Harris claims she
“achieved landmark results” by “fighting the Wall Street banks” and winning a
large settlement following the Great Recession. In fact, her office refused to
prosecute blatant foreclosure fraud being carried out by OneWest Bank, run by then
CEO Stephen Mnuchin, now Trump’s secretary of the treasury.
The problem with Harris instead is her tendency to say what is popular in front of progressive audiences while defaulting to the political status quo when it comes time to make tough decisions. It would have taken real courage to stand up to the Obama administration in 2012 when it was pushing states hard to sweep the robosigning scandal — which involved flagrant document fraud on an industrial scale — under the rug. But Harris was the top law enforcement official in the largest state in the country. She certainly could have gotten far better terms than she did. RYAN COOPER
July 31, 2020
So it’s Senator Kamala Harris? Want to bet?
Former Vice President Joe Biden seems to have announced Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. There was an inquisitive photographer's shot of his notes suggesting just that. But there's also some question about whether she's really qualified. The media has already seeded the ground with quotes from some of the dumbest lawyers in America to state she is a “natural born citizen” under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, and is therefore, eligible to be vice president or president.
Is that really true?
Kamala Harris’ mother was Shyamala Gopalan, born in British India (present-day Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu). Ms. Gopalan never became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Donald Harris, Senator Harris’ father, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Jamaica. There are no provisions in the U.S. Constitution that qualifies a child born of a foreign national as a natural-born citizen and Senator Harris is not eligible to hold the office of the vice president.
It's possible the Trump campaign will not allow this nomination to go forward without a court challenge. There will be a full court press by the media to claim Senator Harris is eligible to the office of the vice president. The media and the Democrats will call President Trump every name in the book to get him to back off his call for legal action.
The media did a bang-up job keeping Barack Obama, a child born of a foreign national, out of the courts and into the White House. The Democrat Party believes they can do it again.
Let’s review the primaries of the 2008 election. Hillary Clinton and John McCain couldn’t afford politically to take Obama with his questionable eligibility to court. A court win would have been the classic pyrrhic victory. Whichever candidate had “standing” at the time of the lawsuit would have won the argument (the law and the facts were not on Obama’s side) and disqualified Obama to be eligible to be president, but they would have lost the election (war). A U.S. Supreme Court decision (either Clinton vs Obama, or McCain vs Obama) would have been viewed as a racist attack on a black man and the African-American community would have responded by throwing their support to the other candidate (an Obama replacement) or not voting at all.
Virtually everything written on the topic of “natural born citizen” since the Founding documents were drafted and signed, falls into one of three categories:
(1) As Alexander Hamilton explained, the “natural born citizen” requirement was expressly placed into the Constitution to ward off “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils” by “raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union.”
Some doubters questioned the supremacy of U.S. law over the laws of other nations, that being born abroad meant that person was a citizen or subject of that country. However, the Naturalization Act of 1790 reaffirmed a person born abroad of American citizens is also a “natural born citizen.”
(2) The vast preponderance of law review articles focused on the “natural born citizen” requirement. Authors challenged the Framers’ logic, decision, and promulgation (and subsequent Naturalization Laws) that foreign-born children of American citizens are inherently natural-born citizens. One paper which is referenced extensively by other law school students and researchers has been Who Can Be President of the United States: the Unresolved Enigma. Gordon’s article was written at a time when Governor George Romney ran for president. George Romney was born to American citizens in a “Mormon colony” in Colonia Dublán in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Gordon argued that Romney should not be considered eligible to run for president. He tried to revive the legal concept of jus soli (Latin: right of the soil), commonly referred to as birthright citizenship, as the right of a person born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship. Gordon and other legal scholars rejected Romney’s claim of Constitutional presidential eligibility as a “natural born citizen” based on jus sanguinis (Latin: right of blood), the principle of nationality law by which citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state.
(3) The remaining percentage of law review articles which focused on the question of “natural born citizen” took a different tack entirely. They challenged the Framers’ logic, that the “natural born citizen” clause was discriminatory, that it embodied “…striking unfairness and dangerous ambiguity.”
In What Is the Constitution’s Worst Provision? Robert C. Post argued that the Clause is highly objectionable because it unmistakably and clearly prohibits naturalized citizens from becoming president. And in Unnatural Born Citizens and Acting Presidents, James C. Ho argued that “No matter who wins the White House this November [2000], I and millions of other Americans like me once again will have suffered a certain measure of exclusion from the selection process. We have the right to vote, to be sure. But we cannot serve as president.”
Article after article, it is hard to come to any other conclusion what these legal scholars had in mind and it wasn’t that the U.S. Constitution was “ambiguous,” the favorite trope of the left, but that Democrat lawyers tried to disqualify Republican presidential candidates (Governor Romney wasn’t the only one) on the basis that they were born abroad, that they were not “native-born” and thus should not have been qualified as a “natural born citizen.”
In every article the authors argued the “natural born citizen” clause should mean something other than a person born of American citizens; that potential presidential candidates should either be born in the United States (native born) or not have been born in the United States (a naturalized citizen). Alexander Hamilton asserted that a person’s birthplace is immaterial. If they are born to American parents, then they can be born abroad, on the sea, in the air, and maybe one day, in space.
When it pleased them, leftist lawyers wished to exclude candidates they did not like on the basis of where they were born or that the Constitution is discriminatory. Alexander Hamilton’s concern wasn’t where a potential candidate for president was born but rather how he would govern the new United States. The allegiance of a child of a foreign national could rest with another country over the interests of America.
In her 1988 article in the Yale Law Journal, The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility: An Approach for Resolving Two Hundred Years of Uncertainty, Jill Pryor wrote, “It is well settled that ‘native-born’ citizens, those born in the United States, qualify as natural born. It is also clear that persons born abroad of alien parents, who later become citizens by naturalization, do not. But whether a person born abroad of American parents, or of one American and one alien parent qualifies as natural born has never been resolved.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) brought to the floor Senate Resolution S.Res.511 and “resolved” and reaffirmed Senator John McCain (R)—born in Panama of American citizens—was a natural born citizen.
There are no circumstances in U.S. law that qualifies a person born of a foreign national to be considered a “natural born citizen” of the United States. Senator Harris’ mother was born in British India and never became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Senator Harris is unambiguously ineligible to be vice president of the United States.
In lieu of a court challenge and media malfeasance, I submit the Senate could consider a Senate Resolution to affirm Senator Harris’ constitutional eligibility for the office of the vice president.
Mark writes thrillers and an occasional children’s book, and is a long-time contributor to American Thinker.
Kamala Harris planting negative stories to knock out her
potential rivals?
Kamala
Harris, who was resoundingly rejected by voters before the primaries based on
her phoniness, is now running a stealth campaign to be Democratic
presidential nominee Joe Biden's vice president. Here's the Atlantic
Monthly's June 30 take on it:
In public, Harris has repeatedly insisted that
she's not talking about or thinking about her prospects of being picked. But
judging from my conversations with people around Harris, she and her team use
her prospects to book events and television hits that aim to show she's neither
overeager nor overambitious. She and her team are avoiding situations that
could create stumbles. They're hoping that her résumé, her background, and the
force of her personality propel her. They're picking specific moments for her
to grab attention on the Senate floor or send a calibrated tweet. They're
tuning out political reporters who are stuck on their couches, looking to drum
up content during the pandemic. They're trying to ease concerns in Biden's
orbit that if she's picked and they win, she'll start running for president the
morning after the inauguration. They want her on the ticket, and positioned to
be the Democratic nominee in 2024.
It's
been in the news quite a bit that she wants the job bad even though she's
effectively been saying "Who, me?"
She's
been showing up at every press opportunity to smile and look occupied with
legislation — popular uncontroversial measures, such as making Juneteenth a
holiday. She's also been out there denouncing cops and
blaming Trump. In addition, she's had what looks
like some heavy-duty plastic
surgery in a bid to look better on
camera. Nothing to see here, move along, la di da...
But
behind the phony smiles and demurs, she's campaigning like crazy to
undercut her potential black-woman rivals, planting negative stories about them
in the press about them to keep Biden from picking them. Call it a
campaign to one.
Curiously enough, negative stories about Harris's
potential rivals for the VP slot have been popping up of late in mainstream media
outlets. Imagine that.
Those
potential Democrat rivals include Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Rep.
Val Demings, and Rep. Karen Bass, all black women who could also take
that coveted
vice presidential slot.
In recent weeks, all three have had negative
stories published about them—almost certainly the result of opposition research
fed to reporters by a rival.
Within a span of two days earlier this month, Vox and Politico published similar stories criticizing Demings's record as Orlando police
chief. Harris has been criticized in similar fashion for pursuing "tough
on crime" policies as California attorney general back when the Democratic
Party still believed in crime prevention — although neither story mentions
Harris's record.
Around the same time, ABC News published a story highlighting Bottoms's ties to
"controversial figure" Kasim Reed, the former Atlanta mayor who left
office in disgrace amid a federal corruption investigation that resulted in
prison time for a number of his senior staffers. Harris herself is no stranger
to controversial figures. Her political career emerged as she was in a
relationship with former San Francisco mayor (and Washington Free
Beacon Man of the Year) Willie Brown, who was also the subject of
a federal corruption investigation — but once again, Harris's similar
background went unmentioned.
Following reports that Biden was considering Bass because of her relative lack of
interest in using the VP gig as a platform to launch a presidential campaign in
2024, Politico came through with an article about how the congresswoman once described
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as "comandante en jefe" (commander in
chief). "Florida Democrats recoil at Karen Bass VP float," the
headline read.
It
sounds like she's got the hooks in at JournoList, which wouldn't be surprising
at all, given her closeness to the old Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
political machine. The stories are coming out with perfect timing,
and they're echo-chambering each other to magnify the "narrative."
It's a reverberation
of her record as a dirty trickster prosecutor, the kind who could plant
evidence on the innocent and defend phony made up questions to convict someone
in a death penalty case, which is what she did. Planting evidence
is "her M.O.," as Glenn Reynolds noted at Instapundit.
And
like her plastic surgery, it's really pretty obvious.
Bad
stories about rivals in Vox — really? Vox? The Vox,
founded by Ezra Klein, who, coincidence of coincidences, also founded
JournoList in a bid to make journalists the Obama machine's echo
chamber? Sure enough, Vox.
And
planting evidence isn't her only M.O., either — she's quite skilled at
manipulating different kinds of media. Remember this CNN/CBS shopping
excursion with the girls on the bus?
Remember
all her fake
Twitter followers, put there by her own minions,
to make Harris look more influential than she really is?
Remember
her suspiciously timed legislation which came about just before the Jussie
Smollett racist-attack hoax?
She's
an operator, so too bad about the rivals, she's out use the press to knock them
out.
Because
with dotard Joe in the presidential chair, it's pretty obvious
Harris is going to have some pretty impressive catbird-seat level power.
She'll be the heir apparent, perfectly positioned, for when Joe makes his
exit, either during, or shortly after he takes power. He's a placeholder after
all, and she knows it. She knows the plan, which is why this represents a
golden opportunity for her. What better than to have the real power in the
White House, well positioned for 2024?
So
there she goes, padding like a duck underwater, trying to pretend to be all
uninterested, when the reality shows she's willing to jump into any bed and
manipulate any 27-year-old who knows nothing, to bite and claw her way to the
top. Harris has no limits, and voters should beware if dodderig old Biden's
fool enough to pick Harris as his running mate. She'll get him, too.
BLOG EDITOR: STEVE MNUCHIN IS KNOWN AS THE ‘FORECLOSURE KING’.
Harris’s office never pursued the matter.
In her 2016 senate bid, Harris was the only Democratic candidate
for Senate to whom Mnuchin donated money. He
was joined by at least one other OneWest investor, billionaire George Soros.
AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF
CALIFORNIA KAMALA HARRIS ANNOUNCED THAT NEARLY HALF OF ALL MURDERS IN
MEXIFORNIA ARE NOW BY MEX GANGS. THAT DIDN’T END HER AMNESTY.
KAMALA ALSO HAS SERVED
DIANNE FEINSTEIN’S CRIMINAL BANKSTER PAYMASTER WELLS FARGO, THE VERY BANKSTERS
THAT CAUSED THE MORTGAGE MELTDOWN AND WALKED OFF WITH BILLIONS IN NO STRINGS
BAILOUTS SO THEY COULD BUY THEIR COMPETITORS. KAMALA HARRIS MADE SURE NO WELLS
FARGO EXEC OR OTHERWISE WENT TO PRISON FOR THEIR ECONOMIC CRIMES. WELLS FARGO
HAS BEEN VERY GENEROUS TO KAMALA HARRIS AS SHE HAS AND WILL SERVE HER
PAYMASTERS AS WELL AS DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND THE OBAMA-BIDEN BANKSTERS REGIME
DID.
Wasn’t
Kamala Harris the one who put tons of blacks into jail for excessive sentences
when she was a prosecutor in California?
Harris
sees that, which is why she's jumping at the chance. Ever since her
days as Willie Brown's mistress, sleeping her way to the top in politics, she's
known a good opportunity when she's seen one.
LIKE
OBAMA – BIDEN, KAMALA HARRIS WILL SERVE THE BANKSTER CLASS AND THE DEMOCRAT
PARTY’S RICH
Her rise, however, was propelled in and by a very
different milieu. In this less explored piece of her past, Harris used as a
launching pad the tightly knit world of San Francisco high society, navigating
early on this rarefied world of influence and opulence, charming and partying
with movers and shakers — ably cultivating relationships with VIPs who would
become friends and also backers and donors of every one of her political
campaigns, tapping into deep pockets and becoming a popular figure in a small
world dominated by a handful of powerful families.
Kamala #HeelsUpHarris ascends to the top of the Biden VP list:
What could go wrong?
The trends on Twitter are in and
Kamala Harris has risen to the top of Joe Biden's heap for vice presidential
picks.
Kamala
Harris is trending today. Is it because people remember she laughed about
locking up poor parents for their children's truancy? Or is it because she
tried to cancel Joe Biden a few months ago based on his segregationist ties..? #VA10https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-initiative_n_5c50b08ee4b0f43e410bcbc4 …
Kamala Harris
Defends Controversial Truancy Initiative In Newly Resurfaced Video
Some
random responses, none good:
Weird
that "I'm white and I want Kamala Harris for VP" is trending. Never
seen millions of white people want a cop in power before.
So wait,
Joe Biden put together a crime bill that specifically targeted Black male
citizens and Kamala Harris made sure those same people did extra time in jail?
And now they want to run together on the Democratic ticket for POTUS?
If Black Lives Matter THIS will never happen!
If Black Lives Matter THIS will never happen!
Wasn’t
Kamala Harris the one who put tons of blacks into jail for excessive sentences
when she was a prosecutor in California?
Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone until she gets the Vice Presidential nomination.
Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone until she gets the Vice Presidential nomination.
congratulations
to kamala harris, the establishment's choice who dropped out before the
primaries even began, for becoming the next president. they always find a wayhttps://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1273809696168841221 …
please
do not fall for @KamalaHarris she speaks with a forked tongue https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1272519084362563584 …
She's
black, and she's female, which is Biden's criterion for picking a vice
president. And unless he wants to go Norbit with
Stacey Abrams, Harris might just be all he's got, given how he's boxed himself
in.
Given
how Biden is showing greater signs of senility than ever, they might as well
even declare her the real president if, heaven forbid, Biden should win.
Harris
sees that, which is why she's jumping at the chance. Ever since her
days as Willie Brown's mistress, sleeping her way to the top in politics, she's
known a good opportunity when she's seen one.
Harris,
recall, is the one who tried to pander to black voters and guilt-minded whites
to the effect that she, in all her Berkeley, California and
Canadian upbringing, had suffered through her upbringing in the midst of
some kind of Klan country. Her yearbook photos from her high
school showed otherwise.
Being
half east Indian, she's not typically black, though she'd have you think she
was. Here's how she acquired that "credential":
Kamala Harris wanted to go to a black school.
That’s what black folks called Howard University in the early 1980s when Harris
was a teenager considering her future.
Harris, she would say later, was seeking an
experience wholly different from what she had long known. She’d attended
majority-white schools her entire life — from elementary school in Berkeley,
Calif., to high school in Montreal. Her parents’ professional lives and their
personal story were bound up in majority-white institutions. Her father, an
economist from Jamaica, was teaching at Stanford University. Her mother, a
cancer researcher from India, had done her graduate work at the University of
California at Berkeley, where the couple had met and fallen in love. And
Harris’s younger sister would eventually enroll at Stanford.
Her rise, however, was propelled in and by a very
different milieu. In this less explored piece of her past, Harris used as a
launching pad the tightly knit world of San Francisco high society, navigating
early on this rarefied world of influence and opulence, charming and partying
with movers and shakers — ably cultivating relationships with VIPs who would
become friends and also backers and donors of every one of her political
campaigns, tapping into deep pockets and becoming a popular figure in a small
world dominated by a handful of powerful families. This stratum of San
Francisco remains a profoundly important part of her network — including not
just powerful Democratic donors but an ambassador appointed by President Donald
Trump who ran in the same circles.
Harris, now 54, often has talked about the
importance of having "a seat at the table," of being an insider
instead of an outsider. And she learned that skill in this crowded, incestuous,
famously challenging political proving ground, where she worked to score spots
at the some of the city's most sought-after tables. In the mid- to late '90s
and into the aughts, the correspondents who kept tabs on the comings and goings
of the area's A-listers noted where Harris was and what she was doing and who
she was with. As she advanced professionally, jumping from Alameda County to
posts in the offices of the district and city attorneys across the Bay, she was
a trustee, too, of the museum of modern art and active in causes concerning
AIDS and the prevention of domestic abuse, and out and about at fashion shows
and cocktail parties and galas and get-togethers at the most modish boutiques.
She was, in the breezy, buzzy parlance of these kinds of columns, one of the
"Pretty Thangs." She was a "rising star." She was
"rather perfect." And she mingled with "spiffy and powerful
friends" who were her contemporaries as well as their even more
influential mothers and fathers. All this was fun, but it wasn't unserious. It
was seeing and being seen with a purpose, society activity with political
utility.
After
that, she became "cop Kamala" as the lefties say, or a pretty dirty
prosecutor, both in San Francisco and as California's attorney
general. She always put the needs of the Democratic establishment
above the people she said she was "helping." Here's
something from an item I wrote about earlier:
So here's a new one, from California watcher
Susan Crabtree at RealClearPolitics, reporting Harris's
soapboxing at the second presidential debate:
"So
in my background as attorney general of California, I took on the big banks who
preyed on the homeowners, many of whom lost their homes and will never be able
to buy another," Harris said in late July during the second round of
Democratic debates in Detroit.
In
fact, she and several other state attorneys general were instrumental in
negotiating a $25 billion national settlement with five of the top U.S.
mortgage lenders to provide debt relief and other financial services to
struggling homeowners. But in 2012, just months after Harris secured those
funds along with the other state AGs, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown diverted
$331 million from California's portion of the settlement to pay off state
budget shortfalls incurred before the housing crisis.
Although
Harris initially spoke out against Brown's diversion of the funds, she remained
silent on a subsequent court battle that began in 2014 — even after she left
the attorney general's office and for the last year and a half while serving as
senator and during her presidential bid this year.
She shook down some banks in the
name of 'the people' and then went and used the money for something else. No
wonder she's always been popular with the Democratic one-party blue-state
establishment. I have a full blog on that here.
And being part of that
establishment, she protected that establishment - such as a sex harrasser,
Larry Wallace, who happened to be a top aide during her stint as
California attorney general, and whose transgressions forced the state to shell
out more than a million dollars in compensation to his victims while he
was on the job.
Harris claimed she didn't know a thing about it.
Establishment, see, protects its own. So much for #MeToo.
Here's another corrupt little
manuever - she managed to obtain a Los Angeles Police Department Praetorian
guard that followed her wherever she went across the state. Police for me,
but not for thee. Not
her first corruption rodeo.
How
exactly is that kind of establishment record - sucking up to the rich,
protecting Democratic operatives, using all matter of executive privilege,
etc., going to win over Bernie Sanders supporters? If Joe Biden picks Harris,
he can write them off, these are their hot-button issues.
Worse
still is her record as a criminal prosecutor, the Tulsi Gabbard takedowns
described - the very takedowns that sank Harris's presidential bid before she even got
to the primaries. In Tulsi's words:
There are too many examples to cite but she put
over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked
if she ever smoked marijuana.
She blocked evidence that would have freed an
innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept
people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the
state of California, and she fought to keep a cash bail system in place that
impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.
In
an era of protests against police brutality in one-party blue cities,
particularly from Black Lives Matter supporters, putting Harris on the ticket
with Biden makes about as much sense as Republicans putting Mitt Romney at the
top of the 2012 ticket in an age when Americans wanted to get rid of Obamacare.
Romney, recall, launched his own version of the government takeover prior to
President Obama's legacy program.
As
a Republican, perhaps this is all good opposition research fodder for President
Trump or Vice President Pence to hurl thunderbolts at in the upcoming
presidential election. Maybe we should snicker.
But
it just goes to show how hard up the Democrats are for untainted candidates who
can manage some kind of connection to normal people. If Kamala Harris is the
best Joe Biden has got, it's not happening.
YOU CAN’T SEPARATE THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FROM THEIR PLUNDERING
BANKSTERS!
More stiffing the little guy from haughty Kamala Harris
This
characterization, from Thomas Lifson last month, pretty well sums her
up every time a Kamala Harris story comes to light:
Kamala Harris is scary in her pathological
ambition, moral flexibility, comfort with deception, and sheer ruthlessness.
So
here's a new one, from California watcher Susan Crabtree atRealClearPolitics, reporting Harris's
soapboxing at the second presidential debate:
“So in my background as attorney general of
California, I took on the big banks who preyed on the homeowners, many of whom
lost their homes and will never be able to buy another,” Harris said in late
July during the second round of Democratic debates in Detroit.
In fact, she and several other state attorneys
general were instrumental in negotiating a $25 billion national settlement with
five of the top U.S. mortgage lenders to provide debt relief and other
financial services to struggling homeowners. But in 2012, just months after
Harris secured those funds along with the other state AGs, then-California Gov.
Jerry Brown diverted $331 million from California’s portion of the settlement
to pay off state budget shortfalls incurred before the housing crisis.
Although Harris initially spoke out against
Brown’s diversion of the funds, she remained silent on a subsequent court
battle that began in 2014 – even after she left the attorney general’s office
and for the last year and a half while serving as senator and during her
presidential bid this year.
Which
is pretty outrageous. Harris shook down some banks in the name of "the
people" and then like a crooked lawyer, didn't give the
"winnings" to the clients. Whoever got wronged in this
mortgage-lending mess didn't see a penny of the won cash. It all just went
to other Democrat priorities within the one-party state.
Sound
like the kind of lawyer you'd want to have if you got stiffed in some bank
deal? Whatever this is, it's not the doing of the consumer advocate she's
now painting herself to be.
Any
more than she's the prison-rights advocate she claims to be - she threw
thousands of them in jail for petty offenses during her time as State Attorney
General, kept people in jail beyond their sentences in order to retain them to
fight fires, and refused to disavow false testimony from prosecutorial
misconduct that would have freed prisoners. She's never been about the little
guy.
The
mortgage-payout story shows two distasteful things about Harris.
One,
she plays the old California political machine game (it probably happens in
other crooked one-party states, too) of amassing a vast pot of money for one
purpose, a virtue-signaling purpose, a purpose that press releases can be
released on, and political campaign speeches can be made ... and then spending
the same pile of cash on something thing else, something far less
salable to the voters, something that will cover up spending mismanagement or
fatten pensions. In California, this game is gotten away with all the time. Gas
tax is approved by voters to improve roads ... and ends up bankrolling
bureaucrat and administrative hiring sprees. Federal stimulus money is shoveled
into the state for shovel-ready bridges and road improvements --- and goes
to cover municipal budget holes brought on by mismanagement. Voters approve
bond measures in the name of hiring teachers and getting more school
supplies for kids in education -- and it goes to educrat pensions and union
siphon-offs. Harris is comfortable operating that way in taking on the big
banks, shaking them down -- and just letting the money head elsewhere.
Two,
she's still the teacher's pet of Democrats, the sidling, sucking-up,
get-along-to-go-along, slept-her-way-to-the-top errand girl the more powerful
Democrats like. Crabtree reports that Harris first protested the diversion of
the funds, and then went silent. Why would she do that? Obviouly, she heard
from more powerful Democrats, the kind who could make or break her career.
An Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-style boat-rocker she was not. The money was won,
the cash was collected, the whole thing went to the government instead of
the little guys, and she went along.
Which
pretty well tells us what kind of leader she would be if heaven forbid she should
win the presidency. In winning the money and then allowing it to be diverted, she
failed the little guys she now says she was serving. And with that, she shows
she's never been about serving the people, she's about
obeying the greater interests of the Democratic political machine. No wonder she's so
popular in those circles - she's been kowtowing to
these rich and powerful since the dawn of her career. For voters, the real
message, as she vows to take over their health care, hand out reparations to
black people, and offer free stuff for votes is clear: That
the cash she promises isn't going to get anywhere near the little
guys. Not even the illegal immigrants she's promising free health care for
can believe her.
“One,
Biden has cut ties with President Obama and no longer expects to get that
prized, coveted endorsement from him. He's been sucking up for months for it,
and all signs point instead to Obama tilting toward Kamala Harris. The
fact that Obama failed to endorse Biden at this point, after all those
years of faithful service, was quite a slap in the face for loyal old Joe,
who stood at Obama's side no matter what he did.”
In reality,
as David Dayen detailed at The Intercept, the settlement was at bottom yet another bank giveaway — on
top of the TARP bailout and Tim Geithner's backdoor subsidy of banks through a
fake homeowner assistance program. As Dayen writes, "more families lost
their homes as a result of transactions facilitated by the national mortgage
settlement than those who got a sustainable loan modification to save them."
Nearly half of the dollar value of Harris' settlement was for debt that could
not be legally recovered in the first place. She also declined to prosecute OneWest, run by now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from 2009-2015,
after her own prosecutors said they discovered over a thousand violations of
foreclosure law committed by the bank. (OneWest donated $6,500 to
Harris' attorney general campaign in 2011, and Mnuchin himself donated $2,000
to her Senate campaign in 2016.)
The problem with
Harris instead is her tendency to say what is popular in front of progressive
audiences while defaulting to the political status quo when it comes time to
make tough decisions. It would have taken real courage to stand up to the Obama
administration in 2012 when it was pushing states hard to sweep the robosigning
scandal — which involved flagrant document fraud on an industrial scale — under
the rug. But Harris was the top law enforcement official in the largest state
in the country. She certainly could have gotten far better terms than she did. RYAN
COOPER
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