JOHN KASS: Kamala’s Soviet Nightmare.

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.

* * * * * * * *

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.

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 who 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.

Speaking of Kass’s question to his fellow journalists, back in the early 1990s, far left Democrat George McGovern wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender…

[M]y business associates and I also lived with federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc. While I never have doubted the worthiness of any of these goals, the concept that most often eludes legislators is: “Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.” It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators.

As Steve Hayward added earlier this month, “Well, just how much private sector experience do Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have between them? Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.  Not even with a non-profit organization (which maybe doesn’t count).”

No wonder the DNC’s operatives with bylines profess so much love and devotion.