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Strange Bedfellows for a Popular but Dumb Idea

What we really have here is a made-for-social-media confab of two individuals who really, really like such attention.

Andrew Donaldson
3 min readMay 31, 2019
Photo by photo by Jaime Rodriguez Sr. (public domain)

There is a popular meme on social media where you start with the Avengers movies and go “the most ambitious crossover since…” and then fill in whatever. Senator Ted Cruz and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apparently want to give it a whirl:

The unlikely pair share the popular opinion that Washington is corrupt, and needs to be reformed.

On Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted an analysis by Public Citizen which found that nearly 60% of former members of the previous Congress who have taken jobs outside of politics — including Ocasio-Cortez’s predecessor, Joe Crowley — are now working as lobbyists or influencing policy in some way. Certain laws prevent members of Congress from lobbying for a certain period of time, but they are loosely enforced.

“If you are a member of Congress + leave, you shouldn’t be allowed to turn right around&leverage your service for a lobbyist check,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “I don’t think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you’ve served in Congress. At minimum there should be a long wait period.”

Cruz then replied to

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Andrew Donaldson
Andrew Donaldson

Written by Andrew Donaldson

Writer. Mountaineer diaspora. Veteran. Managing Editor @ordinarytimemag on culture & politics, food writing @yonderandhome, Host @heardtellshow & other media

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