Category: Biden/Harris

Kamala Harris threatens and La Quinta responds

by philg

As Hurricane Milton “barreled” (the obligatory verb for an object moving at 5-10 mph) into Sarasota, Kamala Harris threatened merchants:

About 12 hours later, Orbitz is showing hotel rooms in Orlando for a stay beginning tonight at $122/nights. If you’re willing to stay at the La Quinta… $72/night. For those who want to be ready for Disney World’s reopening tomorrow, the on-property Swan hotel is $252/night. Perhaps Jussie Smollett reported having been overcharged?

What about a hotel in Miami, which was never forecast to be “barreled into”?

I won’t be staying in a hotel tonight because I need to get back up on a ladder. Like Jeffrey Epstein, these hurricane screens didn’t hang themselves and I fear that they won’t unhang themselves either. (The previous owners of our house invested in impact glass doors and windows, but the front door is an unusual shape and they left the original door in place. The wide Armor Screen covers an outdoor dining area that has a bug screen whose frame is hurricane-proof (supposedly) but whose screen material is sacrificial. My thought on the hurricane screen for that area was that we could use it to store all of our outdoor items in the event of a truly bad storm.)

It was mostly peaceful yesterday here in Jupiter (Palm Beach County). The schoolteachers were enjoying the start of their two-day taxpayer-funded holiday while everyone else worked (health care, retail, expert witness, etc.). There was a bit of rain and the wind picked up around 9 pm. There were a handful of tornadoes in SE Florida caused by Hurricane Milton, but none came into Jupiter itself (one was in Jupiter Farms, to our west, one in western Palm Beach Gardens in Avenir, and a sad one for aviators in Fort Pierce that deposited some airplanes outside the airport fence).

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Does Kamala Harris propose “Socialism” or “Xboxism”?

by philg

My response to an X user who wrote “Usually it’s an exaggeration to claim that the other side is lunatic socialism. With Kamala 2024 that’s become a reality we face.”:

I don’t think that it is fair to call Democrats “socialists”. Under Socialism, e.g., in the Soviet Union, able-bodied citizens were required to work or be guilty of the crime of “Parasitism”. There were no undocumented immigrants. Certainly, a Soviet family couldn’t spend four generations living in public housing, getting free health care via Medicaid, shopping for food with EBT, and chatting on an Obamaphone. Kamala Harris and friends propose a system in which half of a country works/commutes 60 hours/week so that the other half can relax and play Xbox. That’s not a political system contemplated by Marx or Lenin. Maybe it should be called Xboxism?

Note that the above idea isn’t original. “Transferism, Not Socialism, Is the Drug Americans Are Hooked On” (Foundation for Economic Education):

Transferism is a system in which one group of people forces a second group to pay for things that the people believe they, or some third group, should have. Transferism isn’t about controlling the means of production. It is about the forced redistribution of what’s produced.

I think Xboxism is an easier term to understand, though, because it captures what government policy enables. And now that we have open borders we need a term that covers a migrant family that arrives to take up the Maskachusetts offer of guaranteed shelter forever even if nobody ever tries to work but instead enjoys a life of permanent leisure.

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Fifth anniversary of Kamala Harris defending freedom of speech

by philg

Five years ago, today:

In case the above is memory-holed, an image version:

(Professor Saad corrected his typo (“FREE societies”) in a follow-up, so this also reminds me that it has been two years since Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Where’s the Edit button for replies?)

Some other comments from fall 2019:

  • You running for President of China?
  • Sorry you don’t like the constitution. Maybe you should run for leader of a different country.
  • Thank god this hysterical candidate who tramples on the constitution will never be President.
  • Democrats want to ban all speech they disagree with. Bunch of fascists. Good luck keeping the 1st amendment if Dems ever get full power.
  • So you are against the 1st amendment?
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Can Kamala Harris shoot someone who breaks into her house?

by philg

“Harris tells Oprah any intruder to her home is ‘getting shot'” (Reuters):

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday issued a warning to any potential home intruder: “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.”
The Democratic presidential candidate and gun owner made the seemingly unguarded comment in an interview with Oprah Winfrey before a live studio audience when the conversation turned to gun laws.
“I probably should not have said that. But my staff will deal with that later,” Harris said, laughing.

(The intruder doesn’t have to be a “threat to democracy” for gun violence to be justified? Also, if she owns a gun and is planning to use it in a crowded domestic situation, what kind of recurrent training does she receive? I’ve never heard of our future president going to the range. Dirty Harry used his gun regularly to shoot perpetrators, but he also was shown going to the range in at least one documentary film.)

I decided to post this question to a vast panel of gun owners… i.e., a friend who owns a vast panel of guns, (Maskachusetts is officially gun-free, at least when it comes to peasants owning serious firepower, but it turns out that there are exceptions…).

[Massachusetts] has a duty to retreat in general but in a house you have some more leeway I think. In any case I don’t talk like that. I would never presume to shoot someone in my house. 90% chance I can just hold them for the police.

For those who say that it is unrealistic that an intruder might get through Kamala Harris’s Secret Service protection, let me remind readers that a criminal mastermind managed to get a rifle, ladder, rangefinder, ammo, etc. past the Secret Service in Pennsylvania recently.

Also in our chat group, the one Android user marveled at the devotion of the faithful:

Three of the guys i message with are at Apple stores now getting the 16. Apple users are hilarious.

He linked to “Apple Fans Flock to Stores for iPhone Despite Delayed AI Rollout” (Bloomberg via Yahoo):

Apple Inc. fans lined up at stores around the world for the new iPhone 16, shrugging off the fact that the device’s signature feature — a new suite of AI tools — won’t arrive until later.

My response:

they’re as loyal as Hezbollah and Hamas members

From the Deplorables:

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Will Kamala Harris and fellow Democrats have to make Puerto Rico a state before implementing their new taxes?

by philg

Kamala Harris has big dreams for what rich people can do for the U.S. Treasury via new taxes and higher tax rates (see The Harris unrealized capital gains tax and Bidenflation and Unrealized capital gains are already taxed by the federal government… for example).

The typical American of means, however, can already escape federal taxation by moving to Puerto Rico. “How Puerto Rico Became the Newest Tax Haven for the Super Rich” (GQ):

In 2012, Puerto Rico had passed two laws intended to make the island a “global investment destination.” Act 20 allows corporations that export services from the island to pay only 4 percent tax. Act 22 goes much further: It makes Puerto Rico the only place on U.S. soil where personal income from capital gains, interest, and dividends are untaxed.

The last big tweak to U.S. taxation was in 2018. Plainly, the rates were low enough that most rich Americans refrained from making the move to the Ritz-Carlton Dorado. But what if Kamala Harris and fellow Democrats are able to deliver on their promise to soak the rich? Wouldn’t there be a lot more rich people who would make the move for 183 days per year in order to avoid losing a big percentage of their wealth? If so, the only way to stop the erosion of expected tax base would be to eliminate Puerto Rico’s ability to offer Act 22 treatment and the only way that I know to strip Puerto Rico of its tax sovereignty is to make Puerto Rico a state.

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Has Joe Biden prevented Kamala Harris from fixing most of our nation’s problems?

by philg

Here’s Kamala Harris talking about her plans for late January 2025:

What’s stopping her from doing this now? Is Joe Biden such an intelligent muscular leader that he is preventing Kamala Harris from taking on corporate landlords? I had imagined that Democrats were all on the same team and that Biden and Harris were working especially closely, like Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz. In reality, Biden is to Harris as P.K. Highsmith and Christopher Danson are to Terry Hoitz? (for those of you unfamiliar with The Other Guys, see below).

A little more background on the kinds of things that a leader such as Joe Biden can do…

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Kamala Harris is happy that the danger to our democracy persists

by philg

Six days ago (i.e., a couple of months since the first attempted assassination of Donald Trump) Kamala Harris said that Donald Trump is “a danger to … our democracy”:

Today, another American apparently took Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at their respective words and tried to save our democracy with a rifle. Kamala Harris says “I am glad [the danger to our democracy] is safe”:

Color me confused!

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The Harris unrealized capital gains tax and Bidenflation

by philg

The Democrats’ latest tax schemes, recently highlighted by Kamala Harris, include collecting tax on unrealized capital gains. To me, one of the strangest things about the US tax system is that losses are taxed as capital gains so long as there is even the slightest amount of inflation. For example, if you bought a stock in January 2021 for $100 and sold it today for $110 more you’d have about $10 in today’s dollars terms under official CPI and closer to $80 if adjusted for house purchasing power (Zillow). Despite the loss on what turned out to be an unsuccessful investment, you’d owe federal and, perhaps, state tax on the sale. The current not-adjusted-for-inflation capital gains tax regime is, thus, rather cruel when combined with Bidenflation but at least you can choose when to pay the tax on your fictitious profit/real loss.

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A Massachusetts Kamala voter solves what she perceives as the “Israel-Palestine Problem”

by philg

We walked to a friend from Maskachusetts shortly after the noble Gazans made the news for amputating a young American citizen’s arm, holding him hostage for 11 months, and then executing him shortly before he would have been rescued by the IDF. Hersh Goldberg-Polin was 23 years old, was not serving in the Israeli military, and “was reportedly working with an initiative that was using soccer to bring Israeli and Palestinian children together” (Wikipedia).

As with other Democrats, the murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin did not dampen her enthusiasm for voting for Kamala Harris, who has pledged to continue funding Hamas (via UNRWA, a funding path that Donald Trump cut off and Joe Biden restored in 2021; unless the October 7 attacks cost more than $1 billion it is fair to say that the Biden-Harris administration funded 100 percent of it with our tax dollars). She did volunteer her belief that there was an urgent need to “solve the Israel-Palestine Problem”. I asked her why the Maskachusetts Righteous sympathies were there rather than with Black Lives Matter or American Women, two victimhood classes that had previously generated large rallies. She said that Democrats were still passionate about these causes, but couldn’t remember any BLM events post-October 7, 2023. I asked why the failure of the Palestinians to achieve their 1948 military goals made them more sympathy-worthy than any of the 1.5 billion residents of Africa, about whom she had never expressed any concern. She said, “I guess I hear more about the Palestinians in the news.”

What was her plan for resolving the conflict? She believed that Palestinian children were being indoctrinated by a message of Jew-/Israel-hatred in their schools (funded by US and EU taxpayers, of course) and that the solution was to bring them to the U.S. so that they could instead be indoctrinated by American schools (also funded by US taxpayers so perhaps this isn’t a huge change from a financial point of view). I didn’t point out that Queers for Palestine and similar rallies all around the U.S. show that there is plenty of “destroy Israel” energy among those who go through American K-12, but I did ask “Why would the typical Palestinian go to the trouble of having 5 kids and then just give them up voluntarily to American do-gooders running a reeducation scheme in which Christianity and Judaism have equal status to Islam?” Our Massachusetts Kamala voter said, “the parents can come too if they want.” I pointed out that, given Gaza’s world-leading population growth rate, almost every adult there has at least one minor child and, therefore, she was proposing that the entire population of Gaza be admitted to the United States to become American citizens. She said that it was indeed her expectation that the majority of Gazans would come to the U.S. I then pointed out that 50,000 babies had been born in Gaza during the recent battles (not to say “war” since that started in 1948 and the Palestinians have never accepted any kind of peace; there has been a continuous officially declared war going for 76 years now). Wouldn’t a new crop of Hamas warriors, therefore, be born soon enough and be able to carry on the fight even if most of their older brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters were peacefully voting for Democrats in Michigan? She didn’t seem to have considered the possibility that Gazans left behind, still getting unlimited food, education, health care, etc. free from UNRWA, would continue the Palestinian tradition of off-the-charts fertility. (See “Reproductive decisions in the lives of West Bank Palestinian women: Dimensions and contradictions” (2017, Global Public Health):

Palestinian women have one of the highest fertility rates in the world, averaging 4.38 births per woman. However, Palestinian fertility patterns are distinct from those of other developing nations, in that high fertility rates coexist alongside high levels of education and low levels of infant mortality – both of which have been established elsewhere as predictors of low total fertility rates.

).

I share this conversation because I thought it was an interesting window into the mind of a Kamala Harris voter. The best way to heal the world is a further expansion of low-skill immigration to the U.S.

Separately, given the success that Hamas has enjoyed after taking and killing American hostages what happens to U.S. citizens in other parts of the world going forward? Since taking American hostages Hamas has secured from the Biden-Harris administration (a) promises of continued funding, (b) a $230 million pier (admittedly washed away quickly), (c) support for the Hamas-sought “permanent ceasefire” that leaves Hamas leaders alive and well and permanently in charge of Gaza, (d) pressure on Israel for a long delay in the IDF operation in Rafah, which turns out to be where at least one American hostage was held and killed (see “Harris warns it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to invade Rafah” (CNN, March 25, 2024)) and “Kamala Harris says Israel assault on Rafah ‘would be a huge mistake’” (Guardian)), and (e) diplomatic recognition by a variety of purported U.S. allies and military client states as leaders of their own sovereign nation (“Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognize a Palestinian state as EU rift with Israel widens” (AP)). What’s the downside to taking American hostages in the Biden-Harris era?

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Unrealized capital gains are already taxed by the federal government…

by philg

… for those who renounce U.S. citizenship.

There has been a bit of an uproar regarding the Democrats’ plan to tax unrealized capital gains and Republicans are complaining that it is an unprecedented new area for the federal government. But this isn’t a new area, at least when it comes to Americans who decide that they’re never going to pay U.S. taxes again. The IRS web page regarding the expatriation tax:

IRC 877A imposes a mark-to-market regime, which generally means that all property of a covered expatriate is deemed sold for its fair market value on the day before the expatriation date. Any gain arising from the deemed sale is taken into account for the tax year of the deemed sale notwithstanding any other provisions of the Code. Any loss from the deemed sale is taken into account for the tax year of the deemed sale to the extent otherwise provided in the Code, except that the wash sale rules of IRC 1091 do not apply.

And a detail page:

Section 877A(a) generally imposes a mark-to-market regime on expatriates who are covered by section 877A, providing that all property of a covered expatriate is treated as sold on the day before the expatriation date for its fair market value.

For purposes of the mark-to-market regime, the covered expatriate is deemed to have sold any interest in property that he or she is considered to own under the rules of this paragraph other than property described in section 877A(c). For purposes of computing the tax liability under the mark-to-market regime, a covered expatriate is considered to own any interest in property that would be taxable as part of his or her gross estate for Federal estate tax purposes under Chapter 11 of Subtitle B of the Code as if he or she had died on the day before the expatriation date as a citizen or resident of the United States.

In computing the tax liability under the mark-to-market regime, a covered expatriate must use the fair market value of each interest in property as of the day before the expatriation date in accordance with the valuation principles applicable for purposes of the Federal estate tax, except as otherwise provided in this paragraph.

How often does this happen? “IRS steps up enforcement of the individual expatriation tax” (KPMG partner; June 2024):

The number of individuals who renounce their U.S. citizenship or terminate their green card status has increased significantly since the enactment of the current expatriation tax regime in 2008. Lists of these individuals published quarterly by the IRS in the Federal Register show that the number of individuals expatriating has increased from 312 in 2008 to 3,260 in 2023, with a peak of 6,705 in 2020.

My big question is how President Kamala Harris will collect long-term money from the targets of her extended (not exactly new, as noted above) unrealized capital gains tax. A person targeted by the tax has two choices:

  1. pay President Harris for unrealized capital gains in 2026 (let’s assume it takes a while for this to be implemented), 2027, 2028, and every subsequent year until death
  2. pay President Harris for unrealized capital gains at long-term rates in 2025 and then never pay income taxes to President Harris, the U.S. government, or any other government again (expatriation)

Why wouldn’t a rational target of the new tax choose Option 2? He/she/ze/they renounces U.S. citizenship, moves his/her/zir/their assets into an offshore Dutch trust (as U2 did) and moves to any country that doesn’t dig into offshore assets/income for computing income tax. Or establish a residence in Italy and pay a flat tax rate of €200,000 a year (recently bumped up from the €100,000/year rate established in 2017, which means it has kept roughly even after adjusting for inflation in the costs of things that rich people buy, but the bump doesn’t affect people who signed up for this prior to August 2024). Or simply move to a country that doesn’t impose any income tax (KMPG on relocation to Monaco). If the expat is nostalgic, he/she/ze/they can return to the US for 30-60 days per year, depending on the employment situation, without becoming subject to U.S. taxation.

There is a lot to like about living in the U.S. (especially here in Florida!), but is it worth paying 100X as much in taxes compared to living in some other part of the world? If there are friends you want to see buy them a first class ticket to Heathrow and push your way through the pro-Hamas rallies to a night of theater. Or, if you’re truly one of those who has taken more than he/she/ze/they needs, send the Gulfstream or Airbus Corporate Jet to pick up the friends.

Here’s a place in northern Italy that costs less than a tract house in Palm Beach County ($2.7 million for a modern house on 22 acres):

If you don’t mind a little maintenance, a castle in Sicily on 7 acres:

Given the tax savings, maybe there isn’t any need for maintenance. Just buy a new house every few years with a fraction of what would have been paid in unrealized capital gains tax and give the old house to a charity.

Separately, why didn’t the Democrats impose their new tax regime during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration when they had control of both houses of Congress and the White House? How can Kamala Harris simultaneously say that she agrees with everything that Joe Biden did (or read from a teleprompter) and also that she will do completely different stuff starting January 2025?

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