Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supports boycotting the New York Post because it published a photograph of the September 11 terrorist attacks after Ilhan Omar described the attacks as “some people did something”
Ilhan Omar recently said the following: (the bolding is mine)
“CAIR was founded after 9/11, because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties”
In response, the New York Post published the following on its cover:
The cover shows a photograph of the World Trade Center on fire after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The top of the cover says:
Rep. Ilhan Omar: 9/11 was ‘some people did something’
The bottom of the cover says:
Here’s your something
2,977 people dead by terrorism
In response to this cover, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supported a boycott of the New York Post. She made the following tweet: (original, archive)
The text of Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet states:
“Two years ago, Bodega owners across NYC (& cheered by neighbors) shut their shops citywide to protest Trump’s #MuslimBan.”
“Today, that same community is banding together to reject sales of the NY Post at bodegas citywide.”
“This is what real unity (& NYC solidarity) looks like”
Ocasio-Cortez made her tweet in response to a tweet by Dr. Debbie Almontaser, which said:
“Yemeni Americans held a 1,000 bodega strike against the #MuslimBan, tonight we just declared a boycott of the racist NY Post! Starting tomorrow morning Yemeni American merchants will be rejecting the sale of the NY Post! NY Post take your papers back! #BoycottNYPost”
Wow.
All the New York Post did was tell the truth.
And now a member of the U.S. Congress supports boycotting it for telling the truth.
And two members of Congress are grossly downplaying the severity of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the entire history of our country’s existence.
That’s really despicable.
California lawmakers want to ban those little shampoo bottles you get in hotels
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/14/us/california-hotel-plastic-bottles/index.html
California lawmakers want to ban those little shampoo bottles you get in hotels
April 14, 2019
Those little shampoo bottles offered in hotel bathrooms, used once or twice and then usually tossed in the trash, could soon be a thing of the past in California.
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban hotels from providing guests with small plastic bottles for soap, shampoo and conditioner. The proposed law, which would go into effect in 2023, would instead encourage hotels to provide the products in bulk dispensers to reduce plastic waste.
Assembly Member Ash Kalra of San Jose co-authored the bill, known as AB 1162, which would apply to all lodging establishments. Kalra said that small plastic bottles under 12 ounces represent a sizable amount of waste and that his bill would reduce the problem.
“By not offering small bottles of personal care products, hotels, motels, and other lodging establishments can promote a more sustainable business and potentially reduce operating costs,” he said as part of an analysis on the bill. “AB 1162 will take meaningful action to curb single-use plastic consumption in the lodging industry and increase consumer awareness.”
The bill was introduced in February and is working its way through committees. Santa Cruz County passed a similar law that banned small toiletry bottles in hotels last year, CNN affiliate KSBW reported.
The legislation comes amid a growing push to phase out single-use plastics like straws and bags. Critics say these items take decades or more to decompose and end up polluting landfills and bodies of water.
California has been at the forefront of bans on single-use plastics and became the first state to ban plastic bags in 2014. New York state also moved to do the same last month.
Even before this legislation, hotels have begun to make the shift toward bulk dispensers, which they say are less wasteful and cheaper.
Marriott International announced last April that it would replace the individual soap, shampoo and conditioner bottles with bulk dispensers in its showers. The program is expected to save an average of 250 pounds of plastic per year for a 140-room hotel — about 23,000 plastic bottles, Marriott told Lodging Magazine.
“This is a win-win from a sustainability perspective, operational perspective, and financial perspective,” Denise Naguib, vice president of sustainability for Marriott, told the magazine.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: “We are going to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers”
De Blasio’s Green New Deal will ban ‘classic glass and steel skyscrapers’
April 22, 2019
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s so-called Green New Deal will ban “classic glass and steel skyscrapers,” he said Monday.
“We are going to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers which are incredibly inefficient,” Hizzoner said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“If someone wants to build one of those things, they can take a whole lot of steps to make it energy efficient, but we’re not going to allow what we’ve seen in the past.”
De Blasio’s new scheme to slash carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030 includes a ban on new buildings with all-glass facades “unless they meet strict performance guidelines,” City Hall said in a release Monday.
A Simple Plan To Address The ‘Student Loan Crisis’
A Simple Plan To Address The ‘Student Loan Crisis’
By Derek Hunter
April 25, 2019
It’s the greatest crisis facing the country today and threatens not only the present, but the future as well. It’s not the national debt, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, health care, or any of the other issues Democratic candidates for president routinely ramble about, no. This is something far more serious – people making informed, really bad choices. And the Democratic Party is rallying to their defense.
Out of pure self-loathing, I watched most of the 5-hour lovefest on CNN Monday with Democratic candidates for president. One hour each for Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. These back-to-back town halls featured pre-selected questions from a screened audience of college students looking to government to solve their problems. Of course, government can’t solve your problems, especially when your biggest problem is looking to government to solve your problems.
Still, it was a look not only into the minds of the candidates, it was a look into the minds of people who, someday, will be in elected office themselves. It was scary.
A day after more than 300 people were killed in a terrorist attack because of their faith, I don’t remember a single question or statement from anyone about it. There were, however, a lot of questions about student loans.
Judging by the amount of coverage student loan debt has gotten this year, you’d think there were loan officers hiding in bushes outside of high schools waiting to jump out and force college bound seniors to sign their lives away to big banks.
That’s not happening, of course, students are signing those documents willingly after actively seeking out loans for college. But you’d never know it by the way the candidates talk about student loans.
The issue isn’t so much an issue as it is an opportunity to pander. Candidates dangle varying versions of loan forgiveness and “free” college to students with more debt than many companies as a way to buy votes. It’s also a way for Democrats to advance an idea that is at the core of progressive politics: no personal responsibility.
So much of what Democrats are pushing this year is designed to insulate people from the bad choices they make – don’t worry about consequences, government is here to “fix” it. It’s the “let mommy kiss your booboo” of 2020.
Nothing captures this attitude like student loan forgiveness. Fully informed people making bad choices to borrow more money than their education will ever be worth, flocking to politicians promising to make it all better.
Rather than stealing from taxpayers to absolve people of their bad decisions, here’s an alternative that will serve the much more important purpose of teaching future generations about responsibility: tell the truth.
One questioner at Monday’s CNN event asked what can be done for her. According to her question, she’d amassed $25,000 in loans for just her freshman year of undergraduate studies at Saint Anselm College, which cost $38,000 per year in 2017. Rather than pander to someone like this girl, all candidates, and all Americans, should ask her why in the hell she chose to attend such an expensive school. Ask what undergraduate degree she thought could justify such a move. These people need to be taught that a degree in interpretive dance or 1940s bisexual polar bear studies might make you super-woke in your Young Socialists of America drum circle, but they aren’t viable for future employment.
Additionally, every student with a complaint about student debt should be asked the following:
1. Why go to an expensive school if you can’t afford it without taking on massive debt?
2. Why would your parents allow you to choose a school if you have to take on upwards of $100,000 in loans?
3. Do you understand the concept of a loan?
Knowing those questions had to have gone through their heads at some point, they should then be asked why they should be absolved of their debts when they willingly and knowingly made bad decisions?
They won’t have an answer, at least not a good one.
Candidates should pat them on the back, tell them they’re sorry but there’s nothing they can do for them. Not everyone is meant to lead a life of example, some people serve as cautionary tales – so let it be with these people.
Future generations can learn from the high self-esteem, snowflake generation whose parents should have but didn’t tell them “no,” so they can avoid their mistakes. Unless you’re going to be roommates with the next Mark Zuckerberg, no undergraduate education is worth $100,000 or more in debt. If you can’t pay for it with savings, scholarships, grants, and some moderate amount of loans, don’t go to that school. There are other options.
There should be no student loan forgiveness. It’ll be a tough lesson for kids to learn, but it’s one they need. Their parents failed them, their guidance counselors failed them, and they failed themselves. Let a group of liberal billionaires step-up, put their money where their mouths are and help, but don’t force an autoworker in Michigan or farmer in Wisconsin who’s helping their kid work their way through a state school or commuter college do it.
Choices have consequences, especially bad ones. At least they should. Government is supposed to protect people’s rights, not from themselves. And certainly not at the expense of everyone else. Let these people serve as an example of what not to do. It won’t help them, but it’ll do wonders for the next generation.
Chuck Berry vs Bruce Springsteen, Two Visions of America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMdfi46TmXM
The Video Authorities Don’t Want You To See: Mystery Person & Flash Of Light Before Notre Dame Cathedral Fire
I’m not saying that this video is proof that the Notre Dame Cathedral fire is arson.
What I am saying is that forensics experts should examine the video, and come to their own conclusion, based on actual evidence.
I’m also saying that it’s really weird that authority figures have already said that the fire was not arson. There hasn’t been enough time to do a forensics investigation. So why have they already said it was not arson?
How about investigating the actual evidence before determining whether or not it was arson?
The Video Authorities Don’t Want You To See: Mystery Person & Flash Of Light Before Notre Dame Cathedral Fire
April 17, 2019
If it had only been a singular incident involving a Catholic church in France the burning of one of the most well known human monuments to all of Christianity and Western Civilization could be understandably classified as an unfortunate accident during recent renovation work. Given that more than a thousand French churches across the country have been vandalized in recent years, though, more and more French (and others) are wondering if the Notre Dame fire wasn’t something far more sinister. Just released video of what appears to be someone moving inside the cathedral followed by a flash of light allegedly right before the fire started will do nothing to lessen those suspicions. If this was an act of vandalism and not an accident then hopefully the perpetrator(s) will soon be caught and brought to justice.
Here is that video which is now going viral all across the world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgfYYMjpf1s
It’s too soon to either blame or rule out arson as the cause of the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire. I will wait for the forensics investigation. In the meantime, who is this person in this video?
Given that they have not conducted an official forensics investigation yet, and given that such an investigation can take months, I don’t see how they can be saying for certain that the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire wasn’t arson.
A live broadcast by a French TV station showed an unidentified person walking around, way up high in the building, after the fire started. This person is neither a construction worker nor a firefighter.
I’m not saying this was arson. And I’m not saying this was not arson.
What I am saying is that:
1) There hasn’t been enough time to determine the cause, or to rule out any cause. So it seems really weird that people have already ruled out arson.
2) The person in this video has not been identified.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7xIOt4qR7M
Trump Just Drove A Mack Truck Through The Shameless Liberal Hypocrisy On Sanctuary Cities
Trump Just Drove A Mack Truck Through The Shameless Liberal Hypocrisy On Sanctuary Cities
By Scott Morefield
April 15, 2019
If the liberal attitude toward immigration and a host of other issues could be summed up with just one saying, it would be this one: “good for thee, but not for me.”
Safely tucked away inside their think tanks, tenured academic positions, lilly-white suburban enclaves, and ESPECIALLY behind their carefully crafted WALLS, it’s easy for liberals to virtue-signal about how the rest of us should be “compassionate” and agree to welcome every migrant who takes a notion to come to the United States. But when it comes to their own personal lives, their “money” is almost never anywhere in the vicinity of their big fat jabbering pie holes.
In other words, just like with the degree of charitable contributions from people all-too-eager to spend YOUR money, liberals are big fat hypocrites.
Such was the case last week when President Donald Trump brilliantly proposed – in a masterful troll job that may very well exceed all of his previous troll jobs – that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transport illegal border-crossers to … wait for it … sanctuary cities. Sure, it’ll sadly probably never happen, and likely the only reason Trump brought it up was to do exactly what it did – expose liberal hypocrisy. But even so, you’d think liberals would be ALL OVER the notion, right? This should be so EASY, given their worldview, so why not just call Trump’s bluff and say “bring them on in?” I mean, even allowing for the typical degree of liberal hypocrisy, the very definition of “sanctuary city” means that those in charge of designating their cities as such must want them to be, you know, a SANCTUARY for illegal immigrants. The more the merrier, they’re always saying, yet when the bad orange man proposes giving them what they supposedly want, right in their own backyards, they look that gift horse in the mouth like it’s got three eyes.
It’s almost like they think Mexico and Central America aren’t sending their best, or something.
Senator Amy Klobuchar accused Trump of “literally using human beings as pawns in a political game.” If that was the case, it was a checkmate move, Mr. President. Actress Alyssa Milano called the idea “sick and twisted.” Rep. Adam “Pencil-Neck” Schiff called it a “hare-brained scheme.” Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro waxed eloquent about “the cruelty of this administration,” because apparently the definition of “cruelty” is matching liberals up with the reality of their absurd utopian fantasies. CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin accused the Trump administration of treating illegals like a “pestilence to spread around the country,” which still begs the question: if they love them so much why would they care?
And then there was Cher, who did a Trump-prompted stark 180 on mass immigration by wondering via Twitter why Los Angeles and California, a city and state that aren’t “taking care of” their “own” should bring in and “take care of more.” This was a woman who, less than two years ago mind you, begged anyone who could to “take a dreamer” into their home. It’s hard to know how long it’ll be before “red-pilled Cher” issues the obligatory profuse apology, but for today at least it’s nice to see a ray of common sense pierce even the most brainwashed of souls.
There were plenty more where those came from, all perfectly summed up by Trump Deputy Director of Communications Matt Wolking, who tweeted: “Seeing left-wing media folks who advocate for open borders lose their minds because immigrants will bring violence and crime to their cities is … quite a sight.”
Indeed. It reminds me of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s now legendary question to Jorge Ramos last October when the Univision anchor was traveling with the first migrant caravan.
“How many of these migrants are you taking in personally into your home and are supporting once they get into the United States?” Carlson asked Ramos.
“I think that’s a great question and that’s precisely the kind of question that people like you ask when you don’t want to understand that this has nothing to do with individuals,” Ramos responded. After an awkward back and forth, Carlson asked him if he would simply take in “three” migrants, a question Ramos dodged yet again because he CLEARLY wasn’t about to take any of the migrants he supposedly cares so much about into his sprawling, walled (because of course it is) mansion. They might get the carpets dirty, after all.
To his credit, San Jose, California Mayor Sam Liccardo is the only liberal non-hypocrite in America right now. That’s because he offered to take any illegal immigrants President Trump would transfer to his city: “[Donald Trump] plans to release detained immigrants to [San Jose]??” Liccardo tweeted Friday. “We welcome any families willing to endure such extraordinary hardships and to take such tremendous risks to be a part of our great country.”
Liccardo’s non-hypocrisy, on this issue at least, stands in stark contrast to the rest of his ideological brethren. Liberals want to take your money and choose where to spend it, but don’t want to give it themselves. Liberals want walls for their mansions and their neighborhoods, but none for America. Liberals want armed guards and even guns for themselves, but would disarm ordinary Americans whose lives apparently aren’t as “valuable” as theirs.
And as Trump masterfully exposed, they want endless immigration from the Third World, but not anywhere near where they live.
U.S. Congressional representative Katie Porter (D-California) doesn’t seem to think that children need a father, and doesn’t seem to care about the density restrictions and other anti-development laws that increase the cost of housing in California
U.S. Congressional representative Katie Porter (D-California) recently talked about “Patricia,” one of her “constituents” who lives in Irvine, California.
Here’s a video of part of Porter’s statement, from the Washington Post channel at YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QKOLydDfNg
Since Porter said she looked up the salary of Patricia’s job at monster.com, I am guessing that “Patricia” is fictional. Nevertheless, I will go along with this, and offer my comments and analysis.
Patricia works as a bank teller at JPMorgan Chase, and earns $16.50 per hour, which works out to $35,070 per year. Patricia has a six-year old daughter, and the two of them live together in a one-bedroom apartment in Irvine, California. After taxes, Patricia takes home $29,100 per year, which is $2,425 per month.
Porter provided this image of Patricia’s monthly expenses:
These are Patricia’s monthly expenses:
$1,600 rent
$100 utilities
$250 on a 2008 car
$150 gas
$402 USDA “low cost” food for one adult and one child
$40 phone
$450 after school childcare
This leaves Patricia with a monthly budget deficit of $567.
Porter blames this budget deficit on JPMorgan Chase.
Now I’d like to offer my own commentary and opinion on this, in three different categories.
First of all, Porter makes no mention whatsoever of Patricia’s child’s father.
If Patricia was actually married, then her husband could work from home and take care of their child after school, and there would be no need to spend $450 per month on after school child care. Also, her husband’s income from working at home would make it easier to pay for their other expenses.
This refusal by Porter to even so much as mention Patricia’s child’s father is typical of liberals when they talk about single mothers who are struggling to raise their children. I have previously written about liberals’ refusal to mention the fathers of these children here, here, here, here, and here.
Secondly, Porter never mentions how density restrictions and other anti-development laws cause the price of housing in California to be substantially higher than it would otherwise be.
But I will mention it.
Here is a link to an article that was published by the Atlantic in 2007.
When a developer builds housing, there are three separate and distinct costs: the cost of land, the cost of construction, and the cost of getting a building permit (which the article refers to as the “right to build”).
Irvine is in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. According to the Atlantic article, using data from 1999, getting permission for the “right to build” added $303,000 to the cost of a house in Los Angeles in 1999.
Here’s part of the relevant text from the article:
In a 2003 article, Glaeser and Gyourko calculated the two different land values for 26 cities (using data from 1999). They found wide disparities. In Los Angeles, an extra quarter acre cost about $28,000 – the pure price of land. But the cost of empty land isn’t the whole story, or even most of it. A quarter- acre lot minus the cost of the house came out to about $331,000—nearly 12 times as much as the extra quarter acre. The difference between the first and second prices, around $303,000, was what L.A. home buyers paid for local land-use controls in bureaucratic delays, density restrictions, fees, political contributions. That’s the cost of the right to build.
And that right costs much less in Dallas. There, adding an extra quarter acre ran about $2,300—raw land really is much cheaper—and a quarter acre minus the cost of construction was about $59,000. The right to build was nearly a quarter million dollars less than in L.A. Hence the huge difference in housing prices. Land is indeed more expensive in superstar cities. But getting permission to build is way, way more expensive. These cities, says Gyourko, “just control the heck out of land use.”
The same article also includes this chart:
And please remember, this cost for the “right to build” is completely separate from the cost of the land, and the cost of construction.
The cost for the “right to build” is determined entirely, 100% by zoning laws, density restrictions, and other local government policies.
Here’s another example of how hard it is to get a building permit in California:
January 23, 2015
… there were more permits for single-family homes issued last year through November in just one Texas city Houston (34,566) than in the entire state of California (34,035) over the same period.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Houston is 628 square miles.
California is 163,696 square miles.
So even though California is 260 times as big as Houston, Houston actually issued more new building permits for single family homes in 2014 than did the entire state of California.
Just think about that for a minute.
Those numbers show just how incredibly, ridiculously hard California makes it to build new housing.
Anyone who has ever bought or sold anything at eBay understands that, all else being equal, the bigger the supply of something, the lower price, and the lower the supply, the higher the price.
By making it so difficult to get a building permit in California, the government is causing housing to be far, far more expensive than it would otherwise be.
Here is a great article by Thomas Sowell about how the politicians in California have waged war against the construction of new housing.
This video also explains California’s war against the construction of new housing. And please note that it is progressives, social justice warriors, and other left wing activists who are the ones that are most opposed to building this new housing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
California is waging a very strong, major war against the constriction of new housing.
But Porter never mentions any of this.
Third, being a bank teller is an entry level job. It doesn’t require any education beyond high school.
If Patricia wanted to earn more money, she could have gone to college or trade school before having a child.
But Porter never mentions this, either.
Tucker Carlson: Trump calls Democrats’ bluff on illegal immigrants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8XJPwmX3jo
Maxine Waters falsely blames banks for the student debt crisis that was actually overseen by the government
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORRAqBK-RNs
Hypocrite Nancy Pelosi says she supports illegal immigrants, but opposes Trump’s proposal to send them to her own Congressional district
Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said that she supports illegal immigrants.
However, she opposes a recent proposal by Trump to send them to her own Congressional district.
Ashley Etienne, Pelosi’s spokesperson, said of Trump’s proposal:
“The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated… Using human beings – including little children – as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.”
This reminds me of how Ted Kennedy said he supported wind power, but opposed the proposed offshore Cape Cod wind farm that would have been six miles away from his home, because it would have been “visible.”
Hypocrite Bernie Sanders changes his tune on “millionaires and billionaires” after the media reports that he is one of them
I want to start out by saying that I think it’s absolutely wonderful that Bernie Sanders became a millionaire by selling books to customers who wanted to buy them.
I have no problem with the fact that Sanders is a millionaire.
What I do have a problem with is his hypocrisy.
On many, many occasions, Sanders has criticized “millionaires and billionaires.”
This is a link to a video on C-SPAN’s website, which shows Sanders making such a statement. Here are his exact words: (skip to 0:33)
“There is something profoundly wrong, when in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires, at the same time as millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and we have shamefully the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country.”
However, now that the media has reported that Sanders himself is a millionaire, he is saying something very different. The New York Times just quoted Sanders as saying:
“I wrote a best-selling book… If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”
I agree 100% with Sanders’ statement.
If I can just add three more zeros to my own book sales figures, I, too, will become a millionaire.
Sanders’ association of the existence of “millionaires and billionaires” to the fact that there are children living in poverty is not accurate. According to the book The Millionaire Next Door, 80% of U.S. millionaires are first generation rich. They earned that money legally and honestly, by providing labor, goods, and services that people were willing to pay for. That makes everyone better off. It does not cause anyone to live in poverty.
The real reason there are so many children living in poverty in the U.S. has nothing to do with the fact that there are “millionaires and billionaires.” Instead, the high rate of childhood poverty can be attributed almost entirely to the irresponsible behavior of their parents.
Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
(My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Wikipedia has published the following chart, which shows the massive increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births that has taken place in the U.S. since the 1960s. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States,_1940-2014.png
According to that chart, since 1960, the percentage of babies born out-of-wedlock in the U.S. has skyrocketed from 5% to 40%.
In the 1960s, the Democrats launched their “War on Poverty,” whereby the government started paying women to have babies out-of-wedlock.
And as anyone who understands economics will tell you, whatever you subsidize, you get more of.
In this video, a happily married woman explains how a government social worker told her that she should get divorced in order to collect more benefits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6JqmdIubA
The liberals who complain about childhood poverty almost never blame it on the high out-of-wedlock birth rate.
Time and time and time and time again, the media publishes articles about childhood poverty, without even mentioning the fathers of these children.
Video: Chicago thugs violently assault innocent man. Then he pulls out gun and scares them away. He never pulled the trigger.
The video below shows an incident that just happened in Chicago. Some violent thugs start brutally beating an innocent man. Then he pulls out a gun and scares them away. He never pulled the trigger.
I challenge any anti-gun person to explain why this man was wrong to do what he did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwhRJQsusJU
Supporters of free universal health care can’t explain why U.K. citizen Mick Jagger had his life saving heart surgery in the U.S.
Supporters of free universal health care can’t explain why U.K. citizen Mick Jagger had his life saving heart surgery in the U.S.
I’ll explain it.
There is a tradeoff between time and money.
When something is “free,” it often comes with the “cost” of having to wait in line.
Mick Jagger knew that he could either get “free” heart surgery in the U.K. (where he is a citizen), at the cost of having to wait on a waiting list, or, he could get the surgery immediately by paying out of his own pocket to have his surgery in the U.S.
And he’s not the only one to understand this tradeoff between time and money.
When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, Canada, needed cancer treatment, he came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And when Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach needed cancer treatment, she also came to the United States and paid for her health care with her own money.
And when Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he, too, came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
Many liberals in the U.S. want the U.S. to adopt the same kind of universal health care that exists in Canada and the U.K. So here’s my question to those liberals: If the U.S. does adopt such a system, then where are the celebrities and politicians from other countries going to go when they need life saving health care?
Economically illiterate New York Times writer Michelle Goldberg, who supports the Green New Deal, said she didn’t notice when thieves charged more than $11,000 to her credit card
Michelle Goldberg is an opinion writer for the New York Times. She is in favor of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. In a recent column, Goldberg wrote:
“Warren, of course, will also be good on climate, and she has endorsed the idea of a Green New Deal put forward by Democrats like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
In the same column, Goldberg displayed her own economic illiteracy when she explained that she never looks over her monthly credit card statement, and that it was only when her husband looked at it that she found out that a corrupt and fraudulent bank had been charging her hundreds of dollars per month, for years, for a total of more than $11,000. She wrote:
“A few years ago, when I was self-employed and had recently had my second child, my husband went combing through my credit card statements, looking for tax deductions that I’d missed. I’m financially disorganized at the best of times, and with a baby and a toddler, I was barely even trying to keep track of my business expenses. So it’s not surprising that I hadn’t noticed the hundreds of dollars of weird recurring bank charges that my husband discovered.”
“It turned out I’d been signed up for a dubious program that purported to protect users’ credit in certain emergency situations. My bank had been accused of fraudulent practices in connection with it and fined $700 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government agency that was Senator Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild. I tried, maddeningly, to seek redress from the bank — cycling through phone trees, screaming at automated operators. No one could tell me how I’d been enrolled in the program, or for how long.”
“Eventually, I turned to the C.F.P.B. itself, filling out a simple form on its website. A few weeks later, I was notified that the bank had been deducting money from my account for years, and I was being refunded more than $11,000. Having financed my own maternity leave, I badly needed the money.”
The fact that Goldberg never looked over her monthly credit card statements, and that she hadn’t noticed this theft and fraud, proves that she is economically illiterate.
And it’s that same economic illiteracy that causes Goldberg to support the Green New Deal.
Even the supporters of the Green New Deal admit that they don’t know where the money to pay for it is going to come from.
In September 2018, CNN published this transcript of a conversation between Ocasio-Cortez and CNN correspondent Jake Tapper, where Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly refused to answer Tapper’s questions about where the funding for the Green New Deal would come from. Here are their exact words:
TAPPER: Your platform has called for various new programs, including Medicare for all, housing as a federal right, a federal jobs guarantee, tuition-free public college, canceling all student loan debt.
According to nonpartisan and left-leaning studies friendly to your cause, including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities or the Tax Policy Center, the overall price tag is more than $40 trillion in the next decade.
You recently said in an interview that increasing taxes on the very wealthy, plus an increased corporate tax rate, would make $2 trillion over the next 10 years.
So, where is the other $38 trillion going to come from?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, one of the things that we need to realize when we look at something like Medicare for all, Medicare for all would save the American people a very large amount of money.
And what we see as well is that these systems are not just pie in the sky. They are — many of them are accomplished by every modern, civilized democracy in the Western world. The United — the United Kingdom has a form of single-payer health care, Canada, France, Germany.
What we need to realize is that these investments are better and they are good for our future. These are generational investments, so that not just — they’re not short-term Band-Aids, but they are really profound decisions about who we want to be as a nation and as — and how we want to act, as the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.
TAPPER: Right. Now, I get that, but the price tag for everything that you have laid out in your campaign is $40 trillion over the next 10 years.
I understand that Medicare for all would cost more to some wealthier people and to the government and to taxpayers, while also reducing individual health care expenditures.
But I’m talking about the overall package. You say it’s not pie in the sky, but $40 trillion is quite a bit of money. And the taxes that you talked about raising to pay for this, to pay for your agenda, only count for two.
And I — we’re going by left-leaning analysts.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Right.
Well, when you look again at, again, how our health care works, currently, we pay — much of these costs go into the private sector. So what we see is, for example, a year ago, I was working downtown in a restaurant.
I went around and I asked, how many of you folks have health insurance? Not a single person did, because these — they were paying — they would have had to pay $200 a month for — for a payment for insurance that had an $8,000 deductible.
TAPPER: Yes.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: What these represent are lower costs overall for these programs.
And, additionally, what this is, is a broader agenda. We do know and we acknowledge that there are political realities. They don’t always happen with just the wave of a wand. But we can work to make these things happen.
And, in fact, when we — when you look at the economic activity that it spurs, for example, if you look at my generation, millennials, the amount of economic activity that we do not engage, the fact that we delay purchasing homes, that we don’t participate in the economy and purchasing cars, et cetera, as fully as possible, is a cost.
It is an externality, if you will, of unprecedented — unprecedented amount of student loan debt.
TAPPER: So, I’m assuming I’m not going to get an answer for the other $38 trillion.
So that’s the relevant part of the conversation between Ocasio-Cortez and CNN correspondent Jake Tapper.
You can see their conversation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CWUgPWRhxU
Supporters of the $40 trillion Green New Deal have already said where $2 trillion of its price will come from. But when Tapper repeatedly asked Ocasio-Cortez where the other $38 trillion was gong to come from, she repeatedly refused to answer him.
Perhaps Ocasio-Cortez could charge that $38 trillion to Michelle Goldberg’s credit card.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely says, “They had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt did not get reelected”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said that the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in order to prevent U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt from getting reelected. You can see her saying it in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqj7hNA8LpE
Here are her exact words:
“They had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt did not get reelected.”
Here are two reasons why Ocasio-Cortez’s statement is wrong.
First of all, Roosevelt died two years before the 22nd amendment was approved by the U.S. Congress. Roosevelt died in 1945. The U.S. Congress approved the 22nd amendment in 1947.
Secondly, the 22nd amendment contains a clause which gives an exemption to whoever is President at the time the amendment is passed. This is the text of the 22nd amendment: (The bolding mine.)
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.
So that”s two different reasons why Ocasio-Cortez’s statement is wrong.
Where exactly does Ocasio-Cortez get her information?
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
