America awoke to discover a corporate colossus stretching coast-to-coast across the continent. They also discovered a new anti-cronyism crusader protesting the billions in subsidies and tax credits state governments are prepared to feed it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected House Democrat from New York and the progressive poster child of the hour, condemned New York and Virginia for bribing Amazon with tax dollars to East Coast cities in New York and Northern Virginia.
She raged on Twitter, and truly, it was great.
Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018
Not so great was what Ocasio-Cortez was up to on Capitol Hill. A couple hours after tweeting an awesome anti-corporate screed, she crammed into the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., with a couple dozen protesters and demanded the presumptive House speaker sign on to her “Green New Deal plan.”
Next, we should define the standards of that committee. To be truly effective, it should:
1. Have a mandate to draft a Green New Deal plan by 2020;
2. Not have officials appointed to it that accept fossil fuel industry contributions— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018
Scroll over to her website to see how serious Ocasio-Cortez is about her anti-corporatism. This Green New Deal calls for “a carbon-free, 100% renewable energy system and a fully modernized electrical grid by 2035.”
All the United States needs to do, the bartender-turned-legislator argues, is to encourage “the electrification of vehicles, sustainable home heating, distributed rooftop solar generation, and the conversion of the power grid to zero-emissions energy sources.”
What does this flowery and high-minded green rhetoric actually mean? It means billions in subsidies and tax credits. It means a repeat of Obama-era waste when the profits were private and the risk was public. It means Solyndra, only on a much more massive scale.
Ocasio-Cortez absolutely deserves points for calling out Amazon and calling out state governments. But her anti-cronyism only goes so far because her beef isn’t the redistribution of taxpayer dollars. Her frustration is that those taxpayer dollars aren’t being funneled to the corporations she prefers.
