Tag: GREEN NEW DEAL

Democrats Introduce Climate Bill One Day After Green New Deal Failure. One Lawmaker Was Noticeably Absent From The Roll Out

By Chris White

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Democratic lawmakers introduced a stripped-down climate bill Wednesday less than a day after Senate Republicans dinged a more ambitious plan.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the Climate Action Now Act as one of many steps toward Democratic efforts to confront global warming. In particular, the bill aims to preventPresident Donald Trump from removing the United States from the non-binding Paris Climate accord. (RELATED: McConnell And Senate Republicans Vote To Kill Green New Deal)

The bill is a watered-down version of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, which called for shifting completely away from fossil fuels and toward green energy. The GND was torpedoed in the Senate on Tuesday after Republicans voted en masse against the resolution while Democrats voted present.

Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, was not present Wednesday during the roll out of the Climate Action Act.

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The GND was introduced in February and called for “10-year national mobilizations” toward a series of goals aimed at fighting global warming. A fact sheet posted online during the introduction claimed the plan would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War 2.” It also became an object of ridicule as a draft suggested the end of cows and drastically curbing airplane travel.

House Democrats along with most of the Democratic Party’s quickly expanding 2020 presidential field have voiced support for the measure. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who both announced their bids for the 2020 nomination, for instance, signed on as Senate co-sponsors of the proposal.

Pelosi’s office has not yet responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment about why Ocasio-Cortez was absent.

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CIVIL WAR: Democrat Elite Moves to Crush Grassroots Primary Challengers Before 2020

By Shane Trejo

The powers atop the Democratic Party are scared of socialist upstarts gaining steam and stopping the party from beating Trump next year

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The Democratic Party elite has seen enough of its young upstarts like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-MA). They are purging firms and consultants that are willing to work with primary challengers against incumbent Democrats heading into 2020.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced last week that they are blacklisting any vendors from work in the party unless they agree to a loyalty oath of sorts indicating that they will not challenge incumbent Democrats.

The form reads as follows: “I understand the above statement that the DCCC will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting Member of the House Democratic Caucus.”

The Intercept published an op/ed written by a far-left activist detailing how the restrictive move from the party elite is creating fissures within the grassroots heading into 2020:

“Like many women in their 20s across America, I feel inexplicably hopeful and manifestly seen when I watch Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take on the stale and insular political dynamics of Washington…

Ocasio-Cortez’s unapologetic energy in Washington cannot be separated from her decision to run against Joe Crowley in Queens, New York. Every action Ocasio-Cortez takes carries the same fearlessness that prompted her not to wait her turn…

Yet instead of embracing Ocasio-Cortez and the fresh path she has opened, the DCCC and other national “Democratic” organizations are wrapping their arms more tightly around the heavily white, male incumbent Democrats in Washington.”

Between this and the disenfranchisement of Bernie Sanders supporters, the grassroots left is beginning to get the picture that the Democratic elite is not on their side. In fact, the Democratic brass treats their constituents in a similar manner that Republican leadership is known to treat theirs.

The New York Times received word in 2014, near the peak of the tea party phenomenon, that “top congressional Republicans and their allies” were working to “deny [Tea Party-backed candidates] any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.”

“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at the time, referring to tea party upstart primary challengers. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”

McConnell may have been arrogant but was not wrong in making his boast. With the one lone exception of libertarian economist Dave Brat upending Rep. Eric Cantor in Virginia, every single tea party challenger was put down in 2014. State senator Chris McDaniel came the closest to defeating incumbent Thad Cochran, but lost in a run-off election following extreme corruption. The movement would never quite recover.

“I know this: Politics doesn’t like losers. If you don’t have anything to point to, it is kind of hard to keep it going,” McConnell said of his opposition, kicking dirt into their face while they were down.

The Democratic Party elite hopes to replicate the success that the Republican Party bosses had during the Obama presidency in derailing their ascendant grassroots rebellion, but the far left is very much aware of what is happening and does not plan to go down lightly.

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With the civil war ongoing for the soul of the Democratic Party, that does not bode well for their chances in 2020. The extremists in their midst will likely cause great division heading into the presidential election, and that has to be music to President Donald Trump’s ears.

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NOT A SINGLE SENATE DEMOCRAT VOTES “FOR” GREEN NEW DEAL

Not A Single Senate Democrat Votes "For" Green New Deal

Instead of voicing their support for the most ludicrous proposal in socialist history, 43 Democrats decided to take the easy way out

By Tyler Durden

How embarrassing is the green new deal?

So embarrassing that when Senate majority leader McConnell tried to force the Democratic party’s presidential contenders into an embarrassing vote over the berserk, MMT-inducing climate-change proposal (which Republicans are confident that even sober liberal will oppose), not a single Democrat voted for it. Instead, in the vote which was blocked late on Tuesday with a vote of 0-57, 43 Democrats voted merely “present”, including the Senate’s half-dozen presidential candidates, to sidestep the GOP maneuver and, as Bloomberg put it, “buy time to build their campaign positions.”

The vote was the first of many attempts by Republicans to force (socialist, MMT) supporters of the Green New Deal to come into the spotlight and suffer the public scrutiny. The proposal – mostly a collection of goals for mitigating climate change rather than a fully formed plan of action – which according to some would cost north of $100 trillion and would require the launch of helicopter money, also known as “MMT”, has been a favorite target for criticism by McConnell and Republicans ever since freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts rolled it out in February.

“I could not be more glad that the American people will have the opportunity to learn precisely where each one of their senators stand on this radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy,” McConnell said before the vote.

Alas, that opportunity was denied because instead of voicing their support for the most ludicrous proposal in socialist history, 43 Democrats decided to take the easy way out.

Even the six Democratic presidential contenders, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, all voted present.

At this point, the candidates for the Democratic nomination generally haven’t spelled out specific proposals. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has called the Green New Deal “bold,” and Senator Kamala Harris of California has said it’s “an investment” worth the cost. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota described it somewhat less enthusiastically, as an “aspiration” to act on climate change.

Fresh off what has been dubbed the best day in Trump’s presidency, on Tuesday Trump, no longer the subject of Russia collusion conspiracy theories, met with Senate Republicans at the Capitol, and according to Lindsey Graham the president told them regarding the Green New Deal, “make sure you don’t kill it too much because I want to run against it” in 2020.

Well, so far so good. In an attempt to save face with progressives, Adam Green, a co-founder of the grassroots Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said McConnell was trying to force some “no” votes at a time when Democrats are still reviewing the plan. Voting “present” shows that Democrats aren’t going to hamper things with an early dissent, he said.

While the “present” votes were to be expected, what came as a surprise is that three Democrats voted with Republicans against the resolution including Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Doug Jones of Alabama, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year in a deep-red state. Independent Angus King of Maine, a member of the Democratic caucus, also voted against the measure.

The challenge for Democrats looking ahead to next year’s campaigns is to avoid having their support for a still-evolving climate proposal tarred by Republican efforts to portray it as an extremist agenda that would do away with hamburgers and airplane travel.

“It’s one thing to be on the campaign trail and say here is what I believe in and fill in the details,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, who was a top aide to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “It’s another thing to go on record and let other people fill in the details for you.”

As Bloomberg notes, “the Green New Deal has more than 100 congressional Democrats as co-sponsors, including the six senators running for president. While Democrats are united on the need for significant action to stem climate change, they don’t agree on specific proposals.” As a result, McConnell introduced his own version, drawing on the language of the Democratic measure.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer tried to shield Democrats from having to expose splits between moderates and progressives on the issue. He dismissed the vote as “gotcha politics” intended by Republicans to distract from the fact that they don’t have their own plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“Republicans want to force this political stunt to distract from the fact that they neither have a plan nor a sense of urgency to deal with the threat of climate change,” he said.

Following tonight’s Senate vote, Democrats plan to introduce a resolution in the House this week that calls for the U.S. to remain part of the Paris Climate Accord and requires the Trump administration to create a plan to meet its emission reduction goal, according to a senior Democratic aide. As a reminder, in 2017 Trump announced that he intends to pull out of the Paris agreement, under which the U.S. pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

While Senate Democrats weren’t under any real pressure from outside progressive groups to vote for the Green New Deal at this point, they will be in due course.

Meanwhile, capitalizing on the ultra-liberal faction within the Democratic Party, the GOP’s message focuses on the botched February rollout of the proposal, which included the release of documents from Ocasio-Cortez’s office promising economic security even for those “unwilling to work,” and suggesting the eventual elimination of air travel and “farting cows.”

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Nolte: Pelosi Folding on Antisemitism Proves Ocasio-Cortez Really Is ‘The Boss’

(INSET: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, holds the gavel during the opening session of the 116th Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 3, 2019. - Veteran Democratic lawmaker Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the House Thursday for the second time in her political …

By John Nolte

HSINO… That is Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — our “House Speaker In Name Only,” an aging figurehead limping towards extinction.

Late last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared herself “the boss” — and Thursday’s disgraceful House vote condemning All the Hates proved that sentiment 100 percent true.

Don’t be fooled by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MD); she is not “stepping on rakes” or “accidentally” revealing her antisemitism. This is a coordinated strategy on the part of her and her allies to legitimize antisemitism, to normalize bigoted stereotypes about money-grubbing and dual loyalties that go above and beyond honest criticism of Israel.

That’s the play here, that is what is at stake, and because she’s lost control of the House and her caucus to the Ocasio-Crazies, Pelosi is helpless to stop it.

In fact, Pelosi has become Ocasio-Crazy’s puppet, her mouthpiece… “I do not believe she understood the full weight of the words,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday to explain why she does not believe Omar should apologize or lose her consequential seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I feel confident that her words were not based on any antisemitic attitude. But that she didn’t have a full appreciation of how they landed on other people where these words have a history and a cultural impact that might have been unknown to her,” the ventriloquist dummy added without blinking.

This week marked the third time in two months Omar went there, went to a place we have not seen a mainstream figure go since Father Coughlin in the 1930s. And with Ocasio-Crazy out there launching a ridiculous (and condescending) defense of Omar (it’s a learning process) and refusing to back a House resolution that condemns antisemitism alone (think about that), Pelosi had no choice but to back down, to come up with this utterly meaningless All the Hates resolution that Omar was perfectly comfortable voting for.

And why wouldn’t she vote yea? The resolution was not only a triumph for Omar and her wild-eyed ilk over Pelosi, it proved her strategy is working — that you can now hurl these bigoted smears without fear of condemnation.

This is how much of a shell Pelosi is now: she no longer has the influence to convince her caucus to support a standalone resolution against antisemitism; she no longer has the authority to stop Omar from her antisemitic quest to move the Overton window, she is powerless against Omar’s launching of one rhetorical fire bomb after another directly into the middle of Pelosi’s agenda for the 116th Congress.

And let’s be honest, going back to its Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow days, the Democrat Party has always been a hotbed of antisemitism — a party that has tolerated and even feted Louis Farrakhan for decades, that embraces Rev. Al Sharpton, a Party that seems to have grown tired of having to hide its antisemitism and just wants to be free.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff Ran Slush Fund – Funneled Over $1 Million in Campaign Donations to His Own Companies

by Cristina Laila March 4, 2019

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According to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Committee Monday (FEC), two PACs founded by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide, Saikat Chakrabarti funneled over $ 1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies, reported the Washington Examiner.

So much for Ocasio-Cortez’s promise to reduce “dark money” in politics!

According to a complaint filed by government watchdog group National Legal and Policy Center, it appears Chakrabarti set up his two companies for the sole purpose of hiding how the donations were used.

The Washington Examiner reported:

The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication “there’s something amiss.” They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.

PACs are required to disclose how and when funds are spent, including for expenditures like advertisements, fundraising emails, donations to candidates, and payments for events and to vendors.

The private companies to which Chakrabarti transferred the money from the PACs are not subject to these requirements.

The complaint names Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti and asks the FEC to investigate and audit the two PACs alleging they were engaged in “an elaborate scheme to avoid proper disclosure of campaign expenditures,” reported the Examiner.

“It appears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her associates ran an off-the-books operation to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus violating the foundation of all campaign finance laws: transparency,” Director of National Legal Policy Center Tom Anderson said.

Chakrabarti founded the two PACs in question in 2016 and 2017.

Brand New Congress was founded in 2016 and Justice Democrats was founded in 2017 with the end goal of getting ultra progressive candidates elected to Congress — ultimately these two PACs helped radical Communist Ocasio-Cortez win a Congressional seat last November.

The Washington Examiner explains how Chakrabarti set up the PACs and his shell companies to move the money around in secret:

In 2016 and 2017, Chakrabarti’s PACs raised around $3.3 million for the project, primarily from small donors. During this time, the committees transferred over $1 million to two shell companies controlled by Chakrabarti with names similar to one of the PACs, Brand New Campaign LLC and Brand New Congress LLC, according to federal election filings.

A few weeks after starting the Brand New Congress PAC, Chakrabarti formed one of the companies, Brand New Campaign LLC, in Delaware, using a registered agent service and mailbox-only address.

Over the next seven months, as small-dollar political donations poured into the PAC from progressives across the country, the committee transferred over $200,000, 82 percent of the contributions, to the company Brand New Campaign LLC. The payments were for “strategic consulting,” according to federal election filings. They were sent to an apartment address listed for Chakrabarti in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan.

In 2017, Brand New Congress PAC transferred another $240,000 to Brand New Congress LLC, also for “strategic consulting.” Another PAC co-founded by Chakrabarti that year called “Justice Democrats” transferred an additional $605,000 to Brand New Congress LLC in 2017.

Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the FEC, said he has never seen such an arrangement. “It’s a really weird situation,” he said. “I see almost no way that you can do that without it being at least a reporting violation, quite likely a violation of the contribution limits. You might say from a campaign finance angle that the LLC was essentially operating as an unregistered committee.”

Recall, AOC’s Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti is a radical Communist and a huge fan of Indian political leader Subhas Chandra Bose who was an ally of Adolf Hitler and Imperial Japan.

Ocasio-Cortez was lambasted by conservative media after her boyfriend’s name appeared on the House directory list — many speculated she put her boyfriend on payroll like a good Socialist.

“Nice to see her adapting to the swamp so quickly,” writer Luke Thompson said after discovering AOC’s boyfriend was designated as House staff a few weeks ago.

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BILDERBERG ATTENDEE HICKENLOOPER JOINS 2020 RACE

Bilderberg Attendee Hickenlooper Joins 2020 Race

Former Colo. governor could be globalist dark horse

By Paul Steinhauser

Touting that he’s proven he can bring people together “to produce the progressive change Washington has failed to deliver,” former two-term Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday morning launched his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“I’m running for president because we need dreamers in Washington but we also need to get things done,” Hickenlooper said in a video announcing his White House campaign

Taking aim at Republican President Trump, Hickenlooper said a major reason he’s running is because “we’re facing a crisis that threatens everything we stand for.”

And repeating a line he’s used on the campaign trail, he explained that “as a skinny kid with coke bottle glasses and funny last name, I stood up to my fair share of bullies.”

The 67-year-old geologist turned successful startup brewpub owner, who later served two terms as Denver mayor before being elected Colorado governor, joins a crowded field of contenders vying for the nomination.

Hickenlooper, who in January finished up his second term steering Colorado, becomes the second sitting or former governor to enter the race. Washington State Gov. Jay Insleeannounced his candidacy on Friday.

Like Inslee, Hickenlooper faces a long-shot bid against a number of higher-profile contenders such as Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New  York.

Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who served as Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Barack Obama, is also running, as are Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

A number other Democrats are moving toward White House bids, including former Vice President Joe Biden, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Rep. Eric Swalwell of California.

HILLARY CLINTON SAYS COUNTRY IN ‘FULL FLEDGED CRISIS’

In his video, Hickenlooper spotlighted the challenges he faced during his first term as governor, from the historic recession to devastating droughts and forest fires and floods to the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora.

“We beat the NRA by enacting universal background checks and banning high capacity magazines,” he touted.

Hickenlooper also highlighted passing through a divided legislature health care legislation that now covers “nearly 95 percent of all Coloradans.” And he spotlighted bringing environmentalists and fossil fuel companies together to create “the toughest methane emission laws in the country” and moving the state from “40th in job growth to the number one economy in America.”

The listing of his progressive achievements is aimed at blunting perceptions of Hickenlooper as a moderate Democrat not in lockstep with the base.

HICKENLOOPER’S RESERVATIONS WITH MEDICARE-FOR-ALL, GREEN NEW DEAL

While many of his rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination have wholeheartedly supported both the Green New Deal and “Medicare-for-all,” two top wish-list items for the progressive base of the party, Hickenlooper expressed some reservations during a stop last month in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House.

“We will get to some version of single payer, but single payer doesn’t include getting rid of insurance companies,” he told reporters when asked about Medicare-for-all.

Asked about the Green New Deal, the sweeping proposal that aims to transform the country’s economy to fight climate change while enacting a host of new health care and welfare programs, Hickenlooper told Fox News that he hadn’t seen all of the details of the plan, but “I’m going to guess that 99 percent of what’s in the Green New Deal I will be happy to embrace.”

But he said support for the Green New Deal shouldn’t be “a litmus test that you’re either with us or wrong.”

The Republican National Committee, though, tagged the former governor as yet another “liberal” joining the 2020 field, in response to his announcement Monday.

“John Hickenlooper is the latest tax-and-spend liberal to join the race. But according to Hickenlooper, he’s actually ‘a lot more progressive’ than his far-left opponents. In a primary dominated by socialist policies like the $93 trillion ‘Green New Deal,’ that puts him way outside the mainstream,” RNC Communications Director Michael Ahrens said in a statement.

Hickenlooper is expected to formally kick off his campaign on Thursday, with what’s being billed as a “hometown send-off” event in Denver. The next day the former governor heads to Iowa – the state that kicks off the presidential caucus and primary calendar – for two days of campaigning.

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