barney

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal 'would be a loser' for Democrats against Trump in 2020, says Barney Frank

The Green New Deal, unveiled by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, will not resonate with American voters, longtime Democrat Barney Frank told CNBC on Tuesday.

The proposal, which calls for generating 100 percent of the nation's power from renewable sources within 10 years, is emerging as a major campaign issue, with all the Democratic senators running for president in 2020 pledging their support and President Donald Trump and Republicans blasting it.

"I think the Green New Deal would be loser," said Frank, the former Massachusetts congressman who retired in 2013 after more than three decades on Capitol Hill. "There's an argument that you don't destabilize a society by doing too much change at once."

Critics of Frank's signature legislation, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, had expressed similar concerns. The measure, also written by then-Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was crafted after the 2008 financial crisis and signed into law in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama.

"There are people who are skeptical of government," said Frank, who has defended Dodd-Frank for years against accusations that it was too broad and disruptive to the financial industry. "People like me who do want to expand the government role in some areas need to understand that we need to show how that works. You have to do it in pieces. And then as you show that it worked, you build on that."

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who unsuccessfully sought the 2016 Democratic nomination that went to Hillary Clinton — is among the senators supporting the Green New Deal. He announced Tuesday he's running for the White House again.

In a "Squawk Box" interview, Frank said, as he did four years ago, that he does not believe Sanders can be elected president.

"Bernie Sanders, obviously, makes a very important contribution," Frank said. "I wish the American people were more willing to vote for what he wants."

The other senators who already announced bids for the White House are Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren, New York's Kirsten Gillibrand, California's Kamala Harris, New Jersey's Cory Booker, and Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar.

Ohio's Sherrod Brown, Oregon's Jeff Merkley and Colorado's Michael Bennet are other senators said to be thinking about Democratic presidential bids.

Joe Biden, former vice president and a former longtime senator himself, is also expected to jump into the race soon.

Matthew Barney’s New Film Stars an NRA Rifle Champ as a Mythological Huntress in the Idaho Mountains

For his newest film, Matthew Barney didn’t cast names as big as Maggie Gyllenhaal or Paul Giamatti, who both starred in his previous film River of Fundament, but he did opt for an attention-grabbing lead: Anette Wachter, three-time NRA National long-range champion and a gun blogger.

Titled Redoubt, the film is a loose adaptation of the myth of Diana, the Greek goddess of the hunt, who is played by Wachter. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the young hunter Actaeon comes across the goddess bathing after a hunt. When Diana notices the uninvited guest she angrily turns him into a deer. His own dogs then kill him.

“In casting the role of Diana, Matthew considered many women with different backgrounds, but sharpshooting ability was an essential skill for the role,” a representative from Barney’s studio told artnet News. “Anette’s Diana was tasked with, among other things, shooting a quarter-inch-thick copper engraving plate from hundreds of feet away.

The film follows a series of wolf hunts that take place over seven days and seven nights in the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho. (Barney spent much of his youth living in Boise.) It debuts March 1 as part of an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery—the first time Barney has shown at his alma mater since receiving his BA there in 1989—before traveling to UCCA Beijing and the Hayward Gallery in London.

Production still from Matthew Barney’s Redoubt (2018). © Matthew Barney. Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels, and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

“With this project, I was interested in making a portrait of the central Idaho region that would allow for a broad range of energies and expressions, both beautiful and problematic,” Barney said in an interview with the Yale Art Gallery’s magazine. “When I lived there in the 1970s and 1980s, that isolation felt more significant than it does now, and that was a chal­lenge for a teenager interested in finding out what was happening on the other side of the mountain. But, even now, there are strong isolationist tenden­cies that carry on in that region.”

Redoubt is 134 minutes long—considerably shorter than the 330 minutes of River of Fundament and the 398 minutes of his previous epic, The Cremaster Cycle. Like the latter, Redoubt also features no dialogue. It does, however, incorporate a great deal of choreography, arranged by dancer Eleanor Bauer, who also performs in Redoubt.

The film also stars Sandra Lamouche of the Bigstone Cree Nation in the role of the Hoop Dancer, who performs her own tribal dance choreography. Barney himself plays a character called the Engraver, who surreptitiously stalks the hunters and documents their actions in a series of copper engravings.

Production still from Matthew Barney’s Redoubt (2018). © Matthew Barney. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels, and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

Those engravings will be on view in the exhibition, alongside four monumental cast sculptures that the artist made by pouring molten copper and brass into the bodies of dead trees, which had been culled from the remains of a forest fire in the Sawtooth range.

Matthew Barney, Virgins (2018). © Matthew Barney. Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

“One extremist movement in parts of Idaho, eastern Oregon and Washington, and western Montana and Wyoming calls for a separation from government and urban life and a return to the land and is known as the ‘American Redoubt,’” Barney told the Yale magazine. “A redoubt generally refers to a defensive military fortification, especially an isolated earth­work, or to a defense of a threatened social or psychological position. But for me, the term ‘redoubt’ resonates as a description of a more abstract form of isolation or withdrawal.”

Matthew Barney, Diana: State two (2018). © Matthew Barney. Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

The film will be screened at set times outside the gallery, with the public premiere taking place March 2 at 1:30 p.m. and 6 p.m.

“Matthew Barney: Redoubt” will be on view from March 1 to June 16, 2019, at the Yale University Art Gallery. A catalogue on the project and the making of the film, published and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition.

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Barney Frank says Green New Deal a 2020 'loser'

Former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., isn’t holding back when it comes to commenting on the Green New Deal, calling it a “loser” highlighting a deep divide in the Democratic Party.

"I think the Green New Deal would be a loser. I do not think that people are going to be advocating that whole package." Frank told CNBC on Tuesday.

The legislation proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has gotten mixed reactions among Dems.

Former Rep. Barney Frank, seen here in May 2018, blasted the Green New Deal in an interview. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for PFLAG, File)

"There's an argument that you don't destabilize a society by doing too much change at once," Frank said. “People like me who do want to expand the government role in some areas need to understand that we need to show how that works. You have to do it in pieces. And then as you show that it worked, you build on that."

'MODERATE' A DIRTY WORD? 2020 DEMS CRINGE AT BEING LABELED LESS THAN LIBERAL

Frank also weighed in on the 2020 election chances of newly declared candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and commented on the some of the new members of the party now in Congress and the importance of the more centrist members.

“The people who are being listed now as the leading edge, none of them beat a Republican.  None of them frankly contributed to having a majority in the House that expand medical care, that would fight for good climate change policies, that would build infrastructure and protect union rights.  They all beat other Democrats where the policy differences are fairly small or replaced other Democrats.” Frank said.

“The people who are going to be critical are the ones who beat Republicans. They are clearly liberals on public policy issues but if they had advocated the list of policies Senator Sanders has advocated, they wouldn’t have won.”

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Sanders, who lost the 2016 party nomination to Hillary Clinton, announced his 2020 campaign earlier Tuesday.  While Frank said he believes in most of Sanders’ agenda, he's pragmatic in his assessment of Sanders' chances to clinch the party nom.

"I wish the American people were more willing to vote for what he wants," said Frank.