Aug
21
2024

Maybe I Should Rename This Blog "Incoherent Word Salad"

… but nah, it seems Kamala has cornered that market:

Well, gosh, she manages to use "return on investment" four times in that 1:08 clip. I assume it focus-grouped well, because it makes her sound like a smart, no-nonsense, green-eyeshade type of person.

And of course, the last four words in the clip are notable: "It pays for itself".

All based on the inherent assumption that Your Federal Government can spend additional trillions more wisely and productively than the private individuals and businesses they're taking it from.

Take it away, Milton:

Or if you would prefer a text rebuttal, here's Rich Lowry: Kamala Harris Is No Investor

Clearly, someone mentioned “return on investment” to her in a policy briefing somewhere along the line, and the phrase stuck. Now, Harris apparently thinks she’s the Warren Buffet of deficit spending.

The concept of investment tends to be inapt in the context of government spending. In the private sector, when someone takes the risk of investing in a business or product, and then it doesn’t work, he or she pays the price. This ensures a measure of accountability and rigor that is lacking in government.

There’s a reason that no one ever confuses the Department of Health and Human Services with Apple Inc.

Indeed. Kamala's new word salad is no improvement over the old and stale one.

Also of note:

  • Just put this idea over there, in the junk pile with all the others. Megan McArdle explains Why Harris’s housing plan won’t work.

    Harris’s housing plan has three main planks. One of these is $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, which she says will help more than 4 million home buyers over four years. Another is a plan to punish corporate landlords who buy up lots of single-family rental properties or use algorithmic software to set prices.

    The third plank is the 3 million new homes, which Harris promises to get built with a combination of initiatives: a $40 billion “innovation fund”; “a historic expansion of the existing tax incentive for businesses that build rental housing that is affordable”; a new tax credit for building starter homes; and a red-tape initiative that is meant to streamline permitting processes for builders.

    Without the millions of new houses, the two other initiatives risk making the housing situation worse. Restrictions on corporate landlords could shrink supply by undermining the build-to-rent market, which is currently one of the strongest sectors in new construction, according to developer Bobby Fijan. And that down payment assistance for first-time home buyers would likely end up in the pockets of existing homeowners, as newbies use it to bid up prices in a tight market.

    It’s not impossible to construct 750,000 extra homes a year — housing starts, which were about 1.2 million last year, hit 2.2 million at the peak of the housing bubble. But ramping up production to that level would take years, and might never happen, because the only real way to get there is via the one promise Harris will find hardest to keep — that is, to make it much easier for builders to build.

    I think Ms. McArdle has thought about this harder than (Democrat) Noah Smith (discussed here the day before yesterday).

  • They are trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Matt Welch has an acerbic take on the convention rhetoric: Democrats Just Can't Quit Saving Our Souls.

    Say what you will about the otherwise calorie-lite first fortnight of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign, at least it eased for a moment the shrill catastrophizing that has marked Democratic messaging against former President Donald Trump over these past nine years.

    "Gone are [President Joe] Biden's sober exhortations about the battle for the soul of the nation and a democracy under attack," The Washington Post observed earlier this month. "In its place are promises of 'freedom' and 'a brighter future' and, at times, audible giggles and laughter."

    Well, the darkness came back with a vengeance in Chicago during Monday's opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Staged as a somewhat awkward and late-running "Thank you Joe" celebration, Day One demonstrated that the party remains in thrall both to the millenarian temptation and its flip side of messianic zeal.

    "We're facing inflection point, one of those rare moments in history when the decisions we make now will determine the fate of our nation and the world for decades to come," Biden barked, familiarly. "That's not hyperbole. I mean it literally. We're in a battle for the very soul of America."

    Literally!

  • How much for the big guy? Andrew C. McCarthy takes to the NY Post: Damning impeachment report shows why Dems were desperate to get rid of corrupt Biden. It's a dual indictment of the Biden family's corrution and the Justice Department's investigatory blindness and stonewalling. Excerpt, describing the Biden involvement with CEFC ("a CCP-dominated Chinese influence operation camouflaged as a regime-backed energy conglomerate").

    The CEFC deal eventually brought us the now-infamous “10 percent for the big guy” email — outlining Joe’s personal stake.

    It also gave us Hunter’s 2017 WhatsApp shakedown of a CEFC exec — explaining: “I am sitting here with my father” wondering why the “commitment” hasn’t been “fulfilled,” and “I will make certain between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

    Within days, the floodgates opened with $5 million — on top of millions already paid — flowing into the Biden family coffers.

    McCarthy points out that Hunter's shenanigans could have been stopped by his father with a few minutes' stern lecture. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to notice that that dog did not bark.