WHY TO VOTE FOR KH FROM MICHAEL G.

Michael G re the coming election
PART I - WHY TO VOTE FOR KH
First, I urge every U.S. citizen to vote in our upcoming national
elections.
Second, these are considerations for why I plan on voting for
Vice-President Harris to serve as
the next President of the United States:
1. I believe Vice President Harris will continue to implement the
transformative work of the
American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and
Science Act, and the
Inflation Reduction Act, with the purpose of strengthening the
foundations of the United States
economy for a long time to come.
2. I believe Vice President Harris will continue and enhance the
largely successful recent efforts
of the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration to reduce
inflation and decrease the cost of
housing, food, energy, and other essentials.
3. I believe Vice President Harris will pursue tax deductions and tax
credits targeted to increase
the prosperity and financial stability of the average American
struggling in the aftermath of the
economic dislocations of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis.
4. I believe Vice President Harris will uphold the rule of law and the
integrity of government
institutions by valuing experience. expertise, and the ability to work
across party lines.
5. Vice President Harris has promised to sign legislation to
strengthen control of US borders to
contain the pressures caused by the breakdown of civil society in
several Latin American
countries. I believe she will strive to put in place a smart and
thoughtful approach to legal
immigration to the United States.
6. I believe Vice President Harris will uphold support for Ukraine in
its fight to repel the Russian
invasion and to become a strong and independent democratic state.
7. I believe Vice President Harris will uphold Israel�s right to
security and safety and seek a
solution to provide a stable foundation for the safety, security, and
well-being of the Palestinian
people.
8. I believe Vice President Harris will continue the Biden
administration's policy of maintaining
military strength in relation to China, protecting American industries
from unfair and harmful
trade practices engaged in by businesses and other institutions in
China, while seeking to
maintain diplomatic engagement to increase cooperation and reduce
friction between the United
States and this important country.
9. I believe Vice President Harris will actively protect the civil
rights of Americans and the human
rights of all peoples, including the autonomy of women in decisions
about becoming mothers
and seek to avoid undue government interference in matters of personal
identity and personal
relationships.
10. I believe Vice President Harris will defend the right of every
U.S. citizen to vote and facilitate
exercise of the franchise by all U.S. citizens.
Michael
PART II WHY NOT TO VOTE FOR DT
In my last post, I listed 10 reasons why I plan to vote for
Vice-President Harris as the next
President of the United States. While I prefer to stay on the positive
side, I feel that it is
important to also mention in a sober and level-headed way the reasons
why I believe it would be
a mistake to vote for the election of former President Trump to a
second term:
1. I do not believe that electing the former President will bring back
the low inflation and cheaper
prices of 2017 to 2019 hoped for my many of his supporters. The
increase in the prices of food,
housing and energy have been due mainly to supply shortages and
dislocations caused by
COVID and the disruption in maritime shipping by the wars in Ukraine
and the Middle East. A
second Trump administration will not have any magic path to restore
pre-COVID price levels.
2. I believe the largely untargeted tax cuts advocated by the former
President will worsen the
income and asset gap between the wealthiest members of our society and
the millions of other
Americans who are struggling "to make ends meet" and seems
to be at the root of the "populist"
mood in much of our country.
3. Universal tariff increases on imported goods and technology from
abroad prominently
advocated by the former President will, I believe, stoke the very
inflation that is of so much
concern to many Americans today and have an adverse boomerang effect
on our economy and
national security.
4. Replacing many members of the Federal civil service with persons
favorable to the former
President's political agenda, as he has suggested, will gravely weaken
the impartial and non-
partisan ethos of the Federal civil service, one of the outstanding
accomplishments of the late
19th century Republican Party.
5. The former President's apparent plan to engage in a mass
deportation of undocumented
aliens will create a crucial labor shortage in key sectors of the
agriculture. construction and
service industries (among others), and risks to weaken proper legal
protections for documented
aliens and lawful permanent residents of our country.
6. Former President Trump has blamed Ukrainian President Zelensky for
the full-scale invasion
of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. I see no merit in this
allegation. I fear election of former
President Trump will weaken the position of Ukraine in its effort to
maintain its independence
and territorial integrity.
7. The former President has begun to speak about Americans who do not
agree with his policies
as �enemies from within.� This characterization contradicts the
fundamental respect for diversity
in thought and politics and for freedom of expression and speech that
is a cornerstone of what it
is to be an American.
8. The former President's preference to leave to the States questions
about the autonomy of
women in decisions about parenthood is misplaced because fundamental
human rights are
universal in nature. Leaving a patchwork of inconsistent rules among
U.S. States in this
sensitive area creates confusion and suffering for many women, medical
professionals and
others.
9. The peaceful transfer of power between Presidents is a keystone of
our system of national
governance. There is little likelihood that a re-elected President
Trump would support limiting the
use of the improper stratagems and theories used to try to
delegitimize the 2020 Presidential
election.
10. I believe there is little doubt that former President Trump failed
to intervene and stop the
attempted occupation of the Capitol of the United States for several
crucial hours on January 6th
2021. I believe we need to elect as President a person fully committed
to "protect and defend
the Constitution" under all circumstances.
Michael
PART III THE ECONOMY CLAIM AGAINST BIDEN (and, by implication KH)
Those inclined to vote for former President Trump often say that the
economy for them was
better in the Trump years before the onset of the COVID crisis than
they have been in the post-
COVID years of the Biden administration. By this, they generally refer
to the inflation in the costs
of food, housing and energy. The implication is that the economic
policies of former President
Trump created the better conditions during his administration and that
the policies of the Biden
administration have created and are responsible for the recent
inflation and sense of economic
crisis.
I believe both of these conclusions are mistaken. First, the relative
low inflation from 2017
through 2019, I believe, represented the results of the efforts to
stabilize and grow the economy
by the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve after the Great
Recession. I believe that
little of this relative prosperity (including wage increases for
African-American men alluded to by
commentators such as Bret Stephens) can be attributed to the explicit
policies or initiatives of
the Trump administration (with the possible exception of some modest
stimulus from modest tax
decreases for middle-class families in the 2017 tax legislation).
On the other hand - and I think this has to be said very loudly and
clearly - the inflation in the
post COVID period Is mainly the result first of the severe supply
chain disruptions due to the
shutdowns, quarantines and restrictions on productivity resulting from
the need to contain the
COVID virus. More recently, inflation has been exacerbated by severe
interruptions in shipping
by the war in Ukraine and the wars in the Middle East, and threats to
the safety of maritime
traffic. While the combined stimulus packages of the CARES Act (passed
towards the end of the
Trump administration) and the American Recovery Plan (passed early in
the Biden
administration) may said to have also been factors, these Acts I
believe largely saved America
from a depression or terrible recession in the wake of COVID. I
believe it is also undisputable
that the rate of inflation has significantly fallen in the last year,
largely due to the careful policies
of the Federal Reserve augmented by the policies of the Biden
administration.
Thus, I believe that voting for former President Trump on the premise
that he can better run the
economy or restore the price levels in the first couple of years of
his administration is based on
faulty assumptions and is gravely mistaken. The proposals for an
across-the-board tariff on
foreign imports of good and technology proposed by the former
President is intrinsically
inflationary and likely to reverse the steady if still incomplete
progress in checking inflation while
working to increase wage levels.
One of my disappointments in the debate during this election season is
that there has not been
a more comprehensible discussion about the reasons for the economic
pain experienced by
many Americans despite the state of our economy being what Heather Cox
Richardson calls
"the envy of the world." I believe that the long-term
infrastructure, research and development,
and capital commitment legislation passed during the Biden
administration is a major
accomplishment that a Harris administration will sustain and build on,
but that a second Trump
administration is more likely to undermine and undo by misguided
approaches such as the
Trump campaign's tariff proposals. Thus, I think that voters for whom
the state of the economy is
a major concern should be voting for the Harris-Walz ticket so that
the foundations for a strong
U.S. economy laid by the Biden administration can be built on and
strengthened.
Michael
Part IV THE DO-NOTHING CLAIM AGAINST KH
Former President Trump and Senator Vance have often suggested that
somehow Vice
President Harris could have seen to the enactment of her policy
proposals and initiatives during
the three years she has been Vice President.
I think this suggestion is unfair - and very ironic as well - for the
following reasons:
First, very obviously, the Vice President is not the President and
therefore has not had unilateral
control of the Biden administration�s agenda.
But more importantly, President Biden and Vice President Harris have
tried to advance some of
the Vice-President's proposals and others that flow from a belief in
the power of government to
maintain fairness and opportunity in our economic and social systems.
A striking example to me
is the expanded childcare credit, which was passed temporarily under
the American Recovery
Plan in 2021 but had to be pared back in the 2022 budget negotiations
due to opposition mainly
from Republican lawmakers and, yes, a few Democratic or independent
lawmakers, especially
in the U.S. Senate. Other plans to provide initiatives designed to
support workers in the service
economy had to be scrapped because of opposition largely if not
exclusively from Republican
lawmakers.
To ensure that more of the proposals and initiatives proposed by Vice
President Harris can be
fairly considered, refined, and implemented requires not only on
electing Vice President Harris
to be the next President of the United States but also on electing a
majority of Senators and
Representatives who understand the potential of government to support
economic security and
encourage fair competition and a level playing field for
entrepreneurship and investment, be
they Democrats, Independents or Republicans who are willing to work
with the Vice-President in
pursuit of her goals for our country and its people.
Michael