Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez previewed President Biden’s “infrastructure” plan two years ago. After she released her justifiably mocked Green New Deal legislation and ultimately removed it from the internet, this gem surfaced. A few months later, she engaged illustrator Molly Crabapple and released a cartoon of the future through her eyes to reintroduce her childish ideas.
Ocasio-Cortez starts with a cherry-picked history of the science on climate change. She does this to set the same emergency frame of mind Biden tried to evoke in his speech. They both want you to believe we need crisis-level funding due to climate and the pandemic. In reality, the pandemic is waning. Unemployment is lower than when President Obama won reelection in 2012, and there should be legitimate debate on how we address carbon emissions. Especially since Climate Envoy John Kerry admitted the only countries that could impact global predictions are China and India. America is not the problem.
In just over 7 minutes, Ocasio-Cortez hits all of the critical points Biden did in the speech rolling out his infrastructure proposal. The billions proposed for a “climate corps” are in there. High-speed rail plays a role. The problem of income inequality and the eventual push to utopian equity are included in the cartoon. The push to turn people into caregivers as a career is in there. And, of course, all the jobs she outlines are represented by a union.
Even Native Americans, referred to as indigenous people, bring their secret knowledge of managing the land to save the day. The idea that most Native Americans have any deep connection to nature or understand remediation better than scientists and researchers has always struck me as absurd. You have to take a watch to get the full effect.
Oddly, it doesn’t mention electric vehicles. They were likely not included since the far-left thinks we will probably have to outlaw private car ownership. Biden’s infrastructure proposal also includes eliminating “exclusionary zoning” and calls for building multi-unit housing in so-called exclusionary areas. This phrase is the code for outlawing zoning for single-family homes and making them harder to build.
These are the policies President Trump referred to when he said a Biden administration would destroy the suburbs. Step one of a federal takeover of local communities through the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy that former HUD Secretary Ben Carson repealed. Eventually, federal bureaucrats will decide where children go to school, designate industrial parks and public transportation. It is a federal takeover of local zoning and community planning through coercion. The communities that don’t play along will lose federal grants and highway funding.
The World Economic Forum is even more forthright when it envisions the green future where humans are nothing but workers and consumers. You won’t own anything, and you will be happy about it by 2030:
There are even pieces of HR-1 when Ocasio-Cortez talks about an imaginary girl from the neighborhood she wants to believe she is from. As an adult, her imaginary friend runs for Congress in the first publicly funded election after working in the Climate Corps. It is a stretch to believe that very many little girls from Westchester County, New York, will end up working in hard hats. Even in Ocasio-Cortez’s green, cow flatulence-free future, it seems more likely they will go to college and end up a McKinsey for a few years.
Ocasio-Cortez’s story is oddly prescient and far as the current political situation and gleeful at the prospect of ramming a flurry of legislation through a unified government. Just like President Biden’s proposal, it has almost nothing to do with fixing our physical infrastructure. The result is a massive redistribution of wealth, a consolidation of power for unions and Democrats, and a leveling that makes the lives of most American’s equally crappy. Except for members of the ruling class like Ocasio-Cortez.
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