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Saturday, February 23, 2019

I Don't Get It -- The Democrat Candidates All Line Up Behind The Green New Deal

In the annals of virtue signaling, there has hardly ever been a stranger item than the Green New Deal.  The supposed goal of the GND is to combat climate change and to promote income equality.  The goals sound good, but then comes the reality of the proposal.  Here are the key items:

1.  If fully enacted, the GND will have no significant effect on climate change.  The USA emits an ever decreasing share of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  Unless every other country follows with severe limitations on emissions, the forces that supposedly cause climate change will continue unabated.

2.  If fully enacted, the GND could have some effect on income equality, but that would be reached by making upper and middle income portions of society poorer rather than by making the poor wealthier.  The GND would attack economic prosperity in an effort to make us all poor.

3.  If fully enacted, the GND would end air travel and replace it with trains and ships.  A state like Hawaii would lose about 95% of its visitors and with them the tourist industry that powers the Hawaiian economy.  The same would be true in Florida and the many other locations that rely on tourism.  For example, the economy in Nevada would collapse.  Families that are spread across the country would no longer be able to visit each other.  Travel to other countries would dry up.  If the GND barred military uses of planes (which it currently does), America's ability to defend itself would be nearly destroyed.

4.  If fully enacted, the GND would change the diet of the average American.  By banning cattle, the GND would end consumption of beef, milk, cheese and other dairy products.  Think of all those fast food restaurants that would have to close.

5.  If fully enacted, the GND would end the use of gasoline powered cars.  It would also end the use of power plants that use fossil fuel or nuclear power (even though the nuke plants are totally non-polluting with zero emissions.)  That means everyone working in the oil, gas, coal, and uranium industries would lose their jobs.  It also means that huge numbers of auto workers would be put out of work as well.

6.  If fully enacted, the GND would make America dependent for power on wind and solar energy.  That may sound nice, but wind and solar are remarkably unreliable (think of night with no wind) and there is no storage mechanism for power that could possibly allow this goal to be achieved without constant periods of no power.  We could go back to candles, but they give off carbon emissions and would defeat the purpose of the GND.

7,  If fully enacted, the GND would allow anyone to decide that he or she just doesn't want to work and then to get fully supported by the government.  It doesn't take a genius to realize that many people would choose not to work if they don't have to work.  That may be a good thing since so much of the US economy would be destroyed by the GND.  Nevertheless, it would result in the end to prosperity in America.

8.  If fully enacted, the GND would required expenditures of a size never before seen on earth.  The plan of the supporters of the GND is just to print money to pay for the costs.  That will inevitably result in uncontrollable inflation and the destruction of cash as a store of value.  Wealth will be wiped out.  Americans could all be equally impoverished.

So here's the question:  if the content of the GND is so clearly disastrous for the USA (and it is), why would nearly every Democrat running for president support this program?  Whose votes are they seeking?  There aren't enough mentally deficient or deluded voters to make up a majority.  People will realize soon enough that the programs being pushed by the Democrats are a national suicide pact.

It's truly unbelievable.

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