Sorry I’ve been out of it. Been pretty busy. Here’s some good news today:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) are reportedly planning to unveil legislation for a Green New Deal in the coming days.
Markey's office confirmed to The Hill that the senator was working with the freshman New York representative on a plan, adding that an announcement regarding the bill's contents is coming soon.
Language in the bill was not yet final, the spokesperson said, nor was a timeline for when the bill would be unveiled. A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez did not respond immediately to The Hill's request for comment.
Here’s some more info:
Details: It’s unclear to what extent the proposal will adhere to a draft legislative document circulating that describes the policy, which dates back to Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign website.
- That document includes a goal of 100% renewable electricity within 10 years (up from 17% today), a federal jobs guarantee for people working in the low-carbon transition, and universal healthcare.
- It’s light on details on how that would be funded and is also silent on whether the policy includes a price on carbon dioxide emissions, long considered central to climate change policy.
Between the lines: The two Democrats leading the proposal represent a bridge between the old and new guard progressives. Markey was co-author of the last big climate-change legislation Congress considered a decade ago, while Ocasio-Cortez is the highest profile member of a new crop of House progressives.
This is great news because the Green New Deal keeps gaining momentum.
In other Markey-related news, he’s also been busy cracking down on Facebook:
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Wednesday called on Facebook to stop paying teen-agers for personal information and said he would be introducing his bill to extend online privacy protections from kids to youth.
Markey has long argued that current online protections in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) he spearheaded be extended from kids (13 and under) to teens as old as 17.
Markey was reacting to a TechCrunch report that Facebook had offered teens money for giving up personal information including communications, web histories and photos.
“It is inherently manipulative to offer teens money in exchange for their personal information when younger users don’t have a clear understanding how much data they’re handing over and how sensitive it is,” Markey said. “I strongly urge Facebook to immediately cease its recruitment of teens for its Research Program and explicitly prohibit minors from participating."
He put in a plug for his ‘Do Not Track Kids Act,' which would extend protections to teens.
That comes only a day after Markey joined with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in a letter demanding information from Facebook about "knowingly" trying to get kids to spend their parents' money on in-app purchases those parents didn't know about.
Click below to donate and get involved with Markey and Ocasio-Cortez’s re-election campaigns:
Ed Markey
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez