POLITICS: Harris’ ‘Opportunity Economy’ a wrecking ball of fed control

Former President Donald Trump this week denounced Kamala Harris as a “one-woman economic wrecking ball,” and that sure fits her plans to create an “Opportunity Economy.”

Her vision to radically transform American life bizarrely presumes that politicians are benevolent, bureaucrats are competent, and there’s never any cost for government giveaways or debacles.

In a Pittsburgh speech and an MSNBC interview Wednesday, Harris portrayed socialistic political control over the private sector as the key to economic progress.

She promised to “engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation” — but didn’t mention that FDR practically copied Mussolini’s economic policies verbatim.

Harris is calling for “equity,” which she defines as equal results: “Some people need more so we all end up in the same place.”

How much more?

It’s a secret. 

Which groups receive more? 

It’s a secret.  

The only certainty in her Opportunity Economy — a term absurdly capitalized as a branding effort throughout her slapped-together online platform — is that politicians will determine who gets what. 

Bureaucrats will be like football referees who continually move the goalposts and boundary lines. 

And anyone who complains about the rigged game will be castigated as an enemy of fairness or the woke hobgoblin of the week.

To understand how Harris’ Opportunity Society would function, recall President Biden’s federal student debt scam. 

Biden announced a $500 billion student-loan-forgiveness scheme shortly before the 2022 congressional elections, hoping to buy votes for Democratic candidates, but the Supreme Court struck down the plan as an illegal abuse of power. 

Biden boasted he’d ignore the court’s ruling and issued one new loan forgiveness ploy after another, despite more judicial rebuffs.

His debt schemes sought to compel plumbers and ditch diggers to pay off loans for the benefit of lawyers and doctors.

The founders included a Bill of Rights in the Constitution because politicians are notorious for foul play.  

But traditional American protections for individuals will be decimated if they impede Kamala’s grandiose plans.

“Due process” will simply be any process that government does to people.

Harris’ Opportunity Economy will maximize grandstanding and minimize legality.

For a prototype, look to the federal harassment of the Sheetz convenience-store chain.

Sheetz, like many businesses, uses criminal background checks to hire staff for its 600-plus outlets.

In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Sheetz for violating the rights of job applicants who failed such checks.

The EEOC — which itself uses background checks in hiring — claims the common procedure violates civil-rights law, because black men’s imprisonment rate is nearly seven times higher than that of white men, restricting their chances of landing a Sheetz job.

To assure all job seekers “end up in the same place,” the EEOC would effectively make it a federal crime for businesses to refuse to hire ex-convicts.

But the agency offered no evidence that Sheetz had shown bias against any particular applicant, or violated any law passed by Congress — only that it had run afoul of the EEOC’s lawless enforcement guidance.

Harris urges Americans to be “unburdened by what has been” — especially, it seems, the disastrous record of past federal boondoggles.

She wants to give $25,000 grants to favored first-time home buyers, even though similar Bush-era handouts, along with a deluge of subprime mortgages and reckless home-loan policies, led to the 2008 housing crash that slashed in half the median net worth of black and Hispanic households: “Wrecking-ball benevolence,” as I’ve called it. 

The Harris Opportunity Economy rests upon faith in modern monetary theory, which presumes gushers of free government funding can solve every problem.

It’s irrelevant that young Americans will be financially skewered to service the $35 trillion (and counting) federal debt, as long as voters fail to connect foolish federal policies to their personal financial struggles.  

Those who expect the Opportunity Economy to boost prosperity will be cruelly disappointed. 

But that won’t matter, because Harris’ policies will produce “equity” — based on secret, ever-changing White House definitions. 

If claims of equity don’t fly, “social justice” can provide a default victory lap. 

And if the policies fail to benefit any favored minority or newly discovered gender group, they’ll be surefire fixes for “climate change.”

Harris portrays Uncle Sam as a cornucopia, but what about all the real-world opportunities that government destroyed in recent years? 

Scores of thousands of businesses were bankrupted by the COVID lockdowns that began in 2020.

Tens of millions of children have never academically recovered from the school shutdowns championed by Democrats and extended by the Biden administration.

Millions of American families remain ravaged by the inflation unleashed since 2021.

Harris justifies sweeping new federal interventions to achieve “equity.” But in her Opportunity Economy, every American would be further subjugated to Washington.

Endless vote-buying schemes will be an economic wrecking ball, unleashing perpetual political warfare guaranteed to make America poorer.

James Bovard’s latest book is “Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty.”