Kamala Harris – Page 4

Trump blasts Harris plan to ban price gouging as communism. But GOP states already block some price hikes.

Posted on September 17, 2024September 17, 2024 by Lone Candle

“GOP state attorneys general, as well as many of their Democratic counterparts, have moved to stop companies from charging what they view as exorbitant increases in the cost of some goods in certain circumstances.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, sued a large egg supplier for raising prices by about 300 percent at the height of the pandemic lockdowns in 2020.

Kris Kobach, the Republican attorney general of Kansas, is suing a large natural gas supplier over allegations that it gouged consumers in the aftermath of a 2021 winter storm. And in storm-prone Florida, state officials widely publicize a law that prohibits sharp price increases in essential items during emergencies.

“Nobody likes to be gouged when they’ve lost their roof,” said Trish Conners, a former chief deputy attorney general of Florida now in private practice at the firm Stearns Weaver Miller. The state laws address the “fundamental public safety role that state AGs have, and it’s largely bipartisan. You don’t see too much difference between AGs in that regard.”

The state laws underscore some of the benefits and challenges that Harris may face in selling her plan. It is broadly popular for politicians to shield consumers from excessive prices — even if many economists disagree with the approach. But at the same time, most states have limited their intervention in the market to a far narrower set of circumstances, and Harris’ plan for a national approach would likely represent a major expansion of the role of government in prices.

Some 37 states have laws to address price gouging, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most of the laws have specific triggers — such as a state of emergency or disaster — and prohibit sellers of certain essential goods from jacking up prices beyond a certain threshold. Some states have a numerical threshold of, say, 15 or 25 percent, while others have vaguer prohibitions on “excessive” or “unconscionable” increases.

Florida Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody vowed to vigorously enforce the price gouging law as hurricane season began earlier this year. Her office has a dedicated hotline, app and website for consumers to report instances of gouging during emergencies.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/24/trump-harris-price-gouging-groceries-00176247

‘Nobody Ever Stood Up for Her’: Kamala Harris’ Early Skill in Sex Crimes Cases Defined Her Career

Posted on September 15, 2024September 15, 2024 by Lone Candle

“So as she stood before the jury that August day in 1997, Harris, 32, did something risky: She acknowledged all of her victim’s flaws. Yes, the young girl had lied to the police about being forced to enter the Oakland home where she was raped. Yes, she also lied about her age and the clothes she was wearing. She was, in Harris’ candid estimation, “difficult to deal with,” “emotionally immature, and probably not very developed.”

“But the law does not say that you have to like the victim in order to decide that she should be protected,” Harris continued. “The law does not say that she had to grow up in a normal family, whatever that is, grow up under the normal circumstances, whatever that may be, in order to be protected by the law.”

It was a bold strategy, one even veteran prosecutors might have thought twice about, but it displayed Harris’ early aptitude for performing well in high-stakes battles fraught with obstacles. “The truth isn’t always how you picture it — rosy and everyone’s happy and everyone comes from a great background and it’s easy,” said Ken Mifsud, who was in the same intern class as Harris in 1988 at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.”

…

“Harris herself asked the victim a crucial question: Why did she lie to both the police and at the preliminary hearing about being forced into the house where she was raped?
“Because I was scared that if I had told them that I would go there willingly,” the girl replied, “that it was not rape.”

Harris followed up with why she eventually decided to tell the truth. “Because I had talked to you guys and understood how important it was,” the girl said.

I called one of the preeminent authorities on child witnesses to get a sense of how unusual Harris’ strategy was. Gail Goodman, the director of the Center for Public Policy Research at UC Davis, is widely credited as the founder of the modern scientific study of child victims as witnesses. “That is unusual, in my experience, that a prosecutor would do that,” Goodman told me.

The girl, Harris told the jury in her closing statement, was the “perfect victim” for the men to go after. Would a girl who was healthy and secure enter that apartment, thinking that the men in there would “talk her through her problems at the group home” across the street? No, she would not.

“Are you to believe that [she] went through this entire process of testifying, of being cross-examined in that manner, of being physically examined, because she’s just making it up because she wants to manipulate?” Harris asked the jury. “Is she that complex? No.”

“She is that vulnerable. And they knew it, and they raped her.”

The jury believed the girl on the most important question. They found the two men guilty of rape. Evans was sentenced to 18 years in prison and Lee to 14 years. When the victim heard the verdict, she “melted in front of us,” according to O’Malley.

“Nobody ever stood up for her,” O’Malley said. “No one ever spoke for her. … Kamala made her feel like she was the only important person in her life. She focused on her. She empowered her.” (Years later, O’Malley reconnected with the young woman, who she said turned her life around. She was married with kids and was “very happy.”)”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/22/kamala-harris-sex-crimes-prosecutor-00175347

Trump and Harris agree on “no tax on tips.” They’re both wrong.

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Lone Candle

“The problem with tipped wages is not that they are taxed too heavily; it’s how little they tend to pay, and how much tipped workers have to rely on the kindness of strangers to make ends meet. In 2023, for example, the median annual wage for waiters was just below $32,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In fact, as the Tax Policy Center put it, eliminating income taxes on tips would do little, if anything, for many tipped workers whose earnings are so low that they are already exempt from paying federal income taxes.

“It’s very hard to dispute that the vast majority of moderate and low-wage workers are left out,” said Brendan Duke, senior director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress. “We know that 95 percent of low- and moderate-wage workers don’t get tips, and only about a third of those tipped workers pay income taxes and would benefit from this.” (Duke was specifically talking about Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s proposed legislation on this issue.)

Part of the reason that tipped workers are paid so poorly is that the federal government only guarantees them a subminimum wage of $2.13 per hour. If along with tips, a worker’s earnings are still below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, then employers have to make up the difference. (Many states and municipalities have wage requirements above the federal minimum, but those also often include carve-outs with lower hourly minimums for tipped workers.)

That’s why a handful of states have abolished the subminimum wage for tipped workers altogether. Because by allowing employers to pay tipped workers less, businesses essentially pass their payroll burden directly onto their customers. And while most Americans are used to paying tips, those who don’t — or those who at least threaten to not tip — create a hostile environment for workers and make it harder for employees to make a fair wage.”

…

“One of the biggest concerns about doing away with federal taxes on tips is that it would discourage businesses from offering more competitive wages. That’s because if workers’ take-home pay increases because of a tax cut, employers wouldn’t need to provide tipped workers a higher base-line wage. In effect, it’s a tax cut that might mostly subsidize businesses’ payroll costs, not workers’ cost of living.

“It will reduce employers’ needs to raise wages,” Shierholz, of the Economic Policy Institute, said.

There’s also the fact that creating a tax carveout for tipped employees could create a major loophole for employers looking to pay people less. Some sectors, for example, can simply become part of the tipped economy, making more of their workers rely on tips rather than a minimum wage.

The policy would “incentivize employers to have more workers be in tipped occupations,” Shierholz said. “[Employers] could reduce the base wages they pay their workers under the guise of doing something for the workers. They could say, ‘We’re making you tipped because you won’t have to pay taxes’ and then in the fine print, it’s like, ‘Oh also, you’re going to be making $2.13 an hour in base wages.’”

That’s why pursuing other policies, like abolishing the subminimum wage, would do much more to increase workers’ pay than eliminating taxes on tips would. The poverty rate for tipped workers in states without a subminimum wage, for example, is lower than that in states with a subminimum wage.

“If you really want to help tipped workers, there are other ways that are far, far better,” Shierholz said, adding that federal dollars would be better directed toward programs like the Child Tax Credit or the Earned Income Tax Credit, which would be much better at targeting workers who need it.

So if politicians are looking to tout a pro-worker agenda, they should point to policies that can actually raise people’s wages, as Harris did by also endorsing raising the minimum wage. Otherwise, they might just be pushing for yet another tax cut for the rich. After all, that might be why major business lobbying groups have endorsed “no tax on tips” — to avoid actually raising workers’ wages.”

https://www.vox.com/policy/366680/no-tax-on-tips-trump-harris-subminimum-wage

Kamala Harris’s and Donald Trump’s wildly different tax plans, explained

Posted on September 11, 2024 by Lone Candle

“Harris is proposing policies like raising taxes on corporations and creating new tax credits, while Trump promises to institute new tariffs and to cut taxes on certain businesses. There’s not a lot the two agree on, other than a proposal to eliminate federal taxes on tips.
As president, both candidates would struggle to make their promised changes unilaterally as taxation is controlled by Congress, not the executive branch. Neither party seems on track to make the type of huge House or Senate gains a president would need to ram their agenda through Congress, and it’s possible control continues to be split between parties, a recipe for gridlock.

That makes these plans more about demonstrating an economic philosophy to voters than anything else.”

…

“Harris has said she wants to:

Set the capital gains tax rate at 28 percent
Set the corporate tax rate at 28 percent
Give new small businesses a tax break of up to $50,000
Create a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers
Increase the child tax credit for all parents, including giving new parents a $6,000 credit
Eliminate certain taxes on tips
Ensure no tax hikes on individuals making less than $400,000”
…

“Trump says he plans to:
Slash some corporate taxes to 15 percent
Institute a tariff of up to 20 percent on all imports (except those from China, which would have a 60 percent tariff)
Renew the individual tax cuts from 2017, keeping even the highest income tax brackets where they are
Get rid of taxes on Social Security benefits
End taxes on tips”

https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/370753/taxes-debate-trump-harris-irs-tariffs-child-tax-credit

RUSSIA Attacks USA

Posted on September 11, 2024September 11, 2024 by Lone Candle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQiEOd007Ns

VP Harris and Immigration

Posted on September 1, 2024September 1, 2024 by Lone Candle

“Early in the administration, Harris was given a role that came to be defined as a combination of chief fundraiser and conduit between business leaders and the economies of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Her attempt to convince companies across the world to invest in Central America and create jobs for would-be migrants had some success, according to immigration experts and current and former government officials.
But those successes only underlined the scale of the gulf in economic opportunity between the United States and Central America, and how policies to narrow that gulf could take years or even generations to show results.

Rather than develop ways to turn away or detain migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, Harris’ work included encouraging a Japan-based auto parts plant, Yazaki, to build a $10 million plant in a western Guatemalan region that sees high rates of migration and pushing a Swiss-based coffee company to increase procurement by more than $100 million in a region rich with coffee beans.

She convened leaders from dozens of companies, helping to raise more than $5 billion in private and public funds.

“Not a huge amount, but it ain’t chicken feed and that links to jobs,” said Mark Schneider, who worked with Latin American and Caribbean nations as a senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Clinton administration.

Jonathan Fantini-Porter, the chief executive of the Partnership for Central America, the public-private partnership Harris helped lead, said the money had led to 30,000 jobs, with another 60,000 on the way as factories are constructed.

She also pushed Central American governments to work with the United States to create a program where refugees could apply for protection within the region.

Still, some of Harris’ critics said her focus on the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was a mistake.

Most migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during the Obama and Trump administrations did come from those countries. But as migration from that region stabilized during the Biden administration, it exploded from countries such as Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba.

The Northern Triangle countries accounted for roughly 500,700 of the 2.5 million crossings at the southwest border in the fiscal year of 2023, a 36% drop from the 2021 fiscal year, according to the Wilson Center.

“They didn’t care to do a good diagnosis of the issue, and they have just focused on a very small part of the topic,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a political science professor at George Mason University who has studied Latin American relations and their impact on migration. Correa-Cabrera said Harris had “failed completely” in her mission by following an outdated approach to tackling the root causes of migration.

Biden had a similar portfolio to Harris’ when he was vice president. He was in charge of addressing the economic problems in Central America by rallying hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for a region where the United States has a complicated legacy.”

…

“Ricardo Zúñiga, who served as State Department’s special envoy for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, said Harris was essential in bringing together Latin American and American business leaders to drive investment in Central America.

Less than a week into her role, Zúñiga recalled, Harris sat with members of the national security team and economists from the Treasury Department. After a round of introductions, she quickly got into probing the personalities of the Latin American leaders with whom she would be interacting.

Zúñiga said he later watched her put the information she had collected into practice. In Mexico City, she connected with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador by expressing interest in the artwork at his presidential palace.

In Guatemala, she took a much more direct approach to President Alejandro Giammattei. She warned him last year about attempts to disrupt the handover of power of the newly elected president, Bernardo Arévalo, while also pushing him to help form programs that migrants could use to apply for refuge in the United States closer to their home countries.

“She was curious and asked many questions,” Zúñiga said. “She very quickly realized that we weren’t going to solve 500 years of problematic history in a single term.””

https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-attack-harris-immigration-her-120655619.html