Harv's Corner 09/23/2024

Harv's Corner
I Voted!

Early voting has begun. 
It's important before you cast your vote that you know what you are voting for.  Today I present Kamala Harris with an outline of her platform and what you can expect if she is elected.  Next week I will present Trump's platform.  Please read carefully and then
VOTE!

Kamala Harris, D
The sitting vice president built a career as a local and state prosecutor in California before she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016. Four years later, as President Joe Biden's running mate, she became the highest-ranking female official in United States history. Harris appeared destined for another possible stint as vice president until July 21, when Biden stunningly dropped his bid for re-election and endorsed her for president. Since naming Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Harris has pledged to chart a new way forward even as she has embraced many of Biden's ideas
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CLIMATE
Harris supports the Biden administration's general approach to climate policies, including subsidies for renewable energy. She has promoted environmental justice programs, which focus on the impact of climate change on marginalized communities.
During her first presidential campaign in 2019, Harris endorsed a ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process used to extract oil and natural gas from bedrock.
She also challenged federal approvals of offshore fracking when she was attorney general of California. However, she says she no longer supports a fracking ban.

ECONOMY
Harris wants to ban price gouging, create incentives to build housing, expand tax credits for middle- and low-income households, and offset the costs by increasing taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans. Her main proposal for reducing inflation is to ban corporate price gouging on groceries. Her campaign says she would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose "harsh penalties" on corporations that violated the ban and fund investigations of gouging in meat supply chains . She supports the Biden administration's spending on infrastructure and renewable energy.

DEMOCRACY
Harris' campaign has framed the election in part as a fight to preserve American democracy. She has condemned Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and she supports legislation to expand voting access and counter restrictions in Republican-led states. Those measures failed to pass because of Republican filibusters. In accepting the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August, she said she would "hold sacred America's fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power."

ABORTION
Harris supports a federal right to abortion and wants to prevent states from banning the procedure before fetal viability. She has regularly spoken out in favor of abortion rights, including making the first official visit to an abortion clinic by a president or a vice president. To achieve her goal of enshrining the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law now that the Supreme Court has overturned it, she would need not just Democratic majorities in Congress but also 50 senators willing to get rid of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

ISRAEL, GAZA
Harris has said that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas and that the United States should continue to send it weapons, while calling for a cease-fire and putting somewhat greater emphasis than Biden has on the humanitarian crisis that Israel's bombardment and invasion have caused in Gaza. She supports a two-state solution. Her national security adviser said in August that she would not support an arms embargo to end the American weapons shipments on which Israel has relied. Harris has praised a national strategy for combating antisemitism.

IMMIGRATION
Harris denounced many of the Trump administration's immigration policies but has endorsed President Biden's decisions to restore some of them, such as restrictions on asylum-seekers, as illegal border crossings have reached record levels. She has tried to address root causes of migration by securing private funding for development projects in Latin America. She recently supported a bipartisan proposal that would have hired thousands of new border security agents and asylum officers and closed the border if crossings reached m ore than 5,000 migrants a day over a week.

UKRAINE
Harris has yet to specify how her positions on Russia's war with Ukraine might differ from Biden's, other than to praise the president's efforts to rebuild alliances unraveled by Trump, particularly NATO, a critical bulwark against Russian aggression. The Biden administration has pledged unceasing support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion. The government has sent tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine that is expected to last through the year. Harris has said it would be foolish to risk U.S. global alliances and decried Russian leader Vladimir Putin's "brutality."

EDUCATION
At the start of her 2019 campaign, Harris called education a "fundamental right" and pledged to "guarantee that right with universal pre-K and debt-free college." As vice president, she has called for increasing teacher pay and criticized Florida's Black history curriculum. During her tenure the White House made broad new investments in historically Black colleges and universities. Harris has supported the Biden administration's moves to provide more than $100 billion in student debt relief, and has specifically argued in favor of student debt relief for public servants.

GUN CONTROL
The vice president wants to implement gun safety laws to reduce gun violence, including red flag laws, universal background checks, and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. She disagreed with the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn the banning of bump stocks, used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting at a music festival. In a statement after the decision, she called on Congress to ban bump stocks immediately. As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris said that she owned a gun for personal safety, but also called for "reasonable gun safety" laws.

​LGBTQ RIGHTS
During her rallies, Harris accuses Trump and his party of seeking to roll back a long list of freedoms, including the ability "to love who you love openly and with pride." She leads audiences in chants of "We're not going back." While her campaign has yet to produce specifics on its plans, she's been part of a Biden administration that regularly denounces discrimination and attacks against the LGBTQ community. Early in Biden's term, his administration reversed an executive order from Trump that had largely banned transgender people from military service.

THINK!   VOTE! 
​ (HARV)