DELEITURAS

Listening to the President, his administration, some in Congress and several news reports, many would say the economy is recovering slowly but gaining traction. Seeing the economic data released today may reveal a somewhat more real reality.

The unemployment figures released this morning seem promising, but only in a vacuum. Claims dropped 24,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 297,000 for May. What the report doesn’t tell us is why fewer people filed claims. Was it because all of these folks have found gainful employment? Or are fewer people re-entering the labor market after having given up on finding a job some time ago?

Home builders are feeling less confident in a housing recovery. The latest survey of builders dropped to 45 for May and the April number has been adjusted lower.  Anything below 50 is considered “negative sentiment.”

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s business activity index dropped from 16.6 in April to 15.4 in May. New orders also saw a decline from  14.8 to 10.5 indicating that the pace of growth is slowing.

If economists’ data isn’t enough, two of the nation’s largest retailers are reporting disappointing earnings.

Wal-Mart reported the smallest sales growth in 5 years today. The report blames the harsh winter for keeping customers out of their stores, but then goes on to forecast a second quarter that will come in below analysts’ expectations.

Kohl’s reported their first quarter results today and missed – on both sales and earnings. The retailer showed a $13 million drop from the same time last year in sales and missed analysts’ expectations by $15 million.

At least three progressive Democrats have broken with their party to criticize President Donald Trump for his Wednesday decision to oppose Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Ro Khanna of California excoriated Trump when he became one of several world leaders to recognize Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as the country’s leader instead of Maduro.

The people of Venezuela have faced extreme economic hardship and crackdowns on their freedom under Maduro, who succeeded infamous socialist dictator Hugo Chavez. The Trump administration announced sanctions against Maduro Monday.

Omar is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Gabbard has announced a 2020 Democratic presidential run.

“A U.S. backed coup in Venezuela is not a solution to the dire issues they face. Trump’s efforts to install a far-right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region. We must support Mexico, Uruguay [and] the Vatican’s efforts to facilitate a peaceful dialogue,” Omar wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Gabbard also spoke out against recognition of Guaido by the U.S. Nearly 15 nations including Brazil and Canada have also recognized Guaido over Maduro, reported Bloomberg.

“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders — so we have to stop trying to choose theirs,” Gabbard wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Khanna, who is on the House Armed Services Committee, released the following statement on Venezuela Thursday:

The United States should not anoint the leader of the opposition in Venezuela during an internal, divided conflict. There is no doubt the Maduro’s economic policies have been terrible, and he has engaged in financial mismanagement and also political authoritarianism. But crippling sanctions and threats of military action are making life worse for ordinary Venezuelans, and the U.S. stands alone in its decision to impose economic sanctions against the Venezuelan government. We should work to support the efforts of Uruguay, Mexico and the Holy See for a negotiated settlement and end the sanctions that are making the hyperinflation worse. I plan to circulate a letter to my colleagues to the Trump Administration urging them to immediately change course in its policy toward Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Democrats like Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois sided with Trump on the foreign policy issue. Durbin said in a statement Wednesday:

Last year I visited Venezuela and found a country on the verge of political, economic, and humanitarian collapse. I told then-President Maduro that if he went ahead with a sham election under absurdly rigged conditions he would find his regime even further isolated and in question. Tragically that is exactly what has happened and why President Trump, Secretary General of the Organization of American States Almagro, and other nations in the region have appropriately recognized National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as the constitutionally appropriate leader of Venezuela.

U.S. action in Venezuela has also included $20 million in humanitarian assistance, reported the Miami Herald.

Maduro, 56, countered Trump’s decision by saying he would cut diplomatic ties with the U.S. during a speech outside his presidential palace in Caracas Wednesday.

Trump’s announcement came after Guaido, 35, declared himself the country’s interim president amidst “nationwide protests” Wednesday, reported NPR. Guaido is the head of Venezuela’s Congress, according to CNBC. CNBC also reported:

Venezuelan opposition sympathizers had been urging Guaido to assume the presidency since Maduro was inaugurated to a second term on Jan. 10 following a widely boycotted election last year that the United States and many other foreign governments described as a fraudulent.

Brazil and Canada have also recognized Guaido over Maduro. Maduro compared Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to dictator Adolf Hitler in a speech on Jan. 14 after Brazil recognized Gauido.

Wait a second! Didn’t we just go through this? Doesn’t this sound like déjà vu all…over again?

Let’s look back. Less than 20 years ago, in order to buy a home one had to meet certain criteria. That is: to have a verifiable job, have saved (yes, scrimped and done without to save) 20% to put down (certain qualified groups like vets could get loans with less down), and to have a history of paying bills in a timely fashion. It was a standard that not everyone could make.

But the government, your congress, in its infinite wisdom said, “Hey, we think everybody should be able to buy a home. After all, it’s the American Dream.” And Presto! They changed the rules. They told banks to accept less than verifiable job information. They told banks that people shouldn’t have to save money to buy a home. And they told banks that paying bills on time was an ideal, not a requirement.

And Congress said banks could offer low equity loans, creative financing, including interest only so that everyone could afford  to own a home.

Of course, we’re all for home ownership. But it comes with a price. Our family chose to do with less so that we could save money needed to put down on a home. We knew that there was a limit on what size of home we could afford. Common sense…and the mortgage company…dictated our price range. We bought our home hoping that the value would increase, but realizing that the five year balloon payment meant that we would have to refinance no matter.

But what happened? You know the story. Heck, it isn’t ancient history. The housing bubble burst less than ten years ago. People who couldn’t really afford to be in homes suddenly discovered they couldn’t make the payments when the real loans came due (the interest only and sub-prime loans only lasted so long). The market value of homes dropped and more new homeowners realized they owed way more than their home was worth. Many walked. Leaving banks holding the mortgages until the banks folded leaving, yes, you guessed it, taxpayers footing the bill.

After most banks were bailed out and scolded by the ‘smarter, wiser’ administration they went back to requiring certain criteria before they would loan money. A lesson learned. Or so we thought.

This week President Obama came out with a new proposal wanting banks to accept less than qualified people for home loans. After all, it’s the American Dream. You can read about it in the Washington Post.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed his pleasure on Monday for the impending Senate vote on the Green New Deal, Democrats’ expansive anti-climate change plan.

“I could not be more glad that the American people will have the opportunity to learn precisely where each one of their senators stand on the “Green New Deal,” McConnell tweeted. “A radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy.”

McConnell revealed in February that he will force a vote before the August recess, and the vote could be held as early as Tuesday, according to NBC News.

“The proposal we are talking about is, frankly, delusional,” McConnell said on the Senate floor earlier in March. “It is so unserious that it ought to be beneath one of our two major political parties to line up behind it.”

While Democrats have largely rallied in support the of the Green New Deal, it has been a wedge issue among voters for its radical policy prescriptions. With a goal of moving toward net zero emissions over a 10-year period, the proposal calls to “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who introduced the resolution along with Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, attacked Republicans on Saturday for bringing her proposal to the Senate floor for a vote.

“The GOP’s whole game of wasting votes in Congress to target others “on the record”, for leg they have no intent to pass, is a disgrace,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Stop wasting the American peoples’ time + learn to govern. Our jobs aren’t for campaigning, & that’s exactly what these bluff-votes are for.”

Two pseudo-conservative groups’ presidents, Ryan Alexander of “Taxpayers for Common Sense” and Thomas Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste, lied to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 5th.

In an attempt to fool the Congress into agreeing to deep, harmful defense cuts – whacking at the military’s muscle, not fat – they lied to the Congress by calling a host of crucial, desperately needed defense programs “waste.” This has recently become the Left’s favorite tactic in its campaign to gut America’s defense.

Instead of overtly saying “let’s disarm ourselves unilaterally and then everyone else will be nice enough to do so” or “let’s disarm ourselves; we don’t need a strong military”, most leftists – other than the most strident liberals in Congress – have shifted to labelling every defense program they oppose (i.e. the vast majority of defense programs) as “waste.”

This is supposed to justify deep, crippling defense cuts and to fool fiscal conservatives into agreeing to such disastrous cuts.

We conservatives must not be fooled by this. The vast majority of what the Left, including TCS, calls “waste”, are actually needed, well-justified defense programs – not just weapons, but also the facilities that support them and the troops.

Specifically, TCS lied to the Congress that the planned CMRR (chemical metallurgy research) facility (intended to produce plutonium pits, crucial components of nuclear warheads) and other planned nuclear facilities are “wasteful”, and that the programs targeted by TCS and POGO (which is funded by George Soros) are also “wasteful” and deserving termination (these proposals included the cancellation of the badly-needed nuclear facilities listed above). They furthermore lied that their proposals would save $800 bn (which they would not).

The reason why their claims are blatant lies is simple – because the vast majority of the defense programs they’ve targeted are not “waste”, but crucial, NEEDED, and well-justified programs. Specifically:

1) The CMRR facility is absolutely necessary to produce plutonium pits – crucial components of nuclear warheads – in sufficient quantities for America’s geriatric nuclear stockpile, which is long overdue for such modernization. The facility currently responsible for the production – the Los Alamos National Laboratory – is dilapidated beyond economic repair and in dire need of replacement, and its plutonium pit production capacity is woefully inadequate to sustain even a reduced nuclear arsenal of 1,000-1,550 warheads, let alone anything larger.

Likewise, the Uranium Production Facility is needed to produce highly-enriched uranium for America’s uranium-based nuclear warheads, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These two facilities are NOT anyone’s pork projects – they are urgently needed national security priorities. They were both promised by President Obama during the Senate debate on New START ratification, and the requirement that these facilities be built was included in the Senate Resolution of Ratification of New START (and is thus the law of the land). The requirement for the CMRR facility was recently reaffirmed by the entire Congress in the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins. Thus, the requirement for these facilities is the law of the land.

2) The Next Generation Bomber/Long Range Strike Bomber is an urgently needed replacement for the USAF’s B-1 and B-52 bombers, both of which have huge radar signatures and, as a result, cannot survive in anything other than benign combat environments where the only opponents are insurgents or primitive countries unable to contest airspace control. They cannot survive in any situation where the enemy has advanced (or even upgraded Soviet) air defense systems, such as the S-300, S-400, S-500, or even the SA-5 and SA-6. Any airspace defended by such systems, including that of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela, is firmly closed to them.

Yet, the USAF has to be able to strike deeply into these countries, from over the horizon to be credible in any contingency involving them, or in nuclear deterrence scenarios. Today, its only bombers capable of that are its 20 B-2s. Such a number is woefully insufficient, due to the sheer number of targets among other things.

The requirement for an NGB has been validated by two successive Quadrennial Defense Reviews, successive Defense and Air Force Secretaries, Chiefs of Staff, other USAF generals (e.g. David Deptula and former CSAF Gen. John M. Loh), and numerous think-tanks and analysts, including the CSBA, the Heritage Foundation, and Dr Rebecca Grant. The USAF says the new bomber is an absolute requirement, that deferring or cancelling it would be “very high-risk”, and that it’s a crucial part of their mission (CSAF Gen. Mark Welsh). Indeed, the bomber is the central part of the AirSea Battle plan to defeat anti-access/area denial threats. Without the bomber, the whole plan collapses and the US won’t be able to counter such threats.

3) Kill the V-22 Osprey, which has proven itself in THREE different war theaters (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya), saving countless lives, delivering troops and supplies into and out of combat zones and accumulating over 150,000 flight hours. Marine pilots love it; the USMC Commandant praises and supports it; and it is twice cheaper to buy and operate than its proposed replacement, the CH-53. It can fly twice farther and twice faster than any helicopter. It’s needed to replace the C-2 COD aircraft, the USAF’s CSAR helos, and the presidential helo. Yet, TCS and POGO anti-defense hacks want to kill it.

4) Permanently cut the Navy’s carrier fleet to 10 vessels (by retiring the USS George Washington in 2016 26 years early) and eliminate an entire carrier group – not just the flattop itself. This would significantly weaken the Navy and undermine its power projection capability by reducing the number of platforms serving this purpose. Only a carrier or a long-range bomber can deliver strikes against enemy targets wherever and whenever needed without host country basing. With just 10 flattops, the Navy would have no more than 5-6 available for duty globally; this means either 2 for the Persian Gulf and only 3-4 or the Pacific, or just one in the Gulf and 4-5 in the Pacific.

5) Cut the Navy’s current and planned SSBN fleet to just 8 boats, which means only 4-5 would be at sea at any given time, i.e. America’s enemies would have to sink only 4-5 of them, while the rest would be in port, being easy targets. This would gut the naval leg of the nuclear triad.

6) Eliminate the DOE’s reserve stock of highly-enriched uranium for nuclear warheads. (See above.)

7) Cancel the F-35B Marine Corps variant (along with the Navy’s C variant), leaving the Marine Corps with no attack jets to fly from the Navy’s small carriers (amphibious assault ships) when its Harriers retire. As USMC Commandant Gen. Amos has said, this would cut the Marine’s combat aviation power by 50%!

8) Closing the Army’s tank production line in Lima, OH… when the Army’s Abrams tanks need refurbishment and upgrade, and when the Army plans to reopen the line in 2017 to produce Ground Combat Vehicles.

9) Withdrawing the remainder of US troops from Europe and laying them off (i.e. more jobless, homeless veterans), thus cutting the force structure further and significantly undercutting the military’s power projection capability, because units based in-theater, closed to the combat zone or area of action, are much CHEAPER to deploy and operate, and can react much faster and more effectively, than units based in the CONUS. (Similarly, one warship based in-theater, e.g. in Europe or Japan, is worth four warships based in the CONUS.) The principal reason why is precisely because they’re based in-theater – they don’t have to waste money and time flying in from the CONUS and then returning to the CONUS.

10) “Freeze” funding for the Ground-Based Midcourse Missile Defense system protecting the US from ballistic missile attack and not build any more such interceptors or siloes for them – whether in the US or anywhere else. This would leave the US totally unprotected from any ICBMs Iran fields in the future (it is projected to field them by 2015-2016).

These are just the most damaging, most crippling of the defense cuts that POGO and TCS have proposed. Implementing them would gut the military and make it unable to counter anti-access/area-denial threats – the most pervasive and ubiquitous threats the US faces today – because TCS and POGO have targeted the very weapons and capabilities needed to counter these threats.

Meanwhile, CAGW’s Thomas Schatz, while also lying that “the Pentagon is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse”, specifically targeted the Medium Extended Area Defense System (MEADS) for killing (the DOD has agreed but wants to complete the R&D phase so as not to leave taxpayers with no return on their investment).

While MEADS’s opponents falsely claim that MEADS would be ineffective and unneeded, it IS very much needed and has passed its tests. It is needed to replace the woefully obsolete PATRIOT system, whose radar can look only at 90 degrees, not all around itself (360 degrees) and has been less than spectacularly effective. Moreover, despite Schatz’s lies that MEADS program partners Italy and Germany wouldn’t mind if the US quit the program, the truth is exactly the opposite: their governments just recently sent the US government a letter warning the US not to withdraw from the MEADS program.

In other words, the claims of TCS and CAGW and their presidents about defense spending are blatant lies. By lying to the Congress, they have committed a serious offense, and they should be prosecuted and severely punished for it.

A 2016 interview with CNN President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen shows he appears to have lied during his Wednesday congressional testimony, when he said he did not want to work in the White House.

When asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo if Trump would ask him to go to Washington D.C. to work for him, Cohen told Cuomo “I certainly hope so,” Cuomo followed up and asked if he would want to go, Cohen responded saying, “One hundred percent,” when asked about his future job, Cohen said “Hopefully it’ll be in Washington.”

WATCH: 

This comes after Cohen told the House Oversight Committee that, he “did not want to go to the White House, saying “I was offered jobs.”

CNN reporter Dana Bash called Cohen out after the hearing Wednesday saying, ‘he very much wanted a job in the White House.” Trump’s family also weighed in, “Michael was lobbying EVERYONE to be ‘Chief of Staff.’ It was the biggest joke in the campaign and around the office. Did he just perjure himself again?,” Eric Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Cohen is set to go to prison for 36 months, starting May 6 for lying to Congress.

This week my mother was talking about ID theft. Several of her friends had their credit card information stolen and used. Fortunately, the credit card companies caught the fraud and helped each cancel the accounts. Mom is worried about her own credit and the safety of her accounts.

And well she should be.

Yesterday it was reported that even the First Lady, Michelle Obama, had her personal information hacked and posted on a website. Some are saying this may be a hoax though it is being reported as valid information. She’s not alone. Similar ID theft has happened to other celebrities including Beyonce, Mel Gibson and even former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Obama’s are fortunate and have the Secret Service investigating. Other celebrities are able to get FBI response but for most of us it’s not so easy.

So, short of getting the Secret Service’s ear what can you do?

• If you do nothing else, you can become more aware of where you share personal information online and elsewhere.
• Make sure your wi-fi connections are secure.
• Monitor your bank and credit accounts. Many banks and credit card providers offer monitoring plans (sometimes at a cost.)
• Be sure to take advantage of the free annual credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com and monitor your credit  standing along with your free credit scores using Credit.com’s free Credit Report Card.
• For a fee you can enroll in a identity monitoring program.

You can read more at ABC Local andYahoo News. For more prevention tips visit IdentityTheft911.

 

 

Today is May 1st, also called the “International Workers’ Day”, a communist feast par excellence, celebrated by communists and socialists, indeed by Leftists of all stripes, around the world. So I would like to ask you, Dear Readers, if you can recognize which socialist party had the following platform? Whose party platform is it? (No looking it up in Google!)

“We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. (…)

All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.

The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all.

In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries.

We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on landand prevention of all speculation in land.

We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. (…)

The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program (…)The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.”

Don’t recognize whose platform is it?

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union? Of China? Of Italy? Of the USA? The French Communist Party? The French Socialist Party? The UK Labour Party? The Argentine Justicialist Party?

Nope, nope, and nope. This is the platform of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), AKA the German Nazi Party, planks no. 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, and 21.

You see, despite all the attempts by the global Left to tar the Right with responsibility for and ideological kinship with the Nazis, for all their attempts to stick the Nazi tag to the Right, for all their false claims that the Nazis were “far-right”, the Nazi Party was thoroughly LEFTIST through and through.

Nazism is a mere shorthand for “national socialism”, and that brand of socialism, while being nationalistic, was still SOCIALIST and thoroughly leftist. The Nazis advocated, and implemented, nationalisation, land reform, outlawing child labor, and the division of corporate profits.

Not only that, but their leader, Adolf Hitler, publicly said that he and other Nazis were SOCIALISTS:

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions”

– Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s speech on May 1, 1927. Cited in: Toland, John (1992). Adolf Hitler. Anchor Books. pp. 224–225. ISBN 0385037244.

No matter how hard leftists around the world deny it, national socialism was a thoroughly LEFTIST ideology, and the Nazis were their ideological, national socialist cousins. The only difference between them and communists is that communists are “international socialists.”

Part 1

Every day we hear more tales of woe from college students who are inundated in debt due to their huge student loans.  Paying off student loans is a factor affecting lifestyle choices for many. More recently, the loans have become a larger influence on graduates, impacting decisions about home buying and even marriage.

Some believe that the sudden jump in college tuition is directly related to the government taking over the student loan program and advertising easier options for students to attend college. Is this so? There does seem to be precedence. Look at the sudden, sharp increase in house prices when so many were able to get non-principle loans through government sponsored programs. Or, the drastic rise in prescription drug costs since the implementation of Medicare Part D. There may be something to this argument. Others will point to the severe financial situation of states which forced them to cut college funding.

No matter the cause, what can be done to fix the problem?

Lower interest rates, which may help in the long run, still leave students with loans and long term repayment plans. (Interest rates for undergraduate loans were approved to remain at 3.4% for one more year in the recently passed Highway Bill effectively kicking the can down the road until after the election.)

In 2007, Public Service and Public Service Loan Forgiveness was enacted. This program allows graduates who work in the public service sector full-time for ten years and make qualifying payments during those years to have the rest of their loan forgiven.

A new House bill The Student Loan Forgiveness Act, introduced by Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-MI) offers a unique solution. The Income Based Repayment plan offers: Students pay 10% of their ‘discretionary’  salary for 10 years at which time the remainder of the loan is forgiven. As expected, this bill is wildly popular with college students, especially when so many graduates are competing with experienced unemployed workers resulting in lower pay jobs. In its current form, this bill is retroactive for those who have made qualifying payments; only available for federal loans; and places caps only on future loans.

With many government programs a fairness question causes discord among those who find themselves just outside the benefits of the potential bill. If the bill passes this year students who graduated ten years ago and paid their 10% will find their loans forgiven. Qualified students who graduated over ten years ago will also find their loans forgiven but will have paid a much larger portion of their personal debt. Students who received private loans are not eligible. And students who consolidated their loans may find their repayment plan starts over from the consolidation point.

These forgiveness programs aside, one might ask why the government is responsible for both offering student loans and for offering forgiveness? Wouldn’t it make sense just to offer college at a lesser cost? Some theorize that this is further evidence of the government wanting direct involvement in one’s life choices; including employment and housing options. Some are concerned that the commitment to work ‘for the government’ is part of a hidden socialist agenda; that the more ties one has to the government the more dependent he will be on its benefits.

Fiscal conservatives and those who want smaller government look at these forgiveness programs and ask why taxpayers are again having to foot the bill? Older generations look at today’s young graduates with disbelief. Student loans are not new but were often looked at as a hold on personal growth and something that should be paid back as quickly as possible, even if necessitating working more than one job. Many believe this generation has had high expectations give them; that they should not have to start at a beginning wage for a job. They mistakenly believe they should immediately on graduation be able to afford a new car, a new home and all the good things they grew up with but without having to wait and save as their parents did.

Tuesday, Part 2 of this article will look at some options for the new high school grad: How can a student become qualified for quality employment without wallowing in school debt and how to make common sense decisions.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed Saturday that former President Ronald Reagan used certain rhetoric to pit white working class Americans against brown and black working class Americans.

“A perfect example of how special interests and the powerful have pitted white working class Americans against brown and black working class Americans is Reaganism in the ’80s when he started talking about welfare queens,” the New York Democrat said while speaking at a conference in Austin, Texas.

“So you think about this image of welfare queens and what he was really trying to talk about was … this like really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing, that were ‘sucks’ on our country,” she continued. “That’s not explicit racism but still rooted in a racist caricature.”

Ocasio-Cortez — who was born nearly nine months after Reagan left the White House — made the comments during an interview at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals. The swipe against the country’s 40th president was not the only controversial statement she made while speaking to The Intercept’s Briahna Gray.

The self-identified democratic socialist also claimed that “where we are” as Americans amounts to “garbage.”

“So when someone’s talking about ‘our core,’ they’re like, ‘Oh, this is radical,’ but it isn’t radical. This is what we’ve always been,” Ocasio-Cortez said, arguing against the notion that her proposals are too radical. “I think all of these things sound radical compared to where we are,” she continued, “but where we are is not a good thing. And this idea of like, ten percent better than garbage, it shouldn’t be what we settle for.”

Ocasio-Cortez went on to criticize the concept of political moderation.

“Moderate is not a stance. It’s just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” she said. “We’ve become so cynical that we view ‘meh’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete.”