A Campaign Roundup
Kamala's shadow and the copy/paste of politics
Inflation is “killing us without killing us,” says one woman during a TV interview. When you have to pick between feeding your kids or feeding yourself, that’s bad.
Kamala Harris has not been forthcoming about many of her policy stances so far, but has said she will introduce “anti-gouging” laws that would essentially introduce price controls on food, drugs and other goods. Even the Washington Post thought that sounded a little communist. Soviet-era controls kept prices low for a while, before massive shortages.
But as many have pointed out, it wasn’t long ago that V.P Harris was raving about “Bidenomics”, which has made inflation much worse. Now, she seems to be blaming greedy grocery stores and Big Pharma for making life hard for average Americans, instead of policies she helped implement. Washington Examiner:
“Where Harris really takes the cake is her primary solution to the inflation created by her tiebreaking votes for the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and $1.3 trillion Inflation Reduction Act. In response to a 20% increase in overall prices since she became vice president, and a 4% decrease in real average weekly wages, Harris has borrowed from a president who began the only inflationary cycle worse than the one stoked by her and Biden: Former President Richard Nixon.”
A few accounts pointed out the strange fact: V.P. Harris is running against herself.
V.P. Harris also announced that she would make food and service industry tips tax-exempt, which sounds rather like something Donald Trump announced a few weeks ago. It’s not clear how many people that would actually impact, since a lot of servers are already don’t pay federal income tax. Nor is it clear that presidents can decide taxation policy.
One other policy was that she would increase the child tax credit, which Senator J. D Vance had already said he would do. It seems that even the story of letting Governor Tim Walz know he was her choice for running mate was familiar. In one of the only interviews Harris has done since securing the Democrat’s nomination, she and Walz discussed how he didn’t pick up when she called to tell him. Maybe that’s just how it goes with running mates? J. D. Vance told a similar story a while back, about how he missed the call from Donald Trump who ended up speaking to his son.
Donald Trump is back on Twitter, chatting to Elon Musk for almost two hours. The discussion was a genius move or a waste of time, depending who you asked. It was wide-ranging and thoughtful or it was two mega-egos rambling about themselves, depending who you asked.
Takeways: The Hill, Not the Bee