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
If Oshkosh is a typical Wisconsin city, we can infer from the signage at the local office of the Democrats that Rainbow Flagism is their #1 concern. Photos from July:
What else did we find downtown? A person reduced to sleeping in a doorway:
I’m wondering if this is evidence for my theory that expressing support for 2SLGBTQQIA+ is popular because one need not reduce one’s personal standard of living in order to assist the purportedly unfortunate. See Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money? (In point of fact, we did not hear anyone expressing an anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ point of view during the entire week that we were in Oshkosh.)
This is one of the many luxuries of being a Democrat, I think. One can consider oneself an advocate for the unfortunate while walking past a homeless person on the way to the rainbow flag store.
Separately, here’s an article on the new passion among young educated Democrats in Wisconsin:
Students at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee joined the wave of protests occurring at campuses across the United States to support Palestinian liberation, speak out against Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 30,000 people and to urge their universities to cut ties with Israel.
Dahlia Saba, a member of UW-Madison’s Students for Justice in Palestine and a first-year graduate student at UW-Madison, said the protest aims to clearly communicate student demands to UW-Madison administrators. Those demands, posted on Instagram, include divestment from Israel, disclosing all investments by the UW Foundation and cutting ties with Israeli institutions.
Saba, who is Palestinian-American, said that she has been paying attention to the “huge injustices perpetrated against the Palestinian people” for much of her life. She said that she has family members who were recently evacuated from Gaza.
Samer Alatout, UW-Madison associate professor, said he was at the protest to support students and celebrate student movements. He said the actions represent a “sea change” and students were claiming a right to have a role in managing and governing the university, including its ethics.
Native Americans tried and failed to defend their borders back in the 15th and 16th centuries. The result has been a fall from 100% of the population to about 1% (enrolled members of various tribes; the number grows to between 2% and 3% if we count Elizabeth Warren-style self-identification as Native American). The drop in percentage from 100% down to 1% certainly cannot be characterized as a “replacement” and, thus, for those who follow Science it must be an enrichment.
Let’s see how immigrants have enriched Native Americans on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
In one part of Florida today, a high-skill immigrant launched a spacecraft to Jupiter (not Jupiter, Florida!):
For the Science-minded Native American, perhaps this can be viewed as compensation for the loss of sovereignty.
In our part of Florida, an immigrant attempted to deliver Uber Eats to my mom’s senior fortress, a 150-unit building whose front door is marked by a massive fountain, big American flag on a 40′ poll (Ta-Nehisi Coates won’t want to move in!), and circular driveway. The Uber driver was unable to speak English and I was unable to speak Spanish. The map showed that he got pretty close to the building, but never went into the main driveway or parking lot. He eventually dumped the bag on the curb and drove away after sending the following photo:
Because our Spanish-only speaker didn’t include any building in the background, this could easily be in Miami, for example. We walked all around the building and never did find it. “Jayson” is now available to deliver food to any Native American in Palm Beach County (0.1% of the total population according to Google’s giant AI brain and 0.6% of the population if you look at census.gov with your own feeble mind; the page does have a 0.1% figure, but that’s for “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone”).
Below, a member of the credentialed elite at the New York Times reminds JD Vance that only migrants such as Jayson can read blueprints, juggle Makita, and build us the houses that we desperately need in order to shelter… the next crop of 30 million undocumented migrants (2016 numbers from Yale). I would love to see the house that someone at Jayson’s skill level builds!
NYT reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits in silence as JD Vance educates her on the labor force participation rate relating to illegal immigration.
Garcia-Navarro tried arguing that illegal immigrants can't be deported because America needs them for jobs.
As the righteous in Tim Walz’s Minnesota, California, and Maskachusetts observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day and deplore the time when a hated Jew inflicted a Nakba on the entirely peaceful Native Americans, let’s look at the 21st century way to conquer a big part of the world.
From Microsoft, back in June:
I think this is because my desktop computer was running a CPU/chipset/motherboard configuration from 2015 that lacks some modern security features, such as a Trusted Platform Module.
I wonder if a lot of people won’t upgrade despite Microsoft’s threats. After all, improvements in computer hardware have slowed to a crawl (see GPU performance improvements since 2015 (and why not just use motherboard graphics?) in which we learn that the 2015 CPU had reasonable performance by 2022 standards. With Microsoft not bothering to continue with security updates and nearly every PC connected to the Internet, will a smart 10-year-old be able to take over a substantial fraction of the world’s computers? This is not an open-source computer program that folks other than Microsoft can debug and patch.
Circling back to Indigenous Peoples’ Day… remember that immigration wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to Native Americans, but Science proves that immigration will be the best thing that has ever happened to Native-Born Americans.
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).)
“Considerable structural damage … was observed on brand new, well-built homes and included segments of concrete block walls missing and large sections of roof removed,” the NWS said in a report released Thursday afternoon.
A house in this part of Florida is supposed to be built to handle 170 mph, I think (map). A house is a “Risk Category II” building. If the headline is correct and the tornado was blowing at only 140 mph, why was a house engineered to handle 170 mph damaged? Could it be that a rotating wind is more damaging than a relatively steady wind from one direction? Were the houses not built properly? Human engineers aren’t as smart as they claim to be? Here’s a picture from the Palm Beach Post of the Nature v. Human contest:
Here’s Ron DeSantis on Friday leading a 38-minute press conference (without teleprompter) on the clean-up challenges related to Hurricane Milton:
Governor DeSantis Holds a Press Conference in St. Petersburg Following Hurricane Milton https://t.co/eHiTXaEpBM
It seems as though flgov.com is updated regularly with summaries of challenges and achievements. Example from Oct 11: “In a multi-agency response, FWC [Fish and Wildlife] officers and partner agencies rescued and evacuated approximately 426 people and 45 pets from flood waters in a Clearwater apartment complex. FWC officers used a high-water swamp buggy, UTV, and shallow-draft vessels during the rescue effort.”
Less attention is paid to those who have endured some of the worst Milton-related suffering. I’m talking, of course, about private aircraft owners. It’s very expensive to build a hurricane-proof hangar and, consequently, the typical hangar hasn’t been built hurricane-proof (the latest building code likely requires them to be able to withstand at least a Category 4 hurricane, a lower wind standard than for houses because the theory is that nobody will be inside a hangar during a hurricane). The general aviation hangars at KSRQ and KSPG are apparently badly damaged. Sarasota. which previously had a 4-year waiting list for a hangar:
The St. Pete downtown airport (walking distance to some museums), which previously had a 10-year waiting list:
Florida officialdom doesn’t seem to credit FEMA with savings lives or property. This is consistent with friends in Maskachusetts deploring the Deplorables’ lack of respect and awe for the Great Father in Washington. The righteous of MA, NY, and CA are particularly upset that Republicans have spread misinformation, e.g., that FEMA has handed out about $640 million on sheltering migrants while native-born hurricane victims aren’t getting lavish aid. Prior to Milton, one Democrat mentioned on Facebook that Congress had appropriated $20 billion for Hurricane Helene victims (Congress is currently in recess; the Democrat-run New Republic says “Lawmakers left town last week without passing additional natural disaster funding, and approving additional money may prove tricky when they return.”). Multiple Democrats responded by heaping scorn on Trump supporters for being so easily gulled into believing the Fake News about FEMA spending money on migrants.
Where could the Deplorables have gotten this misinformation? Let’s check fema.gov:
Landfall: October 9, 2024 at 8:30 pm. Supposedly about 4 million customers lost power (source: Ron DeSantis press conference).
Mid-afternoon the next day:
Early evening:
The morning of the second day:
Apparently there was power at the big airport in Tampa because they resumed operations about 36 hours after the hurricane made landfall:
FIRST FLIGHT OUT: We reopened and resumed flight operations this morning at 8 a.m. ❤️ As always, please check with your airline for the latest flight information. ✈️ pic.twitter.com/exAPP6KBfS
(Orlando had reopened a few hours earlier, so they too had power despite being in the middle of the Band of Destruction (TM).)
Afternoon of second day:
About 48 hours after the hurricane hit, the total customers out has declined from 3.4 million to 2 million:
The bad news is that restoration for some Floridians won’t be until 8 days after the hurricane made landfall. Here’s FPL’s estimate:
I’m not sure if people in neighborhoods with underground lines (like ours!) will get power sooner. Currently, 10 percent of FPL’s customers are out versus 17 percent for the state.
I can’t figure out why the customer numbers are so high. I thought that the transmission lines were designed to handle hurricane-force winds (and they were further beefed up after 2019; see Tough questions from reporters for Ron DeSantis). Maybe there are a lot of neighborhoods with above-ground powerlines for local distribution?
Strong independent female linewomen continued to work through the night, apparently…
2.5 days after landfall, it looks like Naples and Fort Myers are on their way back to normal while half of Tampa is dark. More than half of the Floridians who originally lost power now have it back (thanks once again to the efforts of linewomen who identify as female):
around lunch time…
Three days (72 hours) after landfall:
The pace of restoration seems to slowed down in the dark:
3.5 days after landfall:
Not a great situation in Tampa, with more than one third of customers without power. On the other hand, the total is down below 1 million compared to 4 million at the start.
Four days (96 hours) after landfall and about 500,000 customers are still out. More than 235,000 of them are Tampa Electric customers, which has only 840,000 total customers.
Florida Power and Light now says that they’ll have nearly everyone restored, even in directly hit Sarasota, by Tuesday night. (Also that they’ve thus far restored 90 percent of their affected customers, 1.8 million people who’d lost power at one point.) Speaking of FPL, if you were to watch their X feed you’d learn that electricity restoration is definitely not something that white males do:
Crews are working through severely damaged areas in Manatee County — one of the hardest-hit areas during both #Milton and #Helene — to repair damaged equipment where it is safe to do so. Rest assured, we will not stop until every last customer has power restored. pic.twitter.com/0AZbFeIsv0
We continue to restore power to our customers in Volusia County. We'll keep working around-the-clock to turn the lights back on. pic.twitter.com/eXsDrXOLsj
And as of Tuesday at noon, FPL indeed had all but 38,000 customers back online. Tampa Electric (TECO) continued to be an outlier with 100,000 customers still dark.
