Since it’s “Follow Friday” on Twitter today, we offer up a must #ff: @KimStrassel.
Kimberly Strassel is the Potomac Watch columnist for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and she has a nifty knack for cutting through all the BS and simply telling it like it is.
She did just that for her 200,000+ followers on Thursday after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist from New York, released a preposterous 10-year plan called the “Green New Deal” to do away with airplanes, eliminate “farting cows,” end the use of fossil fuels, overhaul every building in America, and provide taxpayer cash even to those “unwilling” to work, among a slew of other absurd pies in the sky.
Strassel teed it all up by saying the document, written like a grade-school wish list, could have easily been a plant from wily Republicans. “By the end of the Green New Deal resolution (and accompanying fact sheet) I was laughing so hard I nearly cried,” Strassel wrote on Twitter. “If a bunch of GOPers plotted to forge a fake Democratic bill showing how bonkers the party is, they could not have done a better job. It is beautiful.”
Then Strassel cited a piece by Reason’s Ronald Bailey headlined “How Much Will the Green New Deal Cost?”
“2) See Ron Bailey for look at sheer number of turbines, solar panels, facilities necessary just for the ‘renewable electricity’ bit. Wud need 500k square km, bigger than California. Also note, govt will pay for these — not private sector,” she wrote.
But Strassel was just getting started. She mocked the proposal’s call to “upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” As The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh points out, “there are over 5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. Add that to the approximately 127 million households, which is to say nothing of all the schools and churches and hospitals, and you have a project that would cost trillions of dollars and take decades, at a minimum, to complete.”
Said Strassel: “3) Also, AOC would put charging stations ‘everywhere,’ upgrade or tear down ‘every building’ in the country (homes and businesses), install high-speed rail across every state, upgrade all our infrastructure. (Maybe once Ds allow permitting reform? LOL. LOL. LOL.)”
But the WSJ’s writer wasn’t done yet. Next, she mocked the plan’s call for the goverment to provide “a job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security for every American.”
“4) Somehow, government-run healthcare, ‘family sustainable’ wages, paid leave, and ‘affordable’ housing are also ‘required’ for a clean economy. I would love to understand this logic. (And imagine what wages will need to be to pay for billion-dollar-per-kilowatt electricity),” Strassel wrote.
The proposal also says “we set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” That set Strassel up yet again.
“5) Key part though people is bit in fact sheet that explains why resolution is not immediately banning fossil fuels or demanding zero-emissions across economy. Because ‘we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.’ Note ‘fully.’ “
Then Strassel said Ocasio-Cortez is coming after your “air miles and bacon.”
“6) Planes run on fossil fuel. No fossil fuel, no visits to granny. Cows produce methane, why alarmists want to get rid of livestock. She can’t do it ‘fully’ in 10 years, but AOC is coming after ur air miles and bacon. This is honesty about how Ds wud micromanage private life.”
Strassel also pointed out the absurd plan for funding the expansive government program.
“7) And how to pay for mass trillions in cost? Don’t worry! Federal Reserve will just ‘extend credit’ And ‘new public banks can be created to extend credit too.’ Because, you know, like, money is just paper, and how hard can it be to make some more of the stuff, right? Right?”
But her last tweet was the most brutal.