A brilliant expose on the broken system..

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has used a speech before finance watchdogs to expose the vast conflicts of interest which shape American politics. In just three minutes the Democrat congresswoman laid bare the almost total absence of rules stopping lawmakers from being bought off by wealthy corporations. “We have a system with right now which is fundamentally broken,” she concluded after her question and answer session with a panel of senior figures from campaign finance watchdog groups.

The 29-year-old told the officials she wanted to imagine what she could do within the current rules if she was a “bad guy” who wanted to “enrich myself and advance my interest, even if that means putting that ahead of the American people”. “Let’s say I have some skeletons in my closet that I need to cover up so I can get elected. “If I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees, is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?” she asked. The panel admitted there were no regulations stopping politicians from pursuing such a course of action.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez then went further: “So I use my special interest dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected. “Now I’m elected I have the power to draft, lobby and shape the laws that govern the USA. I can be totally funded by oil and gas, by big pharma, and there’s no limit to that whatsoever.” The congresswoman, who represents New York’s 14th district, then noted how a corrupt legislator could even buy stocks in a company, then write laws deregulating that industry, causing the share price to soar and pocket a huge profit. “You could do that,” confirmed one of the officials, adding that even the minor ethics regulations which did apply to members of Congress did not affect the president.

“So I and every member of this body are being held to a higher ethical standard than the president of the United States,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez concluded. Minds “It’s already super legal as we have seen for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it’s even easier for the president to be one.” Ms Ocasio-Cortez won her seat in congress by unseating long-time Democrat elder statesmen Joe Crowley, who outspent her in the primary campaign 18 to 1. Almost 75 per cent of her campaign funding came from small individual donations, compared to just 1 per cent for Mr Crowley, who was mostly funded by larger businesses.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivers devastating dissection of US financial system and political corruption in congress speech | The Independent

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US campaign finance laws are, well, less than ideal — or, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in a House committee hearing this week, they make it “super legal” for lawmakers to be a “pretty bad guy.” A viral video of Ocasio-Cortez during a hearing held by the House Oversight and Reform Committee on strengthening ethics rules for the executive branch swept across the internet this week. The video, put together by NowThis News, shows the high-profile New York Congress member playing a “lightning round” game with witnesses. The purpose: to highlight how it’s legal for congressional candidates to do a lot of shady stuff. And they’re held to a higher standard than the president.

“I’m going to be the bad guy, which, I’m sure, half the room would agree with anyway, and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people,” Ocasio-Cortez said during the Wednesday hearing. “I have enlisted all of as my co-conspirators, so you’re going to help me legally get away with all of this.”

She then asked a litany of questions. Can she run a campaign entirely funded by corporate political action committees? Yes. Can she use that money to make hush payments and pay people off to get elected? Yes. Once in office, can she influence and write laws that might affect the groups from which she’s taken special interest money? Yes. And can she hold stocks in companies the legislation she’s writing might boost? Yes.

Walter Shaub, senior adviser to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and former head of the Office of Government Ethics who resigned under President Donald Trump, was one of the witnesses in the hearing. Ocasio-Cortez asked him whether the ethics limits placed on members of Congress and the president are comparable. “In terms of laws that apply to the president ... there’s almost no laws at all that apply to the president,” he said.  “It’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it’s even easier for the president of the United States to be one, I would assume,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She also took a bit of a swipe at her colleagues. “We have a system that is fundamentally broken. We have these influences existing in this body, which means that these influences are here in this committee shaping the questions that are being asked of you all right now,” she said.

AOC made a confusing topic easy to understand
The NowThis video, published on Thursday, has been seen more than 13 million times. It is yet another example of Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most high-profile new members of Congress, making headlines and generating buzz. She’s drawing attention to a topic — campaign finance laws in the US — that many Americans care about but don’t know the specific ins and outs of. People generally agree that money in politics is a problem that needs fixing: Pew Research Center polling shows that most Americans believe there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and groups can spend on campaigns and think that big donors have more influence than others. But campaign finance laws are complicated, so many people aren’t aware of what is and isn’t allowed.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez video: “lightning round” on money in politics goes viral - Vox

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No wonder the right tries to smear her:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted Republican critics Saturday after a series of right-wing conspiracy theories about her surfaced on Twitter. “This stuff is really sad. The GOP is so intellectually bankrupt that they no longer engage to debate issues in good faith, but instead seek to lie, distort, name-call, target, & destroy people/communities w any means possible,” she tweeted early Saturday morning. “It’s a virus and a race to the bottom.” 

“It’s pretty wild that the GOP can’t decide whether they’re going to run with the conspiracy theory that I’m secretly rich, or the exaggeration & mockery of my family’s struggle after my dad died during the financial crisis. Instead, they decide to defy logic and run with both,” the New York progressive responded.

Ocasio-Cortez tears into ‘intellectually bankrupt’ GOP over ‘targeted rumors’ | TheHill

Ben Stein on Tuesday claimed policies advocated by freshman lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) “invariably lead to bad things,” including genocide. The actor, former speechwriter to President Richard M. Nixon, and political commentator even made comparisons to Adolf Hitler.  Ocasio-Cortez has made headlines for advocating higher marginal tax rates of up to 70 percent on earnings past $10 million in income as well as a “Green New Deal” to tackle the climate crisis.  But in a Fox Business clip posted online by Media Matters, Stein claimed her democratic socialist politics will lead to dictatorship and genocide: “We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung all came to power promising the same kinds of things that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is promising. And it led to mass murder, it led to dictatorship, it led to genocide. These promises are old promises and they invariably lead to bad things.” Stein said the current system “works extremely well” and “allows people to make something of themselves instead of oppressing other people” as they try to earn money.

Ben Stein: Ocasio-Cortez Is Promising 'The Same Kinds Of Things' As Hitler | HuffPost

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There is tons of stuff like this, they simply can't deal with the arguments..

PETER MORICI (UNIV. OF MARYLAND PROFESSOR): In order to achieve the transition she envisions we'd have to install, globally, 100 trillion kilowatts of generating capacity over the next 30 years. Now Germany pulling out all the corks over the last several years tried to do that with renewables and only accomplished a small fraction of it. It's absolutely impossible to do what she's describing according to physics. What this is, is you know there's ignorance, there's willful ignorance, and then there's willful and malicious ignorance -- that is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is demagoguery, it's time she be called out. The left is just using global warming, climate change, the environment as a stalking horse for socialism. They can't take away all your money and accomplish this, but they will. That's what this is about. She's a demagogue. 

Basically what you have in Ocasio-Cortez are Latin American values. Instead of us assimilating them, they are assimilating us. And they want to bring the kind of socialism that destroyed Venezuela, and frankly Mexico, here. You know, it isn't that we're going to become Venezuela, but we could easily become Mexico, and you won't be able to go outside your door without getting shot.

Fox guest: "What you have in Ocasio-Cortez are Latin American values. Instead of us assimilating them, they are assimilating us."

LIMBAUGH: Last week, after the New York state Senate legalized murder, calling it abortion, the same buildings lit up in pink. To honor who? Who has pink as their color? Well, the militant feminazis and the pro-abortion crowd, and even some, some -- pink is a color in the gay rainbow. These are clearly different times and here's Ben Stein's tweet about Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong. Well you can throw Fidel Castro in this mix, you could throw Pol Pot into this mix, you could -- any left-wing dictator results in walls being built to keep prisoners, citizens, in and to keep dissenters dead, imprisoned, or shot. And yet, today, if you mention that to people like Ocasio-Cortez or any of these other liberals today. They don't even have to be millennials. They can be the parents of these kids. "That's ancient history, that's old stuff, we've dealt with that. That's never happening again." And then they focus right back on us. We are the threat. We, being conservatives and some Republicans. We represent the threat to them. They're not worried about becoming Hitler all over again, they're not worried about becoming Mao Zedong. That's who they are when you get down to it in terms of their totalitarian instincts, authoritarian instincts. They are Stalinist to the core.

Rush Limbaugh compares Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot

HEWITT: It is despotic. That's it. It is not socialism, it is communism, it is fascism, it is despotism. It drains all freedom out of America and if we had a media class that understood a lick about history, they would know this.

Hugh Hewitt: The Green New Deal "is communism, it is fascism, it is despotism"

The pursuit of equality will lead to bloodshed, loss of liberty, loss of human rights, and the Green New Deal is an example. The death that will ensue in the United States of America, the mayhem, the suffering, if the government takes over all health -- the problem is these people need a cause, that's what it is. There is a soullessness to the Elizabeth Warrens of the world, they need meaning, they need a crusade. They can't leave well enough alone. That's a big part of leftism. This country is too free, too kind, too affluent, they need to screw it up. If they screw it up, they have purpose. Liberals are not leftists, but liberals are naive and weak, because they don't confront the evil that leftism will bring about. That they mean well is of such little consequence -- do you know how much evil has been done by people who think they're good? Nearly all of it. OK? Just want you to know.

Dennis Prager says the Green New Deal "will lead to bloodshed, loss of liberty, loss of human rights"