Free Republic

In the awkward aftermath of the Green New Deal’s rollout, perhaps the most appropriate question for its supporters, especially the Democratic presidential field, is one often posed by tennis bad boy John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!” But, apparently, when New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey introduced their proposal in February, they were deadly serious, and breathless progressives couldn’t wait to hop aboard the climate change express. First in line, the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate who were eager to offer up their enthusiastic support. There was just one snag. The Green New Deal, in...

Sen. Mike Lee didn’t quite bring a snowball onto the Senate floor. But the Utah Republican’s prop-filled speech Tuesday mocking the proposed Green New Deal resolution on addressing climate change elicited similar incredulous reactions from Democrats. Lee’s speech — in which the conservative Mormon argued, seemingly genuinely, that the “real solution to climate change” was to have more children — included a dramatic portrait of former President Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun while on the back of a velociraptor, photos of Star Wars characters and Aquaman, and frames from the sci-fi disaster movie “Sharknado.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) may have the support of progressive politicians for their Green New Deal but they’ve lost the nation’s largest organized-labor group, the AFL-CIO. “We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy,” the AFL-CIO’s energy committee wrote in a letter to Markey and Ocasio-Cortez. “We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families....

2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand claimed in an interview this week that, if done using market forces, there is “nothing socialist” about the Green New Deal -- a proposed vast government-led overhaul of the nation’s economy and energy use. Gillibrand made the comments in an interview with New York Magazine, where she was asked about her support for the controversial plan that has shot into Democratic mainstream thought after spending years as a fringe, far-left idea. “I love the framework of the Green New Deal, and the reason is this: I believe that global climate change is the greatest...

Do you ever wonder why people run for office? I mean, unless you're a total cynic, you must assume that at least part of the motivation is wanting to do good. Sure, those who run for office want fame and prestige, but they also have strongly held views and want to affect public policy, right? So why in the world would they engage in sabotage of the ideas they hope to advance? That's undeniably what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey have done with their juvenile Green New Deal. Consider: The caricature of environmentalists is that they are just...

The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Andrew Wheeler as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a 52-47 mostly party-line vote. Every Democrat voted against Wheeler, while Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) was the only Republican to vote against him. Collins in a statement Wednesday said she would not vote for Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist, because of his track record backing policies that weaken rules protecting are pollution and lowering car emissions. “While Mr. Wheeler is certainly qualified for this position, I have too many concerns with the actions he has taken during his tenure as Acting Administrator...

The Democrats’ “Green New Deal” proposal is praiseworthy but does not go far enough, the U.N.’s “right to food” expert said in an article posted Friday — one day after she was accused of ignoring the severe food crisis in Venezuela. Hilal Elver, a U.S.-based Turkish academic appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2014 as “special rapporteur on the right to food,” said the Democratic initiative would be the first major U.S. effort “to address the threat of climate change as dynamic, multi-dimensional, and ubiquitous, and for that alone, it deserves praise.” However, she added that the...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) responded Tuesday to criticism from Ivanka Trump by suggesting Trump's daughter learned about working "for tips & hourly wages ... 2nd-hand." "As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, with a link to reports of Ivanka Trump slamming Ocasio-Cortez earlier in the day. "A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create," she continued. Rep....

Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris pointedly declined in an interview broadcast Sunday to put a price tag on the Green New Deal and "Medicare-for-all," which she has endorsed wholeheartedly even as Republicans cite nonpartisan cost estimates of trillions of dollars for each unprecedented proposal. Harris, D-Calif., joined Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. to co-sponsor the Green New Deal resolution earlier this month. The resolution's botched rollout included the release of an official document by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's office that promised economic security even for those "unwilling to work," as well as the elimination of "farting...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent plenty of air time explaining “farting cows,” as she defended her so-called Green New Deal on the premiere of Showtime’s “Desus & Mero.” According to an initial outline of the measure, the freshman Democrat and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said they “set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” The language was later changed to “emissions from cows.” On Thursday night, comedy duo Desus Nice and The Kid Mero asked Ocasio-Cortez...

Some of the organizations helping to promote the Green New Deal (a broad outline for the current conception of the socialist-style plan.)... have ties to 'financing from billionaire George Soros' and trace their roots to such radical groups as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. The Green New Deal was crafted by Ocasio-Cortez along with three groups — the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats and a group calling itself New Consensus....The document was written over a single December weekend. Sunrise co-founder 'Varshini Prakash' described his organization’s expansive goals for 2020: “We, along with our partners, are going to be attempting...

It would be easy to dismiss the Green New Deal as an impossible progressive dream, but that would be a mistake. The Green New Deal is not the bucket list of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow travelers, but a blueprint to turn America into a socialist state. It is the culmination of a 90-year campaign, begun with FDR and the first New Deal. “The first obligation of government is the protection of the welfare and well-being, indeed the very existence, of its citizens,” presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt said at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. Roosevelt said that in...

A few years ago at the height of the global warming scare I wrote a book which set out to answer one of the key questions of our time: if climate change isn’t really a problem why do so many people act as though it is? The answer, I discovered, is that environmentalism is just a fashionable mask for the usual leftist obsessions with state control and wealth redistribution. That’s why I called the book Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. Not everyone who believes in man-made climate change is a full on Commie. Some are merely...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s now infamous talking points on the Green New Deal are the most unintentionally honest explanation of the neo-socialism now gripping the Democratic Party. Too honest, apparently. After her office sent the “FAQ” to NPR, The Post and other news organizations, and posted a similar version on her congressional website, they were met with withering criticism — prompting Ocasio-Cortez to furiously backtrack, seeking to disown and discredit documents her office had produced, posted and distributed. Sorry, you don’t get to do that. Ocasio-Cortez told us what is really behind her Green New Deal. Now she, and the Democrats...

Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades travel backward toward “Year Zero”. Democrats led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey have rolled out their “Green New Deal,” a 14-page House Resolution that would replace air travel with trains, eliminate gasoline-powered cars and get rid of “farting cows” that emit methane. “Almost everything about Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is wrong,” explained Ed Ring in American Greatness, with accompanying detail. He also called Ocasio-Cortez and company the “watermelon people,” because they are green outside and red inside. That comparison has been around for a while, but the red is deeper...

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., had a fiery exchange with a reporter on Capitol Hill on Wednesday when asked to comment on the Green New Deal. Henry Rodgers, the Daily Caller's Capitol Hill reporter, approached the senator at a subway station and asked him if he supported Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's legislative proposal. Menendez avoided the question and asked where Rodgers worked. Rodgers said that when he told Menendez he worked for the Daily Caller, the Democrat responded by saying he would not answer any questions. And intern who was with Rodgers asked a follow-up question, and tensions apparently rose.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, perhaps the GOP’s 2018 MVP, may be on his way to another title. In a senatorial sleight of hand, he has suddenly put opportunistic colleagues who have been swept up the in the AOC tailwinds in an uncomfortable position. They are now going to have to vote on the Green New Deal, which they have loudly supported, in the well of the Senate. The Green New Deal, a proposal rolled-out by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sen. Ed Markey on the Senate side, is a fantastical plan to combat climate change and completely remodel the...

...Democrats are going to have an even harder time separating themselves from the Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). It addresses an urgent problem — global warming — but does so with an impractical, indeed fantastical, approach. It promises to upgrade every single building in the country and to achieve “net zero” emissions within 10 years — without using nuclear power. (Even Sweden isn’t trying to achieve “net zero” until 2050, and it relies heavily on nuclear plants.) As if that overambitious goal weren’t enough, the legislation also guarantees everyone in...

If only Democrats controlled part of Congress so that we could have the robust national debate Ed Markey is demanding.Or rather, to reframe that point: There is a congressional leader who might be trying to sabotage the Green New Deal. But it ain’t McConnell. This isn't a new Republican trick. By rushing a vote on the #GreenNewDeal resolution, Republicans want to avoid a true national debate & kill our efforts to organize. We’re having the first national conversation on climate change in a decade. We can’t let Republicans sabotage it.— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) February 12, 2019 I continue to...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Oh. Why, nobody could’ve seen that coming. Oh, wait… – Useless North Carolina RINO Senator Richard Burr told the leering press yesterday that the incredibly mis-named Senate Intelligence Committee has found no evidence of “collusion” with Russia by the Trump Campaign, Trump Transition Team or Trump Administration. Go figure. Like American Gestapo Chief, er, “Special Counsel” Robert Mueller, Senate Intel is winding down its fake investigation because there is no “there” there – never was, isn’t now, and never will be. Democrats and fake journalists who really bought into this fantasy play...