Category: US Politics

Today, the American people are deciding on the best choice for the president of the United States for the next four years, so it is vital to distinguish between facts and fiction and emotions versus the truth.

With a constant bombardment of propaganda, perception can become one’s reality.  Still, the only reality is reality, and perception can be whatever becomes accepted in the human mind because of exposure to faulty data.

Knowing that a fundamental responsibility for any American president is the safety and economic stability of the American people, the corporate propaganda media have not challenged Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris for her handling of the southern border or the economy for the last four years.

So what were Kamala Harris’s economic and border security achievements for the past four years, and how do her numbers stack up when placed alongside the four years under President Donald Trump?

When Harris and Biden stepped into office in 2021, they inherited Trump’s 1.4% inflation rate.  They quickly exploded the overall inflation rate to 19.75 by passing the American Rescue Plan Act.  Then, in August 2022, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act because of Kamala’s tie-breaking vote.  That act authorized $891 billion in additional spending, massively increasing inflation.

Harris’s philosophy of restricting gas and oil production had a substantial detrimental effect on American consumers.  The national average cost of gasoline under Kamala rose 47%.  Americans paid $2.28 per gallon under Trump, but that same gallon would cost $3.35 today. Under Kamala, filling up a 20-gallon gas tank would cost Americans $67; under Trump, it would cost only $45.60, or $21.40 less.

The increase in fuel costs put incredible hardships on truckers who ship various goods across the country.  The unnecessary increase had a catastrophic domino effect.  Groceries became more expensive by 20%, electricity went up 28%, and rent went up 21%.  Nearly everything Americans purchased became far more costly. 

The numbers tell the real story, so as far as people’s pocketbooks are concerned, based on the economic facts, Americans enjoyed much more spending power and consumer freedom under Trump.

Looking at the illegal immigration crises, the positions of the two candidates could not be more different.  Kamala has historically supported sanctuary cities and an open southern border.  When in power, she immediately stopped the construction of Trump’s border wall and ended Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy.  Harris categorized the wall as being “racist, medieval, anti-immigrant, Trump’s vanity project, and a waste of taxpayer money.”

Her goal has always been to decriminalize illegal crossings.  She stated, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”  At the same time, President Trump has consistently labeled those crossing the southern border illegally as illegal aliens who are committing a crime when they enter the country.

Harris also wants to dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stating in an MSNBC interview, “I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing … and we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”

Along with already giving free housing, food, and education to illegal aliens, Harris has also vowed to provide them free health care, which would crush the American taxpayer.

Border encounters under Harris were 8.3 million, which included 13,099 convicted of murder and 15,811 convicted of rape and sexual assault — an increase of 241% compared to encounters under Trump.

The number-one tragedy of Kamala’s open border policy is human suffering, including the heinous murders of innocent Americans like Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, and Jocelyn Nungaray.  Kamala also lost track of 320,000 migrant children, who experts say are now either dead or captive in the sex trade.

According to a August 2024 article by the Heritage Foundation, “Between October 2022 and April 2023 — Customs and Border Protection seized more than 17,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border, enough to kill every single American 14 times over[.] … Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49.”

With the election right around the corner, President Trump and millions of Americans now see Kamala Harris taking credit for a wall she detested for many years.  She now takes promotional photos in front of sections of the wall built by Trump and says she will start building a wall when elected.

Again, the numbers tell the real story, so as far as border security is concerned, under Trump, the American people were safer and the border more secure as the number of illegal alien crossings hit a historic 45-year low, whereas under Harris, the number of illegal border crossings hit historic highs with the fallout being higher crime rates and the senseless rapes and deaths of Americans.

Americans don’t need to imagine what a presidency under Trump will look like because precise data reveals his four years in office.

And Americans don’t need to speculate what a presidency under Harris would be like, since Harris stated that there is nothing she would have changed regarding policies during President Biden’s presidency.  Hence, Americans can expect at least 10 to 20 million more illegal aliens crossing over the border, receiving free benefits at taxpayer expense.  Four hundred thousand more American deaths due to Fentanyl overdoses. Higher crime rates, including rape and murder, and higher food and gas prices, with young, hardworking Americans unable to afford a home.

Putting feelings aside, Trump had a significantly more robust economy and a more vigorous and secure southern border.  Americans had more spending money and were safer under Trump.  Whether Americans will vote with their heads based on the numbers or their emotions while discounting what the realities are remains the question.

Image: cagdesign via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

There has been a lot of analysis and commentary about last month’s presidential debate, regarding everything from the ABC moderators’ selective fact-checking to Harris’s statement that she is a gun owner to Trump’s reference to reports that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating dogs and cats. Also remarkable was Trump’s assertion that “[Harris] is a Marxist. Everyone knows she’s a Marxist. Her father is a Marxist professor in economics. And he educated her well.”

But perhaps the most significant — and almost universally overlooked — aspect of the debate was something that did not happen: Kamala Harris did not deny that she’s a Marxist. Moreover, she still has not denied she is a Marxist.

Many commentators have taken pains to deny this, such as by arguing that Harris’s plan is not sufficiently socialistic to be Marxist. Others have appealed to Communist Party disavowals of Harris, distancing Harris from her father’s views or tried to refute the claim that Harris’s father was a genuine Marxist. But Harris herself has yet even to address Trump’s accusation.

Is Kamala Harris a Marxist? To answer this question, we must first define the term. Essentially, Marxism is a materialistic, anti-religious socio-economic philosophy that views the human condition in terms of class struggle, sees capitalism as oppressive, and advocates socialistic redistribution of wealth. So to what extent, if at all, are Harris’s views consistent with these tenets? Here are four things to consider.

First, Harris has repeatedly emphasized equity, which is code for treating people unequally in order to achieve equal economic outcomes. For example, in a 2021 White House speech Harris urged that we must be “truly committed to the principles of equity in every way that we as government and as a society can enforce those important principles.” And in her 2022 comments on relief for Hurricane Ian victims, Harris advocated “giving resources based on equity understanding.” The concept of equity provides a clear rationale for wealth redistribution and hearkens to the Marxist dictum “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.” This is why Liz Cheney remarked that Harris “sounds just like Karl Marx.” And, as some have pointed out, the norm of equity actually contradicts the norm of equality, as it is essentially a mandate to discriminate — a practical consequence of Marxism that has tragically played out repeatedly over the last century.

Secondly, Harris’s endorsements of capitalism are consistently qualified in a socialist direction. For example in a 2021 Forbes interview, she said capitalism even in its best form makes the “false assumption” that everyone starts in the same place “particularly when we take into account race and gender.” She then adds that we must consider these disparities when allowing for economic competition. This, of course, constitutes a virtual blank check in terms of socialistic controls to compensate for such disparities in order to create equal outcomes. This is consistent with Marxist thought, which says that class struggle leads to exploitation and oppression in a capitalistic context — injustices which can only be redressed through socialistic management of the economy.

Speaking of which, Harris has vowed to implement price controls should she become President, and this is itself a clear signal of a socialist economic agenda. Specifically, she has proposed a federal ban on grocery “price gouging,” capping prices of insulin and other prescription drugs, and generally lowering health care costs. And she promises to give $25,000 to first-time homebuyers. All told, the Harris plan would dole out over $1.5 trillion in government handouts. This is indicative of a philosophy of federal micromanagement of the economy — an approach very much consistent with Marxist methods. And it is an approach that cannot remain piecemeal but necessarily becomes systemic, as specified market controls create unintended market effects that must then be addressed through further market controls, and so on down the slippery slope to wholesale socialism.

Finally, Harris has been plausibly accused of anti-religious bigotry. While serving as a California senator in 2018, Harris sponsored the Do No Harm Act, a bill that aimed to undermine the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a critical federal safeguard of Americans’ religious freedom. The ironically titled Do No Harm Act would have required religious devotees and faith-based organizations to violate their religious convictions regarding traditional marriage and the sanctity of life.

Later, during her time on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Harris needled several judicial nominees about their membership with the Catholic charity group, Knights of Columbus. Harris repeatedly questioned the nominees’ ability to serve impartially given their standard Catholic advocacy of traditional marriage and the sanctity of life — again, both views which for most Catholics are deeply informed by religious convictions. While Harris did not critique the nominees’ religious beliefs per se, her targeting their involvement with the Knights of Columbus, whose public services are directly inspired by their theological convictions, amounts to tacit religious discrimination.

Harris’s anti-religious stance was also evident in her 2021 support of the Equality Act, which would have undermined RFRA in the name of gender ideology, and her 2013 petitioning of the U.S. Supreme Court to force Hobby Lobby to cover abortifacients in their health care plans.

Harris’s track record throughout her public career shows a consistent pattern of anti-religious bias, which is, again, consistent with the anti-religion stance of Marxism.

These facts do not prove that Kamala Harris is a Marxist, but they are certainly consistent with that possibility. Given Harris’ economic ideal of equity, her evident hostility toward free market capitalist principles, and her alarming record of anti-religious bias, not to mention her persistent refusal to deny Donald Trump’s nationally televised accusation that she is a Marxist, this should give us serious pause.

A common metaphor for abductive logic says, if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. So what are we to make of Kamala Harris, given this principle? Her record does suggest that she holds to an anti-religious socio-economic philosophy that views the human condition in terms of class struggle, sees capitalism as oppressive, and advocates socialistic redistribution of wealth — the very definition of Marxism.

It seems Trump’s accusation is indeed plausible: the Harris “duck” might very well be a Marxist one.

James S. Spiegel is Executive Director of the Kalos Center for Christian Education and Spiritual Formation in Columbus, Ohio. He has published eleven books and over 100 articles and book chapters. He can be reached at jmspieg@gmail.com.

The ever-present, ever-changing election polls reflect what a limited group of people think on a given day. But the billions of dollars wagered on 2024 Presidential election betting proves what a compendium of smart, wealthy people think will happen on Election Day. Polls are opinions. Betting markets are opinions, too, but they are opinions backed up by billions of dollars. The smart money is now backing Trump 60-40. 

Betting on everything from elections to the date of the first measurable snowfall in London has long been legal in the U.K. The internet, combined with the security of blockchain money movements, spread wagering worldwide. Billions have already been bet on this election. Billions more dollars, Euros, yen, and even rubles will be gambled before November 5. Although the odds strongly favored Harris in the weeks after the Biden campaign bit the dust, the ongoing shift in betters’ money-backed best guesses has now moved to Trump 3-2.

According to Forbes, the wagering giant Polymarket recently broke the 60% ceiling. This is the first time Pres. Trump enjoyed such a wide margin since Biden dropped out (or was dropped out, take your pick) from the race. The survey company Election Betting Odds aggregates the betting markets like Real Clear Politics combines pollsters’ predictions. EBO has Trump at 57%. 

The U.S. pollsters do not favor Pres. Trump that highly. Even so, RCP now has Trump up in the critical swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and New Mexico. These are massive changes from two months ago. RCP is now predicting Trump would win with 312 of the required 270 electoral votes if the election were held today. Simply put, the projected ballots and bucks agree.

The critical information for us is not just the betting percentages. It’s how they are generated. These new numbers all come from people who are sure enough in their expectations to bet millions of dollars on the outcome. These are the “Smart Money People” who back up their feelings with hard cash.

You may remember J. Edgar Hoover’s adage, “Follow the money, and you follow the course of the crime.” In this election, it’s “Follow the bucks, and you will predict the ballots.”

Image: Pexels/Jonathan Borba