Newly-minted New York Democratic Party U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – thinks the policies of the Democratic Party aren’t progressive enough and that the party needs to move farther to the left.
To that end, Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC as she is popularly known) is a leading proponent of the so-called Green New Deal – an as yet fairly vague and ill-defined set of goals, strategies and plans to address climate change, so-called economic injustices and the redistribution of wealth. Although the spending plan remains vague, what is known is that it would fundamentally impact the nation’s economy in ways that most traditional Democrats can’t support.
So exactly how does that impact Mississippi politics? Well, consider the price of gas in Coffeeville ($2.19 average) and Tylertown ($2.17 average). That’s at a time when the state average price of gas in Mississippi is $2.102 average and the national average price of gas is $2.395.
But at the same time gas prices in New York State average $2.523 and in the Bronx home of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, gas prices average $2.626. Gas prices in California average $3.285.
That’s a spread of higher gas prices in Mississippi that range from 52.6 cents to $1.183 per gallon higher under current economic conditions. Should the Green New Deal actually be adopted, a significant increase in gas prices would almost certainly follow. Increases in travel costs, fuel costs, heating costs, would follow.
Who is following Ocasio-Cortez in supporting the Green New Deal resolution in the U.S. House? A group of the most liberal Democrats in the House, many of whom represent New York and California – states in the contiguous 48 states with the highest gas prices.
Predictably, the Green New Deal will be dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate. The chances of the non-binding resolution proffered by Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t appear in much better shape in the full House, either – even among the House Democratic leadership.
But the problem for the Democratic Party nationally and in Mississippi is roughly akin to the challenges that have afflicted Mississippi Republicans over the few election cycles – when first Tea Party and later Trump supporters challenged establishment Republicans over whether the GOP was “conservative enough.”
In the last presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced a serious challenge from independent Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats. In 2016, Sanders won 43 percent of pledged Democratic delegates to Clinton’s 55 percent.
Just as traditional Republicans struggled to separate themselves from elements on the right in their party, traditional Democrats are now struggling to distance themselves from elements on the left of their party. Just as conservatives made compromise or consensus hard to achieve in the GOP, progressives are increasingly making compromise and consensus hard to achieve in the Democratic Party.
That last Senate election in Mississippi demonstrated how difficult if not impossible it is in the modern political environment where social media magnifies every flaw instantly for a candidate to separate himself or herself from the national party whose standard they bear.
For both presumptive leading Democratic Mississippi gubernatorial contender Jim Hood and presumptive leading GOP contender Tate Reeves, the faces of the political parties each of them represent matters. In Mississippi, statewide voters have validated right of center Republican Party policies far more consistently than they have validated left-of-center Democratic policies.
Democrats have delighted in GOP feuds between the center and the right for at least a decade. Now, the worm has turned and it’s the GOP enjoying the fray between traditional Democrats and the more far left extremes of their party.
How those national party battles impact the price of gas – and other economic indicators - in Coffeeville and Tylertown in 2019 are things that will impact Mississippi’s governor’s race.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Sid Salter: AOC, the Green New Deal, and the price of gas in Coffeeville and Tylertown
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43 comments:
"Traditional Republican" = oxymoron
But leave it up to ol' Sid to create an oblique tie-in of AOC to those conservatives in Mississippi who disagree with the MSGOP establishment RINOs.
To sum it up, This is what I think about New York Democratic Party U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Tate wins.... Hood will snuggle up to the Green New Deal and get laughed out of the State.
With black Democrats, Hood loses. Black Democrats are going to vote for RSS.
Regardless of their race it would take an absolutely naive fool to vote for a Democratic candidate for governor of Mississippi with the current shape of their national party.
Intelligent young people who have decades left to live want to save the planet they live on. Selfish old boomers and stupid people with less life left to live don't want to lose their comforts and are unwilling to admit that they caused this crisis.
The problem is that while the idiots live in denial the crisis gets worse. Waiting for them to die will take too long. It will be too late.
There seems to be only one solution and AOC knows what must be done.
The problem for both parties and the American people is that the American people have largely lost faith in the status quo represented by the moderates in both parties. The only effective position either party has promoted recently has been the notion that the other party is responsible for all the problems that afflict the country. The American people being the most gullible semi-literates in the world accept this. The result is that when the parties close ranks and hold their primaries the most radical ideas contrast most with the position of the other party, hence, you get "anti-establishment" candidates from both parties, usually flakes. The republicans did it last presidential election and we got a flake. The dems are working just as hard to provide the people with a flake of their own. It won't stop until we are Germany or Italy before World War II.
The Democratic Socialist Left want to take the Democratic Party more to the left, to truly be more Socialist. The Tea Party and Conservative factions of the Republican Party only want their elected leaders to do what they said they would do... Big Difference Sid.
AOC, Bernie and the entire field of fruit cake leftist Dems are the second best thing that could have ever happened to the 2020 Trump campaign.
When far left freak show Bill de Blasio is having to provide enlightenment after you say
“If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that money, if we wanted to,” (Ocasio-Cortez said)
you know all of the lights just aren't burning within your chandelier.
Even Dianne Feinstein and Pelosi are shocked at how dumb she is. Now that's bad!
Sad thing is many of the electorate are just dumb enough to believe them..
I don't disagree with Salter's premise (...at least I don't think I do), but what a horribly-written column. He could have made his point without spending a quarter of his words talking about gas prices, which did little to support his argument.
@9:55
Do you know how minuscule the effect of America basically destroying itself with this idiot's plan would actually be on the climate globally ? AND I understand by asking this we are making the H U G E assumption that anything we are currently doing is actually affecting the climate at all.
the poster at 9:56 is doubling down on stupid.
Intelligent young versus calcified old who just want to hold on to what is comfortable, what most of them built, is beyond dumb.
First, those old codgers might resist their removal. Granted, the socialist governments of the last century were responsible for eliminating probably 150 million (right, 150,000) people in their quest for socialism/communism to make way for the "intelligent young", it didn't work.
Second, the life experience of the "intelligent young" might not be able or capable of running the machinery of the earth, which has been much more durable than human misadventures to date. AOC herself has the lifetime experience of being a cute bartender. Will that feed the hungry, or clothe the unclothed? Her cute smile may concoct a gin and tonic, but can she assemble transportation or build a house?
And far from last, but this doubling down on ignorant speech giving dire warnings to the end of the earth? 12 years left if we don't follow this SUKA? Get a grip. The intensity of warning about the weather has reached even more shrill voice. To which I say, look at the sea level. Look at the records for not only the last century, but for time since the last ice age. The sea level has risen by a few feet per century, not per year. And bets are, it will continue at pretty much the same pace, despite all the hot air generated by those who want power in the form of threats of disaster unless we have the kind of transportation they decide for us.
God bless these idiots who spew such entertaining and idiotic lies and keep us entertained. And please don't let them EVER gain power.
And bless farting cattle too; both milk and steak are good for you.
If you think Trump is going to win you should be listening to Cohen.
@11:15
If you believe Cohen I have a Unicorn you might want to buy for your collection.
@11:15, the guy going to prison for lying to Congress testifying but the committee is only allowed to ask questions the Dems will allow, please. I bet my ex and disgruntled employees would be truthful as well.
Trump is begging Kim, to give him a peace deal or he would be tweeting in real time.
Where to start...?
Let's see, first of all, Cortez is a naïve idiot who is getting far too much attention. She needs to sit back and learn about reality. Yes we need significant accountability and change, but it ain't coming from her!
To the 1st 9:40AM, you and McDaniel can GET OUT of MY "Traditional Republican" party!
Extremists on both far sides are what is wrong with this nation!
9:41, Hood is not a snuggler to the extremist left.
9:54, speaking of naïve... of course MS Dems will vote for a MS Dem candidate!
9:55, "like, oh my gah"! Are you even old enough to vote? Bernie and your AOC are not going to provide a good future for you. Theories sound nice, but not realistic. Check some facts and then come back to see us. We're not dead yet!
The only reason I still live in this dump of a state is because of the low gas prices and low cost of living. If I wanted to pay California or New York prices, I'd move there. I agree that Ivanka Trump is out of touch because she's never worked for a non living wage but AOC is just as far out of touch thinking that a living wage is a right. It's a right only to those willing to work for it. If we just paid everyone $15-20 an hour it would only increase the cost of good that much more which would make that living wage not enough to live on. Just like free college. Not everyone is capable to go to college and I don't want to dilute the value of my education. We need to help people but people also need to do something for that help.
When A.I. takes over the Nissan plant will need about 400 people, McDonald's will need 2. The future is near, before long a living wage is going to come in the form of direct payments because you exist not because you work.
It's all irrelevant. In the long run the U.S. will need all the military it's borrowed money can buy because Trump spends the country's borrowed money to put the liberal dems to shame and since he's not a democrat, the republicans ignore it. We'll have to destroy all the countries we owe money to, like Hitler planned to do or else the U.S. will fall into the ash heap. Capitalist or Socialist don't matter if you can't pay the piper. And we ain't the piper no more.
P.S. the piper has got nuclear weapons too.
You can’t blame all these old people for not understanding the direction technology is going and the challenges it will create. At some point, we are going to have to make some tough choices on how to handle these people that have been left behind and have no chance of catching up.
2:11, they're already making the equivalent of much more than minimum wage. You and I are paying the difference between what their employer pays them and what it takes to live (in the form of Medicaid, SS, grants, free and reduced lunch, subsidized transportation costs, subsidized housing, etc.,).
Humored by the proponents of a green deal who continue to sip multiple cups of Starbucks each day tossing them into the garbage. Now that's what I call green.
I'm 37 years old. I've worked and sacrificed my youth for several small business owners who would work us without compensation and make big promises for the future, only to later us me that they just can't afford to give us a raise.
Meanwhile they hire a half dozen lazy, idiot relatives who recently graduated, make them middle managers, who never contribute. I finally left and took a job making lower wages but with more dignity.
Too many years of working weekends and holidays while they buy boats and go on vacations and buy ever larger homes. They didn't build the business, their grandfather did and he built it with government contracts.
I would vote for AOC in a heart beat. Eat the rich. Full communism!
@2:51 We're still borrowing money? Trump balanced the budget. Didn't he? How dare you raise the image of Hitler. We're better than that.
Dear snowflake, life and business isn’t fair. If you are so smart you should have left when the writing was on the wall instead of believing in a fairness doctrine. I got fucked during my first two jobs and finally landed one that pays me what I am worth. Lazy and entitled is no way to go through the rest of your life. And as for us old farts that want to keep what we earned, you will have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. I also know for a fact if it ever came to it, you wouldn’t even know how to protect yourself. Fucking millennials. Trust no one under 40 should be the new mantra of this country.
Interestingly, Ms. Occasionally-Correct just today tweeted that workers often have to accept wages that are less than the value of their labor to the business for which they work. Um, well, if the business were forced to pay them 100% of the value of their labor, these poor workers would soon be out of job because their employer would soon be out of business (or the business would replace them with automation if it were possible).
The underlying problem with much of this "progressive" nonsense is that however laudable some of the ideas might be from a "perfect world" theoretical standpoint, those ideas are simply not economically _possible_. I think she will soon discover that being a reasonably attractive airhead will only play so long in the role in which she sees herself. I suspect that her self-insertion and self-aggrandizing role in the Amazon NYC situation will come back to severely limit her political future.
Right wing nut arguments vs. Left wing nut arguments = 0 common sense
Hey Sid . . . please don't use the name Ocasio-Cortez in an article that mentions Tylertown.
I doubt she would ever churn butter (on stage) with the other politicians at our Dairy Festival.
Dear 37 years:
You worked without compensation? That's on you. Period.
Work on acquiring some smarts. Doing so will make your dignity taste better.
"Dear 37 years:
You worked without compensation? That's on you. Period.
Work on acquiring some smarts. Doing so will make your dignity taste better."
What he (or she) said.
Dumb and dumber. No wonder you support the lunatic fringe in politics.
AOC came from nowhere. So did Castro, Hitler and Stalin among a few. Speaking on that line, wouldn’t it benefit Russia and China to collide with the Left and have a strong socialist/ communist in office? There’s your Russian collusion and it was done very well right under your noses. Every time I see that buck toothed communist I want to vomit.
A lot of commenters sound like they have never worked for a boss who strings you along with lots of hopes and promises. I can assure you that most people want to be loyal to their employer and give 110%. Nowadays that loyalty gets you very little.
You are all correct. It is stupid to work long hours on projects when the raises aren't coming like promised. Add nepotism and it's time to move on. Let the cousins do the work.
I stand to lose nothing with AOC's rise to power. Honestly I stand to gain by helping her. And if America has her own October Revolution, then that will just be the icing on the cake.
The right wingnuts are so obsessed with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez that her ever meal is criticized as if her choice of meal is political. Leave it Republitards to openly bully a woman.
It is crazy to hear so called "Christian Conservatives" belittle and bully people.
Does not the Bible say that "the love of money is the root of all evil?"
And doesn't the Lord's Word also say that it "would be easier to thread the eye of a needle with a camel, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"
If only Jesus' followers were more like him.
“Leave it Republitards to openly bully a woman”
You mean like Sarah Palin, or Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Oh wait, that wasn’t the republicans....
As an non religious conservative who likes his assets and income, trying to use a dying religion to shame me is irrelevant. I am so tired of religion being used to justify politics. Churches should stay out of politics or they should loose non profit status. I guarantee that if churches had to pay taxes there would be far fewer and those that survived would be better stewards of the post tax money they fleece from their congregations. And if more of jesus’ followers were more like him they would all be dead and just “hanging around”. That is a great idea.
he just hit the nail in the head, right on, preach it.
7:08 proves that anti-religious bigots aren't confined to the left.
This AOC woman is only the beginning, Donald Trump's reign will only clear the way for more anti-establishment quacks from the left and the right who now know that the public is now receptive to anything. The normal rules of civility and accountability in speech and action are being discarded and we will soon discard common sense as well. In ten years AOC will be mainstream and the neo-conservative right will be just as responsible for her rise as the radical left. Denial does not help.
We currently have politics of opposition. Whatever THEY are for WE are against regardless how beneficial some of the opposition's programs are.
Who would have ever imagined that the gentile women of Mississippi would whole heartedly support a man for the White House whose vernacular is indicative of the worst of America's uncivilized populations in order to support his backing for the NRA and assault rifles and tax cuts to Wall St bankers and elimination of interest on their own families' personal savings?
One is not too smart and the other doesn't really look that good. I'll leave it at that. These other ones are pretty and smart.
5:18 a.m.
After Lenin's October Revolution, from 1900 to 1987 more than 110 MILLION people were killed, directly and indirectly, by the Bolsheviks.
But, you're cool with that. Icing on the cake for you.
Your colossal ignorance is mind boggling.
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