Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No Longer Amusing.
I knew something like this would happen.
I’d finally get to a point in life when I could travel - without small kids or a 9-to-5 job - and some charismatic Washington crazy woman would want to ground the whole country.
I’m talking about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of course. For a time she was a refreshing, charming and kooky addition to Congress.
No more.
Earlier this week, from the fevered brain of AOC - as she calls herself - came the Green New Deal, a blueprint to turn America into Venezuela. All in the name of climate change. The Green New Deal is a mashup of far-out environmental policies and everything’s-free utopian ideas where success is punished and sloth is rewarded.
The plan would be laughable if it didn’t have 67 co-sponsors. That should give all of us pause.
Maybe it’s time to stop seeing the freshman congresswoman as a perky kid from the Bronx and instead see her as someone determined to open American borders and sink our economy.
One of the most absurd parts of her plan? Ocasio-Cortez essentially wants to have so much high-speed rail in the U.S. that air travel becomes obsolete.
Forbes says that would be catastrophic, costing the country 700,000 high-paying airline industry jobs and taking roughly $220 billion in revenue out of the economy annually.
Economics aside, it would also take the pleasure out of life.
Look, I’ve spent the last several decades watching dozens of my pals - the ones who believe wholeheartedly in manmade global warming - merrily travel the globe while I tootled around town in a subcompact car, never leaving the country.
(Oh wait, does the Canadian side of Niagara Falls count? OK. I left the country twice. Both times to sprint across the Rainbow Bridge to get a better view of the Falls.)
So what about those of us who’ve never been to Hawaii? Or the Bahamas? Or even Bermuda? Are we supposed to feel guilty because we want to fly in spite of climate change?
Do we get some sort of carbon footprint credit for all the years we vacationed at the Luray Caverns and in the Smoky Mountains? Or will we have to join the Y and learn the back stroke if we want to see any place separated from the mainland USA by a body of water?
Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell found one way to deal with the Green New Deal. On Tuesday he announced plans to put the policy to a vote in the Senate, forcing Democrats in that chamber to take a stand on lunacy masquerading as policy.
The left is apoplectic, so you know it’s a good idea.
But it won’t be conservatives who tame the badger from the Bronx. It’ll be Democrats.
On Thursday we learned that she queered New York’s Amazon deal, costing the city at least 25,000 jobs and $30 billion in revenue.
That’s serious.
Yet Ocasio-Cortez was ebullient. Boasting about how the city could now spend the $3 billion subsidy that was earmarked for Amazon on more worthy things like teachers, subways and better jobs.
Except that $3 billion was coming from tax breaks. There isn’t a pile of loot for schools and infrastructure.
This woman lacks basic understanding of how things work. That’s scary.
I’m not a fan of Jeff Bezos or the Amazon business model, but for the first time ever, I found myself agreeing with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo:
"[A] small group [of] politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community - which poll after poll showed overwhelmingly supported bringing Amazon to Long Island City - the state's economic future and the best interests of the people of this state,” he fumed in a terse statement last night.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no longer just dancing in the halls, taking selfies and getting all the newly elected congresswomen to dress alike for the State of the Union.
She singlehandedly threw a wrench into major plans for the New York economy.
The freshman congresswoman may not know it. But she’s in trouble.
