Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Amazing news - congratulations @Teamsters!" / Twitter
noting
Teamsters on Twitter: "“WE’VE CHANGED THE GAME”: TEAMSTERS WIN HISTORIC UPS CONTRACT
Today, the #Teamsters reached the most historic tentative agreement for workers in the history of @UPS, protecting and rewarding more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters nationwide. #1u" / Twitter
noting
"We've Changed the Game": Teamsters Win Historic UPS Contract - International Brotherhood of Teamsters - "Deal Results in Higher Wages, More Jobs, Equal Pay, A/C, MLK Day, Part-Time Rewards"

Safety and health protections, including vehicle air conditioning and cargo ventilation. UPS will equip in-cab A/C in all larger delivery vehicles, sprinter vans, and package cars purchased after Jan. 1, 2024. All cars get two fans and air induction vents in the cargo compartments.

...
On July 31, representatives of the 176 UPS Teamster locals in the U.S. and Puerto Rico will meet to review and recommend the tentative agreement. All UPS rank-and-file members will receive a list of improvements in the contract. Locals will conduct member meetings and Teamsters will have several weeks to vote on the offer electronically. Member voting begins August 3 and concludes August 22.

The UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement is the single largest private-sector collective bargaining agreement in North America.

UPS and Teamsters reach a labor deal, potentially avoiding a crippling strike | CNN Business

The tentative agreement still needs to be ratified by about 340,000 Teamsters at UPS to end the threat of a strike altogether. That ratification process will take a little more than three weeks.

...
Many details of the tentative agreement are not yet public. But the union said that existing full- and part-time UPS Teamsters will get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more per hour, or more than $15,000 a year, over the length of the contract.

Existing part-time workers,who the union said were making as little as $15.50 an hour as starting pay in some parts of the country, will be raised up to no less than $21 per hour immediately, and starting pay would be increased to $23 an hour during the life of the contract.

 

[lpetrich]

Yet another labor action:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "We joined @RepCasar and Dolores Huerta at their thirst strike. Texas just passed a law blocking water breaks for construction workers. President Biden can stop it by implementing a heat stress rule. It’s time for the President to act. #WorkersCantWait (pix link)" / Twitter
Strictly speaking, it was a law forbidding localities from mandating water breaks. Yet another bit of states preempting localities laws for no good reason, something that has become common in red states like Texas. Right-wingers are very sore losers. They talk about local control, but when localities don't do what they like, they get outraged.

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent appearance on the Pod Save America podcast had, for me, the feeling of a final disappointment, the kind that’s a little sad but brings a set of quixotic hopes to a close. AOC appeared on the popular Crooked Media show to announce her endorsement of Joe Biden for president in the 2024 election. To deliver that particular endorsement while appearing on that particular podcast — where former Obama-administration staffers define the limits of acceptable left-of-center opinion — was to send a very deliberate message. It was AOC’s last kiss-off to the radicals who had supported her, voted for her, donated to her campaign, and made her unusually famous in American politics, the beneficiary of a wholly unique cult of personality that is now starting to come undone.

Author Freddie DeBoer continued with

There are two indelible images of Ocasio-Cortez, neither of them flattering, that bookend her evolution. The first is the photo of her weeping outside an immigration camp in Texas in 2018, before she had won election to Congress. Dressed all in white, she wails in protest of “kids in cages,” the phrase employed by activists to denounce Trump-era immigration policy. The protest itself wasn’t offensive; our treatment of migrants at the border is indeed indefensible. ...

Then noting her lack of protest of Joe Biden's similar policies toward border crossers.

The second image of AOC is at the 2021 Met Gala — a who’s who of celebrity and wealth, a celebration of precisely the elitism that the left is meant to oppose. ... But Ocasio-Cortez tried to have it both ways: she wore white again, this time a dress emblazoned with the words “Tax the Rich” in bright red.

She was not invited again, something that I don't find very surprising.

Then about her supposedly selling out the railroad workers with the strike-settlement deal.

She would go on to claim that this was really a matter of supporting what the workers wanted, but Railroad Workers United quickly clarified that this defense was an act of remarkable dishonesty.

However, she has shown up at several other labor-union rallies, even recent Teamsters, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA ones, and she has evidently been very welcome at such events.

 

[lpetrich]

Less surprising, but just as damning, has been Ocasio-Cortez’s meek attitude toward Biden’s foreign policy. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is perhaps where AOC’s position has been most indefensible, most self-parodic: She has mixed at times impressive rhetoric with total inconsistency as a legislator.

Like tearfully changing a "no" vote to a "present" vote for extra funding for Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system.

It’s powerfully difficult to understand how this could work, though. Israel’s vociferous champions will denounce any opponent as an antisemite, and indeed AOC’s vote did not spare her from their wrath.

Then,

Ocasio-Cortez once said, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party,” an assertion of her distaste for the Democratic Party. Now she seems increasingly comfortable with leaving her past radical branding behind. If she wants to be a docile Democratic senator one day, she should. Just drop the wince-inducing efforts to have it both ways.

However, AOC has passed up running for Senate last year, and she is passing up running for Senate next year, as far as I can tell, and she seems content with being in the House. Not everybody is an obsessive social climber, however surprising it may seem for some people.

Then addressing the argument that she can't do much on her own, saying what's the point of electing her instead of her predecessor, Joe Crowley?

"And, more concretely, if this wing of left-leaning Democrats was always so powerless that we would be fools to demand anything in exchange for supporting them, what were all the donations for?"

"The lurking issue here is that taking a jaundiced look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might prompt people to critically evaluate Bernie Sanders, whose favorability among American leftists exceeds that of Santa Claus."

In 2016, I was told that, win or lose, Sanders’s primary battle was generating a permanent infrastructure for left organizing within the Democratic Party, that the email lists and donor corps would live on past that primary and beyond Bernie and become a tool for durable lefty muscle within the Democratic system.

Well, I think the jury has come back in: The increased visibility of a few socialist politicians has not made far-left Democratic power any more achievable or scalable. The radical wing of the party can still fit our representation in Congress in a three-row SUV. And perhaps we’ve waited long enough to recognize that there’s no reason to expect better in the near future.

 

[lpetrich]

Seems almost like World Socialist Web Site - Marxist analysis, international working class struggles & the fight for socialism

Strikebreaking Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visits New York actors’ and writers’ picket line - World Socialist Web Site

Democratic Party House Representative, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and strikebreaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made an appearance at a picket line of striking writers and actors in New York City Monday morning. Ocasio-Cortez was accompanied by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler.

Because of her and the would-be railroad-worker strike.

The presence of Ocasio-Cortez and Shuler is an indication that the union leaderships, in communication with the Biden administration, are apprehensive about the joint strike action, which continues to inspire other sections of the working class and also represents an objective challenge to the corporate control of film and television production. Ocasio-Cortez has been dispatched to use her fading “left” and “progressive” credentials to contain the strike movement and keep it from taking an anti-capitalist and genuinely threatening direction.

Talk about ideological purism. Not even some "good, but not good enough" sentiment.

“Frankly, while this is a fight against AI [Artificial Intelligence],” she told the crowd, “more than AI, this is a fight against greed.” In this case, lambasting individual entertainment executives for their exorbitant incomes distracts attention from the reality that the source of the problem is the profit system itself.

Ocasio-Cortez promoted the Teamsters, UAW and AFL-CIO bureaucracies—currently in the process of trying to sell out hundreds of thousands of UPS, auto and other workers—and made countless empty calls for union “solidarity” in contract talks.

I like that AOC once proposed turning Amazon Corp. into a worker-run cooperative. That's much more farsighted than what I've seen from much of the Left. Though it may not be what WSWS might want.

 

[lpetrich]

About the WSWS

The WSWS is the online publication of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, and its affiliated sections in the Socialist Equality Parties around the world. It launched publication in February 1998, and has been publishing continuously for the past 25 years.

...
The standpoint of this website is one of revolutionary opposition to the capitalist market system. Its aim is the establishment of world socialism. It maintains that the vehicle for this transformation is the international working class, and that in the 21st century the fate of working people, and ultimately mankind as a whole, depends upon the success of the socialist revolution.

...
During the course of its more than 20 years of publication, the WSWS has been the authoritative voice of international revolutionary socialism. It has served as the indispensable political and intellectual guide for workers, students and youth all over the world who are seeking to make sense of events in a time of great crisis and human suffering, and to find a genuinely progressive—and, therefore, revolutionary—alternative to a dysfunctional capitalist world that is collapsing into barbarism.

Nothing on what they want to achieve, and how they can avoid going the way of Marxist-Leninist regimes. In Eastern Europe, Communism is kaput, with the successors of the ruling parties being plain old social democrats. The five survivors, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea, are all capitalist roaders to greater or lesser degree, though with the Party firmly in charge.

 

[lpetrich]

This article prompted a response in the same publication: The ‘AOC Left’ Has Achieved Plenty

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proven, once and for all, that the left will gain nothing by engaging with the Democratic Party. Or so Freddie deBoer argued in a column for Intelligencer this week. I think deBoer’s view is so mistaken as to betray a fundamental misunderstanding about both the substance of contemporary Democratic policymaking, and the obstacles to socialism in the United States.

After noting AOC's waffling on Israel-Palestine votes,

DeBoer’s more pertinent charge is that AOC has failed to win substantial ideological concessions from the Democratic Party, and that this is indicative of the left’s more general failure to achieve anything through engagement with Democratic politics — a failure that was foreordained by the Democratic Party’s basic nature.

This incredibly strong claim — that despite Bernie Sanders, AOC, and myriad other progressives’ agitation, the Democratic Party has offered the left nothing — is fundamental to deBoer’s perspective.

After quoting from FdB,

One small point is that “Al Gore would have won if he hadn’t been an unusually bad candidate” and “Al Gore would have won if Ralph Nader hadn’t run for president” are not mutually exclusive claims.

I agree. Without Ralph Nader, Al Gore would likely have won a squeaker of a victory in Florida.

 

[lpetrich]

In any case, deBoer’s more important claims are that (1) the Democratic Party does not give “lefties” anything to vote for, (2) socialists have no reason to engage in Democratic politics, since all their efforts have been for nought, and (3) the Democratic Party is “structurally resistant to socialist change.”

Then discussing the Democratic Party's response to the recessions of 2008 and 2020. Back in 2009, the Obama Admin's response was very timid, out of wanting to avoid spending more than $1 trillion, and out of fear of the Republicans. In 2012, four years into his Presidency, unemployment was at 8%. AOC was one of the Democrats who wanted the party to push for full employment.

In 2020, congressional Democrats insisted on increasing unemployment benefits to a level that left many laid-off workers with more income than they’d previously earned at their jobs. Under Biden, meanwhile, Democrats enacted a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill on a party-line vote. The party’s decision to pursue stimulus on this scale — after Congress had already appropriated trillions of dollars in relief spending — was explicitly motivated by the left’s critique of Obama.

...
Notably, in putting such a high premium on full employment relative to price stability, the Biden administration sided with the left over erstwhile members of the party’s economic Establishment, Obama White House alums Larry Summers and Jason Furman.

Taken together, the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan enabled poverty to fall during the COVID recession and triggered one of the fastest labor-market recoveries in history. Biden’s economic management yielded tight labor markets that have increased the bargaining power of low-wage workers and abetted union organizing. As a result, lower-income workers have recovered roughly 25 percent of the increase in wage inequality that accrued between Ronald Reagan’s election and Biden’s. The employment rate among disabled Americans is at a record high, while the overall unemployment rate is near record lows.

Of course, Biden’s macroeconomic policy did also contribute to inflation. But again, it was the left that implored Democrats to take that risk for the sake of minimizing joblessness.

Then about student-loan forgiveness and the Green New Deal.

And although the Inflation Reduction Act is a pale facsimile of the Green New Deal, it nevertheless invests hundreds of billions of dollars in the green transition (and since its tax credits are uncapped, the true scale of its investment in decarbonization may actually exceed $1 trillion).

Then drone strikes and ending the war in Afghanistan, and also the war in Ukraine, something that Freddie DeBoer dislikes, and something that in his mind makes AOC an imperialist warmonger.

 

[lpetrich]

Where Democrats have more power, the left wins more policy gains.

There is no doubt that Biden’s legislative record leaves much to be desired. But in most cases, these inadequacies testify to the importance of electing more Democrats, not the pointlessness of electing any.

More Democrats in the Senate in 2021 would mean votes to overcome the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Does FDB ignore state politics?

In AOC’s New York, leftists have won election to the state legislature and used their offices to enact eviction protections for tenants, provide driver’s licenses to the undocumented, and pass some of the most ambitious climate legislation in the country. Most recently, New York Democrats passed the Build Public Renewables Act. That law requires the state’s public utility to generate 100 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2030, while also empowering it to build and own renewable power plants (a reform enabled by the IRA’s direct-pay provision). It is hard to see how expanding public ownership and provision of energy is such a worthless reform as to qualify as “nothing” from a socialist perspective (unless one holds that all at all attempts at reform in bourgeois democracy are worthless, but in that case, one would have had no expectations for AOC to disappoint).

Also,

In Minnesota this year, meanwhile, Democrats have established paid family and medical leave, invested $1 billion into affordable housing, provided a refundable tax credit (i.e., cash aid) to low-income households with children, prohibited non-compete clauses in labor contracts, barred employers from holding compulsory anti-union meetings, strengthened workplace protections for meatpacking and Amazon workers, empowered teachers’ unions to bargain over educator-to-student ratios, empaneled a statewide board to set minimum labor standards for nursing-home workers, directed $2.58 billion into improved infrastructure, made school breakfast and lunch free from all Minnesota K-12 students, and increased taxes on corporations and high earners, among other things.

Author Eric Levitz then describes why he thinks that "This is not a favorable political landscape for those who wish to abolish private property, and concentrate economic authority in a democratic state."

 

[lpetrich]

A Longtime Political Organizer in AOC’s District Says She’s the Real Deal | The Nation - "She has used her skills to win concrete, historic political victories."

As a longtime DSA organizer living in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, I have seen firsthand how the most prominent of these post-Bernie socialists in office has contributed to historic political victories in New York State.

Then criticizing Freddie DeBoer's claim that AOC has become a plain old Democrat.

n 2020, DSA discovered that NRG, a multinational fossil fuel company, was close to breaking ground on a new fracked gas plant in Astoria’s “Asthma Alley.” We started the No Astoria NRG Fracked Gas Plant campaign, built a coalition of climate organizations, and after a two-year fight that brought in thousands of residents, won.

Author Charlie Heller called it a "historic victory", and noted AOC supporting that effort and her campaigners also doing so.

This year, DSA won an even bigger climate victory: winning a 4 year campaign to pass the Build Public Renewables Act. Its transformative vision and scale has been hailed as “the biggest Green New Deal win in US history,” which mandates the state to build publicly owned renewable energy, create green union jobs, lower bills, and slash racist pollution.

AOC supported that one also, along with Jamaal Bowman.

 

[lpetrich]

After years working on “Inside-Outside” campaigns that unite mass bases with local, state, and federal socialist electeds, I and fellow DSA organizers involved developed a framework based on how we have seen socialist elected power function (and fail) in practice: as force multipliers.

noting
Points of Unity - Uniting to Win -- among the principles is "Elect Socialists at All Levels" and "Act like a Party".

After noting successes of left-wing organizers,

What we were not powerful enough to do was overcome the right-wing corporate onslaught that prevented Build Back Better from passing at all (no one did). Electeds enable movements to punch far above our weight, but we only have so much weight.

After noting some DSA successes in upstate NY near NYC, he continues with "Rather than pit electoral power and mass power against each other, this virtuous cycle models how, for the last seven years, they have been symbiotic."

About the author: "Charlie Heller is a member of the NYC-DSA Ecosocialist Working Group."

 

[Derec]

About the author: "Charlie Heller is a member of the NYC-DSA Ecosocialist Working Group."

Of course he is.

As the largest socialist organization in the US, DSA faces two critical questions: What is the most promising strategy for building socialism in the 21st century? And what kind of organization must DSA become in order to carry it out?

Socialism in the 21st century? Where have I heard that before? Oh ...

Funny how that turned out.

 

[Derec]

As a longtime DSA organizer living in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, I have seen firsthand how the most prominent of these post-Bernie socialists in office has contributed to historic political victories in New York State.

Uh-huh.

In 2020, DSA discovered that NRG, a multinational fossil fuel company, was close to breaking ground on a new fracked gas plant in Astoria’s “Asthma Alley.” We started the No Astoria NRG Fracked Gas Plant campaign, built a coalition of climate organizations, and after a two-year fight that brought in thousands of residents, won.

Natural gas is clean burning (thus should not exacerbate asthma) and releases far less CO₂ than say coal. For both climate and air/water quality the world must exit coal as soon as possible. Attacking natural gas plants in counterproductive in that goal.

It is one thing to achieve a political victory. It is another thing to achieve something meaningful. This "victory" might feel good because of irrational and visceral hatred of natural gas on the far left, but it does fuckall for either air quality or climate.
DSA/Squad are good at the former. They cause a lot of sound and fury, but most of the time they end up with nothing of significance.
called it a "historic victory", and noted AOC supporting that effort and her campaigners also doing so.

This year, DSA won an even bigger climate victory: winning a 4 year campaign to pass the Build Public Renewables Act. Its transformative vision and scale has been hailed as “the biggest Green New Deal win in US history,” which mandates the state to build publicly owned renewable energy, create green union jobs, lower bills, and slash racist pollution.

What exactly is in this bill? I doubt it is anywhere near the scope of AOC's much touted GND.
Also "racist pollution"? LMAO! Pollutants do not care what your skin color is.
Note also that NY has become another de facto one party state (state assembly is 2/3 Democratic). Thus it is not surprising they will pass extreme legislation.

 

[Derec]

More Democrats in the Senate in 2021 would mean votes to overcome the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

And the both of them saved Biden and the Democratic Party from themselves. Throwing $3,500,000,000,000.00 onto an already overstimulated economy would have driven inflation into double digits and would have required the Fed to impose an even more aggressive monetary policy to curb it.
Although it is not out of question that it there were two more Dems in the Senate, two more Senators would have stood up against the ill-conceived B³ bill. Whether these new Democrats (since they would have come from seats now held by Republicans they would have been more likely to be moderate) or existing moderates like Tester.

In AOC’s New York, leftists have won election to the state legislature and used their offices to enact eviction protections for tenants,

Bad idea. Landlords invest money into these properties and get revenue from rents. And if somebody doesn't pay rent, or otherwise violates terms of their lease, landlords should be able to evict them.

provide driver’s licenses to the undocumented,

Another bad idea. Those here illegally should be deported, not aided and abetted. Policies like these erase distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.

and pass some of the most ambitious climate legislation in the country.

That may or may not be good depending what is in the legislation.
Does it prioretize shutting down coal plants rather than mindlessly being against natural gas?
What about nuclear power?
Transit and commuter rail does a lot for climate by reducing driving, but NY(C) is already pretty good in that regard.

Most recently, New York Democrats passed the Build Public Renewables Act. That law requires the state’s public utility to generate 100 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2030, while also empowering it to build and own renewable power plants (a reform enabled by the IRA’s direct-pay provision).

I do not think that would be successful. 2030 is less than 7 years away. Renewables are intermittent, so you have to worry about storage or else have sufficient peaker plants, usually running on gas. Also, modern combined cycle gas turbine plants are clean and efficient and should not be decommissioned prematurely. And what about nuclear - 100% renewable presumably means also shutting down nuclear?

Author Eric Levitz then describes why he thinks that "This is not a favorable political landscape for those who wish to abolish private property, and concentrate economic authority in a democratic state."

I think socialists are starting to drop their act and are starting to admit their end goal is abolishing private property and state ownershop and control of means of production.

 

[Derec]

I like that AOC once proposed turning Amazon Corp. into a worker-run cooperative. That's much more farsighted than what I've seen from much of the Left. Though it may not be what WSWS might want.

And how does she propose to achieve that? Forcibly expropriating Amazon stockholders from Bezos to regular folk having a little Amazon stock in their retirement plans? Then giving that equity to workers?

 

[Derec]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now

When has NY Magazine turned so far left that they are publishing articles by "Marxists of an old school variety"?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent appearance on the Pod Save America podcast had, for me, the feeling of a final disappointment, the kind that’s a little sad but brings a set of quixotic hopes to a close. AOC appeared on the popular Crooked Media show to announce her endorsement of Joe Biden for president in the 2024 election. To deliver that particular endorsement while appearing on that particular podcast — where former Obama-administration staffers define the limits of acceptable left-of-center opinion — was to send a very deliberate message. It was AOC’s last kiss-off to the radicals who had supported her, voted for her, donated to her campaign, and made her unusually famous in American politics, the beneficiary of a wholly unique cult of personality that is now starting to come undone.

Sandy "Wormtongue" knew what she was doing. She and other leftists in the Party managed to manipulate old Joe "Theoden" Biden into doing their bidding on a variety of issues such as wanton spending or cancelling $400G in student debt.
The Squad sergeant proves a far better tactician than FdB who can only contemplate direct frontal assaults, apparently.

The second image of AOC is at the 2021 Met Gala — a who’s who of celebrity and wealth, a celebration of precisely the elitism that the left is meant to oppose. ... But Ocasio-Cortez tried to have it both ways: she wore white again, this time a dress emblazoned with the words “Tax the Rich” in bright red.

I am with Freddie on that. It was indeed a low point for her.

The rest of the article is kind of aimless and meandering. Even not taking into account his political extremism, this writing should not have passed mustard with NY Mag editors.

 

[lpetrich]

Socialism in the 21st century? Where have I heard that before? Oh ...

Funny how that turned out.

???

(on a NIMBY victory over a would-be natural-gas powerplant in Astoria, Queens)

Natural gas is clean burning (thus should not exacerbate asthma)

No, Natural Gas Power Plants Are Not Clean - Union of Concerned Scientists -- they emit nitrogen oxides, a result of subjecting nitrogen and oxygen to high temperatures.

Although burning natgas (CH4) releases less CO2 per unit energy than burning coal (C), CH4 itself is also a greenhouse gas. In fact, *any* different-atom atmospheric gas will be a greenhouse gas, because the atoms attract electrons differently. So if the molecule vibrates, it may produce a varying electric dipole moment. Molecules like N2 and O2 have much weaker emissions - electric quadrupole - when they vibrate. Turning to CO2, it is C=O=C, and C's outward then inward will not make a dipole moment, while the O relative to the C's will.

Also "racist pollution"? LMAO! Pollutants do not care what your skin color is.

From "environmental racism", an effect more properly called "elementary classism", though many Americans find it easier to discuss race issues than class issues.

The problem is that upper-middle-class people are usually very good at getting electric powerplants built away from where they live, and nearer those who don't have much political clout - lower-middle-class and lower-class people.

Consider the Dakota Access Pipeline -- it was rerouted away from Bismarck ND because of NIMBY protests, even though one would expect the Real Americans of that town to *love* to have a crude-oil pipeline run right next to their homes.

 

[lpetrich]

More Democrats in the Senate in 2021 would mean votes to overcome the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

And the both of them saved Biden and the Democratic Party from themselves. Throwing $3,500,000,000,000.00 onto an already overstimulated economy would have driven inflation into double digits and would have required the Fed to impose an even more aggressive monetary policy to curb it.

Overstimulated economy???

I like that AOC once proposed turning Amazon Corp. into a worker-run cooperative. That's much more farsighted than what I've seen from much of the Left. Though it may not be what WSWS might want.

And how does she propose to achieve that? Forcibly expropriating Amazon stockholders from Bezos to regular folk having a little Amazon stock in their retirement plans? Then giving that equity to workers?

She didn't get into that issue, but if one is an expert on business management, one should have no trouble working out how to do that.

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now

When has NY Magazine turned so far left that they are publishing articles by "Marxists of an old school variety"?

Is Marxism really that scary?

Sandy "Wormtongue" knew what she was doing. She and other leftists in the Party managed to manipulate old Joe "Theoden" Biden into doing their bidding on a variety of issues such as wanton spending or cancelling $400G in student debt.
The Squad sergeant proves a far better tactician than FdB who can only contemplate direct frontal assaults, apparently.

I'll concede that much.

 

[ZiprHead]

Consider the Dakota Access Pipeline -- it was rerouted away from Bismarck ND because of NIMBY protests, even though one would expect the Real Americans of that town to *love* to have a crude-oil pipeline run right next to their homes.

Oh noes!!! I bet those people actually drove cars and trucks while they were protesting.