promote from their safe over remunerated ivory towers.
Don’t forget the millions killed in Africa, Asia and South/Central America by the left’s sickassed, anti-human religion. Or it’s incestuous coupling with islam.
Ocasio-Cortez’s GND would reportedly phase out fossil fuel usage within 12 years.””
Contradictory because Blacks would be generally more adversely affected .
Crazy people!
yeah im thinking this is her backdown getting outta the green new screwup using a CYA that she thinks will still get votes and headpats
Earthling2, no mention from them of the Blacks in the Congo who are dying in the artisanal cobalt mines. Mining materials by hand using picks and shovels under horrendous conditions. No mention of the fact that there are 40,000 children, some as young as six dying too or being orphaned and so desperate that they have no choice but to work, if they want to eat. No mention that many were refugees with no support network, suffering discrimination and abuse from corruption. No mention that if the Green New Deal goes ahead al of this will increase dramatically.
No mention either that there are many other people in mines and e-waste recycling dumps across the developing world who are also suffering similar adversities. Maybe they matter less? How black do you have to be for it matter?
in aus a lot of our claimed black are rather shiny white so prob not very if at all…you just have to “identify” as…whatever it is, it seems nowdays
I agree 100% there OZ, I have a full blood indigenous friend in Alice Springs who has seen too many of her kin die at the hands of her own people. Her sister was murdered by an indigenous person. She does not blame the white man, she just wants it to stop. She knows that those who speak up against white people and claim racism have their own agenda. No one wants to get to the root of the problem.
China is exploiting a lot of the human capital around the world, children included, but also heavily in many African countries. The Chinese imperialist colonialists are especially cruel to those who are the poorest, and don’t even promote the most basic of safety like shoring up the earthen walls of these pits that are dug by hand to gain access to the Cobalt mineralization, such as in the Congo. Many children die from the collapse of these loose earth walls of the pits they are digging by hand. And almost no one anywhere says anything, not even BLM and all the woke idiots everywhere. And certainly not the Green Shirts who want this Cobalt for their batteries, windmills and EV’s at any cost.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is widely considered to be the richest country in the world regarding natural resources; its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be worth in excess of U.S. $24 trillion. It’s no wonder the Red Chinese Chi-Comms are in the Congo and Africa like a dirty shirt. Time to kick their A$$ out of there.
The point is, none of this is meant to achieve anything but chaos. That is their intention… and the useful idiots educated by more useful idiots infected by marxism follow the piper.
All such proposals raise the price of energy thus disproportionally impacting the poor, and by extension, the black community.
I don’t expect these progs to elucidate that
but it will be amusing to watch how they avoid this basic fact.
==========
Since they are the ones using American tax dollars to kill black and brown babies all over the world they don’t need to elucidate upon the subject, dead is what they want.
They’ll just decree a subsidy to cover any expense, but only for the people who vote Democrat.
Energy taxes are highly regressive but taxes to make energy green is acceptable. Latinos in California May soon be the biggest voting block in the state and the poorest. When will they vote to stop subsidizing the tech elites?
There are a little smarter than you think.
This result of this bill would necessitate/require that subsidies/benefits would be given to the (colored) people that are most negatively impacted by the increased costs of energy.
Mitigation of the harm would likely be in the form of grants/money to to groups that advocate for the people that are impacted, and those groups would use that power to blackmail others into giving them more money.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are teaming up on a proposal requiring lawmakers who introduce climate bills to consider the impact such legislation will have on black people and poor communities.
Blatant racism.
Of course, they are Democrats and the Democrat Party is the Party of racism.
This would backfire monumentally if the impacts were judged realistically! The working class and the poor are always the most susceptible to energy poverty as has been shown in England, Germany and Australia! But then the Green Blob has always had a wide streak of racism running down its backside as the treatment of African peoples and nations clearly shows!
If the alarmists were really concerned about Africa they would encourage fossil fuel development and the wealth it brings as the best way to bring down both birth rates and environmental degradation. Developed nations can more effectively deal with disease and pollution so you have a cleaner and safer environment!
Remember how they’ve been claiming that CO2 taxes would be revenue neutral, because all of it will be given back to the people?
In a number of podcasts, Scott Adams points out Biden’s obvious cognitive decline. link Biden may not get to run. The other possibility is that he would run and would select Harris as his running mate. So … one way or another, Harris could end up as President or de facto President.
I’m guessing Trump will win and the speculation about Harris will be moot. That said, it’s a long time ’til November.
The link above doesn’t work. This one should.
So when Biden as president -elect or actually inaugurated , is retired, every one moves up one place . Harris becomes president but is it the House or Senate majority leader who becomes VP, Pelosi or McConnell (assuming they are still in place)?
I could Google it of course , but there’s no fun in that when one might provoke, with the enquiry, some interesting comments about how Harris might operate with a Republican VP.
No. VP becomes president, then the new president appoints a new VP subject to confirmation by the Senate.
Speaker of the House only becomes president if both the VP and P are killed at the same time.
New president appoints a new VP.
Hillary Clinton???????
Consider:
Clinton becomes VP – the fallout would be radioactive, rips the country apart.
The Senate shoots down the nomination – the fallout would be radioactive, rips the country apart.
Cute.
No President in their right mind (so perhaps a liberal might just do it) would nominate Hillary for VP. As soon as she was confirmed, the President would suffer an unfortunate life ending event.
Thank you Mark.
‘Biden’s obvious cognitive decline’
The perfect progressive candidate – a pure puppet.
And considering how much cheating the Dems did last time, when they thought they had it in the bag, I can only speculate how exponentially worse their efforts will be this time – especially when their other option is possibly for the high crimes they committed from the very top might actually be examined by someone willing to ream them for it.
The Democrats are going to do a “Weekend At Bernies” remake with Biden. Don’t we all want to look behind the curtain to see who’s doing the voice-over?
Maybe, but this is a long shot, this will open their eyes and minds to the harm they are causing. But I doubt they care.
Americans are entitled to “equal protection of the laws.” That means that legislators may not craft laws for the purpose of benefiting some at the expense of others. Of course, they do this all the time, but that does not make it lawful.
One of our local BLM leaders was complaining that affirmative action policies did not benefit him … those benefits went single white mothers.
I don’t really know how “equal protection of the laws” is understood/interpreted by the courts.
DonM, obviously the courts (as well as the other two branches of government) abandoned the Constitution long before you and I were born.
This irrational socialist crap is beyond stupid…. It’s insane.
As Joe says “if you don’t vote for me, you aren’t black”.
That’s going to make sorting out who’s getting impacted much easier.
I can confirm that hypothesis in my case.
Given: Black people are entitled to ‘reparations’.
Fact: If you don’t vote for hiden Joe biden you are not black.
Therefore: If you don’t vote for hiden Joe biden you don’t get cash.
Republicans should introduce a bill to counter theirs, called the “Climate Stupidity Act”.
The people who would be affected by a warming world more than others would be the higher latitude peoples who evolved in colder temperatures and are not as physically equipped to handle the hotter temps like those who evolved in the tropics.
That’s about as PC as I can make it.
How do they decide if someone’s black enough? Color charts?
If it involves a taxpayer funded handout, you need only ‘self identify’ as ‘a person of color’ to qualify.
The deeper question for the leftards is do you actually have to be black or can you just identify as black to qualify 🙂
Ask “Pocahontas”.
(Alias “Lieawatha”.)
just about the best value politician in the world for when I need a big laugh.
Diversity dogma is a class-based moral or ethical philosophy… religion, notably derived from low information attributes, that instructs evolution of systems, processes, and beliefs, not limited to racism, sexism.
This will be truly hilarious. It will turn out that all the GND proposals have disastrous effects on minorities and the poor.
At this point the global problem will have become specific. Do you want to save the planet? Or do you want to give them heat for their homes, and electricity to cook with?
She is unwittingly introducing America to the concept of Fuel Poverty.
Huh, what about native Americans, Latinos, whites, indians, africans etc etc etc? So its “black is the only way” now?
Also who in the HELL voted for AOC??
Mostly the type of people who think that government printing presses create wealth.
A fact sheet published alongside the proposal said the plan would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War 2.”
These crazies are fixated on World War. Everything they want is couched in “Let’s have another World War” rhetoric.
The Republicans “torpedoed” legislation. War lingo. Prepare for combat. Lock and load, duck and cover, fire when ready. In coming!
The mindset of the Loony Left and their Hysterical Media minders is pure violence. They want war so bad they can taste it. Apparently they love the smell of napalm in the morning …
They started a war in 1861 and lost it, just as they will lose this one. And this time there will be no reconciliation, leftists will be hunted like wild boars and since they abort their babies they will not last long.
“Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are teaming up on a proposal requiring lawmakers who introduce climate bills to consider the impact such legislation will have on black people and poor communities.”
I’m wondering if the proposal considers the impact on black people and poor communities in Africa. I’m reminded of Obama telling black students in Johannesburg, South Africa that the planet will “boil over” if Africans are allowed to raise their standards of living high enough to attain air conditioning, automobiles and big houses.
Racial preference is just as racist as racial discrimination.
Wasn’t it MLK who once asked “If racism is the problem, how can racism be the solution?”
Racism is racism and it is all the Democrat Party and Progressive have.
“Horizontal” Harris, as she is known on the street, has finally slept her way almost to the top of the heap. They have said she is pretty good at it and has had plenty of practice.
Her political Sugar Daddy is saying she should not take the VP slot because it is the road to anonymity.
It seems to me somewhat ironic that someone who supports climate action would be stupid enough to legislate examining its impact on the poor. Any honest analysis will reveal that many green policies hurt the poor by increasing the cost of living. Why would she make a roadblock for herself?
MP,
I think the answer to your question is in the second phrase of your first sentence; she seems to prove she IS stupid enough constantly! My biggest question is HOW she got her degree and I don’t think she paid cash for it! Maybe she worked out a similar deal to the one Kamala had with Willie Brown!
She, and her kind of mind set, expect to be able to do the evaluating and hand down the verdicts. Reality need have no expectations of being represented.
If the only climate bills that were passed were ones that dis-proportionally helped the poor that would be the end of climate bills as we know it. Cheap energy benefits the poor most because they spend more of their money on consumables. Make electricity cheaper and you make air-conditioning cheaper (literally few ‘sweat shops’). Make gas cheaper and you make housing cheaper because people can afford to live farther from their place of employment. Cheaper energy for industry means more things being built in country instead of imported. The list goes on and on and well known to this audience.
Surely the most benificial policy for the economically disadvantaged is cheap reliable high density fossil or nuclear power generation.
This might be a good idea as their bills, like everything that the Green Blob demands to impose, will destroy the very opportunities needed by the people they claim to want to help.
WOW! Talk about your flaming racists, these people take the cake.
“COVID-19 has laid bare the realities of systemic racial, health, economic, and environmental injustices that persist in our country,” Harris said in a statement to the Post…..”
Despite decades of effort going all the back to 1965 and the launch of the Democrat’s “Great Society,” government’s inability to eliminate all the inequalities in this country that Sen. Harris has listed in her comment above must be hugely frustrating for the Left. It is no wonder that Marxism is gaining in popularity. They just haven’t implemented Marx’s ideas enough.
Wikipedia writeup of the Great Society (1965):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
If nothing else, you have to admire the Democrats’ persistence here. Fifty-five years and they are still hammering away at the inequality issue as though it were something new and different that we haven’t seen before. Yes indeed, the solution is for Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” to be required reading for politicians, as well as in high schools and at colleges and universities across the country. It needs to be an inspiration and a standard source of guidelines for everything politicians do, a sort of ideological Holy Bible for all of us. Yea, that’s the answer. /sarc
Seriously though, this belief that government is capable of eliminating inequality has been around so long it has become a religion that never dies. How and when inequality will eventually end, I do not know. But it reminds of the idea that you should teach people how to fish instead of just feeding them fish. Beyond that, each of us remains the product of what we invest in ourselves and our lives. Nothing more, nothing less.
They declared a war on poverty. And poverty is winning.
Inequality will never end for the simple reason that people aren’t identical cogs in a machine.
Some are smarter, some are stronger, some have more drive/perseverance.
The only way to come close is to demand equal outcomes as the Democrats do, and take away from those who succeed in order to buy the votes of those who don’t.
Your scaring me.
CD,
I think we need to face that Communism is a religion trying disguise itself as an economic system! There was never much more for the Marxist’s to go on than the old: “From each according to his ability…”
Reagan summed it up best when he said; “It only works in Heaven, where they don’t need it; and Hell, where they already have it!”
There is no provision for dealing with inevitable rise on sociopaths to positions of power; look at how much trouble we’re running into with them and our system was specifically designed to prevent them from gaining total control! Unfortunately, our Founders never foresaw the press becoming the lapdogs of the Establishment and the intelligence community! A republic like ours only works if the press act as watchdogs and everyone is held accountable; at present the DemoKKKrats are literally getting away with murder and the enemedia won’t even acknowledge there are any problems with their reactions to Trump and the Chi-Com Virus! The jury is still out on whether we will survive as a constitutional republic or collapse down into a banana republic, or worse!
” inability to eliminate all the inequalities in this country” They never had any intention to eliminate any inequalities, that is precisely what keeps them in positions of power, wielding inequalities as a weapon against America is their modus operandi. A weapon they merrily use against all sides.
This comes across like it’s some bizarre form of “reparations.”
I’m all in favour. Green Bills harm the poor and the disadvantaged far more than wealthy people. Does she think poor blacks in inner cities are queuing up to buy $80,000 EVs? That BLM is demanding electricity gets made more expensive for struggling single mothers? Green policies are expensive luxuries that make everyone poorer and so impact the already poor far more.
Yes well over here in Australia there is a massive COVID19 out break because the Victorian government screwed up hotel quarantine. They employed guard’s via WhatsApp etc who in turn had sex with the quarantined and it spread from there
The Vic gov confirmed today they were employed based on their diversity policy ergo refugees from Africa that can’t speak English.
COVID-Citizens Of Victoria Ignoring Direction
From the article: “Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are teaming up on a proposal requiring lawmakers who introduce climate bills to consider the impact such legislation will have on black people and poor communities.”
This ought to negate any carbon dioxide taxes they are proposing since tax increases always hit the poorest people the worst, and that is especially true of gasoline taxes, which is what a carbon dioxide tax really is.
And promising to pay poor people back for the extra cost their gasoline costs them, does not fix the problem for the poor, because raising gasoline/carbon dioxide taxes causes the price of everything in the economy to go higher and the government doesn’t reimbruse anyone for those costs. They come right out of a poor person’s pocket.
Toby Young summed them up;
“Socialism always begins with a utopian vision for the brotherhood of man and ends with people eating their pets”
They have probably realized that any laws advocating Green energy is going to make evectticty and transportation more EXPENSIVE, thus very regressive. Thus, they would fix this by including more hand-outs to those in the Poverty Class.