As part of my software expert witness slavery, I’ve been working with some young attorneys. Billing rate for first year associates is now nearly $1,000 per hour, which they admit “is a lot of money for someone who doesn’t know anything.” Those fresh out of law school generally conform to orthodox ruling party political points of view. Abortion care should be provided at taxpayer expense at any stage of a pregnant person’s pregnancy (as in Maskachusetts!). If a respiratory virus emerges, Science requires that residents of the U.S. be locked down and making it illegal for healthy Americans to assemble does not violate what those without legal training might have understood as a Constitutional right to assemble. When schools are churches are ordered shut, it makes good epidemiological sense to keep alcohol and marijuana stores open and allow people to meet up via Tinder and then share a bed.
A senior associate got into the mix and he turned out to be a self-described libertarian. He pronounced “Kamala” the way that seemingly most people did through June 2024. It’s unclear how it should be pronounced, actually. Maybe “comma-la” (from Harris herself?). An Indian friend (not Elizabeth Warren) says the initial K should be pronounced more like a G. Maybe the pronunciation actually is different depending on which accent Kamala Harris is using that day or that hour?
WATCH: Over 3 minutes of Kamala Harris using different phony accents throughout the years.
Despite spending her childhood in Berkley, California and Montreal, Canada, Kamala uses what she thinks is a Detroit accent, what she thinks a southern accent in Georgia, a French accent,… pic.twitter.com/A07WzWMGkr
What I found interesting was that a non-Deplorable took personal offense at “Kamala” being pronounced, from his point of view, incorrectly. His plan to vote for Kamala Harris gave him a stake in ensuring that everyone who failed to conform with the pronunciation of the moment was disciplined.
I’ve directly observed similar exchanges a couple of other times. The Democrat explicitly says that he/she/ze/they is being “disrespected” if the Deplorable doesn’t speak Sanskrit properly.
A recent tweet from the person most qualified to be President of the United States:
This gives me a chance to dredge up one of my favorite stories at the intersection of African and American politics…
Idi Amin sent a letter to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis: “When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition.”
(from the book Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators by Riccardo Orizio)
The woman, a successful New York attorney, is remaining anonymous, but decided to speak out after Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband, denied the claims through a spokesman.
Emhoff’s accuser, who DailyMail.com is naming only as ‘Jane’, initially declined to comment on the record. But Emhoff’s denial, and his alleged hypocrisy by claiming to be a feminist in media interviews, finally became too much for her.
‘What’s frightening for a woman that’s been on the other end of it, is watching this completely fabricated persona being portrayed,’ Jane said.
‘He’s being held out to be the antithesis of who he actually is. And that is utterly shocking.’
But the second gentleman has since continued to brag about his long-held feminist values in softball media interviews arranged by the Harris presidential campaign.
‘Every time I see Doug on TV portraying the persona of a perfect spouse and non-toxic man, I wonder if Najen is watching too and feeling as disgusted as I am,’ Jane said.
(“Najen” is a reference to the Emhoff nanny who was apparently happy to do a lot of stuff that the wife wasn’t)
Here’s Kamala Harris using the word “hypothesis” in a sentence:
I’m wondering how Asian Americans with IQs of 150 and long track records of achievement process the phenomenon of Kamala Harris having been selected by Democrat elites. If Harris had been elected via primaries, the intelligent Asian American could understand Harris’s victory by reflecting that “non-Asian American voters are, on average, stupid.” But after their coup against Joe Biden, the Democrats could have selected anyone as their candidate.
Let’s consider Lisa Su, for example. She’s 54 years old, has a Ph.D. in engineering, and has successfully managed a 26,000-employee company in a competitive environment (Intel on one side and Nvidia on the other). When she was elevated to CEO in 2014, revenue at AMD was about $6 billion/year. Today it is 23 billion Bidies per year (i.e., roughly double if we adjust for inflation in the cost of stuff that investors in AMD might want to buy). How does Lisa Su watch the above video, and similar, and make sense of the selection of Kamala Harris, out of pool of more than 200 million, by what we are told is the Party of Science?
Here’s the politician whom Republican primary voters rejected delivering, without notes, a 150-year history of Florida weather, complete with the barometric pressure of various major hurricanes. (This is not to say that I endorse any particular point of view about climate change, though “Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century” (Nature 2021) suggests that DeSantis is correct that recent hurricanes aren’t evidence of significant climate change.)
WATCH: Ron DeSantis absolutely nukes a reporter who tried to tie yesterday's tornadoes from Hurricane #Milton to global warming pic.twitter.com/Pj0nENTilZ
My direct exposure to politicians on TV is minimal because I don’t watch TV or cable TV news. From skimming print media, such as the New York Times, and statements from Kamala Harris, I had the impression that Donald Trump’s brain had gone at least “half Biden” and possibly “full Biden” (“Never go Full Biden” being the conventional wisdom). Recently I saw some video on X of a 30-minute block of the man whom we are informed is (1) senile, and simultaneously (2) the world’s biggest threat to democracy.
Separately, Kamala Harris and the New York Times are now telling us to believe that Detroit is a center of “excellence”:
There is no “fact checking” from this hard-hitting independent investigative newspaper regarding the politician’s claim that Detroit is a magnet for excellent Americans.
What does the market say? Here’s a house for sale in Detroit right now on Zillow… for $4,250. This includes three lots, so the actual price of being surrounded by “excellence” is less than $1,500 per lot:
We were supposed to believe that Joe Biden was a paragon of mental acuity (NBC, Feb 2024, interviewing the Secretary of Open Borders: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas offered a similar defense, calling Biden “sharp.” “The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused,” Mayorkas told “Meet the Press.”). Now we’re supposed to believe that Donald Trump is feeble-minded (but also capable enough to burn down the Reichstag on January 21, 2025) and that Detroit is jammed with the “excellent”.
An official U.S. Department of Education email received by a nephew who just finished college highlights the advantages of being an incumbent (his email and name redacted):
So.. a cabinet secretary in the incumbent administration can email all federal student loan borrowers and tell them they’ll have to pay way more if they don’t vote properly in November. Here’s some more of the email:
In addition to implementing these provisions of the SAVE Plan and vigorously defending the plan in court, the Biden-Harris Administration will also continue our work alleviating the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. That includes canceling student debt for borrowers under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and making fixes to other income-driven repayment plans that were riddled with administrative errors long before our Administration. We are also continuing to pursue proposals for broader student debt relief through separate rulemaking that could benefit tens of millions of borrowers in the future.
While we disagree with the Republican elected officials’ efforts here to side with special interests and block borrowers from getting breathing room on their student loans, President Biden and our Administration will not stop fighting to make sure Americans have affordable access to the lifechanging opportunities a higher education can provide. We will continue to put the needs of students and borrowers first, help borrowers access the support and resources they need, and make the promise of higher education a reality for more American families.
We’ll keep fighting for you!
I would have thought that there was a rule against this, but apparently not!
In Europe, the UK, and the US, the natural response to “economy isn’t productive enough to support the government that we want/deserve” is “tax the rich”. Does a climate change alarmist like Bill Gates actually need four business jets or could he get by with three? If the answer is “the Gulfstream G650 and two more jets should be enough” then it is natural to conclude that Mr. Gates isn’t paying his fair share to support our collective spending dreams.
(How big are our dreams? Singapore’s government spends about 19 percent of GDP (Heritage). The U.S. government spends over 41 percent (Heritage; though since “private” health care is essentially part of the government I think the real number is over 50 percent).)
“Donors Quietly Push Harris to Drop Tax on Ultrawealthy” (New York Times, August 29, 2024) is a look inside the process of investing in political donations to make sure that the tax burden from expanded government falls on someone else.
Ms. Harris’s campaign last week said she supported the tax increases included in President Biden’s latest White House budget proposal. One of those plans would require Americans worth at least $100 million to pay taxes on investment gains even if they have not sold the stocks, bonds or other assets that have appreciated.
Under the plan, those Americans would owe a 25 percent tax on a combination of their regular income, like wages, and so-called unrealized gains. The so-called billionaire minimum income tax could create hefty tax bills for wealthy individuals who derive much of their wealth from the stocks and other assets they own.
The proposal has hit a nerve with some of the donors who have flocked to supporting Ms. Harris after Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential race, according to seven people familiar with the conversations.
Still, some donors close to Ms. Harris do not believe she is that committed to the idea. “In my interactions with them, the key is she focuses on her values and is not an ideologue about any particular program,” Mark Cuban, a billionaire and the former principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, said in an interview. “From what I’ve been told, everything is on the table, nothing’s been decided yet.”
It looks like the donors will get tax treatment that isn’t available to others:
The pushback comes amid growing optimism among lobbyists and donors that Ms. Harris is adopting a friendlier approach to business concerns than Mr. Biden. Some have said privately that they feel that Ms. Harris’s policy positions are less set in stone than Mr. Biden’s were, allowing for outside pressure to be more effective.
In her speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Ms. Harris said she would create an “opportunity economy” and provide support to entrepreneurs and “founders,” a word in a carefully constructed speech that some attendees saw as targeted toward assuaging wealthy business leaders in Silicon Valley.
So the people who control what opinions can be widely shared, e.g., via social media, are on track to get a deal that won’t be available to non-donors.
The VCs for Kamala group — which includes Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn; Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures; Ron Conway, a well-known investor; and the billionaire Chris Sacca — surveyed its members about various public policy issues. Roughly 75 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “taxing unrealized capital gains will stifle innovation,” according to a document viewed by The New York Times. The survey otherwise showed support for Ms. Harris’s agenda.
The ambitious tax proposal would face an uphill climb on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and some Democrats are skeptical of changing how capital gains are taxed. That dynamic has helped ease some of the concerns on Wall Street about the idea, said Charles Myers, a fund-raiser for Ms. Harris and the chairman and founder of Signum Global Advisors.
“In my world, yes, I do hear about it and there is concern,” he said. “I think almost every person who would raise it as a concern understands that it would never pass Congress even if it’s a Democratic sweep.”
Part of the idea seems to be is that Kamala Harris can tell peasant voters that government will expand to meet all of their needs, paid for by these new taxes on the rich, and then Congress will instead raise taxes on the upper-income peasants. The article quotes one Democrat who says that’s the explicit plan:
Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, who studies corporate leadership at the Yale School of Management, said he had raised issues about taxing unrealized capital gains with members of Ms. Harris’s campaign team. He said the campaign did not want to publicly distance itself from the idea. “They don’t want to antagonize the populist support they need to get through the elections and make a big issue of it,” he said.
In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those multinational corporations was 22,000 percent. That means for every dollar spent on lobbying, the companies got $220 in tax benefits.
If Kamala Harris is elected and the promised new/higher taxes on the rich aren’t implemented as promised and/or have carve-outs craft just for venture capitalists and they companies they fund, I wonder what the ROI on these Silicon Valley billionaires’ donations will turn out to be.
Related:
“Unite calls for 1% wealth tax on super-rich to fund UK public sector pay rises” (Guardian, August 24, 2024), which shows the broad cross-cultural appeal that the idea has, despite its complete unworkability in the UK, which lacks a US-style exit tax and doesn’t tax UK citizens who move abroad (a US citizen, by contrast, is taxed even if he/she/ze/they hasn’t lived in the US for decades). Thus, any UK billionaire who wants to escape UK taxation can simply move to a tax-free or low-tax country, such as Monaco, Italy, or Switzerland. See, for example, Jim Ratcliffe: “In May 2018, Ratcliffe was the richest person in the UK, with a net worth of £21.05 billion. … In September 2020, Ratcliffe officially changed his tax residence from Hampshire to Monaco, a move that it is estimated will save him £4 billion in tax.”
A national Times/Siena poll found Kamala Harris with a slim lead over Donald J. Trump. Voters were more likely to see her, not Mr. Trump, as a break from the status quo.
Ms. Harris, who is 59, was seen by a wide margin, 61 percent to 29 percent, as the change candidate among voters who are not white. Younger voters see her as the change candidate by a lopsided margin: 58 percent to 34 percent.
Is this the first time in history that an incumbent has been able to persuade American voters that he/she/ze/they is the “change candidate”?
On the other hand, maybe the perception is legitimate. Let’s try to figure out what might change. First, if Kamala Harris has a good idea right now, what is stopping her from implementing it? Is Joe Biden the obstacle? The person who is actually running the U.S. is the obstacle? Why is this person obstructing productive change from a member of his/her/zir/their own party?
For the sake of this post, though, let’s assume that Harris-Walz do have big new ideas and somehow they are being prevented from implementing them.
The principal passion for Democrats is abortion care so let’s look at that first… Kamala Harris is promising a federal law that would legalize abortion care for pregnant people at all stages of a pregnant person’s pregnancy. That would be a change, at least in stages that outlaw abortion care after a certain number of weeks of a pregnant person’s pregnancy. But Joe Biden has also promised this kind of legislation so we’re left with two questions: (a) is expanding abortion care at the federal level an example of “change”, and (b) why hasn’t the Biden-Harris administration done it?
A close second to abortion care is a passion for open borders. But Kamala Harris was Joe Biden’s “Border Czar” so we shouldn’t expect any change in this area.
At least among young Democrats, Queers for Palestine is just as important as open borders. Perhaps this is an example of real change. It looks as though Harris-Walz are promising to force Israel to surrender to the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”). “Walz, Appealing to Muslim Voters, Says War in Gaza ‘Must End Now’” (NYT, 10/3/2024):
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, on Thursday made a direct appeal to Muslim voters, decrying “staggering and devastating” destruction in Gaza and saying that the war between Israel and Hamas should be brought to an immediate end.
“This war must end, and it must end now,” Mr. Walz said in a three-minute video address to the virtual “Million Muslim Votes: A Way Forward” event, which was hosted by the group Emgage Action.
As Hamas was elected by Palestinians on a platform of military conquest and has promised to defeat Israel militarily, the only possible “immediate ends” for the Gaza fighting are (1) Israel switches to US-/UK-style destruction of the enemy population until the Palestinians surrender unconditionally as the Japanese and Germans were forced to, or (2) Israel surrenders to Hamas. I don’t think (1) is what Mx. Walz had in mind, despite his/her/zir/their background as a combat hero. That leaves us with (2), in which the U.S. uses its own military power to destroy Israel, including its Muslim citizens, unless Israel surrenders. The Biden-Harris administration hasn’t done that yet.
Kamala Harris has promised to make housing more affordable. But that’s not change because it was also the Biden-Harris plan, according to whitehouse.gov in September 2021:
(the cost of buying a house, factoring in purchase price and interest rate, has roughly doubled since the Biden-Harris administration implemented its plan)
Kamala Harris promises to give first-time homebuyers (“fresh idiots”?) $25,000. I guess that would be change, but if it is a good idea why hasn’t it been done?
Circling back to the original theme… can the Harris-Walz campaign be credited with an unprecedented achievement in the area of voter psychology/propaganda? Or, given that older voters aren’t as likely to be persuaded that the incumbent represents “change”, can we attribute their success to the declining IQ here in the U.S.? Note that U.S. IQ remains higher than in places that have been in the news lately (source):
Loosely related… A reminder that the war (not the recent battles) in Gaza started well for the “Arab” side (the term “Palestinians” hadn’t yet come into use) back in 1948. I guess one could argue that, after 76 years, the war is still going well for the forces opposing Israel in that they’ve enjoyed tremendous population growth and increasing political support worldwide. The original military objective of destroying Israel hasn’t been achieved yet (maybe Harris-Walz can make it happen?), but the forces opposing Israel managed to create a group of approximately 6 million Arabs who are entitled to unlimited food, health care, education, etc. funded by taxpayers in the US and EU. On balance, though, I think the Arab war on Israel shows that Helmuth von Moltke was correct in saying “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”. Who would have predicted that the professional militaries of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria couldn’t defeat Jewish civilians? And who would have predicted that the Democratic Party here in the U.S. would become the primary financial sponsor and military ally of Islamic government in the region?
Here’s a video of Kamala Harris saying that she’ll agree to spend $trillions (debt that will eventually be paid back at least partially by taxes on Chinese immigrants? What role did they play in this drama?) in reparations to Americans who identify as descendants of former slaves:
The question for today is why she laughs after making this pledge. Slavery isn’t, I hope, a laughing matter, even though it ended more than 159 years ago here in the U.S. (it does continue in some countries, supposedly) Spending $trillions of money that will have to be earned via the sweat of others isn’t, one would think, a laughing matter. Forcing immigrants from China, Haiti, and Venezuela to pay extra taxes and receive fewer government services isn’t obviously a laughing matter.
Here’s one where she starts laughing at about 4:10 while discussing the policy with the most transformative effects on American society:
Here she is apparently laughing about the U.S. being defeated in Afghanistan:
(The Taliban could reasonably laugh about the inability of the U.S. to accomplish any of its goals after 20 years, but why the U.S. VP?)
This is the “joy” that Americans are being sold by the Democrats and their media allies? But what is joyful about U.S. politics? We have an economy that is less than half the size it needs to be for Americans to achieve their government spending goals (free unlimited health care for all, pimped-out housing as a human right, open borders and a cradle-to-grave multi-generational welfare state, etc.). So government is inevitably about saying “No, we can’t afford that right now,” even for Democrats. What child ever experienced joy at hearing a parent say “No, we can’t afford that trip to Disney World”?
Closing this out with Kamala Harris laughing about laughing…
🚨This is brutal to watch. Kamala Harris without a teleprompter is the Democrat Party’s worst nightmare:
“When we think about what’s at stake in this election – well it’s packed with some stuff! Some fundamental stuff! *cackles* I say rather articulately.” pic.twitter.com/2UEboEUkgW
Separately, has anyone seen anything from a leader within the Party of Science congratulating Elon Musk on what seems like a tremendous step forward for actual science? (I disagree with Mr. Musk regarding the merits of humans living on Mars, but it is valuable to be able to send heavy robot payloads into space and the Starship makes NASA’s ($40 billion in 2024 dollars?) SLS look pathetic.) If Democrats love to Follow the Science why aren’t they more jazzed up about Starship today than about Donald Trump’s agenda (the above tweet from Kamala Harris was sent just a few hours after the Starship booster was caught).
Nobody will remember Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in 100 years because they achieved absolutely nothing. But every child will know Elon Musk the Rocket catcher. Congratulations Elon.
(While trying to avoid extradition, Kim Dotcom manages to tweet his support for Hamas: regarding the “Gaza genocide” (exacerbated by simultaneous rapid population growth); accusing Israel of “indiscriminate mass murder”; a confident “proof” that Israel “Netanyahu can’t defeat Hamas in a ground battle” (Nov 19, 2023; maybe he was correct since Palestinians remain enthusiastic about continuing their war against Israel).)
I don’t know if we’ll be without power and Internet due to Hurricane Milton so I’m scheduling this non-hurricane-related post in advance in order to deliver on my “posting every day” promise/threat.
In a separate discussion about this story, a Big Law partner (closeted Republican) wrote that all members of the Party of Independent Thought would transition from “Kamala is so brat because look at Doug” to “Doug has nothing to do with this election; he’s not running for anything”. Just a few hours later, his prophecy was confirmed when a Minneapolis Democrat in a discussion about the above story posted “Who is this guy? Is he running for something?”
Friends of both say the estrangement, set in motion by her parents’ split when Ms. Harris was a child, may have as much to do with traits father and daughter share as it does their decades of differences. … It upset Ms. Harris that her father did not attend Shyamala Harris’s funeral in 2009. … Dr. Harris’s spectral presence in Ms. Harris’s life began when he and her mother separated in 1969, when Ms. Harris was 5. The couple divorced in 1972 after he lost a bitter custody battle that brought his closeness to Ms. Harris and her younger sister “to an abrupt halt,” Dr. Harris wrote in a 2018 essay. The sealed divorce settlement, he said, was “based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting.”
Note that the New York Times covers a lawsuit with a plaintiff and a defendant as a mutual activity (“her parents’ split”). Reading between the lines, it looked like Kamala’s mom sued Kamala’s dad and won the winner-take-all fight that the California Family Court set up. And then Kamala was upset that her dad didn’t want to go to his plaintiff’s funeral. (We know a guy in Maskachusetts whose plaintiff died of cancer after winning the house, the kids, the cash, most of his income going forward, etc. On hearing the news, he was ready to throw a huge party to celebrate her death and the return of his kids not shed crocodile tears at the successful litigant’s funeral.
Addendum: We never did lose power thanks to the heroic engineering efforts of Florida Power and Light as well as the grid-hardening initiative approved by Ron DeSantis in 2019 over the objections of Democrats (see Tough questions from reporters for Ron DeSantis). In other hurricane news, combat veteran Tim Walz tells Floridians to evacuate at 6:32 pm, roughly two hours before landfall. This is apparently not the kind of “misinformation” that Democrats seek to outlaw and suppress, though it contradicts government advice to “shelter in place” once winds exceed 45-50 mph. The “mandatory” evacuation orders on the Florida west coast generally required evacuation by 9:00 am on Wednesday and officials told people who hadn’t evacuated to “shelter in place” after the winds picked up. From the war hero now fighting misinformation:
President Biden and Vice President Harris are doing everything in their power to protect those in Hurricane Milton’s path.
Please listen to evacuation orders, follow guidance from your local officials, and stay safe. https://t.co/K0bnXn4wlD
From the National Weather Service, 4.5 hours earlier (“It’s time to shelter-in-place”):
It’s time to shelter-in-place from #Milton. Tropical-storm force winds, flooding rains, and tornadoes are spreading inland across FL. Unless a life-threatening situation arises, stay indoors and follow updates. pic.twitter.com/yplcIhwjIR
Once winds reach 45mph, you will need to shelter in place. Please call 911 if you're having an emergency, but be aware that responses will be delayed until it's safe to for teams to get back on the roads. We are here for you and will respond as soon as possible. Stay safe.
— Sarasota County Government (@SRQCountyGov) October 9, 2024
An hour before Tim Walz suggested evacuation, the county was saying “shelter in place”:
5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9 – It is no longer safe to be on the roadways. Individuals SHOULD NOT go out on the roadways. They should now SHELTER IN PLACE. There are reports of flooding and it is not safe to be out on the road for the duration of the storm. pic.twitter.com/OMJxO95ciX
— Sarasota County Government (@SRQCountyGov) October 9, 2024
