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kansashunter
Senior MemberPosts: 1,444 Senior Member
New Green Deal
kansashunter
Senior MemberPosts: 1,444 Senior Member
I really hope that they do their best to pass legislation that has the principals of this new deal.
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WASHINGTON – Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is anxious to corner Senate Democrats – including several running for president in 2020 – on the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to combat climate change and promote social justice that conservatives denounce as radical.
McConnell told reporters Tuesday he plans to bring the resolution to a vote "to give everybody an opportunity to go on record to see how they feel about the Green New Deal."
The non-binding measure is a proposal from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
It has no chance of passing the GOP-controlled Senate.
But such a vote could force as many as seven Senate Democrats who have announced, or are considering, a run for president to choose a side on the debate over the controversial measure that calls not only for a sharp transition to 100 percent renewable energy but also higher education, housing and job guarantees for all U.S. citizens.
THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL
I - THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS
Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens: 1. The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are "stored" in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.
2. Worker's rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.
3. The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.
4. The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.
5. The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:
6. The right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.
7. The right to fair taxation that's distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.
II - A GREEN TRANSITION
The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:
1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.
2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.
3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and "complete streets" that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.
III - REAL FINANCIAL REFORM
The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It's time to take Wall Street out of the driver's seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:
1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.
2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we'll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
3. Break up the oversized banks that are "too big to fail."
4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We'll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities. Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.
IV - A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY
We won't get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:
1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings - not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.
2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s proposed "Right to Vote Amendment," to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.
3. Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:
4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the "democracy question" – that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.
5. Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.
7. Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:
8. Rein in the military-industrial complex by
Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.
You can just look a the success of the USPS to see how well this will work......
What could possibly go wrong?
Get rid of the electoral college?? It's about time we let California run the country!
Obviously we under estimated the brilliance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez...... History will reveal her as the modern day Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all rolled into one!!
Right wing media outlets.
They've elevated her and her agenda to a sensational grandiosity of un-American evil that rivals war time dehumanizing caricatures of enemy combatants.
As alarming as some of the proposals might be. The over-reaction guarantees a spotlight.
Attempting to force politicians into the open could be an interesting spectacle.👀👓
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-socialism-still-an-effective-political-bogeyman/
There is definitely a very clear change in framing attempting to take place here. Republicans definitely trying to label and demonize liberals as socialists, but at least a segment of liberals attempting to reclaim and redefine the word. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but the trend is definitely in the direction of "Socialism" becoming less effective as a smear than it used to be. Part of that is that socialism is shifting to mean more that the government takes a more active role in regulating the economy and supports policies designed help and lift up the working class while attempting to limit the political power of the elite. This definition does not really match the traditional definition of socialism (government ownership of capital and the means of production). More importantly for this debate, very few policies being advocated for by self avowed "socialists" would fit the traditional definition of socialism. That said, to the dismay of most small government conservatives, a lot of the policies now labeled as "socialist" are quite popular. And the more the term socialist is associated with things that are popular, the less sting the word will have as a smear.
In short the tides are shifting. I would not be surprised if someone calling them self a socialist is elected president within the next decade. That said, because the current definition has become so divorced from it's original meaning it will not in fact mean that we are "becoming Venezuela" or any of the other outdated scare tactics. It will just mean that we will have elected a president who looks a bit more like FDR than Ronald Reagan.
Say Mortimer, I bet we can get a guy that has never held a real job AND has a Muslim name elected President....... Twice!
Well Randolph, I bet we can get a bartender with a room temperature IQ elected to Congress.......
I think this whole thing might get cleverly side stepped. If not it will be interesting. There is though, as Bisely says a minefield or two.
I have seen the headlines, but this is the first I saw all of the 'ideas' in the deal........
Cortez, her contemporaries, and the Green Deal are created by explicit invitation contained in the decades old focused intentional erosion of the middle class. This erosion is not fictitious conjecture and it's consequences are looming.