Kamala Harris is hostile to free speech, free markets, and fiscal responsibility

Vice President Kamala Harris has a record of hostility to free speech, notes the Wall Street Journal:

“Harris made headlines a decade ago by threatening to punish nonprofit groups that refused to turn over unredacted donor information. She demanded they hand to the state their federal IRS Form 990 Schedule B in the name of discovering “self dealing” or “improper loans.” The real purpose was to learn the names of conservative donors and chill future political giving—that is, political speech.

Her bullying came amid the Internal Revenue Service’s notorious targeting of conservative nonprofits; Wisconsin’s probe of GOP donors; Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s intimidation of donors to the American Legislative Exchange Council; and a campaign of harassment against donors who supported California’s Prop 8….

Free-market nonprofits challenged the Harris dragnet, suing the AG’s office in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta in 2021, the High Court ruled 6-3 that the AG’s disclosure demand broke the law. The Court pointed out that a lower court had found not “a single, concrete instance in which pre-investigation collection of a Schedule B did anything to advance the Attorney General’s investigative, regulatory or enforcement efforts.”

The Court said California’s claim that it would protect donor information lacked credibility, since during the litigation plaintiffs discovered nearly 2,000 Schedule B forms “inadvertently posted to the Attorney General’s website.” It noted that the petitioners and donors faced “threats” and “retaliation.”

The Supreme Court said Ms. Harris’s policy posed a risk of chilling free-speech rights, and it cited its 1958 NAACP v. Alabama precedent, which protected First Amendment “associational” rights. Ms. Harris is citing her experience as state AG as a political asset, but the Bonta case is a warning to voters that she’s willing to use the law as a weapon against political opponents.“

Harris also has a history of left-wing stances, such as supporting the Green New Deal (which could cost $90 trillion), rent control, and racial redistribution of wealth. Harris supports imposing a higher tax rate on corporations than socialist Venezuela.

Harris supported handing out $21 trillion in welfare payments during the pandemic, as the American Enterprise Institute notes. That would have bankrupted America. That $21 trillion spending increase would have more than doubled the federal budget, and would have given America a national debt far bigger compared to its economy than other countries that borrowed so much they became unable to pay their debts and had to be bailed out (like Greece. Of course, the U.S. is too big for the international community to bail out, so the U.S. would eventually default if its debt reached the extreme level resulting from Harris’s proposal, since interest rates would inevitably increase, making such a massive national debt unserviceable. That default would trigger a massive financial crisis).

“While in the US Senate, nobody was to the left of Kamala Harris. Not even [socialist] Bernie Sanders,” notes Jeremy Redfern. As Newsweek reported:

“Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s pick for his vice presidential running mate, Democratic California Senator Kamala Harris, was ranked as being more liberal than Democratic Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the congressperson often considered the furthest left within the Democratic caucus.

“The government watchdog website GovTrack.us ranked all 100 U.S. Senators with an “ideology score” from 1.0 (most conservative) to 0.0 (most liberal). The score is based on each senator’s legislative behavior: namely, how similar the pattern of bills and resolutions they co-sponsor are to other congress members….GovTrack.us gave Sanders an ideology score of 0.02 and Harris a score of 0.00. together, they ranked as the most liberal members of the Senate. The website said Harris joined bipartisan bills the least often compared to Senate Democrats.“

Harris has supported rent control for at least 5 years, even though 93% of economists think that rent control is a bad idea that reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.

Last week, Harris denounced “corporate landlords,” and called for a “cap” on “rent increases.” Even Obama administration officials have said that rent control is stupid and counterproductive. So Harris’s support for rent control marks her as a left-wing Democrat, because rent control doesn’t work (for example, it discourages construction of rental housing, turns some buildings into slums by leaving the landlord with less money for maintenance, makes it hard for new residents to find housing, and encourages empty-nesters to stay in four-bedroom apartments they no longer need, rather than moving out and letting a family with kids live in it). “Obama economic advisor Jason Furman has, in line with a strong majority of economists, acknowledged that ‘Rent control has been about as disgraced as any economic policy in the tool kit.’”