It is clear that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the dragon slayer who defeated the guy who was on track to become Speaker of the House, is under attack from all sides. It is imperative that Establishment Democrats and organizations who go after her unjustly are made to understand that there will be a price to pay electorally and economically. How do we know the attacks are on on both sides including from Establishment Liberals? Read on.
We all knew the Right Wing would use every misstep by Ocasio-Cortez and hyper-amplify it. Unfortunately, publications that purport to be just reporting the news seem to be on the attack as well.
The Daily Caller wrote the following during the run up to the election to start “softening” the target to make Ocasio-Cortez seem uninformed.
New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Friday that the low unemployment rate is “part of the problem” of capitalism failing to help America’s working class because people think the economy is doing well when it’s not.
“The economy is going pretty strong … there’s roughly 4 percent, 3.9 percent unemployment,” Margaret Hoover, host of PBS’ “Firing Line,” told Ocasio-Cortez during an interview. “Do you think that capitalism has failed to deliver for working-class Americans?”
“Well, I think the numbers you just talked about is part of the problem, right?” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We look at these figures and we say, ‘Oh, unemployment is low, everything is fine, right?’”
Ocasio-Cortez also seemed to misunderstand the difference between unemployment and underemployment, asserting that unemployment is low because people are working multiple jobs.
“Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs,” she said. “Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.”
Daily Caller
They completely missed the implication of her first statement which holds. If unemployment is so low, why are wages still so small and why haven’t wages tracked productivity and growth. That is a failure of capitalism. Here second statement correlating hours worked, and multiple jobs with the unemployment rate are wrong, the sentiment she is echoing is correct. Talking about low unemployment rates as working people continue to struggle is wrong. This type of nitpicking will continue from the Right will continue and has.
Unfortunately, even publications that are supposed to be straight reporting are instead of playing ‘gotcha’ reporting when addressing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s gaffes. That is a disservice to us all. Factcheck.org went after her for the following tweet.
They wrote the following.
Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that $21 trillion worth of “Pentagon accounting errors” could finance two-thirds of Medicare for All. It can’t.
The misguided tweet is based on a tally by university researchers who found $21 trillion worth of untraceable transactions in the Department of Defense between 1998 and 2015. It’s a legitimate problem the Pentagon says it’s trying to fix. But transactions — which can be counted multiple times as they pass through accounts — are not the same as spending.
Really? WaPo rates Ocasio-Cortez’s Pentagon tweet bad as Trump’s biggest liesF
Suffice it to say, they missed the point. She was not truing to be an accountant. She was attempting to show that while trillions are either unaccounted for or miscalculated in the Pentagons spending, comparable scrutiny and concern for the money for social programs are always an issue. The fact the Pentagon story has not reached a scandal level is in itself a scandal.
Recently FAIR reported the unfair and biased treatment with a substantial degree of false equivalencies that Ocasio-Cortez is getting from supposedly legitimate media sources; in this case the Washington Post.
The Post’s
factcheck headline (12/4/18) two days later was unquestioningly blunt: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $21 Trillion Mistake.” So had Ocasio-Cortez simply made up the $21 trillion number? No. Invented the study? Unfairly singled out the Pentagon? Bungled the math, inaccurately dividing 21 into 36? No, no and no.Instead, in her tweet, she had failed to properly capture the fact that the missing Pentagon money included both inputs and outlays and, therefore, wasn’t a tranche of lost funds that could’ve been re-allocated to pay for Medicare for All, as she suggested. In fact, the Pentagon’s total budget over those 18 years was $9 trillion. It’s a key distinction, but that missing nuance led the Post to award this “$21 trillion mistake” its worst rating for dishonesty: “Four Pinocchios.”
Article
These media outlets likely with the blessing of both party establishments, given that she is getting incoming flak from all sides of the media are trying to make a caricature of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because the policies she is promoting is where the American people are when asked for their wants and needs. Getting traction beyond her base is terrifying to both party establishments whose benefactors are in fact, the plutocracy. I wrote similarly on this issue in the article
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Cortez is a dynamo therefore a threat. She is well read on the issues, a terrific speaker and is courageous certainly lacking in the Republican Congress. She’d make mince meat of Trump in a debate if she ran for the Presidency. I would vote for her in a minute. Her youth is coupled with an energy to do the best for all especially those that are left behind or discriminated against. Only the best efforts are exuded by her.
You are absolutely correct. And I would too.
Cortez is making the Republicans and some Democrats afraid because she is speaking for the rest of us who have been left behind and do not benefit from all the money the wealthy and the big corporations are sucking out of the poor and middle class. Giving huge tax cuts to big corporations assuming they will expand their business, hire more people and pay their workers better was a farce when many of them told the Republicans they did not need or want any tax cuts and if they got them they would only use them to buy back stock to make their stock price go up and benefit the share holders and the CEO’s who benefit from getting stock instead of actual cash. Sha-Zam! What happens? That is precisely what they do by buying back stock to increase their stock price! Do their employees see any of that? No! Companies make a big hulabloo about giving their employees bonuses or paying them more but then turn around and laying off thousand who now no longer have a job! The Republicans are bound and determined not to let the minimum wage rise with the belief that it would be bad for the business which would be forced to lay off or let employees go. There have been many businesses and cities who have raised the minimum wage to close to $15 an hour and it has not affected their business as much as they had thought it would. Republican legislatures then turn around and pass legislation taking away the rights of cities to pass their own minimum wages but then complain because there are so many people on government assistance! They want to enact work requirements and make people getting government assistance jump through a few more hoops just to get help to survive! It does not seem to occur to them that most people are already working, some are working 2 or 3 jobs just to survive! They then rely on these people to report how much they are working when many do not have a computer or any way to report how much they are currently working, so lose their benefits! Republicans give big corporations and the wealthy the huge tax cuts, blow a hole in the deficit, increasing it into the trillions, then complain about how the deficit needs to be lowered so look to government assistance, social programs and especially food stamps to bring the deficit down! They want to make the poor and middle class pay for the tax cuts they awarded to big corporations and the wealthy when they are not paying their fair share of taxes to begin with! They have high price attorneys to help them find all the loop holes to avoid paying taxes and then deposit their millions in profit in offshore accounts and shell companies so they do not have to pay taxes on them. They even change their home office to tax havens where they are charged little to no tax while feeding at the corporate welfare trough like the greedy pigs they are! Republicans do not understand that if employees are paid more, they would not need additional government assistance such as social services and food stamps. Many people do not want to be dependent on government assistance just to survive, they want to make enough to survive and actually get ahead which scares the the hell out of the Republicans! Now we have a group of young WOMEN DEMOCRATS who are tired of things the way they are and are going to fight for a change. So they take aim at Ocasio-Cortez because she is young energetic and connected the people and not the wealthy so they want to diminish her message and make her sound like she does not know what she is talking about. The mid-terms were a blue tsunami which took out a number of Republicans up for re-election, especially in Orange County California which turned from red to blue in this election. Maybe in 2020 their may be another blue wave to take out a number of Republican traitors, in the Senate, who are complicit knowingly helping Russia meddle in the 2016 election, so they could get Trump in office since they knew they could count on him to approve all their despicable and horrible legislation to take us back several decades! Of course, they created the monster and really have no control over what he will say or do next!