Cortez is urging people to ditch meat and dairy. This is interesting, because there is evidence that suggests a lacto-vegetarian diet is actually more sustainable than a vegan diet, due to deforestation being required for an all-plant diet. This would also allow for some meat, ie, male calves and old cows. (I am not suggesting everyone go veg, just saying that even if you look at that, she may be looking at the wrong diet for a solution).

Energy efficiency has to be forward thinking. Focus on new homes being built and on buildings that need to be renovated anyways. Retrofitting solid buildings that don't need renovations may actually be LESS energy efficient as you need to use energy to rebuild and retrofit.

If this woman actually does have an economics degree from Boston university, the school should lose its accreditation. Giving a person this ignorant a degree that says she understands economics is ludicrous.

If this woman actually does have an economics degree from Boston university, the school should lose its accreditation. Giving a person this ignorant a degree that says she understands economics is ludicrous.

Socialists never give you any specifics. It is all a lot of hand waving until they are in power and after that the authoritarian boot clamps down.

Bernie is no better. Just more vague because He is a bit smarter.

I for one, am glad that the Democratic Party is giving people a clear choice. The mask has been torn all the way off.

The tree thing is another reveal of the deep ignorance behind the GND. Between 1990 and 2000 the US gained over 364,000 hectares of forest per year. Way more trees now than 100 years ago due to massive improvements in agricultural practices, forestry management and less dependence on subsistance farming. A friend has a picture of his great grandfather standing on the porch of small store in rural Georgia almost 100 years ago. In the photo there is hardly a tree in sight out to the horizon. The little store is still there today but there is no view out to the horizon as a thick forest of 80-100 ft+ tall trees conceals it.

From what I've gathered, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to be one of those types who believes that all our problems can be solved by a laser beam focus of political will, without considering the vast technological issues and their interplay with economics.

But if politics is all you know how to do, your approach to problem-solving will be pretty predictable.

"It's simply bizarre to me that grown adults who are not considered delusional and who passed elementary school math classes could vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

It'll take
• accepting money from governments that promote the execution of gays
• selling Uranium to Russia while claiming they interfere with elections
• defending those accused of sexual assault by claiming the 12-year-old "asked for it"
• befriending Harvey Weinstein
• paying hundreds of thousands in settlement costs and defaming multiple women accusing her husband of physical sexual assault
• lying about coming under sniper fire
• promising to confiscate every handgun
• promising to confiscate the lawful earnings of corporations
• a history of lying continually in private practice and about her activism for health care
• the explicit statement that ordinary Americans cannot make their own decisions
• intentionally dividing the American people, calling ~40% of them, "deplorable"

before she is considered an "adult" candidate.

AOC isn't alone in not knowing this: the abandonment and the removal of any existing material, including a structure, has its labor and material costs.

Lots of people don't know that you can't just throw something "away" - because they have no idea what "away" is.

Another point about her proposals is the amount of raw materials needed to construct all the things she's proposing. High-speed rail needs tracks. This means steel, so much more iron will have to be mined. Right-of-ways will have to be cleared and leveled, meaning ecosystems will be damaged. Heavy machinery will have to be used, which uses diesel. What's the carbon footprint there? This "proposal" is about as well thought-out at a middle-school science fair project. Of course, when it winds up causing more damage, well, a few eggs have to be broken, yada yada. Gotta pay the price for utopia!

If this woman actually does have an economics degree from Boston university.... ~ Jay at February 9, 2019 2:28 AM

She does not.

She has a Bachelor's degree in International Relations with a minor in Economics.

Here's the tragi-comic part. This woman has been told all her life that she's smarter than average.

In high school, she won the Intel Science and Engineering Fair and, as a result, had an asteroid named after her.

She attended college on a National Hispanic Institute fellowship - Boston University - where she graduated cum laude with a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations and a minor in economics.

While in college, two things happened which shaped her later worldview and political philosophy. She interned in Ted Kennedy's US Senate office in immigration concerns - where, as the only Spanish speaker, she was responsible for helping families whose relatives had been detained or arrested by ICE. When she was a sophomore, her father died and she had to battle the New York probate system, watching "firsthand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense of the families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy." How that didn't turn her into a limited-government conservative, I don't know.

When she got out of college, all those "you're so smart" accolades meant little and she took a job as a bartender and waitress while her mother worked as a maid, cleaning houses.

She worked for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 and saw a Democratic political machine that was out of touch with the people it purported to represent. Somehow, despite her low-paying job, after the election she was able to travel across the county visiting liberal hot spots like Flint and Standing Rock, where she was so affected by the activists in those areas that she decided to become a community activist herself back home, in the Bronx.

Joe Crowley was an effective Congressman but, like many in Congress, he spent very little time in his district getting to know the people on the street. In a heavily-Hispanic district, Crowley did not speak Spanish. Cortez used those things against him and beat him in the primary with only 16,900 votes - heavily-immigrant districts typically do not have high voter turnout.

Since high school, AOC has been able to use her Puerto Rican heritage to her advantage, positioning herself as an oppressed minority while taking advantage of the assistance available to minorities - college fellowships, mentoring, event participation, minority internships, etc.

While many older folks look at her and see naiveté and inexperience, she sees herself as she's always been told she is, smart and dynamic; and she's got the participation trophies to prove it.

Her experiences - being a Puerto Rican in a mostly white world, a Senate internship, being multilingual in a monolingual world, winning a science fair sponsored by a major technology company - combined to convince her she's much more worldly than she actually is. Dunning-Kruger anyone?

You'll have a difficult time convincing her she's not as worldly as she thinks she is - the world has been telling her she's special all her life.

This "proposal" is about as well thought-out at a middle-school science fair project.

I was a judge at a middle school science fair last week. Don't insult the poor kids!

LOL, In order to get more rail used in the US, your first step would be to get rid of what helped kill it: The Teamsters. I'd love to see a Democrat try that one.

Her big idea to replace cars with rail is simply insane. Rail works in Europe only because the population density is so high. Passenger rail in the US even in the NE doesn't make money and trains still use diesel. High speed rail from NY to LA would take about 3 days because it would need to stop at every town. NIMBYs would stop you from building the rail lines (as is happening in Cali).

I could go on. Nothing in it makes a lick of sense.

If I build a road to a small town or housing development, anyone with a car can use it whenever he or she needs it. If I build a rail line to that town or development, I then have to run a train to it on a regular basis, whether anyone regularly rides that train or not. Very inefficient.

It is a politico-propaganda truth: If you are going to lie, lie BIG. Little lies make you dishonest, big ones make you profound and important, feeding our ever-growing (at least in notoriety) conspiracy culture.

The GND reads like something you'd expect from a bunch of stoned high school kids. It's amazing that anyone would publish such a childish policy proposal.

Aside from the obvious silliness, like banning air travel and cow farts, it ignores all other proposals that have been developed to transition to a low carbon economy and infrastructure - one's that credible institutions have actually researched and modeled for viability.

Granted those don't involve nationalizing the economy and conscripting the population, so they don't appeal to people like AOC.

I honestly think she's a little off. People say she's just stupid, but I don't think that's the case. I think she's delusional and narcissistic.

She seems to be enthralled by a romantic vision of herself as a revolutionary heroine. So much so that she doesn't want to confront reality and prefers to live in a fantasy world.

You can see this in the way that she carries herself. She typically looks posed and almost frozen, with either a startled look or a huge fake grin. Plus she has a wicked case of crazy eyes.

Also it's evident in the false story that she's created for herself, claiming she grew up in the Bronx cleaning toilets, and studied Economics. As anyone who has heard her speak can tell, she from the suburbs.

And she wasn't elected by Latinos in the Bronx. Her district actually spans Queens and an area of the Bronx. Voter analysis has shown that her votes came primarily from progressive whites. Voter turn-out among Latinos in the Bronx was very low for both the primary and election.

Basically her whole persona is a lie.

She's playing people. She's making insane demands so that when she backs off a little she'll seem "reasonable". If she'd started from where her final proposals will be those proposals would have looked insane without the earlier positions to compare them to.

She has sanpaku eyes; don't trust her. She's a dangerous psycho.

> She has sanpaku eyes;
> don't trust her.

Wudja think of that smirking teen a couple weeks back?

When people talk about reading character in the faces of others, we gotta wonder why they're wasting their superpowers on public affairs and true crime television viewing.

The reeeelee smart folk don't worry about things like law or science— They go to Wall Street, where reading the hearts of businessmen can make you insanely, and quite quietly, wealthy.

the abandonment and the removal of any existing material, including a structure, has its labor and material costs

Not only that, how much of that material is of a hazardous nature? and thus requires appropriate precautions during removal and transportation to it's final destination. I'm sure that there are more than few buildings that have asbestos. As long as it stays encapsulated, it isn't dangerous and it's fire resistance has value.

The building I work in (built 1958) has asbestos. Any time any invasive work has to be done, the work area is inspected, and appropriate abatement carried if necessary.

> She seems to be enthralled by
> a romantic vision of herself

> You can see this in the way
> that she carries herself.

> Basically her whole persona
> is a lie.

Does this strike anyone else as teen-psychological?

Y'know, I think about a recent occasion when a candidate for nation demanded judgement. It was Donald Trump, the bankrupted Real Estate developer and teevee game show host.

He was seventy. He had a public life nearly as long as my private one. His expansive catalog of business failures, corruptions and (familial!) incompetence had been authoritative indexed over decade of fame.

We didn't have to wonder about his "vision of himself" or the integrity of his "persona."

Life isn't The Breakfast Club. See also the links in the next thread about judging souls rather than character.

>> I think she's delusional and narcissistic.

I've come to the same conclusion.

One way you can tell that you're dealing with a narcissistic individual is that they will overreact and lash out if you challenge them in any way.

Cortez is a classic example of that.

In order to get more rail used in the US, your first step would be to get rid of what helped kill it: The Teamsters. I'd love to see a Democrat try that one.

That's not going to happen. Look at TSA, they were unionized almost immediately upon creation. The Federal Rail Program will be composed of Teamsters and other union members, sucking on FedGov's teat.

Rail works in Europe only because the population density is so high.

That helps, but European and Japanese rail passengers are subsidized. Not a lot, but they don't make money or break even.

"Between 1990 and 2000 the US gained over 364,000 hectares of forest per year. Way more trees now than 100 years ago.."

Are you arguing that this is bad? Is there enough forest, or too much?

Rail doesn't work in Europe... at least not in a "replace all cars" kinda way. It's great if you're going from the center of one city to the center of another... if you live in a rural area or the burbs not so much. It's quite expensive as well, if you're a family you're usually better of driving and paying for parking.

It's great for tourists and such, but practically you get there much quicker with your car.

She's cute.

gcmortal, just pointing that it’s a non-problem she decided to include in her fix. The markets, technological advancements and improvements in various fields already took care of it. And there was no need for government involvement.

"...because we aren't sure that we'll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast"

And it will take much longer to get rid of airplanes that eat.

Not defending AOC or her plan.

However, here is a local-to-me example of government involvement in reforesting that was necessary and did work:

https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/tillamook_burn/#.XF95mLh7mHs

Another reason for more forests now versus 100 years ago is that timber companies used to clear-cut and abandon land. Government had to get involved to require replanting.

I need to fact check this BUT I've heard the reason we have reforestationin North America is because we've outsourced deforestation to other countries... which for local park purposes is nice but for global warming ones doesn't help

> I've heard the reason we have

Nicole, what do you mean "we"? You don't live in the United States.

I've heard the reason we have reforestation in North America is because we've outsourced deforestation to other countries...
NicoleK

We import tropical woods because we're mostly a temperate country. This is a good place to grow trees, so we do fine on paper and lumber products otherwise. Much of our country east of the Mississippi will reforest itself if you just stop mowing it.

The presence of large numbers of poor people can be hell on trees because they can't afford *not* to cut them down. We're not that poor.

NicoleK, “outsourced”. Just not true. Quick Duckduckgo search and found this at USDA website: The United States exported a record $9.7 billion of forest products in fiscal year 2014. Among U.S. agricultural exports, only corn and soybeans had higher export values. As the world’s fourth-largest exporter of forest products (behind the European Union, China, and Canada), the United States maintains a steady share of the growing global market at just over 10 percent.

U.S. forest product exports have grown 80 percent over the last five years. The majority of this growth was due to growth in volume, as prices have remained relatively flat. Despite the growth in export volume, U.S. timber stocks (uncut trees in the forest) have experienced net growth for the last 50 years as new growth is now much higher than the harvest rate.

The simple answer seems to be that different types of lumber and wood products are going back and forth between countries.

There is more forest land now than in 1900 because so much of the farmland in 1900 was marginal. As agriculture improved, marginal land was abandoned as not worth the trouble or planted to trees as a more valuable crop.
"She has sanpaku eyes"--I wonder if anyone else gets the reference? Very funny but true.

I worked for a forest product company for a short time a long time ago. That company replaced harvested tree with more than had been harvested and quicker than required by law. This was to have a better harvest in the future. The plantation would be thinned later and trees delimbed to produce wood with fewer/smaller knots.

Well less then 1% (more like 0.1%) of the land harvested did not go back to being forests. For the 5 years previous to when I worked there.

The companies we bench marked against had similar numbers.

As I recall, about 1/3 of our harvest of doug fir was shipped as raw logs to Asia. Management didn't like that but a very long contract has been signed years before. It was good revenue but not as good as profit as if the company had made the logs into lumber.

Tut, tut. Youse guys aren't distinguishing between softwoods and hardwoods, which take lots longer to grow.