Harris Unveiling More Policy for Media to Ignore

New policy proposals expected in economic speech

Sept. 4: Harris to boost small biz … DeSantis retreats on paved parks … Abortion win at Supreme Court … North Carolina governor candidate was porn-shop frequent flyer …

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Vice Pres. Kamala Harris on Aug. 16, 2024, rolled out much-demanded economic policy plans that were soon ignored by the media demanding them. (Screengrab / ABCNews video.)

Vice Pres. Kamala Harris today will unveil more elements of her economic plans if she becomes president.

Columnists and TV pundits have been hammering Harris for not having fully thought-out policy proposals for running the world’s largest economy and military power — any of which she might have to defend at next week’s debate with former Pres. Donald Trump — despite having had six whole weeks with nothing else to do but assemble a presidential campaign, choose a vice presidential candidate, mount a national convention, and campaign.

The reason commentators are so hungry for these policy details is that media coverage of presidential campaigns historically has focused on deep, granular analysis of how such policies have worked in the past and might apply in current conditions.

There are some reporters and writers whose job it actually is to focus on policy proposals and their implications. The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reports that Harris’s proposals today will focus on spurring startups and business entrepreneurs.

The specifics that we think we know about include:

• Increasing the tax deduction for small startups tenfold to $50,000

• Creating a new standard deduction to simplify small-business tax filings

• Making it easier to get occupational licenses, and

• Incentives for cities and states to make business-starting easier.

What’s been discussed, but may or may not be part of today’s announcement is expanding the child tax credit and/or paid leave.

Me, I’m not so sure I want to make it easier for people to get licensed for things like, watching kids or repairing elevators or insert-your-nightmare-here.

But Stein notes that the new proposals are business-focused, compared to Harris’s first round of economic proposals, aimed at — my words, not his — protecting people from businesses. That included measures to make more affordable housing available and prevent price gouging.

It’s worth noting that Harris’s new plans are all about small businesses. The good kind! Like how Caesar is cute at the beginning of the Planet of the Apes. And then grows up and takes over the world.

It’s not clear that America really needs help in the startup department. According to the Commerce Institute, startups are already at record levels, nearly twice what they were in 2016.

And that’s without Trump starting a new, doomed business every time he turns around, as he did before he was president with Trump-branded novelty items such as steaks, wines, and higher education.

Politically, the new Harris proposals will present a stark contrast with Trump’s, which favor unsmall business. Trump’s tax cuts reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, with effective rates even lower, and he says he wants to cut their rates more. 

The key to Harris’s proposals is enforcement. Not against small businesses, but against big businesses squeezing themselves through the loopholes to reap small-business benefits. This happens all the time, because there’s no business too big to force itself into the tiniest loophole.

According to Stein, today’s business focus, compared to the “populist tone” of her previous proposals, is “probably aimed in part at reassuring voters who believe Harris is too liberal.”

It would be surprising to learn that the Harris campaign believes there’s a significant cohort of undecideds or Trump voters ready to jump on the Harris/Walz bus if only she’d expand the small-business startup tax incentive to $50,000.

It’s also hard to believe any potential Harris voters are so fond of price-gouging that Harris’s planned crackdown on it is forcing them to vote for Trump. Still, who tf knows.

This may be about using tiny policy levers to move big media narratives.

Because the reality is, these are very small-bore proposals, the equivalent of economic virtue signaling, minus much real impact. Don’t take my word for it. “[I]n practice, targeted federal policies to help small businesses tend to be fairly small-bore,” former Biden economic policy aide Tobin Marcus told Stein.

Of course, the best, simplest, most popular ways to satisfy both business and populist voters and make startups doable include (a) providing universal health care so potential entrepreneurs (bleh) aren’t tethered to a day job by the need for health insurance and (b) providing a universal basic income so everyone can afford basic shit like roofs (rooves?) and progeny.

But widely popular measures like those are simply too far out of the mainstream…as policed by group-think media and corporate congressional handmaidens.

DeSantis Learns You Don’t Fuck with Mother Nature

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) this weekend fired whistleblower and overall spoilsport and party-pooper James Gaddis, for bulldozing DeSantis’s plans to bulldoze state parks. (h/t)

Last week, Gaddis — then a state worker — revealed that the state was planning not only to pave over thousands of acres of state parks to build shit on that land, but that jobs were being given out illegally with no-bid contracts, and the state was planning to squelch public opposition by limiting time for comment — and scheduling those comment sessions for all the parks at exactly the same time so opponents could only show up to one.

How inept and stupid and arrogant was the planning for this? As the Guardian reports, once the details became known, even Republicans turned on DeSantis, including state legislators, both U.S. senators (Marco Rubio and Rick Scott), and DeSantis himself. Once the governor learned of the governor’s plans, the governor called them “half-baked [by him]” and said they’re going “back to [his] drawing board.”

As The Guardian also notes, the debacle is being seen in Florida as a sign that DeSantis is both losing his grip on fellow Republicans and also losing his grip.

Supreme Court Sides with Biden on Abortion in Teeny Tiny Way

The right-wing Supreme Court issued an order yesterday saying that Pres. Joe Biden can, in fact, deny Oklahoma federal funding as punishment for refusing to give patients information about how to remove that unsightly lump in their uterus.

Only Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas voted in favor of the side that had yet to develop fully functioning brains. By which I mean Oklahoma’s Republican government.

The state has a family-planning program that both (a) gets federal money and (b) refuses to comply with requirements for getting that money, which include telling patients — primarily poor and/or uninsured — that their pregnancy options include not being pregnant.

Thanks to the right-wing, theocratic Supreme Court, Oklahoma is one of a dozen states where abortion is illegal. You can also be prosecuted for helping facilitate an abortion or even telling someone, yeah, not the right time for you to be a mommy.

The Biden Health and Human Services Department was willing to bend over so backwards to accommodate Oklahoma’s misogynistic theocracy that literally all the state had to do to qualify for its $4.5 million in federal funds was give patients a single, toll-free number to a national hotline with info about all options (including — sshhh! — abortion).

The Trump administration, of course, had the opposite rule, withholding money from state agencies that dared to advise patients that abortion is a thing. However, because Trump and Trumpists are not good at even bad things, they didn’t do this until 2019, and in 2021, the rule was flipped on its soft, tiny head.

More U.S. Combat Deaths Under Trump than Under Biden

A Washington Monthly analysis finds that more U.S. troops got killed in combat under President Donald Trump than under President Joe Biden.

The context for this is Trump’s claim that he’s the anti-war president and that Vice Pres. Kamala Harris is likely to, um, start World War III. Trump’s endorsement by former Kennedy Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was based in part on the premise that Trump “wanted to end the grip of the neocons on U.S. foreign policy. He said he didn’t want any more $200 billion wars.”

And while it’s true that Biden — and Republicans — are funding weaponry for multiple conflicts around the world — because arms dealers gotta eat, too — American troops are not being sent into combat in the numbers they once were.

Pentagon figures and other accounts show that during Trump’s presidency, 65 U.S. troops died as a result of “hostile action,” while only 22 had during the first two years of the Biden presidency.

The deaths under Biden were the result of two incidents, both terror attacks. One of them was the suicide-bombing deaths of 13 soldiers as the U.S. got out of Afghanistan under terms initially set by Trump.

Of course, what the analysis misses is that, increasingly, the U.S. doesn’t need to send troops into harm’s way to enforce its mayonnaise hegemony. It’s 2024, Newsfuckers, we’ve got flying robots that kill for America’s National Interests™ now!

Turns out, though, even there Biden has been less war-y than Trump. According to the New America think tank, “tracking of strikes shows a consistent decline in the number of strikes since they peaked in 2017 under Trump.”

So maybe Kennedy isn’t any better at picking anti-war candidates than he is at deciding whether to pick up roadkill.

Republican Gubernatorial Hopeful Named Customer of the Year(s) by Porno Shop

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC) found Jesus in the late 1980s. But for years afterward, he kept looking for something else. In private video booths at a porno shop! (h/t)

According to a new report in The Assembly, a state news outlet, Robinson’s years of attendance were confirmed by a single source. And by “single source” I mean six individual people including fellow customers and more than one store employee.

The sources told The Assembly that Robinson was a frequent customer at Gents Video & News and I-40 Video & News.

The most hilarious part of this revelation, of course, is the dual appearance of the phrase “& News.”

Robinson is running for governor and his campaign called the claims “bullshit.” Here’s Robinson in a 2022 Facebook post with one of The Assembly’s sources, former employee and manager Louis Money.

The money that Money is referring to is $25 that Robinson allegedly owes for the last porno tape he bought stole.

Money told The Assembly, “Every night that I worked, which would have been five nights a week, I saw Mark,” who apparently took it literally every time Money said, “Thank you, come again!”

Robinson allegedly purchased “hundreds” of videos. The last one Money got from New York because it was too “super hardcore” for North Carolina.

At the time of his alleged patronage, Robinson was married, with two kids, and has said he was struggling to pay his bills.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein (D-NC) is currently leading Robinson in the polls, thanks in no small part to an unbelievable amount of scandals and stupid mouth-noises courtesy of Robinson.

The race could also have an up-ballot impact on the very close, very important presidential race between Vice Pres. Kamala Harris and former Pres. Donald Trump, who has also enjoyed private time with porn stars.

TCB

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