A Ocasio Cortez Education
- Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York on Oct. 13, 1989, to Sergio Ocasio, an architect raised in South Bronx, and Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, a native of Puerto Rico who cleaned houses and drove a school bus to help the family pay the bills.
- On the eve of the election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez held an outreach and voter education event in Sunnyside, Queens, elbow-bumping campaign volunteers before speaking with community leaders.
- Ocasio-Cortez says she would like to see an evolution of the economy system to a more egalitarian system. She rejects the ‘socialism’ of countries like the Soviet Union and Venezuela but holds up the examples of Western Europe – with extensive welfare states, education and universal education.
- Ocasio-Cortez's press secretary, Corbin Trent, left his wife, kids, and food-truck business in Tennessee to sleep on Chakrabarti's couch. Alexandra Rojas, now the 23-year-old executive director of Justice Democrats, led the last six weeks of the campaign's text- and phone-banking effort.
But when the time came to put her BU economics education to work, Ocasio-Cortez flunked. On PBS last week, she asserted that 'unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs.'
How is it, considering the economic nonsense she spouts, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could graduate cum laude from Boston University, with a degree in international relations and economics? Worse, how is it that her generation could embrace the very economic system that destroyed Eastern Europe and collapsed Venezuela, which sixty years ago was one of the top three economies in the world?
In Finland, which is still a capitalist country, the government resigned over being unable to push through free-market reforms vital to the survival of its health care system, which is projected to collapse without them. Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece teeter on the verge of economic breakdown because of unsustainable social programs.
Denmark has very high taxes and high social benefits. It also has the largest household debt relative to income of any of the industrial countries. Automobiles carry 180% tax and sales tax is 25%. Many young Danes emigrate for economic opportunities.
The idea that the Nordic economic model is the panacea that will “save” America is mythical. Nordic countries are small, relatively homogeneous societies that possess the philosophical bond, which originated in Lutheranism, of community sharing.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Bio
America is a multicultural society with vastly different ideas about sharing, taxation, and the role of government.
To understand the attraction of American capitalism, you might want to attend an expat party in Silicon Valley. There are, for example, 142,000 Frenchmen and women living in the United States. About a quarter of them are estimated to live in and around Silicon Valley. I asked one young woman who ran a software company why she didn’t create her company in France. She laughed that it would take forever to get a business license and even with California’s convoluted attitude toward business, she was up and running in less than a year.
So why does a generation of millennials want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg? Welcome to the changing values movement in higher education.
The most cited and influential educational philosopher of the twentieth century was John Dewey. Known largely for his bringing the real world of pragmatism to educational philosophy, Dewey is less known for his democratic socialism and progressive economic theories.
Schools of education adopted not only Dewey’s pragmatic approach but also his zeal for collectivism and statism. In the late 1950s, Philip E. Jacob authored Changing Values in College, a book that was seized upon in colleges of education to show that value-based outcomes could be the desired goal of education.
For the most part, these ideas were confined to colleges of education, but they received strong reinforcement when Paul A. Samuelson’s Keynesian economic theories increasingly took hold in departments of economics.
But the most dramatic impact of progressivism, however, came from the expansion of the higher education bureaucracy as it responded to the twin demands of multiculturalism and affirmative action in the late 1960s.
The implementation of quotas masquerading as goals required the expansion of the bureaucracy to oversee programs, implement coercive requirements, and placate government bureaucrats who conducted audits of diversity achievements.
Colleges of education responded to these demands by increasing their programs in higher education administration. Those who survived the “rigorous intellectual demands” of such programs could sit on an administrative perch and control budgets and personnel decisions of faculty that viewed them as the ignorant children of a lesser god.
This resulted in a new class of professional administrators drawn both from colleges of education and from faculty who no longer possessed a desire for scholarship as much as a desire to implement a progressive agenda.
The new class’ behaviors could find parallels in the writings of Yugoslav philosopher and critic of communism Milovan Djilas. Academic administrators became a class unto themselves with their own ideology and interests that increasingly departed from the historic purposes of higher education.
This new class was nurtured on the philosophy prevalent in colleges of education that higher education was about taking the progeny of the “great unwashed” and reeducating them to become committed progressives. College was about changing values and educating students to embrace the leftist view of “social responsibility” and “social justice.”
Such shibboleths as diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice became mechanisms for implementing revisionist history, substituting activism for scholarship, and indoctrinating a captive audience of naïve young adults into the glories of progressive solutions to complex economic and social problems.
The captive audience of the classroom was, nonetheless, insufficient to satisfy the new class’ quest to remake the university into a hothouse for progressive ideology.
Like all bureaucrats seeking a proliferation of new offices, they quickly discovered the untapped resources of the college dormitories and orientation programs, what has been described as the “shadow university,” could provide additional venues for coerced political indoctrination. Many of these programs were fashioned on the theories and approaches of Lawrence Kohlberg, whose “Just Community” outcomes, like John Dewey’s, were inspired by collectivism.
It is no accident that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spouts socialist banalities. This is what colleges teach.
As progressive ideologies and political correctness became woven into the cultural fabric of higher education, people who did not share those values did not look upon higher education as a career -- unless they gravitated toward the sciences and technical fields.
Political correctness produced the activist scholar, who, in the true Marxist sense of the word “praxis,” demands to use university resources for tribal leftist political activism while arguing that activism be considered a glorified substitute for scholarship.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the product of the modern university. We might find her naivete and ignorance laughable, but the joke is on us because she is but a symptom of her generation, and we have subsidized the making of that ignorance.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science who has spent 35 years in academia at major research universities. He was a Bradley Fellow with the Heritage Foundation and is currently a distinguished Fellow with Hyam Salomon Center.
How is it, considering the economic nonsense she spouts, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could graduate cum laude from Boston University, with a degree in international relations and economics? Worse, how is it that her generation could embrace the very economic system that destroyed Eastern Europe and collapsed Venezuela, which sixty years ago was one of the top three economies in the world?
In Finland, which is still a capitalist country, the government resigned over being unable to push through free-market reforms vital to the survival of its health care system, which is projected to collapse without them. Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece teeter on the verge of economic breakdown because of unsustainable social programs.
Denmark has very high taxes and high social benefits. It also has the largest household debt relative to income of any of the industrial countries. Automobiles carry 180% tax and sales tax is 25%. Many young Danes emigrate for economic opportunities.
The idea that the Nordic economic model is the panacea that will “save” America is mythical. Nordic countries are small, relatively homogeneous societies that possess the philosophical bond, which originated in Lutheranism, of community sharing.
America is a multicultural society with vastly different ideas about sharing, taxation, and the role of government.
To understand the attraction of American capitalism, you might want to attend an expat party in Silicon Valley. There are, for example, 142,000 Frenchmen and women living in the United States. About a quarter of them are estimated to live in and around Silicon Valley. I asked one young woman who ran a software company why she didn’t create her company in France. She laughed that it would take forever to get a business license and even with California’s convoluted attitude toward business, she was up and running in less than a year.
So why does a generation of millennials want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg? Welcome to the changing values movement in higher education.
The most cited and influential educational philosopher of the twentieth century was John Dewey. Known largely for his bringing the real world of pragmatism to educational philosophy, Dewey is less known for his democratic socialism and progressive economic theories.
Schools of education adopted not only Dewey’s pragmatic approach but also his zeal for collectivism and statism. In the late 1950s, Philip E. Jacob authored Changing Values in College, a book that was seized upon in colleges of education to show that value-based outcomes could be the desired goal of education.
For the most part, these ideas were confined to colleges of education, but they received strong reinforcement when Paul A. Samuelson’s Keynesian economic theories increasingly took hold in departments of economics.
But the most dramatic impact of progressivism, however, came from the expansion of the higher education bureaucracy as it responded to the twin demands of multiculturalism and affirmative action in the late 1960s.
The implementation of quotas masquerading as goals required the expansion of the bureaucracy to oversee programs, implement coercive requirements, and placate government bureaucrats who conducted audits of diversity achievements.
Colleges of education responded to these demands by increasing their programs in higher education administration. Those who survived the “rigorous intellectual demands” of such programs could sit on an administrative perch and control budgets and personnel decisions of faculty that viewed them as the ignorant children of a lesser god.
This resulted in a new class of professional administrators drawn both from colleges of education and from faculty who no longer possessed a desire for scholarship as much as a desire to implement a progressive agenda.
The new class’ behaviors could find parallels in the writings of Yugoslav philosopher and critic of communism Milovan Djilas. Academic administrators became a class unto themselves with their own ideology and interests that increasingly departed from the historic purposes of higher education.
This new class was nurtured on the philosophy prevalent in colleges of education that higher education was about taking the progeny of the “great unwashed” and reeducating them to become committed progressives. College was about changing values and educating students to embrace the leftist view of “social responsibility” and “social justice.”
Such shibboleths as diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice became mechanisms for implementing revisionist history, substituting activism for scholarship, and indoctrinating a captive audience of naïve young adults into the glories of progressive solutions to complex economic and social problems.
Alexandria Ocasio-cortez Husband
The captive audience of the classroom was, nonetheless, insufficient to satisfy the new class’ quest to remake the university into a hothouse for progressive ideology.
Like all bureaucrats seeking a proliferation of new offices, they quickly discovered the untapped resources of the college dormitories and orientation programs, what has been described as the “shadow university,” could provide additional venues for coerced political indoctrination. Many of these programs were fashioned on the theories and approaches of Lawrence Kohlberg, whose “Just Community” outcomes, like John Dewey’s, were inspired by collectivism.
It is no accident that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spouts socialist banalities. This is what colleges teach.
As progressive ideologies and political correctness became woven into the cultural fabric of higher education, people who did not share those values did not look upon higher education as a career -- unless they gravitated toward the sciences and technical fields.
Political correctness produced the activist scholar, who, in the true Marxist sense of the word “praxis,” demands to use university resources for tribal leftist political activism while arguing that activism be considered a glorified substitute for scholarship.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the product of the modern university. We might find her naivete and ignorance laughable, but the joke is on us because she is but a symptom of her generation, and we have subsidized the making of that ignorance.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science who has spent 35 years in academia at major research universities. He was a Bradley Fellow with the Heritage Foundation and is currently a distinguished Fellow with Hyam Salomon Center.
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The feud between New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, continues to play out on Twitter, with the latest blow coming from the left Thursday.
In an unusual attempt at unity, Cruz retweeted a message from Ocasio-Cortez regarding the latest development in the GameStop saga that has plagued Wall Street this week, creeping it’s way into Washington, D.C.
Ocasio-Cortez condemned the online trading platform Robinhood, after it restricted users on its app from trading GameStop shares, after the failing retailer saw an unprecedented uptick in its stock this week.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Parents Wealth
In an attempt to curb trading by small investors -- who some Wall Street veterans fear could destroy hedge funds -- Robinhood took steps to prevent its users from being able to trade freely and reversed the upward trend in GameStop stock value Thursday.
'This is unacceptable,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. 'We now need to know more about [Robinhood’s] decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.'
Cruz threw his support behind the Democrat, retweeting the message and simply stating, 'Fully agree.'
But instead of acknowledging the rare occasion the two congressional lawmakers could actually find themselves in agreement on an issue, Ocasio-Cortez rebuffed the senator’s support, diverting the conversation to the attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.
'I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out,' Ocasio-Cortez shot back at Cruz.
'Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign,' she added.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Background
The New York Democrat has held Cruz and other GOP lawmakers accountable for the breach on the U.S. Capitol after they propagated debunked allegations against the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
The attack happened as lawmakers in the House and Senate separated to review and vote on the Electoral College results for states that some GOP lawmakers, including Cruz, objected to.
Videos that surfaced during and after the attack showed some of the pro-Trump supporters specifically targeting certain Democrats like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez.
The New York Democrat has repeatedly called for Cruz’s resignation from office.