Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:03 pm

Opportunism knocked in the Bronx and look who answered..She is a Democrat and that's all ya need to know.

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Democratic Party Politics 101 with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Corporate Media

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“Democrats have firmly implanted themselves on the side of Wall Street and its militarist corporate partners.”

Some who read my writing may ask, “why don’t you criticize the Republicans as much as you do the Democrats?” My response to such a question is that it should be obvious by now which of the two corporate parties currently holds the Black polity and working class “constituencies” generally in a state of political captivity. That would be the Democrats. Political captivity within the Democratic Party has created a vast graveyard where social movements and revolutionary politics can be buried. With mid-term elections approaching and talks of who will run for the Democrats in 2020 becoming more intense, the Democratic Party has been scrambling to teach those who dare to deviate from their corporate rulers how to fall in line. Some are surprised by the Democratic Party’s progressive containment strategy, but not Black Agenda Report.

Such behavior from the more effective evil of the duopoly should be expected. District-14’s Democratic nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s performance on PBS’s Firing Line with conservative Meghan Hoover is a case in point. The show has the backing of hedge fund billionaires such as Marlene Ricketts, Cliff Asness, and Daniel Loeb. Hoover represents the type of Republican that Democrats have embraced since Trump has been in office. Hoover and her hedge fund supporters have at one time or another opposed Trump in favor of Wall Street-imposed bipartisanship. Ocasio-Cortez was thus walking into the lion’s den of the corporate duopoly replete with intense pressure to cave on the principles of “democratic socialism” on which she ran.

“It should be obvious by now which of the two corporate parties currently holds the Black polity and working class “constituencies” generally in a state of political captivity.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s answers in the interview demonstrate what it looks like to be Democrat, especially in a period where it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide that the party is a dead-end for progressive and radical politics. The interview was tailored to confirm Ocasio-Cortez’s shaky allegiance to corporate Democrats. When questioned about her stance on Israel, Ocasio-Cortez immediately acknowledged Israel’s “right to exist” and the necessity of a “two-state solution” but claimed ignorance on the geopolitical significance of the issue. On Obama’s legacy, Ocasio-Cortez suggested that “progress” was made under Obama. She maintained a critical stance on Obama’s foreign and economic policies, but no details of her critiques were discussed.

Ocasio-Cortez passed the test, but it was a test that those who have banked on a “democratic socialist” takeover of the Democratic Party did not write. The willingness to sit down with “both sides” of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” is a sidestep that tells the Democrats that she will not challenge the Zionist mandate to colonize the Palestinian people and their land. Her characterization of Obama’s legacy as “progress” reassures corporate Democrats that she will not oppose the pursuit of deportations, drone strikes, military invasions, and bank bailouts so long as they are carried out by Democrats of the right hue. Ocasio-Cortez claims that Obama “tried” to do more under his Presidency but was stymied by pesky Republicans. However, as BAR rightfully explained back in 2011, gridlock prevented the Obama-led marriage with the GOP from turning into a 4 trillion-dollar loss for Social Security and Medicare. What Obama “tried” to do was shove a Satan’s sandwich of austerity down the throats of Black people and we should be happy that his efforts failed.

“The interview was tailored to confirm Ocasio-Cortez’s shaky allegiance to corporate Democrats.”

Just two days after Ocasio-Cortez was grilled by PBS’ darling Republican talk show host, the New York Times issued a piece that surveyed potential Democratic Party hopefuls for the 2020 nod against Trump. The Times placed a lens on the campaign efforts of Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren thus far. Warren has already been reaching out to Democratic officeholders in primary states. Harris and Booker sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee and have resumes that prove their ability to both oppose Trump but appease corporate power. As for Biden, the Timesappeared forced to acknowledge his waning popularity among voters yet was quick to defend Biden’s innumerable connections to the party’s establishment. The desperate state of the Democratic Party has its corporate masters desperately seeking a candidate capable of defeating Donald Trump and the preference is clear: any corporate candidate that denounces “democratic socialism.”

The Timescharacterized “democratic socialism” as a “combative ideology” and expressed concern that Bernie Sanders may not possess the broad appeal necessary to defeat Donald Trump. It has been a habit of corporate Democrats to distort the facts of the Sanders campaign ever since the Democratic primary. Poll after poll has shown that Sanders would have overwhelmingly defeated Donald Trump in the general election.The DNC took this data and decided to steal the primary from Sanders and hand it to Hillary Clinton despite the same polls indicating that Clinton would lose by a narrow margin to Trump. If the DNC’s obsession with Russia hasn’t fully demonstrated its disdain for “democratic socialism,” then its continued suppression of the truth about the Sanders campaign should.

“Harris and Booker have resumes that prove their ability to both oppose Trump but appease corporate power.”

Sanders is a Democrat, but he is not enough of an imperialist pig to qualify for the position of Commander-in-Chief under end stage capitalism. The social democratic politics espoused by Sanders in 2016 have their roots in the reactionary “Golden Age” of US imperialism, when increased military production from World War II and intense struggles waged by labor unions led to an unprecedented growth in wages. In 2018, “democratic socialist” demands such as raising wages, expanding healthcare, and forgiving student loan debt are demands that imperialism simply cannot meet, no matter how much Sanders or other social democrats try to appease the war machine. The system is dragging along the path to another economic crisis larger and more volatile than the 2007-2008 collapse. Democrats have firmly implanted themselves on the side of Wall Street and its militarist corporate partners in a quest to preserve the empire at all costs.

The corporate media offers an endless amount of lessons on what it means to be a Democrat during its 24-hour news cycle. Shareholders of MSNBC, CNN, and the Washington Posthave done all that they can to pollute the information airspace with the hopes that the chaotic era of Trump will lead to an “American revival.” This revivalist movement has three distinct objectives. The first is to create the conditions for a military confrontation with Russia and China, which fuels the profits of the military industrial complex and targets Wall Street’s peskiest global competitors. The second is to suppress the economic crisis of capitalism currently ravaging millions of people by directing the attention of the poor and exploited toward Trump, Russia, or some combination of the two. And the third is to maintain the political hegemony of finance capital through the creation of a false equivalency between Trump and the left.

“Poll after poll has shown that Sanders would have overwhelmingly defeated Donald Trump in the general election.”

Coverage of Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16thwas riddled with characterizations of the billionaire as a “traitor” to America . A mere meeting with the Russian head of state caused the corporate media to run wild with conspiracies of the “next” Russian plot to undermine so-called democracy in the United States. The US ruling class has made it painstakingly clear that the most important political question of the period is the demonization of Russia. Trump has failed to pledge sufficient loyalty to the anti-Russian war mongers in the US intelligence and military apparatus.The Democrats have led the way in the hysteria over Russia with the explicit intent of scorching the earth for their own political gain, which is why they have made nice with long-time war hawks like John McCain . Meanwhile, most Americans do not have Russia on their political radar .

Neither Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nor the corporate media can resolve the contradictions of capitalism, which have only sharpened over the course of US imperialism’s decline beginning roughly in the late 1970s. Imperial decline led to Donald J. Trump’s election, albeit mistakenly. Trump is a byproduct of the system’s toxic waste currently drowning oppressed and exploited people—waste that the system of imperialism has no ability to “clean up,” not even momentarily. The ruling class can only attempt to bury the waste, whether by burying millions of people in mass graves produced by US wars, encaging nearly a million Black people behind prison walls, or by relegating much of the planet’s inhabitants with nothing but a low-wage job. US imperialism has long reached the point where the waste of the system has become too much for the ruling class to handle. This has increased the fervor of imperialists like Amazon and Washington Postowner Jeff Bezos to bury the truth behind the rot.

“Trump has failed to pledge sufficient loyalty to the anti-Russian war mongers in the US intelligence and military apparatus.”

The REAL ruling class, which makes Trump look small in comparison, has resorted to inducing an anti-Russia madness in the US population to divert attention from its shortcomings and maybe, just maybe, achieve a greater war with Russia in the process. Such a war threatens humanity, but neither the Democrats nor the Republicans care about the future of humanity as long the future of their profits are secured.The madness that surrounded the Trump-Putin Summit amounts to nothing less than actually-existing fascism. It is an attempt by monopoly capital to assert full hegemony and enforce total loyalty to the spy agencies of the most ruthless system known to humanity. For Black Americans and much of the world, these agencies have caused damage the likes of which Hitler and the 20thcentury fascist movement could only dream of prior to its defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union.

Russia has been called “aggressive” and in violation of “sovereignty” around the world by the mouthpieces of Bezos and Wall Street. Trump has been called a “traitor” for allowing it. When Russia can be confused for the United States’ long and unbeatable record of global criminality, then a serious problem is afoot. When the corporate media are trying to teach Ocasio-Cortez how to be a Democrat or give us insight into their ongoing plans for the next election, we must keep in mind the current state of US imperialism. We must keep in mind that US imperialism is the real enemy, not Russia. We must keep in mind that the Democratic Party is the most effective evil of US imperialism, not Russia. Anti-Russian war-mongering, capitulation to Israel, and complete loyalty to Wall Street are the primary components of the class, “How to be a Democrat, 101.” We must skip this class and begin holding our own about how to wage class war before the Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez or otherwise, lead us to our extinction.

Danny Haiphong

https://blackagendareport.com/democrati ... rate-media
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 12:46 pm

Here we got one running on Alexandria's coattails...if ya can run on the un-elected's coattails. The sheepdogette runs with the pack, Rs, soldiers & spooks. This is what passes for 'progressive' Democrat and the DSA is all on board.

I think I'll take a page from that old crank Cato the Elder, starting today:

The Democratic Party must be destroyed.

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There are many Julia Salazars. Which one is running for state Senate?
A rundown of all the candidate’s misleading claims about her personal history.
By ZACH WILLIAMS, BEN ADLER
AUGUST 27, 2018

Just a few weeks ago, 27-year-old Julia Salazar was a candidate on the rise. She was the subject of flattering magazine profiles and optimistic projections that her insurgent candidacy could unseat incumbent state Sen. Martin Dilan in the upcoming Democratic primary. But the recent surge in media attention has become a liability as well as an asset, bringing increased scrutiny of the story she tells on the campaign trail.

The version put forth by Salazar presents her as the Jewish daughter of a Colombian immigrant family who worked her way through Columbia University by toiling as a domestic worker, which in turn inspired her to become a community organizer. But a string of recent stories brought up uncomfortable details from her past as a Republican, a pro-life activist, and a leader of a campus Christian group, who didn’t pay taxes for years. Most potentially damaging of all, especially in a heavily Latino district, Salazar claimed in the past to be an immigrant but has also admitted to having been born a U.S. citizen in Florida.

Salazar has responded to some of the revelations by saying that she has not lied about her past, but she and her campaign staff could have been more careful in how it was presented and in monitoring articles that may have characterized it inaccurately. Critics charge that she has created an image of herself that strays at times dramatically from the facts.

To unpack it all, here are the biggest controversies over Salazar’s self-reported biography and how it diverges from other accounts and whether Salazar lied about the subject.



“A proud immigrant myself”

Salazar was born in Miami, Florida, to a Colombian father and Italian-American mother, but that’s not always the impression that she has left others with. This video shows her telling one audience that “I immigrated to this country when I was little.” She also reportedly told the Intercept the same thing, among other publications. Her campaign website previously quoted her as saying that “as a proud immigrant myself, I know how important it is to protect the rights of immigrants and ensure that everyone can fully participate in the life of New York state. Her campaign has since changed the language to “as a proud daughter of an immigrant father myself.” A New York magazine profile of her still describes her as a naturalized citizen, as does this article from the Daily News.

Salazar said in an Aug. 24 statement that she should have been more vigilant in briefing campaign staff on where she came from. “The fact that my parents traveled with me between Colombia and the U.S. as a small child produced confusion for some people about where I was born. One member of my staff was even unknowingly unclear on this, and as a result they incorrectly told some reporters that I had been born in Colombia and was therefore a naturalized citizen.” A spokesman for the campaign told City & State that she went “back and forth” as a child between the two countries, though he could not provide details on the frequencies or durations of such trips by publication time.

Salazar has blamed staffers for some mischaracterizations of her birthplace and citizenship status. Nonetheless, some of her own statements have left the same impression that she was a naturalized citizen, originally from Colombia.

Bottom line: In some instances, Salazar has stated clearly that she was born in the U.S., which made her a citizen automatically, and that her mother was American. She never explicitly said she was born in Colombia. But some of her statements about being an immigrant were false, as she is not an immigrant.



“Fighting for social justice in her community”

It appears that Salazar did not become a registered Democrat until 2017. The Daily News reports that she registered as a Republican at age 18 in December 2008 while living in Florida. At Columbia University she found a home among right-leaning students, according to Gothamist. She became a leader of a pro-life group and became involved in a pro-Israel circle, even appearing on a TV show hosted by right-wing conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck. She describes herself as a community organizer with a “decade of experience,” which – since she is only 27 years old – would only be true if one were to include her conservative activism at Columbia.

Salazar’s explanation is that she was raised to be a conservative Republican and her politics evolved while she was in college, but that she registered as an independent rather than a Democrat for several years. “Julia's involvement with the pro-life movement is something she regrets, and her views on both Israel and abortion changed dramatically in college as she learned more about those issues from advocates. However, her commitment to tenants' rights – a commitment she built while organizing her building to address repair and heating issues in college – is one she stands by, and it informs her pro-tenant platform to this day,” a spokesman said in an email.

Bottom line: Salazar isn’t lying about spending a decade in activism, but she is perhaps misleading those who would assume that it was always for progressive, rather than conservative, groups and causes.



A “working class” background

Salazar has credited her time working as a nanny during college as inspiring her to become involved in social justice. But she did not pay taxes for four years in which her campaign told City & State she was working 20-30 hours per week. A spokesman said that she made so little money that she did not need to file taxes, though he could not provide a definitive total for how much she earned. People under age 65 who make less than $10,400 do not have to file taxes, according to the IRS. It’s certainly possible that she was making as little as $10/hour, which, at 48 weeks per year and 20 hours per week would come to just $9,600. It does raise the question, which the campaign could not answer by press time, as to how she could afford to live in New York City.

Her spokesman speculated that she had scholarships or financial aid from Columbia University. To the extent that the years she did not file a tax return overlap with her undergraduate education, that is quite possible. But it would be very implausible as an explanation for the years beyond. While her campaign confirmed that she did not file a tax return for four years, it had not, at press time, responded to a follow-up question about whether it was the same four years that she was in college.

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:25 pm

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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US House candidate, NY-14
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Retweeted Washington Post
John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.

As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy.

He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.
Anyone taking this woman seriously should not be taken seriously.
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 7:26 pm

<snip>

Ocasio-Cortez worked in Kennedy’s office from early 2008, when she was 19, until his death in the summer of 2009. Prior to that, she was active in the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zalvala Youth Legislative Session.

In the press she’s seen as someone who was radicalized by the Bernie Sanders campaign, but this is the resumé of someone who wanted to run for public office as a teenager. I’d even have to wonder if she joined DSA because she saw a wellspring for free interns and staff for a campaign she has been planning since the Dubya administration.


Certainly the “miracle primary victory” narrative is partly mythological horse shit. AOC had connections within the Democratic Party and would have been able to target a vulnerable but liberal district like Joe Crowley’s. (Yes, no matter what, he’s obviously way worse.) That’s the MO of a Kennedy operation top-to-bottom, I’ve watched them do it forever.

And with all due respect, Ocasio-Cortez’s position on health care doesn’t diverge much from her old boss’s package. Teddy was calling for single-payer Medicare in his 2006 book America Back on Track. Quite honestly, this is not so much socialism as it is New Deal/Great Society northern liberalism with a 21st century sheen.

http://washingtonbabylon.com/a-o-c-tweet-mccain/
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Tue Aug 28, 2018 8:47 pm

And with all due respect, Ocasio-Cortez’s position on health care doesn’t diverge much from her old boss’s package. Teddy was calling for single-payer Medicare in his 2006 book America Back on Track. Quite honestly, this is not so much socialism as it is New Deal/Great Society northern liberalism with a 21st century sheen.
And tbh its not even off the ground yet. The midterms still seem somewhat in doubt for them.

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:48 pm

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Corporations See Another Kind of "Green" in Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal"

December 18th, 2018

By Whitney Webb Whitney Webb
0 Comments
WASHINGTON – (Opinion) In recent weeks, support from progressives and establishment liberals has been pouring in for the “Green New Deal,” a plan largely promoted by U.S. Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The plan claims that it seeks to “transform the U.S. economy in an effort to fight climate change” that would ostensibly push the U.S. from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy in a little over a decade.

Though Ocasio-Cortez and others have claimed that the measure is “anti-establishment” and has been mocked by the corporate media, it has recently gained the support of over 30 House Democrats and won endorsements from mainstream media pundits such as Van Jones of CNN.

Jones — who is a senior fellow at the Clinton-connected, John Podesta-led think tank the Center for American Progress, and a former Obama adviser — recently called the Ocasio-Cortez-promoted plan “the smartest, most practical idea in U.S. politics to address two urgent problems: climate change and poverty.”

For someone who has campaigned on upending the status quo and challenging the establishment, Ocasio-Cortez and the “Green New Deal” tied so closely to her name sure have won a lot of support from the establishment, and quickly too. While that phenomenon has been touted as evidence that progressive agendas are finally “winning” on Capitol Hill, one need look no further than the text of the Green New Deal on Ocasio-Cortez’s own website to realize that the real reason this plan has gained so much establishment support so quickly is that it is an oligarch-driven corporate answer to climate change and inequality and a wishlist for the neoliberals who still control the core of the Democratic Party.

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A plan to propose a plan to make a plan
While most media coverage of the Ocasio-Cortez-backed Green New Deal refers to it as a “plan,” the current version of the deal is not a plan so much as a proposal that outlines how to form a committee of House members that would then create the actual specifics of the plan and draft legislation. The Washington Post was one of the few outlets to note this, when it recently wrote:

The Green New Deal deliberately omits details on how to reorient the United States toward the drastic carbon emissions reductions it calls for, instead calling for a select committee in the House to devise a plan by 2020.”

There is nothing necessarily wrong with calling for a House committee to devise the plan. However, there are problems with how Ocasio-Cortez proposes that the committee is formed and how it will operate.

The fact that this current plan has no specifics and is set to be drafted over the next two years by a soon-to-be-selected committee is notable given that the very plan being envisioned was already written years ago by the Green Party. Indeed, the original “Green New Deal” was first created in 2006 and contains many specific initiatives to wean the U.S. economy off of fossil fuels by 2030 and to create jobs in the process. It also contains a plan to secure funding, in large part through reducing the country’s excessively bloated military budget and by reining in Wall Street.

The Ocasio-Cortez plan, however, is quite different from its Green Party predecessor and the text of the plan itself makes no mention of the original plan bearing the same name and aimed at the same ultimate goal. Furthermore, it entirely avoids many of the original’s genuinely progressive initiatives and instead uses language that promotes neoliberal, business-as-usual policies that are advocated by establishment Democrats.

According to a draft of the plan that is currently available on Ocasio-Cortez’s website, the proposed House committee “shall be composed of 15 members appointed by the Speaker, of whom six may be appointed on the recommendation of the Minority Leader.” By all indications, the next speaker of the House is set to be Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), meaning that every member of the committee will be appointed by her, with six of those members potentially being appointed on the “recommendation” of the House’s top Republican. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez herself has recently backed Pelosi as House speaker.

While Pelosi’s status as an establishment, corporate Democrat is enough to create concern that those she would appoint to the committee would be just as beholden to corporate interests as she is, the version of the plan currently on Ocasio-Cortez’s website offers many more reasons for concern.

Although the provision that the speaker-appointed House committee would draft its plan and draft legislation “in consultation with experts and leaders from business, labor, state and local governments, tribal nations, academia and broadly representative civil society groups and communities” [emphasis added], sounds on the surface like a model of diversity and inclusion, past experience, such as the bending of the Paris Accords to business interests, suggests a similar imbalance and looming danger.

The emphasis on including experts and insiders from “business” and “industry” appears several times in the plan, such as in the following excerpts:

The select committee shall have the authority to investigate, study, make findings, convene experts and leaders from industry, academia, local communities, labor, finance, technology and any other industry or group that the select committee deems to be a relevant resource.” [emphasis added]

“The plan shall […] be driven by the federal government, in collaboration, co-creation and partnership with business, labor, state and local governments, tribal nations, research institutions [corporate-funded?] and civil society groups and communities.” [emphasis added]

Such language makes it sound as though industry insiders and business executives will be just a few of the many voices at the table. However, in addition to the fact that the committee will be stocked with House Democrats hand-picked by Nancy Pelosi — who has been accused of planning to “handcuff” progressive policies from Democratic representatives in the upcoming Congress — there is the fact that the Democratic Party itself remains just as beholden to corporate money as ever, aside from the small handful of soon-to-be members of Congress who rejected corporate money during the primaries. Are representatives hand-picked by the speaker of such a corporate-aligned party more likely to listen to business leaders or tribal nation representatives?

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looks at a photo of an iceberg during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 1, 2007, to discuss global warming. Susan Walsh | AP

When she served as speaker after the 2008 election, Pelosi had created the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that stood from 2007 to 2011, when it was disbanded after Republicans took control of the House. That committee was chaired by then-Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who went on to author the cap and trade ACES bill that was so “market friendly” it was condemned by environmental groups like GreenPeace. The bill passed the House but failed to gain enough support in the Senate.

This past October, Pelosi told the New York Times that she would “revive” the now defunct cap and trade committee as speaker in the next Congress and she may choose to do so within the context of the Ocasio-Cortez “Green New Deal” in an effort to appease progressive voters prior to 2020.

Cap and trade is controversial because it essentially enables industries to buy and trade permits that allow them to emit certain levels of carbon. This system allows big oil companies and other fossil fuel extractors and refiners to purchase credits for emissions reductions elsewhere instead of just reducing them directly. As a result, the system has been widely criticized by environmental groups as well as in the Green Party’s original Green New Deal because it both “create[s] complex and easily-gamed ‘carbon markets’ with allowances, trading and offsets” and does little or nothing to reduce emissions, but often increases emissions instead.

Thus cap and trade is a system that would do next to nothing to address the two issues at the heart of the Ocasio-Cortez-promoted Green New Deal. It would not address climate change, as such systems have been shown to not reduce emissions and instead increase them. It would also not address the issue of wealth inequality, as the system would instead create a cadre of so-called “carbon billionaires.” Furthermore, already-implemented cap and trade systems have been fraught with fraud and have even been used for profiteering by organized crime in Europe.

Perhaps most telling of all is the fact that cap and trade has been promoted most heavily by large oil companies. Indeed, it was recently revealed by none other than Shell Oil executive David Hone — Shell being the ninth largest producer of carbon emissions globally — that his company’s lobbying efforts were largely responsible for the inclusion of a cap and trade system in Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement.

During a side event at the just concluded, UN-sponsored climate change conference, Conference of the Parties (COP) 24, Hone publicly stated the following:

We [Shell Oil] have had a process running for four years for the need of carbon unit trading to be part of the Paris agreement. We can take some credit for the fact that Article 6 [of the Paris agreement] is even there at all. We put together a straw proposal. Many of the elements of that straw proposal appear in the Paris agreement. We put together another straw proposal for the rulebook, and we saw some of that appear in the text.”

As the Intercept noted in a report on Hone’s comments, many big oil companies see “cap and trade [systems] as a vehicle for ditching other constraints (i.e., regulations) on their operations.”

Though the actual “Green New Deal” of the Democratic Party has yet to be written, with Pelosi at the helm and the current language used in its current form, the Ocasio-Cortez-promoted plan is all but certain to include cap and trade as a major component of its plan to tackle climate change. Yet, as has been recently pointed out, the inclusion of such a system will do little to solve the issues the plan ostensibly seeks to address and will instead empower America’s oligarchy as well as big oil companies without making a dent in the country’s annual carbon emissions.



Stolen from the Green Party
Something particularly notable about Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” which has been repeatedly overlooked by mainstream outlets in covering the initiative, is that it is not the first such plan to be promoted in U.S. politics in recent years that aims to transform the U.S. economy to using 100 percent renewable energy in a relatively short time frame. In fact, the Green Party first created that deal, with the very same name as the Ocasio-Cortez proposal, in 2006 and an updated version was a major component of the Green Party’s presidential campaign in 2016.

However, the original “Green New Deal” of the Green Party and the Ocasio-Cortez-promoted version exhibit key differences despite the fact that they share the same catchy name.

For instance, Ocasio-Cortez’s version states that her plan will be funded:

…in 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.”

In other words, Ocasio-Cortez suggests funding the plan with credit from the private bank – and Wall Street controlled – Federal Reserve Bank, taxpayer funds, and the aforementioned cap-and-trade scheme that would enrich the country’s ruling class even more.

In contrast, the Green New Deal of the Green Party proposes funding its plan to take the U.S. economy to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 by cutting U.S. military spending in half and closing all foreign U.S. military bases, which would free up at least $500 billion a year and still leave the U.S. with a defense budget three times larger than the next largest defense spender, China.

The difference here is notable because the Ocasio-Cortez plan calls for funding her Green New Deal “the same ways we paid for World War II and many others wars” but does not call to redirect funds paying for the U.S.’ many wars abroad to fund her plan — instead calling for the U.S. government to further indebt itself through the Wall Street-controlled Federal Reserve, which her plan refers to as “traditional debt tools.” Notably, the Green Party’s Green New Deal called for nationalizing the Federal Reserve, ending taxpayer-funded banker bailouts, and breaking up the “too big to fail” banks — progressive proposals unmentioned in the Ocasio-Cortez plan of the same name.

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Campaign buttons tout Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s Green New Deal in Baltimore, Maryland, July 14, 2012. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Furthermore, the Green Party version emphasizes public programs while also transforming domestic energy production and the structure of the U.S. economy, in part through meaningful financial reform. Its newest iteration calls for:

[Building] an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy … [that] rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making.”

It also has specific proposals for meeting its stated goal, in great contrast to the Ocasio-Cortez version, which omits such specifics and delegates them to a committee of Pelosi-selected career Democrats that will develop its plan in consultation with “business” leaders and industry “experts.” Needless to say, the Ocasio-Cortez-backed “Green New Deal” committee is not likely to propose anything that will “transform” the economy in such a way that it challenges the country’s ruling class or its bottom line.

As journalist Kate Aronoff of the Intercept determined after speaking to Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff and other representatives who have backed the deal, “the ‘Green New Deal’ isn’t a specific set of programs so much as an umbrella under which various policies might fit, ranging from technocratic to transformative.” Technocratic is defined as “relating to or characterized by the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts” [emphasis added]. It is interesting that a journalist writing in support of the plan uses this term to describe a plan for “progressive” reform. Yet more importantly, what type of “technocratic” and “transformative” reforms does history show that establishment Democrats and industry insiders are likely to propose and support?

Another clear difference in the plans is how they have been treated by the U.S. media establishment. For instance, when the Green Party’s version was promoted by 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, the Washington Post derided her proposal to “end all use of coal, oil, gasoline and nuclear power by 2030, guaranteeing a federal job to anyone who wants one along the way” — core points also promoted by the Ocasio-Cortez plan of the same name — as a “fairy tale” as well as “poorly formed and wildly impractical.”

In contrast, the Post recently called Ocasio-Cortez’s version “an inspiring solution to our broken world that actually is about fixing the things that most need fixing” and “a dedicated effort to preserve the ecological health of planet Earth.”

The Post’s take on the Stein-promoted plan was not unique, as many establishment outlets in 2016 slammed it as “deeply unrealistic” and “technically impossible,” among other derisions. Ocasio-Cortez’s version, however, has been praised by many of those same outlets as “the smartest, most practical idea in U.S. politics,” “political genius,” and “one of the most interesting — and strategic — left-wing policy interventions … in years.” Is it overly cynical to wonder what factors might account for the establishment media’s seeming about-face?



Greenwashing another neoliberal takeover and Ocasio-Cortez’s rightward surge
Given the extent to which she has promoted herself as a “working class socialist from the Bronx” who went from bartender to representative-elect in a matter of months, the neoliberalism within Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal for the Green New Deal committee may be confusing to those who became convinced that the 29-year-old New Yorker represented a new “progressive” uprising within the Democratic Party.

However, since her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez has steadily moved to the right on a variety of issues that she had made the core of her primary campaign, suggesting that her role as de facto leader of a “progressive” uprising in the Democratic Party was little more than wishful thinking.

Indeed, in the last few months, she has distanced herself from Palestinian solidarity movements, accused Republicans of being “weak on crime,” and dropped her call to abolish ICE, among others. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, she has backed establishment Democrat par excellence Nancy Pelosi to serve as the speaker of the House.

Also notable was Ocasio-Cortez’s praise for war criminal John McCain, whose legacy – she claimed on Twitter in August – “represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service,” despite his promotion of terrorism in Syria, the invasion of Iraq, and violent regime change in Libya among other grotesque examples of American military aggression abroad.

Despite the clear evolution of Ocasio-Cortez from a “democratic socialist” and “progressive” to just another corporate Democrat in a matter of months, her tireless promotion of the “Green New Deal” has given the representative-elect the opportunity to gain some much-needed positive publicity that she can use to bolster her rapidly-faltering progressive credentials. Indeed, the “Green New Deal” does not just greenwash the neoliberal response to climate change, poverty and inequality, it also greenwashes the rightward lurch of Ocasio-Cortez herself and her own transformation from a progressive “radical” to an establishment “centrist.”

Beyond the clear benefit the promotion and potential success of the measure present to Ocasio-Cortez personally, her advocacy also stands to give a much-needed facelift to the Democratic Party without forcing it to make any meaningful changes.

Indeed, recent efforts have been launched – Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal and Bernie Sander’s Yemen War Bill among them – to promote the Democrats as the anti-war, pro-environment answer to Trump, despite the fact that these very efforts, behind the spin, do little if anything to address these problems at all.

Both initiatives are safely inside in the realm of the “Washington consensus” and would strengthen – not lessen – the grip of the oligarchy and powerful monied interests on the American political system. However, they would certainly give the Democratic Party talking points in the lead-up to 2020 with the case for Russian collusion yet to materialize.

Given Ocasio-Cortez’s rapid rightward shift and the actual text of the plan she is promoting, it is essential to call out the “Green New Deal” for what it is: a neoliberal agenda that will keep the U.S. shackled to the oligarchy sucking it dry and that will only worsen the systemic inequality it claims to want to eradicate.

Despite its pretty, progressive-sounding banner, Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal — in its current form — will continue to perpetuate gross distributive injustice by ensuring that the side with the most “green” keeps winning as the world continues to seek solutions to climate change.

Top Photo | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez participates in a town hall held in support of Kerri Evelyn Harris, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Delaware, Aug. 31, 2018, at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del. Patrick Semansky | AP

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/corporati ... VKHTE5uGAc

Obviously shilling for the Greens but nonetheless useful.
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:11 am

Hey, hey
AOC
When ya gonna repeal
Taft-Hartley?

it's my own invention
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:57 am

The political role of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 31, 2019 9:43 am

The political role of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
By Genevieve Leigh
31 January 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the youngest person to be elected to Congress, has rapidly become one of the highest-profile political figures in Washington.

She is the subject of hundreds of articles in the mainstream media. She has been featured on late-night talk shows and was given a special segment on the CBS show “60 Minutes.” Her Twitter account has generated more interactions—retweets plus likes—than party leaders Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. Among political figures in the US, she is second only to President Donald Trump.

There are two factors behind Ocasio-Cortez’s sudden rise to political prominence. Among broader sections of the population, she has attracted support from her association with socialism. The two most popular figures in the Democratic Party, Senator Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, nominally claim to be socialists. Under conditions in which the population is fed an unrelenting diet of right-wing and reactionary politics, anyone who speaks about issues of social inequality can quickly get widespread support.

The second and more decisive factor is the conscious promotion and elevation of Ocasio-Cortez by the Democratic Party and the media. Ocasio-Cortez performs a critical political function—that of providing a left cover for a right-wing party, the better to block the development of a genuine movement against social inequality and capitalism.

Ocasio-Cortez’s tax increase proposal and the “Scandinavian model”
Ocasio-Cortez has received much media attention—and praise from nominally left organizations around the Democratic Party—for her recent proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy to 70 percent, the level that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s. Jacobin magazine, which is associated with the DSA and operates in the orbit of the Democratic Party, called the proposal “just one modest plank in the type of progressive tax platform necessary to curb the social and political power of the rich.”

In speaking about her tax proposal, Ocasio-Cortez has referred to her policies as “radical.” Karl Marx once wrote that “to be radical is to grasp the root of the matter.” The essence of Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals, however, is to obscure the root of the matter: capitalism. She never seeks to address the social and historical foundations of what she is criticizing. Instead, her rhetoric and policy proposals only scratch the surface.

Take, for example, her reference to the “Scandinavian model.” Asked in the recent “60 Minutes” interview what her vision of socialism was, Ocasio-Cortez replied that “what my policies most closely resemble is what we see in the UK, Norway, Finland and Sweden.”

She refers to the UK as a model for “socialism,” but what is the reality of social life in Britain? Home of the House of Windsor and City of London financial parasites, Britain is the most unequal country in Europe. A fifth of the population, or 14 million people, live in poverty.

Following World War II, the working class won certain concessions that went further than most in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. This was due to exceptional economic and political conditions—above all the fear of socialist revolution in the wake of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917.

This wave of industrial militancy by the working class took place throughout the world. The establishment of the social reforms in Sweden, including a public works program, the reduction of the working day, and unemployment insurance, for example, came out of protracted class struggles. The sweeping reforms package of 1932 came on the heels of state violence employed in the city of Ådalen in May of 1931 after timber and pulp workers called for a general strike, in which five workers were killed.

Similar circumstances formed the background of the “New Deal” programs of FDR and the taxation policy that characterized the postwar period. These were not gifts from on high, delivered by a ruling class through benevolence. They were wrenched through bitter class battles (such as the Minneapolis Truck drivers strike, the Toledo auto lite strike and the San Francisco general strike). Roosevelt himself was quite conscious his reform measures were necessary to avoid revolution.

The bourgeoisie never forgave the working class for the gains achieved in an earlier period. Concessions have been ruthlessly stripped away from the 1980s onwards, producing a devastating social crisis, the Scandinavian countries being no exception. The Social Democratic government in Sweden, for example, oversaw between 1994 and 2006 large-scale privatizations in education and healthcare, as well as cuts in welfare programs. As the WSWS has noted, “Sweden has seen one of the fastest increases in social inequality among OECD countries in recent years, while a 2014 study revealed that the top 1 percent in Denmark own almost a third of the total wealth.”

The globalization of capitalist production has undermined the foundation of all programs of national reform. In the United States, the ruling class has responded to the decline in the position of American capitalism with a ruthless policy of social counterrevolution.

Absent from the “socialism” of Ocasio-Cortez is any reference to the class struggle, let alone a revolutionary movement that would overturn capitalism.

Consider what would be required to implement a 70 percent tax rate increase on the wealthiest Americans.It would require that the same financial oligarchy which has spent decades rolling back taxes, amassing sums of wealth never before seen in history, to give up part of this wealth voluntarily.Furthermore, it would require that the political representatives of this financial aristocracy—Democrats and Republicans, who handed over trillions to the banks in the aftermath of the 2008 crash—facilitate the adoption of such a measure.

This transfer of wealth was consciously carried out over decades by Republican and Democratic governments alike. The reduction of top-income tax rates began under Kennedy. In fact, it was the Obama administration which oversaw the largest transfer of wealth in history during his eight-year reign.

The fight for measures to address social inequality—not just a tax on income, but on wealth—requires a frontal attack on the power of this ruling class. The power of this ruling class comes from its control of the banks and giant corporations and its control of the state. Even such reforms, therefore, require the mobilization of the working class in a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist ruling class and its political apparatus.

Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Party
The central political fiction promoted by Ocasio-Cortez and all of those who have promoted her is that anything can be achieved within the framework of the Democratic Party, the oldest capitalist party in America, and at a time when the Democrats are moving sharply to the right.

This media campaign constructed around Ocasio-Cortez is a repetition of the operation behind the 2016 Sanders campaign, which was used to promote the fiction that the Democratic Party can be reformed. Sanders’ own role in 2016 was to channel opposition behind Clinton, the candidate of the military and Wall Street.

A similar operation has been carried out in relation to Ocasio-Cortez. Contrary to her popular portrayal as a humble bartender who took on the Democratic Party establishment through grassroots campaigning, the origins of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign are quite different. The Ocasio-Cortez campaign was orchestrated by a newly formed Political Action Committee called Justice Democrats. The PAC was originally set up by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk (who have since left the organizations), and former leadership from the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

Ocasio-Cortez was then selected out of a pool of thousands of candidates. Many of the figures who ran her campaign and now work as her staff are thoroughly integrated in establishment politics. Her chief of staff, for example, Saikat Chakrabarti, one of the founding members of Justice Democrats, began his career with brief stint at a hedge fund right out of Harvard before leaving to make millions in Silicon Valley when he co-founded Mockingbird, a web design tool. He went on to work for the payment processor Stripe before joining the Sanders campaign in 2015.

Chakrabarti and his co-founders explain on their website that they started Justice Democrats “to create a left-wing populist movement to support alternative Democratic candidates” who are generally, “ideologically aligned” with their core values. In other words, their aim is to create candidates who can give a new face to the Democratic Party while leaving unchanged the content of the party’s politics.

Figures like Ocasio-Cortez are elevated to give a left gloss to a party that is in fact moving sharply to the right.

The rightward trajectory of the Democratic Party has become even more pronounced since the election of Donald Trump. The pro-war and anti-democratic basis of its opposition to Donald Trump is summed up by its frothing response to Trump’s announcement last month that he would withdraw US troops from Syria and reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, and its praise for the former Marine general and war criminal James Mattis, who resigned his post as defense secretary in protest over Trump’s moves.

None of the media pundits care to square their talk of a “left” and “progressive” turn by the Democratic Party with the fact that the new House Democratic caucus reelected the same leadership, headed by the new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that has overseen all the right-wing policies of the Democrats. Ocasio-Cortez herself voted for Pelosi as a signal to the Democratic Party establishment that she is very willing to play her assigned role.

As significant as anything she has said is what Ocasio-Cortez has not said since her election—namely virtually anything on foreign policy and war. She has remained silent about the anti-Russia campaign, the Democrats’ subservience to the CIA, the unending militarist violence carried out by the Obama administration and nearly every other crime of US imperialism.

Ocasio-Cortez’s silence comes not from ignorance but from fundamental agreement. In the rare instances when she does broach the topic, it is to reinforce this fact. This was demonstrated most clearly in her comments on the death of the arch warmonger Senator John McCain when she tweeted: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency (see: “Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders praise McCain: An object lesson in the politics of the psuedo-left”).

This fact is of enormous significance. Just as Sanders’ pledge to support “drones, all that and more” revealed the essence of his politics, so does Ocasio-Cortez’s silence on war and the warmongering of the Democrats reveal the essence of her politics.

The Priests of Half Truth
Trotsky wrote in March 1938 of “The Priests of Half Truth,” speaking of the liberal media:

Their philosophy reflects their own world. By their social nature they are intellectual semi-bourgeois. They feed upon half-thoughts and half-feelings. They wish to cure society by half-measures. Regarding the historical process as too unstable a phenomenon, they refuse to engage themselves more than fifty percent. Thus, these people, living by half-truths, that is to say, the worst form of falsehood, have become a genuine brake upon truly progressive, i.e., revolutionary thought.

Such words could be applied to the politics of Ocasio-Cortez. Much water has passed under the bridge over the past 80 years, however. Perhaps the priests and priestesses of quarter or one-eighth truths …

Ocasio-Cortez feeds on “half-thoughts” in the sense that she criticizes social inequality, global warming, etc., but refuses to say anything about the social and historical conditions that produce these maladies and the political forces responsible. She proposes curing inequality by supporting the Democratic Party, one of the two parties responsible. She proposes to attack the wealth of the rich without attacking the social system upon which this wealth is based.

Such “half-truths” are, as Trotsky noted, the worst form of falsehood—they aim to chloroform, to misdirect, and thereby provide an essential service to the ruling class. All those who promote her, as they promoted Sanders before her and Obama before him, are assisting in this process of political cover-up.

There are social interests that underlie these politics. Pseudo-left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Alternative who promote figures like Ocasio-Cortez Sanders use populist slogans to cover over the fundamental class issues, to subordinate the working class to the Democratic Party, and to promote the social interests of more privileged sections of the upper middle class.

The root of problems facing humanity in 2019—unending wars, unprecedented inequality, attacks on democratic rights, environmental catastrophe, the largest refugee crisis in history, the rise of the far-right, to name a few—is the global capitalist system.

The overthrow of this social system will not come through the politics of Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and those who will inevitably be brought forward in the future, but through the independent mobilization of the working class, on an international scale, in the revolutionary fight for socialism.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/0 ... t-j31.html
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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by chlamor » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:36 pm

Ocasio-Cortez’s laudatory statement: "John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service. As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy", was a pretty obvious red flag that she would kiss the ring of power as needed and when demanded. Her canonization and support of outright criminals and warmongers should be enough to clue one in as to her true allegiances.

The statements expressed by Ocasio-Cortez about McCain more truly reflect her political ideology than the progressive BS she uses to sheepdog liberals to vote for the corrupt Democratic Party.

The entire framework for discussions around socialism are deliberately misused by "millenial socialists" like AOC, who aren't socialists at all. "Millenial socialism" looks like capitalism- a few alterations around the edges but essentially the same.

Millennial socialism is a movement of middle class lib/progs and as such makes it easy to understand why the likes of these "millenial socialists" so easily support imperialism as long as it is couched in palatable terms. The middle class itself is a creation of imperialism- a topic which these millenial hypocrites fastidiously avoid.

What is being pimped with the linguistic jiu jitsu of these millenial blowhards is at it's core libertarian economic doctrine with a heavy dose of tortured language to make it all sound palatable to the lib/prog capitalists who in their heart of hearts want to maintain the system (AKA not have to give up anything) as long as it gets a shiny new paint job. It's all bu**shit.

The insidious aspect of all of this is that it steers people away from understanding what socialism actually is. The capitalist class wants to keep working class people ignorant of what actual socialism is and these phony socialist's like AOC and Sanders do precisely that. Having these inaccurate and insipid stand-ins representing socialism undermines working class consciousness and the revolutionary potential of actual socialist politics. This serves to confuse people as to what socialism actually means.

If "socialism" has any meaning at all, it is as a political movement rooted in the real world and centered on the property question. (Private ownership of the means and distribution of production and the commons).

The salient feature of all forms of socialism is that the working class owns the means of production. This is one of the most important traits which distinguishes socialism from social democracy. Just because someone would like to call a zebra a cheetah doesn't make it a cheetah. Like these animals, the definition of what constitutes socialism is not subjective or up for grabs.

The hurdle that most people must pass is not in "the belief" of Marxism or Socialism or Communism, but in the very unsettling thought that there is nothing in the existing social system that is accurately portrayed and nothing within its bounds that may be employed to change that.

===========

That is why Marxists call it revolution not evolution as capitalism cannot evolve into socialism as socialism requires changes of fundamental social bonds and new organization of society built on those bonds that cannot coexists even in part, with capitalist social relations.

But most of all consideration of different social bonds is not even a subject of deliberation within bourgois liberal autocratic or democratic political framework as it is foundational and beyond reproach and hence this framework cannot project anything beyond systemic bounds.

It may sound shocking but even if real socialist party wins 100% elections, in order to move to socialism would have to dismantle all institutions, parties, all governments and dissolve itself as a part of evil that must be destroyed for socialism to ever happen while extra constitutional working class committees taking over all prerogatives of power and control over communal resources as there is no process within bourgois political framework to decree change in social bonds and true abolition of class.

Borrowing from mathematics terms, socialism and capitalism belong to different topological types of social dynamics and cannot to mapped one to another via any kind of continuous social transformation (Political evolution) and hence such a non transformational change of one object into another in mathematics is called catastrophe and in social science it is called social revolution which in context of historical process and class struggle is called socialist revolution.

True socialist politicians as Marx posited are there to destroy bourgoise government and state institutions while educating working class about their central role in historic process and meaning of class struggle, not to take state institutions over and rule supposedly for good of the people as it is impossible.

If AOC said "I am here in US Congress to bring this abhorrent edifice of greed, slavery and war down on oligarchic ruling class unworthy heads, she would have earned her Girl Scout badge of "Young Socialist" otherwise she is there as a cute maid to to clean up blood and stench of death and cover up political perversion with a big sexy smile.

==========

I noticed.

In fact, when I read "Figures like Ocasio-Cortez are elevated to give a left gloss to a party that is in fact moving sharply to the right", at first I misread "left gloss" as "lip gloss".

This misperception didn't arise from sexism or racism, but from a life saturated in Amerika's tawdry commercial "marketing" culture. Despite the chaste rhetoric of feminism, AOC is "sexy" in the, er, broad marketing sense. (It's OK to showily condemn fraught terms like "nubile" as toxic to egalitarian diversity, but they're still tacitly operational in the contemporary marketing calculus.)

"Sexy" isn't limited to carnal attraction; AOC has manifested an early "signature" proclivity for being not merely "pert", but sassy. Again, despite the current identity-politics zeitgeist that preaches a puritanical, repressively Victorian gospel that regards sensuality and eroticism as anathema, AOC is being put forward as a political "It Girl".

For example, Wall Steet critic and bitcoin hustler Max Keiser is good at deconstructing financial crimes and scandals (when he's not shilling for bitcoin), but he's a political idiot; lately, this supposed non-partisan political observer has been drooling over AOC as a potential harbinger and leader of radical political change. He just loves to hear himself say "AOC!", and insists that she may be a breakthrough agent of political change because "She doesn't know what she doesn't know!" and similar "knowing" inanities.

In short, Max appears to have swallowed the "sassy", wriggling bait hook, line, and sinker. He's not competent to analyze or critique her politics, or question her bona fides as this article does-- he's just enthralled by her media-showcased feisty persona.

In shorter, AOC might as well be Obama in drag.

========

Ocasio Cortez has broken her silence on war and warmongering having voted on January 22, 2019 to support H.R. 676 — the NATO Support Act.

H.R. 676 for years contained the text of Improved Medicare for All legislation which proposed eliminating privatized insurance and providers from the system. Over the years it had gained relatively broad public familiarity and support.

This cruel twist of legislating, almost perversely sadistic, replacing HR 676’s improved medicare for all with text for mandatory support for nato warmonger and war crimes, comes straight out of the D leadership and Pelosi whom AOC warmly supports.

So no ambiguity at all about who AOC represents beneath the carefully chosen composite of her looks and presentation, her so-called audaciousness (sound familiar?) and relatively young age, a siren call to lure young people with wakening class consciousness into the party where movements go to die.

=========

The half-truth of a socially equitable and beneficent capitalism is the biggest lie.The increasing reliance on individuals like Ocasio-Cortez, Talib, Beto O'Rourke and even Kamala Harris indicates that the ruling elite is, itself, drawing lessons from the Sanders campaign, three years ago. They recognize to their dismay that vast section of the American working class, and even layers of the lower middle class, are becoming politicized and are receptive to a genuine socialist perspective and program. Exposing charlatans like AOC is a first order of business.

=========

Ocasio Cortez is the high priestess of half truths, to paraphrase. Corona, queens is my borough and Cortez was active in my district. Corona has multiple issues, sanitation is poor overcrowding, illegal tenancy , a high percentage of domestic violence and a high percentage of fires. It is not a poor community .However working class and a home for the immigrant population. Cortez record addresses none of the issues that affect the community. The only issue she has addressed was to obtain loans for the business community in order to promote minority participation. So, capitalist window dressing is her forte.

=========

AOC's tax plan is less "radical" than the tax code which actually existed during the Eisenhower years. For practically the entire decade of the 50s, the top income rate stood at 90%.

Just yesterday I read that Billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon said that he has "no problem paying higher taxes to address some of the fundamental challenges and inequities in our society," but that
government spending must be efficient.
Efficient translated, of course, means more austerity for the working class.
AOC is simply providing a "left" face for the financial aristocracy.

As for her presence and promotion in bourgeois media, that speaks clearly as to what she stands for. The bourgeois media go to lengths to ignore and censor genuine revolutionary socialist.

========

As individuals, I suspect these reformists, Sanders and AOC, believe they are acting pragmatically within structures, which can be reformed. Twenty years ago, dealing with neoliberal forces at the neighborhood level, I discovered the comprehensive processes to invite, co-opt, or marginalize left reformers at appropriate times. Now, these tactics are central to exercising power everywhere in neoliberal society.
Corporate news has been normalized as absurd spectacle. Common citizens will watch the Republican's call these reformers, "the looney left" and the Democrat's machine will dazzle us with endless debates about "pulling the far left" toward the center. Everything important about any policy issues; which needs to be conveyed to inform citizens, will be avoided. Celebrity status and "leaders" are an important component of the capitalist propaganda machine and methods. Those in power are experts at keeping reformers, sufficiently dis-empowered and marginalized, while using their celebrity as a media distraction. (They also have processes for ideas and words like medicare for all. Remember, how the media demanded "demands" from the occupy movement, so their idiot consultants could do their part.) The left reformist celebrities and corporate consultants together keep all important discussions and information away from the people with the propaganda machine. None of the reformers will touch issues of war, empire, etc. or a new celebrity will be found. Those topics aren't allowed.

========

The first batch of millennial politicians have arrived, and I share the dubious pleasure of being of their generation.

The fact of the matter is that most of them have been raised on right-wing propaganda that frames Keynesian Economics as some sort of radical position, as denoted by the fanfare around Sanders, and since its hip to be "radical" one can expect the term Socialist to be bandied about without proper understanding or even care towards that lack of understanding. The deep layered sophistry of modern politics. wrapped in decades of Corporate and State sponsored propaganda and the petty bourgeois affinity for Post-Modernist theory, ensures that Socialism will only be just another word in the mouths of people who have enough money, and free time, to redefine what that term means.

In the end, the petty-bourgeois "Left" loves to make more of a show of its "progressive," and "radical" credentials, i.e. making boutique political positions and gaining publicity at controlled rallies, than it does about doing anything of actual substance, as demonstrated by it's absolute lack of revolutionary potential. Thus, as writers like Chris Hedges wrote in a recent article, the Democratic Party and "Progressive" movement will ultimately fail to provide the necessary response to this critical stage in Capitalist/World development.

This, of course, is the proper manifestation of decades of betrayal of critical Leftist by their Liberal "allies," which was effectively completed in the 70's with the advent of the bourgeois Left and its gospel of cultural progress, i.e. Postmodern critique in action, that has served to make it so a Minority CEO is the apotheosis of Social Justice. As things stand, a vague "Socialist" sporting the shallow aesthetics of Identity politics (being both a woman and a person of Minority status)is the best that the system can offer, which is to say nothing more than another bronze idol to be the play thing of a predominately white, imperial bourgeois society.

========

Your comment ignores historical precedent. Democrats lead by FDR proposed 100% tax rate on the wealthy during the Depression but only achieved 94%. That was whittled down over the decades to about 70% ( I think ) in the early 70s. Then, after consumer credit and loans were introduced along with the flooding of labor markets in the late 70s, Carter and then Reagan basically eviscerated the tax rate at the behest of the oligarchs who undeniably control both major bourgeois US parties.

So you’re very wrong about this proposal being some sort of indicator of “social progress”. It is a well worn and failed tactic at staving off building revolutionary momentum with the ability to roll back any time the bourgeoisie demands it. Also, the economic conditions would make such a policy impossible to implement without crumbling the remainder of US economic power and is therefore extremely unlikely to get passed without an insane amount of waivers and write offs for the wealthy.

=======

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - new model Sheepdog

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:47 pm

A relevant twitter thread from @circadianwolf

Seeing people who call themselves leftists, even socialists or communists, who aren't opportunist frauds taken in by the spectacle around Omar and AOC is baffling and terrifying. They are constantly declaring things that simply didn't happen and that the news doesn't even claim.

It seems very much as though they haven't ever read more than headlines; the faintest gestures at radicalism, with literally nothing behind it (and plenty of reactionary, fascist positions in their actual words and actions), are enough to conjure a phantom in their minds.

The way they are so easily manipulated by staged opposition from "the right" (as if they are distinct) (like the marketing ploys for some recent blockbusters: this film is being attacked even before release by anti-sjw trolls! we must give it publicity and dollars to counter!)

And so they seem to preemptively dismiss the reality of their fraud; it really is just another run of the Obama marketing campaign, repolished and rebranded as vaguely, definitionlessly 'socialist', for the same people. The failing middle class internet savvys who are learning >

> a taste of poverty & with it a taste of anger & desperation; but while they flirt with labels of 'socialist' & 'communist' they are still fully enraptured by the same narratives they've been immersed in since they were children; they have no theory & so are conned again & again

It's horrifying to realize how effective the social manipulation that came into its own as a field in the 40s and 50s as advertising and propaganda and that developed hand in hand with the US military's development of the internet is today.

The frauds barely have to lie, they only have to present nearly blank slates onto which their audience will gladly fill in the blanks; so Omar 'criticized US action in Venezuela' by affirming the US' good intentions and that the Venezuelan government is illegitimate;

'criticized Israel' by raising fears of 'foreign interests' manipulating the otherwise innocent US government (a 'tail wagging the dog' model of foreign relations that literally only makes sense if Jews have some superpower to manipulate in absence of material power)

and AOC supports socialism by demonizing 'authoritarianism' in Venezuela and says she means 'not socialism, but democratic socialism, like Scandinavia', works to abolish ICE by clarifying she merely wants to rebrand ICE - getting rid of border police would be ridiculous! - and on

When Omar and AOC appear on Rolling Stone with Pelosi it's the Democrats crassly taking advantage of their popularity (which is clearly grassroots and not created ex nihilo by mass media coverage) only to betray them when they 'take a stand'.

I'm sorry but how fucking dumb do you have to be?? Are they so damaged by the lifelong media immersion that they are truly that incapable of independent analysis? Is thinking about the staging just too passe when you could be thrilled by the latest episode of this reality show?

Of course when pressed they all resort to 'well what else is possible' - as if Omar and AOC were merely the useless 'most left possible' (which itself would not merit support) rather than actively (and intentionally) harming real activism and education through their lies and acts

They have -harmed- Venezuela by laundering the demonization of its government to US 'leftists', they have -harmed- Palestine by voting for military funding to Israel & framing the issue as dual loyalty (an antisemetic and anticommunist trope) rather than atrocities of colonialism

What material good have Omar, AOC, and similar figures achieved or even concretely acted toward achieving? I have not seen one positive answer to this; it's always a defense of 'what else would you have us do'. Literally doing nothing would be better, but I'd start with reading.

Twitter really is perhaps the mechanical epitome of the propaganda project, inducing toward the 'read only headlines' style, training responses toward aphorisms and catechisms that fit neatly into character limits, strictly limiting links and references that could add context.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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