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Kamala’s Bait-And-Switch: Progressivism For Socialism
Issues & Insights ^ | 23 Aug, 2024 | I & I Editorial Board

Posted on 08/24/2024 6:54:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber

If you’re one of the shrunken number of people who have bothered to watch the Democratic National Convention, you will by now certainly know it’s been long on rhetoric, and incredibly short on policy specifics. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

On Thursday night’s final evening of the Democratic National Convention, the party’s candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t release a party platform. So “our democracy,” as the Dems like to call it, apparently doesn’t come equipped with any policy promises. Just a candidate, who received zero votes in any primary.

The truth is, the increasingly far-left Democratic Party doesn’t want anyone to know that it plans to push the nation even further to the socialist side of the scale because they know it won’t sell with average Americans who still think the ol’ U.S. of A. is a special place.

As such, it’s no surprise Harris has been a bit gauzy about what she intends to do if elected. Why, it’s almost as if the Dems are hiding something from us.

And they are. As one DNC speaker put it, “we got 70 days to act right, y’all. After 70 days, we can go back to acting crazy, right?” Followed by an answer from one of the assembled panelists: “Right.”

That’s it. Just try to act normally for the next two months or so. Win the election, then all bets are off. A “democracy” built on lies wins.

So what will Harris do for the next two months? Pretend her agenda is no different than the one that the DNC has already adopted.

As Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel put it:

A month into her coronation, the Democratic nominee is finally fleshing out an agenda and has settled the big question of whether she’d revert to her 2020 progressive platform or chart any different path from Biden. Answer: a resounding no. She’s instead doubling down on the failing status quo. So much so that the Harris team didn’t even bother to put its stamp on the party platform, which was released in July under the expectation of a Biden renomination.

Why would she do this? Because her actual ideas about governance are even scarier than Biden’s failed policies. Better to run on Biden’s weak unworkable ideas, repackaged by a younger, more-appealing female face (and not Biden’s perpetual old-man scowl), than to confront Americans with the actual choice of top-down socialism, or a free economy.

If she wins, any chance Harris will follow the Biden script? Nope.

She’s already let the proverbial cat out of the bag, with her never-ending utterances extending back two decades. She’s a hard-core leftist in designer-drag to fool regular people into believing she’s not some kind of extremist. The DNC is helping her commit this fraud.

As the aggressive financial news aggregator Zero Hedge has pointed out, Kamala’s known proposals so far include “price controls,” “28% corporate tax,” “44.6% capital gains tax,” and a “25% tax on unrealized gains.”

All those taxes mean more direct government control over the private economy and mountains of new government spending.

That includes: the federal government building 3 million new homes, along with handing a $25,000 gift for first-time homebuyers who can’t afford homes; a $6,000 one-year tax break for middle-income and lower-income families who have children; and plans to “cancel medical debt for millions of Americans and to help them avoid accumulating such debt in the future” and to cap out-of-pocket prescription spending at $2,000 a year.

The estimated cost of all this: $1.7 trillion.

Just these proposals alone would be enough to sink the U.S. economy and put us into a European-style economic morass, bordering on an economic coma. Higher taxes won’t make anything grow faster other than big government.

But all of this “policy,” along with the details that will be hashed out endlessly, distract from a bigger reality: Kamala Harris supported our four-year disaster as Biden’s vice president, and will now make things even worse by going full socialist.

Critics might argue, “Harris is a progressive, but no socialist.” But these days, we would say that’s a distinction without a difference.

Harris has endorsed the Green New Deal, which would get rid of cars and fossil fuels. She supported “Medicare for All” and the abolition of private health insurance. She backs “free” education through college. She supports defunding the police and open borders. And she thinks getting rid of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution would be a good idea.

In short, you’d have no rights to free speech, and no rights to defend yourself in Kamala Harris’ socialist vision. And government at all levels would take up well more than half of all economic output, with extensive regulatory and financial control over what remains of the private sector.

Sounds like socialism to us. Keep that in mind as Dems and their media allies insist this is another right-wing exaggeration. It isn’t. The Democrats have been inching toward this for decades. Now, with a candidate who was picked by the party, not by the people, they have their perfect instrument for forcing their radical agenda on all of us.

Harris was No. 2 in the most “progressive” (that is, farthest left) administration ever. Even the New York Times admits “Harris economy could prove more progressive than Bidenomics.” Don’t be fooled: The daughter of a Marxist economist and left-wing mother, ranked in the Senate with a voting record to the left of self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris “self-identifies” as progressive. Once in power, she’ll show her real identity: socialist.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: kamunism

1 posted on 08/24/2024 6:54:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

The Dunning Kruger Effect or Why Stupid People Think They Are Smart...


2 posted on 08/24/2024 6:54:29 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber
One of my earliest memories of Rush was his warnings about how Democrats have to lie about their policies to get elected and camouflage themselves with conservative ideas.
3 posted on 08/24/2024 7:09:11 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen (Beat your plowshares into swords. Let the weak say I am strong)
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To: MtnClimber

And yet many Country Club Republican types are supporting Harris. When their clubs are closed down and the land used for immigrant housing, they will say what just happened?


4 posted on 08/24/2024 7:10:28 AM PDT by Maine Mariner
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To: MtnClimber

5 posted on 08/24/2024 7:12:01 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)
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To: MtnClimber
Woodrow Wilson was first, a leader and theorist of "Progressive" thought and ideology. Then he became president.

Progressivism is at heart a totalitarian ideology. Here is some of what Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1887:

‘State socialism’ is willing to act though state authority as it is at present organized. It proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view, and that the State consider itself bound to stop only at what is unwise or futile in its universal superintendence alike of individual and of public interests. The thesis of the states socialist is, that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will; that omnipotence of legislation is the first postulate of all just political theory.

Applied in a democratic state, such doctrine sounds radical, but not revolutionary. It is only an acceptance of the extremest logical conclusions deducible from democratic principles long ago received as respectable. For it is very clear that in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.

It is of capital importance to note this substantial correspondence of fundamental conception as between socialism and democracy: a whole system of practical politics may be erected upon it without further foundation. The germinal conceptions of democracy are as free from all thought of a limitation of the public authority as are the corresponding conceptions of socialism; the individual rights which the democracy of our own century has actually observed, were suggested to it by a political Philosophy radically individualistic, but not necessarily democratic. Democracy is bound by no principle of its own nature to say itself nay as to the exercise of any power. Here, then, lies the point. The difference between democracy and socialism is not an essential difference, but only a practical difference — is a difference of organization and policy, not a difference of primary motive. Democracy has not undertaken the tasks which socialists clamour to have undertaken; but it refrains from them, not for lack of adequate principles or suitable motives, but for lack of adequate organization and suitable hardihood: because it cannot see its way clear to accomplishing them with credit. Moreover it may be said that democrats of to-day hold off from such undertakings because they are of to-day, and not of the days, which history very well remembers, when government had the temerity to try everything. The best thought of modern time having recognized a difference between social and political questions, democratic government, like all other governments, seeks to confine itself to those political concerns which have, in the eyes of the judicious, approved themselves appropriate to the sphere and capacity of public authority.

The key point of Wilson's thought is NO LIMITS ON GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY AND POWER.

Mussolini said the same with different words: Everything inside the State. Nothing outside the State.

6 posted on 08/24/2024 7:14:42 AM PDT by marktwain (The Republic is at risk. Resistance to the Democratic Party is Resistance to Tyranny. )
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To: MtnClimber

“Critics might argue, “Harris is a progressive, but no socialist.” But these days, we would say that’s a distinction without a difference.”
~~~~~~~~~~

Progressivism IS Socialism.

Think of the “early 20th century progressives” that Hildabeest identifies with. That was the Fabian society, which was a pure socialist organization.


7 posted on 08/24/2024 7:28:56 AM PDT by sevlex
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To: MtnClimber

That convention reminded me of what an Academy Award ceremony would look like with only ONE person or movie nominated - thousands attending, money spent, all the hoopla. What a waste. She was going to be their nominee PERIOD - why the party? Why the show?

It showed all their warts which is a PLUS - IF a majority could see it for what it was..several nights of lies accusing their opponent of lying! Some so bald, so bold they were incomprehensible.


8 posted on 08/24/2024 7:30:43 AM PDT by Thank You Rush
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To: MtnClimber

There is no difference. This is just rebranding. Like JCarr’s re-definition of rape as a struggle session. About as macabre, too.


9 posted on 08/24/2024 7:36:19 AM PDT by bobbo666
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To: MtnClimber

Other threads state that she wants 35% Corp taxes. Joe wanted 28%


10 posted on 08/24/2024 7:38:49 AM PDT by ridesthemiles (not giving up on TRUMP---EVER)
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To: MtnClimber

Marxist


11 posted on 08/24/2024 8:01:07 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: BenLurkin

“Tax the rich” is the biggest LIE Democrats tell. The party is now totally owned and controlled by BigTech, BigBank, BigMedia, BigWallStreet (#RustyIrony), these are the richest most mega-capitalists in history. These punitive taxes are NOT for them, they will get an exemption and even subsidies. These taxes will be on those who do not accept and obey the Democrat party line. ALL policies will be weaponized to attack any who oppose whatever tyranny the Left has in mind. If they succeed it won’t be socialism, it’ll be feudalism. Socialist systems always end up feudal, masters and serfs. What will you be?

“Woke” multi-Billionaires Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Larry Fink (Blackrock), Sundar Pichai (Google), are all loved by (misnamed) “progressive” Democrats. Elon Musk who has recently pushed back against the WokeLeft’s censorship and tyranny is hated by them! And all know the most HATED billionaire of all is Donald Trump... and they seek his and Musk’s destruction. Nuff said!


12 posted on 08/24/2024 8:36:46 AM PDT by FiddlePig (The greatest threat to our sacred liberty is to not value it!””)
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To: MtnClimber
"Progressivism" always was a euphemism for socialism.

But if you want to be more precise about what the Democrats are up to, it's a centrally
controlled economy with private ownership (by connected elites).

In short Fascism. Very nearly as defined by Mussolini himself. I would say that is a form
of socialism. Others might argue otherwise (ignoring Mussolini's socialist roots).

But in any case, exactly what the Democrats propose and have already partially
implemented. But updated from the Fascism of 100 years ago by the addition of
sexual perversion.

13 posted on 08/24/2024 9:13:43 AM PDT by Salman (It's not a slippery slope if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: ridesthemiles
Other threads state that she wants 35% Corp taxes. Joe wanted 28%

Ant then the stock holders (the owners) will pay at least 15% on dividends on top of the corporate taxes. That would be over a 50% tax on stockholders. There should be a 50% reduction on government employee pensions to reflect the reduction in pension investments.

14 posted on 08/24/2024 9:19:39 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: Maine Mariner

“And yet many Country Club Republican types are supporting Harris. When their clubs are closed down and the land used for immigrant housing, they will say what just happened?”

Actually, I think they will do fine. Harris’s model is more fascist than socialist. The state is all, individuals are important only for how they advance the state, and corporations serve the purposes of the state and are compensated very well for that service.

There are great big bonuses in megabucks for country club types in aligning with a fascist/socialist leadership. Look at what it has done for Pfizer.

I think that is part of the big political realignment going on in America today. The country clubbers are no longer Republicans. Nor are the neocons. They may not have quite figured that out yet. But they will.


15 posted on 08/24/2024 9:22:33 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: marktwain

Good quote from Wilson. I was not aware of it.


16 posted on 08/24/2024 9:25:52 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: ModelBreaker

EXCELLENT OBSERVATIONS!!


17 posted on 08/24/2024 10:21:33 AM PDT by Maine Mariner
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To: MtnClimber
Kamala’s Bait-And-Switch: Progressivism For Socialism

Actually, Progressivism IS Socialism, ... just a newer word to fool the Idiots until they are No Longer Useful.

18 posted on 08/24/2024 10:34:33 AM PDT by Navy Patriot (Celebrate Decivilization)
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