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So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promotes that we should all live within our means...and for her, a former bartender, her new salary of $145k is not enough means...at least not enough means to keep her honest. So, has she and the fresh class of liberal darlings finally exposed their true inadequacies? Shall we season with another liberal darling's tax fraud and campaign finance violations? Or is there another perspective here?

bonus challenge: respond to this post without mentioning a Republican as justification for your poor choice in party affiliation.

subgenius wrote:bonus challenge: respond to this post without mentioning a Republican as justification for your poor choice in party affiliation.

What do you have against Republican voters? ; )

The woman says, in effect:

"If you do not maintain the value of the salaries of members of congress, that will increase the likelihood that they will turn to sources of financial support that have an agenda, and which will try to influence the legislative process to their own advantage."

Er, well, obviously. So while it may be popular to let legislators' salaries fall, it is not in the long term helpful to sustaining democracy.

But what do we see in the OP? Basically "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demands more money, threatens to turn to crime if cash is not stuffed into her handbag forthwith".

Republicans are so grown-up, aren't they?

Chap wrote:But what do we see in the OP? Basically "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demands more money, threatens to turn to crime if cash is not stuffed into her handbag forthwith".

I love Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's awesome. Her IQ is the sum of the IQs of the entire GOP. Absolutely brilliant.

I think I'm going to have a life-sized picture of her made to hang on my office wall.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise are in talks to back this same pay raise.

subs isn’t allowed to tell you that, though.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been on this train from the very beginning of her national political fame and probably the single best thing about her. We should compensate legislators well and pay for generous support staff. This insulates them from corruption, especially corruption in the form of outsourcing their job to lobbyists. That is so rampant that it's effectively how the system works to the detriment of the country.

Perfume on my Mind wrote:I love Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's awesome. Her IQ is the sum of the IQs of the entire GOP. Absolutely brilliant.

I agree with you about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is disgusting how ridiculously her opponents bend over backwards to invent any excuse to malign her and misinterpret what she says.

Another one of the good guys is Elizabeth Warren. I am about halfway through her book, A Fighting Chance. I highly recommend it. I think you will find it inspiring and uplifting. One of the things she discusses in her book is her battle to establish the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). She points out that even many Republican politicians recognize how large corporations, like banks, deliberately deceive and trick consumers to enhance their own profits, but are too beholden to or dependent on the large donations or bribes offered by them, to oppose their agenda.

She talked about her meeting with Alabama's Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. She wrote:

The congressman agreed to meet with me soon after I took the CFPB post. He spoke movingly about people who had been swindled; he really seemed to feel their pain. He concluded by saying that if he had more courage, he'd go after the people who did that to families. In other words, if he stood up for the families who'd been hurt, he could find himself sidelined in Congress by the leadership of his own party. I was stunned by his use of the word courage and his small, tight smile.

As Congressman Bachus ushered me out of his office, he took my arm and leaned close to me. "I'll go after the consumer agency, but I hope you understand, it isn't personal." He said it in a quite, gentle tone, with his accent twanging through each syllable.

In other words, it is not so much their lack of IQ or their lack of sympathy and understanding for the downtrodden and unfairly disadvantaged, as it is their cowardice and greed that accounts for the deplorable behavior of GOP politicians.

I agree with EAllusion. If Alexandria Ocasio Cortez could have implemented her policies back when I was a congressman and not collecting $8500/month in taxpayer funded disability, I wouldn't have had a reason to be so dishonest. It's the taxpayers fault. Now sock it to them and make sure my check is direct deposited every two weeks.

Chap wrote:So while it may be popular to let legislators' salaries fall, it is not in the long term helpful to sustaining democracy.

1. No one says let legislators' salaries fall as an alternative. Simply put, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is contradicting her previous positions on other people's salaries with her own position on her salary.
2. She literally is saying that without earning more money, not saying "without enough money", a legislator will turn to crime.
3. Please, provide some sort of reasonable argument, or actual evidence, that sustaining democracy requires legislator pay raises. Because it sounds like you are implying that for democracy to be sustained, it must establish viable careers for legislators.
I would appreciate your clarification on your position - thank you.

canpakes wrote:

subgenius wrote:bonus challenge: respond to this post without mentioning a Republican as justification for your poor choice in party affiliation.

What do you have against Republican voters? ; )

in general, nothing.