But. if you have a plan to reach your goal, you can reach your goal.
Here's the plan. Believe. Stop being scared. Now, let's do this!
A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The Intercept
Published on Apr 17, 2019
What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple.
Set a couple of decades from now, the film is a flat-out rejection of the idea that a dystopian future is a forgone conclusion. Instead, it offers a thought experiment: What if we decided not to drive off the climate cliff? What if we chose to radically change course and save both our habitat and ourselves?
We realized that the biggest obstacle to the kind of transformative change the Green New Deal envisions is overcoming the skepticism that humanity could ever pull off something at this scale and speed. That’s the message we’ve been hearing from the “serious” center for four months straight: that it’s too big, too ambitious, that our Twitter-addled brains are incapable of it, and that we are destined to just watch walruses fall to their deaths on Netflix until it’s too late.
This film flips the script. It’s about how, in the nick of time, a critical mass of humanity in the largest economy on earth came to believe that we were actually worth saving. Because, as Ocasio-Cortez says in the film, our future has not been written yet and “we can be whatever we have the courage to see.”
Growing up in northeast Ohio I never thought much about how people made a living. Most people I knew worked for the tire companies. The factories were just down the road a few miles from our parent’s home in Akron.
But, as I grew up, most of those jobs faded away, little by little… by degrees, you might say.
Later came the draft. Having little choice, most every male I knew was drafted or volunteered for the military. Nobody I knew, “evaded the draft”. Back then, as I saw it, we had no choice. We all went, one way or the other… but, individually, you might say… by degrees.
Most of us just accepted the draft and the loss of jobs because, we thought, “There’s nothing we can do about it. That’s just the way it is”. We went along. Accepting.
Flash forward to today. We’re still accepting. But now it's continuous war, poor healthcare, wealth inequality, deteriorating infrastructure, loss of our rights, hatred of everyone save white Republicans, welfare for the corporations and the .01%, predatory capitalism for the rest of us… and gun violence for our kids… all this by degrees, of course.
We can move away from this, you know. It does not have to be this way.
We don’t have to accept the way things are today… by degrees, of course. By degrees.
ROSANNE CASH, SHERYL CROW, LORI MCKENNA, ANAIS MITCHELL, JOSH RITTER, and MARK ERELLI join forces to benefit Giffords: Courage To Fight Gun Violence. Pay what you want for the song & learn more about the project at https://www.bydegreessong.com
Written by Mark Erelli, Hillbilly Pilgrim Music/ASCAP
“So long as the farmer, the worker and the businessman pull together in the national interest, this country has everything to hope for.
“But it is terribly dangerous to let any one group get too much power in the Government. We cannot afford to let one group shape the Nation’s policies in its own interest, at the expense of the others.”
“That is what happened in the Nineteen Twenties, under big business rule of the Republicans. Those were the days when big corporations had things their own way. The policies that Wall Street big business wanted were the policies that the Republicans adopted. Agriculture, labor, and small business played second fiddle, while big business called the tune.”
“Those were the days of Republican high tariffs – tariffs that penalized the American farmer by making him pay high prices for manufactured goods, while he was receiving low prices for his crops.”
“You remember the results of the Wall Street Republican policy.”
“You remember the big boom and the great crash of Nineteen Twenty-nine.”
“You remember that in Nineteen Thirty-two the position of the farmer had become so desperate, that there was actual violence in many farming communities.”
“You remember that insurance companies and banks took over much of the land of small independent farmers. 223,000 farmers lost their farms.”
“That was a painful lesson. It should not be forgotten for a moment.”
“All through this century the American farmer and worker have been the victims of boom and bust cycles – with the accent on bust. And they have suffered alike in these misfortunes.”
The USA Trump and his cohort are foisting upon us today is a far cry from the USA of the 1930's and 1940's, the Roosevelt/Truman New Deal era (which was continued by every president up to Reagan, who began to dismantle it). Our prosperity was a direct result of the New Deal programs put in place to overcome the Republican Party policy disasters of the 1920’s, policies which are strikingly similar to those the Republican Trumpists are again putting in place.
Mr. Truman made no bones about the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. He continued:
"How many times do you have to be hit on the head before you find out what's hitting you? It's about time the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them."
“Why is it that the farmer and the worker and the small businessman suffer under Republican administrations, and gain under Democratic administrations?”
“I’ll tell you why. It is a result of a basic difference in attitude between the Democratic and the Republican parties.”
“The Democratic party represents the people. It is pledged to work for agriculture. It is pledged to work for labor. It is pledged to work for the small businessman and the white-collar worker.” “The Democratic attitude puts human rights and human welfare first.” “But the attitude of the Republican gluttons of privilege is very different. The big money Republican looks on agriculture and labor merely as expense items in a business venture. He tries to push their share of the national income down as low as possible and increase his own profits. And he looks upon the Government as a tool to accomplish that purpose.” “These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men. And it is their constant aim to put the Government of the United States under control of men like themselves. They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship.”
“Our intentions are made clear by our deeds. In the Twentieth Century, every great step forward has come during Democratic administrations of the National Government. Every movement backward has come under Republican auspices, and it is the people who have paid dearly for these reactionary moves.”
“I’m not asking you just to vote for me. Vote for yourselves! Vote for your farms! Vote for the standard of living that you have won under a Democratic Administration!”
“Get out there on Election Day, and vote for your future.”
The problem we have today is that both parties are in the pocket of big business. Both do the bidding of the global corporations to the detriment of small-farmer agriculture, labor, and small business. (The 99.9% of Americans.)
One great hope for our future is that the Green New Deal Democrats will remember that “standing for” small-farmer agriculture, labor, and small business, made the prosperity we enjoyed from the 1950's through to the Great Recession (2007-2009), that very prosperity the Trumpists say they want again but have no idea how it came to be.
I’m guessing that you’re tired of getting hit on the head, too.
We are a totally insane people. We allow our politicians to waste our tax money instead of using our billions to mitigate the challenges we face at home. Here are just a few recent examples:
Sunrise Movement members ask, "Mitch, Look Us In The Eyes". Photo credit: Anthony Adragna.
(Washington, D.C.) Breaking News... I'll bet 10 cat's eye marbles that you didn't know this:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office was occupied for a few minutes yesterday by a group of young people - The Sunrise Movement - demanding, “Mitch, Look Us In The Eyes.”
These young heroes "delivered a petition containing 100,000 signatures to McConnell’s office calling on him to co-sponsor the “Green New Deal” resolution."
McConnell plans to allow a vote... but his plan calls for a vote to somehow "...highlight disarray within the Democratic Party over the progressive-backed climate initiative." I guess we'll find out what that means in the days ahead.
Please click through to the link below to see the videos.
More than 100 youth climate protesters entered Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office Monday to advocate for the “Green New Deal" and challenge McConnell's plan to fast-track a vote on the resolution in the Senate.
The youth climate advocates, members of the national climate group The Sunrise Movement, were seen overflowing from McConnell’s office into the stairwell in the Russell Senate Office Building on Monday morning.
Protesters inside his office held up a sign that read, “Mitch, Look Us In The Eyes.”
“I am here because people in my community don’t have jobs, are starving and turning to opiods [sic] and dying. Mitch McConnell refuses to do anything about,” said 15-year-old Kentucky high school student Lily Gardner, according to a press release from Sunrise Movement.
Within hours of the protests taking place, several members of the group could be seen being escorted out of the office in handcuffs by Capitol Police.
"As with all Kentuckians visiting D.C., we welcomed them to the office today. It's worth noting that two weeks before, Senator McConnell had already announced that he will be bringing the Green New Deal up for a vote in the U.S. Senate," McConnell spokesperson Stephanie Penn told The Hill.
The protesters delivered a petition containing 100,000 signatures to McConnell’s office calling on him to co-sponsor the “Green New Deal” resolution that was introduced in both the Senate and the House in early February by freshman lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The nonbinding resolution is a sweeping environment and energy reform plan meant to set up the United States to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
It lays out, in part, a pathway for the country to transition to 100 percent renewable energy use by 2030.
McConnell announced two weeks ago that he would soon bring a vote on the resolution to the Senate floor — a move Republicans hoped would highlight disarray within the Democratic Party over the progressive-backed climate initiative.
Initially championed by Ocasio-Cortez to be the focus of a select committee in the House, the Green New Deal has met resistance by some Democrats who questioned the significance of the measure.
While Senate Democrats in recent weeks have pushed back on McConnell's clear effort to divide the party, the vote will highlight disagreements among Democrats over just how to approach the issue of a warming globe.
McConnell did not say when the vote would take place, but the bill has little chance of passing the Senate.
The Sunrise Movement played a part in helping Ocasio-Cortez's office draft the Green New Deal resolution.
The youth protesters have held multiple rallies to support the initiative at the Capitol this year, including staging their first sit-in at Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office in the fall with Ocasio-Cortez present.
The group held a similar protest outside McConnell's Kentucky-based office last week.
Look, don’t let anyone tell you that we don’t have the money or resources to rebuild our infrastructure. We do.
It’s well past time to call BS on the financial “experts”, especially the ones with “R” (for Republican) after their name. They are dead wrong and most likely trying to line the pockets of their moneyed, predatory capitalists, supporters.
Why? Because we can and do have the wherewithal and it’s the same as our ancestors had (and used) and the rest of the world is using right now…. publicly-owned financial institutions.
So let us call BS on the R financial “experts” and get about the work of the people of the United States.
"The Green New Deal endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more than 40 other US Representatives has been criticized as imposing a too-heavy burden on the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it, but taxing the rich is not what the Green New Deal resolution proposes. It says funding will come primarily from certain public agencies, including the Federal Reserve and “a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks.”
"Funding through the Federal Reserve may be controversial, but establishing a national public infrastructure and development bank should be a no-brainer. The real question is why we don’t already have one, like China, Germany, and other countries that are running circles around us in infrastructure development. Many European, Asian and Latin American countries have their own national development banks, as well as belonging to bilateral or multinational development institutions that are jointly owned by multiple governments. Unlike the US Federal Reserve, which considers itself “independent” of government, national development banks are wholly owned by their governments and carry out public development policies."
…
"The most profitable and efficient way for national and local governments to finance public infrastructure and development is with their own banks, as the impressive track records of KfW (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau or “Reconstruction Credit Institute”) and other national development banks have shown. The (Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated) RFC (Reconstruction Finance Corporation) showed what could be done even by a country that was technically bankrupt, simply by mobilizing its own resources through a publicly-owned financial institution. We need to resurrect that public funding engine today, not only to address the national and global crises we are facing now but for the ongoing development the country needs in order to manifest its true potential." -more-
Following the Bush/Cheney 9/11 false flag crimes and the 9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Congress voted your rights away by passing three, Bill of Rights busting laws: (a) the USA PATRIOT Act (Yes, Congress “repealed” the Patriot Act. But it was in name only. Now we must work to revise the Freedom Act.) (b) the Military Commission Act and (c) section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.
This combined with several Supreme Court decisions favoring corporations over humans, and /or giving corporations rights previously only enjoyed by humans with souls, such as allowing corporations and special interest groups to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections. (Please see: Citizen's United vs. Federal Election Commission.)
One step toward rectifying these egregious decisions is coalescing in the Green New Deal.
Not only can wrongs be corrected, the process of doing so can be financed through an end run past obstructionist Republicans and their big, dark money corporate sponsors. It’s a move similar to the one that President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) pulled off back in the 30s.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has presented an outstanding way for funding the Green New Deal. The idea worked in the past and it can work now, so says Ellen Brown, JD*, a banking expert who knows a thing or two about banking, the Federal Reserve, finance, and Public Banking. She is the author of 12 books, including best-selling book, Web of Debt, and hundreds of articles.
“With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls “galloping momentum,” the “Green New Deal” promoted by Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop. Her plan would give a House select committee “a mandate that connects the dots” between energy, transportation, housing, health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee and more. But even to critics on the left, it is merely political theater, because “everyone knows” a program of that scope cannot be funded without a massive redistribution of wealth and slashing of other programs (notably the military), which is not politically feasible.
“That may be the case, but Ocasio-Cortez and the 22 representatives joining her in calling for a select committee also are proposing a novel way to fund the program, one that could actually work. The resolution says funding will come primarily from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”
“A network of public banks could fund the Green New Deal in the same way President Franklin Roosevelt funded the original New Deal. At a time when the banks were bankrupt, he used the publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation as a public infrastructure bank. The Federal Reserve could also fund any program Congress wanted, if mandated to do so. Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act and can amend it. Or the Treasury itself could do it, without the need to even change any laws. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and that power has been delegated to the Treasury. It could mint a few trillion-dollar platinum coins, put them in its bank account and start writing checks against them. What stops legislators from exercising those constitutional powers is simply that “everyone knows” Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation will result. But will it? Compelling historical precedent shows that this need not be the case.”
*Ellen Brown is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. She developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In the best-selling Web of Debt (2007, 2012), she turned those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust,” showing how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how we the people can get it back.
Harry Belafonte - Man Smart (Woman Smarter) - 1952
Sunrise Movement Members on Capitol Hill... before being jailed.
Sunrise Movement - The Green New Deal
More than 1,000 young people and allies flooded the Capitol Hill hallways and offices (10 Dec 2018) of Democratic representatives to demand that elected officials listen to their youngest constituents — as well as some of the world’s top scientists — and back the bold proposal to shift the US to a zero-carbon energy system by 2050 in order to save the planet from an irreversible climate catastrophe. Thanks to efforts spearheaded by the youth-led Sunrise Movement, the number of Democratic lawmakers now supporting a Select Committee on a Green New deal has now swelled to 23.
Did your mainstream media of choice cover this story?
