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VIEW from behind the plow

The Green New Deal promoted by progressives might better be named the “watermelon deal” – green on the outside and red on the inside.

It is an extension of former President Obama’s announced intention to “transform” America.

The Green New Deal promoted by socialists in the Democratic Party, such as newly-installed House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City, supposedly is aimed at halting global warming, a faux cause in itself.

It sounds so ignorant that only a simpleton would believe the propaganda surrounding the scam.

But not so fast.

Look at the slew of Democrat presidential hopefuls who are whole-heartedly in favor of it.

It’s all part of a plan to move America from a constitutional republic, in which citizens have freedoms, to a socialist dictatorship where residents are required to participate in a government health care program (Obamacare) seizure and redistribution of capital to individuals who haven’t earned it.

A wise teacher in an inner-city school heard students cheering the Green New Deal.

“We will get free stuff,” they said.

He explained it to the students this way: Suppose I give Billy $10 to do some work, but then I force him to give four of his friends $2 each of his $10.

Then each of the five would be receiving the same pay: fairness in the minds of some.

Billy objected. “But I would be doing all the work.”

Exactly; that’s socialism, the teacher said.

Suddenly “free stuff” didn’t sound so great to the students.

Columnist David Webb commented:

“Medicare for all, free tuition, abolish ICE may have gone away as a 2016 midterm campaign slogan but Democrats are using other methods to underfund, defund, regulate or limit enactment of good policies. These are effective political and bureaucratic strategies with real-world failures.

“Democrats have reached into the drawer that was closed since FDR’s new deal and LBJ’s great society and renamed it the “Green New Deal.”

Green New Deal isn’t the only slick maneuver the new Democrat House majority is planning.

Jarrett Stepman of the Daily Signal reports that Democrats plan to “save democracy” by putting themselves in charge of elections. He says H.R. 1 (inappropriately named the People Act of 2019) is moving through the House of Representatives.

He provides a condensed version of what the act would do as follows:

• Forces states to implement mandatory voter registration, removing civic participation as a voluntary choice, and increasing chances for error.

• Mandates that states allow all felons to vote.

• Forces states to extend periods of early voting, which has shown to have no effect on turnout.

• Mandates same-day voter registration, which encourages voter fraud.

• Limits the ability of states to cooperate to see who is registered in multiple states at the same time.

• Prohibits election observers from cooperating with election officials to file formal challenges to suspicious voter registrations.

• Criminalizes protected political speech by making it a crime to ‘discourage’ someone from voting.

• Bars states from making their own laws about voting by mail.

• Prohibits chief election officials in each state from participating in federal election campaigns.

• Mandates free mailing of absentee ballots.

• Mandates that states adopt new redistricting commissions.

It is a follow-up step to the movement to abolish the Electoral College, which smaller states need to protect themselves from being manhandled by a handful of large population centers.

A-O-C is at the forefront of cheerleading for H.R.1.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls the bill a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”

There is no chance H.R.1 will become law this year because of the Republican majority in the Senate. However that could change at some point.

National Review’s David French summarizes H.R. 1 this way:

“At its essence, the bill federalizes control over elections to an unprecedented scale, expands government power over political speech, mandates increased disclosures of private citizens’ personal information (down to name and address), places conditions on citizen contact with legislators that inhibits citizens’ freedom of expression, and then places enforcement of most of these measures in the hands of a revamped Federal Election Commission that is far more responsive to presidential influence.”

Stepman adds this:

After nationalizing American election laws, H.R. 1 would put them all under the watchful eye of a “revamped” Federal Election Commission. This is perhaps the most brazenly partisan element of the bill.

The Federal Election Commission currently allows six members (though it currently only has four), with a requirement that four members sign on to any decision in order for it to pass. It has an even number of Republican and Democratic appointees—thus, it takes both parties to agree to prosecute a violation of federal law. This prevents the party in control of the White House from enforcing the law in a partisan fashion.

H.R. 1 would change that by making the commission a five-person body comprised of the president’s appointees, with the president’s party able to appoint three of the five. This would make the commission into a partisan body beholden to the president.

Proponents say this would end the current “deadlock,” but in reality it would turn the commission into a partisan tool to be used by the president. It would be an egregious concentration of power, especially given the way the rest of the bill would nationalize American elections.

While the Framers weren’t unanimous about how much power states should have relative to the federal government, none would have thought it a good idea to give near-tyrannical power to an unelected body of five people, which is what H.R. 1 would essentially do.

The “For the People Act” really is little more than a progressive power grab intended to manipulate election rules to favor liberals, and it is an anti-democratic bill that would upend America’s electoral system.

As with the Green New Deal, it is a vehicle for introducing ideas that would fundamentally transform our republic into something we would not recognize at all, Stepman concluded.

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Such an action would almost assuredly force a breakup of the United States. Wouldn’t that be a sad (and terribly ill-advised) thing to do?

However there appears no middle ground for the increasingly aggressive “Progressive” (socialist) element in our society.

Many of the loudest promoters for socialism have never known anything but the comfort and plenty they grew up with.

The aphorism, “you don’t miss the water ’til the well runs dry,” is beyond their comprehension.