Chesapeake Observer – Page 143 – Perspectives on public affairs from Maryland's Eastern Shore

The Green New Deal and the Poor

November 12, 2019

No area of policy is more prone to panaceas than energy policy. President Jimmy Carter thought if Congress passed his energy program, it would not only solve America’s energy problems, but its economic and moral ones as well. Yet even Carter never thought of a panacea like the Green New Deal (GND). Its main promoter Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), known popularly by her initials (just like her program) as AOC, has said the multi-trillion-dollar GND would: forestall looming climate catastrophe; forcibly transition the entire $20 trillion U.S. economy from one largely based on the utilization of morally suspect fossil fuels to one using only (100 percent) immaculate carbon-dioxide-free renewables; lead to full employment (which the US has anyway); and “promote justice and equity… repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.” And it would be largely accomplished in ten years—completely finished in 30.... Read More

My rant is brief, and to take this discussion beyond my conclusions I am recommending a selection of articles representative of the research on which I have relied. The first is a basic survey of the growth of the managerial state, followed by DEI in military services, suppression of results at NIH, and climate policy. I end with a contrary and more optimistic point of view. My point is not how misguided policies adopted in the past four years have been -- I need not repeat that story -- but how these policies did not get or need Presidential attention in order to be adopted. They are the continued working of a self-perpetuating layer of managers.

A basic introduction to how the managers have taken over everything from elected officials

The great historian Niall Ferguson, now an invaluable columnist in the Free Press, discusses how far we have fallen under Biden-Harris-Blinken-Sullivan foreign policy.

A detailed report on how our military establishment has decided to indoctrinate future generations of admirals and generals.

How an NIH researcher is withholding results that undermine claims that sex change is good for teenagers.

A good discussion of the basic unrealism of EPA’s new regulations to mandate electric vehicles and remove natural gas and coal from electricity generation. It is complemented by this survey that few Americans even care about the climate cause or want the regulations imposed by these managers..

And to wrap up my concerns about the powers that be, a point by Matt Taibbi: “Something’s up. Suspiciously similar editorials about possible post-election emergency measures coming out in multiple publications” The managers are worried but have a plan to hold on to power.

But maybe I am wrong. Alex Gutentag and Michael Shellenberger observe how Kamala’s campaign is ”circling the drain,” in the immortal words of Bo Snerdley. Gutentag and Shellenberger describe its many pathologies that have driven pillars of my “managerial class” away from Democrats. One good line is that in Kamala’s world “shaming and belittling take precedence over actual debate. This, in the long-term, has been another losing strategy.” I have been the target of shaming and belittling, and we will see if these optimists are correct. I hope and pray they are.