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Recently the (liberal) Washington Post fact-checked some of the claims of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new socialist candidate for Congress in New York. Ms. Cortez, who has a joint degree in economics and international relations, often boasts that she graduated 4th in her class at Boston University. Yet, points out Victor Davis Hanson, many of the statements she has made since becoming the face of progressive Democrats have proven either “wrong or unhinged.”
In an interview on the rebirthed Firing Line, the international-relations major was forced to admit that she knew relatively little about the facts on the ground in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, other than boilerplate left-wing anti-Israeli talking points. She claimed that the unemployment rate is low because “everyone has two jobs. In truth, only one in 20 do, about 5 percent of the American workforce.
Crazier was her statement that the “upper middle class does not exist anymore.” In fact, its numbers are at a near all-time high, nearly encompassing one-third of adults.
A series of Ocasio-Cortez’s assertions about Medicare and Obamacare turn out to be equally fallacious. She claimed that ICE had a “bed quota” that had to be filled by unsuspecting immigrants. That too is a false statement. ICE keeps a minimum of 34,000 beds for surges of detainees, but it is absurd to suggest that the agency must keep them filled.
No doubt Ocasio-Cortez, at 28, is still young and inexperienced. But when she refers to her own supposedly stellar academic record, and then in a series of statements illustrates how poorly educated she is, one wonders, What exactly is the value of $300,000 Boston University degree?
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