Tag Archives: political parties

What She Said Then, What She Says Now

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News outlet writers are starting to object, however mildly, to Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ reluctance to do interviews and news conferences. Harris did do the one interview recently, with a friendly interviewer and while accompanied by her Comfort Running Mate, but that’s it. The press does have a beef about her apparent fear of sitting for unscripted interviews with objective interviewers—and doing them frequently and alone—and to have unscripted, free-wheeling news conferences of some duration and frequency where she wouldn’t know the questions in advance.

The press, though, couches their objections in the premise that without these interviews and news conferences, they won’t know what her platform is or what policies she intends to push were she elected.

Those of us outside the press, us less credulous average Americans, do know what her platform and policies are—Harris has told us quite clearly over the last several years, right up to mid-2024 when she supplanted Joe Biden as Party’s candidate.

Here is her platform made manifest, from what she has said and what she’s saying now, even if her remarks today are scattered about, and her remarks yesterday are being busily ignored by those same news outlet writers.

What She Said Then What She Says Now
There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking, as vice president I did not ban fracking, as president I will not ban fracking
“an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal”
And: once pledged to close all privately-run immigration detention centers “on day one” during her first presidential campaign		 Harris’ campaign manager: “I think at this point, you know, the policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue”
January 2017 criticized t Obama’s refusal to veto a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.
I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza…the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.  We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [not set at the feet of Hamas].
What She Said Then What She Still Says
Tax each stock and bond trade
Roll back 2017 tax cuts
Raise capital gains tax rates at the same rates as ordinary income		 Raise corporate taxes
Tax unrealized capital gains
4% “income-based premium” on households making more than $100,000 annually to pay for her version of “Medicare for All”
$10 trillion in public and private spending over 10 years to create millions of jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions		 Expand child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, to be paid for by “there’s a great return on investment.”
Spending $25,000 via “tax credit” to cover the down payment costs for “first-time home buyers”

Do we believe her when she was saying what she believed, or do we believe her foxhole conversions of convenience today? I suggest, on the other hand, that where her positions today are substantially of those from yesterday, we certainly can take her at her word, and these are part of her clearly stated platform, also.

She Contradicts Herself

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris does this with some regularity. Here’s her latest self-contradiction:

If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan, because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad based economic growth[.]

Capital gains are the stuff of investment, both its goal and the source of funds for further investment as well as for initial investment in different directions.

Thus: Harris would “encourage” investment by taking investment funds away from investors via her higher taxes.

That’s some investment encouragement.

A Couple of Questions

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Former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump says he wants to “once again turn America into the manufacturing superpower of the world,” and that a couple of the ways he’d achieve that would be to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% for those companies that make their products in the US and by applying tariffs on foreign-made goods.

One question concerns how strictly he’d apply that tax break criterion—or how strictly Congress would allow him to. Would making their products in the US include or exclude companies who assemble their products in the US, but do so from components or subassemblies that are imported? If implemented in some form, would the exclusion include components or subassemblies that are made in USMCA members Mexico and Canada?

The subassembly bit especially would impact the several car companies that assemble their vehicles in the US, but these are far from the only companies that do that. Which brings up another question: what about those international companies headquartered in other nations but that assemble/manufacture in US factories products for sale in the US. Would the 15% tax apply to the US component of those businesses? To the whole foreign-domiciled company?

How would the tariffs apply to the components imported for final product assembly? How would the tariffs apply to those foreign-headquartered companies that bring in components for final assembly in the US and sale in the US?

Answers need not block either of the two proposals, but they do need to be worked out.

He’s Being Generous

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In Gerard Baker’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, he called out Gwen Walz, ex-teacher and wife of Progressive-Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate, for her “teacher voice” instruction to Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance in telling him to “mind your own business” on the subject of Vance’s remarks about traditional families.

Baker correctly noted that, further into her be quiet “teaching,” Walz distorted Vance’s position by emphatically suggesting, with no evidence to support her distortion, that Vance opposed nontraditional means of making babies, for instance fertility treatments. Then Baker added this:

[I]t was the “teacher voice” remark that I found instructive.
It unintentionally captured the Democratic idea of the polity they seek to lead and reshape. It spoke to how they view themselves—and us. They are the teachers, equipped with the knowledge and authority to direct their hapless charges. We are the students, naive and ill-informed, sometimes attentive but too often insubordinate, with minds that need to be shaped and disciplined.

I’ll be more straightforward and blunt: this is the contempt in which Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and the Left hold us average Americans. It continues and extends the contempt one of the founders of the modern progressive movement had toward us. In Herb Croly’s own words:

…the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

It’s time to put an end to Party’s contempt for us, it’s time to put an end to Party’s attempt to rule over us, and the opportunity for that is this November.

Biden-Harris Support of Anti-Israel Terrorism Made Manifest

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The Biden-Harris administration is emphasizing its dislike of Israel and its support, increasingly untacit, for the terrorist Hamas.

President Biden claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal with Hamas terrorists.

And this, in responding to a reporter’s question while he’s vacationing—again—in Delaware:

Mr President, do you think it’s time for Prime Minister Netanyahu to do more on this issue? Do you think he is doing enough?
No.

And

I spoke to his [Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s] mom and dad, and we are not giving up. We are going to continue to push as hard as we can. Thank you[.]

Unfortunately, disgustingly, the pressure the “we” of the Biden-Harris administration promises to continue is on Israel. They don’t care that it’s Hamas that’s refusing every deal offered, including those to which Israel has agreed.

It would be better were the energy of that pressure applied to the terrorists and to the terrorists’ backer, Iran, instead.

But this administration, like his mentor’s administration (when Biden was Vice President) before it, actively does not like Israel and, apparently, Jews, to the extent the administration even makes excuses for the terrorists, demanding ceasefires that can only favor Hamas with their implementation.