I am grateful to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the people who helped to get her elected and…most of all…the benevolent universe for giving her the brains, courage and platform to say the things that she is saying.
Read on.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “lightning round” on money in politics goes viral
AOC points out it’s “super legal” for her to be a “pretty bad guy.”
US campaign finance laws are, well, less than ideal — or, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in a House committee hearing this week, they make it “super legal” for lawmakers to be a “pretty bad guy.”
A viral video of Ocasio-Cortez during a hearing held by the House Oversight and Reform Committee on strengthening ethics rules for the executive branch swept across the internet this week. The video, put together by NowThis News, shows the high-profile New York Congress member playing a “lightning round” game with witnesses. The purpose: to highlight how it’s legal for congressional candidates to do a lot of shady stuff. And they’re held to a higher standard than the president.
“I’m going to be the bad guy, which, I’m sure, half the room would agree with anyway, and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people,” Ocasio-Cortez said during the Wednesday hearing. “I have enlisted all of as my co-conspirators, so you’re going to help me legally get away with all of this.”
She then asked a litany of questions. Can she run a campaign entirely funded by corporate political action committees? Yes. Can she use that money to make hush payments and pay people off to get elected? Yes. Once in office, can she influence and write laws that might affect the groups from which she’s taken special interest money? Yes. And can she hold stocks in companies the legislation she’s writing might boost? Yes.
Walter Shaub, senior adviser to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and former head of the Office of Government Ethics who resigned under President Donald Trump, was one of the witnesses in the hearing. Ocasio-Cortez asked him whether the ethics limits placed on members of Congress and the president are comparable. “In terms of laws that apply to the president … there’s almost no laws at all that apply to the president,” he said.
“It’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it’s even easier for the president of the United States to be one, I would assume,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She also took a bit of a swipe at her colleagues.
“We have a system that is fundamentally broken. We have these influences existing in this body, which means that these influences are here in this committee shaping the questions that are being asked of you all right now,” she said.
The NowThis video, published on Thursday, has been seen more than 13 million times. It is yet another example of Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most high-profile new members of Congress, making headlines and generating buzz.
—snip—
Ocasio-Cortez, in her lightning round of questions, identifies a way to break down campaign finance laws — and all the surprising things they allow — in a way that’s easy to digest. That a politician can legally take money from, for example, the oil and gas industry and then, once elected, write laws that help the industry and invest in oil and gas stocks is pretty wild. As she puts it, it’s easy for her to be a “pretty bad guy.”
Will she and her allies “win?”
This time?
Probably not.
But it’s a start.
All of those…here or anywhere else, including the mainstream Democratic Party…who want to stand up for the old ways?
Feel free.
But always remember…
That line starts to the right.
Way to the right, no matter how many protestations of “But…but…I’m a progressive!!!” you might make.
Enjoy.
You are already old news.
AG
Actual footage of AG doing battle with the progressives who oppose the role of money in politics:
As above, so below.
Sigh…
The Government Media Complex is…and has been for several years if you include the primaries and election of 2016… working overtime to cast AOC, Beto O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and just about anyone else who opposes the “legal graft” system now in place in this government as “quixotic.”
People who are dreaming the impossible dream. (From the song of similar name…written by the way by one of most venal hustlers it has ever been my misfortune to meet.)
The little neocentrist people on this blog?
Same same.
Like I said…as above, so below.”
The full text of the first historically recorded example of this idea goes like this:
The kicker there?
“…to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.”
And what are those “miracles?”
What is this “One Thing?
The continuing evolution of the Living Universe.
On all levels.
Bet on it.
What people who oppose evolution on a political level are really doing…so-called “conservatives” and those that serve their purposes no matter what they might name themselves…is simply acting as a slowing brake for that evolution.
Necessary…after all, too rapid evolution is known as revolution, and we all know how that generally turns out…but in the end, futile.
Have fun while it lasts, marduk et al.
Your end time is coming.
Bet on that as well.
AG
As always, you either utterly miss the point or you’re deliberately attempting to misrepresent it (who could tell the difference?).
AOC’s campaign against the legalized bribery around financing campaigns may or not be quixotic. That is neither here nor there.
My post is about you attacking progressives on this blog who you imagine oppose AOC’s position on money in politics. Progressives who oppose AOC on campaign finance are exactly as common as Don Quixote’s dragons. They simply don’t exist. AOC has received nothing but praise for her positions, not just on this blog but from Democratic voters nationally.
You’re doing battle with an empty strawman. A figment of your imagination. You’re tilting at windmills.
Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on NPR on Pelosi: “I think she’s actually doing a great job. I’m very proud that she was able to hold the caucus together during the longest shutdown in American history. She got concessions for the president. I think she’s showing people who’s boss.”
6:40 AM – 7 Feb 2019
No no no, you naive fool, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was just pretending to say good things about Speaker Pelosi. Purely a tactical move by AOC, who in fact detests Pelosi. Bet on it.
But Marduk, one of those dragons just flew past my window.
I think those are the beliefs he wrote he was ready to die for.
useta appoint himself sole arbiter of who qualify as “true progressives”. (You don’t actually hafta be so old — this was not that long ago!)
Then, after a while of people pointing out — again and again and again and . . . — that there is nothing remotely progressive (exactly the opposite) about the actual stated positions constituting his oeuvre here, and hence a far-right Ron Paul glibertarian has no standing for such arbitration . . .
. . . he more recently pivoted on a dime to declaring “progressive” a debased-to-meaningless-hence-useless term . . .
. . . cuz of course when actual “progressives” were challenging and critiquing him, then “progressive” could obviously no longer be a valid stance!
While what you document here is all true, it’s also important to capture this absurd man’s harboring of extremely regressive policy preferences while simultaneously offering rhetorical support for people on the most aggressively progressive side of the Democratic Party.
AG wants us to allow Frog Ponders to be unaware of his strong desire to enable Dominionist heterosexual old rich white man policies to flourish, because it reveals that his rhetorical support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Justice Democrats and others is a sham, a desire to drive wedges in this community and the Democratic Party coalition so that his desires may come to pass.
Arthur has already admitted here this year that he is prepared to campaign against Democrats during the 2020 general election campaign. That’s not what a person who wants to be effective in getting the Nation to move “…way Left and way faster…” would prepare themselves to do.
. . . is continuously belied by his relentless attacks undermining the leftiest available alternative to Banana Republicanism/Trumpism. His “argumentation” here is completely counter-productive to the goals he pretends to value and promote.