Kass: Rips on Kamala's price controls and general socialist economics.

BTW, I did run a real estate development/construction business for 30 years and socialism scares the crap out of me.

Kamala’s Soviet Nightmare

By John Kass

Aug 21, 2024

In the almost 40 years when I was a reporter, columnist, and editorial board member at a faded (but once great) Chicago metropolitan newspaper, I’d periodically conduct an unpopular experiment on colleagues:

I’d ask them if they’d ever made a payroll while dealing with other bills for electricity, taxes and other operating costs.

In other words: Had they ever run a business?

It seemed reasonable to ask, since journalists were so eager and willing to weigh in on economic matters, from unaffordable teacher contracts to property tax “swaps” and waxing on profoundly about the importance of “community investment.” Sometimes I’d ask for a show of hands when I’d run the experiment.

“Have you ever run a business?”

But nobody ever raised their hands.

Nobody.

They just stared, sullenly, as if I were speaking some Mongolian dialect. I finally gave up and stopped asking.

But I realized the truth. Before newspapers went woke, they were flush with cash. They were fat and happy. No one was ever laid off. Newspapers had more money than they could think of spending.

Yet American journalists really didn’t want to be burdened by business issues, by “expenses” and “cost of production” and “profits and loss.” And they often avoid the most nagging issue of all:

Reality.

And there was a secret to success in American journalism.

Feelings. It was all about expressing feelings. And emotion.

So if you were assigned to write a story about watching the faces of customers at a supermarket who gave up on costly and inflated grocery store items, like milk and bread, or those who couldn’t even afford hot-dogs for a July 4 cookout, you’d be chronicling heartbreak, anger, frustration and despair.

If you didn’t feel their pain, well then, you wouldn’t have any feelings.

Kamala Harris, now the Democrat presidential candidate desperate to distance herself from the disaster of Joe Biden, has feelings.

She is desperate to win. Which is why she called Joe Biden a racist, before eventually sucking up to him and joining his administration.

To separate herself from old Joe, she recently announced a drastic plan: If elected she would use her powers to order the federal authority to control rising inflationary costs.t

In other words, government price controls just like the Stalin era, before farmers gave up and famine swept Ukraine. Stalin argued that to make an omelet you had to break some eggs. And his de facto but unofficial publicity agent, the Pulitzer Prize winning Walter Duranty of the New York Times agreed. Some eggs had to be broken, and if millions died of starvation…well, you can’t cry over broken eggs, can you?

“On Day One,” she promised, perhaps forgetting she had been at the top of the Biden administration for more than a thousand days, “I will take on price gouging and bring down costs. We will ban more of those hidden fees and surprise late charges that banks and other companies use to pad their profits.

“We will take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases,” she continued. “And we will take on Big Pharma to cap prescription drug costs for all Americans. Our plan will lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.”

She’s talking about price controls.

Yes.

Price controls didn’t work for the Soviet Union and Stalin, and the Soviets, like today’s Democrats, had the media eating out of their hands. And then came the famine.

Most of America’s inflation since 2020 has resulted from Kamala Harris, as Vice President, twice breaking Senate ties to approve the American Rescue Plan of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. These didn’t reduce inflation; they caused it, they were the match to the dumpster fire. Dumping trillions of dollars in cash on the the economy and the inevitable happened, and every American who took basic economics knew what would come:

Too much cash chasing too few goods happened. Gas was under $2 a gallon. And then everything started to rise as the inflation tax of too much government spending took hold, and milk and eggs and coffee, beef and bread, everything rising and many Americans were forced to make choices.

There were moms and dads skipped meals so their kids could eat. We never thought this would happen again in America, but it did. And some senior citizens had to select from medicine or food. It was the Democrats and their selling their “feelings” that got us here.

Not all of the corrupt corporate media was in support of Kamala Harris’ Soviet-style plan. The leftist Washington Post condemned it, as did the much more rational Wall Street Journal.

The Washington Post editorial board condemned the Harris idea as “gimmicks.” They were too kind.

Rather than “leveling with voters” and saying that “inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve’s policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it,” the vice president “opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business,” the Washington Post wrote,

“Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make ‘excessive’ profits, whatever that means.”

The Post slammed her idea to dole out $25,000 to help first-time homeowners with their down payments, saying it “risks putting upward pressure on prices.”

Really? If you’re a home-seller you benefit, because that idiocy immediately spikes home prices by 25k and more. But it inflates prices too, by at least that $25,000. And young people can’t afford the cost of a home.

The principle applies when the feds move to subsidize student loans. Say the daughter of a Hinsdale surgeon has her loan to get a doctorate in gender studies forgiven by Uncle Joe Biden and the spendy Democrats. And so, after forgiveness, who pays for the loan? The bank? Don’t be silly. The electrician or pipe fitter, carpenter or butcher pay. The blue-collar workers who didn’t wasted money or time with gender studies are the ones who pay.

Harris isn’t the only economic illiterate in Democrat politics at this week’s Democrat National Convention in Chicago groping around in the dark.

Chicago’s neo-Marxist Mayor Brandon Johnson—the mayor of the panic attacks—wants to run his own government grocery stores, just like Comrade Stalin. Walter Duranty is no longer with us, but the Times has plenty of Kamala press agents. Others moved to Chicago to give Johnson political cover, a nice deal for a moron without a clue.

As Johnson talks about his grocery stores, I think of my dad. My father and my Uncle George were grown men and slaved away for years as waiters and busboys in Chicago downtown hotels, just to scrape enough money together to open a small independent grocery on the Southwest Side in the Gage Park neighborhood. They worked 12 hours a day at least, year after year, no vacations.

I wonder: Since Johnson doesn’t like putting criminals in jail—he supported George Soros prosecutor Kim Foxx—what would he do with shoplifters at his fancy government City Hall stores?’

Give them hugs?

Or shovel candy bars at them for votes? Or most likely raise taxes on the chumbolones who remain in the city.

My friend, conservative radio host Dan Proft calls the Mayor Johnson grocery stores “Gimmie Dat” stores, since shoplifters will take what they want.

Who pays for the economic illiteracy of Democrat politicians who govern with emotions?

The people pay.

They pay for the gimmicks with higher taxes. And they pay the inflation tax because Harris unleashed inflation by dropping more than a trillion dollars of newly printed cash on the weakened economy, which is why many Americans can no longer afford the extravagance of bacon and eggs. That’s why inflation went up. That’s why the price of eggs and meat and milk are high. The politicians cackle. And the people pay.

The people also pay with increasing violent crime. They pay with fear alone, riding on public transit in the big blue cities like Chicago, with Democrats electing do-nothing Soros prosecutors. The people pay and pay.

Once I thought economic illiterates—among voters and office holders—would benefit by working in the private sector before going into government.

Or at least by watching the cartoon I link to here: from the brilliant 1958 essay written by Leonard Read, “I Pencil.”

But even a simple cartoon is beyond Harris and Johnson.

Harris has never worked in the private sector except for a summer job at McDonald’s. And Johnson was a teacher and union organizer for the real political muscle in Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union. Democrats say they’re in the giving business, but that’s a lie.

They’re not in the giving business. They’re in the taking business. They use their government clout to do the taking.

Eventually, the people who do the work break down, like overworked mules or donkeys or rusty tractors. And those who make the pencils, and the farmers who grow the beef and vegetables, the chickens and the lentils and the wheat just can’t do it anymore, with or without Walter Duranty of the New York Times.

By then the shelves are empty.

And the people grow hungry. Their children starve.

Don’t you worry about the politicians. Don’t worry about those Democrats. They’ll always be taken care of. Their beaks are always moist. It’s the Chicago Way. And in Chicago, the host city of the Democrat National Convention, they have fat, juicy, six figure public pensions. And plenty of golf. When the bill finally comes due, they’re gone.

They’re never around when the bill must be paid, and especially not economic illiterates like Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or Brandon Johnson. They live charmed lives.

But you’ll be around, won’t you? And if not, your children will be around if you’re gone. The kids are the ones who pay. They pay for our economic illiteracy and our feelings and our politics. They always pay.